Little Sister (43 page)

Put on a show.

That was what her mother said. But to Kim. It was always the easy, obedient sister who came first.

Put on a show. Kim, give the gentlemen what they like. Your sisters can do their turn after. That’s why we’re here, girls. That’s what’ll let us leave this shithole
forever. Just the four of us. The Timmers girls. Mother and her three daughters. Centre stage. No one’ll ever forget us then. Will they?

But they did, Mia thought. So easily.

Kim was back to shrieking at the policeman who’d found them that night. Yelling about his lies. The people he’d hidden. What they’d got up to, year after year and no one
cared.

Give the gentlemen everything they ask for. And then we walk away from the lot of them. That useless dad of yours too.

‘It’s why we’re here,’ Mia whispered.

Ollie Haas tried to say something. A plea. A denial. The man in black yelled at him.

The baseball bat went up.

The baseball bat came down.

The policeman screamed, his face a bloody mess.

Blom was bellowing too. All around her they watched and didn’t move. It was like music. Another kind of performance, just as cruel as the ritual act the three of them had been forced to
perform that distant balmy evening.

Mia took a deep breath and walked up to Lambert before he could strike the next blow.

‘Don’t do this, mister,’ she said, putting a trembling hand on his arm, remembering what it was like to be a scared little girl on the Volendam waterfront all those years ago.
Begging. Pleading. A small creature hoping against hope. ‘Not for us. We’re not . . .’

Worth it
, she almost said.

Clawed fingers struck at her then, scratched her cheek, pushed her out of the way. Hands to her face she waited, expecting the pain that was to come.

Because old Kim was here and in full flood. Fierce and uncontrollable, mad and wild.

‘She’s weak as a baby,’ her sister yelled, reaching out for the bat. ‘Let me. I’ll beat the bastards for you.’

Lambert looked back at the rest of them. Gert Brugman sighed and stared at the dusty straw floor. Lotte Blom nodded. Willy Kok shook his head. His brother said, ‘Any more of this and
I’m walking out of here, Frans. I thought you lot wanted to put things right. Not do more wrong.’

No one spoke. Tonny shouldered his weapon and went for the door. Willy stayed all the same. Kim held out her shaking hand, trying to grab the bat. Lambert kept it from her, bent down in front of
the bleeding Haas, the silent, sullen Blom.

‘Who killed them?’ he demanded, pushing the wooden stump hard into their faces in turn. ‘The family. Rogier. Who killed them? That’s what we want to know.’

An elderly couple, seventy at least, ran The Little Ducks Pancake House and Music Bar. They seemed surprised to get business before lunchtime, but grateful for it. The interior
of the place was white walls with fake beams, neat wooden tables all carefully laid, paintings and photographs everywhere. At the end of the room stood a low wooden stage, a lone mike stand leaning
at the back like a shiny drunken heron.

Vos ordered pancakes. Bakker stuck to coffee. When the man had gone to the kitchen she said, ‘So this isn’t just a random stop for a bite to eat?’

He checked his messages again. There were none. Then he got up and started walking round the walls, looking at the photos and the memorabilia. Bakker uttered a long, pained sigh and joined him.
The place was like a shrine to The Cupids. Photos of them when they were young and starting out. Then in New York, playing the fool at the top of the Empire State Building. Picking up prizes.
Posing with starlets.

The woman came out of the kitchen with coffee in two old-fashioned china cups with saucers bearing biscuits.

‘You’ve seen our local heroes then,’ she declared, bringing them their drinks. ‘Those lovely boys came from Volendam. Back when they were doing the songs they wanted, you
couldn’t beat them. All that later stuff . . .’ She winced. ‘Well, we can forget that now, can’t we? Poor lads. Time wasn’t kind to them. Never is if you’re in
the music business I guess.’

She placed the cups on the nearest table and wiped her hands on her apron.

‘Your girlfriend looks too young to remember but I reckon you do, mister.’

Bakker looked ready to explode.

‘She’s my niece,’ Vos said quickly. ‘Didn’t something happen? Something bad?’

The friendliness vanished from her face in an instant.

‘Lies. All them people from the city coming here telling their lies. Just because young Rogier liked to hand out sweeties to the kids. I ask you. Those lads never did anyone any harm.
I’m not saying they were angels. You couldn’t be in jobs like that. Everyone worshipping you. There was a time when they couldn’t walk down the street without the ladies flocking
round. Then, not long after, another time when it was just the fans like us, people who knew them, asking for autographs. Even though we had them already. Can’t have been easy. They
didn’t do those terrible things some people said. Never would.’

She walked up to the photos and pointed out a more recent one. An older, frailer Gert Brugman performing solo on what looked like the cafe stage.

‘They used to play here when they were teenagers and learning their tricks. Gert still comes back sometimes. Salt of the earth. Good Volendam folk. Here . . .’

She led them down the room. In the corner, mounted on a plaque halfway up the wall, sat a sunburst guitar. Next to it was a pair of drumsticks and what looked like thick long strands of
wire.

‘That was Rogier’s first electric,’ the woman told them. ‘My husband paid off the hire purchase on that when the lad was broke. Frans Lambert’s drumsticks. Some
bass strings from Gert. We have a tribute band from time to time. Out here we still remember them for what they really were. Not all those nasty lies the press kept putting around.’

Bakker reached out and plucked the strings on the guitar. They were slack and barely made a sound.

‘We’d buy more memorabilia if we could.’

‘Not easy after all these years I imagine,’ Bakker said.

‘Not easy when the people who’ve got it won’t sell,’ she grumbled. ‘I mean why hang on to stuff? Either have someone play it. Or let fans like us put it where
people can see the things. I don’t get it.’

Vos reached out and touched the drumsticks.

‘He had a lovely golden set of drums,’ the woman said. ‘All glittery. We’d buy them if we could. But their relatives . . .’

Vos had got Van der Berg to go through that option. Rogier Glas’s parents were dead. Lambert grew up with a single mother who’d moved to Florida. Brugman’s father still lived
somewhere nearby but the two weren’t on speaking terms.

‘What relatives?’ he asked.

She threw up a dismissive hand.

‘The kind you hope don’t come around at Christmas. I don’t even know they’ve got a right to own that stuff in the first place. I mean . . . why would Frans hop off and
leave his drum kit with a pair of clowns who can’t even get a girlfriend for themselves let alone play the things?’

Bakker said, ‘Perhaps he thought he was coming back?’

The woman laughed.

‘Left it a bit late, hasn’t he? Only old folk like us going to pay to listen to him now. No one—’

Vos’s phone beeped. He looked at the message and started to take out his wallet.

‘What relatives?’ Bakker asked again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Vos cut in. ‘We have to go.’

He placed a twenty note in her hand. The kitchen doors opened. The man walked out bearing a plate.

‘Go?’ he asked. ‘But I have cooked your pancakes. With my own hands. Here they are.’ He thrust the food at them. ‘Surely you’ve time for a bite.’

Vos nodded, picked up a piece in his fingers and was wolfing the thing down as they got to the car, spilling pieces everywhere.

He went to the driver’s side, wiping his hands on his jeans as he reached out for Bakker’s keys.

‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we supposed to ask who the relatives are?’

‘No need,’ he said, getting behind the wheel. She climbed into the passenger seat. ‘Aisha tracked it down finally.’

He brought the car to life and floored the pedal down the dusty track back to the road.

‘Frans Lambert and the Kok brothers are cousins.’

‘What?’

‘Someone walking their dog in Volendam called in this morning. She saw two men threatening a couple of visitors with a firearm outside a bar last night. There was a pair of girls with
them. Got a number for their truck. It’s them.’

She gazed at him, open-mouthed.

‘Tonny and Willy wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

He cut in front of a bus as they reached the road and got hooted at for his pains.

‘Would they?’ she asked.

Another world was alive inside Kim Timmers’ head. Here in the dusty barn where two men were getting beaten slowly, deliberately, chanting out the same pathetic refrain
when they got the space to say the words.

It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t I swear . . .

Lies. Every word, every syllable they uttered through cracked and bleeding teeth.

Elsewhere. A lost place, bathed in the dreamy golden summer light of the town beside the lake.

One hot evening a short lifetime ago. Music and the smell of hot dogs and chips on the waterfront. People pushing and shoving. Laughing, too much drink inside them.

Their mother was there, bossing them around the way she always did. Their father, silent as usual, watching in his gruff, suspicious way.

We are a family of girls.

That was what their mother told them.

Men are just fools.

Dangerous fools though. Fools who knew what they wanted and hated when they didn’t get it.

Uncomfortable in their tight clothes, the three of them lurked at the back of the stage.

‘All things come to good children,’ Freya said, listening to the cues, watching the hired band avidly as she waited for the moment to push them up onto the boards. And you three are
so good. My golden angels.’

She kissed each in turn. Kim took the embrace happily. Mia less so. Jo, Little Jo, always the one for an argument, tried to squirm out of her grip.

Freya Timmers held on to her tight, just to make the point:
You do as I say.

‘What’s wrong, darling?’ she asked in a hard voice as the band began to signal for the stage.

‘Had enough,’ Jo spat at her. ‘
Had enough.
We all have.’

She pinched Kim’s bare arm hard.

‘Haven’t you?’ Scared sister, timid sister, Kim kept quiet. ‘It’s always you she starts with. You’ve had enough. You said . . .’

‘Didn’t,’ Kim whispered, too afraid to look her in the face. All the same a worm was slowly turning.

Mia looked up at her mother and said, ‘Will we win, Mum? Will we win and then . . . then that’s it?’

Freya stared at the three of them and there was none of her usual affection there.

‘I could lie to you, darlings. But I won’t. No one ever wins. Doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to keep fighting. Never stop. You can have everything in the world or
think you have. Love. Money. Fame.’ She glanced at the three judges at their table. ‘People at your beck and call telling you how wonderful you are. But if you don’t keep fighting
you lose the lot. And then you’re ordinary. Common. Plain. Ugly.’ She reached out and pinched Kim’s cheek. ‘We’re not any of those things. So go and—’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Jo cut in. ‘If we don’t win. If it doesn’t stop. I’ll tell him, Mum. I bloody will—’

A slap then. Quick and hard. Straight across the face. Jo glared at her, cheeks turning red from the blow, from her anger too. She was never scared. That was just her sisters.

‘I’m taking you on that stage and you’ll sing like I showed you,’ Freya told her. And you watch your language, child—’

‘I bloody will . . .I will . . .’

Freya’s arm came back again. The music started. People were beginning to stare.

The angry, threatening scowl turned to a loving smile in an instant.

‘You be sweet now, children,’ she said, grabbing their hands. ‘Do that and we’ll all be fine.’

Down the dusty drive they sped, heading towards the ramshackle farmhouse. The graveyard of old tractors and machinery looked more than ever like the upturned toy box of a
careless giant. Then they saw a car that wasn’t there before. A shiny black Mercedes coupé standing out among the junk.

A man was leaning on the door of a rusty metal barn set in front of a field of endless green. There was a shotgun in his arms. Tonny Kok. Worriedly watching the unmarked police car race for his
home.

Laura Bakker took her seat belt off before Vos had even found a space in the yard. She was opening the door as he came to a halt next to the corpse of an ancient John Deere.

Tonny hadn’t moved, towards them or away. It was obvious what he was doing: guarding something.

‘Call Control,’ Vos ordered. ‘Ask for backup.’

‘No.’ She was out of the car already. ‘You call them.’

He wasn’t pleased.

‘This is no time for games . . .’

‘True,’ she said, leaning through the door. ‘Listen to me, Pieter. I know these people. I grew up with their kind. You’re . . . city. You’re different. The
enemy.’

‘I’m your boss . . .’

‘You’re what they hate. You let them down. You hid all the things they wanted to see. Let me speak to Tonny first.’ She nodded at the phone in his hands. ‘You call
Control. Get backup. Whatever you want. I’m going to talk to him.’

Then she closed the door and walked up to the man with the shotgun. He stood there, uncomfortable, shuffling on his big feet.

‘Tonny.’

‘Miss.’

‘Laura. Laura Bakker. Remember?’

He nodded at the car.

‘I remember. We don’t want trouble. Best you and your friend get out of here. Lots of angry people around. Seeing you won’t help.’

There was a cry of pain from behind the metal doors. Shouts and screams. Then silence.