by David Hewson
‘So this is spontaneous?’ Vos asked. ‘Something happens. He drives them to a remote location. For whatever reason . . . sexual probably.’
‘Seems a reasonable guess,’ she agreed.
‘How did they manage to overpower him? Klerk couldn’t have been a pushover. A nurse working in an environment like that would be used to dealing with violent—’
‘Marken was for juvenile girls,’ Aisha cut in.
‘All the same—’
‘You’re running ahead of yourself, Vos. Let me take this one step at a time.’
More photos. Tyre marks in the drive. Two sets, one narrower than the other.
‘These are for Klerk’s car,’ she said, pointing at a series of tracks that stopped close to the back door. ‘We’re pretty sure the others are from Stefan Timmers’ four by four. It got badly burned in the fire but I’d assume Timmers drove to the farmhouse in that.’
Van der Berg wanted to know when. Aisha thought for a moment, licked her finger, stuck it in the air, waited then shook her head. There was, she said, no way of putting a time to the tracks. They needed some independent verification. A witness. And that was unlikely out in the wild green pastures of Waterland.
‘You want to know how two young women could subdue a grown man. Well . . .’ She threw some more photos in front of them. ‘There’s this. We found it on the floor.’
A knife. Shiny, silver, very sharp from the looks of it, very plain in design. Not a speck of dust so it hadn’t been there long.
‘That looks like canteen cutlery to me,’ Aisha continued. ‘Wouldn’t be hard for them to steal it in Marken. My guess is they drove to the farmhouse. Klerk wanted something. The girls overpowered him. Walked him inside. Made him strip naked. Tied him to that chair. It’s a wild one but—’
‘Why?’ Van der Berg asked.
‘We’re forensic, Dirk. We do how. Not why. That’s your call.’
He didn’t like that answer.
‘No need to get smart—’
‘She isn’t,’ Vos interrupted. ‘Aisha’s right. Though . . .’
If you wanted to kill a man why make him strip first? To humiliate him. That seemed obvious. But the obvious was often wrong. It was what you wanted to hear. The solution you craved. The truth was usually more elusive, a teasing creature lurking in the shadows.
‘Questions?’ Aisha asked.
‘Not yet,’ Vos said. ‘Let me get this straight. Klerk drove the girls to the farmhouse. They got him inside. Made him strip. Tied him to the chair.’
‘Correct.’
‘Then they shot him,’ Van der Berg added.
She threw up her hands in despair.
‘You’re trying to spin this out!’ he cried.
‘No I’m not. I’m trying to understand. What we know. And what we don’t know. Because—’
‘Because what we don’t know’s more important than what we do,’ Vos noted.
Aisha nodded and said, ‘Up to a point.’
‘The sisters called in their uncle and said bring along your shotgun. We’ve got someone we want dead,’ Van der Berg guessed. ‘And then they—’
‘If he doesn’t stop this I will go mad,’ Aisha moaned.
‘But—’
‘Shut up, Dirk,’ Vos ordered. ‘And listen. The ropes.’ He’d been staring at the pictures. Something didn’t add up. ‘The ropes are wrong. They’re still tied.’
‘The ropes are still tied,’ she agreed. ‘Which means—’
Vos placed a finger on the nearest picture.
‘He freed himself. He wasn’t tied to the chair when he was killed.’
‘Exactly. From the wound and the spatter it’s obvious he was standing up.’
Van der Berg shrugged.
‘So what? He worked himself free. Went for them. Uncle Stefan got out his gun.’
Aisha nodded.
‘Possibly. The trouble is . . .’ She found the pictures of the abrasions again, red weals on Klerk’s arms and shins. ‘This went on for some time. An hour. Maybe two. Would they just watch a naked man wriggle his way free like that? I don’t—’
‘No. They wouldn’t.’ Vos was getting a picture now, a hazy image emerging from the fog. ‘That doesn’t work at all.’
‘So what does?’ Aisha wondered.
He ran his fingers over the pictures again.
‘Klerk had to be left on his own for a while. Naked. Strapped to the chair. The girls left. They caught that bus. We can time it exactly.’
‘Where they were picked up was a good twenty-five-minute walk from the farmhouse,’ Aisha agreed. ‘Judging by those abrasions . . . we’d have to do some more tests to check . . . but I don’t think he could have worked his way out of them by then. Maybe the uncle got the girls later in Amsterdam and brought them back. They lugged the corpse over to Marken. Returned to the farmhouse. He got shot. Except . . .’
She was keeping something in reserve.
‘You don’t think that, Aisha,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what I think.’ She reached into the file and pulled out more photos and some documents. ‘Here. Take a look at Uncle Stefan. Tell me what you see.’
57
Jaap Blom owned an apartment in Amsterdam, the mansion in Edam, and a penthouse in The Hague. The first gave him a resident’s parking permit so he’d brought his soft-top Mercedes E-Class coupé into the city. The traffic was bad on the way back to their country house. Trapped in a sluggish line of cars trudging towards the IJtunnel Lotte Blom turned to him and asked, ‘Did I do well?’
He tapped his fingers on the wheel. Most of the time he spent away from Edam. Work, he said. And for the most part that was true. What she did while he was away was her business. It had been like this for years. Perhaps children would have changed things but they never came along, and her suggestion of adoption was one he could never countenance. Blom was a self-made man, a Volendam caterer turned band manager. He’d created The Cupids, a product, a brand, just like the restaurants and hotels he’d sold, at a huge profit, in the wake of their success. He didn’t want another man’s cast-offs.
‘In what sense?’ he asked.
‘In the sense that . . .was I believable?’
‘You’re always believable, Lotte. You say what you have to say with so little grace no one could ever accuse you of lying.’
She laughed at that then reached into her bag, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
‘I’ve asked you so many times not to smoke in the car,’ he said. ‘It stinks for ages afterwards. I have to get it valeted the moment I go back to The Hague.’
‘True,’ she said then leaned back in her seat and blew smoke up towards the roof.
Blom grunted and hit the soft-top button. The fabric retreated towards the boot with a metallic hum and whir.
‘Wonderful,’ she complained. ‘Now we expire of pollution instead.’
‘There are a couple of parliament dinners next week. I thought you might like to come.’
She turned, stared at him then started to laugh. The traffic was moving again.
‘Just an idea,’ he muttered.
‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘You did fine!’ he yelled. ‘Thank you. It’s in both our interests, you know.’
She sighed and relaxed in the soft leather seat.
‘Must be awful.’
He didn’t want to ask but he knew this wouldn’t go away.
‘What?’
‘Thinking something’s dead and buried. Then watching it crawl out of the grave.’
‘We’ve nothing to worry about.’
She leaned against the car door and gazed at him.
‘I never had anything to worry about in the first place.’
The car lurched forward as he misjudged the pedal. They almost hit the vehicle in front. The traffic picked up once more and they entered the incline towards the tunnel. Ten minutes to get through and then another thirty to Edam. After that he’d retire t
o the summer house at the end of the garden by the canal. Peace and solitude away from the world. Away from her.
‘Once they find those kids this’ll all blow over,’ he insisted. ‘We can go back to normal.’
The laugh again and she echoed, ‘Normal?’
He bit his tongue then said, finally, ‘As normal as it gets.’
‘Marken.’ She had a sarcastic, musical voice. ‘I don’t understand why you told Vos you never went there. Truly I don’t. I mean . . . what if he checks?’
A long pause. The car moved, more steadily this time.
‘There’s no need to complicate things,’ he answered. ‘They’re busy enough as—’
‘It was weird enough you screwing that woman. What was her name?’ She rapped her long nails on the dashboard. ‘Don’t remember. Don’t really care. Sad in the end. But those . . . charity visits. Yes. That’s what they were. Perhaps you should have mentioned them. I know they’re unimportant, like you say. But they did ask.’ She looked at him. ‘Unless she got rid of those records for you? Was that it?’
‘The past is past,’ he said. ‘Done with.’
‘So you keep saying. Let’s change the subject. I was reading in one of the Sunday papers how inexpensive property is down in Italy at the moment. Calabria. The Mezzogiorno. You can pick up a villa for maybe . . . three-quarters of a million. Tops.’
‘Don’t we have homes enough?’
‘It’s not for us. Me. I need a project. Something to get me out more.’ She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. The cigarette smell hung around on her breath. ‘It won’t be any trouble. Or work on your part. Just give me the money. I’ll do the rest.’
He thought for a moment then said, ‘I can’t go above a half.’
‘After all. You never know when a bolthole might come in handy.’
They entered the dark mouth of the tunnel. The car lights came on. Smog and smoke surrounded them. She reached out and hit the roof button, closing it over their heads.
‘Fine,’ he muttered.
‘We can put the transfer through this afternoon, can’t we? That would be so nice. You’re such a sweetie.’
She leaned over to kiss him again. Blom shrank towards the window.
Lotte Blom reached into her bag for another cigarette.
‘I do hope it wasn’t something I said.’
58
When she turned on the lights the shack wasn’t what Laura Bakker expected. Her uncle back in Friesland kept a place for his men friends. Fishing gear and stacks of beer cans. Cans of oil and fuel. Dank and smelly equipment on the walls.
The top floor of the Flamingo Club was furnished in scarlet, walls, curtains, furniture, like a sleazy nightclub in miniature. There was a small dining table next to a gas cooker, a refrigerator by the side. She opened it. Bottles of wine and beer. Soft drinks too. Recently bought, judging by the use-by dates.
On the sideboard sat a bowl full of sweets, a pile of chocolate bars next to it. Then a few pop and fashion magazines just a few months old.
A red velvet curtain marked off the end of the room. Bakker walked up, drew it to one side, and found herself wishing Vos or Van der Berg were there with her. Not for comfort. She just wanted someone with whom she could share her outrage.
Instead she whispered, ‘Bastards.’ Then took a closer look. A double bed with a pink satin coverlet and matching pillows, the kind favoured by the loucher Amsterdam sex clubs she’d raided. A door beyond that led to a tiny shower and toilet. Ranged behind the washbasin was a stack of condom packets, some gel, a few sex toys. She took out her latex gloves and pushed them to one side. Something else was hiding there. It took a moment for Bakker to appreciate what it was: a child’s soft toy, a penguin, old and threadbare, which could only denote true love for the kid who’d once owned it. The thing sat next to a couple of shiny plastic vibrators and some other devices Bakker couldn’t name, and didn’t wish to.
‘Bastards,’ she muttered again and walked out, past the bed, closing the curtains.
The room was hot and stuffy. Flies and mosquitoes were rising from the lower floor, along with a smell of something else. She checked her phone and knew what to expect: out here, in the dead land between Volendam and Monnickendam, perched on a ledge of rock past the dyke, the outside world had receded. The Flamingo Club was in the perfect spot, visible only from the Gouwzee, private, undisturbed.
She’d forgotten about Marken and Sara Klerk. All that drove her was a growing red rage in her head and she knew what put it there: the sweets and the soft drinks, the battered penguin, the chocolates. Stuff for kids. Something to give them and say: now you’re part of this. Don’t tell a soul or they’ll blame you. Because it’s your fault really. You never said no. Which is as good as saying yes.
You let it all happen.
You made it so.
A steep line of wooden steps led down to the lower floor. She thought she heard a car somewhere as she took the first few but that was probably someone on the road. At the bottom she had to pull out her torch and fumble round for the light switch, half-reluctant to find it for fear of what it might reveal. In the end it was by a workbench with some tools scattered on the surface. A single fluorescent tube flickered to life and there was nothing here to scare her really. Just a set of double doors leading out to the sea, and beneath her on a slipway a small motor cruiser.
This was bigger than her uncle’s boat. The Evinrude wasn’t a simple outboard. It sat at the back of the vessel, driven from a wheelhouse amidships where a big shiny throttle sat begging for action. Toys for the boys, she thought. But which boys?
The phone came out again. Still no signal.
‘Dammit,’ Bakker snapped. Maybe she’d have to drive all the way back to Monnickendam to call in.
Then something buzzed in her pocket and she remembered. Simon Klerk’s phone. It ought to have some charge now. Maybe it was on a different network. She took out the handset and sighed as she looked at the screen. The Sony was out of coverage too. The buzz was simply a reminder. A dead man’s appointment with the dentist.
Bakker was always interested in the way people organized their phones. In particular what they put on their home screen. You could tell a lot about their personality from that. Men . . . often it was news, sports sites, email, messages, social media and games.
Not with Simon Klerk. Alongside the stock icons was one for video. That struck her as odd.
She opened up the app and clicked on the first file. It was home-made, from the phone. Bakker stared at it in fascinated horror. This was the girl she’d talked to, Kaatje Lammers, laughing, bent down beneath someone who had to be Klerk. Playing with him, all fingers, lips and saliva.
There was a noise from somewhere up the stairs.
Then a woman’s voice in the shadows said, ‘I thought you might come sniffing after that phone call. Having fun?’
When Laura Bakker looked up all she saw was the wooden stock of a shotgun coming straight at her in a fast and vicious swipe. The thing connected hard with the side of her head. In an instant she was falling, getting pushed down, into the hull of the cruiser below.
There she fell, legs crumpling beneath her, light fading. Flies rose all around and she knew now what they were feeding on. Blood, recent and sticky in the well of the boat.
The gun stock flew again. She rolled, avoided some of the pain. But then it was back, impossible to evade. Face down, half-conscious, unable to see anything except the gory, sticky deck, she was aware of hands on her, tying her wrists together, taking the issue handgun from her belt.
Light then, and not long after the low rumble of an engine.
Evinrude, she thought.
59
Aisha Refai shuffled her papers nervously.
‘This is for certain.’ More pictures. Now of Stefan Timmers, a bloody heap in the farmhouse, and on the morgue table. ‘He left the place, presumably with Klerk’s body. He went to Marken. We’ve found pebbles from the beach in the soles of hi
s shoes. You have Stefan in the frame without a shadow of doubt. Though given he’s dead—’
‘Point taken,’ Vos cut in. He stabbed a finger at the flabby corpse on the table, turned face down. ‘He was shot in the back.’
‘In the back. From close range.’
‘And Simon Klerk . . .’
‘Close up again. Straight in the face.’ She thought about it and jerked up her arm, firing a pretend shotgun, her dark features briefly full of fury. ‘Something angry about that. Almost personal. You look someone straight in the eye and take their life. The uncle though . . .’
‘That was cowardly,’ Vos suggested. ‘The way you’d kill someone if you were scared of them.’
Plenty to be scared about, Van der Berg said. The man was a thug with a long criminal record. Prone to violence. Perhaps more than the local police knew.
Something was missing, Vos thought. And then he remembered. Irene Visser’s phone. The sisters had stolen that and left it – or lost it – at the farmhouse.
He asked her if there was anything new on that. She sifted through her reports.
‘Not much. Sorry. Oh. I know I said there were no prints on it. I was wrong. There were.’
She showed them a photo on her tablet. A bloody fingerprint on the back of the handset.
‘One of the girls?’ Van der Berg suggested.
‘No. It’s Simon Klerk. Maybe . . .’ She was struggling. ‘Maybe he stole it from her.’
They went quiet. Too many possibilities to handle. Then Vos said, ‘How about this? The girls left Klerk tied up to teach him a lesson. He was there for an hour or two on his own, struggling against the ropes. He got free. He didn’t have his phone with him. Laura found that in Marken. Maybe he forgot it.’
Van der Berg and Aisha nodded.
‘So he finds Visser’s phone one way or another. Where’s he going to call first? Home. Maybe—’
‘And before he gets through Uncle Stefan gets there,’ Van der Berg chipped in. ‘With the girls or not. He shoots Klerk. He takes the body over to Marken . . .’
‘Wish we could find that boat,’ Aisha grumbled.
‘Then they all come back and they shoot Stefan.’ Van der Berg didn’t look convinced himself. ‘But why?’ A brief grim laugh. ‘I mean . . . it’s like leaving a sign up, isn’t it? Look what we did. Here’s our dead uncle to prove it.’