Little Sister (26 page)

Aisha Refai set out the tools for the task.

From the autopsy that Snyder, the man from Rotterdam, had overseen it was clear that Simon Klerk had been tied naked to a chair in the Waterland farmhouse. For some time, she said. There were
abrasion marks on his shins and arms, signs that he’d struggled against the ropes.

‘You’re sure of this?’ Van der Berg asked. ‘This Snyder guy knows his stuff?’

She looked bashful.

‘Snyder’s not the most charming man I’ve met. But he’s OK. He does a good job. Honest. I’ve learned a few things. And . . .’ She was a genial woman,
mid-twenties with a scarlet headscarf that just about covered her dark hair. ‘He thought it better this came from me. To be honest I think he might be a bit scared of you two. Who can blame
him?’

Vos pooh-poohed that. She spread out a selection of photos on the table. Klerk’s body in the pebbles on Marken. Laid out on the silver table in the morgue. The abrasion marks were obvious
in some close-up photos. Then she showed them the rope. Heavy old sisal.

‘It was in the farmhouse already,’ she said. ‘Lying around. We found more in one of the rooms.’

‘So this is spontaneous?’ Vos asked. ‘Something happens. He drives them to a remote location. For whatever reason . . . sexual probably.’

‘Seems a reasonable guess,’ she agreed.

‘How did they manage to overpower him? Klerk couldn’t have been a pushover. A nurse working in an environment like that would be used to dealing with violent—’

‘Marken was for juvenile girls,’ Aisha cut in.

‘All the same—’

‘You’re running ahead of yourself, Vos. Let me take this one step at a time.’

More photos. Tyre marks in the drive. Two sets, one narrower than the other.

‘These are for Klerk’s car,’ she said, pointing at a series of tracks that stopped close to the back door. ‘We’re pretty sure the others are from Stefan
Timmers’ four by four. It got badly burned in the fire but I’d assume Timmers drove to the farmhouse in that.’

Van der Berg wanted to know when. Aisha thought for a moment, licked her finger, stuck it in the air, waited then shook her head. There was, she said, no way of putting a time to the tracks.
They needed some independent verification. A witness. And that was unlikely out in the wild green pastures of Waterland.

‘You want to know how two young women could subdue a grown man. Well . . .’ She threw some more photos in front of them. ‘There’s this. We found it on the
floor.’

A knife. Shiny, silver, very sharp from the looks of it, very plain in design. Not a speck of dust so it hadn’t been there long.

‘That looks like canteen cutlery to me,’ Aisha continued. ‘Wouldn’t be hard for them to steal it in Marken. My guess is they drove to the farmhouse. Klerk wanted
something. The girls overpowered him. Walked him inside. Made him strip naked. Tied him to that chair. It’s a wild one but—’

‘Why?’ Van der Berg asked.

‘We’re forensic, Dirk. We do how. Not why. That’s your call.’

He didn’t like that answer.

‘No need to get smart—’

‘She isn’t,’ Vos interrupted. ‘Aisha’s right. Though . . .’

If you wanted to kill a man why make him strip first? To humiliate him. That seemed obvious. But the obvious was often wrong. It was what you wanted to hear. The solution you craved. The truth
was usually more elusive, a teasing creature lurking in the shadows.

‘Questions?’ Aisha asked.

‘Not yet,’ Vos said. ‘Let me get this straight. Klerk drove the girls to the farmhouse. They got him inside. Made him strip. Tied him to the chair.’

‘Correct.’

‘Then they shot him,’ Van der Berg added.

She threw up her hands in despair.

‘You’re trying to spin this out!’ he cried.

‘No I’m not. I’m trying to understand. What we know. And what we don’t know. Because—’

‘Because what we don’t know’s more important than what we do,’ Vos noted.

Aisha nodded and said, ‘Up to a point.’

‘The sisters called in their uncle and said bring along your shotgun. We’ve got someone we want dead,’ Van der Berg guessed. ‘And then they—’

‘If he doesn’t stop this I will go mad,’ Aisha moaned.

‘But—’

‘Shut up, Dirk,’ Vos ordered. ‘And listen. The ropes.’ He’d been staring at the pictures. Something didn’t add up. ‘The ropes are wrong. They’re
still tied.’

‘The ropes are still tied,’ she agreed. ‘Which means—’

Vos placed a finger on the nearest picture.

‘He freed himself. He wasn’t tied to the chair when he was killed.’

‘Exactly. From the wound and the spatter it’s obvious he was standing up.’

Van der Berg shrugged.

‘So what? He worked himself free. Went for them. Uncle Stefan got out his gun.’

Aisha nodded.

‘Possibly. The trouble is . . .’ She found the pictures of the abrasions again, red weals on Klerk’s arms and shins. ‘This went on for some time. An hour. Maybe two.
Would they just watch a naked man wriggle his way free like that? I don’t—’

‘No. They wouldn’t.’ Vos was getting a picture now, a hazy image emerging from the fog. ‘That doesn’t work at all.’

‘So what does?’ Aisha wondered.

He ran his fingers over the pictures again.

‘Klerk had to be left on his own for a while. Naked. Strapped to the chair. The girls left. They caught that bus. We can time it exactly.’

‘Where they were picked up was a good twenty-five-minute walk from the farmhouse,’ Aisha agreed. ‘Judging by those abrasions . . . we’d have to do some more tests to
check . . . but I don’t think he could have worked his way out of them by then. Maybe the uncle got the girls later in Amsterdam and brought them back. They lugged the corpse over to Marken.
Returned to the farmhouse. He got shot. Except . . .’

She was keeping something in reserve.

‘You don’t think that, Aisha,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what I think.’ She reached into the file and pulled out more photos and some documents. ‘Here. Take a look at Uncle Stefan. Tell me what you see.’

Jaap Blom owned an apartment in Amsterdam, the mansion in Edam, and a penthouse in The Hague. The first gave him a resident’s parking permit so he’d brought his
soft-top Mercedes E-Class coupé into the city. The traffic was bad on the way back to their country house. Trapped in a sluggish line of cars trudging towards the IJtunnel Lotte Blom turned
to him and asked, ‘Did I do well?’

He tapped his fingers on the wheel. Most of the time he spent away from Edam. Work, he said. And for the most part that was true. What she did while he was away was her business. It had been
like this for years. Perhaps children would have changed things but they never came along, and her suggestion of adoption was one he could never countenance. Blom was a self-made man, a Volendam
caterer turned band manager. He’d created The Cupids, a product, a brand, just like the restaurants and hotels he’d sold, at a huge profit, in the wake of their success. He didn’t
want another man’s cast-offs.

‘In what sense?’ he asked.

‘In the sense that . . .was I believable?’

‘You’re always believable, Lotte. You say what you have to say with so little grace no one could ever accuse you of lying.’

She laughed at that then reached into her bag, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.

‘I’ve asked you so many times not to smoke in the car,’ he said. ‘It stinks for ages afterwards. I have to get it valeted the moment I go back to The Hague.’

‘True,’ she said then leaned back in her seat and blew smoke up towards the roof.

Blom grunted and hit the soft-top button. The fabric retreated towards the boot with a metallic hum and whir.

‘Wonderful,’ she complained. ‘Now we expire of pollution instead.’

‘There are a couple of parliament dinners next week. I thought you might like to come.’

She turned, stared at him then started to laugh. The traffic was moving again.

‘Just an idea,’ he muttered.

‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

‘You did fine!’ he yelled. ‘Thank you. It’s in both our interests, you know.’

She sighed and relaxed in the soft leather seat.

‘Must be awful.’

He didn’t want to ask but he knew this wouldn’t go away.

‘What?’

‘Thinking something’s dead and buried. Then watching it crawl out of the grave.’

‘We’ve nothing to worry about.’

She leaned against the car door and gazed at him.

‘I never had anything to worry about in the first place.’

The car lurched forward as he misjudged the pedal. They almost hit the vehicle in front. The traffic picked up once more and they entered the incline towards the tunnel. Ten minutes to get
through and then another thirty to Edam. After that he’d retire to the summer house at the end of the garden by the canal. Peace and solitude away from the world. Away from her.

‘Once they find those kids this’ll all blow over,’ he insisted. ‘We can go back to normal.’

The laugh again and she echoed, ‘Normal?’

He bit his tongue then said, finally, ‘As normal as it gets.’

‘Marken.’ She had a sarcastic, musical voice. ‘I don’t understand why you told Vos you never went there. Truly I don’t. I mean . . . what if he checks?’

A long pause. The car moved, more steadily this time.

‘There’s no need to complicate things,’ he answered. ‘They’re busy enough as—’

‘It was weird enough you screwing that woman. What was her name?’ She rapped her long nails on the dashboard. ‘Don’t remember. Don’t really care. Sad in the end.
But those . . . charity visits. Yes. That’s what they were. Perhaps you should have mentioned them. I know they’re unimportant, like you say. But they did ask.’ She looked at him.
‘Unless she got rid of those records for you? Was that it?’

‘The past is past,’ he said. ‘Done with.’

‘So you keep saying. Let’s change the subject. I was reading in one of the Sunday papers how inexpensive property is down in Italy at the moment. Calabria. The Mezzogiorno. You can
pick up a villa for maybe . . . three-quarters of a million. Tops.’

‘Don’t we have homes enough?’

‘It’s not for us. Me. I need a project. Something to get me out more.’ She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. The cigarette smell hung around on her breath. ‘It
won’t be any trouble. Or work on your part. Just give me the money. I’ll do the rest.’

He thought for a moment then said, ‘I can’t go above a half.’

‘After all. You never know when a bolthole might come in handy.’

They entered the dark mouth of the tunnel. The car lights came on. Smog and smoke surrounded them. She reached out and hit the roof button, closing it over their heads.

‘Fine,’ he muttered.

‘We can put the transfer through this afternoon, can’t we? That would be
so
nice. You’re such a sweetie.’

She leaned over to kiss him again. Blom shrank towards the window.

Lotte Blom reached into her bag for another cigarette.

‘I do hope it wasn’t something I said.’

When she turned on the lights the shack wasn’t what Laura Bakker expected. Her uncle back in Friesland kept a place for his men friends. Fishing gear and stacks of beer
cans. Cans of oil and fuel. Dank and smelly equipment on the walls.

The top floor of the Flamingo Club was furnished in scarlet, walls, curtains, furniture, like a sleazy nightclub in miniature. There was a small dining table next to a gas cooker, a refrigerator
by the side. She opened it. Bottles of wine and beer. Soft drinks too. Recently bought, judging by the use-by dates.

On the sideboard sat a bowl full of sweets, a pile of chocolate bars next to it. Then a few pop and fashion magazines just a few months old.

A red velvet curtain marked off the end of the room. Bakker walked up, drew it to one side, and found herself wishing Vos or Van der Berg were there with her. Not for comfort. She just wanted
someone with whom she could share her outrage.

Instead she whispered, ‘Bastards.’ Then took a closer look. A double bed with a pink satin coverlet and matching pillows, the kind favoured by the loucher Amsterdam sex clubs
she’d raided. A door beyond that led to a tiny shower and toilet. Ranged behind the washbasin was a stack of condom packets, some gel, a few sex toys. She took out her latex gloves and pushed
them to one side. Something else was hiding there. It took a moment for Bakker to appreciate what it was: a child’s soft toy, a penguin, old and threadbare, which could only denote true love
for the kid who’d once owned it. The thing sat next to a couple of shiny plastic vibrators and some other devices Bakker couldn’t name, and didn’t wish to.

‘Bastards,’ she muttered again and walked out, past the bed, closing the curtains.

The room was hot and stuffy. Flies and mosquitoes were rising from the lower floor, along with a smell of something else. She checked her phone and knew what to expect: out here, in the dead
land between Volendam and Monnickendam, perched on a ledge of rock past the dyke, the outside world had receded. The Flamingo Club was in the perfect spot, visible only from the Gouwzee, private,
undisturbed.

She’d forgotten about Marken and Sara Klerk. All that drove her was a growing red rage in her head and she knew what put it there: the sweets and the soft drinks, the battered penguin, the
chocolates. Stuff for kids. Something to give them and say: now you’re part of this. Don’t tell a soul or they’ll blame you. Because it’s your fault really. You never said
no. Which is as good as saying yes.

You let it all happen.

You made it so.

A steep line of wooden steps led down to the lower floor. She thought she heard a car somewhere as she took the first few but that was probably someone on the road. At the bottom she had to pull
out her torch and fumble round for the light switch, half-reluctant to find it for fear of what it might reveal. In the end it was by a workbench with some tools scattered on the surface. A single
fluorescent tube flickered to life and there was nothing here to scare her really. Just a set of double doors leading out to the sea, and beneath her on a slipway a small motor cruiser.