Little Sister (32 page)

‘And Rogier?’

He didn’t seem too keen to answer that question.

‘Rogier was the talent. The one who wrote the songs. He never let us forget that. He didn’t mix with us so much. Not after the money rolled in.’

‘Women? He wasn’t married.’

‘He didn’t need to be married. Of course there were women.’

‘Kids?’

Brugman groaned.

‘Not all that crap again. He just happened to like being around them. No crime in that, is there? Rogier nagged us all the time. Let’s go and see some sick kids in hospital. Make
guest appearances for charities. Those sweets.’ He shrugged. ‘It was a bit of a gimmick I think. Genuine. But not bad publicity either. There was nothing more to it than that. Jesus, if
he’d been some kind of pervert don’t you think I’d have known?’

‘People always say that. They don’t wear a monster outfit and a badge.’

He thought about what Vos had told him of the interview with Jaap Blom.

‘Freya Timmers thought you guys were on the way out. She wanted a recording contract for those kids to take your place. She was trying to pressure Blom into giving her one. Said that if he
didn’t she’d go running to the police and tell them one of you had been abusing her girls.’

Brugman put down the coffee. There was a red blush building behind the stubble.

‘Who in God’s name told you that?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Jesus! We’d been on the way out for years. But we were still gods in Volendam. We could walk into any bar, snap our fingers, walk home with who we liked. Why piss around with
kids?’

‘I guess some people like it.’

‘Well not me. Not us. Are you going to do anything to find those girls? They were local. Cuties. They deserved better than they got.’

‘And they sent you a message. Or someone did.’

‘True.’

‘But why?’

‘This is a waste of time,’ Brugman said.

He closed the lid of the guitar case and looked ready to go.

Was it? Van der Berg wasn’t sure. He didn’t really know why Brugman wanted to talk in the first place. So he asked about Frans Lambert. What had happened to him.

‘Frans was always on the edge. He liked to give you this tough-guy image. Karate and all that. But he couldn’t stand the heat really. Jaap was always leaning on him. On all of us.
More sessions. More tours. Frans hated being on the road.’

‘So where is he?’

Brugman frowned.

‘Why are you asking me? Aren’t you supposed to know where people end up?’

‘We’re supposed to find out. Not quite the same thing. See . . . if no one talks to us . . . tells us what’s going on . . . it all gets so much harder.’

Brugman scowled and said, ‘Frans was into all that spiritual crap. Always heading off for meditation or something. Thailand. Bali and places. We did the talent contest that night. He had a
plane booked. Then it’s . . . bye, bye.’

And you’ve never heard from him? In ten years? Some guy you grew up with? Made millions with once upon a time?’

Brugman looked at his watch. Not that he seemed a man pressed for time.

‘No. Never heard from him. Don’t you get it? After that family got killed, Rogier murdered . . . no one wanted to go near The Cupids. No smoke without fire. That’s what they
all said. Maybe Frans saw it coming. If he did he was smarter than me.’

Van der Berg asked about money. Brugman turned shiftier and kept quiet.

‘Come on, Gert. I still hear you on the radio. I don’t know how the business works. There must be royalties. Where’s his share? Who gets it?’

A pained shake of the head opposite.

‘Where do you think? It’s where all the money goes. To the manager. Jaap Blom. I talked to him maybe a year after Frans went missing. He reckoned he was gone for good. Not heard a
thing. Probably dead in some shithole out there.’

‘But the money must still come in . . .’

Brugman didn’t look him in the face. Just told him to talk to Blom.

‘Do I need to worry?’

Van der Berg sighed then asked, ‘About what?’

‘About those girls coming for me next?’

‘Why would they do that?’

Brugman took out his phone and showed him the email and the pictures again.

‘Is this meant to be a threat?’ he asked. ‘If it isn’t . . . what the hell is it?’

‘One thing you learn in this job,’ Van der Berg said. ‘It’s when people are only telling you half of the story. If that.’

‘I never touched any of them,’ Brugman snapped. ‘Not a hair on their heads.’

‘Good.’

‘Are you doing anything at all?’

‘We’re trying to find those girls. Do you really think they didn’t murder Rogier Glas?’

Brugman closed his eyes and sighed.

‘I mean,’ Van der Berg went on, ‘let’s imagine it wasn’t them. Yet still they confessed. They felt guilty. That’s what happens with kids sometimes. When
they’re abused. They blame themselves. Not the bastard who messes with them. Not . . .the rest of us . . . for letting it happen in the first place.’

Brugman grabbed the guitar case and the amp and muttered, ‘This is all beyond me.’

‘Did anyone else have reason to hate Rogier? Reason enough to kill him?’

Brugman thought for a while then said, ‘Not enough to kill him. No.’

‘Who?’

A shrug. He wasn’t happy saying this.

‘You didn’t mess with Jaap. He was the boss. He made us. He told us that day in and day out. You took what he offered and you didn’t argue. Even when it meant we had to pretend
we liked all that dance and rock shit he made us do. We were supposed to be these happy, smiling Volendam guys for the public. Legends who never got old. But honestly . . . it wasn’t like
that. God knows where most of the money went. And the pressure . . . it got ridiculous. Rogier kept nagging us to dump Jaap and find someone else. They were his songs. Jaap was making more money
out of them than any of us. Rogier talked about going solo a few times too. We all had. Jaap hit the roof the moment he heard and put a stop to it. Said we didn’t have the talent. Or the
balls. He was right. Apart from Rogier. He was the golden goose. It wasn’t just him who died that night. We all did.’

He stopped, remembering something.

‘What is it?’ Van der Berg wondered.

‘I was really wasted that day. Been drinking since eleven or so. Truth is . . . most of the last ten years of The Cupids we’d broken up. Barely made a damned thing together. Jaap
just wouldn’t let us tell anyone. Things were really frosty between him and Rogier. Jaap had us under contract. None of us could get out of it. We had to do what he wanted. I knew there must
have been some kind of blow-up when Frans slipped in the news he was headed for the airport. He always made himself scarce if there was an argument around.’

‘Wait.’ Van der Berg was trying to think this through. ‘You didn’t know Lambert was leaving until that very day?’

‘Booked it that morning he said. Jaap wasn’t pleased. We had some sessions the week after. We knew we’d have to use some local guy instead. Frans could be a real jerk when he
wanted.’

He got up and Van der Berg saw how badly he moved. The limp. The shaky way he held the amp. He looked sick, not just decrepit.

‘One question. Ever heard of a kid called Maria Koops?’

Brugman stopped and looked at him.

‘Yeah.’

‘Where?’

‘She was that girl who killed herself in Marken a few years back. One of the fishermen picked her out of the lake. It was in the paper.’

‘An orphan,’ Van der Berg said.

‘Has she got something to do with all this?’

‘Maybe.’

Brugman looked interested.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Not a lot we can do at the moment. It’s all just . . .a mess.’

Brugman glared at him and said, ‘Nice to see our tax money going to good use. Keeping us all safe at night.’

How many times had he heard that? Van der Berg couldn’t count them.

‘When do you play next?’

‘Officially? Tonight in the Jordaan. Bar near Lindengracht.’

‘Unofficially?’

Brugman lifted the amp.

‘I may just try busking out here. Until the police come along and move me on. Do you want to listen?’

Van der Berg wrote his mobile number on a card and handed it over.

‘Call me any time. There’s something you know, Gert. Maybe you don’t even realize it. If you’d like to share—’

But by then he was shambling out of the door.

Van der Berg paid for the coffee and checked his messages. Nothing happening anywhere. He hoped Vos and Bakker were having more luck. He still couldn’t work out why Brugman had been so
desperate to talk to someone. Would it have been different if Vos had turned up? The ‘straight’ one?

The phone rang.

Back in Marnixstraat Aisha Refai was doing her best to make the call unnoticed from a quiet corner of forensic. The ribbons of tape had returned from the lab. To her surprise there was something
on them.

‘I need to talk to you, Dirk. Right now.’

‘Because?’

She glanced around then swore under her breath. Snyder was back from the clubhouse by the water. He had the beadiest eyes she’d ever seen and just then they were on her.

‘Not on the phone. Just get in here.’

‘Will do.’

She was trying to close down the window on her laptop when the man from Rotterdam got there. Too slow.

‘Who sent this to the lab?’ he asked. In his hands was a ribbon of VCR tape. ‘I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘I was going to—’

He shoved her to one side and looked at the laptop. She didn’t say a thing.

‘Go home,’ he ordered.

‘What?’

‘I said go home. I can’t have people running around doing what the hell they like without my knowledge.’

‘Snyder. You weren’t here.’

‘Don’t give me that shit. You sent this stuff off last night and didn’t even tell me.’

‘You weren’t here.’

‘This is starting to offend me now.
You
are starting to offend me. Go home,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll let you know if I want you back.’

Outside in the street, close to tears she called Van der Berg again and said they ought to meet for a coffee somewhere.

‘I’m going to drown in coffee, Aisha.’

‘I’ll rescue you,’ she said and told him the place to be, twenty minutes or so.

She sounded down and that was unusual.

Brugman had set up in the centre of the square, amp on the cobblestones, guitar out, ready to play. The local uniforms would move him on in fifteen minutes at the most.

Van der Berg wandered over and said good luck. He meant it.

The guitarist looked at him and said, ‘That Koops kid?’

‘Yes?’

‘You said she was an orphan.’

‘Or something. Single mother maybe.’

Brugman scratched his head.

‘I don’t like gossip. Especially with outsiders. But . . .that’s not right. Not really.’

Van der Berg said he could handle gossip. Listened then asked for a name. When he heard it he closed his eyes and cursed his own stupidity.

Walking back towards the cafe and Aisha he called Vos.

‘Where are you?’

Outside Ollie Haas’s place on the edge of Volendam. Haas wasn’t home.

‘What did Brugman have to say?’ Vos asked.

‘That’s a very good question,’ Van der Berg replied. ‘I’m still trying to work it out. But one thing. You remember I mentioned that cook . . . ?’

The sisters sat on the back seat all the way. People got on. People got off. No one looked at them much at all.

Invisible,
Kim whispered as they pulled through Broek.

No we’re not,
Mia thought. Anything but.

The bus idled in Monnickendam for a while. They stared out of the windows at the bright summer day, the park they called the Green Heart, the verdant fields behind.

Waterland. Narrow dykes, broader streams. The grey lake ahead. Marken across the gentle summer waves, its long finger jabbing out towards Volendam.

They hadn’t set foot in the place of their birth since the night their family and Rogier Glas were murdered. No one from the town had come to see them in custody or in Marken. Not even
Uncle Stefan. But then he and their parents had never seen eye to eye.

Would anyone recognize them? Even as they were? She’d no idea and didn’t want to know. They had to find somewhere to hide. Somewhere to think. And then . . .

The woman in front was reading the news on her tablet. It was easy to see over her shoulder. They were the lead item, alongside a picture of Vera the Englishwoman. Vera Sampson. They never knew
her second name.

The headlines said it all.

Kim saw them too then leaned on her shoulder shivering. Pleading. For what? Answers. Release. Something they could cling to and hope it might bear the name of truth.

Then she whispered in Mia’s ear, ‘They’re saying we killed her. We didn’t.’ Her breath was too quick, her voice low and frightened. ‘Did we?’

‘No,’ Mia whispered. ‘We didn’t. Kaatje was there. You brought her. Remember?’

The bus kept moving. Out into the countryside again, the last leg before the town by the water, with its harbour where a talent show once happened, three young girls singing their hearts out for
all to see.

Kim’s wild eyes roamed around. It was like this after the man died in his van. She went crazy then and Mia followed, just to keep her company.

In the narrow green channel by the road a family of ducks leapt squawking out of the water, surprised by the sudden sound of the bus.

‘Quack!’ Kim cried so loudly the other passengers turned and stared.

She giggled and put a hand over her mouth. Then kissed Mia quickly on the cheek and said sorry.

They weren’t more than a kilometre from the town so Mia pressed the bell.

‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Kim.’

Her sister didn’t move.

‘We’re not there.’

‘We’re where we’re going. Remember? The chickens?’

She thought for a second.

‘Chickens. Right. I remember.’

Mia wondered whether that was for real.

The bus came to a halt by a narrow dirt track. At the end was a ramshackle low farmhouse with wrecks of tractors and other machinery scattered around the yard.