The House of Dolls (3 page)

‘Of course it’s not,’ he said, making an effort to sound reasonable. ‘This is Amsterdam. How could it be?’

The houseboat was almost invisible from the road, an ugly black hulk marooned in the Prinsengracht beneath the line of the pavement. The cheapest on the market when he and Liesbeth sold the apartment, split the money, went their separate ways. It needed so much work and he couldn’t afford even half of it on the pittance of a cut-down, early retirement police pension.

‘There’s a crook called Theo Jansen in the appeal court today,’ she added. ‘According to what I hear they think he’ll go free.’

Another sudden stop. This time he forgot to reach for the dog. Sam barked testily as he was flung against the front of the wicker basket.

‘Sorry, boy,’ Vos murmured and reached out to stroke his wiry fur. ‘What?’

‘This Jansen chap’s in front of the judge this afternoon. Likelihood is he’s on his toes straight after . . .’

They’d almost cycled past the place. The court lay along the Prinsengracht too, close to Leidseplein. Most of Pieter Vos’s working life, the police station, the courthouse, the cafes and brown bars of the Jordaan where he retreated to talk and think, lay within walking distance of his ramshackle houseboat.

‘If the idiots let Theo out the first thing he’ll do is start a war,’ he said. ‘Frank knows that as well as anyone. I hope he’s prepared. What in God’s name are they thinking?’

‘They don’t have much choice. You didn’t stay to finish the job, did you?’ She had a harsh and judgemental tone to her flat northern voice when she wanted. One that seemed old for her years. ‘That’s what they reckon in Marnixstraat. You quit and someone else screwed up in your place.’

A council boss’s daughter either kidnapped or demanding a ransom for herself. The city’s former gang lord about to get out of jail, looking for revenge against the Surinamese crook who’d seized his territory, the coffee shops, the brothels, the drug routes, while Jansen was in prison.

Pieter Vos could understand why his old friend was worried.

‘You’ve got a lot to say for yourself, Aspirant Bakker. Not much in the way of tact.’

She leaned closer. Pointed a long finger in his face. Chewed nails, he noticed. No polish. No make-up on her face.

‘I didn’t join the police to learn tact. De Groot told me to bring you in.’ She had green eyes, very round, a little on the large side, now gleaming with a mixture of determination and outrage.

‘That’s what I’m going to do. If I have to follow you around all day.’

He stifled a smile and pushed the bike gently forward again.

‘At the risk of repeating myself, I’m no longer a police officer.’

The boat looked dreadful in the strong spring sun. Peeling black paint. A shrivelled and desolate garden around the deck. The railings rusty. The wood rotten in places. In front of the bows, by the next mooring, a small dinghy sat half-flooded in the dank canal water, just as it did the day, almost two years before, when Vos moved in.

This casual neglect, a lack of care and worry, helped him feel easy in this quiet and leisurely part of the city. The Drie Vaten bar by the bridge to Elandsgracht. The little shops and restaurants. The people more than anything. The Jordaan was home. He couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

A portly figure strode out from the foot of the street, near the statues of Johnny Jordaan and his band. In his shabby jeans Vos never thought of himself as old. Nor did most of those he met as far as he could work out. They seemed to treat him like an odd adolescent, trapped in amber in his houseboat, listening to old rock, visiting the nearby coffee shop for a smoke from time to time, lingering over beers in the Drie Vaten.

Seeing Frank de Groot gave him pause for thought. At forty-nine the boss of Marnixstraat was just ten years his senior. But he looked like a man well into middle age now, lined face, neatly clipped dark hair and tidy moustache, both too black to be real. His wan, watery eyes appeared tired and worried. A gulf had emerged between them. Vos had gone nowhere, gone backwards maybe, since he locked himself in the houseboat on the Prinsengracht. De Groot had stayed in post and that had marked him.

‘Pieter! Pieter!’ De Groot rushed up and forced a small package into Vos’s hands. ‘I thought I might catch you here.’

‘Here’s where I live, Frank. Where else would I be?’

‘Hanging round the Rijksmuseum,’ De Groot replied with a glint in his eye. ‘In the Drie Vaten eyeing up that pretty woman behind the bar. Not fixing your damned boat that’s for sure. This dinghy . . .’

De Groot moaned about the half-sunken boat every time they met.

With a sudden clatter Laura Bakker turned up, shot out her long legs, slammed her heavy boots on the ground.

‘I was on my way to Marnixstraat,’ Vos said. ‘Aspirant Bakker briefed me.’ The green eyes were on him, surprised. ‘She did a good job. All the same I can’t help you.’

‘Cheese!’ De Groot patted the little package. ‘I got it from that shop you like. Kaashuis. They said it’s straight from the farm. It’s Limburger . . .’

The dog was wrinkling its nose at the package.

‘You’re trying to bribe me with cheese? This is pathetic.’

De Groot nodded.

‘True. Please. Can’t we talk? Fifteen years we worked together. It’s not a lot to ask.’

The commissaris wore a fixed smile.

‘You’re looking . . . bohemian, Pieter. More so than ever I’d say.’

Vos climbed off the bike, lifted Sam out of the basket, found the lead in his pocket and a spare bag from the supermarket.

He extended the loop of the leash to Bakker and held out the bag.

‘You wanted a pet. Time to discover what it’s like. Clean up after him. He can’t do it for himself and there’s a fine if you leave it.’

‘I didn’t join the police force to walk dogs,’ she complained.

‘Indulge us,’ De Groot growled.

His voice could turn from amicable to threatening in an instant. She snatched the bag and the lead then bent down and cooed at Sam.

‘Don’t let him beg for food,’ Vos ordered. ‘And keep him away from other dogs. He doesn’t know he’s little.’

The two men watched Bakker chain her bike to the canal railings then wander down the canal, behind the happy, wagging tail of the proudly strutting terrier.

‘That was a dirty trick,’ Vos said.

‘What?’ De Groot asked, all innocence.

‘Sending me the office dunce and hoping I’d take pity on her.’ Vos stared at the wax paper package in his hands. ‘I hate Limburger.’

‘I’m not a cheese man, am I? She’s not a dunce, Pieter. Didn’t choose to be born in Dokkum. Kid just doesn’t fit.’ He thought for a moment then added, ‘Also I think she may believe in God.’ De Groot shook his head. ‘What the hell she’s doing here . . . I’m sorry. I thought she’d mess that up too. Why do you think I turned up?’

Vos lifted his bike onto the boat deck.

‘Do I have to beg?’ De Groot asked. Then he pointed to the half-sunken dinghy next to Vos’s home, the empty hull covered by a grubby tarpaulin. ‘I’ve told you a million times. You should do something about that. It’s against the law.’

Vos put his hands to his head and sighed.

‘It’s . . . not . . . my . . . boat. Remember?’

De Groot hopped from one foot to the other, apologetic, but only mildly.

‘Stuck next to your place like that. Looks like yours.’

‘Inside,’ Vos ordered then walked down the gangplank and threw open the tiny wooden door to his home.

‘De Groot wants us to go to Marnixstraat,’ Liesbeth Prins said. ‘Wim? Are you even listening?’

His office was one of the most palatial in the city hall on Waterlooplein. Long windows, a view. A feeble spring sun hung over the city beyond the window: the canal, the mansions and corporate headquarters, then the sprawling, chaotic community of De Wallen. There were more than eighty thousand people in the tightly enclosed fiefdom of central Amsterdam. Six months before, his Progressive group had seized a surprise number of seats in the elections then forged a fragile alliance with the tiny anti-EU Independence Party. And in the hard bargaining for seats that followed, Prins had won just what he wanted: the role of vice-mayor, with a specific brief.

He was forty-eight, a tall, imposing, unsmiling man. Liesbeth had known him since she was a teenager, though most of her life was spent with Pieter Vos. Now he’d risen from rich city lawyer to full-time politician on the city council, and a part of her had come to wonder: was that why he needed her? To complete the picture?

‘I can’t waste more time on her games,’ Prins said flicking through one of the many reports on his desk. ‘De Groot should have better things to do. God knows—’

‘You think she can be that heartless?’

He took hold of her hands, made her sit down. Looked into her eyes. A big man. A sad man in some ways. There was never the familiarity, the humour, the playful closeness she’d shared with Vos.

‘I know her better than you. She’s been like this ever since Bea died.’

‘Katja’s sick.’ Her voice faltered. She felt cold. Ill maybe. The black dress she’d picked that morning hung loose on her skinny frame. ‘Christ, Wim. I know you never liked the fact she wasn’t so bright. Not the star pupil. Some genius to take over your firm one day. But she’s still your daughter . . .’

Prins placed the report on the desk. She saw the name on the cover in bold black letters:
De Nachtwacht.

The Night Watch. The title taken from the city’s most famous painting, Rembrandt’s massive master work in the Rijksmuseum. A group of armed militia men about to patrol Amsterdam, to keep the city safe. Prins gave the same name to the key element in his election campaign the previous autumn. A promise to clean up De Wallen once and for all. No half-hearted measures any more. No compromises. From the start he’d pledged to make life unbearable for the dealers, the coffee shops, the brothels, the pimps and hookers who’d been there for decades.

No one expected him to win. But with the endless round of recession and austerity the popular mood had become febrile and unpredictable. People were looking for a change, any change. Then the Independence Party began to pick up votes on the back of suspicion about Brussels and the EU. They sensed an opportunity and joined the clamour. De Nachtwacht turned from a minor politician’s pipe dream into a hazy commitment that put him second-in-command in the council, with the one man above him, the Labour party mayor, happy to stand back from De Nachtwacht entirely and watch from a distance the developing furore about its implementation.

‘This,’ Prins said, tapping his finger on the report, ‘is more important than Katja now. I can’t help her any more. I’ve tried. But maybe someone else’s child—’

‘The police want to talk to us.’

‘You should have spoken to me before you called Marnixstraat.’

She shook her head. Ran three bony fingers through her scant, short fair hair.

‘Someone leaves a cardboard coffin outside the door. There’s a doll in it. Some hair. A bloodstain . . .’

‘One more of her games . . .’

‘A doll! A hank of hair. Blood.’

Prins closed his eyes for a second.

‘There’s nothing she won’t do if she needs money for dope.’ He eyed the desk and the reports there. ‘They’re like that.’

‘Katja’s not heartless. She wouldn’t . . . taunt me with this.’

‘You always see the best in people.’ His arms came away. ‘Especially when it’s not there. Stay out of it.’

‘How can I?’

He wasn’t paying attention. Wim Prins was smiling, the way he did for the public these days.

Margriet Willemsen, the pushy young woman who led the Independence Party, had opened the door. Behind her stood Alex Hendriks, head of the council’s general office. A diminutive, quiet man who seemed to live inside the sprawling council offices next to the Opera House on this open square near the heart of Amsterdam.

‘We’ve a meeting about De Nachtwacht,’ Prins said, for her benefit and theirs. ‘Call me later . . .’

‘You can make time if you want,’ she insisted. ‘For Katja’s sake . . .’

Still smiling he put his arm round her, whispered, ‘Tell De Groot I don’t want this in the papers. I don’t want to see her in court either when they pick her out of the gutter. We don’t need that and neither does he.’

Then, brightly, ‘Margriet. Alex.’

‘Is everything OK?’ the woman asked. ‘We didn’t mean to interrupt . . .’

‘You didn’t. Sit down, please.’ The smile again. ‘Liesbeth is just leaving.’

The holding cells of the Prinsengracht courthouse. Basement rooms. No windows. No light. Stale, cold air.

Theo Jansen sat at a plain grey table waiting for his daughter Rosie and freedom. Fifty-nine years old, a giant of a man with the thick white beard of a fallen Santa Claus. When he was nineteen he’d started work as a bouncer for one of the Spui brothels patronized by rich foreigners, corrupt locals and the odd passing Hollywood star. The Seventies were a time of change. Drug liberalization, the consequent dope tourism and the spread of the red-light trade made the mundane profits of brothel-keeping seem tame.

Jansen was a quick apprentice, strong, fit, in the right place. He rose quickly through the gang ranks on the back of his fast fists, even temper, sharp intelligence and steadfast loyalty. Then his boss was cut down in the street during one of the periodic vendettas that gripped the Amsterdam underworld. There was no obvious successor so Theo Jansen, son of a lowly paid line worker from the Heineken brewery, stepped up for the title.

Three further executions, a flurry of generous bribes to politicians local and national, some strong-arm persuasion on the street and the old network was his. Until Pieter Vos came along.

Jansen didn’t hate cops. They had a job to do. Some could be bought. Some could be scared off. Others turned away by subtle coercion brought elsewhere. Vos, a man as relentless as he seemed invisible at times, understood no such pressure. Quietly, doggedly he worked away, chipping at the edges of the city’s criminal empires without fear, pulling in the small fry, offering them the choice between jail or turning informer.