The House of Dolls Read Free

asked.
    Battle won.
    ‘Whatever Miriam tells you. Flight goes to London at six o’clock. You’re in Cape Town for breakfast. Looking at a new life.’
    He patted the black gun.
    ‘You hear that? A new life. A little gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.’
    Menzo waited. Miriam Smith waited, standing back on her heels, folding her arms through the brown fur coat.
    ‘Thanks,’ said red kid obediently.
    ‘Yeah,’ said the blue one and stared at the cold stone floor.

3
     
    As usual Sam had stayed with the woman Vos had befriended in the security office. He retrieved the little dog, said thanks, then led him outside. The rain was holding off. He placed the white and tan fox terrier in the front basket of his rusting black pushbike, adjusted the plastic windscreen at the front, pulled two elastic bands out of his jacket pocket and snapped them round the bottom of his wide, unfashionable, creased and shabby jeans to keep them out of the chain.
    Zappa had given way to Van Halen. He pulled out the phones and stuffed them into his pockets. One look at his jeans, the decrepit black bike, the dog in the front. Then he set off into the morning traffic for the ten-minute ride to the houseboat on the Prinsengracht.
    Cyclists and trams. Cars and motorbikes. Baffled tourists wandering among them all, not knowing which way to look.
    He’d asked Frank de Groot straight out: was there any news of Anneliese? The smallest piece of evidence to link her with the Prins girl apart from a doll? The silence that followed said everything.
    Just eighteen months old, the dog circled the basket three times then settled, got bored and, as the bike picked up speed past Leidseplein, rose to his haunches, put his long nose and beard into the wind, turning from side to side with delight, mouth open, white teeth in an apparent grin.
    The first spot of rain and he’d be back behind the windscreen. But spring was beginning to peek out from behind the grey shroud of winter. The lime trees showered the streets with their feathery seeds like tall statues scattering pale-green confetti for a wedding to come. The dog would enjoy his second lazy summer on the water, basking amidst the ragged vegetable and flower pots on the deck, enjoying the attentions of camera-happy tourists. More anonymously, Vos would too. And before the year was out the boat would be finished finally. He could try to think about what might come next.
    A furious ringing of bells from behind, an exchange of cross words in English. Then, as he entered the long straight cycle path that ran alongside the canal, Laura Bakker pedalled briskly to his side muttering curses about tourists.
    She was riding a rusty olive-green granny bike with high handlebars, sitting stiff-backed, a strand of red hair escaping to blow behind her in the spring breeze. The grey trouser suit looked as if it belonged in the 1970s. So, in a way, did Laura Bakker.
    One hand, he saw, worked her phone. Talking while she rode, not looking where she was going. Or, worse, texting. As he watched the thing nearly fell from her grasp. She only stopped it with the sudden, informed response of someone who recognized how truly clumsy she was.
    ‘Vos! Vos!’ Bakker cried when she’d got firm hold of the phone again. ‘Listen to me! Stop, will you? Commissaris de Groot wants to see you to discuss this in person.’
    A pleasure boat slowed on the canal. A pack of people in the front started taking pictures of them. Sam, paws on the front basket, little head into the breeze, shook his fur like a model posing for the camera.
    ‘Why on earth did De Groot send you? Of all people?’ Vos asked, keeping his eyes on the path ahead.
    ‘What’s wrong with me?’ She looked offended. ‘Just because I’m from Dokkum . . . it doesn’t mean I’m a moron.’ A glance towards Marnixstraat. ‘Whatever anyone thinks.’
    ‘I didn’t say that,’ Vos muttered then wove through a crowd of visitors wandering across the cycle track and quickly