Little Sister (37 page)

‘So this has been a complete waste of time! We’ve no idea where the Timmers sisters are. Not a clue who’s telling the truth or not.’

He set off for the bridge over the canal, as mad with her as she seemed with the world.

‘I need the toilet,’ Bakker declared as they reached the steps. ‘Where’s the nearest?’

‘How would I know? Do I look like a tour guide?’

She pointed back towards the centre of town.

‘Over there. I’ll see you at the car.’

Fine, Vos said. He called Marnixstraat as he crossed the canal and walked back to where they’d parked. That was an awkward conversation too. There was something Van der Berg wanted to say
but wouldn’t.

By the water opposite the gardens along Blom’s road a couple of elderly men were seated on deckchairs, sipping at beers.

As he ambled by wondering when Bakker would turn up one of them pointed across the green water and said, ‘Would you look at that? What is the world coming to?’

Vos muttered a quiet curse then turned to see.

She was a tall and fit young woman, if clumsy sometimes. Already she’d scaled the garden walls of the first two houses. Now she was stepping through the ornate, Chinese-style lilies and
bonsai trees of the third.

‘Laura!’ he yelled across the canal. ‘Get out of there.’

She waved at him then careered into what looked like an expensive ceramic pot holding a tall bush full of red flowers. It crashed to the ground and shattered, sending soil and shrubbery
everywhere. She jumped over it and walked on. One more wall to go and then she was back in Blom’s place.

The summer house was empty. She stopped at the door, looked across at him. Shrugged and mouthed a single word, ‘Sorry.’

Then she stepped inside and went for the laptop. The back door of the house was opening already. He heard Jaap Blom’s furious shout rise over the canal.

Henk Veerman went home, packed hand baggage, looked under the bed and retrieved the two USB drives there. One stolen. The other carefully updated over the years. That second
had been his quiet insurance. His get-out-of-jail card should it be needed.

He sat on the bed and thought of his wife, innocent of everything. There’d been a moment during that last illness when he’d thought perhaps she knew. The suicide of the Koops girl,
Hendriks hanging himself not long after . . .

There were plenty of clues that all was not well inside the remote and private institution of Marken. Men outside Waterland had started to notice and worry. In spite of his promotion he’d
felt far from safe.

But she’d never asked him outright. Instead she faded before his eyes while the guilt and shame grew inside him. What hurt almost as much as her painful, agonizing decline was the
knowledge that a part of him still argued none of this was his business, his fault.

I only work days.

He’d wanted to scream when he told Jonker that. He’d said those words so often in the past.

I only work days so whatever you and your friends get up to when I’ve gone home doesn’t touch me. I did nothing. Therefore I am innocent.

The truth was bleaker and more painful.

I did nothing so I’m as guilty as the rest.

Worse than them maybe. For acting out of deliberate, considered cowardice and self-interest instead of thoughtless, brazen pleasure. Perhaps that was what destroyed Hendriks, a decent, weak man,
like himself, willing to turn a blind eye to those who thought themselves superior to the rest.

Acquiescence.

It was what kept them in their jobs. And the thing that destroyed them in the end.

Veerman checked his phone. He had the numbers he needed. Then he went to the downstairs computer and looked at flights out of Schiphol that evening. There was one to Istanbul. Outside the EU. A
place where it would be easy to hide for a while, maybe sailing on a wooden gulet around Bodrum. That was one of the pipe dreams he and his wife had shared.

He bought a one-way ticket then hooked the USB drive into the back of the computer. There was so much material there, gigabytes and gigabytes of it. It was going to take an hour or more to
upload.

Did he have that long?

Did he have a choice?

Veerman poured himself a tumbler of Scotch then sat and watched the progress bar crawl slowly left to right.

Bakker was inside the summer house, seated in front of the laptop. Jaap Blom stood over her, face red with fury. Lotte Blom was watching in silence, arms folded.

There was a video up on the screen. It was a beach somewhere, blue sea, blue sky, golden sand. Then a figure began to walk across it, headed for the waves. It was Blom’s wife in a
bikini.

‘If you really think the police need to see my holiday videos,’ Blom said, ‘I’ll burn some DVDs and you can take them with you.’

Bakker looked at the pile of disks next to the computer. Vos walked over and picked up a few. They all had exotic destinations on the label: Phuket, Barbados, the Seychelles.

‘It’s a hobby of mine,’ Blom said, ambling over. He opened a drawer next to the desk. It was full of cameras, still and video. ‘Taking pictures. Innocent
pictures.’

‘We need to take the computer,’ Bakker told him. ‘All your disks. All the . . . drives you have.’

‘Laura . . .’ Vos began.

‘Why?’ Blom walked over and closed the notebook lid. ‘What possible business is this of yours?’

Bakker got up. She was struggling.

‘If there’s nothing to see you won’t object. You said we could . . .’

He walked to the door and held it open.

‘One chance, I said. You had one opportunity to get out of here and then it wouldn’t go any further. You didn’t take it.’

‘Pieter.’ She took Vos to one side, pleading in a quiet, worried voice. ‘There has to be something. He lied to us.’

‘Get out,’ Blom ordered. ‘This is illegal entry. I could have your backsides in court for this.’

‘He . . .’

Vos put his arm round her and the two of them walked back into the street. They went over the bridge in silence, past the two old men who stared at them, puzzled, still sipping at their beers.
Blom was on the other side of the canal in his summer house. Smoking another cigar. On the phone.

When they reached the car she looked at Vos and said, ‘I made a bit of a mess of that, didn’t I?’

‘A bit,’ he agreed.

Then his phone rang and he knew who it would be. Vos went away from her to take the call. De Groot wasn’t even mad. Things had moved beyond that now.

‘Put her on,’ the commissaris ordered when he’d run through Blom’s version of events and Vos hadn’t argued with a single detail.

‘Frank. Don’t be hasty. There’s more going on here than meets the eye. I do believe Jaap Blom’s hiding something . . .’

‘The sisters!’ De Groot yelled down the line. ‘Where are they? What are you doing to find them?’

‘I’m trying to understand. Not making a great job of it I’ll admit but—’

‘Put her on now. I don’t want to see her face inside this office until the disciplinary people ask for it.’

There was never any point in arguing with him when it was like this. So Vos went and handed her the phone then wandered off for a while, looking back along the canal. Modest houses on one side.
Mansions on the other. Jaap Blom had crossed over, from Volendam to Edam, and probably made a good number of enemies along the way. He might be lying. So might Bea Arends. Or the pair of them. The
only thing that was certain was that they couldn’t both be telling the truth.

‘Pieter?’

Her voice had a soft, hurt bleat to it, a tone he’d heard from time to time. He always hated the circumstances that caused it.

He wandered back to the car. She handed him the phone.

‘De Groot says I’m suspended. He’s calling in the disciplinary people. I’m going to get kicked out.’

‘One step at a time. I’ll talk to Frank tomorrow. When he’s calmed down a bit—’

‘He says I’ve pissed off one of the most important men around. Blom could make all our lives awkward. Someone has to take the blame.’

He took her arms.

‘Tomorrow . . .’

‘I’ve been a bloody idiot. Again.’

She swore, kicked the car hard with her heavy work shoes, then swore again, more vividly. The elderly pair along the track stared at them and shook their heads.

‘Did that help?’ Vos asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, climbing into the passenger seat. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

He was and he hadn’t realized it.

‘Because you make me think. Good going for an idiot.’

‘Thanks!’

‘I mean . . .’ He was struggling. ‘I mean we’re all idiots. That’s what we do. Blunder about. In the dark mostly. Don’t kill yourself for it. Sometimes we
find something. Help someone. And then we’re not idiots at all. For a while anyway.’

Laura Bakker looked deeply miserable.

‘I make a good idiot, don’t I? From what De Groot said—’

A different phone trill interrupted them. It puzzled her for a moment. Then she reached into her bag, retrieved her private mobile and looked at the number on screen.

‘Why the hell is Dirk calling me on this number?’ she wondered then answered, listened for a moment, looked at Vos and said, ‘It’s for you.’

When she let herself out of the farmhouse there was only one place for Kim Timmers to go. Back to the town by the lake, to wander along the waterfront trying not to stare at
all the blank and aimless people there.

She couldn’t remember being outside on her own like this. Even when there was family it rarely happened. There was always her mother, Little Jo, Mia by her side. Except when Freya asked
her for a favour and for some reason Kim was always the first, the one who didn’t object too much. The obedient one, for a while anyway. Which meant she wasn’t alone for long either.
Just with a stranger, or someone whose face she was supposed to forget.

She had a ten-euro note in her pocket and spent almost a quarter of it on an ice cream. It occurred to her she’d no idea what things cost. How any of this worked. And she wondered . . .
would someone look at her white face and the chestnut hair and see what lay beneath?

Kim didn’t intend to stare at any of the people round her but she couldn’t stop herself. Some were familiar. Women working the stalls, selling fried fish and sweet waffles. They all
looked older, more worn than she remembered. Still, they were the same people. They’d been here a decade before when a family called Timmers lived in a black-timbered cottage two streets
behind this gaudy shoreline, dreaming of money and fame, all through nothing more than the sweet sounds three young girls and their mother could make when they wanted. When someone paid.

The harbour was too risky. She felt guilty for abandoning her sister after one more promise that only wound up broken. Mia was the good one, the calm one, the sister who saw sense. Kim
couldn’t help herself. She’d never been as awkward as Jo. When it all started she was the quiet one, the easy one, the one who did as she was told. Which was why they began with her at
the outset and that knowledge nagged at her even now. On that black night some of her dead, troublesome sister had rubbed off. Perhaps over the long strange years in Marken that piece of Jo inside
had grown.

For her anyway. Mia didn’t really hear her light, bright voice high in her head. Mia just pretended, like the good and loving sister she was.

She lingered so long on that thought, the ice cream started to drip onto her black Goth clothes. Kim wiped off the stains and threw the cone into a bin. Why did she run? She wasn’t sure.
Maybe it was the sight of that drum kit in the farmhouse. Or just the fact that they’d been promised freedom for so long, and all they got when it happened was a cruel and new kind of
captivity.

Where to go?

Back. To Mia in the end. There was nowhere else. Volendam wasn’t the same. Without her family, without that warm bond around her, the place seemed alien. Strange. Hostile even.

She closed her eyes, trying to recall something different from the past. A memory surfaced. A cafe bar where her mother sang. Once they’d allowed the girls up onto the stage, though
children weren’t really supposed to be there.

The place had the oddest name: the Taveerne van de Zeven Duivels. The Inn of the Seven Devils. The sign outside had scared her to begin with. But the devils were funny really. And inside
colourful dummies hung from the ceiling, with dreadlocks and stupid grins, brandishing pitchforks at the people below.

It was back towards the marina and the path to the bad place Simon Klerk knew about. The secret place he’d taken them until they said no. That was Mia’s idea. Keep stringing him
along. One day he’d grow so desperate they’d make the most of that.

One day.

This was freedom. Penniless and lost in the place they once called home. Eating soft ice cream that tasted of chemicals. Watching the lazy lake and Marken across the water. It felt as if that
long spit of land that ran out from the institution was laughing at her.

Kim walked out of the town towards the marina. She remembered the bar as a grey, industrial-looking building down a cul-de-sac near the pleasure boat moorings. After ten minutes she saw it.
Still there. Still with a sign at the start of the dead-end lane: a red devil leering, chasing a woman in a bikini who seemed to find it so very funny he was poking his pitchfork into her
buttocks.

The only people around were a couple of dog walkers wandering by the water’s edge. A good place to hide, she thought. Maybe that was what her mother had been doing all those years
before.

She wandered in. Just three men at the bar. One about forty. Two younger ones. They stared as she put her change on the counter and asked what it could buy.

A Coke with rum appeared. The men came over. They weren’t local. She could hear the city in the coarse, beery voices. One of them bought a glass of old jenever and put it on the counter in
front of her.

Kim sipped at it, coughed on the strength of the drink, laughed as they laughed.