Little Sister (28 page)

‘I know what your husband did,’ Bakker yelled.

Sara Klerk eased the engine into a steady cruise.

‘Do you?’

‘I know he was abusing those girls.’

She notched the throttle back. The engine fell away more. This was bad.

‘Everyone will sympathize—’ Bakker began.

Furious, Sara Klerk grabbed the shotgun and pointed it straight in her face.

‘Do you think I want your damned sympathy? What use is that to me?’

‘Shoot a police officer and you’ll never set foot out of jail. Kill a faithless abusive husband and—’

‘Didn’t just kill him, did I? That pig Stefan . . .’ But she put the gun to one side and blipped the throttle up again. ‘Point taken though.’ She laughed. ‘No
need for a gun out here, is there?’

The cruiser picked up speed as Sara Klerk began to talk. A solitary gull swooped over the boat thinking maybe there were fish getting gutted. It made one low pass then left.

Soon the salt smell of the greater lake was all around them, nothing else at all.

Mia heard the front door, left Vera and went downstairs. Kim was there grinning. Kaatje Lammers by her side.

‘What—?’ she started to ask.

‘I rescued her,’ Kim said. ‘I set her free.’

Kaatje started wandering round the ground floor, grinning at everything there: the computer, the cosy living room, the kitchen. She went to the fridge and took out a beer.

‘You look different too, Mia,’ she said, cracking the can.

‘We have to look different. They’re searching for us.’

Kaatje raised the can in a toast.

‘And now they’re searching for you,’ she added in a quiet, worried voice.

‘Not yet,’ Kaatje added. ‘Veerman sent me out to that place you were supposed to go. The halfway house. Near the museums. Daft idiot running it. He doesn’t lock the
doors. We can go wherever we like.’

This didn’t ring true at all.

‘I can pop back home tonight if you like, Mia. If you don’t want me here.’

‘We do,’ Kim cut in. ‘You can stay. As long as you want.’

‘Vera—’ Mia began.

‘She’s a bloody old bitch.’

‘Who’s Vera?’ Kaatje wondered.

Before Mia could get in, Kim told her. Everything.

‘Vera’s getting better,’ Mia said. ‘We have to . . . we have to think this through.’

Kaatje laughed at that.

‘What’s there to think about? You’ve got a place. You’ve got money, haven’t you? Make the most of it. They’ll take it away soon enough.’

Mia couldn’t think of anything to say. The two of them wandered off, Kim showing her around the house. Downstairs only. She was staying away from the upstairs floors, and that was
good.

Something was wrong here. Mia went up the steep staircase to their room and found the bag they’d brought with them from Marken. There were papers about the halfway house Klerk was supposed
to take them to. An address, details. And conditions. What would happen when they arrived.

Mia scrabbled through their clothes trying to find the envelope. It had to be there somewhere.

Out in the endless expanse of Waterland, blue light flashing, Van der Berg at the wheel, hooked through by voice to the helicopter about to get airborne and the police boat
leaving Volendam, Vos struggled to picture what was happening.

She was in a boat. Sara Klerk was at the wheel. The green dot kept moving out from land. Now it was past the long finger of dyke stretching out from Marken, headed for the vast grey emptiness of
the Markermeer.

‘I should never have let her go out there on her own,’ he grumbled.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Van der Berg cried. ‘Don’t blame yourself for every damned thing that comes along.’

‘She shouldn’t—’

‘It was a routine call. No need for two officers. No one had a clue—’

The helicopter crew called in. They were airborne. Control patched Vos through to the patrol boat. It was still in the Gouwzee, tracking the moving dot everyone could see on their screens.

‘How long?’ Vos demanded. A crackle across the radio.
‘How long?’

‘Ten minutes,’ the helicopter pilot said.

‘Same here,’ the boat replied.

Silence then.

‘Where exactly am I going?’ Van der Berg asked.

‘The harbour,’ Vos replied. ‘They’ll bring her back there.’

One way or another, he thought.

Kaatje had opened more beer. Kim was with her. The two of them looked ready to get drunk. Mia had found the letter and read it through, then checked on the computer just to
make sure.

The house was too hot for comfort. The atmosphere was wrong. She walked into Vera’s room and found the woman sleeping. Her ankle was barely swollen now. It wouldn’t be more than a
day before she could get around. Perhaps less. And then?

They had no plans, no ideas, no direction for the future. The simple promise of freedom was insufficient. If they could solve any one of the riddles surrounding them that might be different. But
Mia had no idea how to approach that problem. She doubted the dilemma even occurred to her sister.

Still, a decision had to be made and if it meant a confrontation that was that.

She walked into the kitchen and looked at the two of them, the empty cans on the table. Kim was bleary-eyed, Kaatje mouthy and full of herself.

Mia thought about her clothes. The red shirt. Long blue jeans that almost reached the ground.

‘What did they say?’ she asked. ‘When they took you to the safe house?’

‘Just what I told you. I can do what I like now. They
trust
me.’

Kim giggled at that.

The letter they’d been given went on the table.

‘They told us we’d have conditions,’ Mia said. ‘Times we could go out. Never more than an hour or there’d be trouble.’

‘Said the same to me,’ Kaatje agreed.

‘They were sure they’d know,’ Mia went on. ‘They’d tag us. They could tell we’d gone. And where we were.’

Kaatje put down her beer.

‘A tag? What’s a tag?’

She crossed her legs then. Mia looked at her long blue jeans. Then she crouched down by the table and tried to roll up the bottom of the left leg. Kaatje snatched her feet away and snapped,
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Kim had put her beer down too.

‘Just looking,’ Mia said. ‘I’d like to see.’

‘See what?’

‘What?’ Kim added.

‘See what’s there, Kaatje. If they tagged you.’

The girl got up, stroked Kim’s garish hair, grinned, went to the back window by the cutlery drawer and stared out at the kebab bar and the coffee shop behind. Summer in Amsterdam.
Mosquitoes were rising everywhere. She squished one on the window, slowly, pulling off its wings while the creature struggled.

‘You pair kill me,’ she said, to the glass not them. ‘Stuck up little cows. No better than me or anyone else. But you thought that . . .’

‘We didn’t,’ Mia replied, going to Vera’s handbag, emptying out all the money there, stuffing it into her pocket. She’d packed the case Simon Klerk had given them,
the one with Disney characters on the side. It sat in the hall, near the front door.

Kaatje turned. There was a kitchen knife in her hand.

‘You stopped playing their games, didn’t you? Simon told me . . .’

‘That was our choice,’ Mia insisted.

‘We thought we could use it. To get us out of there,’ her sister added. A promise. Do that. Get this.’

‘Yeah?’ Kaatje came closer to the two of them, the blade shining under the bright sunlight. ‘Well I’m just a born scrubber, aren’t I? Gave in every time. And where
are we now? You two out here, doing what the hell you like. And me . . .’

She put her right leg up on the spare chair by the table then rolled up the jeans around the ankle. A grey plastic bracelet was locked there, what looked like a watch without a face stuck on the
side.

‘One hour,’ Mia whispered. ‘When did you walk out?’

‘Bit more than that,’ Kaatje said with a grin.

Mia stared at the knife and said, ‘Kim. The bag’s by the door. We’re leaving. Just the two of us.’

‘Leaving for where?’ the girl screamed, waving the blade at them. ‘If I’m getting banged up for good who the fuck gives you the right to walk away like nothing ever
happened? Huh?’

‘No one,’ Mia murmured and didn’t listen to her rants any more.

Head down, cowed for once, Kim did as she was told. They picked up the bag. Mia checked the money again. All told it was just over a thousand euros. Then she held open the front door and let her
sister out.

Kaatje stood in the hall, wild-eyed, brandishing the knife.

‘Good luck,’ Mia said and noticed they didn’t get the finger wave now.

Out in the narrow street she looked up and down. Left or right. It didn’t really matter.

‘This way.’ Kim was pointing back towards the city centre. She put a hand to her sister’s cheek. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.
You’d be better off without me.’

‘No,’ Mia said, starting to walk where Kim wanted. ‘I wouldn’t. I’d be as good as dead.’

Behind them the front door slammed.

Evinrude.

Her uncle’s boat was nothing like this. But Laura Bakker had grown up on a farm. She was familiar with machinery, its capabilities and its dangers too.

All she required was an opportunity.

Sara Klerk cut the engine. To Bakker’s relief the shotgun stayed where it was.

‘You won’t sink easily, will you?’

‘No,’ Bakker replied. ‘I’m a witch. We float.’

‘Not for long.’

Somewhere in the distance was the drone of an engine. High in the sky. Further off what sounded like the high-pitched whine of a speedboat. She wanted to think these were the sounds of hope. But
you couldn’t rely on anything except yourself in the end.

The cruiser slewed to a halt, bobbing gently on the Markermeer’s steady waves. Sara Klerk looked at the back of the boat. Close to the transom was a modern anchor, two pivoting flukes
around a long shank. Small, portable, convenient. And unattached to any chain. Maybe it came with the cruiser. But if the boat simply shuttled between Marken and the Flamingo Club’s slipway
it was never going to be needed.

Sara Klerk winked at her, and went for the thing.

The noises outside were still distant but Bakker thought she could make them out more clearly. The chop-chop of a helicopter. The frantic wail of a high-powered boat.

Still no time to waste.

Sara Klerk was by the outboard when Bakker moved. She lunged to her feet and fell towards the wheel and the throttle. The cockpit was cramped. One attempt only and then the woman would be
back.

Her elbow caught the throttle and opened it wide. Then she jabbed at the wheel and turned it fully to the left. The cruiser roared and bucked like a horse that had been kicked, rearing to one
side.

Bakker found herself falling hard to the cockpit wall, banging against the shotgun, tumbling to the floor. Last chance now.

A scream. Not hers. She looked up and saw Sara Klerk fling away the anchor, struggle to hold onto the boat deck, lose her grip and fall head first over the side.

Visions of the outboard turning on the woman in the water, of blood in the grey waves, and opportunities lost. The noise from the sky was louder. Something else was getting near. She clambered
to her feet, got her chin to the throttle, eased it back down. Winded, the boat lost its momentum and fell back into the waves.

There was a blue police speedboat approaching from the coast side. The blast of rotors deafened her as the helicopter came to hover overhead. Bakker lurched towards the stern, steeling herself
for that red stain through the choppy foam wake she’d left behind.

It wasn’t there. Just an angry desperate woman, flailing at the waves.

She looked up at the helicopter and nodded, mouthing, ‘I’m fine.’

One minute later the boat came alongside. Three officers there, uniformed, two of them recovering a furious Sara Klerk from the water. Then the third leapt over onto the cruiser, looked Bakker
up and down and said, ‘Are you all right?’

‘I will be when you get this stupid rope off me.’

He did that. She told him to take the cruiser and touch as little as possible. Then she climbed onto the police boat. The Klerk woman was sitting in the stern like a drowned rat, both terrified
and furious.

She rushed over and said, ‘Sara.
Sara.
Will you please look at me?’

A guilty look, regret and trepidation.

‘I think we need to talk,’ Bakker told her. ‘Don’t you?’

In the red-brick building behind the Rijksmuseum the administrator looked at the alert on the monitor system.

One hour and fifty minutes gone. They had to have some leeway. Even this one. He’d been through the skimpy documentation Marken had sent. That alone was enough to recall the kid.

What bugged him was a simple truth. Calling the police was an admission of failure. A step backwards. One that sometimes was hard to reverse.

Her file was in front of him.

‘Kaatje, Kaatje,’ he whispered. ‘Where are you? And what are you doing?’

That wasn’t his call now. It was down to Marnixstraat.

Vos stayed on the phone all the way into Volendam. The helicopter was heading back to the mainland. The police boat seemed busy.

Then he heard the news and it pushed him back into the seat, eyes closed, breathing deeply.

‘For pity’s sake, Pieter,’ Van der Berg moaned, negotiating the labyrinth of narrow lanes that led to the waterfront.

There were lights flashing ahead. Police cars and vans lined the crowded waterfront. An ambulance was waiting, a stretcher out of the back.

‘She’s safe,’ Vos whispered.

‘Oh!’ Van der Berg slapped the steering wheel. ‘Boy do you know how to break things.’

‘Park over there,’ Vos ordered, pointing at a gap between the ambulance and a marked van.

‘I thought for a moment . . .’

The words failed him. He found somewhere to dump the car.