Little Sister (6 page)

The bird retreated tail first through the shattered glass, shaking its head, back into the open green channel.

There was something in its beak. Both men stared, wanting to make sure of what they saw.

‘Them’s men’s underpants,’ Willy said. ‘He’s thinking it’s for a nest.’

His brother nodded.

‘I’ll get the tractor.’

The three-storey terrace house in Vinkenstraat was quiet at the front. But their room was at the rear and overlooked a coffee shop and kebab bar in the neighbouring tourist
thoroughfare of Haarlemmerstraat. From the grubby window, across a soot-stained courtyard, they could see drowsy people smoking in a tiny, shady room. Quiet, tired-looking foreigners laboured in a
kitchen behind the restaurant. People came and went all the time.

In Marken they always felt close to home. There was the grey still water, the marine air, the squawks of gulls, ship’s horns across the lake. Here their senses were assaulted by unwanted
and unfamiliar sensations. Even with the window closed it was impossible to escape the stink of traffic fumes, cooking and an occasional exotic waft of what had to be dope smoke, not that they
could be certain. The noise – voices, car horns, music, distant trains – was constant. Their new short hair, black for Mia, purple-red for Kim, so exciting the night before, now felt
odd and wrong.

In the middle of the night Kim had got up and washed off the temporary tattoo. Then her sister did the same. After that the two of them sat on Kim’s single bed, hugging each other for an
hour. Not crying. Not afraid. Just drained of everything.

For years they’d dreamed of freedom and what it might bring. Now the moment was upon them it seemed a small and useless commodity. Marken possessed a kind of comfort in the daily routines,
the sanitized, hands-off care the institution provided, the knowledge that their entire world was constrained by that high-security fence with its video cameras posted around, always watching,
always recording.

Here they seemed unobserved. Anonymous. It was almost as if they didn’t exist at all.

At a quarter past eight there’d been a knock on the door. Vera, the Englishwoman, stood there, gasping from the effort of climbing the steep staircase. Her lined face no longer seemed the
colour of walnut, more that of a dull and fading parchment. Still she smiled the way the nurses did back in Marken. Genial but in control.

There was a tray in her trembling hands, two cups of coffee on it, two glasses of orange juice, two pieces of cake.

‘Best you have breakfast in your room, girls,’ she said in English. ‘I’ve got to go and see some people. You don’t want to be wandering outside without
me.’

Mia took the tray and asked why.

‘Because,’ Vera said. ‘I may be a while. I’d like you both to stay here until I get back. I’ll bring us a nice lunch. We’ll have a little chat. OK?’

It was almost nine when the woman left. Gone eleven when she returned. They used the time to explore. The house was narrow but so tall the wooden staircase sloped perilously from floor to floor.
They had a cramped, scruffy bathroom next to them. The Englishwoman seemed to occupy all of the floor below. The ground was given over to a kitchen, a living room with a TV set, a music centre and
computer, and a dining room with a table, four chairs around it, a single window looking out onto the courtyard where an old refrigerator was slowly rotting away.

Vera had locked the heavy front door behind her. They wandered around, tried the computer, couldn’t guess the password, and hunted for a spare set of keys without success.

Then Kim remembered something and they clambered up the staircase, using their hands and feet like children, and went back to the bedroom to search for the phones they’d brought from
Marken. Two. One for each of them. Both were missing.

‘They’ve got to be here somewhere,’ Kim insisted, going through the case Simon Klerk had given her.

‘You put it in your pocket,’ her sister said.

Kim found her jacket. There was nothing there. They talked about it and agreed. When they reached Vera’s house they’d found just one phone, the handset with the message from Little
Jo. The other must have fallen out somewhere along the way. Now the second one was gone and they knew: the Englishwoman must have taken it while they slept.

‘I’m clumsy as hell,’ Kim said, suddenly furious with herself.

There was no need for an argument, Mia told her. No point in trying to assess blame. Things happened to them, things that required no explanation. They knew life was like this and accepted
it.

‘At least in Marken we could go for a walk,’ Kim grumbled.

‘Marken’s behind us,’ Mia insisted.

‘She shouldn’t take things like that. Not when they’re ours.’

When Vera came back she had fresh orange juice, eggs and ham and cheese. She cooked them pancakes too and then the three of them sat down for lunch.

Kim asked for her phone back. Vera grinned.

‘What phone? I don’t know anything about phones, sweetheart. Have you got one then?’

‘I had one. We both did.’

Vera took out a plastic pill box, checked the time, fiddled with the lid, rolled a couple of white tablets onto the table and swallowed them with some juice.

‘You must have lost them somewhere.’

Mia said, ‘We’d like to go for a walk soon. We always have a walk.’

Vera laughed and shook her head.

‘Not yet, luvvies. I mean . . . there are people out looking for you, aren’t there? Give it a while. When I get the word . . . then it’s OK.’

‘Who from?’

The smile on the Englishwoman’s face never cracked.

‘So you don’t know who sent you here?’

‘They just . . . we just got the map. And a note.’

‘One step at a time, eh? You just take it easy. Don’t have to worry about a thing. This is a nice house. A safe house. Enjoy yourself. Until we hear.’

‘Hear what?’ Kim asked.

‘What we have to do,’ Vera told them. ‘I mean . . . everyone’s here for a reason, aren’t they?’ She reached over and touched the sleeve of Mia’s
T-shirt. Something about the way she did this seemed . . . wrong. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

The sisters kept quiet.

‘Until we’re sure where you’re going . . . until someone’s said,’ Vera added, ‘best you two keep your heads down. Watch the telly. Listen to some
music—’

‘Can we use the computer?’ Mia asked.

‘I’d let you if I could,’ the woman said with a shake of her dyed hair. ‘But it’s been playing up lately and I don’t know how to fix it. You finish your
lunch. I’ve got to go out again. Won’t be long. I’ll have you out there soon enough. It’ll be like a new world for you two, I bet. There’ll be a treat too. More than
one.’

She got up from the table and the smile fell from her face.

‘You can manage the washing-up I’m sure. We’re all in this together, aren’t we? You and me.’

They gave her ten minutes after she left just in case this was a test. Then, very gingerly, they went to the front door and tried it. Locked again. After that the two of them tested all the
windows on the ground floor. Every one was sealed shut and refused to move.

Kim wandered back into the living room and turned on the TV. Nervous, together on the sofa, holding hands, they watched the news. There was no mention of two sisters escaped from an institution
on Marken. Or anything else about Waterland.

They switched off the programme and sorted through the CDs by the side of the music centre. Finally Kim found something they recognized.
The Love of a Stranger.
The penultimate album by
The Cupids.

‘I don’t want this,’ Mia said and threw the thing into the corner.

Her sister retrieved the disc, put the music on, and the two of them listened in a dull and angry silence.

All they’d done was exchange one prison for another. They didn’t even need to say it.

First thing in Marnixstraat Pieter Vos dispatched Laura Bakker to look for the missing papers concerning the Timmers case. When she came back with nothing he told Van der Berg
to join her. Normal service was resumed in the Drie Vaten so Sam had stayed with Sofia Albers. The office remained quiet. It was August. So many people on holiday. So little to do.

After three hours of tedious paperwork Vos went and joined them in the archives. The duty officer was getting sick of the sight of them.

Bakker said, ‘I told you, there’s hardly anything here.’

‘You did,’ Vos agreed and led them back to the office and the coffee machine.

Frank de Groot, the commissaris whose name was on the file deletion records, was off for the day. His daughter was getting married in Utrecht.

‘We could always phone him,’ Bakker suggested, more in hope than expectation.

‘They’re just missing files,’ Vos said. ‘There’s probably a simple explanation. It can wait a day.’

He handed out the coffees and they went to sit around his desk. Vos listened to their ideas in his customary non-committal fashion.

‘Besides,’ Van der Berg added, ‘if we didn’t know those files were missing we wouldn’t even be bothered. The case is as good as dead . . .’

‘You said we never found who killed that family,’ Bakker pointed out. ‘This Ollie Haas screwed it up. How can it be closed?’

‘It’s not closed,’ Vos said.

‘If there are no files how can it be open?’ she wondered.

Bakker smiled, preened her long red hair at that. A persistent young woman, she was never shy of an argument and both Vos and Van der Berg had learned to avoid these unless they were absolutely
necessary.

‘How about Haas?’ she added.

Van der Berg sighed and said, ‘We don’t know where he lives. If that old girlfriend of his hadn’t phoned yesterday we wouldn’t even be—’

‘Ollie Haas has a house on the outskirts of Volendam,’ Vos cut in. ‘Quite an expensive one. He retired there just under five years ago. I checked.’ He pulled a sheet of
paper out of his drawer. It was a page from an estate agency website. ‘The place is valued at three-quarters of a million euros. He lives there alone. It’s up for sale.’

He passed Van der Berg the printout.

‘That’s a lot of bricks for a police pension,’ the detective noted. ‘Ollie Haas is an Amsterdammer. He was brought up in Oud-Zuid. Why the hell would he move out to
Volendam? The locals won’t even talk to you until you’ve been in the place thirty years or more.’ He slapped the page on the desk. ‘Something’s wrong. I’m with
Laura. If we’ve nothing better to do – and I don’t see we have – I think we should poke our noses round a bit. Talk to Haas again. Find out what happened to those
files.’

Bakker retrieved one of the few folders still remaining from the Timmers case and opened it. There were photos of the parents, a gruff-looking man, angry, coarse face, faded blue
fisherman’s smock. A pretty fair-haired woman, too good-looking for him most would think. Then three little blonde girls in tight scarlet satin shorts and white shirts grinning for the
camera.

‘What a way to dress up kids of that age,’ she grumbled.

Gus and Freya Timmers were thirty-nine when they were killed. The mother and daughter died of multiple stab wounds in their tiny fisherman’s cottage behind the Volendam seafront. Her
father suffered a single shotgun blast. Freya and Jo were found in the parents’ bedroom. He was in the room the triplets shared. Ollie Haas believed Mia and Kim only survived because they
were at the waterfront collecting a prize in the talent contest from Gert Brugman, the singer with The Cupids. He could find no motive for the crime and no likely culprit.

Brugman had stayed on the waterfront all night, drinking. Rogier Glas left the event for a meeting with the band’s manager, Jaap Blom, in the cafe Blom ran in the town. Frans Lambert had
taken a cab to Schiphol as soon as the contest was over and flown to Bangkok. He’d never been heard of since.

‘That’s odd,’ Bakker said. ‘Why didn’t he come back?’

‘It is funny,’ Van der Berg agreed. ‘But they have him on camera going through Schiphol at six in the evening. He couldn’t have been anywhere near Volendam when it
happened.’

Bakker wasn’t giving up.

‘Blom?’ she said, pointing a finger at the report. ‘That’s not the same as . . .’

‘The politician,’ Vos cut in. ‘Yes. That’s how he made his money. Media. Pop music to begin with. Now . . .’

Bakker turned to the nearest PC and did a quick search. It was all there: Jaap Blom, fifty-six. Former pop group manager. Founder of an advertising and online media company sold to an American
corporation six years before. Rich as Croesus, now a member of the
Tweede Kamer,
the second chamber. When he wasn’t in The Hague on political business he lived in a mansion in Edam,
Volendam’s more affluent neighbour just two kilometres away.

‘Irrelevant,’ Vos said and went back to the papers.

Glas was found murdered in the front seat of the band’s van three hundred metres from the Timmers’ home. The two sisters were there with a bloodied knife. Haas believed they wrongly
thought they saw the musician leaving their house just before they turned up and found their parents and sister Jo dead. So they followed Glas to his van and killed him there.

‘Bit extreme,’ Van der Berg commented. ‘Two kids. Eleven years old. I mean . . . why?’

Bakker pointed to the concluding paragraph of the report. It said the Timmers children had been reported for disruptive behaviour by their school. Social services had been planning to talk to
the parents to try to find the cause.

‘Perhaps they were in shock,’ she suggested. ‘Rogier Glas just happened to be the first victim they saw. I found a newspaper cutting that said he was really popular with all
the kids. Used to go to charity events. Hospitals.’

She put it in front of them. Glas surrounded by happy children. The headline read, ‘The Candy Man’.

‘It says he always carried sweets with him. Used to hand them out to the kids all the time.’ She was thinking. ‘I’m assuming this is all harmless? I mean . . . just
because he handed out stuff to children. It doesn’t mean . . .’