The House of Dolls Read Free Page B

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