Little Sister (22 page)

‘I want you to find him,’ Vos said. ‘I’ll be in before eight. By then would be good.’

After that he thought long and hard. He meant what he’d said to Laura Bakker earlier that night. He did trust her now, and in truth he hadn’t much before. She was young. Impetuous.
Clumsy sometimes. But she was also dogged, curious and good with detail.

He called her. A sleepy voice answered the phone. Vos wondered if she was on her own. He knew nothing about her private life at all. It would have been impertinent to ask.

‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’

A drowsy yawn and then, ‘It’s late. What do you think?’

‘I thought maybe . . . you’d still be up.’

‘Well I wasn’t.’

‘Oops. Sorry.’

‘Oops,’ she repeated. ‘You think you can get away with anything if you say that.’

‘Mostly I can.’

She laughed and said, ‘True. So what’s happened?’

‘Probably lots,’ he said. ‘It’s just that no one’s told me. Yet.’

‘That was worth waking me up for?’

‘First thing in the morning I need you to go to Marken.’

A pause.

‘And . . . ?’

‘A fishing expedition.’

‘You sent Dirk on one of those today. He ended up getting bashed on the head.’

‘I’d rather you avoided that. Tell the director there . . .’

‘Veerman.’

‘Tell him you need to see Irene Visser’s office. Her papers. Talk to him. Talk to the staff. The patients.’

‘Her neighbours?’

That was a good suggestion, he thought. Just a wrong one.

‘Don’t bother with the neighbours just yet. There’s something in that place we don’t get. I should have seen it before.’

‘You mean the thing she was running from?’

Sam got up, yawned and stretched on the cobbles.

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Is that OK?’

‘Oh yes.’ He could tell she was flattered, not that she was going to let on. ‘Very.’

Thursday. Vos trudged into work at half past seven. De Groot had suspended the two young uniform officers whose clumsiness had led to Irene Visser’s death. Given the
interest the media were starting to take in the case it was probably inevitable. Nothing made a good story like a murder investigation going wrong.

Van der Berg was at his desk, brushing aside all inquiries about his head. Laura Bakker had gone to Marken. De Groot was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing from forensic Vos couldn’t
have guessed already. Both men died from single blasts of a shotgun. No sign of a weapon, no prints, no incriminating physical evidence so far.

The night team had found Stefan Timmers’ decrepit Land Rover burned out near Volendam harbour. The blackened shell was downstairs being looked over.

‘Going to take a while to get anything out of that,’ Rijnders said as he got ready to knock off shift. ‘If they can. The fact his shotgun case was in the farmhouse . . .Must
have been his weapon that killed Klerk, don’t you think?’

There was no sign of the weapon itself. Vos had wondered about setting up a fingertip search around the farmhouse. But it was August. De Groot would start moaning about stretched resources, with
some justification. Waterland was a flat green wilderness. If it were simply fields a concerted search might reveal something. But the whole area was criss-crossed with a multitude of dykes and
canals, some narrow, some broad. Anyone wanting to hide a firearm would surely throw it in the green, opaque water. Then it was as good as gone.

The file on Timmers was pretty damning too. A string of convictions, including three for serious assault. He’d spent six months in jail for the last. Local intelligence suggested he worked
as a runner for hire whenever the local gangs needed drugs or other contraband shifted.

‘Just the man you’d want for dirty work,’ Rijnders observed.

‘He didn’t visit the girls in Marken, though.’ Vos still couldn’t make the connection. ‘And why . . . why come back to the place they shot Klerk? Why take the
risk?’

Rijnders said cheerily, ‘Well that’s for the day team to discover, isn’t it?’

He was about to leave when Vos reminded him about the drummer.

‘Oh. Sorry. Frans Lambert. Yes.’ He bent down and brought up something on the computer. ‘Short of it is . . . he’s dead. Surprise, surprise.’

It was a story from an English-language newspaper in Bali, five years before. Vos noted the date, around the time the Timmers files went missing.

The clipping was headlined, ‘Expat Dutch Businessman Lost at Sea’. It was just six paragraphs accompanied by a photograph of a tall, fit-looking middle-aged man with a greying
moustache standing next to some gym equipment. The caption read, ‘Bram Engels, proprietor of Prinsen Health Club’.

‘Bram Engels?’

‘No. It’s Frans Lambert,’ Rijnders insisted.

He pulled up a series of earlier shots of The Cupids. The same man, same moustache and serious smile.

‘I made a few calls to the police out there and our embassy. It seems Mr Engels turned up around the time Frans vanished. He had some money with him. Started a fitness and sauna club.
Owned a small boat. Just like Frans did when he lived in Volendam. He played drums in one of the local nightclubs too. Everyone says he was really good. Went out with a girlfriend one day. Fishing.
Swimming. Who knows?’ He pulled up a photo of a small cruiser, seemingly adrift on a bright blue sea. ‘They find the boat. They don’t find Bram. Or Frans for that
matter.’

‘They didn’t get a body?’

‘The woman gave a statement to the police. He went for a swim. She had a nap. He never came back. A month later they found some remains. He’s buried in a place called Seminyak. It
seems he’d given up on the Netherlands. That was his new home.’

‘You’re happy with this?’ Vos asked.

‘The police say he’s dead. The embassy say he’s dead. The business went into liquidation after it happened. There’s no trace of any financial activity. Nothing to suggest
it wasn’t him in the water.’

‘What about the money? Royalties? The Cupids must have—’

‘That would all go through the manager.’ Rijnders scowled. ‘Word was that Jaap Blom was a bit of a bastard. He kept his musicians on a basic wage, pocketed the rest, handed out
some extras when they started to moan about talking to lawyers. Told them what to do, what to play, where. And if they even whispered about going solo . . .’ The detective put a pretend gun
to his head and said, ‘Bang.’ Then he thought for an instant and added, ‘It’s just gossip, and the music world’s full of that, but people say Jaap could turn pretty
nasty if anyone asked for too much. I know he’s a nicer-than-nice politician now. But word was he’d threaten to cut your fingers off back then. If you pissed him off.’

Vos stared at the photos of Frans Lambert, in Volendam with the band, under a false name in Bali.

‘Maybe you should ask him,’ Rijnders said.

‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

The night man scratched his chin.

‘What do you mean? Didn’t De Groot pass it on? Jaap Blom’s coming in here at nine fifteen. He heard we were scratching around The Cupids. Offered to help. I
thought—’

Vos picked up his phone and said, ‘I haven’t checked my messages yet. Thanks.’

If Rijnders realized that was a lie he didn’t let on.

Nine fifteen. Blom had to come through reception.

Van der Berg was busy sifting through the thick file on Stefan Timmers. Vos called him off.

‘I want you to go back in time,’ he said.

‘May I know why?’

‘Not sure.’

Van der Berg nodded.

‘I like it when we start this way. Let me guess. Ten years. Back to Volendam.’

‘No. Five. And I don’t know where.’

There was an awkward silence then Van der Berg said, ‘Five. Well here’s what I know for starters. Some guy who was director of Marken before Veerman killed himself.’

‘What?’

‘Threw a rope round a tree in that wood close to where we found Simon Klerk. Put his neck in it. Didn’t I mention this?’

‘No.’

‘Sorry. I saw it when I was nosing through the files. It didn’t seem relevant.’

Vos shrugged and said, ‘Perhaps it isn’t.’

‘Perhaps,’ Van der Berg agreed. ‘Five years. Ollie Haas deleted those records.’

Vos said, ‘The same month that missing drummer seems to have drowned in Bali. Under an assumed name.’

‘Really?’

‘Looks that way.’

Five years.
There was one other thing and neither of them was keen to mention it.

‘I think that’s what Irene Visser was running from,’ Vos said instead. ‘Not us. Not what happened in that farmhouse. Something different altogether. Perhaps if
we—’

He stopped. De Groot was marching through the office. Calm, relaxed, intent. Vos closed down the pages on Frans Lambert as the commissaris marched up to his desk. Then he related a summary of
the case so far, the weapons, Klerk and Stefan Timmers.

‘Pretty obvious what happened,’ De Groot said. ‘They’ve got a thug for an uncle. If they wanted to kill that nurse . . .’

There was still no sign of the sisters, and not the least intelligence from the streets about two blonde girls aged around twenty, hiding somewhere in the city.

‘Maybe they’ve upped sticks,’ Rijnders suggested, grabbing his car keys. ‘Gone back to Volendam—’

‘No one could hide there,’ De Groot said. ‘It’s too small. Too obvious. If you’re going to hide you go somewhere big. Somewhere you can be anonymous.’

‘They’re managing that,’ Vos agreed.

‘They’ve murdered two people,’ the commissaris added. ‘They need to.’

Something bothered Vos. He couldn’t understand why two young women on the run would advertise themselves by standing outside Gert Brugman’s apartment, making sure they were seen
looking just the way they were in Marken. Fugitives usually tried to disguise their appearance. They seemed to be flaunting it.

He made a note to tell the patrols they had to take the description of the sisters with a pinch of salt.

‘I had a call from Jaap Blom,’ De Groot added. ‘He wants to come in with his wife and answer any questions we have. I told him it wasn’t necessary but he’s back up
here for a while. I thought it would be polite.’ He gave Vos a sharp look. ‘My office, nine fifteen. Just the two of us. We don’t need to record it. He’s not making a
statement.’

‘Fine,’ Vos said.

‘And try not to piss him off.’

Laura Bakker drove carefully all the way to Marken and found herself at the institution gates just after nine. There was a TV news unit parked outside, one camera hard up
against the barrier, the other filming a reporter talking about the second tragedy to hit the institution in a week.

She drew up, showed her police ID to security then went through to the car park. It was another perfect morning out by the water. Perhaps there’d come a time when she’d cycle out
here. Even get Vos to join her. He needed the exercise. She craved the green open spaces of her childhood.

But not now. There was a job to be done. On her own for once. Finally he was extending an invitation to her, one she’d been waiting for, the chance to prove herself.

Climbing out of the car she found herself face to face with a short, ragged-haired girl with elfin features, beaming at her as if amused.

‘You’re a policewoman, aren’t you?’

‘I am,’ Bakker agreed. ‘Have we met?’

‘Oh no. I just saw you the other day. I’m an inmate here. They won’t let me talk to the likes of you.’

Bakker introduced herself and shook her sweaty hand. The girl had been running by the looks of it. There was sweat on her young face and under the arms of her T-shirt.

‘Kaatje Lammers. Nutcase,’ she said.

They were alone in the car park. Steam was coming from the ground-floor block she took to be the canteen. Veerman and the medical staff were nowhere to be seen.

‘We’re talking now, aren’t we?’

The girl laughed and said, ‘Well spotted.’

‘Is there something—’

‘Is it true Irene Visser’s dead? You lot killed her last night? I heard the cooks talking. They won’t let me see the news . . .’

‘There was an accident. A car crash. No one killed her.’

‘Running away, the cooks said. From what?’

Bakker’s phone started ringing. She rejected the call.

‘I don’t know. I wish I did.’

‘Did you ask her about Simon Klerk?’

We tried, Bakker thought. The woman was evasive from the outset. And the fast-moving cycle of events – the missing sisters, Klerk’s death, the shocking scene in the farmhouse –
meant the case had moved ahead of them, leaving everyone trying to catch up.

‘Do you think she had something to tell us?’

‘Everyone’s got a story,’ the girl said with a wink. ‘Question is . . . why should they tell it? To you lot? I mean . . . what good is it?’

‘I don’t know. We could sit down here and talk if you want.’

Rapid footsteps sounded across the asphalt. Veerman was there, dark suit, dark face as usual. He looked furious.

‘What is this?’ he snapped. ‘I’m trying to deal with Visser’s death here. Talk to the staff. Try to explain the inexplicable. And you just march in . . .
where’s Vos?’

‘Vos sent me,’ Bakker said.

Kaatje Lammers was loving every moment of this.

‘Why?’ he wondered.

She glanced at the girl, who wasn’t going anywhere.

‘We’ve reason to believe Irene Visser was planning to leave Marken in a hurry. I want access to her office. Her computer. Her papers. To people who worked with her.’

‘You can’t just march in here the day after she died and start turning the place over.’

‘I just want to have a look around. That’s all. I’ll do my best not to upset anyone. It’s all . . .routine.’

Kaatje Lammers had her hand over her mouth, stifling a giggle.

‘I could start with Kaatje here,’ Bakker added. ‘You were one of Dr Visser’s patients, weren’t you?’

‘Star pupil. She had all sorts of people coming in to take a look at me. I’m special, you see. Genuine sociopath – I believe that’s the expression. Isn’t it,
Director?’

‘Not now,’ Veerman said. ‘There’s no time.’

‘I’ve got all the time in the world!’ Kaatje cried. ‘What you talking about? If she wants a chat—’