The House of Dolls (13 page)

‘That’s Anneliese?’ Bakker asked again.

Dancing on the green grass as if she’d live forever.

Laura Bakker didn’t seem to mind she got no answer. Just went on anyway.

‘One of the night team saw this, Vos. They recognized her. I’m sorry. They said it was important.’

‘Of course it’s important,’ Vos said, eyes locked to the small video window. ‘Someone wants me in this case. What else did they tell you?’

‘Nothing.’

He reached forward and paused the video.

She’d gone missing the third week of July. It was hot that summer. No rain. The city had felt lethargic. Vos had been slaving day and night trying to persuade some low-level hoods in the city gangs to turn informer. No sign of the storm to come.

He leaned forward and looked very closely at the grass, the people around her. She was wearing a pastel blue shirt and jeans cut off below the knee. He could remember being with her when they went shopping for them. A birthday present. He got bored when she took so long to make up her mind.

Liesbeth couldn’t come for a reason he couldn’t recall.

He shook his head, tried to clear his thoughts. Hit play again.

‘Vos . . .’ Bakker began.

Anneliese was heading towards the Blue Teahouse. Skipping like the kid she was. Then she sat on the grass, hands around her knees, face full of delight. Of . . .

Happiness. And she wasn’t always. He recognized that now.

The picture shook. Whoever held the camera was trying to sit down too, still holding the thing.

Vos moved in so close his nose almost touched the screen. Watched as a figure came into view. Same kind of clothes. A pale shirt, pink this time. Long blue jeans.

Then a face.

Blonde hair. Bright blue eyes. They might have been sisters.

‘Jesus Christ,’ De Groot murmured. ‘What the . . .?’

Bakker reached over, hit pause and scrabbled for some stock shots from the files.

‘That’s the Prins girl, isn’t it?’

Vos kept staring at the screen: two young fair-haired girls in their mid-teens. They might have been cousins. Sisters. He hadn’t been at home much but he knew a few of Anneliese’s friends. Katja Prins had never been among them.

‘Katja doesn’t look like that now,’ she said.

Three photos. Police mugshots probably. A surly, drawn face, that of a teenager old before her time. Vos turned them over, looked at the dates. They started two years before.

‘So the girls knew each other?’ De Groot asked.

‘Not that I was aware,’ Vos said. ‘I was working, remember? God knows how many hours a day . . .’

Marnixstraat swallowed him up the moment he walked through those doors. Liesbeth seemed content. Anneliese was growing, busy in the summer holidays. There was nothing for a father to worry about.

De Groot ran a finger over more papers.

‘Katja Prins went to pieces after Anneliese vanished. First mention of being taken into police custody three months later. Drunk. High. Prins pulled some strings and got her off with a caution.’

Vos reached forward and hit play. Forty seconds of Anneliese and Katja Prins beaming at the camera like childhood friends, caught in a hot and sunny summer that would never end.

Then the screen went black. He was about to turn it off when Bakker pointed out the video wasn’t done. Another twenty seconds to run. They waited.

After a brief gap a light came on. A dark, squalid room. A terrified, bloodless face.

Katja Prins again. Features drawn. Thinner. Made miserable by something Pieter Vos couldn’t begin to guess.

Screaming, mouth wide open, spittle flying.

Vader, Vader, Vader. Help me . . .

No one else in the picture. Nothing behind except blackness and plain pale walls.

‘Someone’s holding that camera,’ De Groot said. ‘Someone’s got that kid.’

The three of them sat for a long minute not saying a word. Pieter Vos closed his eyes and tried to think. Sometimes you made decisions. Sometimes life made them for you.

He turned and looked at Laura Bakker.

‘Where were you last night?’

‘What?’

‘When I came back and saw someone had been in my boat. I thought it was you. I tried to call. You were on voicemail.’

She didn’t blink.

‘I was so pissed off with you I didn’t answer. I thought you were drunk.’

‘If you’re going to work with me you pick up the phone.’

She shook her head.

‘I’m working with you?’

Then to De Groot.

‘I want Koeman, Rijnder and Van der Berg. They can start by getting all the files on Katja Prins. On Menzo and Jansen.’ He thought for a moment. ‘After which they’re mine, along with Bakker here.’

‘We’re really stretched, Pieter . . .’ De Groot said.

‘Don’t care. Mulder can work on Rosie Jansen. I don’t want him sticking his nose in this.’

A nod, the softest of grunts.

Vos got up.

‘Where are you going?’

De Groot asked.

‘I’ve got a call to make.’ Then to Bakker. ‘Go back to Marnixstraat. Arrange for Jansen to be transferred there.’

They looked at him.

‘You need an ID for the daughter, don’t you?’ Vos asked.

‘Of course,’ De Groot agreed.

Vos pointed a finger at both of them.

‘No one tells Theo Jansen a thing. You leave that to me.’

‘Then what?’ De Groot said.

‘Then we put him back in jail. You wouldn’t want him on the street, Frank. Not after he’s heard.’

Close to the end of another meeting about De Nachtwacht. Hendriks and Margriet Willemsen around the table.

‘We had a call from one of the papers,’ Hendriks said. ‘The reporter didn’t want to say why. She says she needs to talk to you. A personal matter.’

Prins slammed his pen on the table and swore.

‘I told her that wasn’t good enough,’ Hendriks added.

Margriet Willemsen’s eyes had scarcely risen from the documents for a moment since they began.

‘It’s about your daughter,’ the civil servant added. ‘They’ve heard she’s missing again.’

She was looking at him then.

‘What’s wrong, Wim?’ she asked. ‘Is there news?’

He’d got used to the idea that everything changed when he entered the council offices. That he shrugged off the world outside, became someone else. But it wasn’t true. All the crap followed him, up the stairs, into the office that overlooked the canal and De Wallen.

‘I thought it was Katja jerking me around again,’ Prins said. ‘Maybe I was wrong. It’s possible this is something to do with what happened yesterday. The attack on Theo Jansen.’

‘How?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know! If the police do they’re not saying.’

She said nothing.

‘I won’t be blackmailed,’ Prins said. ‘I won’t let these bastards win.’

‘Best we don’t complicate things,’ she said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘We can stall on De Nachtwacht,’ Hendriks suggested. ‘You should focus on your daughter. It doesn’t look good if you carry on as normal. As if it didn’t matter.’

Prins slammed his fist on the table.

‘We don’t back down. I won’t—’

‘Listen to me.’ She reached out and placed her hand on his. ‘You’re upset. It’s understandable. Alex is right. Let’s put out a statement. Say we want to make sure everyone’s on board—’

‘Dammit!’ Prins yelled. ‘I run this place. I say what happens here. We’ve got a timetable.’ He picked up the project plan, launched it across the table at Hendriks. ‘We stick to it.’

They stayed silent.

‘Any questions?’

‘If that’s what you want,’ she said quietly. ‘We should ask Marnixstraat to put a blackout on any stories about Katja. They’ll do that for us, Alex?’

Hendriks was frowning. He never liked raised voices.

‘If it’s a kidnapping I guess so,’ he said.

Then he took his phones and his iPad and fled.

‘You shouldn’t lose your temper with staff,’ Willemsen said when he’d left. ‘It can come back to haunt you.’

‘Come back to haunt me?’ Prins said. Then told her about the email and the video.

She didn’t blink, just listened then asked, ‘Have you still got it?’

‘Do I look like a moron? If Liesbeth saw—’

‘What did he say? What did he ask for?’

Prins tried to remember.

‘He didn’t ask for anything. There was a name. Pop Meester. The file. That was all. For Christ’s sake. How the hell did they get something like that?’

She got up, walked to the window. Dark pin-striped business suit. Not a black hair out of place.

‘How?’ Prins asked again. He couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘I mean . . . without you knowing?’

‘What?’

She came to him, put her palms on the table, looked in his face. Margriet Willemsen never got mad. Just cold and right then she was icier than he’d ever seen.

‘Are you asking me whether I filmed us screwing? Then passed it on to some . . . blackmailer?’

‘I didn’t—’

‘Why would I do that? What possible reason . . .?’

‘If the press get hold of this. If Liesbeth—’

‘Don’t be so damned weak.’

‘How did this happen?’ he asked again. ‘They had something in your room.’

Her hand went to his grey hair. Affection. Or control. He wasn’t sure.

‘I’ll deal with that. I’ll deal with De Nachtwacht. It can wait for now.’

‘No. That’s what these bastards want, isn’t it?’

The desk phone rang. He hesitated to pick it up. So she did it for him.

Alex Hendriks. Marnixstraat were going to get onto the press. There’d be a blackout agreed on Katja. No mention of her in the papers or the broadcast media. No one to approach the family.

‘Someone’s really taken her, haven’t they?’ Prins whispered.

Willemsen sat on the edge of the desk.

‘It might be best if you went home.’

‘And do what exactly?’

‘Be with your wife?’ she suggested. ‘That would look good.’

Vos was at the Prins house, an awkward meeting punctuated by difficult silences.

‘Is there anything I should know?’ he asked.

‘Like what?’

Liesbeth looked terrible. As if she hadn’t slept in days. Almost as bad as she did after their daughter went missing.

‘Anneliese and Katja Prins were friends,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea. Did you?’

They sat at the kitchen table in the comfortable, elegant house hidden away in a select courtyard near Willemstraat. It was nothing like the life they’d lived together. He was working long hours rising through the ranks in Marnixstraat while she brought up Anneliese, taking temporary jobs on the side. They never ran short. Never made much of a fuss about furniture or decorations. All those things seemed irrelevant. They were a family and while Vos wished she’d agree to marry him he understood and accepted why she didn’t. What was the point? They had Anneliese, a beautiful child, more precious, more significant than any band of gold could ever be.

‘That can’t be right,’ she said too quickly. ‘I’d have known.’

For a while she’d worked in a legal aid organization. Lawyers came and went.

‘Did Wim used to come into your office when you were in Damrak? Maybe he brought Katja with him?’

She went to the sink, got a pack of cigarettes, came back and lit one. Her hand shook the way it used to.

‘What is this, Pieter?’

He told her about Rosie Jansen’s murder, how she was found next to his boat.

‘It looks like you’re not the only one who wants me involved in this case.’ He showed her the police ID. ‘I’m back and I never wanted to be. We found a video. Anneliese and Katja in the Vondelpark. They were friends. Not long before she disappeared. No question.’

She thought about it.

‘Maybe Wim did bring her. I don’t remember. I never really knew Katja until I started seeing him. Liese was dead then. We were history.’

Not dead, he thought. Just missing.

‘Teenagers like secrets,’ Vos said. ‘They cultivate them.’

‘You were out day and night when she disappeared. I’d left the law office by then anyway. That summer I had a part-time job. I still took her to school. Brought her home. She never saw Katja as far as I know. Are you really sure?’

‘I saw the pictures.’

‘Well . . .’ A shrug. ‘I can’t explain it.’

He waited.

‘Why are you here anyway? Mulder was round first thing. We told him everything we knew. When someone calls we’ll tell you.’

‘If,’ he said. ‘If they call.’

‘So you think Katja’s playing tricks again? With all this gang shit going on? Mulder said maybe they took her.’

‘Maybe they did.’

‘Well?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just asking questions. Waiting for answers. It’s all I do.’

He watched her cough on the cigarette, took it from her fingers, stubbed it out in the ashtray.

‘You’re not my keeper now,’ she said.

‘I never was, was I? How could I have been? I wasn’t there. The job . . .’ That was true and he regretted it. ‘Sorry.’

Liesbeth always liked apologies. They were a sign she’d won.

‘She’s still got things here. Her old bedroom. I told Mulder. I thought he might be interested.’

‘He wasn’t?’

‘Him and Wim are at loggerheads over this Nachtwacht nonsense. None of you want that to happen, do you?’

Vos sighed.

‘I’ve been a police officer for all of sixty minutes. Don’t ask me to speak on behalf of Marnixstraat. I’d like to see her room if that’s OK.’

It was at the front, overlooking the private park in the centre of the courtyard. Small, with a single bed and a studied tidiness that surely came from Liesbeth’s fastidious hands, not those of a teenager.

Lurid posters of pop stars on the wall. A wardrobe stuffed full of clothes. A chest of drawers much the same. A desk with the ghostly marks of a missing laptop on the surface.

‘The computer . . .’

‘Wim said she sold it for dope.’

He rifled through the clothes in the wardrobe. Bags of shoes at the back. Lots.

‘She left plenty behind.’

‘Fashion, Pieter. There’s no value in anything from yesterday.’ She looked him up and down, briefly put a hand to his threadbare jumper. ‘You never did understand that. You don’t look a day older. How do you manage that?’