Free The House of Dolls by David Hewson Page A

side. He really had to ask his name. Not now though.
    Four, five faster tourist boats cruised by, all of them taking pictures, which bothered him, not that he could do much except try to bring his hood up round his face. Then he checked the map and realized they’d almost passed the spot the West Indian had marked. He flung round the outboard, cut the engine to idle, steered towards a rusty metal ladder leading up to the pavement above.
    The black guy was right. No one would see the boat. They’d wait there until a call came. From someone inside Miriam said after she’d brought them the cones of greasy fries.
    He didn’t like that much. It was important to see things for yourself.
    Menzo probably had other people around. They’d be watching too. They’d see the two of them climb the rickety steps, look round the broad cobbled road outside the courthouse.
    So what? If they did what Menzo wanted they were fine. If they didn’t . . .
    He wasn’t going to think about that. He loved his sister. Wished she hadn’t come all the way to Amsterdam on a wisp of hope and a forlorn prayer.
    ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
    Then he jumped from the dinghy to the platform at the bottom of the ladder, tied up the boat the way his uncle showed him. Went up the ladder.
    More trees shedding green leaves on the damp, slow day. Police cars. People, lawyers and clients he guessed, smoking outside a severe stone building.
    As he watched, an unusual-looking man with long hair and a young and striking face cycled to the main doors and started talking to the security officer there. He wore old clothes, almost ragged. Behind him, pedalling hard to keep up, was a tall red-haired woman, pretty but anxious, just as oddly dressed.
    Another check of the cheap digital watch on his wrist, one of the few things that had come with him from Paramaribo. Almost three o’clock.
    He walked along the waterfront, found the ladder again, went back down to the dinghy.
    ‘I’m hungry,’ red kid moaned.
    ‘You’ll have to wait,’ he said. ‘We got work to do.’

15
     
    The last time Vos met Theo Jansen was two weeks before Anneliese disappeared. The encounter was friendly enough. One hour in the gang boss’s compact, unostentatious house near Waterlooplein, his daughter in attendance. No lawyer. Jansen thought he didn’t need one and he was right. Vos was fishing. Jansen didn’t take the bait. Michiel Lindeman didn’t get any criminal work until Klaas Mulder took over the anti-gang unit in Marnixstraat.
    Now, as then, Jansen sat next to his stocky, unsmiling daughter Rosie. When he was in post Vos had tried to understand everything he could about the man who, for a while, was the most powerful home-grown crook in Amsterdam. He’d learned about Jansen’s modest childhood and his genuine love for his only child. His ruthless treatment of those who betrayed him and how this was matched by the utmost loyalty for any who stayed on his side.
    What Vos found served to paint a portrait of an ordinary Amsterdammer who turned criminal through accident and opportunity not design. Theo Jansen saw himself as a necessary evil. Someone would run the drug business, control the red-light cabins and the brothels, keeping the dark side in order, maintaining a comfortable status quo in which criminal activity was ring-fenced from ordinary life as much as possible. In Jansen’s eyes it made more sense for a Dutchman to take that role. Better that than one of the many foreigners who’d been jostling for underworld power for the last three decades.
    Earlier that day the judge had listened to Lindeman and decided Jansen could be released on bail pending a legal review. All he had to do was give an undertaking to stay away from his former associates and report regularly to the police, two conditions to which he readily agreed. The case would be considered in the summer. Until then – and after probably – he’d be a free man.
    The hearing