The House of Dolls (12 page)

It wasn’t that he was drunk. Not quite. In a way his head was clearer than it had been in months. He could see none of this was working. The boat would never get fixed. Nor would his life. Not this way.

And there was Frank de Groot dangling a way back into the old nightmare. The familiar hell.

He went to the window at the stern, opened it. Took out the ID card De Groot had given him. Was ready to throw it out into the water.

‘Sam . . .’ he pleaded. ‘For God’s sake.’

The volume of the little dog’s barks had gone up a good few decibels the moment cold night air entered the room. Now it turned into a howl.

Animals saw things before people. Could smell things too.

The tarpaulin was half-off the sinking dinghy along the way.

Vos felt his breath catch, his gorge rise. All the old familiar feelings. No way of avoiding them.

He put the lead back on Sam, marched him over to the Drie Vaten, told Sofia Albers she’d have to look after him for the night. Something in his face stopped an argument.

A good woman. One who was soft on him maybe.

‘Did you hear anything?’ he asked. ‘See someone near my boat?’

She looked at the dark night.

‘Not a thing, Pieter. What’s the . . .?’

He grabbed a couple of paper napkins from the counter, walked outside, went down the steps to the dinghy, looked. Took a napkin for each hand, moved the tarpaulin gingerly away.

Then called Frank de Groot. Found he could talk much the way he used to when he was in the force. Logically, calmly, clearly, even if his head was spinning.

De Groot listened and finally said, ‘Jesus, Pieter. Not the Prins girl?’

Vos steeled himself to look again.

A woman’s body side on against the dinghy’s planking. Gunshot wound to the head. A dark stain leaking down towards one breast. Cradled in the crook of her right arm a porcelain doll in an old-fashioned dress now soaked in blood. The kind Petronella Oortman might have owned.

‘Just get here, will you?’ Vos said then sat on the chilly stone bank and waited.

Morning. The road along the Prinsengracht was still closed. The bridge, the junction by the statues of Johnny Jordaan’s band too. Vos had watched a murder investigation slowly come together, the past rise from the cold dank waters of the canal.

Officers in white forensic suits. Cameras and swabs in their hands. Low voices murmuring into phones, dialogue served in digital fractures by way of answer. Vehicles everywhere. The long black saloon of the commissaris. The cheaper marked squad cars of the uniformed officers there to keep back the sightseers and the press. A forest of bicycles. This was still Amsterdam.

And a gurney. Lifted up beneath searing floodlights, raised from the half-sunk dinghy six hours after he found her there. A morgue shroud round the corpse now. Black plastic covering her dead eyes and bloody skin.

A precise, painstaking ritual was coming to life and Vos couldn’t fail to be a part of it. Around five, when he could barely keep his eyes open, he’d spent a fitful hour in a spare room above the bar. Drank more coffee, ate a pastry when he woke around six thirty. Walked a downcast, puzzled Sam briefly along the canal then left him with Sofia Albers without so much as a word.

It was seven now. De Groot was there with a team of forensic officers and detectives. Laura Bakker hung around at the edge of the crowd, not quite a part of them, shivering by the canal. Red hair tied back, eyes bright and alert. A new suit. Navy this time, almost the same colour as his own shabby jacket, trousers and sweater. She looked like a lanky schoolgirl who’d been up all night.

De Groot caught Vos’s eye, clicked his fingers and pointed to a control van. Vos smiled at the young aspirant, lost and ignored. Told her to come too though that got a long sigh from De Groot. The three of them went inside and sat on the cold seats. De Groot got Bakker flipping through reports on the laptop, making calls, checking queries.

Vos felt clear-headed. Sharp almost. It had been two years since he’d found himself inside an investigation, trying to find light in the darkness. Something in him welcomed the challenge. An inner voice he couldn’t silence.

‘Have you told Theo Jansen yet?’ he asked when they’d gone through a summary of the overnight intelligence.

Frank de Groot stared at the laptop and said, quietly, ‘No. We need to think that through. He’s supposed to get out today. What do I say? His daughter’s dead and we’ve no idea how? Jimmy Menzo never set foot outside Ostend. We can’t trace whoever he had outside the courthouse. Theo’s going to go crazy.’

‘Why does it have to be Menzo?’ Bakker asked, looking up from the computer.

The commissaris gazed at her.

‘Who else could it be?’

Vos wasn’t so sure.

‘Would he really go for the daughter just because the hit on her old man had failed? Those kids outside the courthouse were organized. It wasn’t spur of the moment. They were told what to do. It was crude, violent and public. He was trying to make a statement. Killing Rosie Jansen . . .’

He looked at Bakker and asked, ‘What would that say?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘Kill her and it just makes things worse, doesn’t it?’

Vos smiled, glanced at De Groot and nodded.

‘Quite,’ he said. ‘More war. A worse war. Not just bloodletting. A vendetta. Maybe it was Menzo. But I thought he was smarter than that.’

‘You’re starting to sound like one of us again,’ De Groot noted with a smile.

Vos picked up the printouts from the computer, got Bakker to run things through the laptop again.

Went over what they had.

Two teenage Surinamese hoodlums had attempted to murder Theo Jansen. They’d failed and died, one shot, one seemingly committing suicide, not that the dive team had yet recovered the second body. Both had arrived legally through Schiphol the week before and stayed in a cheap city centre hostel. Nothing linked them to Menzo or any other known Amsterdam hood.

Jaap Zeeger was still missing. There was no news about Katja Prins. The papers and the TV were full of stories about gang war and the attempt on Jansen’s life. None had yet picked up the identity of the murder victim in the Prinsengracht or the fact the Prins girl was missing.

Bakker’s phone rang. She mouthed the word ‘forensic’ and listened to the call, her pale face taut with interest.

‘Why are they calling you?’ De Groot asked when she was done.

‘Because I asked them to,’ she said as if the answer was obvious. ‘They found something on the doll. The one he left with Rosie Jansen. There was a . . .’

She went to the laptop, scanned her messages.

‘A little camera. Taped to the back inside a plastic bag to keep out the water.’

Fingers on the laptop again. Her hand went to her face and stroked back a stray strand of hair.

‘It’s got pictures. And a video. They’re sending it over.’

The three of them waited. A series of images came up. Vos watched very carefully.

‘Where is that?’ he asked.

‘Rosie Jansen’s apartment,’ De Groot said. ‘We knew she was killed there anyway.’

Eight still images in all. Theo Jansen’s daughter dead on the floor of what looked like an elegant room. Pale carpet. Modern paintings on the wall. Blood alongside it. Spatter. A single shot.

Scattered furniture. Broken crockery. Glass fragments on the carpet.

‘She fought,’ Bakker said.

‘Like a tiger,’ Vos agreed. ‘Rosie would.’

‘Is there anything new?’ De Groot asked with a marked impatience. ‘How did he get in? What have forensic got?’

‘No sign of forced entry,’ she said then tapped the keyboard once more. ‘Nothing else. They’re still looking. It takes time I guess.’

Vos stared at his feet. Brown suede shoes. Worse for wear. On the way out he’d picked a few clean clothes out of the laundry bag Sofia had waiting for him. Different socks. Still odd, light grey and dark. He’d never noticed. Same navy wool jumper. Beneath it a cheap sweatshirt from C&A. He was dressed for a night listening to a band in the Melkweg. Not a murder investigation.

‘You don’t have time,’ he said. ‘Someone’s pushing here. Pushing Theo Jansen.’ He stared at De Groot. ‘Pushing you. Maybe even pushing Jimmy Menzo.’

The commissaris said something about going back to Marnixstraat and talking the case through there.

Vos shook his head.

‘Yesterday was a favour. I’ve paid off your stinking cheese now.’

‘Jesus, Pieter!’ De Groot cried. ‘This bastard dumped Rosie Jansen on your doorstep. He came inside your home. You’re involved whether you like it or not.’

‘All the more reason to be out of it,’ Vos replied and got up, looked at the pallid day outside.

He could go back to the Drie Vaten. Sleep for a while. They’d release his boat once the forensic people were through. After that he’d tidy up. Change into different old, threadbare clothes. Get back to the work that wasn’t really work. The life that didn’t add up to much at all.

Maybe sit in the Rijksmuseum again, hour after hour, staring at Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house, trying to make sense of things.

After that drink a few beers. Maybe smoke something for the first time in weeks.

Wasting time. Because what else was left to do with it?

‘Forensic sent over a video,’ Bakker added. ‘It was on the camera too. Wasn’t taken with the other photos. Someone put it in there deliberately.’

‘How many pictures do you need?’ Vos asked, exasperated. ‘Rosie Jansen’s dead. Start looking.’

‘It’s not about her,’ Bakker said warily.

Then she pulled up something new on the screen.

Wim Prins sat in the kitchen of their quiet courtyard home. Just after eight. Coffee and toast on the table. Klaas Mulder, the hoofdinspecteur from Marnixstraat, had turned up ten minutes early.

To Prins’s annoyance he didn’t want to talk about De Nachtwacht. Just Katja.

‘If this isn’t some kind of game—’ he began.

‘It’s not a game,’ Liesbeth spat at him. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not that.’

Mulder glared at her. She scrubbed at the kitchen table with a dishcloth, not that it needed it.

‘If Katja’s been taken you’ve got to expect an approach. Probably today,’ Mulder said. ‘It’s possible this is linked to the attack on Jansen.’

‘How’s that?’ Prins asked.

Mulder shrugged. Picked up his coffee, toyed with a doughnut on the table and said, ‘You promised to take them apart. Maybe Menzo thinks this is a good time to throw Jansen and his people out for good. You won’t get rid of everything. What’s left . . . he gets more.’

‘This is about Katja,’ Liesbeth whispered. ‘Not politics. Not some stupid law . . .’

Silence. Mulder filled up his own coffee cup. Waited.

‘It’s about my daughter,’ Prins agreed. ‘She’s screwing me around again. I don’t doubt it. Not the first time. Won’t be the last. But we’ve got to deal with it.’

The cop shrugged.

‘Either way it’s serious. De Groot says he’s not turning a blind eye any more. If this is all a game she’s in court for wasting our time. If someone has her. Menzo say . . .’

Liesbeth Prins put a shaking hand to her forehead.

‘Jesus, Wim. Why did you get us into all this shit? What possible point—?’

‘Stop it!’ Prins yelled. ‘You know why.’ He nodded at Mulder.

‘He does too. The whole damned city. God knows it’s been played out in the papers often enough. I had a wife who fell to pieces in front of my eyes. Got a daughter who’s gone the same way. It’s just—’

‘So it’s about you, is it?’ she asked in a low and bitter tone.

‘If you like,’ he said more quietly. Then to Mulder, ‘Tell me what you want us to do.’

‘We need a list of all her friends. Her contacts—’

‘Katja left home two years ago,’ Prins cut in. ‘You know them better than we do.’

Mulder put his notebook back in his jacket, ate some more doughnut, looked at his watch and said, ‘If you’re too busy . . .’

‘She’s still got her room here,’ Liesbeth said. ‘There are things in it. Some of it goes back to when she was little.’ A pause. ‘She was happy then.’

‘You’ve looked?’ the cop asked.

‘Not much. I wondered whether we could throw some of it out. But whenever I asked she flew off the handle.’ Liesbeth Prins hugged herself through the thin dressing gown. ‘Even after she left. It’s not easy.’

‘What isn’t?’

‘Being a stepmother. Or a stepdaughter I guess. Do you want to see?’

He finished eating, shook his head.

‘Not really.’ Mulder got up, brushed the crumbs from his jacket. ‘If someone calls let me know.’

‘We didn’t talk about De Nachtwacht,’ Prins said.

‘We didn’t. Bit busy right now to be honest. With things that matter.’ The grin. ‘Missing people. Dead people.’

‘This is going to happen, Mulder. Marnixstraat won’t stop it.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘We won’t. But from what I hear we won’t need to.’

‘What?’

Mulder got up, threw his business card at Liesbeth Prins.

‘If you hear anything come straight to me. No one else.’

Laura Bakker ran the video sent by Marnixstraat forensic. Shaky frame rate. Bright summer’s day from another time.

It was on the memory card but came from a different camera. The date was a little under three years before. Just days before Anneliese disappeared.

‘That’s your daughter, isn’t it?’ she asked.

Frank de Groot had his face in his hands, was cursing.

It took a while for Vos to say yes.

He tried to place the location. Grass. Families with kids. A pale building like a flying saucer in the background.

The Vondelpark. The Blue Teahouse. A quiet place for a drink or a sandwich. They used to wheel Anneliese there in a pushchair when she was tiny and the world seemed whole.

Here she was looking the way she did just before she vanished. Young and beautiful and happy. On the cusp of adulthood, a life beyond home. She was treading barefoot across the grass, laughing and smiling for whoever held the camera. Vos could remember watching her do that. It could have been yesterday. He recalled too the way he used to worry. What if something – a wasp, a piece of broken glass – lurked in the Vondelpark’s lush lawn and he failed to see it first?