The House of Dolls (14 page)

‘Maybe because I haven’t done anything of late,’ he said with a shrug.

Liesbeth sat down on the bed and looked ready to weep.

He went through the chest. Just underwear, socks, shirts, a few books: vampires and steampunk.

‘Do you hate me?’ she asked.

The desk had a single drawer. It was full of pens, spent concert tickets, paper clips and crayons. There was a large art pad at the back. He took it out and flicked through some of the drawings there.

‘Why would I hate you?’

‘Because I ran out when you needed me.’

Vos came and sat down on the bed.

‘We were both too broken by what happened. We couldn’t talk. There was nothing left.’

They’d never had this conversation and that was a cruel and sad omission.

‘You didn’t need me,’ he added. ‘Not that I could see.’

‘I . . .’

She closed her eyes, said no more.

‘When Wim came along he seemed to take you out of yourself. Out of the misery.’ He gestured at the room. ‘Took you to a place like this . . .’

Vos laughed and felt no jealousy, no envy. Even the regret seemed to be fading.

‘No competition really. Is there?’

She reached out and squeezed his hand. Didn’t let go. Looked as if she wanted to say something but didn’t dare.

Vos kept looking at the desk.

‘Katja and Anneliese knew each other,’ he said. ‘They were close. Not long before she vanished. Back then . . .’

He couldn’t get those images out of his head. The two girls, beautiful and carefree in the park. Was it possible a friendship that seemed so close could be a secret?

‘Back then Katja was fine too.’ He slipped his hand out of hers. ‘When did she start to lose it?’

‘I don’t know. Ask Wim. He’s her father.’

‘I will.’

‘Marrying me didn’t help. I was never good enough. Bea was larger than life. Knew everyone. Did what the hell she liked. And then the dope got to her. And she killed herself. Katja’s still a simple child really. She loves a little drama. How the hell could I compete with that?’

When he was an officer in Marnixstraat his head worked well. Had a capacity for dates and linear narratives. Now . . .

‘When did Bea die?’ he asked. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘That’s because you were stinking drunk and doped up too,’ she said with a sudden flash of anger. ‘It was around the time we split up.’

‘How exactly?’ he asked.

She glared at him.

‘She shot herself. Were you really so out of it you never knew?’

He went and looked at the desk again. Something was stuck underneath one of the corners by the wall. Vos crawled onto the carpet and found it: a USB memory stick.

Smiling, he held it up.

‘Mulder’s a cretin,’ she said.

‘You’ve got a computer? I’d like to take a look.’

She showed him into the study. Prins’s desktop was sleeping.

He brought it to life, put the stick into the machine.

‘Could you check her bedroom again?’ he asked. ‘See if there’s anything I missed?’

A dark look but she left anyway.

There was a single message in Wim Prins’s inbox, sent just a few minutes before. It came from someone calling himself Pop Meester.

An interesting name in the circumstances. Vos thought for a moment, opened the message. There was a zip file with it. Room on the USB stick, just time to get it on there before Liesbeth came back empty-handed. Then he thought for a second and marked the message unread.

‘Well?’ she asked.

He clicked on the first of Katja’s files. Pop music came out of the desktop speakers. Everything on there was an MP3.

‘Piracy’s bad,’ he said, and ejected the USB stick. ‘I’d like to keep this anyway.’

‘I can make some more coffee,’ she said, suddenly hopeful.

‘I’ve got an appointment.’

‘You always have. Another time?’

He pocketed the memory stick and said goodbye.

The morgue was on the ground floor at the back of Marnixstraat overlooking the staff car park and the adjoining bike sheds. Lines of marked squad cars ranged outside the window. Diesel fumes mingled with the stink of autopsy, chemical spirits and blood.

One of the assistants leaned against the wall in the yard, smoking a cigarette. A grey curl waved in through the open window.

Theo Jansen stood near the exit looking at nothing through the glass. Tears in his eyes.

‘Sorry,’ Vos said. ‘I wanted to tell you myself.’

‘Why?’ Jansen shot back at him. ‘Do you think this makes us equal?’

Rosie Jansen’s body lay on a metal anatomy table in the centre of the small room. Her face was visible above the sheet. The gunshot wound had been cleaned up and covered with a bandage.

De Groot had set a team working on the murder overnight. More than had been allotted to the two Surinamese kids who tried to kill Jansen outside the courthouse. It was early. But still they ought to have more than this.

‘Not equal, no,’ Vos said.

The white beard was straggly, uncombed. Jansen seemed much older than he had the day before.

‘But we do connect. She was left next to my home. The doll in her arms. It’s like one I was sent when Anneliese went missing—’

‘I had nothing to do with that!’

‘I know. You told me and I believe you. But whoever this man is . . . these people . . . They want me in this case, Theo. They left some photos of my daughter with Rosie.’

Angry, baffled, Jansen said, ‘You’re telling me she had something to do with your kid’s murder now?’

‘I didn’t say that. Someone wants me to get hooked up in all this. I don’t know why. I wish none of it had ever happened. But it has.’ He shrugged. ‘Here we both are.’

Jansen walked to a chair by the door to the yard, sat down heavily. Laura Bakker asked him if he wanted something. A glass of water. Coffee. He shook his head. Vos had arranged secure transport back to prison.

‘How did they kill her?’ Jansen asked.

Vos took him through as much as they had.

‘She opened the door herself. That would be to someone she knew, wouldn’t it? Or invited in.’

‘Rosie didn’t live in fear,’ Jansen said. ‘She wasn’t scared of anyone. Why should she be? No one goes round killing your kids for God’s sake.’

He realized what he’d said. Shrugged. His eyes strayed to the silver table. Bakker called one of the morgue assistants. The man walked over and covered Rosie Jansen’s swollen dead face.

‘What kind of world is this?’ Jansen asked of no one in particular.

‘Had she had threats?’ Vos asked.

‘No.’ He leaned forward on his arms, stared at the ground. ‘I got a few in jail. Only to be expected. Rosie was just looking after things until I came out.’

‘Not a lot to work with,’ Vos said quietly.

‘Where is he?’ Jansen asked. ‘That Surinamese bastard. Jesus . . . Coming for me I can take. Expect. But not Rosie. Never . . .’

‘He’s still in Ostend. Went there yesterday morning. Private plane at the airport.’

Jansen sat upright, leaned against the wall, looked at him.

‘He’ll be back,’ Vos said. ‘When he does we’ll interview him.’

Silence.

‘We both know he’ll have an alibi we can’t break,’ Vos went on. ‘We know one of the kids is dead. It’s best we assume the second fell on his sword too. So we’ll need someone who’ll talk. Any ideas?’

‘I’ve spent the last two years in a cell thanks to that bastard Mulder. Why keep asking me these stupid questions?’

Vos nodded and said, ‘Because I have to.’

‘Going to let me out now?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Dammit! The judge said—’

‘It’s conditional,’ Laura Bakker interrupted. ‘If you read the judgement. Release on bail pending appeal. In the circumstances . . .’

Jansen glowered at her, then at Vos.

‘You’re on this case now? This is it? The team?’

‘We’re looking for the Prins girl,’ Vos said. ‘I wanted to tell you myself. I felt you were owed that. De Groot’s assembling a team. Mulder’s going to run it . . .’

The big hood jabbed a finger in his direction.

‘I want you. Not that clown. If he hadn’t put me in jail none of this would have happened.’

Vos frowned.

‘You can’t think that way, Theo. Keep asking yourself . . . what if? You’ll go crazy. I’m talking from experience. I’ve found you a single cell in Het Schouw. As close to deluxe as I can get.’

There were six tower blocks in the prison complex of Bijlmerbajes near the Amstel river. Jansen had spent two years in Demersluis, a unit reserved for dangerous prisoners.

‘Het Schouw’s a holiday camp next to your old place. It still has to be solitary,’ Vos added.

Jansen was back staring at the table.

‘And Rosie? When do I get to bury her?’

‘We’ll let you know. Are there relatives we can contact? Her mother . . .’

‘She left me years ago. I don’t even know where she went.’ Tears threatened his vision once more. ‘Why are you asking me this? You’ve got files. You know what I eat for breakfast. When I take a shit. Rosie was all I had.’

Vos checked his watch then asked, ‘Is there anything else?’

‘Can I make a couple of calls? Private? Friends. I need to talk to Michiel Lindeman too.’

‘The lawyer won’t get you out,’ Bakker chipped in.

‘Of course,’ Vos said. ‘There’s a pay phone in the corridor.’

‘And the toilet,’ Jansen added.

The phone and the washroom were a good walk away. Vos nodded at a young officer to deal with it. When Jansen was gone he spoke quietly to the lab technician working in the morgue and asked him to check some records.

Bakker stayed reading the files.

‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

He gave her a business card in a plastic evidence sleeve.

‘Those two boys of Menzo’s had this. The Poppenhuis aan de Prinsengracht. Derelict building. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a doll’s house.’

‘This is that gas explosion?’ she asked looking at the card.

‘Koeman’s out there taking a look. I want to see for myself.’

She didn’t move.

‘This is a picture of the Oortman house, isn’t it? Like the one you got on the first box with the doll in it?’

‘Seems to be,’ he agreed.

‘You can get that picture anywhere, Vos.’ She handed the sleeve back. ‘It’s just clip art. You pick it up off the web.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Chasing a missing kid? On the back of a business card? This . . .’ She nodded towards the silver doors of the morgue. ‘. . . is a murder. Jansen wants you to handle it. De Groot will agree if you ask him.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

She folded her arms. The home-made suit seemed to hang on her more badly than the previous day’s.

‘Laura, there’s nothing either of us can do for Theo Jansen’s daughter. Katja Prins could be alive. With a little luck maybe we could find her. If you’d rather stay here and play with a computer . . .’

‘I’ll get us transport then.’

Vos looked out of the window.

‘It’s not raining, is it?’

Ten minutes after Vos and Bakker left the station Frank de Groot wandered down to the ground floor. The morgue was almost deserted. Rosie Jansen’s body was back in refrigeration. The forensic assistant was head down in a computer.

No pathologist.

No officers.

No Theo Jansen.

He walked over to the assistant, a smart young woman, Dutch Muslim, a pink scarf around her head, music fizzing out of the tiny phones in her ears.

‘Where is everyone?’

She took out the phones and looked up from the screen. He had to repeat the question.

‘They all left.’

‘I can see that.’

She looked upstairs.

‘Management meeting about the two Surinamese kids who went for Theo Jansen. Seems there’s a link with that place on Prinsen where the bomb went off. They were there first.’

‘What link?’

‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that’s what they’re trying to work out. That nice new man went off somewhere.’

The commissaris swore under his breath. She looked shocked. He apologized.

‘Pieter Vos isn’t new.’

‘He’s new to me.’

‘And the crook we had in custody?’

She brightened.

‘The big guy? A couple of prison officers came to pick him up.’ She shook her head. ‘God I hate that part. When they come and see. You’ve got to watch and you hate yourself for it.’ She glanced at the bank of refrigerated storage units. ‘Still can’t imagine what it feels like. One of your own family . . .’

‘Theo Jansen put plenty of business our way,’ De Groot grumbled.

‘Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have feelings, does it?’

Everyone answered back these days.

He tried to call Vos and got voicemail. Then Laura Bakker. She was in the street somewhere. On a bike he guessed. Just managed to tell him they were on their way to the bombed-out house on the Prinsengracht when the signal died.

‘Christ,’ De Groot muttered and got another black look from the young woman in the pink headscarf.

The washroom was an isolated block at the end of a long corridor, close to the car park. He wandered down there, went to the wall, listened to the buses from the station outside as usual, started to take a leak. Said a silent prayer of thanks that Vos was back on duty and starting to look a little like his old bright, sharp self.

A gang war. Katja Prins missing. De Groot had enough to deal with working out how they were going to handle the fallout from Prins’s crazed scheme to clean up the city. He’d left most of that in Klaas Mulder’s hands and wasn’t sure that was such a wise decision.

Zipping himself up he heard a muffled sound. A man, in pain.

He looked along the line of stalls. The last door was half open. A leg, a single black shoe akimbo, poked out from inside.

‘Christ,’ he said again and walked over.

One of the younger uniformed men, not much older than Laura Bakker, face bloodied, eyes scared. Bundled into the corner next to the toilet, hands bound behind his back, mouth stuffed with paper towels held in place by a torn cloth.

De Groot strode over, removed the rag from his mouth, waited as he spat out the towels, gagging along the way.