Lovers and Liars Trilogy (126 page)

“Of course,” Gini said politely, wondering whether there was any point in continuing. She had been here, in this lovely, tranquil, exquisitely furnished room for nearly an hour. To enter it was like stepping into one of the Dutch interior paintings she had always loved. A Delft-tiled wood-burning stove stood in the corner; tall windows overlooked one of the loveliest canals in Amsterdam. Erica van der Leyden was as civilized and as understated in appearance as the room; she spoke perfect English; she was about thirty-six, dressed in conservative clothes, low-heeled shoes, a well-cut skirt, a sweater, and pearls.

Only her hands revealed the grief she experienced and the tension she felt. She could not keep them still. Every time she had to speak her dead daughter’s name, her hands clenched. Gini pitied her deeply. She could see that Erica van der Leyden was a woman fighting desperately to stay calm, a woman hanging on by the slenderest of threads.

There was only one discordant element in this room, and that was the teenage girl now slouched in a chair to Gini’s right. She had been introduced as Fricke, Anneke’s elder sister, and was about sixteen. She was not prepossessing, and Gini suspected she both knew that, and chose to emphasize it. She was overweight, with heavy eyeglasses, and long, fair, greasy hair. She was wearing jeans and a turtleneck sweater, and she, too—to judge from the few sullen remarks she had so far made—spoke excellent English.

Her mother had already made two attempts to persuade her to leave the room. Neither had been successful, for all that strict upbringing. Rising to her feet now, Erica van der Leyden made a third.

“Fricke, I’m sure you must have some studying to do.”

“I’ve already done it.”

“Then if you would leave us alone, please, for just a short while. You can see—this isn’t easy for Miss Hunter or for me.” She hesitated, then said something more sharply, in Dutch. Fricke gave her another sullen stare and did not move.

“Why shouldn’t I stay? I’m Anneke’s sister. I don’t suppose it occurs to anyone I might have something useful to say.”

The rudeness, and the fact that she spoke in English so Gini could not mistake the rudeness, seemed to please her. Erica van der Leyden flushed, and Gini quickly intervened.

“No, please. Don’t ask Fricke to leave on my account. It’s true. She might well remember something—something that seems unimportant perhaps.”

Fricke made a small grimace that might have implied satisfaction, or scorn. Her mother gave a resigned gesture of the hands and returned to her chair. She gave Gini a bewildered, helpless look. Gini could feel this interview slipping away from her. She leaned forward.

“Perhaps, Mrs. van der Leyden, if you could describe Anneke to me. I know it must be painful, but under the circumstances…”

“Of course.” Her hands twisted in her lap. “Another young girl is dead. A third is missing. My heart goes out to their parents. I wish I could assist, but—”

“If you could just tell me the kind of things Anneke liked, that might help. Did she like to go to the movies, or dance? Did she like music?”

“Well, she liked music, I suppose—modern music, as most girls of her age do. She was interested in clothes. She used to buy fashion magazines, didn’t she, Fricke? We had some arguments, as mothers and daughters do, about hair, and makeup and clothes—but nothing serious. Anneke was a very sweet girl, not as clever as Fricke, of course, but imaginative. Gregarious. She had lots of friends. She had pen pals too, all over the world. She loved receiving letters and cards. And then she was quite good at languages. She liked to travel. We had all been to Italy, and Spain, and to Switzerland to ski. She made a school trip to Paris last year, and another, the year before, to London, which was a great excitement. She took ballet classes. She was good at dancing, very graceful…”

It was the very ordinariness of what she was describing that undermined her: Gini saw the realization come into her face—that the girl she was describing might be any young girl from a reasonably privileged and educated background. Her own inability to convey her daughter’s uniqueness—that was what made her suddenly choke on her words. Tears rose to her eyes. With a gesture of apology she rose and turned away.

Gini expected Fricke to go to her mother then, and attempt to comfort her, but the girl did not move. She continued to sprawl, exactly as before, watching with an air of surly condescension. Gini stood.

“Mrs. van der Leyden,” she said. “This is distressing you. I’m sorry. Perhaps it would be better if I left now?”

“No. Please. You’ve come a long way. I said I would see you. Perhaps—there’s a photograph of Anneke I would like to show you. I’ll get it. If you would excuse me one moment…”

She left the room. In the heavy silence that followed, Gini returned to her chair. She picked up the note Anneke’s mother had produced earlier, the note that Anneke had left behind. It was dated the second of April, the previous year. On an attached sheet of paper, for Gini’s benefit, was a neatly inscribed translation. It read:

Dear Mother and Father,

Yesterday I met a new friend, called Star. He is a wonderful man, and very kind. I’m going with him to England for just a few days. I’ll be back Friday. I’ll call from England. Don’t worry.

Lots of love,

Anneke

Nine months later she was dead. Her parents never saw her alive again. It was the stuff of every parent’s nightmares, and the note’s insouciance, its naïveté, chilled Gini to the bone.

“She actually believes all that, you know.”

Fricke spoke so suddenly that Gini started.

“I’m sorry?”

“My mother.” Fricke rose. “She actually believes all that rubbish she said now. Pen pals. Ballet lessons.” She gave Gini a measuring look. “I suppose you believed it too.”

“Not necessarily.” Gini returned that look coldly. “Your mother was trying to help me. She may be mistaken in what she said.”

“Oh, yeah? She’s mistaken all right. My father too. They didn’t understand Anneke. They didn’t know her at all.”

“Look, do you have something to tell me?”

“I might have.”

“Then why don’t you get on with it and stop wasting my time?”

The girl flushed, then gave a shrug and turned away. Gini waited. Her instinct was not to prompt and not to plead—and it seemed to be correct, for it was Fricke who was the first to give way.

“I can’t talk to you here.” She hesitated. “You know the Leidseplein? It’s a big square, near the Vondel Park.”

“I know it. I’ve been to Amsterdam before.”

“There’s a café there, on the north corner. It’s called the Rembrandt. I’ll meet you there in half an hour. I have a violin lesson then. I’ll skip it. She’ll never know…”

“Fricke—”

The girl was already moving toward the door. She gave Gini one last, sneering glance.

“If you’re there, fine. If you’re not—who cares… You reporters are all crap anyway. When Anneke first disappeared, they were all on the doorstep, they phoned all the time. Now that she’s dead—what happens? Nothing. They’ve all gone on to the next fucking tragedy.”

She brought out the two expletives with some care. Gini did not react to them or to her comments, and this seemed to disappoint her. She left the room.

Gini remained only a short while longer with Mrs. van der Leyden. Yes, she learned, Anneke had kept a diary and address book, but she had taken them to England, and they had never been found; the police had already been through all her other personal papers, which had provided no information, and which were now packed away. No, there had never been any hint of serious unhappiness or disturbance on Anneke’s part. She was a contented, well-adjusted girl with nice friends from good families.

This portrait did not convince Gini, and she knew it did not truly convince Anneke’s mother either; that was why she stressed its accuracy so desperately and at such length. She continued to speak in this way as she led Gini down the stairs and across the hall. There, her hand on the front door, she abruptly stopped. “Sometimes she would have these little moods, of course,” she went on, pleading in her eyes. “As all teenagers do, as Fricke does. It’s nothing. It passes. It’s part of growing up. She knew how much we loved her. She loved her family in return.”

Gini could hear the agonized unspoken questions, and read them in her eyes. They were the same questions Mina’s parents had not dared to voice to her the previous night: What didn’t we see, how did we fail her, where did we go wrong?

“Please. Take the photograph. Keep it. It’s yours.”

Erica van der Leyden pressed the picture of Anneke into Gini’s hands. Her face crumpled, became lax with grief.

“I
loved
her,” she said with sudden passion. “I loved her so much. If you don’t have children, you can’t understand. I love my husband, of course—we’ve been married many years, and I would never tell him this… But the way I love him, it’s nothing,
nothing
compared to the way I love my daughters. Is that terrible? I don’t care. It’s true. If I had to sacrifice him for them, I wouldn’t hesitate, not for one second. Him, myself, this house, everything we possess—it’s all meaningless, I’d abandon it all tomorrow, I’d
kill
to bring her back—”

“Please,” Gini began.

“—that’s what it means to be a mother. No man on earth can ever feel like that. Such desperate desperate love. Oh, dear merciful God…”

She was shuddering from head to foot. She covered her face with her hands, then suddenly gripped Gini hard, forcing her to look up at her face.

“Tell me Anneke knew that. If I could just believe she knew that…”

“I’m absolutely certain she knew it,” Gini said quietly. “Mrs. van der Leyden, I’m sure she knew…”

It was an inadequate reply, but it seemed to console Anneke’s mother—temporarily, at least.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “I pray to God you’re right.”

Leaving the house, Gini walked away fast, and stood by the canal, holding tight against the railings of the bridge. She was trembling with the force of Erica van der Leyden’s emotion. It had passed from Anneke’s mother into her; she felt as if it were in her lungs and heart and blood. It was fearsome, and she feared it most because it had not simply been transferred from Anneke’s mother to herself—something within her had risen up to meet it, to recognize it. I have been
claimed,
Gini thought, beginning to pace the bridge, breathing in great gusts of the cold air; and because she knew that this had always lain in wait for her, that it was her female birthright, this moment was one she never forgot.

She crossed to the far side of the canal and looked back. Anneke’s mother was drawing the blinds against the gathering dusk. Gini knew she had crossed a divide. For a moment she felt physically weak, weighted down by a disabling passion and concern. The next instant she experienced its very opposite, a heady strength so powerful, so affirmative, she felt light with joy.

She had been ready for this initiation into womanhood, she thought. She had been preparing for it since arriving in Sarajevo, but how curious, how unlikely, that this revelation should be effected in a strange city, in the bourgeois hall of a bourgeois house, by a woman she had never previously met.

This was how it felt to be a mother; this was the nature of that condition; she could feel its vulnerability and its power flow in her veins. She felt a sudden and overwhelming flood of gratitude to the woman who, having lost a child, had given her this gift.

Was the conduit grief, or love? Both, she thought, and, turning, quickening her pace, made her way toward the Leidseplein, and its cafés and its lights.

In the summer months the Rembrandt café would have been filled, no doubt, with students, backpackers, the international army of the young. Now, in January, its interior was almost deserted. Those few customers there were all foreign and elderly, perhaps retired couples taking low-price mid-winter breaks.

Gini chose a prominent table by the windows and ordered coffee. She waited, calming herself, forcing her mind back to her work, though she knew from this moment on, she worked with new purpose and a deeper determination, and that her work would be informed by the emotion she had seen in Erica van der Leyden’s face. Two young girls had died; Mina Landis would not make a third, she would not let that happen—and as she let that thought settle in her mind, she felt it was not some empty assertion or boast: she was
armed
now, and injury to another daughter, another child, was something she could actually prevent.

She needed assistance, however; she needed some new lead. Unless Fricke proved helpful, she could see that this visit, even if far from a wasted journey for her, was one that would produce little hard information. She needed a signpost; someone had to show her which road to take next.

She had already seen the police inspector who had handled Anneke’s case; he also had spoken perfect English, and been eager to assist. But nine months of inquiries, it seemed, had thrown up virtually nothing.

“Your police have the advantage over us,” he said. “They have a description at least. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised Star actually exists. I’d decided Anneke van der Leyden invented the name. It wouldn’t have surprised me. With girls her age, nothing does.”

A dead end, Gini thought. The previous day, at Max’s, before Rowland left with Lindsay for London, she had tried to persuade him once more to let her talk to his DEA contact here. She had been expecting a refusal, and a flat refusal was precisely what she got.

“Then just give me a place name, Rowland,” she had said, walking out to the drive with him. “A café. A bar. Somewhere this Dutch chemist goes, where his American partner hangs out.”

“No. I will not. I’ve already explained. I get information on condition I do nothing to prejudice a DEA investigation that’s been in place for months.”

“I’m
not
going to prejudice it, for God’s sake. What do you think I’m going to do, Rowland? March up to these guys, order a crate of White Doves, flash my press card, and demand Star’s real name or else?”