Little Sister (7 page)

Bakker left it there. Vos said nothing. Nor did Van der Berg.

Haas could find no evidence to place the musician at the scene of the crime. Jaap Blom was adamant that he’d walked with Glas from the talent contest, talked to him about management
matters in his cafe below the recording studio The Cupids used and seen him head off back towards the van afterwards.

Forensic believed the murder of the Timmers family and Glas’s death happened around the same time. They were unable to trace the owner of the shotgun but there was no record of Glas ever
owning a firearm. Whatever the sisters thought it seemed impossible he was responsible. Vos shuffled through the few documents they had.

‘What are you looking for?’ Bakker asked.

‘The interview with the sisters. This is just a summary.’

‘De Groot deleted all that stuff. Lots else besides.’

Vos stared at the red document folder. These murders had taken place outside Amsterdam. It wasn’t unusual for city police to get called into serious investigations in rural areas. But
there had to be a reason.

‘Why did we handle this?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t we leave it to the locals?’

‘I asked at the time,’ Van der Berg told him. ‘There was all that terrible publicity. Two parents. A child. That pop singer dead, killed by kids. The locals were pleading with
us to take it on. Ollie Haas had worked in Waterland before. He couldn’t wait to get his paws on it. I was hoping I could steer it our way.’

He looked round the office. It was almost deserted.

‘Frank de Groot was deputy commissaris back then. He gave it to Haas. He said Ollie knew the ropes out there and we didn’t.’

‘Can we pick it up now?’ Bakker wondered. ‘Do we have the right to barge in? I mean—’

Vos’s desk phone rang. He took the call and listened.

The other two watched, sensing something from his manner.

The conversation lasted a minute, no more. Vos put down the phone, thought for a moment, then said, ‘Mia and Kim Timmers were allowed out of a secure institution in Marken yesterday on
some kind of . . .parole or something. They never turned up at the halfway house where they were supposed to stay. The male nurse who was driving them is missing. Perhaps with them. Perhaps
not.’

‘Yesterday?’ Bakker cut in. ‘What time yesterday?’

‘About half past five. Not long after we got that phone call.’

‘Those kids have to be high-security detainees,’ Van der Berg said. ‘They’ve been missing nearly eighteen hours and they tell us now?’

Vos got his jacket. He’d have to call the bar and ask Sofia Albers to look after Sam for longer than usual.

‘The institution said they wanted to make sure. They have to inform us when prisoners abscond. This is our case now. Laura?’

She leapt to her feet, grabbed her phone, her bag.

‘Get someone here to deal with chasing that phone call. I need a car.’

‘You mean
we
need a car?’

‘We need a car,’ he agreed. ‘Dirk can drive.’

Her big eyes widened.

‘What’s wrong with me?’

‘Nothing. But Dirk knows the way.’

Twenty minutes later they were in an unmarked police saloon, Van der Berg at the wheel, Vos and Bakker in the rear, going through the suburbs on the way out to Waterland. She
was a country girl, Vos said. She ought to feel at home with the people there.

‘At home?’ Bakker wondered.

‘What he means,’ Van der Berg suggested from the front, ‘is they might open up to you in a way they won’t with us. These places aren’t like Amsterdam. They’ve
got their own way of living. And talking, too.’

‘And because I come from the country I’m supposed to . . . empathize with them?’

‘That would be helpful,’ Vos added. ‘Dirk’s right. It’s never easy when you come out here. They keep everything to themselves. Perhaps . . .’

He stopped. A sudden idea had struck him. What if Marnixstraat had been called into the Timmers case in the first place precisely because someone knew they’d struggle in the foreign,
hostile environment of Volendam?

‘Perhaps what?’ Bakker asked.

‘Perhaps nothing.’

At Broek they left the main road and travelled east into Waterland, not more than a kilometre from the narrow channel where the Kok brothers laboured over a yellow SEAT nose down in thickly
weeded water. Then they rejoined the main road to Marken along the margin of the dyke and finally drove onto the causeway that linked the island to the mainland.

A breeze kicked up sending a couple of gulls scuttling into the bright blue sky. There were yachts bent over in the wind on the lake. Across the water sat Volendam. To its right their
destination, a ragged skyline of rooftops set on what was once so obviously an island.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Laura Bakker said with a smile. ‘I never knew there was anywhere like this so close to the city.’ She clapped her hands then let down her long red
hair. ‘We could cycle here one day.’

Van der Berg’s eyes widened. In the driver’s mirror he looked terrified.

‘One day,’ Vos agreed.

They navigated the winding streets of Marken as Bakker laughed at the cute wooden houses. Then they found the single-track lane to the institution and came up to the security gate by the wooded
entrance. Two minutes later they were in Henk Veerman’s office watching the TV news. The disappearance of Mia and Kim Timmers was the lead item.

‘Who released this?’ Vos asked.

‘Not us,’ Veerman replied. ‘Why would we?’

‘You didn’t tell us for eighteen hours that two dangerous prisoners were missing,’ Bakker broke in. ‘Now it’s on the news—’

‘They’re not dangerous,’ Visser insisted. ‘We don’t believe that for one moment. I’d never have allowed them out of here if they were.’

There was a knock on the door. The psychiatrist wandered over wearily to answer it. A sturdy young woman of about thirty stood there. Short black hair, eyes red from crying, plain blue dress,
something almost military about her bearing. She marched straight in, introduced herself as Simon Klerk’s wife, then asked Veerman what he was doing.

‘We have the police here,’ the director muttered, not meeting her gaze.

‘Where’s my husband?’ she demanded. ‘You let him out of here with those murdering bitches.
Where is he?
’

Vos waited for their answer. Finally Visser said, ‘We don’t know. I’m sorry. We don’t understand what’s gone wrong.’

Bakker’s phone went. She walked outside to answer it. Vos kept quiet, thinking about the people in this room. Their attitude. What appeared to worry them. Klerk’s wife, irate,
confused, looking for someone to blame. Visser, a thin, nervous woman . . . Veerman, everyone’s idea of a cold, practical manager . . .

Something remained unsaid between them and there could only be one reason: there were strangers, police officers, present.

Laura Bakker walked to the door and asked to speak to him. Vos and Van der Berg joined her in the corridor.

‘Two things,’ she said. ‘After that TV news item a bus driver called in to say he picked up the sisters from the dyke road on the mainland just after eight last night. We must
have come past the place. They stayed on the bus all the way to Centraal station. Got off around twenty to nine.’

‘And?’ Vos asked.

‘We had a uniform patrol car near the dyke. They went to take a look.’ She took a deep breath. ‘They found a couple of yokels pulling a car out of a ditch. Yellow SEAT. Simon
Klerk’s car.’

A howl of grief broke behind them. The nurse’s wife was there, eavesdropping.

‘I’m coming,’ the woman cried, jabbing at Van der Berg with fierce elbows when he tried to stop her. ‘Wherever he is . . . you take me . . . I am coming.’

Vos grabbed her arm as she tried to push past.

‘Mrs Klerk. I need to know your name. We have to talk.’

‘Sara,’ she said firmly.

‘Sara. I’ll let you know as soon as we find something. But you have to stay here. That will help us . . . help your husband more.’

‘I can’t!’ she bellowed. ‘Don’t you understand—’

‘Of course I do,’ Vos cut in. ‘Dirk?’

The detective was on it straight away, saying all the right things, edging the protesting woman into the room with Visser and Veerman.

She reached out and pointed a finger in Vos’s face.

‘Don’t you screw with me!’ Then a jab back at the room. ‘I’m not taking any shit from them either.’

Vos didn’t budge.

‘My officer will remain here and keep you up to date on anything that happens.’ He glanced at Visser. ‘I want your files on the Timmers sisters—’

‘Can’t do that,’ the woman said immediately. ‘They’re confidential. Medical records.’

‘She’s right,’ Veerman added. ‘Only a court can give you those and we’ll oppose it every inch of the way.’

‘My husband . . .’ Sara Klerk wailed.

‘Do your best,’ Vos told Van der Berg and left him there.

This time he drove. Bakker still wasn’t so good behind the wheel. He didn’t want more than one car in a ditch that day.

Back through the narrow houses they wound, past the sign to the little harbour, out onto the narrow causeway across the dyke to Waterland.

‘You can see why Simon Klerk wasn’t keen to go home,’ Bakker observed as they hit the long straight road.

A solitary traffic car had come across the Kok brothers as they struggled with the yellow saloon almost submerged in the green waters of the channel. When Vos and Laura Bakker
turned up Willy and Tonny were standing by the side of their tractor in their faded blue dungarees and waders, both smoking smelly pipes and taunting the young uniformed officer who was watching
them.

Vos introduced himself. The uniform took him and Bakker to one side and told them what he’d found. The two men, both known to the local police, appeared to be trying to recover a crashed
car from the dyke when he turned up.

‘They never called us,’ the young officer said. ‘God knows what they might have done if I hadn’t come along.’

‘Got it out of the ditch?’ Bakker suggested.

He gave her a caustic look and told them about the Kok brothers. They’d been spoken to regularly about minor offences: drunken arguments in Volendam, poaching, scavenging for scrap without
permission.

‘Big time hoods then,’ Bakker added with a smile.

The uniform grunted something and then Willy Kok called over, ‘Whatever that young man’s telling you about us . . . it’s all lies. All we do is have a few too many beers from
time to time. You go arresting fellers in Volendam for that and you’ll be building new jails all the way back to that city of yours.’

Vos and Bakker walked over to them. They were staring at her as if she were some kind of unexpected apparition in these parts.

‘That’s a policewoman?’ Tonny asked.

‘That is,’ Bakker replied.

Willy nodded at the uniform officer.

‘Don’t suppose you’d fancy his job, would you? They sent that young chap here all the way from Eindhoven. No wonder he don’t look happy. Don’t belong . .
.’

Vos asked about the car and what they’d found.

‘We’re paid to clean out the channels,’ Tonny said firmly. ‘That’s what we do. Grass. Weed. Prams. Bikes. Them townies . . .’ He cast a glance at the uniform.
‘Specially ones from down south . . . I reckon they think the countryside’s just one big dump for them to chuck whatever crap they feel like.’

Vos wandered over to the dyke. The back end of the SEAT was sticking out. The number plate was clearly visible. It was Simon Klerk’s vehicle.

‘Do you have a rope?’ he asked the brothers.

‘Got two,’ Willy replied. ‘Who’d go working out here without a couple of ropes to—’

‘Get them,’ Vos ordered. He looked at Bakker. ‘There’s a bunny suit in the back of the car. More your size than mine.’

She put her hands on her hips. All four men stared at her.

‘Shouldn’t we wait for forensic to bring a team out?’

‘We don’t know we need a team, Laura.’

‘Laura,’ Tonny Kok repeated. ‘That’s a good name. She seems a nice girl, that lass of yours, sir. Friesland from her voice I’d say. A northerner . . .’ He
scowled at the uniform. ‘You can trust people from up there. Unlike . . .’

Bakker swore, went to the car, got out the bunny suit and was about to put it on. She looked at her neat red shoes. Willy climbed out of his waders and said, ‘Never let it be said the
blokes of Volendam aren’t gentlemen.’

The uniform uttered a pained sigh and said, ‘It’s all right. I’ll do it.’

She gave him the suit and the giant waders. Tonny Kok tied a thick rope to the frame of the digger, tugged on it and handed the thing over. Then the young officer clambered down the muddy green
side of the ditch and half-walked, half-fell into the slimy water.

‘If there is something there try not to disturb it too much,’ Vos suggested.

He smiled up somewhat viciously and said, ‘Of course.’

‘Just a quick look.’

The man in the clean white plastic suit crooked one leg against the submerged saloon, pinched his nose with his left hand then used his right to steady himself as he sank down into the algae and
weed.

‘Who’d have thought it?’ Willy wondered. ‘The lad’s got manners. When it comes to pretty ladies anyway.’

He broke the surface with a loud curse. They all went silent and watched. There was something in his hand.

‘Rope,’ he cried, tugging on the thing. Willy and Tonny got their leathery hands to it and heaved him to the surface. Green weed and algae covered the suit and his dark hair. He did
his best to shake it free then dumped the things on the verge.

‘Clothes,’ he said, then kicked off the giant waders onto the grass. ‘Men’s clothes.’

‘This boy here’s nothing but a genius,’ Willy declared, patting him heavily on the shoulder. ‘I reckon you should snap him up swiftish before Interpol or someone nabs
him.’

‘That’s all there is?’ Vos asked. ‘Just clothes.’

‘One man’s?’ Bakker added. ‘Nothing else?’

‘Nothing,’ Willy agreed.

The uniform shook his head again then pulled a long strand of weed from his hair.