No Way Out
Amsterdam, the evening before New Year’s Eve 1956. Almost nobody on the streets in the Red Light District. The cold wind blows gently through the area, litter blows into the narrow canal. The water in the canal flows with small waves. Hardly anyone in the old warehouse on the Oudezijds Achterburgwal, where there is normally a lot of liveliness. Only Little Annie, who works all the way down, has a client who uses her sexual service.
Chinese Annie, her real name is Anna Maria Zentveld, has pitch-black hair. She works one floor up from Kleine Annie. From her workplace, above street level, she looks down at the men who pass by. But those are few. She doesn’t feel like it tonight, but she still has to pay for the small room. She turns on the radio. Around half past eight that evening there is a radio play that she would like to hear. She has just arrived by taxi, she was visiting acquaintances with her boyfriend Toon, but because she still had to work she went back earlier.
A man was waiting outside. He had seen and spoken to Chinese Annie, but she had sent him away. He had no cash in his pocket and he couldn’t pay her with checks and so he had to ‘just’ arrange money. Now he is back on the small bridge, but the curtains are closed. That means she’s busy now. In the distance a lonely car drives down the narrow canal.
Suddenly a woman comes screaming out of the canal house. In panic she screams for the police, a well-known officer just happens to arrive. “Annie, there is something wrong with Annie!” the woman screams and they walk in together. The neighbor comes out, looks on the sidewalk where the noise is coming from and picks up a rug to beat it out. Then she goes back inside.
Why she didn’t do anything or even wanted to know what was going on, she has to explain at the police station, but she can’t. The neighbor, Katinka, knew Annie very well, they sometimes did a threesome when the customer asked for it. Little Annie is deeply affected. Chinese Annie, her namesake, turned out to have been strangled in her room. But Little Annie didn’t see a man come in, she was busy with a customer. The man who was waiting on the bridge also saw nothing. Then how could she have been killed? And who was driving the car he heard driving away?
The police are puzzled. It is very clear that Chinese Annie has been strangled. She was lying naked on the sofa, hand prints on her neck. Chinese Annie was in her early thirties.
Chinese Annie came from Amsterdam. Her mother Katrien, her nickname was Drunken Tonia, was also a prostitute and from Amsterdam by birth. She did not know who her father was, but Anton had raised her as a father. Anton and Katrien were married, but that marriage did not last long. Anton worked in the harbor, not far from Central Station. That was hard work. Anton’s family came from Castricum, a place not far from Amsterdam, Katrien’s parents came from the Dutch capital. Chinese Annie did not owe her nickname her supposed Chinese appearance, Annie was as Amsterdam as the Dam. Maybe because she made up her eyes like the Chinese: small and narrow? Annie was going to marry her boyfriend, Manke Toon. In a few months it would be. But it clearly did not come to that.
Through her work, Annie knew many men. But who would want to kill her? And why? Toon had stayed with friends that night, and Annie had no enemies. At least, the police couldn’t find them …
A few months after the murder, another woman is killed. Also a prostitute. Anton sits at the funeral, sobbing, drawing attention to the murder of his daughter. But the police investigation is bogged down on watertight alibis and conclusive evidence.
1974. It is eighteen years after the murder, the case of Chinese Annie is closed. There are no new clues in the case and Even if it turns out that those involved have lied to the police, they cannot do anything, because every suspect continues to deny. And there is no supporting evidence. Only years later would murders in the Netherlands never expire. After Chinese Annie, more prostitutes were murdered, but a suspect was not always brought to justice.
