by David Hewson
She gazed at him, open-mouthed.
‘Tonny and Willy wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
He cut in front of a bus as they reached the road and got hooted at for his pains.
‘Would they?’ she asked.
99
Another world was alive inside Kim Timmers’ head. Here in the dusty barn where two men were getting beaten slowly, deliberately, chanting out the same pathetic refrain when they got the space to say the words.
It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t I swear . . .
Lies. Every word, every syllable they uttered through cracked and bleeding teeth.
Elsewhere. A lost place, bathed in the dreamy golden summer light of the town beside the lake.
One hot evening a short lifetime ago. Music and the smell of hot dogs and chips on the waterfront. People pushing and shoving. Laughing, too much drink inside them.
Their mother was there, bossing them around the way she always did. Their father, silent as usual, watching in his gruff, suspicious way.
We are a family of girls.
That was what their mother told them.
Men are just fools.
Dangerous fools though. Fools who knew what they wanted and hated when they didn’t get it.
Uncomfortable in their tight clothes, the three of them lurked at the back of the stage.
‘All things come to good children,’ Freya said, listening to the cues, watching the hired band avidly as she waited for the moment to push them up onto the boards. And you three are so good. My golden angels.’
She kissed each in turn. Kim took the embrace happily. Mia less so. Jo, Little Jo, always the one for an argument, tried to squirm out of her grip.
Freya Timmers held on to her tight, just to make the point: You do as I say.
‘What’s wrong, darling?’ she asked in a hard voice as the band began to signal for the stage.
‘Had enough,’ Jo spat at her. ‘Had enough. We all have.’
She pinched Kim’s bare arm hard.
‘Haven’t you?’ Scared sister, timid sister, Kim kept quiet. ‘It’s always you she starts with. You’ve had enough. You said . . .’
‘Didn’t,’ Kim whispered, too afraid to look her in the face. All the same a worm was slowly turning.
Mia looked up at her mother and said, ‘Will we win, Mum? Will we win and then . . . then that’s it?’
Freya stared at the three of them and there was none of her usual affection there.
‘I could lie to you, darlings. But I won’t. No one ever wins. Doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to keep fighting. Never stop. You can have everything in the world or think you have. Love. Money. Fame.’ She glanced at the three judges at their table. ‘People at your beck and call telling you how wonderful you are. But if you don’t keep fighting you lose the lot. And then you’re ordinary. Common. Plain. Ugly.’ She reached out and pinched Kim’s cheek. ‘We’re not any of those things. So go and—’
‘I’ll tell him,’ Jo cut in. ‘If we don’t win. If it doesn’t stop. I’ll tell him, Mum. I bloody will—’
A slap then. Quick and hard. Straight across the face. Jo glared at her, cheeks turning red from the blow, from her anger too. She was never scared. That was just her sisters.
‘I’m taking you on that stage and you’ll sing like I showed you,’ Freya told her. And you watch your language, child—’
‘I bloody will . . .I will . . .’
Freya’s arm came back again. The music started. People were beginning to stare.
The angry, threatening scowl turned to a loving smile in an instant.
‘You be sweet now, children,’ she said, grabbing their hands. ‘Do that and we’ll all be fine.’
100
Down the dusty drive they sped, heading towards the ramshackle farmhouse. The graveyard of old tractors and machinery looked more than ever like the upturned toy box of a careless giant. Then they saw a car that wasn’t there before. A shiny black Mercedes coupé standing out among the junk.
A man was leaning on the door of a rusty metal barn set in front of a field of endless green. There was a shotgun in his arms. Tonny Kok. Worriedly watching the unmarked police car race for his home.
Laura Bakker took her seat belt off before Vos had even found a space in the yard. She was opening the door as he came to a halt next to the corpse of an ancient John Deere.
Tonny hadn’t moved, towards them or away. It was obvious what he was doing: guarding something.
‘Call Control,’ Vos ordered. ‘Ask for backup.’
‘No.’ She was out of the car already. ‘You call them.’
He wasn’t pleased.
‘This is no time for games . . .’
‘True,’ she said, leaning through the door. ‘Listen to me, Pieter. I know these people. I grew up with their kind. You’re . . . city. You’re different. The enemy.’
‘I’m your boss . . .’
‘You’re what they hate. You let them down. You hid all the things they wanted to see. Let me speak to Tonny first.’ She nodded at the phone in his hands. ‘You call Control. Get backup. Whatever you want. I’m going to talk to him.’
Then she closed the door and walked up to the man with the shotgun. He stood there, uncomfortable, shuffling on his big feet.
‘Tonny.’
‘Miss.’
‘Laura. Laura Bakker. Remember?’
He nodded at the car.
‘I remember. We don’t want trouble. Best you and your friend get out of here. Lots of angry people around. Seeing you won’t help.’
There was a cry of pain from behind the metal doors. Shouts and screams. Then silence.
‘You’ll find out all about it in the end.’ He locked the shotgun with a quick, deliberate slam. ‘Not now. This thing’s started. Train’s running. Can’t stop it. Not even for you.’
‘And if the train’s going to the wrong place?’ she asked.
Vos came up and stood next to her. The pair of them folded their arms and waited.
‘You had all that time,’ Tonny said. ‘Years and years people round here have been waiting. But we don’t count, do we? We’re just small folk. Stupid farmers and fishermen. Nothing next to all those toffs in Amsterdam. The ones with the money. And your . . . your ear.’
Bakker glared at him then.
‘The only voices I’m listening to right now come from two young girls in trouble. They need help and they’re not getting it. Not from us. Not from people who think they’re doing them a favour either.’
Another scream from inside. He raised the gun, the barrel half-pointed their way.
‘I’m asking nicely, Laura,’ he said.
‘I heard. I’m just not listening. Best shoot me,’ she said and pushed the grey barrel to one side.
There were more shouts inside the barn, more pained and frightened screams. From across the flat green meadows came the insect whine of far-off sirens.
101
‘We didn’t win,’ Kim muttered in the dusty half-dark of the barn.
She could see it all so clearly as if then were now. And now nothing but a ridiculous never-ending nightmare.
They didn’t even get second place. That hot night by the lake Freya Timmers sat listening to the judges, a stony stare on her face. All the trite remarks.
So much talent everywhere . . .
Such a hard decision . . .
It wasn’t, Kim thought. It was an easy one. Give them what they wanted. What they’d suffered for. Earned. She even more than her sisters.
Instead a couple of long-haired, pretty teenagers from Amsterdam, strangers, foreigners, another boy-band in the making, walked off with first prize. Jaap Blom had told The Cupids to vote that way, or so her mother said. It didn’t occur to her then that perhaps they’d paid too. Only later did that idea surface when the pair of them got a recording contract then vanished into obscurity.
Jo was so furious, spitting bile and curses everywhere. Their mother dragged her off ho
me, Gus their father in prickly tow. Kim and Mia had to stay behind and pick up the poor consolation they’d won: third prize. A box of chocolates.
A box of chocolates.
‘All that,’ she whispered to herself, staring at the two men bruised and bleeding before her. ‘For a box of bloody chocolates.’
They’d hung around the stage for a while. Then, when the beer was flowing and the men getting too friendly for their liking, they’d carefully detached themselves from the crowd, slid out from the show, walked along the waterfront away from everyone.
Mia was in tears. Kim was just mad.
Aware of their stupid clothes they went and sat by the car park near the museum. No one there. They opened the chocolates and tried a couple. Too sweet. Too cheap.
Like us, Kim thought. And nothing was ever going to change that.
After a while Mia stopped crying and said they ought to go home.
Kim threw the chocolates in a bin and said, ‘I’ll tell her I chucked this crap away too.’
That’s brave, she thought as they trudged back to the cottage by the harbour. Next to the threat Little Jo had uttered, yelling curses right, left and centre. Shouting . . . I’ll tell.
That’s really brave.
When they got there the door was open. There were voices inside. Loud and violent. Mia hovered at the front step.
Kim had always been the timid one. Mia in the middle. Jo the angry sister, cursed with a caustic, too-free mouth.
That had changed though.
‘Don’t,’ Mia said and tried to hold her back. ‘There’s something—’
‘No one’s hurting me again,’ Kim said. ‘Or you. Or Little Jo. No one—’
Then she pushed her sister aside and walked straight in.
102
Inside the barn there were two men bound to chairs, heads down, bleeding, faces caught in shafts of sunlight from the broken roof. In front of them stood Lotte Blom and Bea Arends. A tall, athletic bearded figure who had to be Frans Lambert was cradling a baseball bat stained red, looking back at the door. Willy Kok lurked to one side, a shotgun broken in his arms. Gert Brugman was leaning against a wooden crate. Then a couple of slight, elusive shapes half in darkness.
Vos walked straight up and said the first words that came into his head.
‘Amsterdam police. Put that thing down, Lambert. And the gun, Willy. I know why you’re doing this. I know what brought you here—’
The tall man didn’t move.
‘Is that so, Sherlock?’ Bea Arends rounded on him. ‘Monday those two girls came out of Marken. We spirited them away and thought you’d finally notice something’s wrong here. And what do you do? Nothing.’
‘Nothing,’ Lambert repeated.
Bakker stepped forward so they could see her clearly.
‘Things don’t happen overnight,’ she said. ‘There’s an investigation under way. This time round—’
‘Under way?’ Lambert snarled, kicking at Haas’s chair so hard it made him whimper. ‘Like the one this fool did? You lot don’t give a damn about us. All you want is to cover the backs of—’
‘We’ve a lot of work right now,’ Vos cut in. ‘Lot of bodies. Simon Klerk. Irene Visser. Stefan Timmers—’
‘Good riddance,’ Bea Arends snapped. ‘Filth, the lot of them.’
‘Vera Sampson,’ Bakker added. ‘She was your friend, wasn’t she?’
The woman hesitated at that, then nodded at the shapes in the corner.
‘Don’t try and lay Vera’s death at the door of anyone here. Wasn’t the girls who killed her. That crazy cow Kaatje Lammers was there, wasn’t she? Cut your throat for five cents that one. And Veerman let her out. None of this would have happened if you lot were doing your job. If—’
‘I agree,’ Vos said and got nearer Blom and Haas. He’d seen worse. This was a beating. A nasty one. But nothing more. Yet.
The door opened. Tonny Kok stuck his head through and said there were people turning up. Police. Lots of them. Then he went back outside. Gun in arms again.
‘All we want is the truth,’ Lambert said. ‘Bea and me lost a daughter. These girls their family. Then their freedom. There’s blood spilled here. Ours. Got the right to know.’
Vos listened then asked, ‘So why did you run?’
The drummer’s arm stabbed out at Blom.
‘Because you don’t hang around and argue with the likes of him! Freya did. She knew he wasn’t going to fix anything proper for those girls. And look what happened when she moaned about it. Like Hendriks, the man from Marken too. Dead and gone.’
Blom winked with one half-shut eye. Lambert pulled back the bat, ready to strike.
‘You always made a lot of noise, Frans. Not much in the way of sense. Or action. First sign of trouble. On your way.’
‘I had no part in your filthy games, you bastard! Why should Freya bring us all down because of you?’
‘You really think I killed her?’ Blom asked. He seemed ready to laugh.
Vos looked towards the girls in the corner.
‘Mia,’ he said. ‘Kim.’
‘They were kids,’ Lambert barked. ‘What do they know?’
All the files from Marken. Every last report written by Ollie Haas. They were more thorough than Vos could have expected but that was all part of the fog. The idea this was a cock-up, not a conspiracy. A clever tactic. A successful one. For a while.
‘Let’s ask them,’ Vos said and called their names again.
103
There was no one in the hall of the black-timbered cottage. No one in the front room. Or seated at the familiar table in the kitchen where they sat and ate in silence after their father spoke a quiet grace.
The sounds came from above. Footsteps, shouts and screams. And then a terrible cry unlike anything they’d ever heard. A high-pitched shriek. It had to be Little Jo. And another scream.
At the foot of the stairs they stopped. Mia reached out for her sister’s hand to drag her back. Kim shook herself free and took to the steps.
Blood on the walls. Blood on the cheap table where their mother kept what heirlooms they owned: old crockery, now smashed into sharp jagged pieces on the bare timber landing.
‘Kim . . .’
They made their way to the big bedroom. The place her mother loved to take them when the house was empty, to sing, to hug, to dream.
Two bodies on the floor, spread-eagled like a pair of bloodied rag dolls. One tall. One small. Blonde hair both, bedraggled now and barely hiding faces the sisters knew would haunt them for all the long days and months and years to come.
The kitchen knife he’d used lay between their bodies. Kim picked it up and didn’t know why.
Another sound then. A loud, commanding one.
His voice.
His presence.
They turned and saw Gus Timmers, shotgun in his arms. Weeping, angry, mouthing dreadful imprecations.
All aimed at them.
You dirty little bitches. How could you?
It was as if his hurt was greater than theirs. As if they’d somehow done all this to spite, to harm him. To spoil the precious illusion of family. And that was their fault, naturally. The guilt, the blame, all theirs.
The bloody knife trembled in Kim’s sweating fingers as their sobbing father tried to aim the barrels their way.
‘Run,’ Mia said more loudly and snatched her sister’s hand. ‘Run!’
Fearful, wailing, they turned and fled, away from the gore and the dead, away from the terror behind the black-timbered walls where they’d grown up always hoping for something better because Freya, their mother, said the golden days, a brilliant future, both were coming soon if only they could wait. Be good girls, like Kim was. Be willing, be polite and never cry.
Down the worn wooden planks of the landing, down the grimy carpet on the stairs, out through the hall, into the hot street.
Behind them the sound of an explosion so loud it seemed to tear a hole in their sunlit world.
> That dull, dread noise spurred them on. Along the narrow cobbled lane, not knowing where to go. Until a van door opened blocking their path. And a familiar face came into view.
‘Girls,’ the big man said, all smiles. ‘What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
104
Mia and Kim didn’t come when he called. So Vos told them about the case files anyway. How they’d been erased in Marnixstraat and resurrected with new information by Veerman as he fled the country.
‘Henk Veerman?’ Lotte Blom looked as angry as the rest of them. ‘He was part of it. You believe him?’
‘I do. He got an attack of conscience. We have the documents, videos, reports, interviews,’ Vos repeated. He looked at Ollie Haas. ‘The initial investigation. It was thorough. Which is why they had to hide it. They thought they’d destroyed pretty much everything after Maria Koops died. But Veerman had copies. Lots more from Marken too.’
He fed them some of what he’d uncovered the night before, leaving out the fact that it had happened in a bar by the Prinsengracht for fear of alerting anyone in Marnixstraat.
‘Just pack this in, will you?’ Laura Bakker cried. ‘It’s not needed. You’ll only get yourselves into more trouble. And if you bugger about much further you’re going to find these two—’ She pointed at Blom and Haas. ‘They start to get a load of sympathy they don’t deserve.’
‘The young lady speaks a lot of sense I think,’ Willy declared. ‘We should listen to her.’
Lotte Blom bent down over her husband, put a hand to his chin, forced him to look into her face.
‘You told me this was finished, Jaap. For good. You said—’
‘I told you the truth,’ Blom spat at her through cracked and bleeding lips. A nod towards the shadows. ‘Ask them.’ The girls still didn’t move. ‘Ask them.’
A moment of silence. Outside a sharp electronic noise broke the quiet. A bullhorn, a voice Vos recognized. De Groot calling for someone to come out. Then vague and pointless threats.