The House of Dolls (33 page)

English that night, they decided. Some new brews just in.

Vos found an isolated table at the back next to a line of ancient show posters. Sam sat the way he usually did in strange places: half on Vos’s right foot, leaning against his trouser leg.

‘Proost,’ the detective said and chinked his glass against Vos’s then stopped and picked up the bottle. ‘Look at the crap on here.’ He pointed to a label on the back. ‘Please drink responsibly. What in God’s name does that mean? Don’t spill it or something?’

‘Probably,’ Vos thought.

Van der Berg sipped the beer, pulled a face, went back to the bar and returned with something Belgian.

‘What the hell’s this about, Pieter? Do you have a clue? And if you do, will you enlighten the office jester?’

‘If I thought you were the jester would I have asked you to chase Bea Prins?’

A shrug.

‘If it’s honesty you’re after let me tell you the truth. You shouldn’t be near this case and you know it. Too close.’

‘Tell that to De Groot.’

‘He’s just desperate. Mulder never made the grade. That stitch-up with Jansen’s going to work out badly whether we catch the old bastard or not. Frank’s short of quality players. He needs you. He likes you.’ Another chink of the glass. ‘Everyone does. But he’ll thrust your hands into the fire, Pieter. If that’s what it takes. Management. It’s what they do.’

Vos nodded, said nothing.

‘And your farm girl . . .’

‘She isn’t mine,’ Vos pointed out. ‘I’m not sure she knows or cares much about farms either.’

‘They’ll still send her packing. She sticks out a mile in that place. And then she’ll hang around anyway. Won’t be any easier to shake off than your friend in the Drie Vaten. The kid looks like a duck out of water. I mean . . . watching the pair of you.’ The dog was relaxing. He wandered beneath the table. Van der Berg stroked his soft head. ‘What a sight. You looking like you visited the charity store. That kid as if she’d just inherited her old mum’s wardrobe.’

‘Her Auntie Maartje makes her clothes,’ Vos said, half-seriously. ‘From patterns. In Dokkum.’

‘Her Auntie Maartje needs a new hobby. It’s bad when things get personal. This nightmare’s going that way. Time to stop.’

Vos laughed, shook his head.

‘Don’t get smart with me,’ Van der Berg added. ‘We’re off duty now. I can say what I like.’

‘I never realized you needed a private moment for that.’

A moment of tension, almost hostility between them. The dog seemed to notice and came to sit equidistant between their legs. Got a pat from each in return.

‘You’re a clever man,’ Van der Berg added. ‘Except you don’t know when to stop. And you don’t see anything in front of you except whatever it is you’re chasing. That Bakker girl’s like that too if you ask me. Bad enough having one blinkered obsessive in the office. Two’s unhealthy.’

‘Is this why we came out for a beer?’

‘Partly. I’d also like to know if you’re going to give Frank what he wants. Wim Prins’s dead head on a plate. For the wife and the daughter. And that reporter they found in the canal this morning.’

‘Too soon to know,’ Vos said.

‘Oh come on. You’re Pieter Vos. Everyone’s waiting to hear . . .’

‘What do you think?’

Van der Berg lifted his glass, drained it.

‘I think this is a two-beer problem. Not English either.’

He went to the bar, came back with a couple more local brews. Local Brouwerij’t IJ with an ostrich on the label.

‘Bea Prins was murdered,’ he said in a bored monotone. ‘I’ll go along with that. The daughter . . .’

A candid, forthright man. He didn’t look at Vos at that moment.

‘Does that mean he took Anneliese?’ Van der Berg wondered. ‘Then made it look like the same thing happened to his own girl? I don’t know. Unless . . .’

He fidgeted, didn’t want to say it.

‘Unless?’ Vos prompted.

‘Unless he was a customer at that privehuis. And he met Anneliese there.’

Vos kept quiet.

‘If it was him you’re never going to find out, are you? About Anneliese? Or his own kid?’

‘That would seem to follow,’ Vos replied with care. ‘Not that we’ve the least evidence either of them is dead.’

‘Hope’sa wonderful thing,’ Van der Berg said quietly. ‘So long as you don’t let it blind you. I still struggle with the idea he’d go from running Amsterdam one minute to stabbing a reporter to death the next. Alongside all the rest.’

Arms on the table, he looked at that moment as if he lived in the Pieper. But Dirk Van der Berg had that happy habit with any bar he visited.

‘And so do you,’ he added. ‘Which means Frank de Groot’s going to be disappointed . . .’

Vos’s phone rang. He pulled it out, looked at the screen expecting to see Bakker’s name there, hearing her call him back to Marnixstraat for some reason.

Instead it said,
Number unknown
.

He answered over the hubbub of the Pieper.

‘You’re in a bar,’ a familiar low, miserable voice said. ‘I can smell the beer from here.’

Vos told him exactly where.

‘Bastard,’ Theo Jansen replied. ‘You’re lucky I talk to you at all.’

After the brief spat with Vos Laura Bakker walked into the basement canteen, bought a bottle of water and a cheese salad. Sat on her own at a table near the window.

Other officers came and went. No one spoke to her. No one took much notice.

Then, when she was nearly finished, Koeman, the beady-eyed detective back working with Mulder on the Jansen case, came over and took a chair.

He didn’t ask. Didn’t look like the kind of man who ever did.

About forty, nice casual clothes. A nice face too when she thought about it, though the overlong brown moustache was stupid. The kind of thing a drug squad officer might have affected once. Koeman had greedy, wandering eyes too. He looked at every woman who passed through Marnixstraat that way. Didn’t mean anything, she guessed. The others said he was happily married. Just a habit, one he probably never even thought about.

‘Tell me about cows,’ he said then tucked into a flabby-looking burger.

‘Not a lot to say about them.’

‘Do they go moo up in Friesland? Or talk funny? Like you.’

She smiled sarcastically. Picked up her tray. His arm came out, stopped her.

‘Let’s chat,’ he said. ‘There’s time.’

‘Why?’

He took his hand away and sighed.

‘Because I was trying to be friendly. That’s all.’ He put down the burger. Swigged at a pack of orange juice. ‘Really. I know people have been a bit . . . off with you.’

‘I never noticed,’ she lied.

Koeman laughed at that.

‘You stand out, kid. You look different. You talk different.’ He gestured at the floors above them. ‘This is a big place. We don’t like different.’ More quietly. ‘Makes us feel awkward. Sorry.’

She tried to remember the last time anyone in Marnixstraat had apologized to her about anything.

‘What does it matter anyway?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got the assessment next week. They’re going to kick me out. Everyone knows.’

Koeman shook his head.

‘Next week’s next week. A lot can happen between now and then.’

‘I don’t fit here. You said it. Vos said it. De Groot—’

‘No one
fits
here,’ he interrupted with a sudden vehemence. ‘I didn’t when I turned up. Pieter Vos neither. It’s a police station. Not a hospital or a monastery or something. We’re not here to fix things. Just find them if we can. Then pass the problem on to someone else.’ He shrugged. ‘The law.’ A wry laugh and then a nod at the window. ‘People outside. The . . .
general public
. Who mostly despise us if we do our job. And can’t wait to take a pop at us if we don’t.’

He was trying to tell her something and she wasn’t sure what.

‘I don’t give a damn if they kick me out,’ Bakker insisted. ‘I can do something else. Something sane. Something . . .’

‘You’ll mope and scream and cry.’

‘You don’t know me, Koeman!’ A couple of tables away people were starting to stare.

‘I know more about you now than I did on Monday. Back then I thought you were this dumb, frightened, talentless kid who’d somehow got on the wrong train. Found herself in the big, bad city. Too scared to go home. Too scared to stay.’

Bakker folded her arms. Watched him tuck into the burger again.

‘And?’ she asked.

‘And I was wrong. There’s something about you. Vos can see it. You’re like him, a bit anyway. He’s scared too. Scared of us. Scared of going back to where he was, because it was all so bleak and grim.’ He pushed aside the half-finished burger with a scowl. ‘Not just for him.’

‘He’ll be gone the moment this case closes,’ she said. ‘If it turns out Prins was behind Katja’s disappearance. That there’s nothing to connect the girl with his daughter. Or nothing he can find . . .’

‘Fine,’ Koeman said. ‘If that works for him.’

‘But it won’t, will it?’ she said slowly. ‘He wants to know.’

‘Don’t we all?’

‘Is there something you want to tell me?’

He groaned.

‘God you’re hard work.’

‘Koeman—’

‘No. Listen. This is important. We may be slow and stupid. We may be pigs from time to time. But we notice things. Like what you’ve done for Pieter since he came back. Maybe that’s all we do.’ He looked at her. A frank and friendly expression. ‘We’re good at it though. Noticing. Looking.’ A pause. ‘Hunting.’

She felt slow and stupid.

‘I haven’t done anything for Vos! Are you suggesting . . .?’

‘No! No!’ He climbed to his feet, grabbed his tray. ‘I give up. This is impossible.’ He glared at her. ‘
You’re
impossible. I’m trying to help, Laura. So’s Vos.’

‘He’s sad,’ Bakker said in a quiet, frail voice. ‘Can’t you see that?’

‘I can,’ he agreed. ‘But when he’s around you he’s alive. Something makes him think. And when Pieter Vos thinks . . . eventually things happen. If we’re lucky. And God knows we could use some luck right now.’

He had to go back to work, he said. Koeman held out his hand. She took it automatically, getting to her feet, tray in hand. It tipped, tilted, was about to fall onto the floor, scattering plate and glass everywhere.

Another clumsy moment. But this time Koeman was there and grabbed it before the disaster happened, caught the thing and held it safe.

‘You haven’t been kicked out yet, kiddo,’ he said. ‘Go home. Get a good night’s rest. Think about it. Tomorrow’s likely to be a big day around here. Make your mark. Or try to. Get noticed for the right reasons for a change. That’s all.’

A few spots of rain out by the canal. A sharp wind. Vos stood next to the line of parked cars along the pavement.

‘Let’s end this now,’ he said. ‘You can’t keep running, Theo. You’re too old for this. So am I.’

‘What are you talking about? You don’t look a day older than when we were locking horns on the street.’

‘I feel it. What’s left to prove?’

‘Who killed Rosie for one thing.’

‘I’m not on that case.’

‘I wonder why. Do you know who took your girl?’

Vos hesitated then said, ‘No. I don’t. But I think we’re starting to get an idea about what happened to Katja Prins. And maybe that will take us there.’

A cyclist went past. A young woman on a granny bike. Stiff and upright, face in the wind. The way Laura Bakker rode.

‘You really think Prins killed his own daughter?’

‘I don’t know,’ Vos answered. ‘I just think . . . we’re closer. This is my business. Not yours.’

Jansen grunted, asked about the Doll’s House. Vos answered carefully. Talked about Menzo and how they’d learned the Surinamese gang had secretly taken control of the place from him.

‘Is that it?’ the voice on the line asked. ‘Is that all you have?’

‘Would I tell you everything?’

‘You should. You and me are in the same boat. We’re the innocents here. Don’t you get that?’

Vos thought of the scene out in the tulip field. Two burned corpses in a wrecked Mercedes.

‘Not entirely.’

‘We’ve been lied to. Strung along like fools. Those kids Menzo put on me. He sent them to that place out of laziness. He picked it up on a whim. Wanted out of there. Wanted the insurance.’

Van der Berg had come to stand outside the bar. He was smoking a cigarette, leaning against the windows, watching from across the narrow street, holding Sam’s lead while the dog sniffed around the pavement.

‘You know that, do you?’

‘I do,’ Jansen said with a pained sigh. ‘Whatever happened in that place – don’t ask because like I told you I’m an innocent. It was still on my watch. Not Jimmy’s. I didn’t know about it. I didn’t even know I owned the stinking dump. Kids? Little girls? Not my kind of business.’

Van der Berg was trying to get a trace on the line. Had his own phone to his ear. Shook his head as Vos watched.

‘You’re a good businessman, Theo. I find it hard to believe this was news to you.’

There wasn’t the expected explosion. Just the long sigh again.

‘You know what?’ Jansen said. ‘So do I.’

‘I’m standing out in the freezing rain,’ Vos went on. ‘Let’s discuss this face to face. A beer.’ He thought about this. ‘Maybe we can go our separate ways afterwards.’

There was laughter then, a long throaty boom.

‘What’s this? Pieter Vos? The straightest cop in Amsterdam? He’s going to talk to a wanted criminal? A murderer? Then let him walk?’

‘Not forever. Just until we’re both . . .’ He couldn’t find the right word to begin with. ‘Satisfied.’

‘We lost our daughters. Nothing makes up for that.’ A pause. There was something new and broken in Jansen’s voice. ‘Does it?’

Vos stayed silent.

‘I apologize,’ Jansen added. ‘Am I boring you?’

‘Frankly, yes.’

Silence. Maybe he’d gone.

Then the gruff voice in his ear said, ‘Let me give you something to think about then. Rosie was running that place behind my back. With someone else.’

‘Who?’

‘Patience, Vos. Indulge me and maybe you’ll find out. It was Rosie’s all along. She knew something bad happened there. Got scared and passed it on to Menzo behind my back. She tried to sell me out to him too. Families, huh? You think you know where you stand . . .’