The House of Dolls by David Hewson

piece in the city papers.
    Dead eyes, blank face. But the hair was much the same and the smile . . . was maybe the one Anneliese would have worn had she known. Fated, resigned, half-amused that life should amount to this and nothing more.
    ‘Walk away from Katja and you walk away from our daughter.’
    They were all watching.
    ‘If I couldn’t save Anneliese,’ Vos said and heard his own voice rising angrily, ‘what makes you think I can do it for someone else?’
    Frank de Groot intervened, thrust an ID card into Vos’s hand. An old picture. The same rank. And a piece of paper.
    ‘Let me be the judge of that,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Prins in here even if I have to drag him every inch of the way. This is Katja’s last known address. Some dump near Warmoesstraat. Tell me who you’d like assigned to work alongside you. We’re busy here but take your pick.’
    Laura Bakker stood stiff and nervous in her misshapen grey suit, sad green eyes staring at the floor.
    ‘I’ll take Aspirant Bakker,’ Vos said.
    De Groot blinked. Mulder was laughing.
    ‘This is serious, Pieter,’ the commissaris said in a gruff, annoyed tone.
    ‘Yes,’ Vos said. ‘It is.’
    Then put a hand to Bakker’s arm and led her from the room.

10
     
    When Hendriks was gone, taking his papers and gadgets with him, Margriet Willemsen got up and walked to the window.
    ‘What’s this about your daughter?’ she asked as Prins came to join her.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Don’t give me that, Wim.’
    So he told her. She looked worried.
    ‘What if Hendriks is right? If Menzo or Jansen or one of the other hoods is coming for us?’
    ‘Jansen goes free this afternoon. Those two will be at each other’s throats in a second. It gives us more ammunition to do what we want . . .’
    ‘What’s she like? Katja?’
    ‘She was fine until two, three years ago. Just another teenager.’ He shrugged. ‘Difficult. Not so bright. Never said where she was going. What she was doing. Then . . . It was her mother all over again. God knows I’ve tried. Just a while back there was this place . . .’
    The Yellow House. He’d paid through the nose for that, thought for a time it might be working. Then she was back to the squalid tenement off Warmoesstraat, living like a tramp.
    Willemsen picked up some papers Hendriks had left behind.
    ‘I don’t want this to get in the way. We’re on shaky ground already.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Hendriks is right. People are getting cold feet. We might have to trim things a little . . .’
    ‘No,’ Prins insisted. ‘I won’t allow it.’
    She smiled.
    ‘We’re tearing up the twentieth century. Putting something new in its place. You can’t expect everyone to leap on board from day one. Why should they?’
    ‘Because we’re right.’
    ‘Right doesn’t mean you get to win . . .’
    Prins closed his eyes. Headache coming on.
    ‘I want you to think about your daughter,’ she said. ‘That story’s going to break one way or another. When it does I don’t want to see you like this. You’ve got to look hurt. Concerned.’
    ‘I am hurt. I am concerned.’
    ‘Show it then. Katja going off the rails is proof we’re on the right track. When she turns up we can use that.’
    Margriet Willemsen came close, touched his chest very lightly for the briefest of moments.
    ‘They’ll find her. When they do get her out of Amsterdam. Put her in rehab in America or somewhere. No distractions. For her. For us.’
    He didn’t say anything.
    ‘Do you understand me?’
    His phone was ringing. He looked at the number:
Liesbeth
.
    ‘Past caring,’ he muttered and took the call.

11
     
    Vos insisted they go to Warmoesstraat by bike. He wasn’t a cop yet, whatever Frank de Groot said. The ID card was in his jacket for convenience, nothing else. She seemed keen to avoid cars too. The previous week she’d been driving a station patrol car when it got into an argument with a tram.
    ‘The tram won,’ Bakker said wide-eyed, as if this