The House of Dolls (40 page)

She stopped. Had said too much and knew it.

‘I was trying to make things better in a way that was going to work. Believe it or not. Now we’re back to square one. With Menzo dead and Jansen God knows where . . . I don’t know who’ll be calling the shots. I will talk to your superiors about this, Vos. They’re not naive. They live in the real world. Not the fairy-tale one you people seem to inhabit.’

He didn’t object when she went to the door. Bakker was starting to tick, demanding to know why.

Vos sat in silence, running his fingers through his long, straggly hair. Then excused himself, went down the corridor, walked into the washroom, went into the first empty stall, made a long phone call, thought about the answers he got. Issued an instruction.

Bakker was outside waiting for him.

‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Anyone there?’

‘I went to the toilet.’

‘You’re up to something. Where’s your mate Van der Berg?’

‘Til Stamm. Why would a casual housemate of Katja Prins, someone who said she wasn’t even a friend, try to steal information on Katja’s father?’

‘She didn’t kill anyone,’ Bakker said. ‘Why are you bothering about her when that bloody woman—’

‘I don’t have time for this,’ he said and marched through to the next room, pulled Koeman out of the interview. He’d got nothing fresh from Alex Hendriks. The records he’d brought proved Willemsen had communicated with Mulder. That Mulder had contributed to the party funds. That was it.

Vos leaned on the wall by the window, staring at the street outside, listening to the rattle of the pneumatic drills.

‘He wants protection?’ Koeman asked. ‘Does he get it?’

A puzzled frown.

‘Of course not. I’d really like a decent coffee. Not from the machine. Forensic have got a new one . . .’ He looked at Bakker. ‘And some biscuits. What kind do they do these days? Can you fetch a list?’

She was taking a deep and angry breath.

‘That was good,’ he added quickly. ‘The thing about the videos. She’ll be on the phone to the people above Frank right now. But what the hell . . . ?’ A tug of the long hair again. ‘I really need to know why Til Stamm would do a thing like that. Good coffee might help—’

‘I am
not
your waitress, Pieter Vos,’ Bakker declared.

Koeman threw his hands in the air.

‘Oh for God’s sake I’ll fetch the coffee. You don’t get a biscuit list. Any news from the hospital?’

Vos looked at his phone. A message from the officer there saying Katja Prins was ready to be discharged soon. She still hadn’t said a word. When they let her go she’d be staying with Liesbeth under medical supervision.

‘Two biscuits,’ he said. ‘No chocolate. I hate chocolate on biscuits.’

Koeman stomped off. Bakker started to squawk again.

‘Quiet,’ Vos said. ‘I’m trying to think.’

‘It would be nice to be included.’

‘Depends what I’m thinking.’

‘I won’t give a damn when they kick me out of this place next week. I’ll go willingly and find a job working with normal people . . .’

‘Normal people will bore you, Laura. They do that.’

A door along the corridor opened. Frank de Groot, red-faced, furious.

‘In!’ he shouted. ‘Both of you.’

‘I’m waiting for my coffee and biscuits, Frank,’ Vos objected.

‘In!’ the commissaris roared.

It wasn’t hard to find the place. Yellow sunflowers on the wall. One street behind the fragrant busy market where tourists paid through the nose for bulbs they’d never grow. Jansen stood outside in the cold, wondering what to do.

A name. That was all he had. Nothing to link the American to Rosie. He didn’t even understand what the Yellow House was.

Then a white Volvo estate parked clumsily along the road, a familiar figure got out and lumbered towards the building.

Didn’t look at the big man with the dyed stubble darting into the shadows.

Jansen fought for the name. He used to be good with these. Never forgot a face. Now it took a while.

Van der Berg. A big, boozy friendly detective. Someone Jansen once thought might turn out to be flexible. But that was part of the act. In truth he was as stubbornly honest as his boss Pieter Vos. Who surely sent him here for a reason.

De Groot closed the door and told them to sit. Read a kind of riot act. About all the things they’d done wrong. How Margriet Willemsen was bringing down the wrath of distant gods.

Vos listened patiently. Laura Bakker squirmed and twisted in her chair.

‘This,’ De Groot declared, ‘is where it finishes. I know there are holes. I want to hear what the Prins girl’s got to say just as much as you do. But it’s not going to change anything. We’ve got two names to put on the sheets. Mulder and Wim Prins. Both dead. I want that done. As far as the Willemsen woman’s concerned—’

‘She’s lying through her teeth,’ Vos intervened. ‘You know that.’

‘Maybe I do! But she didn’t kidnap Katja Prins. She didn’t murder that reporter or Rosie Jansen. Most of all we can’t prove a damn thing. You can’t . . .’

Hendriks’s car with the suits near the Skinny Bridge had been spotted on CCTV. False plates, no IDs for the men inside. It looked suspicious but there wasn’t a single footprint back to city hall.

‘If we’ve got photos of them—’ Bakker started.

‘We can do what?’ De Groot asked. ‘Spend days finding them and then? They didn’t do anything. You don’t have a scrap of evidence to put her in the frame alongside Mulder. Or for corruption either.’

He turned to Vos and asked, ‘Am I wrong?’

‘Probably not. You might want to pass the file to the anti-corruption people.’

‘That’s my call,’ the commissaris answered. ‘Not yours. I want to see the paperwork drawn up on Prins and Mulder. I want to be able to put out a statement. Case closed.’

The two of them sat silent at that.

‘It’s not too much to ask,’ De Groot added. ‘I don’t see the point in chasing dead men. Leave Margriet Willemsen to me. And find Theo Jansen. If we can put him inside I’ll be able to sleep at night.’

‘Lucky you,’ Bakker said. ‘We still don’t know what happened to Anneliese. Why Mulder would have dumped Rosie on Vos’s doorstep—’

‘He was screwing with us!’ De Groot yelled. ‘He hated the idea Vos was back here. Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . thought it would be fun to give him some more pain. Do you think we’re going to find an answer to everything? Life’s not like that here. This isn’t . . .’

‘Dokkum?’ she asked. ‘Got that, thanks.’

De Groot folded his arms. Kept quiet.

‘Can I see Katja Prins home first?’ Vos said. ‘She’s not talking but they say she can leave hospital. Liesbeth’s going to look after her. They both need some support.’

‘Wouldn’t you be better off looking for Jansen?’ De Groot demanded.

‘We don’t have a clue where he is,’ Vos said. ‘No one does. Even his own men I suspect. Maybe . . .’ A thought. ‘Maybe Theo will find us when he wants to. He’s out there for Rosie. If we put out a statement saying Mulder shot her—’

‘Don’t be long,’ De Groot ordered. ‘I want that on the evening news.’

Back in the corridor Laura Bakker said, ‘De Groot doesn’t like me.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because he doesn’t.’

‘Frank’s in a corner,’ Vos told her. ‘The Willemsen woman’s causing him pain.’ He dragged on his old blue jacket. ‘Do you know what Barbara Jewell and the Yellow House do?’

‘Cure people? That’s what she claimed.’

‘Regression therapy,’ he said. ‘Heard of it?’

She nodded.

‘That’s where you say hello to your monsters. And then you end up . . . clear and clean.’

‘Does it work?’

‘I don’t have any monsters,’ Bakker said straight off. ‘It’s just you complicated city folk . . .’

Vos laughed.

‘What’s funny?’ she asked.

‘You.’

‘I can’t believe that Willemsen woman’s going to get away with this. You saw her. We both—’

‘Politics, Laura. Sane people stay clear. Frank’s right too. We don’t have anything to throw at her except a couple of bedroom videos and a few suspicious bank records. Let’s try to fix the world bit by bit, shall we? The easiest parts first.’

She nodded, a brief smile at that.

‘So are we going to the hospital now? I’ll get a car.’ He glanced outside the window.

‘Too nice for that. I want some fresh air.’

An exasperated sigh.

‘We can’t cycle all the way to Oosterpark. If we’re picking up Katja . . .’

He waggled his bike keys and smiled. She glanced back at De Groot’s office. The door was closed.

‘So where are we really going?’

‘Mystery tour,’ Vos said.

Just before noon Van der Berg came out of the Yellow House, phone in hand, having a conversation he didn’t seem to like. The sun was close to warm. The street had a few tourists clutching flowers and stupid souvenirs: clogs and pointed white hats.

There was a woman with the cop. Maybe forty, stockily built with dyed hair. She wore a mannish long black jacket and an expression of bafflement. Didn’t want to be with Van der Berg. Didn’t have a choice. That was obvious.

While the two of them stood outside the house with the sunflowers, Van der Berg gently arguing, eyeing the Volvo, Jansen quickly ducked out into the sunlight, looked at the street. A cab was trundling along looking for business. He clicked his fingers, summoned it. By the time the driver got there Van der Berg was back at the Volvo opening the door for the woman Jansen assumed was Barbara Jewell.

Jansen pointed at the white police car, said, ‘Wherever they’re going.’

The driver hesitated.

‘Friends of mine,’ Jansen lied as he climbed in.

‘Then why don’t they give you a lift?’ the driver asked.

Jansen threw a couple of fifties on the front seat.

‘That’s why.’

The Volvo edged out towards the end of the street, looking for an opening in the busy traffic. The cab driver frowned, picked up the notes.

Two cars distant they followed Van der Berg through the cars and trams.

Then they got to the Prinsengracht and the police car bore left.

One way down the southern bank, away from Marnixstraat. A long, leisurely drive. After a while the squat white barn-like shape of the Amstelkerk came into view with the green open space of the park beyond it. Children playing on the swings. Rosie had come here when she was little and Jansen a single father, trying to be the best parent he knew.

Another white patrol car came and parked outside the burned-out building opposite. Jansen stared across the canal. He knew where he was going now. A place he should have visited long ago.

Two uniformed women officers took Katja and Liesbeth Prins from the hospital to the blackened shell of a building that was once the Doll’s House. They were waiting in the street with their wards in the car as Vos had instructed. Watched as he and Bakker leaned their bikes against the smoke-blasted railings, took out the set of keys he’d brought from Marnixstraat, removed the padlock and the chain and pushed open the new metal security door.

Bakker followed him in, looked around and said, ‘De Groot’s going to kill you.’

‘I’m not doing this for Frank. Didn’t you notice?’

‘And I get fired too.’

‘If you want to go back to Marnixstraat . . .’

A wry smile. Nothing more.

Another marked police car drew up. Van der Berg with the Jewell woman.

‘Send everyone back to the station,’ Vos said. ‘I just want Katja and the two women in here. And you.’

Inside the place was cold and stank of bitter smoke. Charred wallpaper, barely pink, hanging down like peeling bark. Floorboards brittle and creaking under foot. Vos took the stairs slowly. He went into the first-floor room at the front, couldn’t force from his head the picture of the blue fluorescent tubes and the stains that emerged like magic.

Lost in his own thoughts for a while. Someone coughed. When he turned they were there: Bakker to one side leaning against the wall, watching everything the way she liked. Liesbeth wild-eyed and baffled. The Jewell woman puzzled, suspicious. And the girl . . .

Katja cut a skinny tense figure in a plain blue coat and jeans. Her hair was clean and tidy now. She seemed more sixteen than nineteen. Had that troublesome adolescent glint in her eye, the hard-set look of a surly teenager waiting for the inevitable reprimand.

Liesbeth didn’t meet her darting eyes. Barbara Jewell did and looked distraught and concerned.

Vos introduced the American to Liesbeth then walked over to the wall, brushed his fingers against the rings of forensic marks. Looked at the same thing on the floor. Pointed them out and said, ‘Here.’ Then, ‘Here.’

‘What is this, Pieter?’ Liesbeth asked. ‘We’re all exhausted. We want to go home.’

He came back to them. Bakker kept quiet for once.

‘Anneliese was in this room,’ he said. ‘That was her blood. Someone attacked her. I think she fought back. She didn’t look her years. To me anyway. But she wouldn’t give in easily. I know that.’

Another glance at the wall. The stains weren’t standard blood splatter. It couldn’t have been much of a fight.

‘That was three years ago and we never knew. Never would have done if a gangster hadn’t inherited this place because Theo Jansen’s daughter was too embarrassed to keep hold of it. Then sent his hoodlums here because he wanted them dead and his sorry little privehuis off the books.’

He’d thought this through. There could be no other answer. Menzo and Jansen inhabited a small world. It was no great surprise the way the different parts hooked up.

Vos tried to catch Liesbeth’s eye and it wasn’t easy.

‘Did you hear what I said? Anneliese was here. A brothel. Don’t you want to know—?’

‘Of course I do!’ she shrieked. ‘But not now. Katja’s sick. Give her some peace for God’s sake. You never took much interest in your own daughter. Do you have to put someone else’s through hell to make up for it?’

Katja slammed her hands over her ears, walked over to the bed, sat down on the stained mattress, stared at the thick grubby carpet.