Little Sister (16 page)

‘Who’s that?’ Bakker wondered.

Vos went over and introduced himself.

‘Snyder,’ the man said. ‘I got seconded here from Rotterdam first thing this morning.’

‘What happened to Schuurman?’ Vos asked. ‘I usually get him.’

‘He’s on a course, isn’t he? Any more questions, or can we get on with our work?’

Bakker was wandering towards the door to the hall, the source of the flies.

‘Leave that!’ Snyder ordered. ‘We go first.’

‘I’d like to know who he is,’ Vos pointed out. ‘Just a look.’

‘It’s my job to preserve evidence,’ the forensic officer said.

‘I know what your job is,’ Vos said then pushed past, ignoring the protests, waved away the cloud of flies at the door and took a good look.

‘This is outrageous,’ Snyder objected. ‘I’ll have to raise it with De Groot.’

‘Feel free,’ Vos told him. ‘I never have these problems with Schuurman.’

The body of a stocky man lay half-turned in front of him, face cast in a shaft of summer sunlight streaming from the cobwebbed window by the front door. A staircase ran up behind. The dust on
the ancient wooden steps indicated there wasn’t much point in venturing up there. No one had for a long time.

Vos took two steps forward into the hall.

‘Cut that out!’ Snyder cried. ‘We haven’t even started yet. I don’t want a bunch of clodhopping detectives trampling on the evidence.’

Barely listening Vos crouched down and stared at the dead face in front of him. Weather-beaten, stubbly, grubby dark-brown hair turning grey. Between fifty and sixty. The same age as the two
remaining Cupids, Gert Brugman and the vanished drummer Frans Lambert. But this man had a tattoo on his forearm. An old-fashioned anchor entwined with snakes, the blue and red ink merging into the
skin with age. Before he interviewed Sara Klerk that morning he’d taken a good look at the pictures of Brugman and Lambert in the newspaper cuttings Laura Bakker had found. They were rough
and ready men, solid Volendam stock. But if they’d had tattoos he’d have seen them in some of those publicity photos the papers ran.

‘Any ideas?’ he asked.

‘There’s no ID on him,’ Van der Berg said. ‘Not that I could find.’

‘Jesus,’ Snyder bawled. ‘What am I dealing with here? You don’t touch a damned thing—’

‘There are two young women out there,’ Vos said, getting to his feet. ‘Sick. Scared. Maybe dangerous to others. Maybe in danger themselves.’ He pointed a gloved finger in
Snyder’s face. ‘Don’t get in my way. And don’t even think of whining to De Groot either. That won’t work.’

Snyder glared at him.

‘Won’t it? You sure?’

Vos walked outside, beyond the clouds of flies and the team of forensic officers, trying to find fresh air. Aisha Refai was by the door, glaring in the direction of Snyder. She followed the
three of them as they left.

‘What’s going on, Vos?’

‘You tell me,’ he said, checking the pictures on his phone.

‘I was off yesterday. Come in this morning. They say Schuurman’s away on some course I never knew about.’ She nodded back at the farmhouse. And here’s this stuck-up prick
from Rotterdam throwing his weight around. De Groot brought him in apparently. Wasn’t sure we could cope on our own.’

Van der Berg shifted on his big feet. Laura Bakker started clucking too.

‘Stop it,’ Vos said, holding up his hand. ‘If that’s what the commissaris wants it’s his prerogative.’ He nodded at the farmhouse. ‘Do your job, Aisha.
It’s important. If you find anything . . .’

‘You’ll know,’ she muttered and tramped back in her suit.

‘I’m no expert, as that charmer from Rotterdam will doubtless confirm, but I’d guess whoever our man is he got killed around the same time as the nurse,’ Van der Berg
suggested. ‘The flies. The state of him. It is hot.’

Bakker looked at Vos, who said nothing.

‘Is he right?’ she asked.

Vos shrugged and stayed silent.

‘Which raises the question,’ Van der Berg continued, ‘why strip Klerk naked and dump him in Marken? And leave the other one dead in his work clothes on the floor in there? I
mean—’

Another van turned up. Three more forensic officers got out. Vos didn’t recognize any of them. He stopped one and asked where they came from.

‘Rotterdam,’ the man said. ‘Snyder called us.’

Then they went off to the crime scene.

‘So just because Schuurman’s away we have to bring in a bunch of strangers?’

‘People do go on courses, Laura,’ Vos told her. ‘It’s August. Holiday time. There’s quite a workload. Getting bigger all the time.’

‘But—’

Aisha Refai wandered over. She looked sheepish.

‘Progress?’ she asked.

‘Not really,’ Vos replied. ‘You?’

She glanced back at the farmhouse. The teams there seemed intent on setting up their gear. Sheets, lights, cameras.

‘I seem to be peripheral to their plans at the moment. I found these in there. I’m guessing they got dropped by accident.’

She held up a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a Samsung smart phone. Recent. Expensive. It had a faux leather case, red crocodile. And an old, worn ID card.

The picture looked like the dead man inside. It gave his name as Stefan Timmers, age fifty-four.

‘Timmers?’ Van der Berg said, then got on the phone.

‘Snyder’s too busy poking round the bloodstains and the body,’ she went on. ‘He doesn’t seem much interested in my ideas. What’s the betting this is your
man’s phone too?’

Vos touched the case through the clear plastic.

‘Well done.’

‘Why do you say it like that?’ Aisha asked.

‘Nothing,’ he told her. ‘Can you check it out?’

She glanced back at the team at the house.

‘Probably best if I sat in your car.’

They ushered her to the unmarked Volvo. The Kok brothers watched closely then came over and asked if it was OK for them to leave. They looked Laura up and down before they did.

‘Wish there were more like you around,’ Tonny said with a cheery leer.

‘Bye, bye.’ She gave them a wave.

After a while Van der Berg returned with some news from Marnixstraat. Stefan Timmers was older brother to Gus. The triplets’ uncle. He lived in a cottage in Volendam and had a string of
convictions for theft, assault, drunk driving, threatening behaviour. At least one term in jail.

‘Nice man, by all accounts,’ he added. ‘Kind of puts those girls here, doesn’t it?’

‘Take a look round his place,’ Vos said. ‘Call if you need any help.’

Van der Berg headed for his car. They watched him drive carefully down the narrow lane, not far behind the rusty tractor belonging to the Kok brothers.

‘What are we looking for?’ Bakker asked.

‘Something . . . small. Something that’s probably not here. A million miles away for all I know.’

The old Ford tractor was belching black diesel as it chugged slowly away. Bakker’s sharp eyes followed it. She was thinking as always.

‘You don’t like the way those two look at you, Laura. I’m sorry. I should have said—’

‘I can watch out for myself, thank you very much. You get used to it. God knows what it must be like if you’re beautiful. Those two Timmers girls. Did you see the pictures? When they
were kids? They were lovely. That . . . I can’t imagine.’

He wanted to say something but knew it could so easily be taken the wrong way.

‘If anyone ever tries that in Marnixstraat let me know. I won’t stand for it.’

She threw back her head and laughed out loud.

‘You’re a bit late.’

He realized he was blushing.

‘What? I mean it. I won’t stand—’

‘You really are an innocent sometimes.’

‘This job screws you up,’ Vos moaned. ‘You just notice all the wrong things. Never look at what’s right in front of your nose.’

‘An innocent,’ she repeated.

Something grey and heavy flapped above them. It was a heron coming in to land by the dyke. They hung around the city too. One was fond of standing on the back wall behind Marnixstraat, eyeing
the canal in the busy heart of Amsterdam, hour after hour. In the vast green wilderness of Waterland, the bird looked different. At home. Unfeeling with its great spear of a beak. Malevolent, if
Vos was feeling imaginative.

‘We all are out here,’ he said.

There was a shriek of delight from the back of the Volvo. Aisha Refai had found something.

Kim crooned the words of another song. This time her sister didn’t follow.

They were back in their room, up the steep narrow stairs, silent for the most part after the confrontation with Vera. Pigeons seemed to be congregating outside the window. The smell of dope from
the back of the coffee shop in Haarlemmerstraat was stronger than ever.

Sniffing it through the window, Kim laughed then reached up and stroked her sister’s short black hair.

‘We’re different now. Aren’t we?’

‘Weren’t we always?’ Mia answered.

They never talked about this. It was awkward, unnecessary. That had been the case ever since the black night, a decade before, when the police came out of the dark screaming at them, staring at
their bloodied fingers as they stood by Rogier Glas’s van waiting to see what happened next.

Something then had joined the two of them, trapped them inside the same shell. But it was all an illusion. As the girls grew the differences became apparent. Physically Kim was a touch heavier,
in the face, in the body. Quicker, stronger, bolder too while Mia sat back and watched, waiting for her moment.

Until now they’d barely quarrelled. It was rare they even disagreed. Decisions came jointly out of nothing. In the first instance from Kim usually and then Mia simply nodded.

But they
were
unalike in many ways. Even in the music – Kim the low notes, Mia the middle – the subtle shifts were there.

Mia thought about this and sang a snatch of an old hymn. Kim listened, nodded, waited for her moment and came in with a deeper harmony. Just one line and then in unison they finished.

The pigeons cooed outside the window as if in appreciation. Someone in the kebab-bar kitchen clapped very slowly.

‘Did you hear her too?’ Kim asked in a whisper.

‘No. Not really. We left that behind in Marken.’

With the madness,
she thought.

Her sister frowned and stayed silent. Mia gazed at her more intently, more seriously than she would ever have dared before.

‘We have to be careful. We both want to be free of this place. But we don’t know where we’re going.’ She shrugged. ‘Or why, really?’

‘Because we’re owed,’ Kim muttered.

‘We are,’ Mia agreed. ‘I’m going to mess with the computer. Want to come?’

Kim just shook her head and stared out of the window at the back of the kebab bar and the dope cafe in the street behind. One of the waiters there was waving at them.

Down the long steep stairs. Three flights of them. Mia sat and idly wasted half an hour looking through the limited pages Vera allowed. The child filter was on. She couldn’t work out how
to remove it. The news sites had nothing fresh to say about Simon Klerk. Or them.

Towards the end of the afternoon Vera returned from the doctor’s. She looked as if she’d been crying.

‘What you two been up to?’ she demanded, in an obvious foul temper.

‘Nothing,’ Mia replied.

‘Where’s your sister?’

‘Sleeping, I think.’

The Englishwoman placed her shopping bag on the grubby carpet at the foot of the steps.

‘Keep your nose out of that,’ she ordered, and set off up the flight of stairs.

Kim wasn’t sleeping. She was waiting, hidden in the doorway of Vera’s first-floor room. She listened as Vera marched up to the top of the house calling out her name. Then the woman
marched down, a heavy, angry tread for one so skinny.

The Dutch liked steep staircases and narrow steps. Some were almost like cliffs or ladders into distant attics.

Hiding behind Vera’s bedroom door Kim held on to the cord she’d unwound from the curtains. It ran across the shallow landing, tied to a radiator pipe at the other side. When Vera
came storming down the familiar steps calling out her name Kim waited, saw a leg, then another, and pulled the rope tight.

One hand up, stifling a giggle, as the Englishwoman’s shin connected with the trap.

Vera screamed then, falling head first down the steep incline, arms out waving frantically.

In front of the crippled computer Mia heard her cries. Then a shocking, physical impact as body met first wood and next hard tiles.

She raced to the hall. Weeping, looking like a deformed mannequin, Vera lay there. A crumpled, misshapen heap.

Kim on the steps above, laughing, curtain rope in her hand, snapping it like a whip.

Aisha marched out of the Volvo, proudly holding up the phone.

‘It’s not Klerk’s,’ Bakker said before the young forensic officer could speak.

‘I was going to say that,’ Vos objected.

She grinned.

‘The case. I knew that was what you’d spotted when I thought about it. A man wouldn’t have one like that. Not hard, you know.’

‘Not hard,’ Vos agreed. ‘So?’

There was a shout. Snyder had emerged from the farmhouse, pulled down the hood of his bunny suit and started yelling for her.

‘I thought the good times couldn’t last,’ Aisha said. ‘I’d better get back to doing what the new boss asks.’ She held up a bag with the phone and the ID card.
And give him this. Sorry folks. Happy to help. Don’t want to lose my job.’

‘What—’ Vos began.

‘There are no prints. Maybe they wore gloves. Or wiped it. Dropped it . . .’

Aisha pulled out her notepad and handed over a name and address.

‘Damn,’ Vos muttered. ‘That can’t be right.’

Snyder’s shouts were too loud to ignore. She shrugged and went back to the farmhouse, pocketing the plastic bag along the way. Only, Vos guessed, to be found again later when she could
slip it in front of Snyder as something new.

‘May I?’ Bakker asked when he kept staring at the page.

He passed over the note.

Irene Visser. A street name: Kerkbuurt. Marken.