Little Sister

by David Hewson

  He turned on the TV and slotted the DVD into the drive. Some titles came up. After them came a very amateur musical act, a middle-aged woman plastered in thick make-up trying to sing an old Abba tune. Finally something that sent a shock of cold up and down his spine again, worse this time because now life and death ran together, no easy line between the two.

  Three kids, sisters obviously. All dressed alike, scarlet shirts, blue shorts, red patent shoes. Everything too tight. Too . . . adult.

  They started to sing and Van der Berg found himself rushing to find the remote and hit pause.

  ‘I need you here,’ he said. ‘Aisha?’

  There was a sound back in the living room. That was quick, he thought. Then he went to look, trying to erase the image of those three children, dressed and made up like showgirls. It all seemed so wrong.

  Van der Berg stepped into the front room and said again, ‘Aisha?’

  The light went out and in that brief moment he realized he was scared. Then something hard came out of the shadows. A coward’s blow. The sucker punch caught him on the cheek. Something else crashed into the back of his head.

  A big man, he went down like a stone.

  41

  Near the end of the dyke a line of bright street lamps was emerging along the mainland running off to the right. They had to be getting close to the broader highway by the lake. To her relief Vos had eased off on the speed. He was right. Irene Visser was drunk. And she couldn’t get away in the end. There was no need to turn this into any kind of chase.

  ‘I can’t see any sign of a roadblock up ahead.’

  She called Control before he asked. A woman there went silent while she checked the status of the request.

  ‘They’re there,’ the officer said eventually. ‘Just turned up.’

  ‘We can’t see them,’ Bakker told her.

  The car went over a ridge in the road. The phone bounced straight out of her hand into the footwell.

  Vos groaned.

  ‘I’m trying,’ she said. ‘Sorry. If you drove a bit more carefully maybe. Oh my God—’

  Afterwards it was simple enough to work out what had happened. The squad car had arrived at the tight bend where the dyke lane from Marken met the wide road back to the city. The men inside, two young and inexperienced officers, parked straight across the asphalt, side on to coming traffic. They were out of the car, one of them trying to position lights and a sign, the other spreading a spike strip over the road to take out the tyres of any incoming vehicle.

  Drunk or not, Irene Visser spotted them early. She was probably doing a hundred and twenty at the time.

  ‘Jesus,’ Bakker whispered, watching the Alfa lurch sideways, tyres shrieking, brake lights flashing bright red, nose twitching into the skid.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ Vos ordered, throwing her his phone.

  The sports car was down to eighty when the front nearside caught the tail of the police car, flipping the vehicle onto its side in an instant. As Vos and Bakker watched the Alfa turned somersaults and rolled straight off the bend, over the low grass bank, down towards the bare shoreline ten metres or more below.

  The two uniformed cops had retreated to stand on the opposite high dyke wall, the beams of their two torches following the doomed car as it twisted towards the pebble margin by the water.

  The thing hit with a loud, explosive crash. Vos slewed his Volvo to a halt, leapt out and raced to the top of the dyke, Bakker behind him.

  Thirty metres away Irene Visser’s vehicle rolled over twice on the pebble beach then exploded in a burst of orange and red flame. Vos was trying to scrabble down the bank. Bakker came and held him back, then the two uniformed men.

  ‘Pieter,’ she begged. ‘You can’t get—’

  A second explosion then. The bonnet of the Alfa flew into the air and the windows blew out on all sides. Up to the velvet sky sparks shot like crazed fireworks. The smell of burning diesel reached them.

  Breathless, head shaking, furious with himself, Vos watched.

  ‘She wasn’t there. Irene Visser was never near that farmhouse.’

  Bakker nodded.

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘She wasn’t.’

  The car was consuming itself in a fiery burst of flames and smoke, rising to the night sky.

  ‘So why,’ he wondered, ‘did she run?’

  42

  It was dark by the time Mia Timmers arrived back at Vera’s house. There were lights on inside.

  The door was locked. Kim answered it.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Mia asked.

  ‘Where’ve you been, Sister?’ Kim replied, then wandered back into the kitchen.

  Mia didn’t want to push things so she went upstairs to see Vera and give her the pills Kim had thrown out of the window. To her relief the Englishwoman looked a bit less sick, though she still complained she couldn’t move.

  ‘That’s not all my medication,’ she moaned, looking at the bottles.

  ‘It’s all I could find.’

  ‘I need a doctor! I was a nurse, remember? This ankle’s broken.’

  Mia had thought about this when she was walking home.

  ‘You can have a doctor when you tell us the truth. About who paid you. What we’re supposed to be doing.’

  Vera’s narrow face was set in an angry scowl.

  ‘I told you the bloody truth. I don’t know. That’s it.’

  ‘But you must know something. How they found you. How—’

  She froze. There was a sound from downstairs. Singing. Kim’s voice. And then another, faint, high and faltering.

  Vera swore and started to struggle with the caps of the pill bottles. Mia walked slowly down the steep steps. The singing had stopped. Then it began again, one voice this time. Kim’s. An old folk song they used to perform when the three of them were being groomed for stardom by the men who hung around the recording studio above the waterfront cafe.

  There was a smell from the kitchen. Kim had been frying eggs, she guessed. Probably burnt them from the acrid stink.

  No arguments, Mia thought. That would be the worst thing.

  Then she walked in and saw them. Kim at the table. Next to her a girl of ten or eleven. Shiny blonde hair, freshly washed, falling around her shoulders. Blue patterned dress with short sleeves. Narrow pale face, scared and puzzled at the same time.

  Kim had a serrated steak knife in her hand. They’d had that sort at home but never got allowed things like it in Marken.

  ‘Sing!’ She stabbed the sharp pointed end into the old table. The girl stared at the wooden handle quivering in front of her. ‘You can sing, can’t you?’

  Then Kim grabbed the kid by her skinny bare arm and squeezed, hard.

  Mia whispered, ‘This isn’t us. She’s not . . .’

  A high, uncertain note, barely soprano, emerged from the girl’s trembling throat, veering from tone to tone.

  Wrong. All wrong.

  43

  Floodlights by the water. Medics on the shore. Unseen nightbirds hooting and rustling in the dark wetlands behind them. There was nothing for Vos and Bakker to do at that moment. Irene Visser was dead, the Timmers case in limbo, a mystery that seemed determined never to reveal itself.

  He responded the way he usually did to such situations, shrinking inside his shell, silent, reflective. Bakker now had the routine set for these moments. Not nagging. She was aware that didn’t work. Instead, carefully, without the least attempt to apportion blame, she tried to prod Vos into thinking about what had happened, retracing the steps that led them here, trying to see something, a fact, a marker by the road, that had eluded them on the way.

  Seated in the car, both doors open, smelling the burnt fuel on the hot night air, he listened and did his best. Then shook his head and said, ‘We need to step back from this. It’s all too close. Maybe—’

  ‘Don’t say it.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘You don’t want me near the case. It’s gettin
g too awkward. I should go back to Dokkum and see my aunt.’

  ‘I’d never say that—’

  ‘Oh no? What about when that Georgian woman’s kid went missing?’

  ‘That was different,’ he objected.

  ‘How?’

  ‘You were different. Still a bit raw. Vulnerable. Not that you’d ever admit it.’

  That seemed to ruffle her feathers.

  ‘I’m not sure I’d agree.’

  ‘I’d never expect you to,’ Vos replied. ‘But now. You’re . . .fine.’

  The medics were lugging a gurney up the incline from the burned-out car. Neither of them felt the need to witness that particular event.

  ‘Thanks,’ she replied. ‘Don’t overdo the compliments.’

  ‘I don’t need to. You’re a part of Marnixstraat now. Most of the time anyway. And when you get . . . rebellious. Well.’ He laughed, just for a second. ‘We probably need it.’

  ‘So if it’s not me you were thinking about . . .it’s . . . ?’

  She didn’t finish. They both knew what she was going to say.

  ‘I didn’t ask to come back to this job,’ he said. ‘I never planned it. I’m glad you found me. Sort of. But I don’t know . . .’

  The ambulance started up. People were dragging floodlights down the grassy dyke bank. When they turned them on they cast reflections on the water like miniature moons.

  ‘I doubt myself,’ he said quietly. ‘Every day. I get up and think . . . why didn’t I do this better? What makes me miss things that should be so damned obvious?’

  She shuffled around in the seat.

  ‘It’s called being human, Pieter. You’re not exactly alone in all this.’

  ‘No.’ He was glad of the conversation. ‘I’m not, am I?’

  ‘My old dad used to say a wise man always learns more from his failures than his successes. Maybe we should spend more time looking at our doubts and less with what we know.’

  They were in the wrong place out here in Waterland. Strangers in an alien land. It was so obvious and he’d no idea how to address that problem.

  ‘That’s what worries me.’

  His phone rang. He prayed it wouldn’t be De Groot. Instead he heard the anxious voice of Aisha Refai.

  ‘I’m in Volendam,’ she said. ‘The place Dirk was looking at. I think you should come here. Someone’s attacked him. He’s not too bad but—’

  He passed the phone straight to Bakker and told her to get more details. Then started up the car and pulled away from the grim scene by the water.

  44

  Money. The sisters had some of their own, stolen in Marken. More left in the envelope with the map. And Vera’s now too. It was time to use it.

  Mia listened to the blonde girl’s pathetic efforts at singing then stood up, smiled at her and said, ‘It’s late. Time you went home. Isn’t it . . .?’

  She waited, still forcing the smile. Finally the kid said, ‘Iris.’

  ‘Iris,’ Mia repeated. ‘Come on then.’

  Kim didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t look at them. God knows what she might have done if Iris really could sing, a fine soprano, just like Little Jo. But all they got was that tuneless croak and perhaps that saved them all.

  Mia took the girl outside, into the dark street. Amsterdam came alive at night, people everywhere. The girl knew where she lived, which was a blessing. Five streets away, back towards Dam Square.

  They walked there and they talked. Mia told her how her sister was sad and confused. Because once upon a time, years ago, they’d had another sister, one who died. That loss never ceased to ache, especially for Kim. Sometimes she did things, silly things. Things they both regretted.

  ‘Did she sing?’ Iris asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Mia said, remembering.

  ‘I can’t, can I?’

  ‘Have you tried much?’

  ‘I did my best,’ the girl said in a hurt voice.

  ‘No. I mean . . . did your mum teach you? Anyone? Did they help?’

  ‘Mum works.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘He’s gone. Went years ago.’

  ‘Brother? Sister?’

  ‘Just me,’ Iris said in a low, dead tone.

  And that, Mia thought, is why you walk off with a complete stranger. Because there’s nothing left to do. Nowhere to go. No one to talk to.

  In Marken, trapped, desperate to be free, they’d pictured the outside world as a perfect place. Somewhere happiness fell from the sky, rose up from the cobblestones like wild flowers ready to bloom, seeping into everyone’s life because that was what they were owed and all they had to do was wait. It was just another illusion. How many more?

  Finally they found the place. The ground floor was a tacky-looking mobile phone shop. There was a stack of bells by the door. So many apartments tucked into such a narrow grimy building. Vera, with her tiny terrace house, was lucky to have such space to herself. Which was, perhaps, why she was chosen.

  ‘Here,’ Mia said and took out a fifty-euro note.

  Iris stared at the money, puzzled. Scared perhaps.

  ‘I want you to have this.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because when you take it you’re going to promise me two things.’

  Mia waited. This was important. Iris had to be part of the deal, to volunteer herself.

  ‘What things?’ the kid asked.

  ‘First . . . you won’t tell your mum about us. About my sister. What happened. You won’t tell her. You won’t tell anyone. Kim’s not . . .not well. It might make people . . . hurt her.’

  ‘If she’s not well she needs a doctor.’

  ‘She’s seeing one,’ Mia insisted, the lies coming so easily. ‘We’re getting somewhere. But if there was trouble . . . it would set her back.’

  ‘’Kay.’

  Iris put the money in the pocket of her jeans.

  ‘You didn’t ask what the second thing was.’

  Two young eyes stared up at her. Surly. Not liking to be reminded she’d forgotten something. That awkward, cantankerous gaze might have been her sister now that they were free.

  ‘You have to promise me,’ Mia said. ‘You won’t walk off with someone like that again. You don’t just go with anyone in the street. It’s not good.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘But you did,’ Mia said, trying to sound kindly. ‘Doesn’t matter what you mean to do. No one takes any notice of that. Only what they see. Or . . .’ Her mind was racing back through the years. ‘Or think they see.’

  There wasn’t a soul in the world who cared one whit for intentions. If that had been the case things might have turned out differently in Volendam. All that mattered really was appearance. The mask the world saw, not what lay beneath.

  ‘Promise,’ she said. ‘Promise me now. Or I take the money back and I’ll wait here and tell your mum.’

  ‘I’d tell on you,’ Iris replied with an unpleasant grin. ‘And your sister.’

  Mia folded her arms, leaned against the door and said, And then we all suffer. So which is it? Are we going to be smart? Or stupid?’

  Kids. They were sweet in a way. But when the challenges came all they had was stubbornness when what they really needed was courage.

  ‘’Kay,’ the girl said again and let herself in with a key.

  On the walk back, through streets getting busier by the minute, Mia stopped and bought two pizzas, some beer, some pastries. She let herself into Vera’s house. Kim was in the front room watching TV and didn’t even look at her.

  Upstairs the Englishwoman was a touch calmer. The ankle really was sprained, Mia thought. Not broken at all. Before long – and it would be difficult to gauge when – Vera would be mobile once more. And that would spell trouble.

  ‘I bought some pizza. Plain. With salami. What do you want?’

  ‘I want you two out of here,’ Vera said. ‘I want you gone.’

  Mia found herself laughing.

  ‘What’s so
funny, kiddo?’ the woman asked.

  ‘That’s what I want too.’

  After she’d divided up the food she served the rest on two plates, poured beer and brought it to Kim as she sat in front of the TV. It was a kids’ channel, an old cartoon, full of bizarre mock-violence, scribbled blood, beheadings and beatings.

  ‘If you ever steal someone off the street like that again,’ Mia said quite calmly, ‘this is over. I will walk to the nearest police station and . . . that’s it.’

  Kim reached for the remote and turned on the news. There was an update on the Marken case. Another body had been found. Stefan Timmers, their uncle, in the farmhouse where Simon Klerk had been shot dead.

  Mia stared at the television, unable to think.

  ‘Will you, Sister?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered.

  ‘And then they’ll put us back inside somewhere. You one place. Me another. Forever and ever. World without end.’

  ‘Amen,’ Mia whispered.

  It was hard to think of anything else to say.

  Kim picked at the nearest slice of pizza and pulled a disappointed, childish face.

  ‘Don’t like salami,’ she muttered. ‘I thought you’d know by now.’

  45

  Dirk Van der Berg was seated on a chair in the grubby front room of the black-timbered cottage in Volendam when Vos and Bakker turned up, Aisha Refai fussing over him, checking his scalp. Tonny and Willy Kok lurked by the door whining to be released.

  Vos told them straight: no one was going anywhere until he found out what had happened. Then he got the story. The Kok brothers had been on their way back from a few beers in one of the harbour bars. When they approached Stefan Timmers’ place they saw a figure run through the open door and vanish down the street.

  Van der Berg was inside, half-conscious on the floor.

  ‘Someone biffed him,’ Tonny said. ‘I’m thinking maybe we should have gone chasing that fellow who skedaddled up the lane. But we were worried about the man here.’

  ‘Moaning and groaning,’ Willy added. ‘Very strange. Don’t get this kind of thing in these parts.’