The House of Dolls (4 page)

Most chose jail, which was a wise decision. But not all.

The two men had met from time to time. Jansen liked Vos. He was an unconventional, modest man with a downbeat honesty and a fearless, perhaps foolish persistence. The city would always have police officers. Just as it would always be controlled to some extent by criminals. Might as well be one whose honesty could never be questioned.

Then the quiet detective’s world was torn apart and so, in a way Jansen still failed to understand, was his. Three years before the cop fell victim to a personal tragedy that saw him leave the police, a damaged, broken man. Not long after, tempted by Klaas Mulder, Vos’s successor, a small-time crook called Jaap Zeeger, a minnow Jansen barely knew, stood up in court and talked.

‘Liar,’ Theo Jansen spat out loud, just thinking about those weeks he spent in the dock, listening to fabrication upon fabrication. Zeeger, led on by Klaas Mulder, had put him there and still Jansen didn’t understand why.

‘Liar,’ he said again more quietly and then the door opened. Rosie, by her side Michiel Lindeman, the lawyer Jansen had used for a decade or more.

He smiled at his daughter. Thirty-two years old, her mother long gone from his life, vanished from Holland as far as anyone knew. Rosie would never abandon him. She’d stood by her old man throughout, had done since she was a teenager. Did her best to keep what remained of his empire running through a combination of strength and persuasion she’d learned from him over the years. She’d inherited his heavy physique and his outlook. A big, smiling, loud woman who never minced her words. Unlike Michiel Lindeman, a lean, humourless, middle-aged Amsterdam defence brief who’d come to make his name, and his fortune, representing crooks a few others didn’t dare touch.

‘Will I get out today, Michiel?’ Jansen asked watching them sit down.

‘All that money we’ve spent,’ Rosie said, glancing at the lawyer. ‘If Dad’s not home for supper I’ll be asking why.’

Lindeman took the hard cell chair so delicately it looked as if he feared the seat might break his thin and spindly frame. An act. This hard, unforgiving man was indestructible. Plenty had tried.

‘Well?’ Jansen asked again when he got no answer.

‘It’s up to the court. Not me.’

Lindeman always sounded bored. Odd given the money he was getting for every minute of his time.

‘We’ve got the statement from Jaap Zeeger,’ Rosie said. ‘Signed affidavit. Klaas Mulder got all that crap out of him by force. Threats. Beatings.’

‘If Vos had still been there none of this shit would have happened,’ Jansen muttered.

Lindeman laughed.

‘Vos would have got you straight. Be grateful he went crazy before he got the chance.’

Theo Jansen nodded. Before he set up on his own Michiel Lindeman was senior partner in one of the biggest city law firms. Alongside none other than Wim Prins, the new vice-mayor of the city council. The man who got into office by promising to clean up Amsterdam. That made Lindeman more valuable than ever.

‘Get me out of here,’ Jansen said. ‘Book me a meeting with your old friend Prins. We can sort things out. Reach an accommodation. He knows we’re never going away. Tell him he can trust a Dutchman. We’ll both run that Surinamese bastard out of town. Then things can be peaceful again.’

Lindeman shook his head and sighed.

‘You’re a criminal, Theo. Wim Prins can’t click his fingers and get you out. Even if he could . . .’

He went quiet.

‘What?’

Lindeman stared at Rosie Jansen and said, ‘Tell him.’

She seemed uncomfortable for some reason.

‘Things are different, Dad. What was ours . . . maybe isn’t any more. I did my best. I’m not you. Half the men we had are with Menzo now. Those that aren’t are dead or gone.’

‘Not all of them. I get to talk to people inside. I’m not alone in there.’

‘Those people in jail are lying sons of bitches,’ she hissed. ‘Menzo’s putting words in their ugly mouths.’

Jansen could feel himself getting mad.

‘What’s lost I’ll take back. I’ve done it before.’

The lawyer looked round the room, pointed at the shadowy corners.

‘See, Theo. There you go. Talk first, think later. What if this place is wired?’

Jansen shifted on his chair, felt his big shoulders move the way they did when a fight was coming.

‘If they tapped into a private conversation between a man and his lawyer they’d never get to use it. I don’t pay you to be insulted.’

Besides, there was no mike in the room. This was Amsterdam. The courthouse. They did things properly. Carefully. Legally. The Dutch way.

‘You pay me to get you out of here,’ the lawyer replied. ‘To keep you out. If they think for one minute there’s going to be a war that won’t happen.’

‘I’m not guilty!’ Jansen slammed his heavy fist on the table. Then more quietly, ‘Not for that shit Mulder pinned on me.’

Rosie Jansen reached over and took gentle hold of his clenched fingers.

‘We know that. They do too. I want you home. I want you to stay there. You had your time—’

‘My time?’

They’d talked this through before. Reached a deal. He could see it now.

‘You’ve got enough legitimate businesses to keep you comfortable for the rest of your life,’ Lindeman said in a dry, tired tone. ‘Rich and safe. Zeeger’s affidavit doesn’t make you innocent. The best we can hope for is release on bail on the basis of an unsafe conviction. You need to give them something that will get us an appeal. I want to be able to say in private you’re out of De Wallen. Menzo’s taken most of the firms you ran there anyway—’

‘Stolen!’ Jansen bellowed. ‘Thieved behind my back while I was rotting in jail on some trumped-up—’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ his daughter cut in. ‘It’s happened. You can’t turn back the clock. No one can.’

‘I’m your father, Rosie. Don’t you know me?’

Her warm hand tightened on his. Her dark eyes shone at him, pleading.

‘You can’t. If you try they’ll put you back in prison. Me too maybe. It’s not just Wim Prins on our backs now. The government’s coming down on us. Times are changing. They won’t let things pass the way they did.’

‘Throw them some money. That usually works.’

Lindeman shook his head.

‘A lot’s happened in two years. Change of party since you went inside. Change of mood. Not just in the council. Everything we grew up with’s falling to pieces. You’re a dinosaur, Theo. Time to get out of the way before the comet hits.’

Jansen blinked.

‘You think I’ll just roll over and let Jimmy Menzo have it all?’

Lindeman shrugged.

‘If you want to go home and live with your daughter. Enjoy your money. Forget about how things were before. They’re gone for good.’

Rosie smiled at him, looking the way she did when she was five, ten years old. His daughter could always wind him round her little finger and she knew it.

‘That’s what you came to tell me? That I’m an old man and I’m out of it?’

‘Pretty much,’ Lindeman agreed. ‘I’m a lawyer. Not a miracle worker.’

They waited for him to say something.

‘I’ll think about it.’

Rosie wasn’t smiling any more.

‘I said I’ll think about it,’ Jansen repeated.

‘We’ve got a pre-hearing meeting fixed this morning, Dad. They want an answer before it comes in front of the judge.’

‘The court needs to know now,’ Lindeman added. ‘A commitment. A—’

‘A piece of paper?’ Jansen snapped. ‘You want me to sign that? I, Theo Jansen, relinquish all my rights—’

‘We don’t have any rights.’ Her voice was stern and rising. ‘We don’t have anything. We’re screwed. Let’s try and get out of this with a little dignity.’

There were tears welling in her solemn dark eyes and he always hated that.

‘I want you home,’ she said again in a voice so soft and gentle it belied her looks. ‘I want us to enjoy things together. That place you bought in Spain. We never went there. Not once. All the things we never had time for . . .’

Jansen leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, the bleak, windowless walls. In his mind he could see the city outside. April. Soon the new herring would be here. He could grab a beer in a brown bar, walk to a canalside stall, dangle a sliver of raw fish over his mouth, down it like a Pelican the way he did when Rosie was a kid and he wanted to make her laugh. You weren’t supposed to do that in Amsterdam. It was common. But so was he. And she always giggled when he did it. That was enough.

Freedom wasn’t something intangible. It had a taste. You could touch it, smell it. A fifteen-year sentence, ten inside if he was lucky, wasn’t punishment. It was an execution of a kind, cruel and deliberate.

‘You need to say it now,’ Rosie insisted. ‘Michiel has to tell them. If he doesn’t there won’t be a hearing. You go back to jail. And I go home alone. Dad, if you won’t do it for yourself, just do it for me, will you?’

The houseboat was thirty years old, fixed moorings with electricity, phone line, water and mains drainage. A stationary, rotting wooden hull on the canal the locals shortened from the Prinsengracht to Prinsen, close to the Berenstraat bridge.

‘I’d hate to live in a pit like this,’ De Groot said as he ducked his head and went into the cabin. Roses, chrysanthemums, a few vegetables were visible beyond the glass in their pots and raised beds. None of them prospering.

‘How’s Maria?’ Vos asked, recalling the man’s quiet, shy wife.

‘Fine. She wonders why you don’t come round any more.’

He said something about being busy. De Groot eyed the chaotic interior of the houseboat, the boxes of tools on the floor, rock posters covering the peeling paint on the timber walls, raised a single heavy eyebrow. Then followed Vos to the old pine dining table and sat with him.

‘Busy doing what? Never mind. I want you back. You can be a brigadier again. The pay’s a bit better. Not much—’

‘What’s happened?’

Skimpy details. The night before, a miniature cardboard coffin was left outside Wim Prins’s courtyard home in one of the smarter
hofjes
a kilometre north near Willemstraat. An antique porcelain doll. A hank of hair. A bloodstain.

‘How did they want the money?’ Vos asked, interested in spite of himself.

De Groot pulled a photo out of his coat pocket.

‘They didn’t exactly. There was a note in the doll’s hand. Computer. No prints.’

One line, big bold letters.

Love’s expensive, Wim. Get ready for the bill.

‘What else? Did they call?’

De Groot shook his head.

‘That’s it.’

‘Wim Prins doesn’t love his daughter. She’s a junkie. An embarrassment. If they wanted money they’d kidnap the kid of someone who cared.’

‘I know you hate him. What he did with Liesbeth—’

‘It’s not that. Katja’s just a younger version of her mother and God knows she caused him enough trouble.’ It was a terrible thing to say. To think even. But true. ‘Bea Prins killed herself, didn’t she? She was an embarrassment and so’s the daughter. Prins is a man with ideas. A mission. Clean up Amsterdam today. The country tomorrow. A dead wife and a lost child would add some credibility.’

De Groot put the photo away.

‘That’s unfair. Inaccurate too. From what I hear De Nachtwacht isn’t doing too well. It’s easy to be a prude when you’ve got no power. Harder in practice. His coalition’s shaky. His own party’s having misgivings. My guess is the whole thing’s dead before summer’s out.’

‘I don’t give a damn about politics. Why isn’t he in the police station now? Screaming at you to do something?’

‘Who says he isn’t?’

Vos laughed.

‘Wim Prins wouldn’t want me back. You’re not here for him.’

No answer to that which said something.

‘You can’t ignore the similarities.’

Vos shook his head.

‘What similarities?’

‘The doll! Prins got a doll!’

‘Did he get a picture of the Oortman house?’

De Groot threw up his hands in despair.

‘For God’s sake, are you still going on about that? It was just a drawing the bastard sent as a joke or something. Why do you waste all that time staring at something in a museum? This is real. The Prins girl’s missing. No glass cases. Flesh and blood.’

Vos started hanging round the Rijksmuseum out of habit when he crashed out of the job. It was routine. Something to fill the day. De Groot was right. It was just a drawing that came with the doll, Anneliese’s blood, a hank of her hair. One more odd fragmented link among so many. For some reason – the temporary breakdown in all probability – he couldn’t get the picture of that place, with its tiny rooms, the fragile creatures trapped inside them, out of his head.

He had been over his daughter’s case a million times. In the brief period he worked on it as a police officer. Later, in the quiet of the houseboat in the Jordaan until something – sleep, booze or a smoke – killed the never-ending circle of possibilities and riddles. There was a photo of her by the long window on the street side of the boat, next to a poster for a couple of concerts he’d been to at the Melkweg.

He walked over and picked up the picture.

Anneliese on her own eating an ice cream in the park. A little had melted on her bright blue dress. She was pretty, childlike. Almost a doll herself. But her eyes seemed blank now. Her smile a little forced. That was what time did to you. These thoughts had never occurred to him when the shot was taken on a warm June day not long before she vanished.

Vos put the photo back on the shelf. It seemed to embarrass De Groot.

‘We don’t know what happened. We never—’

‘He sent you the same doll!’

A flash of memory: sitting at his desk in Marnixstraat after an endless week of sixteen-hour days. Fielding frantic calls from Liesbeth asking where Anneliese might be. Just turned sixteen. Never late home from school, not without warning.

One of the aspirants of the time, a shy young kid called Oscar, came up with a cardboard box, a coffin shape sketched on the top with black felt tip. The lid bore a printed line drawing of what looked like the Oortman house, nothing else. Vos could picture himself opening it. Inside a doll. Hair. Bloodstain. Tucked inside the pinafore dress was a photo of his daughter, terrified against a plain background, duct tape round her mouth.