The House of Dolls

by Hewson, David

  This was a walk he’d taken every day for nineteen years, working his way up the council hierarchy. Doing what he was told. Being a good civil servant. Along the canal then to the pretty pedestrian bridge where the artists sat and painted, trying to sell their canvases to any passing tourist. A quiet, solitary stroll. If there was time he’d stop by the painters, admire their work. Tell them he wished he could draw too, which was true though in truth he’d never much tried. There was always work. Papers to be dealt with. Decisions to be made. Councillors to be obeyed. Levers and switches that needed pulling in order to keep the city running.

  Sometimes he’d think about those choices as he sat by the Amstel, glad to leave the council building and De Wallen behind. Tourists would ask him to take photos of them beneath the white wooden arms that rose from their supporting arches to make way for boats moving up and down the broad, busy river. He always agreed. For all its faults he loved Amsterdam, was proud of his native city.

  His small, modestly decorated flat was just on the other side, close to the point at which Kerkstraat met the tree-lined street that bore the river’s name.

  On this strange day he walked straight past the artists, didn’t even look at them. Then stopped. The white arms were rising. A large commercial barge edged slowly down the river towards the Skinny Bridge. Tourists had their cameras out. Cries of delight.

  A bridge. A boat. A hiatus in the day his old life ended.

  Hendriks stared at the rising arms. Could see his building on the corner of Amstel and Kerkstraat beyond.

  A silver-grey Mercedes parked outside. Four swarthy men in business suits were getting out. They looked busy, anxious. One went to the door, pressed the bell. The other three were looking around.

  Transfixed, Alex Hendriks watched them. He’d entered a different world since Wim Prins and Margriet Willemsen seized the helm of the council. Perhaps that explained his actions. Or so he liked to think.

  The bridge kept slowly rising. Across it his eyes caught those of one of the men in suits.

  Recognition. He felt it. Felt the way his blood ran cold.

  A shout. The other two turned. The fourth at the door gave up and looked too.

  The twin levers of the Skinny Bridge moved slowly towards the bright spring sky. One of the men was dashing towards the crossing. Hendriks kept gazing at them, unable to move. It felt like a dream. A slow nightmare seeping up from the cold waters of the Amstel, freezing his limbs as it crept around him.

  The lights on the bridge started flashing. A low klaxon. The nearest suit got to the rising edge, tried to cling to it.

  One hand out. In it something so unexpected it made Hendriks turn his head sideways, like a curious bird.

  A gun. It had to be.

  Two of them now and at that point Alex Hendriks found his legs. He turned and ran, kept on going along the opposite bank of the Amstel, fleeing for his life.

  There was a Volvo estate near the main road. White, red and blue. Politie on the side.

  He glanced back. The white arms were all the way up. The figures in suits swarmed angrily on the other side. Too far to chase him down the opposing bank.

  Hendriks opened the back door of the police car and fell in. Saw two uniformed officers turn and stare at him.

  ‘Marnixstraat,’ he said.

  ‘We’re not a taxi . . .’ the cop at the wheel began to say.

  ‘You want to know what happened with Klaas Mulder, don’t you?’

  They were quiet then.

  ‘Take me to Vos,’ Hendriks ordered, and slunk down into the back seat.

  9

  Fourth floor of Marnixstraat. A forensic officer was working archived CCTV material on one of the big-screen workstations. Vos, Bakker and Koeman watched. A map of the area around Rosie Jansen’s apartment near Dam Square was in the corner of the screen. Van der Berg sat busy at another desk, poring over more phone logs.

  Vos had checked repeatedly on Katja Prins’s condition in hospital. She was awake now. Liesbeth was still there. Katja still hadn’t spoken a word to anyone.

  ‘Here.’ Laura Bakker pointed to a tall figure in the corner of the CCTV coverage. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Mulder,’ Koeman agreed. ‘Rosie Jansen’s apartment’s round the corner. Narrow pedestrian street. No camera coverage there. This puts him in the vicinity. There’s nothing to say he was in her place. Nothing we’ve picked up in his apartment either.’

  The detective looked tired and out of sorts. There’d be an internal inquiry into Mulder’s death, beyond the usual inquest. All firearms incidents generated them.

  ‘He’s nailed for the De Vries woman,’ Koeman added. ‘No question there. Rosie . . .’ He frowned. ‘I don’t see it. Are we bringing in that woman from the council and her little imp or what?’

  De Groot had listened to Vos’s report of that meeting with an expression on his face that said, ‘I told you so.’

  ‘The commissaris thinks we don’t have enough,’ Bakker told him.

  ‘We need the Prins girl to start talking,’ Koeman grumbled. ‘This doesn’t look right.’

  Vos went over the street map around Rosie Jansen’s apartment. It would have been easy to approach the place without crossing the busy Dam Square. Mulder could have gone to see her. He could have gone anywhere.

  The CCTV rolled on.

  ‘We’re screwed here,’ Koeman grumbled.

  Bakker placed a long forefinger on the screen. Her nails were short and clipped, like those of a schoolgirl.

  ‘There,’ she said.

  Vos looked. Wondered. Ignored Koeman’s bleats. Asked someone to fetch Suzi Mertens, still downstairs, waiting to be charged.

  When the woman came up he pointed to the figure on the screen and asked, ‘Do you know who this is?’

  She took out a pair of glasses and peered closely at the monitor.

  ‘I don’t think so. Should I?’

  On the adjoining computer Bakker typed a name into the ID database.

  ‘This woman was with Rosie?’ Mertens asked.

  ‘She was in the vicinity,’ Vos said. ‘Maybe it’s nothing. You’re sure you don’t recognize her?’

  Suzi Mertens took off her glasses, glanced at the screen again, leaned forward.

  ‘I already told you. Who is she?’

  ‘You can go back downstairs,’ Vos said. ‘You might want to find yourself a lawyer.’

  ‘Who . . . ?’

  Vos nodded at the door. The desk phone rang as she walked out. Koeman answered it.

  ‘Don’t pull up records when we’ve got witnesses around,’ Vos told Bakker.

  ‘It was an ID card! She couldn’t see—’

  ‘If I can interrupt the argument,’ Koeman said, hand over the phone.

  He was smiling. Beaming. Happy again.

  ‘You know I said we should have pulled in that dork from the council,’ he said gleefully. A chuckle. ‘No need. He’s here. And he wants to talk.’

  10

  Leidseplein didn’t look much different. Forty years before Theo Jansen did grunt work here. There was money to be made from drink and drugs and sex down the dark lanes that spread out behind the busy square.

  He’d decided to heed the barber’s warnings. Steered clear of De Wallen. Hung around cafes drinking endless coffee. Waiting for someone to call.

  Behind the ugly sprawl of the casino, wandering aimlessly, he came across a blind alley. A dark cobbled cul-de-sac leading off the street. Found himself staring at it, mind wandering, struggling to focus.

  A memory. Somewhere down this dank lane he’d done door duty for an early privehuis. A cheap and nasty dive. One of the first to mix dope and women, not long before the gang wars began. Jansen had been given responsibility for keeping it hidden. Paid off some police officers and a few people in the council. Kept the business running and tried not to look too closely at the clientele.

  One night a big Hollywood star, a man everyone recognized, turned up waving a fist full of guilder notes.
He didn’t mind being seen in an illicit Amsterdam whorehouse. That was what the city was for. So Jansen took his wad, made sure no one snatched any photos or asked for autographs. Then left him with three teenage Thai hookers and a bag of weed.

  The idiot seemed happy enough.

  Jansen took a couple of steps down the alley, remembering how he saw the same actor in a family film not long after. Playing the perfect father, a role the papers said he performed in real life. Rosie was five or six at the time and loved that movie. Jansen had watched it with her, feeling sick most of the time.

  The black brickwork didn’t look any different in this dark cul-de-sac. Same smell of drains.

  Did he own this place now? Or was it part of the Menzo estate that Robles and his thugs controlled?

  He didn’t know, wasn’t interested in finding out. Just found himself transfixed by the memories. Maarten was right. People got old, got weak and stupid. And the city rolled slowly on forever. Where he was stood was a short walk from the Museum Quarter with its Rembrandts and Van Goghs, the Concertgebouw where he and Rosie sometimes liked to go when the music was light enough for a working-class Amsterdammer’s taste. But they were different places. Bright and elegant and refined. The two of them were interlopers there and knew it. This was home, hemmed in by dank bricks and the daily grasping round of seedy business. Life had been like this here long before he was born and would stay that way when he was dust. It was a place people needed to visit from time to time. The dark side. Somewhere they could throw off the crippling mantle of respectability and let the hidden animal inside loose for a while.

  Then go home, to little wives and little lives and dream of the next time they might be free.

  Not him. He was their servant. Their slave. A well-paid one but that was all.

  Alone, lost for where to go, what to do, Jansen found himself gripped by a sudden urge to see the place that started him on this path. Walked down the narrow alley. A purple door. A name: Lazy Elephant. It was all coming back.

  Found himself in the darkness at the end. The door was shiny black now, freshly painted. A set of bell pushes for the floors above. He stared at them. An accountant. A public relations firm. A Chinese import and export business.

  He was wrong. This place had changed. Maybe for the worse. He was never a thief. The men who found their way through the door of the Lazy Elephant got their money’s worth. He wondered if these people could say the same.

  Someone had plastered a stick-on sign on the wall close by. A warning about pickpockets and muggings.

  They happened, Jansen thought.

  It was a grim, desolate alley. He was alone. An old and now anonymous man. Stupid place to wander.

  They were there when he turned. Three young hoods, one Asian, the others he wasn’t sure. Ugly and skinny, with crowing looks on mean faces. The smallest was at the front, the other two behind. The way cowards worked.

  He had a thin knife out. Said, ‘Give me your wallet, Granpa.’

  Waved the blade.

  Theo Jansen wondered how long it had been since he’d dealt with scum like this. Not far from here either.

  Bent down, put a hand to his ear, said in a croaky voice, ‘What’s that, sonny? I don’t hear so well.’

  A flurry of curses. The knife flashed in front of him. The little idiot put his hand to the front of Jansen’s coat.

  ‘Gimme the fucking money, man.’ Another swipe. ‘Or it’s this.’

  Jansen nodded, said, ‘Ah.’

  Slowly opened his coat, put a hand in, wriggled it round, listening to the kid’s language get louder and worse as they glanced around wondering if someone could see.

  He had long black greasy hair. This was so easy. Jansen closed his right hand round the gun, brought it out. While the kid stared at it, eyes wide, mouth open, Jansen’s left hand wound itself into his scalp, pulled his head hard, banged it against the wall.

  The knife clattered on the cobblestones. The other two scampered off in an instant. Just the two of them now, close against a set of bell pushes. A man approaching sixty. A youth maybe twenty at the most.

  Theo Jansen jabbed the barrel of the pistol hard into his sallow cheek. Listened to the stream of whimpered pleas, jabbed harder. Told him to shut up.

  ‘What’s the lesson today?’ he asked calmly.

  ‘Didn’t mean it, mister,’ the kid whined. ‘Didn’t—’

  ‘What’s the lesson today?’

  He’d roared that in his best angry voice and it felt good.

  Silence.

  ‘Sometimes you pick the wrong guy,’ Jansen said after a while. ‘That’s the lesson. Learn it.’

  The gun barrel didn’t move. The kid’s eyes stayed wide.

  ‘Repeat after me . . .’ Jansen began.

  ‘Sometimes you pick the wrong guy,’ the kid said quickly. Street-smart, Jansen thought. Just the way he was. But no muscle. Probably no decent parent either. In a way this kid had an excuse he’d never possessed.

  ‘Get yourself a job, sonny. You’re not cut out for this stuff. Listen to me. I know.’

  The kid laughed, a flash of anger in his eyes.

  Spat back, ‘A job. Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Jail. And I’m going back there or somewhere else very soon.’

  He took the gun away from the skinny youth. The kid glanced at the cobbles, the knife there.

  ‘You can forget that,’ Jansen said.

  The door opened. A middle-aged woman in a smart business suit stared out at them, asked warily, ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘We were looking for the Lazy Elephant club,’ Jansen said. ‘But I think we’re too late.’

  Then he half-shoved, half-kicked the kid back out into the street. Jansen watched him lope off. Cursed himself for the crack about a job. That was an old man’s response. He’d have been insulted by it too.

  Back in the square he found a herring stall. Looked at the fish. Old, not new. Got a grunt from the man behind the counter. Ordered a broodje, watched as the man put the thin white fillet, some onions, some pickles in the bread roll.

  Walked round Leidseplein eating. He should have had a beer first. Or a jenever. That way he might not have noticed the thing barely had any taste. This was his city and it seemed to be recoiling from him. No one looked at him. No one did anything but get out of his way.

  A crazy old man eating broodje haring. Thinking of a dying crook, consumed by flames in a field of flowers. And his daughter, murdered, left next to the houseboat of the only cop a man like Theo Jansen would ever trust.

  Maybe Mulder did kill her. And then what? Hard to take revenge against a dead man. He’d heard nothing from Maarten. Nothing from Robles or Suzi. Three, four hours, that was all he’d give it. After that he’d sit in a bar somewhere in the Jordaan, drink himself stupid, make the call and wait for Vos to turn up.

  A few minutes later the phone rang. It was Suzi outside Marnixstraat.

  ‘You didn’t need to send that man,’ she said. ‘Or threaten me. You could have just asked.’

  ‘Confession comes naturally I guess.’

  ‘You’re a bitter, crazy old fool. You know that?’

  ‘Yeah. But we’ve all got our faults. I never lied to you though. Did I?’

  Silence. He thought he’d pushed her too far.

  ‘They say they’re going to charge me with hiding you. When they’ve time. I could go to jail.’

  ‘It’s not so bad. They’ve got priests and things.’

  ‘Theo!’ she shrieked. ‘Don’t blame me for everything! It was Rosie’s idea. Not mine. She was pissed off you didn’t want to know me. I didn’t have two pennies to rub together—’

  ‘You could have asked!’ Jansen bellowed.

  ‘Begged you mean. Gone on my knees.’

  Maybe that was true, he thought. He’d built walls around himself over the years. No one came close. Not even Rosie it seemed.

  ‘If it was Mulder I may as well come in,’ he said more quietly. ‘What
’s the point?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Am I talking to myself here?’

  ‘Vos doesn’t think it was Mulder,’ she said. ‘He didn’t say so but I could tell.’

  Even after thirty years he could still hear the edge in her voice.

  ‘So who’s he chasing?’ he asked.

  ‘A woman. I wasn’t supposed to see but they had her name on the screen.’

  ‘Someone I might know?’

  ‘She’s American. Barbara Jewell. Runs something called the Yellow House. I looked up the address. It’s behind the flower market. They’ve got her on CCTV near Rosie’s place.’

  ‘The Yellow House? What the hell’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know! He couldn’t wait to get me out of there. They’ve got hold of the Prins girl. Vos wants to talk to her about that place on the Prinsen. But she’s sick or something. Can’t speak. They kept asking me what happened there—’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘That’s the truth. But that kid does. They seem sure of it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  Ten minutes to the flower market on foot. He could ask about the place there.

  ‘That’s it? Thanks?’

  ‘I’m sorry I sent Maarten. I didn’t want to see you myself. I couldn’t face that.’

  ‘Do I frighten you, Theo? Is that it?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he agreed. ‘Most things do if I think about them.’

  11

  Vos sent a couple of uniformed officers to fetch Margriet Willemsen to Marnixstraat, met her in reception. They got three cups of coffee from the worst machine, headed down the corridor. He’d picked the route carefully. Along the way Alex Hendriks sat inside another room with Koeman and a young detective. Vos stopped at the door and looked through the glass. The little civil servant’s head rose from the table. Terrified when he saw her.

  ‘I’m here because of that cretin?’ Willemsen demanded. ‘You know I just fired him? Did he tell you that?’

  ‘He told us you sent him home and there was a bunch of thugs waiting for him,’ Bakker said.