The House of Dolls

by Hewson, David

  6

  Ten minutes on, after a fast bike ride, Vos and Bakker marched into Marnixstraat. De Groot had summoned a briefing on the fourth floor. Koeman managed to intercept them as they walked down the long corridor.

  ‘No time,’ Vos said, trying to brush him to one side.

  ‘Make time,’ Koeman insisted.

  He blocked their way until he got through what he wanted to say. Anna de Vries, the murdered reporter, had visited Wim Prins in his office the previous afternoon.

  ‘Why?’ Bakker asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Koeman said. ‘Here’s something else. Last night no one knows where Wim Prins was. Not the people in the council. Not his wife. He told her he went drinking on his own. Didn’t get back till eleven thirty. We think the woman was murdered about an hour before that.’ Koeman winced. ‘One of the street girls says she heard a scream around then. Not that she did anything, naturally.’

  ‘Later,’ Vos said, trying to push past.

  ‘That’s not all,’ Koeman went on, pulling some photos out of a plastic envelope. ‘De Vries’s phone fell into the gutter in the alley where she was stabbed. We got it back. There’s a message supposed to be from Prins asking for a meeting in the Cafe Singel. He never showed. I checked. Then another supposedly from Katja Prins. She mentioned your name . . .’

  Koeman thrust a piece of paper in front of his face, pointed a couple of lines down.

  Can you hear me howling, Pieter? Don’t you care?

  Vos struggled to speak.

  ‘You got one like that. Supposed to be from Anneliese,’ Koeman said. ‘It’s in the files here. Except that one called you father. Not Pieter. How many people know that? Except the bastard who sent you it?’

  Too many possibilities. Too many memories.

  ‘These are all fakes,’ Koeman went on. ‘Rogue SIMs. The calls went through the same mast so it’s the same person with two phones. Someone was reeling in that woman like a fish on the line. We need to get Wim Prins in here. Find out where he was last night. Jesus . . .’

  He scratched at the brown walrus moustache.

  ‘I met her a couple of times. She was a nice enough kid for a hack.’

  Vos tapped the page of messages.

  ‘If this was Prins . . . would he use his own name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Koeman said straight off. ‘Would she have turned up if he called himself Donald Duck? Let’s ask him.’

  ‘You just hate politicians,’ Vos said and did get past that time.

  A high, angry voice down the corridor behind him.

  ‘Don’t we all?’ Koeman cried.

  7

  Wim Prins had used the same bank for almost a quarter of a century. A small private institution based in a turreted mansion in the Museum District. His account manager for most of that time had been Kees Alberts, a dour senior official familiar with international tax legislation and investment opportunities. It was through this man that Prins had bought the villa in Aruba, carefully diverting some of his income from the legal practice which then numbered Michiel Lindeman among its partners. There were other investments around the world too. Another villa in Greece. Some retail sites in Florida. Share portfolios based in a variety of Caribbean havens.

  Money never bothered Prins much. His net worth, every last asset taken into consideration, was pushing the ten million euro mark. But most of that was tied down in funds and property. He’d needed little in the way of liquid cash for years and in truth had no idea whether he could raise half a million euros easily at all.

  Alberts soon put him straight. After Prins called the day before he’d worked out some swift calculations. Prins had immediate access to two hundred and forty thousand euros. The money sat on the banker’s desk, in a black leather Tumi case as he’d demanded. Four hundred euros for that already deducted from the pile.

  ‘There must be more,’ Prins insisted.

  ‘Lots more,’ Alberts agreed. ‘I just can’t turn it into cash the moment you click your fingers. Give me till tomorrow and I could probably add a hundred thousand. A week and we could probably liquidate a million. Most of your money’s in property, Wim. I can get you loans against that. Expensive loans. But not overnight. And .. .’

  The banker gazed at him.

  ‘I have to ask why. There are rules these days. About money-laundering . . .’

  ‘Do I look likea money-launderer?’

  ‘The rules don’t ask what you look like. Only what you do. And why.’

  Silence.

  ‘And why?’ Alberts repeated.

  ‘Because it appears someone’s kidnapped my daughter. And unless I give them half a million euros . . .’ He glanced at his watch.

  ‘One hour from now she could be dead. Check with Marnixstraat if you like. They know all about it.’

  The banker went white.

  ‘You asked,’ Prins said.

  ‘This is a bad time, isn’t it? What with the stories in the papers—’

  ‘Forget about the papers. How can I get more money?’

  Alberts shrugged.

  ‘You can’t. Not from here. Maybe the police can come up with a solution. Marked notes. A case with dye in it or something. That’s why they’re there.’

  ‘No time. And they won’t do me any favours.’

  ‘This is the twenty-first century, Wim. We don’t keep vast sums of cash lying around. Who wants it? Who needs it?’ He tapped the case. ‘Most of that I had to get from somewhere else.’

  Prins waited. Nothing more.

  ‘If you don’t want it . . .’ Alberts began, reaching for the case.

  ‘It’s mine, isn’t it?’ Prins snarled then snatched it from him and walked out into the bright cold day.

  De Nachtwacht was such a simple plan, one he’d thought of while staring at Rembrandt’s colossal painting in the Rijksmuseum just a few minutes away. A group of sturdy Amsterdam worthies, ready to go out into the city. Drums beating. Weapons at the ready. There was a young girl too, bright-eyed, goldenhaired, a dead chicken mysteriously attached to her waist. Some kind of symbol, he guessed. He’d never known. Never been interested in the finer detail. This was a canvas about men willing to fight to take control of something they cherished. The city. To make it safe for their families. To bring light out of the darkness.

  Was it vanity that made it so appealing to him? For most of his marriage he’d been unfaithful. Slyly sleeping with Liesbeth on the side. How many of Rembrandt’s men in their fine costumes, good churchgoing wealthy burghers, were up to the same tricks? Was it the city he wanted to purify? Or himself ?

  Prins watched the traffic move lazily down the long straight road of Weteringschans. A cab meandered towards him. That morning he’d bought a pair of cheap, heavy-rimmed sunglasses from a tourist store near Leidseplein. As the Mercedes drew to a halt he put them on then climbed into the back, sat there, hand on the Tumi case.

  Said nothing.

  ‘Is this a date or do you want to go somewhere?’ the driver asked.

  ‘I want to go somewhere,’ Prins said. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  The man shrugged, waited.

  Wim Prins looked at himself in the mirror. Just one more middle-aged man, grey hair, heavy sunglasses, big and cheap, hiding most of his face.

  ‘Schiphol,’ he said then placed the black case on his lap.

  Hand baggage. Good enough to take him halfway across the world.

  8

  Margriet Willemsen was at the window when Hendriks walked in. She’d taken a call from a detective, Koeman. Told him as little as possible. Simply confirmed what he already appeared to know.

  This didn’t make Alex Hendriks happy.

  ‘That dead reporter was here yesterday. She had the video for God’s sake. What do we do?’

  ‘We distance ourselves,’ she said, coming back to the desk. ‘We stay calm. We tell them the truth as far as it goes. We wait and see what happens. This doesn’t affect us, Alex. Keep cool.’

  ‘Cool
?’ He screwed his eyes shut, wondered what was coming next. ‘We need to talk to Prins. Work on our story.’

  ‘Wim’s out of this place for now,’ she insisted. ‘You leave him to me. Do you know what happened?’

  He had to say it.

  ‘I got hacked. There was a girl in the office. A temp from one of the drug charities. Now she’s pissed off somewhere. I’m pretty sure she got into my account. She must have sent it.’

  ‘You know, Alex, if I didn’t think you’d run screaming to Marnixstraat I’d send you naked out into the street right now.’

  Hendriks scowled.

  ‘But you do,’ he said. ‘And I need you. I just wanted to rein him in. That’s all. Where the hell is he? I tried calling home. His wife sounded . . .’ Hendriks liked Liesbeth Prins. There was something fiery and independent about her. He couldn’t understand what she saw in her dry, introverted husband. ‘She sounded dreadful.’

  ‘I don’t know where he’s gone,’ Willemsen said. ‘Who cares? Marnixstraat have got enough on their hands. If they start asking more questions put them on to me.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that! They’re the police. They can do whatever they like.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And I’m vice-mayor of the city council. Mulder’s our link man for De Nachtwacht. If anyone from Marnixstraat comes on tell them they need to talk to him.’

  Hendriks nodded. There was another question. It wouldn’t go away.

  ‘That reporter . . .’

  ‘They think it was a mugging gone wrong,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t think . . . Wim . . . Jesus, he was mad as hell when we threw him out of here. Liesbeth said he was out last night. She doesn’t know where. If they start—’

  ‘For God’s sake, Alex, will you shut up?’ she yelled. ‘You kicked this nightmare off, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not really,’ Hendriks snapped back. ‘I just threw a little fuel on a fire that was already burning.’

  She didn’t like it when people answered back. Didn’t have any good response either.

  ‘Hell of a coincidence if someone mugged that woman just a few hours after she was in here scaring the shit out of him,’ he added.

  Margriet Willemsen smiled then. The smile from the election posters. Broad and insincere.

  ‘A coincidence,’ she said. ‘That’s all it is. We’re in this together, Alex. We’ll weather it together too.’ She waved at the door. ‘You can go now. Just do as I say. Everything will be fine.’

  Outside in the corridor his phone buzzed. Hendriks looked at the screen. An incoming text.

  Til Stamm writes, u want me?

  Oh yes, Hendriks thought. There were so many questions.

  Alex Hendriks writes, We need to meet. Where? When?

  A long pause. He thought he’d lost her. Wondered what he’d do if that was the case. Then . . .

  Til Stamm writes, zeedijk& stormsteeg 1130

  Hendriks leaned against the windows looking out to De Wallen. He knew the city so well he could picture that junction in his head. Two old narrow cobbled streets meeting at a crossroads never meant for modern traffic. Chinese restaurants anda couple of shops. A brown bar he visited sometimes, the Cafe Oost-West.

  Why the hell would a druggie temp who’d raided his private account want to meet him in Chinatown in the middle of the morning?

  Alex Hendriks writes, Come into the office. Everything’s cool.

  Another pause and he really thought he’d lost her. Then . . .

  nothings cool alex. didnt u notice? B there.

  9

  Nineteen men and one woman in the Marnixstraat briefing room. Mulder at the front issuing orders, Vos and Laura Bakker in the first line of chairs.

  De Groot had outlined the arrangement beforehand. Mulder would run the operation on the ground. Vos would deal with any subsequent interviews. The logic seemed unbreakable. Vos was newly returned to the service, dealing with men he hadn’t worked with recently. Mulder had been a serving senior officer throughout, knew all the latest codes and buzzwords.

  Argument over before it had even begun.

  Vos and Bakker listened to the stakeout plan. Men in plain clothes on the street. In offices overlooking the crossroads. A couple in the Cafe Oost-West. Cars ready to block off all the exit routes. A surveillance helicopter swooping high over the city, not fixed since that would only serve to create suspicion. Fast links into all the nearby mobile phone masts, ready to trace calls as they came and went.

  All in position from fifteen minutes before Prins was due. Still no word of the man himself. Just his wife downstairs, waiting in reception, waiting on news.

  Vos heard that, closed his eyes, made a mental note to leave with Bakker by the back. Then, when Mulder’s briefing was done, asked, ‘And us? Where do we go?’

  The tall officer looked at him and shook his head.

  ‘You wait here,’ Mulder said. ‘We’ve got a team in place. I don’t have room for novices.’

  Bakker started squawking straight off, only to be quietened by a fierce word from Frank de Groot.

  ‘It’s a team, Vos,’ Mulder repeated. ‘You don’t know how we work and I don’t have time to start giving lessons now.’ He pointed to one of the computers on a desk at the edge of the room. ‘We’ve put some temporary CCTV cameras in place. If you can find a spare desk you can watch it all from here. We bring in the contact. If we can get a location for Katja Prins then we deal with that too.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Thirty minutes to be in position. If you’ve got any questions . . .’

  Laura Bakker put up a hand, like a schoolgirl wanting to ask a question.

  ‘What?’ Mulder asked.

  ‘Bring Wim Prins in, will you?’ she asked. ‘Just so we can tidy up a few things.’

  Mulder looked at Vos.

  ‘Yes,’ Vos said. ‘I’d like that too.’

  10

  Schiphol. Prins walked straight to the KLM counter, paid almost five thousand euros for a one-way business class ticket to Oranjestad in Aruba. The plane was due to leave at eleven forty-five. Nine hours fifty minutes to fly from a chilly Amsterdam to the warm Caribbean. After that a cab to San Nicolas, a hired boat to cover the twenty-seven kilometres to Venezuela, an easy haven beyond immediate Dutch jurisdiction.

  There he could put the money into the safest haven he could find. Think. Wait. Drink.

  Maybe even smoke and finda whore. Everyone else did. Why not? This was a new time, a new world.

  Hand baggage only. The counter gave him a boarding pass. Within three minutes he was through immigration with his electronic passport. Didn’t even have to look a border guard in the eye.

  The airport was always busy, a sprawling complex of gates and shopping arcades that seemed to stretch forever. There was a business lounge. He avoided it. There might have been someone there he knew. Instead Prins wasted time in a free display of paintings from the Rijksmuseum then sat alone in a tucked-away bar, sipping at a beer, picking at a hot dog, clutching the case, the heavy sunglasses on his face all the time.

  Just after eleven now. The police would be flooding Chinatown. He looked at his phone. Messages from Liesbeth. She’d gone to Marnixstraat but didn’t say any more than that.

  Where are you? Why don’t you call?

  He thought about this, tapped out a reply.

  Everything’s fine. Be patient. We’ll get through this.

  She came straight back.

  I need to talk to you, Wim.

  But you don’t, he thought. You haven’t. Not for a long time. Since the marriage. That changed everything. Before, when it was an affair, illicit, secret, stolen, they were joined by an unspoken, interior passion. A frantic heat that a wedding ring extinguished almost overnight, rendering the magical mundane.

  I’ll call when I can.

  From Venezuela. Isla Margarita maybe. He’d been there once with Bea. She spent most of the time coked out of her skull.

  Liesbeth wasn’t like that. Not yet. An
d he would call her. Sometime. But not soon.

  He looked at the phone. They could trace him through that if they wanted. So he turned it off. Took out the battery. Sat on his own, feeling like a criminal, praying for the moment he could step on board.

  11

  Vos and Bakker found an office with a PC hooked up to Mulder’s CCTV circuit. It was just after eleven. Nothing much happening from the six cameras on the street. That didn’t seem wrong. Then he asked her to fetch Liesbeth,a couple of coffees and leave them alone.

  Two minutes later she was back with a miserable-looking Liesbeth Prins and two cups of coffee from the best machine, one forensic owned and rarely allowed anyone else to use. Laura Bakker could be persuasive when she felt like it.

  She left to find a hot desk somewhere else. Vos turned off the PC screen. Liesbeth sat down by the window, didn’t look him in the eye. Didn’t answer when he asked if she knew where her husband had been the previous night. Where he was now.

  After a series of questions she barely acknowledged she said, ‘He’s got the money. Or so he said. What else do you expect?’

  Gently, he asked again about Anneliese and Katja. How they might have known each other. Whether there was any suggestion they’d gone to a house on the Prinsen in their free time. He was used to awkward questions. But none so close and painful as those he knew he had to broach now.

  ‘She was sixteen years old,’ Liesbeth said wearily. ‘You were never there. I had a life of my own too. Do you think I knew what she did every minute of the day?’

  ‘The place she went on the Prinsen was a brothel,’ Vos said, not taking his eyes off her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A privehuis. A kind of club. Probably one where the girls were . . . pretty young. Getting groomed.’

  Nothing.

  ‘We found her blood there. Her bus pass. She was in that place. Maybe with Katja. God knows who else . . .’

  She shut her eyes tightly fora second, mouth a taut grimace of fury and pain.