The House of Dolls (43 page)

Laura Bakker put down the hammer.

‘Trouble is, mate . . . they do.’

Vos kicked through the black wood, reached in, found a light switch on the left, flipped it.

Pink, he saw. Pink walls. Pink carpet. Pink chair. Pink bed. And something else.

A shape on a chair, bound to it with rope. Head slumped forward. Blonde hair. Slight figure. Childish pink and white gingham dress.

‘Anneliese,’ he whispered and walked inside.

Summer arrived early. The morning cyclists along the Prinsengracht were in shirts and shorts and skirts, sunglasses on their heads as they went about their daily rounds, pedalling beneath the green lime trees.

Vos’s boat was still a mess. There’d been other cares. Dealing with the aftermath of his invasion of Michiel Lindeman’s mansion and the ensuing arrest. Seeing both the lawyer and Jansen into court and jail where they’d remain. The same process for Katja Prins and Barbara Jewell. They were out on bail on manslaughter and blackmail charges, headed for a suspended sentence from a judicial system that was already showing signs of sympathy. And probably the same for Suzi Mertens who was with Jansen when Vos went to interview him in prison. Arguing his case. Closer perhaps than the man himself wanted. But Vos was glad to see her there.

The fallout had provided a field day for the papers. A bent cop. Warring gangsters. A dead politician and his partner, a crooked city lawyer who’d groomed and made captive the daughter of the detective in charge of tackling organized crime. And most of all the discovery that Anneliese wasn’t dead at all. A miracle of a kind. It was made for the headlines.

Margriet Willemsen remained vice-mayor of the city council, unchallenged, untainted largely. Alex Hendriks had fled, taking a large pay-off to London to look for another job, a different life.

Then the media moved on to other stories. There was only so much scandal Amsterdam could take. What remained best suited criminals, be they lawyers or dead police officers, not a hard-bitten woman politician who seemed to have an answer for everything.

De Groot had dropped the investigation into Mulder’s – and Menzo’s– illicit payments. That was the price of turning a blind eye to the illegal entry into Lindeman’s house.

Vos wasn’t minded to argue. Anneliese was free, slowly emerging from her imprisonment and the sedative Lindeman had given her. Beneath the pain and passing bewilderment she was still the daughter he knew: bright, inquisitive, determined. But different too in ways Vos struggled to appreciate. There was a gap between father and daughter, even without this extraordinary hiatus. Her relationship with Liesbeth was closer, more intense, complex and difficult at times.

There would be thoughts they’d share he’d never hear about. He didn’t worry or mind. His daughter would, the doctors assured them, recover one day. The scars of Lindeman’s doting incarceration might take years to heal. Even with help and counselling a few might never disappear entirely, not that he wanted to think about that right now. But she was alive, and the legal side of the case could proceed without her. Lindeman would plead guilty on grounds of insanity, arguing that he was himself the victim of an obsessive, selfless form of love. There would be no need for witnesses, cross-examinations in court. She would at least be spared that.

He sat on a rickety old stool on the boat deck, between the dying roses and a few pots of herbs, Sam at his feet. The little dog was excited by the presence of someone young, listening to the footsteps echo through the cabin below. She was with Liesbeth, the two of them talking in low voices. Rootling around the boat she’d found the old doll’s house and to his relief had been able to laugh at it. Thrown at him the old accusation:
How could you? Don’t you know me at all?

And at that he’d left her there with her mother. Stayed outside watching the traffic on the canal, people ambling to the rickety pavement tables of the Drie Vaten.

‘Dad?’ she said, climbing up onto the deck, putting on the pair of sunglasses she always wore outside. Her eyes had grown weak trapped in Lindeman’s basement. She was making her first hesitant steps back into the world. It would all take time.

Her voice had altered too. A couple of tones lower than he remembered. Adult and knowing.

Two cases were by the gangplank. This was a goodbye, a temporary one though painful still.

‘Why do you live here?’ she asked, pulling up another flimsy chair to sit beside him. ‘What’s wrong with a flat?’

‘I like my boat. I’m fixing her up. By the time you come back she’ll be finished. You’ll love her. When you go to sleep you hear the water. When you wake up you hear the ducks. It’s beautiful. I’ve never slept so well in my life.’ A shrug. ‘Not for the last few nights anyway.’

Liesbeth had followed her up the stairs. She didn’t look any different. Still hurt. Still grieving for Prins he guessed.

‘You’ll never fix this thing,’ she said, eyeing the long street both sides of the bridge. ‘You won’t have time. De Groot’s going to make sure of that.’

‘You could be right,’ Vos agreed.

Two seats booked onto the same flight Wim Prins tried to take, direct to Aruba. They’d stay in his villa there, the one Liesbeth had secretly visited while she was living with Vos. Anneliese knew nothing about that, any more than she realized Prins was her real father. Vos had demanded Liesbeth’s silence on those matters from the outset. She hadn’t argued.

‘Will you find the time to come and see us?’ Anneliese asked. ‘Mum says . . .’ She looked uncertain. ‘We’re going to stay there for six months or so. I need to get my head in shape. Being somewhere else . . .’

‘If the doctors say it’s a good idea . . . if you think so too . . .’ He touched her arm. ‘Come back when you’re ready. No pressure. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘It would be good to see you,’ she said in that steady, determined way she’d had since she was little. ‘You look as if you need some sun.’

‘Don’t worry about me. If there’s time . . .’

It was a lie. They both knew it. He looked at his watch. The taxi would turn up at any moment. Vos got to his feet, smiled as she joined him.

He put his arms round his daughter, kissed her soft cheek. She was tall and beautiful, summer shirt and new jeans. Hair cut short now, not the childish locks Lindeman had demanded.

‘You can always find me here,’ Vos said. ‘I will always love you. If you need me, just ask.’

She took off the sunglasses. Blinked back tears. Perhaps the child in her thought he and Liesbeth would toy with a reconciliation. While the adult knew differently and always took the bleaker view.

‘I need a minute with your mother,’ he said. ‘Go and have a coffee over the road. It’s better than the stuff I make.’

‘I never said thank you, did I?’

‘You didn’t need to. I’m sorry it took me so long. I gave up. I thought I’d lost you. That there was nothing I could do.’

‘What changed things?’

‘Not what but who. Katja Prins I guess. And a very stubborn young woman from Dokkum.’

‘What . . . ?’

‘Another time,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

Arms round his shoulders she reached up and kissed him again. Both cheeks. Love between them. The quiet yet fierce devotion of family. Something Pieter Vos thought he’d lost forever.

Then she strode over to the Drie Vaten, sat at a table among the tourists, ordered a coffee. A couple of young men were eyeing her. She wasn’t just beautiful in his eyes. There was a charming, affecting, perhaps illusory innocence about her. It turned heads. Had done for the obsessive and lonely Michiel Lindeman, looking for his own private marionette to own, to shape, to adore, three years before. Sooner or later another man would come along. A good one this time he hoped. And not too soon.

‘You’re welcome to come and see us, Pieter,’ Liesbeth said. Arms folded. Face emotionless, impenetrable. ‘Make a change from this dump.’

The dog sat upright, stared at her. Vos was sure he heard a low growl.

‘I like this dump. The Jordaan’s my home.’

She didn’t appreciate that.

‘And now Aruba’s going to be yours,’ he added.

‘I want to be somewhere warm and sunny. Somewhere we can be happy. Liese needs that as much as I do.’

‘It’s best you stay there.’

She cocked her head to one side, puzzled.

‘If that’s what I want. Wim’s estate here needs sorting out . . .’

‘The bank can do that. You should leave it to them.’

‘What happens about Bea?’ Liesbeth asked. ‘Does that go down on Wim’s file too?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘I was married to him. Remember?’

She’d asked so few questions. A part of him wished it could stay that way.

‘I’ll leave that open for now.’

The dog got up and walked to the bows, sat there, back to them, posing for the snapping cameras of a pleasure boat cruising down the canal.

‘Why?’

‘Because he didn’t kill Bea. You did.’

The same frozen expression. Not a flicker in her eyes.

‘And there I was,’ she said blithely. ‘Thinking you were getting better.’

‘I’m fine, thanks. Someone had wiped down the seats of her car.’ Vos’s attention strayed to his daughter. Sofia had come to sit with her, probably to make sure none of the men did. The two of them were sipping coffee. Chatting. ‘Forensic thought it happened when it went in for a service a few weeks before. I got Van der Berg to check. The garage didn’t use wipes on that model. The seats were leather. They needed polish.’

‘You expect me to believe—?’

‘The wipes were very specific. Bigger than the kind you buy in a shop. Exactly the same size as the ones we have in forensic. Where you were working at the time.’

‘That’s it?’ she asked. ‘The best detective in Amsterdam. That’s all you have?’

‘It’s a start. Or it will be if you come back from Aruba. I don’t want Anneliese staying more than six months either. Not unless she comes here and tells me to my face that’s what she wants.’

‘You arrogant bastard . . .’

‘Wim knew all along, didn’t he?’ Vos had thought this through. Kept it to himself. ‘De Nachtwacht was a part of that guilt, I guess. Thinking he could clean up the city and atone for something on your conscience. I guess it wasn’t so hard for him to jump from the plane—’

‘He was a coward. Weak. Just a man. That bitch stole my daughter. While you were pissing about going crazy in Marnixstraat, getting nowhere. She took Liese to that privehuis. It was her fault—’

‘No. Lindeman seized her. No one else.’

‘Bea started this! Are you listening? Are you still asleep?’

Her voice had got too loud. A young, concerned face watched them from a table outside the Drie Vaten.

‘I just wanted to know,’ Liesbeth said more quietly. ‘Wim was at his wits’ end with the woman. I didn’t set out to kill her. She laughed in my face. Said she’d known about me and Wim all along. What she did to Liese was her revenge. Not on me. On my daughter.’

That hadn’t occurred to him. It should have, Vos realized.

‘And you just happened to have a gun. Some wipes from Marnixstraat forensic to clean up afterwards.’

‘I’d worked it out, Pieter.’ She prodded him in the chest. ‘While you were getting nowhere. I knew.’

A white taxi was edging along the Prinsengracht, the driver looking out for someone.

‘Come back and I reopen the whole thing,’ Vos promised. ‘I’ll use every officer I’ve got until I see you in court. Believe that if you believe nothing else.’

She smiled, waved to Anneliese outside the cafe. Shouted in a calm and friendly voice, ‘Ready?’

Looked at him, still beaming then asked, ‘And break your daughter’s heart twice over? I don’t think so. If you were going to do it, you’d do it now. Don’t fuck with me. You’re not up to it. You never were.’

She held out her arms. The promise of a final embrace.

‘Make a pretence. For her sake. Not mine. Bea’s dead and buried. So is Wim. Liese’s alive and I won’t let anything in the world hurt her. You can count on that.’

The briefest of hugs, a cold peck on the cheek. Then he lugged their bags to the road. Held his daughter in his arms one last time, whispered fond words in her ear, kissed her and watched them go.

He was still standing there, lost in his thoughts, his doubts, when a cycle bell rang.

Sam came running down the gangplank, yapping wildly, dashed to the bike, put his feet up against her legs.

‘You forgot, Vos. I don’t believe it.’

He felt slow and stupid. A tall young woman on a modern bike with a basket on the front. Her red hair was long and down around her shoulders, carefully combed. She wore an old-fashioned print dress, white and green, cut just above the knee. Pale brown leather sandals, not heavy black boots. And a pair of modern sunglasses which she pushed back from her nose as he watched, then planted on her head.

‘Laura?’

‘I should have known, shouldn’t I? We agreed. Remember?’

‘You look . . . different. The clothes. Auntie Maartje?’

‘She doesn’t make everything I wear. I’m off duty.’ Slowly she repeated the last two words. ‘Do you even know what that means?’

He recalled a promise: she could take Sam for a ride and a walk somewhere. At the time he’d been trying to turn down an offer of a beer from Van der Berg. Hadn’t given it much thought.

‘Vondelpark,’ she said, stroking the dog’s head after she leaned her bike against the rail. ‘If that’s all right . . .’

The little terrier’s tale was wagging like an overworked metronome. She picked him up, kissed his head, got licked in return, placed him in the basket on the front.

‘That’s new,’ he said, pointing to the handlebars.

‘De Groot’s confirmed me in post. I got the letter yesterday. A present to myself.’

‘Good news,’ he said, nodding sagely.

‘As if you didn’t know. Not that he had much choice. I’d have caused such a stink if they booted me out. After all that nonsense with Katja and Mulder. Ooh . . . you can’t begin to imagine . . .’