The House of Dolls (7 page)

Vos climbed off his old bike. The little basket on the front seemed empty without the dog. He wondered how far he could push Sofia Albers, the woman who ran the Drie Vaten. The odd beer and coffee seemed scant reward for dog care and laundry.

‘Why did you pick me?’ she asked. ‘You could have had one of the proper detectives?’

‘You seemed interested,’ Vos said. He smiled. ‘And I’m not a proper detective either.’

The joke didn’t humour her.

‘I’m an aspirant, Vos. They’re going to fire me next week.’

‘In that case let’s make the best of things.’

She seemed to like a straight answer. Bakker looked up at the street sign and said, ‘This is where it came from, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Your doll’s house. Petronella Oortman lived in Warmoesstraat.’

She did, Vos thought. Not that anyone knew where. He’d tried to find out.

‘Is it important?’ Bakker asked.

A drawing of an ancient doll’s house. A famous one. Stuck on a miniature coffin. After that nothing. Just a black and endless well of doubt and grief. Once, in a screaming match in the night, Liesbeth had yelled at him, ‘You want her dead, don’t you? You want to see her corpse?’

Not at all. He wanted to watch her walk down their street in the Jordaan the way she used to, happy, free, smiling, occasionally mischievous. To vanish like that, after such dreadful, terrifying messages, was worse than a bereavement somehow. It left them both with a wound that refused to heal. A question that came with no possible answer.

‘I think it must be,’ Vos said, coming back to the present. ‘I just don’t . . .’

Understand. It seemed the wrong word. Some things were beyond comprehension, and perhaps Anneliese’s disappearance was one of them.

Bakker wheeled her bike round the corner into the narrow lane running down to the water, checking the numbers on the terraces. The buildings became more run-down. She found a battered red door. Posters in the cracked and dirty windows. Bands, movies and dope. The sound of music from inside.

Recent rock. Which sounded like a pale copy of the originals he preferred.

‘The doll he sent you,’ she said chaining her bike on the railings. ‘Where did it come from?’

‘You mean you didn’t look in the files?’

She folded her long arms.

‘I haven’t read everything.’

This wasn’t going away. Not with Laura Bakker asking.

‘We never found out,’ he said. ‘It was expensive. Looked antique but it wasn’t. They’re made in Germany. No one sells them in Amsterdam. Not like that cheap thing you’ve got in Marnixstraat now. Someone spent real money on this. Maybe . . .’

She waited then, when he said nothing, asked, ‘Maybe?’

‘Maybe he had it already. He was a collector. Crinoline dress. Not much different from the kind of thing Petronella might have put in her doll’s house.’

‘It had her hair?’

‘Yes.’

‘And her blood?’

‘Yes,’ he said, feeling cold and miserable, wishing he was back on the boat with the dog and some beer. Maybe a smoke if things got bad.

‘So you think she was dead already?’ Bakker asked. ‘He was torturing you? Not your daughter?’

When the case was alive he’d rarely had conversations like this, even with Frank de Groot. They were too close and personal.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘He wasn’t a lunatic like De Groot says. That’s too . . .’

Words. Sometimes they wouldn’t come.

‘Simple?’ Bakker asked.

‘Quite.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said and stood there, sad-faced but pretty in an innocent, adolescent way.

People joined the police for different reasons. He wanted to be a part of something that helped. That made the world better. Laura Bakker . . . he wondered. Frank de Groot was a clever, incisive man, as good a judge of character as anyone Vos had known. That remark about how she was trying to herd the flock . . .

The police didn’t change things. He’d learned that early on. At best they offered comfort. Reined in the worst elements of a society so fractured it was incapable of healing itself. It was wise not to hold out too much hope, to set your sights too high. The cost of failure could be shattering.

‘I’m sorry I said those stupid things,’ Vos told her. ‘About drunk drivers. I don’t talk to people much these days. It’s hard.’

For the first time she looked actively cross at something he’d said.

‘You weren’t to know,’ she replied, then pushed past him, tried the doorbell. Heard nothing, banged on the woodwork with her fist.

The girl who answered the door had short and greasy fair hair, a face so pale it seemed like parchment, a skinny, haggard frame. Long Indian cotton dress and a threadbare jumper which she clutched constantly, holding herself by the elbows where a grubby sweatshirt showed through.

Four floors high the terraced house stank of dope and sweat and drains. A communal kitchen, no sign of food. In the front room two drowsy men passing round a bubble pipe.

She was called Til and came from Limburg in the south. The source of De Groot’s cheese. Bakker asked for her ID. Mathilde Stamm. Nineteen. The age Anneliese would have been now. Same as the Prins girl too.

They tried to talk to her about Katja. Gave up and went to the men smoking in the front room. Got nowhere. Back to the girl, pinned her in a corner, waited until she gave in.

Didn’t take long once she understood Vos wasn’t leaving without answers. Katja had lived in the squat for a year off and on. Til didn’t know where she went when she wasn’t there. No boyfriends around. Girlfriends either.

‘No friends at all then?’ Bakker asked before Vos could say another word.

The girl hugged herself more tightly.

‘What is this?’

‘She’s missing. We think she could be in trouble.’

Til Stamm laughed.

‘Just ’cos you can’t find her doesn’t mean she’s missing. Katja gets up to stuff. Gets away with it too. Her old man’s loaded. He runs Amsterdam, doesn’t he?’

‘He thinks so,’ Vos said, looking around the house. It seemed as transient as Centraal station. A place people came and went. Not much more.

‘Her dad can fix things,’ the girl added. ‘He sent her off to rehab.’ She reached into the grubby jumper, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one with shaking fingers. ‘As if Katja cared.’

‘Where?’ Vos asked.

‘The Yellow House. Behind the Flower Market. I don’t have that kind of money.’ She laughed again and it made her cough. ‘Or needs.’

Laura Bakker looked her up and down and said, ‘You mean Katja was even worse than you?’

Vos sighed. The kid flew off the handle, started throwing a flurry of curses, at Bakker, at him. The cigarette fell from her trembling fingers.

Taken aback by the sudden violent outburst Bakker retreated. The men with the bubble pipe didn’t move. No one did except Pieter Vos who retrieved the cigarette from the dirty floor, held it out in front of Til Stamm, waited for her to calm down, then placed it back in her fingers.

‘Do you like her?’ he asked when she quietened down.

‘Katja’s OK. Not snooty. I think maybe . . .’ She twirled a finger at her ear. ‘Her head’s not quite straight. But she never pushed her old man at us. We just saw him when she needed something.’

‘Like what?’ Vos asked.

‘Like money. Or a get-out-of-jail card.’

‘Why would she need that, Til?’

His voice was calm, his manner friendly.

Her eyes were on Laura Bakker. Only a few years separated these two but they might have come from different worlds.

‘The usual,’ the girl replied. ‘I haven’t seen her for a week or so. I told you. Sometimes she goes off on her own somewhere.’

She walked to the front door and flung the cigarette out into the chill day. Pulled a hand-rolled smoke from her jumper pocket, thin and half-gone. Her fingers trembled so much she couldn’t light it. Vos took the matches and did that for her.

‘This is important,’ he said. ‘She must have someone. A friend she liked more than anyone else. Was that you?’

The juvenile shrug.

‘What about men?’

‘I don’t tell tales.’

Laura Bakker started squawking at that. Then went quiet when Vos looked at her.

‘All we want to do is find her,’ he said. ‘Make sure she’s safe. And then we’re gone. Then . . .’ He pointed at the joint. ‘You can go back to doing whatever you want.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ she asked.

‘The getting kidnapped kind,’ Laura Bakker said.

Til Stamm looked at both of them, frowned, then meandered towards the worn wooden steps in the hall. They followed, up and up. The girl walked at the pace of an old woman. The sour, sweaty smell of unaired rooms got worse.

Four flights. At the top Til Stamm stopped, out of breath. Gasping, sucking on the joint.

‘Are we here for the view?’ Bakker asked, glancing out of the window. Nothing there but more dreary ancient terraces on the other side.

‘She’s shit at her job,’ the girl said, staring at him. ‘I’m surprised you put up with it.’

Vos smiled.

‘She’s learning. Country kid, from Friesland. I’m an Amsterdammer. Indulgent by nature.’

The door was already ajar. A room with a single bed. The sheets half on the mattress, half on the bare plank floor. Smell of dirty clothes and resin.

‘A while back she brought this guy here. He was old. Weird.’

Vos walked in, looked around.

‘What was his name?’

‘Jaap. Never heard him called anything else.’

She walked to a chest of drawers, one leg of which was broken, a brick supporting the corner.

‘Never paid his rent. Never paid for anything. Food. Smoke. You name it.’ She clutched at her waist again. ‘Who’d kidnap Katja?’

‘We don’t know,’ Vos said. ‘That’s why we’re looking. This Jaap . . .’

‘He never said much.’

‘She was with him?’ Bakker asked.

‘I don’t do bedtime stories either.’

Vos raised an eyebrow.

Til Stamm folded her arms.

‘I . . . don’t . . . know. I think they were just friends. Katja brings people here sometimes. If she thinks they need a place to stay. She’s a nice kid. A bit simple.’

He walked to the drawers, went through the papers there. Some were official. Reports from a probation officer. Court orders. A letter from a lawyer. He picked up the last and read it.

‘Katja said we ought to put up with him,’ the girl added. ‘Jaap had been in trouble or something. It was all going to come good. One day we’d get paid . . .’

Her arm circled the squalid bedroom.

‘Get all the money we’re owed for this.’

‘When did he leave?’

‘About a week ago.’

‘Around the last time you saw Katja?’

She frowned.

‘I guess. I wasn’t keeping tabs. Why would I?’

‘What does Jaap do?’ Vos asked.

‘Do? He went out in the morning and came back at night. I didn’t ask.’

That was it. Vos waved the paper he’d picked up, told her he was taking it, then the three walked downstairs.

The air outside was a little fresher. Laura Bakker looked uncomfortable. Vos didn’t speak.

‘So,’ she said. ‘The girl talks to you but not to me. What did I do wrong?’

‘Nothing I wouldn’t have done at your age.’

‘I need to know.’

Vos looked at the paper again, thinking.

‘She’s nineteen. Dropped out of school. Out of home. Out of what we think of as life. How many job interviews do you think she’s had?’

Bakker put her hands on her hips. An expression of exasperation he was coming to recognize.

‘How many do you think I got?’

‘Enough. You’re bright. Educated. You wanted to be a police officer. In a quiet little country town called Dokkum.’

‘You don’t know me!’

He nodded.

‘True. But I know Til Stamm. You behaved the way she expected. Life’s easier sometimes if you do the opposite. When they think you’re going to play hardball be charming. If they think you’re the nice guy . . .’

‘Always the nice guy. That’s you. How was the dope they were smoking? Good?’

‘Frank talking out of turn?’

‘It’s in the files, Vos,’ she said, a little shame-faced. ‘On your record when they gave you sickness retirement. I thought . . .’

She didn’t finish the sentence.

‘Thought what?’

‘I thought you’d look older. And more wasted.’

He laughed at that and said, ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the files.’

‘Does this go down on mine?’

Before he could answer her phone rang. She took the call. Change of voice. Deferential not defensive.

‘Any news from Frank?’ he asked when she was done.

Bakker said, ‘You’ve got to stop doing this to me.’

‘It’s the way you talk.’ Vos unlocked his bike. ‘From aggressive to . . .’ He was about to say defensive but that wouldn’t have been right. ‘You’ve got to learn to listen to people, Laura. Especially when what they say doesn’t seem to matter.’

‘That kid in there was lying.’

‘She was,’ he agreed. ‘So what?’

The round green eyes widened.

‘So what? She was lying.’

‘Til Stamm was doing what comes naturally with people like us. Does it matter?’

A quiet curse beneath her breath.

‘Wim Prins finally got around to going to Marnixstraat,’ she said. ‘De Groot wants us back there to talk to them. Prins is busy apparently. A meeting to go to. He can’t stay long.’

Vos held out his hand for the phone. She passed it over. He returned the call. Asked De Groot some questions. Gave no reasons for them. Then passed the phone back and pointed to her bike.

‘Time to go, Aspirant Bakker.’

‘To Marnixstraat?’

‘To court. According to Frank they’re going to let Theo Jansen out sometime over the next hour. He’s promised to be a good boy. Let’s hope we get there in time.’

She didn’t move.

‘Commissaris de Groot specifically told me to get you back to Marnixstraat. If I don’t . . .’

‘Frank can talk to Wim Prins. I don’t want to miss Theo. It’s been a while.’

‘Will you please tell me what’s going on?’

He showed her the piece of paper he’d taken from the bedroom.