The House of Dolls (23 page)

He rolled back his head and sighed.

‘I’m sorry.’

Vos got up and walked to his briefcase.

‘You need to see this.’ He pulled an envelope out of the case. It had the stamp of forensic on it. ‘Don’t share it around. I want to try to understand . . .’

There were two reports, each about DNA samples. One for Katja Prins. The second for Anneliese.

Bakker read them. Then read them again. Put them down. Looked at him and said, ‘So that’s why the result came back so early this afternoon? From forensic in the Doll’s House? You’d already been asking.’

He’d gone back to playing with the things in the doll’s house again, setting the table straight, the tiny figures back in their places.

‘Does it mean what I think?’ she asked.

‘Anneliese and Katja shared the same father,’ Vos said. ‘Wim Prins. Liesbeth worked for him when I first met her. She did lots of temp jobs over the years. For a while she was a volunteer in a legal advice centre he used to visit. I never . . .’

He stopped for a moment, looking as if he didn’t want to continue.

‘We were so . . . happy. So normal. So . . . dull and boring and predictable I guess. At least I was.’

‘You asked for those records this afternoon. You must have thought—’

‘I never thought we were anything out of the ordinary. Just another family trying to do what was right. You lose everything in the end, don’t you? Everything . . . everyone you love. They’re taken from you, one way or another.’

This was important. She understood that. Understood too that it puzzled Vos in ways he couldn’t quite fathom.

‘You must have wondered, Pieter,’ she repeated. ‘Otherwise why check?’

Vos finished fixing the tiny rooms on the first floor.

‘I told you. One day you open a door knowing what’s behind it.
Knowing.
But really it’s just an illusion. A pack of lies. Everything is. Every last thing.’

He set one more tiny shape upright on a chair.

‘And the worst part is . . . when you lie to yourself.’

She waited, said nothing.

‘I worked and worked at Marnixstraat because I told myself that was what they paid me for.’ A shrug, the smile. ‘It wasn’t true. Not really. I was staying away from her. I guess I must have known something was wrong. I didn’t want to see it. Face it. I didn’t notice I was staying away from Anneliese as well.’

He nodded, tried to make sure the words were right.

‘I lied to myself because it was easier that way. Maybe when Anneliese was older we’d have dealt with it. Maybe not.’ The quietest of laughs. ‘I’m not very grown up, am I? You wouldn’t play these games in Dokkum.’

‘People play those games everywhere. Don’t fool yourself. What are you going to do?’

‘I’ll talk to Liesbeth tomorrow. About the blood. About . . . Anneliese.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘This is between the two of us for now.’

‘You can’t keep that to yourself.’

‘I know. That’s why I told you.’

She got up, shuffled her coat around her. Wanted some fresh air.

‘Van der Berg thinks you should stay clear of this,’ she said. ‘Maybe he’s right.’

‘Would Liesbeth thank me for that? I want to find Katja Prins. I want that more than anything.’

‘So you can ask her why your daughter . . . why Anneliese died in an Amsterdam brothel?’

‘She was my daughter,’ Vos insisted. ‘DNA’s got nothing to do with it. We brought her up. I’m her father. And I don’t know she’s dead. Not yet.’

‘Not if . . . Not if you say so.’

Laura Bakker stopped. It was as if she wasn’t even there. Engrossed, obsessed, Vos had turned to the second floor, the main bedroom. He asked her to reach into his case and bring out a pair of forensic gloves. Then, with the stealth and care of a surgeon, he reached inside, lifted the tiny sheets, pulled something out from beneath the covers.

Another photo. Two young girls, happy, healthy, smiling for the camera. Not in the Vondelpark this time. They were in front of a tall terraced house with tulle curtains in the windows.

Anneliese and Katja Prins posing outside the privehuis called the Doll’s House. Before the bomb hit.

‘Forensic did a great job, didn’t they?’

‘Looks like it,’ Vos agreed.

‘Someone’s trying to tell you something, Pieter.’

He nodded, looked at her, surprised perhaps.

‘True,’ Vos said. ‘But what?’

Anna de Vries looked. Couldn’t move.

The thing in his hands was a knife. He must have been holding it low down as he stood there, grinning.

It was a knife and it felt cold and cruel as the sharp point took her breath away.

The phone slipped from her fingers and he didn’t seem to notice. He was too occupied with keeping the blade tight inside her, the force so hard and insistent she couldn’t even scream.

De Wallen. The red-light district. Not a place to wander at night. She’d known that all along.

And this was a mugging of a kind. Just by the last man in Amsterdam she’d have expected.

Jaap Zeeger walked into Marnixstraat just after eight in the morning, asked for ‘Mr Vos’, waited patiently in reception, hands on knees.

They came down and took him into an interview room where Bakker turned on the recorder.

‘First time we’ve met and you haven’t cautioned me, Mr Vos,’ Zeeger said with a grin.

Bakker had brought along the file. Zeeger was thirty-four. A string of minor convictions, mainly drug-related. Time in jail. Time in state drug treatment.

Vos could scarcely believe it was the same man. Lean, with clean dark hair, a face that was pockmarked but more healthy than before. He looked ordinary. Not the sad, sick foot soldier he’d been when he was one of Jansen’s minions. Zeeger had a black leather jacket, black jeans, clean shiny shoes. He said he was working part-time for a courier service and was hoping for a full-time job there soon. He’d been away on holiday at a caravan camp in Texel. Got back the night before. Heard from Til Stamm the police had been looking for him.

Now she’d gone to Texel, to the same caravan he used. One owned by the Yellow House, the rehab charity she’d mentioned and said she had nothing to do with.

Bakker queried that. Zeeger bristled.

‘Til’s a nice girl. She wasn’t lying. They had the caravan going free so I asked. They said she could have it.’

He took some gum out of the pocket of his jacket, popped it into his mouth.

‘Don’t smoke any more?’ Vos asked.

‘Gave it up. Gave up all that crap I got fed. And you know where I learned to use that shit? In jail. Where you lot put me.’

‘We’re terrible people sometimes,’ Vos agreed. ‘Where’s Katja?’

‘Dunno. I went off to Texel a week ago. She was still here. Seemed happy enough.’

‘What do you know about the privehuis on the Prinsen?’ Bakker asked. ‘The Doll’s House? Nice place for young girls.’

He waved a skinny hand at her.

‘I never went there. All I did for Mr Jansen was run round his pot and pills and fetch a bit of money from time to time. He’d tell you that too if you lot hadn’t let him go. That brothel stuff wasn’t my thing. Besides . . .’

For the first time he looked shifty.

‘Besides what?’ Vos demanded.

‘I heard the whispers. Bad things. Young girls. I don’t think Mr Jansen knew, mind. He was dead regular about what went on. Then it closed down and the Thai lady running it got bought out by Jimmy Menzo. I wasn’t going anywhere near him. Not even when I was dead sick.’

He balled his fist and thumped the desk. So hard the recorder jumped.

‘And I was sick. Not bad. Not evil like you lot said. I was sick and I got myself cured. What I’m telling you’s the truth. Don’t care what Mr Mulder says any more. How much he beats me round the head and threatens me with all them things I never did. Doesn’t—’

‘Where’s Katja?’ Vos asked again.

The lean man in black pushed his seat back from the table. Said he’d like a coffee. Bakker went and fetched three plastic cups. Vos waited, thinking. Silent.

Shushed Laura Bakker when she started to throw questions at Zeeger again.

He wanted to be heard. That much was clear. Wanted to say something in his own time, his own way.

‘I wasn’t nothing to do with your daughter, Mr Vos,’ Zeeger said when he’d taken a swig of coffee. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’

Vos nodded.

‘I don’t know who put that stuff in my place. I got home and found someone had left me a package. A doll. Them clothes. I was too out of it to notice things back then. Maybe it was someone else in Jansen’s lot. Menzo’s. Maybe . . .’ His eyes shot briefly to the door. ‘Maybe someone here. You think of that?’

‘We’re not interested in what happened back then. We need to find Katja,’ Bakker said.

‘Can’t help,’ he said, shaking his head, starting to look nervous. ‘Honestly. She was there when I left. She was good too. We went to the Yellow House that afternoon. Me and Kat had sorted ourselves. No more dope. No more booze.’ He raised a finger, as if trying to remember something he’d been taught. ‘We’re clear and clean. Clear and clean. That’s it.’

Bakker swore mildly. This morning she wore a different kind of suit. Green trousers, a too-bright tartan jacket, green sweater with the crucifix on. The colours didn’t so much clash as argue vociferously. Nothing fitted terribly well. Auntie Maartje again, Vos guessed. Not that his own clothes – fresh pair of jeans, another dark sweater, a polo shirt underneath it – were much to write home about.

‘Where . . .?’ she asked.

‘I . . . don’t . . . know.’ He took out the gum, wrapped it inside a tissue, pocketed it. Bit into another piece. ‘I’ll tell you this though. Thinking back about it now I reckon she was scared.’

Vos looked up.

‘Of what?’ he asked.

‘Of who you mean.’

Nothing more.

‘We’ll sit here until you say something,’ Vos told him. ‘If it takes all day.’

‘There you go! Just like Mr Mulder, aren’t you?’ His voice was high and full of a sudden pain. ‘Don’t matter I fixed myself, does it? As far as you’re concerned I’m just another bit of street scum you can lean on any time. Blame the likes of me . . .’

Laura Bakker put her head in her hands and groaned.

Zeeger went quiet.

Then she placed her elbows on the table, looked him in the eye.

‘This is really simple, Jaap. Katja’s missing. It looks as if she’s been kidnapped. The way Vos’s girl was three years ago. They knew each other . . .’

His pale, foxy face crumpled.

‘They did?’

‘They knew each other,’ she went on. ‘And we don’t want Katja to disappear off the face of the earth like Anneliese. Do you?’

Nothing for a while. Then he said, ‘Why ask me? I don’t count. Not against you lot. Not against all them big people . . .’ He nodded at the opaque window, bright sun beyond the glass. ‘Out there.’

Vos folded his arms. Checked his watch.

‘She didn’t talk about it,’ Zeeger went on, looking as if he was giving away a secret. ‘Only the once and then we’re not supposed to say. What happens in session stays in session.’

‘Says who?’

‘Miss Jewell. At the Yellow House. You can’t become clear and clean unless you tell the truth, can you? And you can’t tell the truth if you know someone’s going to blab it out loud the moment you’ve left the room.’

Bakker sighed, long and slow.

‘It’s all right for you!’ Zeeger yelled, and at that moment sounded like his old self. ‘They won’t be banging on your door, will they?’

‘Menzo’s dead,’ she said slowly. ‘Jansen’s on the run. If we find him he’s back in jail for years. If we don’t—’

‘It’s not
them
I’m worried about! Jesus. Kat didn’t mess with Mr Jansen or that Surinamese bastard. You lot . . .’ He shook his head. Ran his thin fingers through the black combed hair. ‘You don’t see much, do you? You think the only bad in the world’s us. Can’t see beyond the end of your stuck-up noses.’

Vos looked interested. Bakker very.

‘Go on, Jaap,’ she said.

‘And end up dead too?’

‘I thought Kat was your friend,’ Bakker told him. ‘Didn’t she help you get . . . clear and clean? Don’t you owe—?’

‘Shut up,’ he barked at her. ‘Shut up both of you.’ He gulped at the coffee again. Cold. Zeeger screwed up his face at the taste. ‘She was frightened. I told you. Just blurted it out once when we were in session.’

‘With Miss Jewell?’ Bakker asked.

Nothing.

‘Jaap,’ she said, trying to look patient. ‘I keep saying this and you keep ignoring it. No one’s seen Katja for a week. There’s a ransom note. Photos of her. A video . . .’

He didn’t react.

‘Do you want to see them?’ Vos asked.

No answer.

‘Fine,’ Bakker said, then pulled out her smartphone, put it on the table, pulled up the video that came with the doll on Rosie Jansen’s body.

Dark room. Katja in a chair. Screaming. Looking as if she was being hit.

Zeeger couldn’t take his eyes off the tiny screen.

‘Stop!’ he screeched after a few seconds. ‘For God’s sake turn that off.’

Bakker hit pause. Katja’s face stayed on the screen, mouth downturned, frozen in a long, pained scream.

‘You know nothing, you lot,’ Jaap Zeeger whined.

‘That’s true,’ Vos agreed. ‘Enlighten us.’

Zeeger’s head went from side to side.

‘We’ll look after you, Jaap,’ Bakker added. ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’

He laughed at that. But after a while he started to talk. Bakker blinked, checked the recorder, made sure it was capturing every word.

Twenty minutes later when he’d finished Vos stood up, shook his hand.

‘I need you to make a statement now, Jaap. Just repeat what you said, on the record. Then sign it.’

‘I just told you . . .’

Vos smiled.

‘It’s how it works. You know that. You’re on the right side for once.’

They left him in the interview room, called for two statement officers. Stood in silence for a moment.