Little Sister (29 page)

‘Perhaps we underestimate our young lady from Friesland,’ Vos said, opening the door. ‘Or I do.’

When they got out the harbourside was crowded: police officers, medics, locals gawping, most of them with their phones out ready to take pictures. Vos thought about trying to clear the area then
realized this was impossible. It was a public event, like it or not. Ahead he could see the blue police boat manoeuvring past the outer wall. A small white cruiser was following close behind. It
seemed such an ordinary scene set against the silver line of the lake. Then a figure stood up in the back of the police boat, tall and upright, red hair blowing in the wind.

Vos found himself waving, Van der Berg too. She seemed too busy to wave back.

He looked around. Volendam. He still hadn’t got the measure of this place. It was a holiday town of sorts, made from fishing, now mostly built on tourism. A place apart from the city just
thirty minutes away by car. They were strangers to these people and would remain that way. What he needed was some local insight.

A minute later the patrol boat moored at the quayside and the cruiser joined it moments after. Vos pushed his way through the crowd and got to the gangplank as a couple of dock workers were
pushing it out to the craft.

Laura Bakker came off first, surprised to see Vos and Van der Berg standing there, holding their arms out wide.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

The big detective came up and gave her an awkward hug. Vos, unable to bring himself to do the same, dropped his arms and said, Actually we were wondering that about you.’

Her hands went to her hips.

‘I’m fine, thank you. I was in control here, you know.’

‘We sent out that patrol boat and helicopter to rescue—’

‘Rescue?’ she cried.
‘Rescue?’

Two of the officers from the boat led Sara Klerk, cuffed and despondent, to the custody van by the quay.

Bakker ticked points off on her fingers as she told them what she’d got out of her on the way back. The woman had long suspected that her husband was having sex with inmates at Marken. On
Monday night he phoned her from the abandoned farmhouse. Kim and Mia Timmers had turned the tables on him when he took them there. They’d pulled a knife, stripped him naked, tied him to a
chair.

When he got free he called home. A furious row ensued. She hired Stefan Timmers to take her out there and frighten the life out of her husband.

‘She claims Klerk turned violent when they got there,’ Bakker continued. ‘It’s bullshit. He was naked, for pity’s sake. She hired Timmers to kill him. Then they
buried the body in Marken to make it look like it had something to do with the girls and came back to the farmhouse to clean up.’ She pushed aside her hair in the gentle marine breeze.
‘Sara reckoned Stefan demanded more money and attacked her when she said no. There was a struggle. The gun went off.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t believe a word—’

‘Stefan Timmers was shot in the back,’ Van der Berg pointed out.

Bakker smiled.

‘Well there you go.’

She told them about the Flamingo Club. Sara Klerk had got the original set of keys out of her husband at the farmhouse. He’d been planning to take the sisters there but decided they
didn’t have time.

‘We need forensic in that shack,’ Bakker added. ‘Looks like a treasure trove to me. A fun palace for whoever was involved. And . . .’

Simon Klerk’s phone came out, still inside the evidence bag. There was just enough charge for her to show them some of the video.

‘We’ve got to talk to this kid. Her name’s Kaatje Lammers. Nutcase. They let her out of Marken this morning.’

She closed her notebook.

‘That’s all I can think of for now. Can we go to a cafe? I need the loo. Could use a coffee too.’ She beamed at them both. ‘But thanks for thinking I needed rescuing. I
appreciate that.’

Vos called Marnixstraat to order a team to the Flamingo Club then asked for an alert to be put out for Kaatje Lammers. Sara Klerk could find herself a lawyer and spend the night in a cell.

The three of them walked into the first cafe they found and ordered coffee. There was a smokehouse next door. The persistent aroma of oak and fish came through the open windows. Bakker excused
herself and went into the loos. There she stumbled into the first cubicle, sat on the toilet, let her head fall down, her hair all over her hands, wondered whether she was laughing or crying or
something of both.

She’d no idea how long she’d been there. So many images ran through her head. Blood swilling through the grey waters of the Markermeer. A bed in a wooden cabin hidden from view. A
battered penguin that must once have been a much-loved child’s toy.

For a second she thought she might throw up. Then there was a sudden loud knock on the door.

‘Are you OK, miss?’ asked a female voice outside. ‘Your friends are worried about you.’

‘I’m fine,’ she cried. ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’

She finished, went to the mirror, wiped her eyes, her face and combed her long red hair. When she got back to the table her coffee was cold so they ordered another one.

To her relief they didn’t ask a single question. Van der Berg’s big hand came out and grasped hers. Then Vos reached out and took her fingers too.

She smiled, laughed, couldn’t think of a word to say.

Then it came to her.

‘So now we go back to Marnixstraat?’ she said. ‘We can—’

‘No, Laura,’ Vos cut in. ‘Now we take you home.’

The uniform patrols didn’t take much interest when the halfway house phoned in a report about a missing girl who’d broken the rules. Then the call came in from Vos
in Volendam and someone matched up the names.

Kaatje Lammers.

The tag showed the last place she’d been where a GPS signal was still visible. A location in Vinkenstraat.

Two officers cycled down there, one male, one female. They banged on the door of the nearest house. It fell open to their touch. Walking inside they found the place empty until they reached the
kitchen. There sat a weeping young woman in a red shirt and long blue jeans.

‘Kaatje?’ the woman officer asked. ‘Kaatje Lammers.’

Eyes streaming, pink with tears, she nodded from the table.

‘You’re over time on your tag, There are rules—’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Kaatje cried, her thin voice breaking. ‘Those two sisters. Kim and Mia. They’re wicked. I wanted to come back but they wouldn’t
let me.’

‘The Timmers girls?’ the man asked. ‘They’re here?’

‘They were. They’re . . . monsters. They said I had to stay here. Or else. And then. And then . . .’

She closed her eyes. The woman officer came and put an arm around her.

‘It’s all right, Kaatje. You’re safe. There’s nothing wrong. Lots of people break the tag rules. It’s not the end of the world. We’ll just go back to the
hostel. Our people will want to talk to you in the morning.’

The girl didn’t move.

The woman tried to comfort her. Hands together across the tablecloth.

Kaatje sobbed and looked up. The puddle was growing, enough to form a scarlet drop that fell from the ceiling like a bloody tear, splashed on the white cotton, spreading out over the fabric.

The man was rushing for the steep staircase. The woman was recoiling from the table, staring above them, at a single red spot getting bigger by the minute.

‘They did it,’ Kaatje said through her tears. ‘Kim and Mia. Monsters. They made me watch. They did it. Not me.’

When the Timmers sisters walked out of Vera’s house they followed the direction the streets seemed to lead, straight into the centre of the city. Amsterdam was still
strange to them and grew stranger with every footstep. They passed women in red-light cabin windows, writhing in their underwear, wriggling fingers at curious men wandering down the street. Dope
smoke seemed to work its way out of coffee shops on every corner. There were windows full of sex gear and bar after bar.

Men got curious from time to time. They ignored them, wandered on. Though once, when a drunk got too persistent Kim turned on him with a sudden shocking violence. And that was that.

They bought chips and ate them by a canal. Everything here seemed unreal and distant. Threatening too. From time to time they saw police, stern figures in uniform watching everything, looking
for reasons to intervene.

But they surely sought two golden-haired angels, not a pair of scruffy tramps, one black-haired, one red-purple, lugging a single bag between them.

Next to a coffee shop Kim tugged at her sister’s arm and said, ‘We could . . .’

‘No,’ Mia said. ‘We can’t. How can you even think of it?’

Three streets on and they realized they were in Chinatown. The smells, the garish windows, the foreign voices click-clacking on the street. They turned down a narrow alley, getting lost, getting
confused.

Beneath a sign that said simply, ‘Hostel’, a man with an Oriental face came up and said, ‘What you looking for, girls? You tell me.’

He was short, not much older than them. You had to trust someone, Mia thought. Just for a while.

‘A bed for the night.’

He laughed.

‘One bed? Two girls?’ He winked. ‘Just the two of you? Nobody else coming?’

‘Just us,’ Kim replied with a grunt and he didn’t argue then.

Forty euros for the pair of them. He wouldn’t bargain. The room was tiny and smelled of cigarettes and dope and sex.

Someone was screwing noisily along the landing. Drunks congregated outside a bar across the lane.

They didn’t get undressed. Just crawled beneath the old bedclothes and hugged one another. Mia had stolen Vera’s phone. She hadn’t quite known why but now it buzzed.

A message:
Where are you?

Mia typed:
Who is this?

You know who.

No. We don’t.

Kim watched beneath the sheets, hands trembling alongside her sister’s.

Little Jo.

Jo’s dead.

Kim whimpered at that.

I’m a friend. Where are you? Where’s Vera?

Vera’s home. We’re somewhere safe.

A long pause, then . . .

Nowhere’s safe. Don’t you know that yet?

‘Screw this,’ Mia cursed and phoned the number instead. It just rang and rang. Not even voicemail.

Then came another text.

We do it this way, sisters. No other. Where are you?

A moment it took her then with fumbling fingers she replied.

The same place you are. Everyone. Hell.

Mia turned off the phone. They hugged each other. They cried. Eventually, her damp face in her sister’s neck, Kim whispered, ‘There’s nowhere left, is there? They’ll keep
us apart—’

‘There’s home. There’s always home.’

Green fields. The smell of the Gouwzee. That recurring memory of the mother duck leading her chicks across the road.

Kim lifted her head and wiped her damp eyes with her sleeve.

‘We can’t go there.’

‘We have to,’ Mia said.

Sometimes the fog cleared.

Sometimes it got thicker.

Sometimes the world went both ways and then it was hard to know where to turn – and who to believe – at all.

It was the following morning and Frank de Groot was demanding to know where the Timmers case stood.

In a Marnixstraat interview room Sara Klerk had signed a confession. Three doors along Kaatje Lammers had tearfully told how Vera Sampson, a former Marken nurse from England, was murdered in her
own home by the Timmers sisters while she watched in horror, unable to stop them.

Outside the window it just looked like another summer day. Traffic building up on the street, people wandering down Elandsgracht going shopping. A few people were walking their dogs. Vos had
taken Sam for a stroll first thing, his head full of riddles and improbabilities. Thinking back now he’d no idea where the two of them had wandered. Along the Prinsengracht he guessed but he
couldn’t remember a thing about the route. Just that he’d dropped off the wire fox terrier at the Drie Vaten at the end, to Sofia Albers as usual. The American was there for breakfast.
Maybe that relationship was going somewhere.

Then came the office and not long after the summons from upstairs.

‘Bakker did well,’ De Groot noted, pulling Vos out of his reverie.

‘She went off on her own. Entered a dangerous situation without even alerting us to the possibility. Could have got herself killed. I don’t call that doing well.’

De Groot leaned back in his chair and uttered a long, pained sigh.

‘Going to be one of those days, is it?’

‘Don’t know what you mean.’

‘I was trying to be positive. She’s closed two murders.’

‘There was nearly a third.’

The commissaris glanced at his computer screen.

‘There is a third. This Englishwoman. You were right. Those Timmers kids didn’t kill the nurse or their uncle. But they—’

‘I doubt that.’

De Groot hesitated then said, ‘What?’

‘We only have Kaatje Lammers’ word. I talked to your man Snyder this morning . . .’

‘He’s not my man.’

‘Vera Sampson was stabbed to death. A violent, frenzied attack. We have the knife. It was wiped. No prints. There’s blood on Lammers’ clothes—’

‘She says she was there. She tried to intervene.’

Vos had gone through the overnight interview. It was all so pat. So obvious. Lammers was about to be returned to a secure institution in the south later that morning. Out of the loop.

‘A frenzied attack,’ Vos repeated. ‘If you intervened you’d at least have been cut. She’s lying. I think she killed the woman. She just wants to lay the blame at
their door. The way Sara Klerk did. Can’t you see, Frank?’

‘No,’ De Groot muttered. ‘Enlighten me.’

Vos wasn’t sure he could but he tried anyway.

‘They’re scapegoats. Maybe they have been from the start. When Ollie Haas found them in Volendam next to that musician’s van.’

‘Wait, wait.’ De Groot was getting louder. ‘Are you now telling me they didn’t do that either?’