Kitabı oku: «The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows: A gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat»
MARNIE RICHES
The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows
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Copyright
Published by Avon
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016
Copyright © Marnie Riches 2016
Marnie Riches asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780008138356
Version 2018-01-24
Dedication
For Weez Maria Owenen, who has grown up to be one of the kickest-assest women I know.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part 1
Chapter 1: London, Belgravia, 16 February
Chapter 2: North West England, Women’s Prison, 27 February
Chapter 3: Amsterdam, Bijlmer District, Later
Chapter 4: South East London, 28 February
Chapter 5: Amsterdam, Mortuary, 28 February
Chapter 6: St. John’s College, Cambridge, Later
Chapter 7: Amsterdam, Vinkeles Restaurant, 2 March
Chapter 8: A Village South of Amsterdam, 25 May, the Previous Year
Chapter 9: St. John’s College, Then, The Bun Shop Pub, Cambridge, 3 March, Present
Chapter 10: Amsterdam, Sloterdijkermeer Allotments, Then, an Apartment Block in Bijlmer, 4 March
Chapter 11: Amsterdam, Apartment in Bijlmer, Then, Police Headquarters, Later
Chapter 12: A Village South of Amsterdam, 25 May, the Previous Year
Chapter 13: The City of London, 5 March, Present, Mid-Morning
Chapter 14: London, Westminster, Later
Chapter 15: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, 5 March
Chapter 16: South East London and Amsterdam, 6 March
Chapter 17: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, 30 May, the Previous Year
Chapter 18: Berlin, Zoological Gardens, 9 March, Present
Chapter 19: Berlin, a Hotel in Potsdamer Platz, Later
Chapter 20: Berlin, Neukölln District, 10 March
Chapter 21: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, 11 March
Chapter 22: Amsterdam, Marie’s Apartment, Later
Chapter 23: A Village South of Amsterdam, 8 June, the Previous Year
Chapter 24: South East London, 15 March
Chapter 25: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, 16 March
Chapter 26: The City of London, 16 March
Chapter 27: City of London, Then, Aunty Sharon’s House, South East London, Later
Chapter 28: A Village South of Amsterdam, 4 August, the Previous Year
Chapter 29: Amsterdam, Oud West District, 12 August, the Previous Year
Chapter 30: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, Later
Chapter 31: London, Westminster, 17 March, Present
Chapter 32: St. John’s College, Cambridge, Then, Cambridge Train Station, 18 March
Chapter 33: Doubletree Hilton Hotel in Cambridge, Later
Chapter 34: South East London, Later
Chapter 35: London, the West End, Later
Part 2
Chapter 36: A Village South of Amsterdam, 16 January, Earlier That Year
Chapter 37: London, South Docklands, 17 January
Chapter 38: South East London, Later, Then 21 January
Chapter 39: South East London, Later
Chapter 40: South East London, Aunty Sharon’s House, 22 January
Part 3
Chapter 41: London, Liverpool Street Station, 19 March
Chapter 42: London, South Bank, at the Same Time
Chapter 43: London, Later
Chapter 44: A Railway Arch in South East London, at the Same Time, and Flashbacks to Early February
Chapter 45: South East London, at the Same Time
Chapter 46: South East London, Aunty Sharon’s House, Later
Chapter 47: Amsterdam, Above The Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, Much Later, Then Sloterdijkermeer Allotments, Then, Even Later, Van Den Bergen’s Apartment
Chapter 48: Amsterdam, Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, Later Still
Chapter 49: Amsterdam, Bijlmerbajes Prison Complex, Then, Marie’s Apartment, Then, Sloterdijkermeer Allotments, 20 March
Chapter 50: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, Then the Deenen’s House in a Village South of Amsterdam, 23 March
Chapter 51: Amsterdam, The Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, Then, Consulting Rooms, Then, Kamphuis’ Home Near Vondelpark, Later
Chapter 52: Amsterdam, Outside Kamphuis’ Home, Much Later
Chapter 53: Amsterdam, Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, 24 March
Chapter 54: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, Then, Carlien Dekker’s House, Later Still
Chapter 55: A Village South of Amsterdam, Carlien Dekker’s House
Chapter 56: Zandvoort, Kennemer Golf & Country Club, Later
Chapter 57: Maldives, North Male Atol, Four Hours Ahead
Chapter 58: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, Later
Chapter 59: A Village South of Amsterdam, Carlien Dekker’s House, Then, Marie’s Office, Police Headquarters, Later
Chapter 60: Amsterdam, Sloterdijkermeer Allotments, Later
Chapter 61: Amsterdam, Bijlmerbajes Prison Complex, 30 March
Chapter 62: Amsterdam, Mortuary, 31 March
Chapter 63: Amsterdam, The Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, at the Same Time, Then, Police Headquarters, Later
Chapter 64: Amsterdam, Prison Services’ Family Centre, 1 April
Chapter 65: Amsterdam, Hasselblad’s House, 2 April
Chapter 66: Amsterdam, Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, Then, Vinkeles Restaurant, Later, 4 April
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
London, Belgravia, 16 February
Cold jabbed his raw skin where it was exposed. Hands, wrapped in torn, woollen gloves; the filthy threads had come loose, long ago. Blackened nails, blue fingers, toes on the cusp of being devoured by greedy frostbite. Vulnerable. But his discomfort mattered no longer. Only watching these two men, as he crouched behind a Range Rover, out of view. On this grand Belgravia street in London, double yellow lines – hidden beneath thick, shovelled banks of snow, but there nonetheless – ensured a clear line of sight.
Problem was, a man like him stood out, here. An imperfect grey figure, juxtaposed against flawless white stone; perfectly white snow, too deep to clear with grit, even in the city; icicles hanging from every portico and window frame – deadly diamond daggers.
Move along, sir. Sorry, no spare change. Shift, or I’ll call the police.
Always looks of utter disdain, as these wealthy denizens of SW1X picked up the scent of urine and stale alcohol. Especially the women. Clad in real fur, now. Since the Siberian winter of discontent …
Fuck them.
He had eyes only for these two men, standing outside Mosimann’s private restaurant. A picture of establishment respectability, posed in their cashmere outer layers before ecclesiastical built-beauty, where now only millionaires could afford to dine. Worshipping at the altar of fine food and business transactions, sealed over bottles of wine that cost thousands. Scum of the earth, these two. Black hearts so easily hidden beneath bespoke Jermyn Street clothing. Lies. Corruption. Evil.
His heart was pounding, as he rehearsed in his mind what he intended to do. Steeling himself, though a man could have no better motivation. Would he miss his chance?
Across the road, the men laughed. Easy in each other’s company. Moving aside, to let a blonde beauty pass. Some Russian oligarch’s squeeze, walking her lapdog. Trot, trot, trot. Firm buttocks clad in baby-pink Lycra. A show-pony, even in harsh conditions, drawing the men’s gaze. Now, he had a good look at them, as they turned to follow the blonde’s progress.
His quarry was neither tall nor fat. An average man in physical respects. Forty something. Dark-haired. Ordinary looks compensated for with immaculate grooming and a physique that had been created in an expensive gym. He knew this much. He also knew that this man lived in a mansion block with Chelsea views of the river. Too much security round there. So, the backstreets of Knightsbridge would suffice, providing things went according to plan.
The other – Mephistopheles with a paunch – would wait. Somewhat older. Fifty-two, in fact. That his chicanery had gone undiscovered for decades was barely credible. But different rules applied to the super-rich. Not today, though. Not today. A day of reckoning was nigh.
Pushing thoughts of the pain in his joints out of his mind, he crossed the road in haste. Dodged a black cab, skidding along on the ineffectually gritted asphalt. Slush, seeping through the holes in boots lined with newspaper.
The men were on the move. Ambling along. The older man even made a snowball and hurled it against the wall, just beyond the frontage of Waitrose supermarket. Ha ha. Playful and lighthearted. Apologising, like some charming billionaire bastard who fits right in, here, to the elderly woman it had almost taken out, before it had plopped harmlessly onto the brickwork. Chatting amiably, unhurried, like men who had the entire week diarised satisfactorily by their P.A.s. No unwelcome surprises for these masters of the universe.
Well, that was about to change, just as he had changed.
Crippling fear had turned to adrenalin. A rush. A hunger. His bloodlust was rising, fending off the chill of a Wednesday afternoon. -17°C and falling. Light already failing. He had to act fast.
At the head of the junction with the neighbouring Lowndes Street, the considerable bulk of a brown and cream Rolls Royce Phantom was waiting as close to the snow-bound kerb as was possible. A billionaire’s car, heated to perfection, its door held open by a liveried chauffeur for the older of the two men. Designed to ferry him to the next Big Meeting. Mephisto with the paunch bade his companion farewell.
Now, it was time.
His quarry started to walk briskly up through Knightsbridge, towards Harrods. Coat hem spattered with icy mess. Head bent forwards, advancing into the jaws of the Arctic wind.
Take a turn into one of the backstreets, goddamn it!
He had anticipated where this man was going. Had studied his movements well enough. But the idiot was staying on the main drag. Too many people, here. Police, cruising by slowly in a patrol car.
Shit. Turn down an alley! Turn!
Except there were no alleys. The man progressed through Lowdnes Square. A green strip in the middle, covered in thick snow; a picture postcard straight from Narnia. Fringed by cars, covered in forgetful white blankets. Here. Maybe he could do it here. The snow sucked the sound out of everything. Except, this spot was completely overlooked by townhouses and mansion blocks. Every window, a potential set of prying eyes.
Not here.
The man hastened along the pavement at a brisk pace, given conditions underfoot. Already some way ahead. The distance between them widening fast. But then, his belly was full. His body had been warmed by fine wine and brandy. His energy hadn’t been sapped by biting hunger, sucked dry by spending the harshest winter since records began on the streets. Robbed for breakfast. Moved along at lunch. Beaten up for dinner. Pissed on by other homeless, too drunk to realise what they were doing - the only midnight snack on offer.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you piece of shit. Remember why you are here.
He kept going. The moment would present itself. He had faith.
Two women, moving towards him now. Bulked up with Puffa jackets and ridiculous furry hats. Blocking his view. Talking, talking. Espanol. Muy pericoloso. Muy dramatico. Hands beating the freezing air in telenovela-exaggerated movements, breath steaming like two pressure cookers on the boil. Tourists, no doubt.
Get out of the way, you fat Spanish cows.
Heart thudding, as they crowded his vision, snuffing out the sight of his target entirely.
They passed him by. Grimacing at the sight and smell of a vagrant.
The target was out of sight. Gone.
Shit.
His face prickled with anxiety. Panic rendered him almost breathless. Peering ahead. No sign of the rich, gutless fucker. Glancing in the doorways of the surrounding buildings. Not there. Glancing in the park. Not there either. Was this all in vain? He should have planned better. Had a plan B. All was lost. But then …
Harriet Street. A sharp left, leading to Sloane Street. There he was. Pausing beneath the Victorian lamppost by the cast iron railings that fringed a 1930s block. An unwitting child, stumbled through the wardrobe wearing seasonal finery into a hard, white world. Waiting to be lured into the shadows by a ragged, destitute Tumnus.
The man struggled to light a cigarette in the wind. Sputter, sputter, the flame died. He advanced to the doorway of this white stone and brick mansion block. Unobservant, as he finally lit his smoke. Opposite, every window had been obscured behind some kind of green builder’s gauze, stretched tight over scaffolding. Hiding the view below entirely. It was a gift from an otherwise vengeful and unforgiving god.
Heart fluttering. Determination stiffening his aching spine. From the railing, he snapped one of those giant icicles that hung everywhere since the freak cold spell had descended on Europe. Ten inches. Sharpened by nature to a point. Galvanised by weeks of sub-zero temperatures.
Five paces. Four. Three. Clutching the icy shiv in his frostbitten hand.
The man was facing the other way.
Jab, jab, jab in the sweet spot in his neck before the weapon could melt or weaken. The man’s blood gushed, hissing hot on the frozen ground, spattering against the wall. Screams coming out as gurgling. But he was the only human being within earshot.
‘That’s for Amsterdam, you piece of shit,’ he said, as the man bled out, staring glassy-eyed and disbelieving into the abyss.
Running away, now, he tossed the icicle down a storm drain that had been cleared of snow. By the time the police found the body, all traces of the weapon would have been washed away in the dirt-splattered slush of the road. Melted by grit-residue. The only clue left at the scene would be the watery holes in the dead man’s neck: the calling card of Jack Frost.
CHAPTER 2
North West England, women’s prison, 27 February
‘Put a bag over my head, didn’t I?’ the woman said, biting nails that were already at the quick.
Couldn’t have been more than twenty, this one. Looked nearer to forty with a complexion the colour of porridge. Overweight and swollen-faced, George guessed anti-depressants were at work. Dull blue eyes, as though the medication had caused a film to form over her sclera, preventing her from seeing the world in its grim true colours. Another poor cow in a pen full of poor cows.
‘What do you mean, you put a bag over your head?’ she asked the woman. She was poised to write. Steeling her hand to stop shaking. Unnerving to be back inside the very same prison she had spent three unforgettable months in – now a long time ago. A one-star vacation at Her Majesty’s leisure. All meals provided. The beatings had come for free. She had not known then that she would swap these Victorian red-brick walls of a one-time Barnardo’s home for the ivory tower of St. John’s College, Cambridge. No, she had been a poor cow in a stall full of crap, same as the others.
Her interviewee leaned forward. Cocked her head to one side. Grimaced.
‘Are you fucking thick or what?’ A spray of spittle accompanied ‘thick’.
Issued forth with venom, George knew. Tap, tap on her temple with her chewed index finger.
‘Donna.’ The prison officer’s tone issued warning enough for Donna to back up.
‘I said, I put the bag on my head. They didn’t know I had it. Tied it tight.’ Donna folded her arms. Smiling now. Satisfied. ‘It was Sainsbury’s. It had fucking holes in the bottom, didn’t it?’
‘Did you intend to kill yourself?’ George asked, a rash unexpectedly starting to itch its way up her neck. She knew Donna wouldn’t catch sight of it so easily because darker skin hid a multitude. She disciplined herself not to scratch.
‘Yeah. Course I bleedin’ did.’
The prison officer, a heavy-set woman in her thirties, by the looks, laughed. ‘Come on, Donna. We all know you were doing a Michael Hutchence, weren’t you?’
‘What?’
Donna was almost certainly too young to have heard of him, George thought.
‘Feller from INXS. Offed himself by accident, doing an asphyxi-wank or something.’
Donna tugged at the collar of her standard-issue tracksuit – too tight over her low-hanging, braless breasts. ‘You taking the piss?’
‘Yes.’
Insane laughter from both of them then. A camaraderie that George was used to seeing, along with the gallows humour. When the mirth subsided, Donna confessed the real reason for her grand polyethylene gesture.
‘I had bedbugs, didn’t I? They were biting like bastards.’ She started to rub her forearms through the jersey material. ‘I asked for a new mattress but they wouldn’t bloody listen. So, I puts the bag on my head, cos if they think you’re going to top yourself in here, you stand a better chance of them actually listening to what you’re on about.’ She glowered at the prison officer, seated beside her. Switched the glare for a grin like a deft pickpocket. ‘I been in here two years, right? Got another six to go.’
George scratched at her scalp with the end of her pen. Got the cap entangled in one of her corkscrew curls. Unrelentingly itchy. Was it the nervous rash? Was this her body telling her brain that she was losing her shit? She couldn’t possibly be freaked out, though. Definitely not. Not after all this time. Not a pro, like her.
She shuffled her sheaf of paper straight, as if to demonstrate to herself that she had mastery over everything. In control of herself and her environment at all times. Now that she was qualified, she spent more time inside prisons than out. Except when she was in Amsterdam with Paul. Bastard. Oh, well. Not everything was within her control.
‘What did you do, Donna?’
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘No? Okay. But what were you convicted for?’
‘GBH. I got my son taken off me, didn’t I?’ Tears welled in Donna’s eyes, replacing the Valium film with something more organic. Sleeve pulled down over her fist, she wiped the burgeoning tears away. ‘They said, social services said, that I’d battered him. And I hadn’t. They said I was unfit, the fucking lying do-gooding bastards. Just because that old bitch next door grassed me for smoking weed and that. And the dead rabbits in the yard. Wasn’t my frigging fault. They shat everywhere. Then, I gets social services and the environmental health come knocking. And school gets involved, saying my Thom was truanting and had bruises and that.’
She pursed her lips. Hers was suddenly a mean face that looked as though its owner could inflict pain happily. George had grown up with the likes of Donna. Not so different from Tonya. A hard-faced calamity queen.
‘My Thomas was not fucking abused.’ Poked herself in the chest, hard, so that George could hear the drumming on her sternum. ‘I was fucking abused. I could tell them how I was bounced round Rochdale. Me an’ about ten other girls off the estate in the back of a van. Thirteen-year-old rent-a-slags for all the dirty bastards in the area. Two pimping wankers raking in it like we was stock in a cash and carry. Working for some warped bastard called the Hawk or some shit like that. Our mams didn’t give a fuck. They was too busy getting pissed down the pub.’
George nodded. Showed no emotion. Dr McKenzie was a criminologist. Professional detachment was the only way to endure these heart-breaking stories. But it was the same story over and over, told by different women. Abuse, leading to abuse. Young girls playing chicken through the fast lanes of traffick. They never made it to the other side intact.
‘So why the GBH?’
Donna snorted noisily. ‘Day our Thom was put in care. Went out, didn’t I? Got mashed up. Beat some slag to a pulp with a snooker cue. She’d been looking at my fella, so …’ She looked up at George. No longer morose but suddenly hopeful, as if a timid sun was trying to push its way through the storm clouds. ‘I’m going to get him back. Our Thomas. When I get out of here. He’s coming home to his mam.’ A gingivitis grin. Radiant with rotten teeth. Thin hair scraped too high on her head into a tight ponytail made her look like a ruined child.
George had to get out of there. She’d had enough for one day. Checked her watch. Brought the session to an end.
As she made her way through the facility to the entrance, where she would reclaim her phone and her composure, she noticed the latest issue of Do What? – the inmates’ magazine she had remembered reading when she had been on remand here. Scattered copies on the table needed organising.
The baffled prison officer paused, giving George a moment to tidy the magazines into a neat fan. Beneath the headline that spoke of Shep, the drugs-dog almost choking to death on a hibernating hedgehog, there was a piece that triggered recognition deep within George’s mind. A debate on whether an icicle could actually be used as a shiv and whether it was right that the prison staff should leave these freakish twelve-inchers hanging off the old prison eaves.
‘Okay, Dr McKenzie?’ The prison officer asked.
George nodded. Tucked her portfolio of notes under her arm and made her way back down to security. Scanned on the way in. Scanned on the way out.
Having failed to find a USB stick at Aunty Sharon’s, she had once tried to bring in a CD-ROM she had burned especially in order to show the inmates a simple guide to the study she was doing into women’s prisons for the government. Security had confiscated even that, saying a teenage inmate had broken up a CD brought in for her by her sister and committed suicide by swallowing the shards. Everything was a weapon in here. She now made damned sure she never ran out of USB sticks.
Got to get the hell out. This place is bringing me down and down.
Beyond the gates, breath steaming on the sub-zero air, she switched her phone on to check for messages. Hoping that cantankerous old fool, Van den Bergen had been in touch. It was weeks since their argument. Six weeks to be precise. Her refusal to speak to him had been deliberate. Even Aunty Sharon had said she’d done the right thing by dropping the shutters on him.
But the screen yielded nothing. Silence. No abrupt words, saying he was sorry and that she had been right. That he would make amends.
On the train she sat at a dirty, crumb-sullied table, clutching her anorak tightly around her. Broken heating meant the journey would be purgatorial. Shivering at the sight of the snow-covered fields and jagged, naked hedgerows that scudded by. A white world, empty of life except for disappointing humanity and the odd cannibalistic robin. Irritation mounting inside her. Oppressive, like the Siberian freeze that had an entire continent in its grip.
Twenty minutes felt like an hour. Her phone still yielded nothing of note. Only nagging emails from civil servants, asking if she would be handing her study in on time. Pointed correspondence from a fellow criminologist who had it in for her. Professor Dickwad Dobkin at UCL. Complaining that he knew about her additional research into trafficking. Saying that he had started something almost identical, eons ago. Long before her. Of course.
‘Get fucked, Dobkin,’ George said, as she searched for her train ticket.
‘Sorry?’ The ticket inspector asked, swaying side to side in the Pendolino carriage, as it pelted through the crystalline hills of Staffordshire.
‘Nothing,’ George said. ‘Talking to myself. Too much work. Not enough play.’
The ticket inspector, a sweaty-looking man, despite the unrelenting cold, gave her a disinterested half-smile.
It was true. Her deadline loomed large. Today’s encounter with Donna had been one of her final interviews. She would have to start typing it up tonight. Perhaps even do a little work on her laptop now, on the train back to London.
Discipline yourself, George.
Except her phone pinged. Probably Aunty Sharon.
Fuck discipline.
Peered down at the screen.
Ah, finally.
But it was not the sort of message she was hoping for.
Come to Amsterdam a.s.a.p. Paul.
CHAPTER 3
Amsterdam, Bijlmer district, later
‘What do you want me to do, boss?’ Elvis asked, pulling his woollen hat down low over his ears, so that bushy red-brown sideburns were only just visible. His breath steamed on the air. Red nose and streaming eyes made him look peaky. But then, these days, Elvis always looked like he never slept. Experience could do that to a detective, even one as dopey and idiotically optimistic as Elvis.
With his protégé seemingly transfixed by the sight of his mobile phone, Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen hastily slipped the device back into his pocket. ‘Get photos of everything,’ he said. Felt like he had been caught doing something forbidden, though texting George in a work capacity was hardly a misdemeanour. Since she had qualified, she worked for the Dutch police on a freelance basis often enough.
He turned to Marie, who looked as though she was wearing every garment her wardrobe held. Some ugly hand-knitted cardigan on top of a coat. Purple clashed with the red colour of her hair poking out beneath two hats, by the looks. Bet she smelled worse than usual beneath all those layers. But today, Marie had abandoned the warmth of the office and her Internet research in favour of dusting for prints. After the best part of a year spent working on missing persons cases, she had been desperate to get out. They all had.
‘You called forensics?’ he asked her.
‘Yep. Marianne said she’ll be about half an hour.’ Marie blushed. Crouched near the dead man’s head. Scowled at his blood-spattered face. ‘He looks familiar.’
‘They always look familiar round here.’
Gazing down at the cochineal Rorschach pattern that surrounded the dead man, Van den Bergen put his hand on his stomach. Though he could not feel the lumpy scar tissue beneath the thick wadding of his anorak, he pressed his long fingers there, tracing the line of the scarring from sternum to his abdomen. Like this dead man at his feet, he had lost almost his entire life’s blood. A good two years ago now. Time heals all scars, right? Bullshit, it did.
Elvis clicked away on a digital camera. Blue plastic overshoes over his snowboots. Behind him, the remaining high-rises of Bijlmer loomed. Once Amsterdam’s arsehole, a few colourful panels on the front of the renovated blocks and winter wonderland conditions made it only marginally more enticing than it had been in the dark days. Better than Van den Bergen remembered the area when he was a young cop. But still an armpit of a locale, crushed under the weight of second-rate infrastructure and drug-pushers that came out at night like cockroaches.
His phone rang. He was praying it would be George.
‘Van den Bergen. Speak.’
It wasn’t her. Fat bastard Olaf Kamphuis was on the line, barking at him for information, though why he was getting his big pants in a twist over a run-of-the-mill Bijlmer stabbing was beyond him. Power had clearly gone to his bulbous head, now he was Commissioner. Hands-on micromanagement also had extended to grabbing Van den Bergen by his balls tightly and squeezing.
‘I want you off the missing persons bullshit,’ Kamphuis had said, sitting in his new desk chair, cranked even higher than the last one, in an office, even roomier than the one he had amply occupied before. Sweat had blossomed darkest blue around his armpits through the ceremonial glad rags. ‘You’ve had long enough to recover,’ he had insisted, huffing, puffing, trying to blow Van den Bergen’s house of cards down. ‘Get back on active service or it’s early retirement for you, you lanky streak of piss.’
How the hell had it happened? Pushing forty-seven now, though he felt nearer to sixty. Two of the biggest cases the Netherlands Police had ever solved, down to him and his team. But trumped yet again by a nemesis in a high-stakes game he thought he had cleaned up in long ago. Commissioner, for fuck’s sake. Olaf Kamphuis was his boss. Again! There was no God. And with his unimpeachable ally, Gus Kosselaar retired and replaced as Chief of Police by that other infernal arse-carbuncle, Jaap Hasselblad, Van den Bergen’s life had become even more of a misery.
As Van den Bergen leaned over to scrutinise the dead man’s face, stomach acid shot up into his gullet. The flames of digestive purgatory the only source of warmth in that unrelenting cold. He straightened up with a click from his hip. Six feet five of broken man. How he longed for the comfort of his office and those stone cold missing persons files now.
He grimaced. Pointed to the gun by the dead man’s hand. The scabs around his mouth and nose. Leather jacket, too flimsy for the cold. Covered in stains. Jeans, yellowing at the knees. Greasy blond hair, plastered to his scalp, now encrusted with blood as was his left hand, where perhaps he’d grabbed at his neck. Bleeding out in arterial spurts across the base of the children’s slide. Then, on the ground in a foetal position. Leaking his last into the pretty red Rorschach. Butterfly. Humming birds. Flower.
‘Crystal meth head. Or mephedrone, is my guess,’ he told Elvis. ‘This is just a drugs killing over some two-bit stash or a botched deal. Our guy pulls a gun on some other junkie arsehole. A bit of a fight breaks out. He gets stabbed in the neck, judging by the looks of the wound and the blood loss. Perp runs away.’
Elvis nodded. Continued to take photos, as Marie dusted for prints on the semi-automatic pistol that lay inches away from the dead man’s blue-grey right hand.
Van den Bergen looked around at the spectators who had started to gather. Rubber-necking, though the scene had been cordoned off with fluttering police tape. Those residents who didn’t stop to watch and pass comment on the body – opinions voiced loudly, scathingly in a variety of languages; dramatic hand gestures and beseeching invocations to Allah - shuffled by in the national dress of their country of origin. Women in full burka. Men in salwaar kameez, wearing overcoats over the top. Indonesian. Ghanaian. Somali. Surinamese. All bundled up in this freakishly bitter northern European climate.
‘Did anyone see anything?’ Van den Bergen asked the crowd. It was a public enough place, for Christ’s sake. Right by a brown monolithic block on Sean MacBridestraat. In the kiddy-park, at that! At the foot of the snow-bound slide. Overlooked by hundreds of people, potentially. ‘Anyone?’
Blank faces. Chatter ebbing away, now.
‘Please come to me with any information you have. Anonymously.’ He started to hand out cards, but not a single resident would take one.
Hands tucked abruptly beneath folds of fabric. Into pockets. No eye contact. The crowd started to disperse, fast.
‘Marie! Help me take statements,’ he called out to his detective.
By the time Marie had finished lifting the solitary print from the gun, the onlookers had all gone, save for a boy of about eight. Drowned in a shabby Puffa jacket that was clearly an adult’s given that his sleeves swept the snow. No hat. Inquisitive brown eyes staring at the dead man.
Van den Bergen and Marie approached the child together, though it was Marie who crouched on the opposite side to the police tape, so that her eyes were level with his.
‘Did you see anything?’ Marie asked.
The Chief Inspector pulled the chain that held his glasses from the inside of his anorak. Slid them onto his tingling nose to observe the child’s reaction. Knew better than to engage the kid in conversation. Only his own daughter understood that he was child-friendly and Tamara was the wrong side of twenty-five now. Marie had the right touch.
The boy was silent. Staring. Staring at the corpse, surrounded by so much red.
‘What’s your name?’ Marie asked, taking the boy by the outsized sleeve.
‘Imran.’
‘You know him, don’t you, Imran? The dead man.’
For five or six almost frozen heartbeats, Imran looked into Marie’s watery blue eyes. Opened and closed his mouth, as though he were about to speak. Van den Bergen stiffened, feeling truth and illumination trying to emerge from deep within the silent boy.
But then, Imran turned on his heel and sprinted into the anonymous vertical warren of the apartment block.
‘Shit!’ Van den Bergen said.
CHAPTER 4
South East London, 28 February
At 2am, the only sound in the small terraced council house was the clickety-click of George’s fingers as they tap-danced back and forth over her laptop’s keyboard. A consummate performance, outlining the suffering of women on the inside. Bedbugs. Beatings. Braless and behind bars. Family gone. Copy-sheet well and truly blotted for life. Hope in prescription capsules, containing chemical respite from anger and pain.
George paused typing to examine again her pay slip from the Peterhulme Trust. Sighed heavily at the disappointing sum on which tax would be due. Not enough, by far. Pocket change to fund a life split between London, Cambridge and Amsterdam. It was only the second full-length study she had completed for the civil servants of the Home Office in Westminster since becoming a professional criminologist. A career she had fought for. And yet, her working life was not panning out quite as well as she had hoped, even with the continuing support of the formidable Dr Sally Wright. None of it was panning out as George had hoped.
Reflected in the laptop’s shining screen, she observed with some distaste the tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. Wiped them away angrily. Pull yourself together, you wimp. Don’t let it all get to you. Don’t take shit personally. You mustn’t let Van den Bergen bring you down. Her hand shook with emotion. Perhaps she should allow herself a good cry. Just this once. Might be cathartic. If she smothered the nose with her sleeve, Patrice wouldn’t wake up.
Key in the lock. Front door opened. At this hour, it could only be one person. No time for tears.
‘Wotcha, darling,’ Aunty Sharon said, prizing snow-encrusted wellies from her swollen feet and putting them neatly on the shoe rack. Next to them, she placed the Betty-Boop heels that she took out of a Tesco bag. Yawning. Throwing her handbag onto the kitchen table. Snatching up the kettle.
‘Here, let me do that,’ George said, taking the kettle from her.
‘All quiet?’ Sharon asked. She started washing her hands with Fairy Liquid and scalding water. ‘Jesus! You turned the thermostat up again?’ She sucked on her fingers, eyeing George suspiciously.
Hand on hip, George rolled her eyes and jerked her thumb in the direction of the door. ‘Who do you think cranked the heating up?’
Snoring, coming from the adjacent living room. The thunderous, slumberous roar of a dragon, sleeping.
‘I gave the bathroom a good do,’ George said. ‘Got the nailbrush on the grouting. Looks a treat now.’
‘Stressed, by any chance?’ Aunty Sharon flung herself down onto the kitchen chair. It groaned beneath the weight of her heavy frame. Her taffeta skirt bunched up around her like an airbag triggered in a car crash. ‘Fucking thing is doing my head in.’ She stood again, unzipped the skirt and stepped out of the layers of electric blue fabric and netting. Flung it over the back of the adjacent chair. Sat back down, wearing only her generous knickers and a thick jumper. Dimpled thighs. Knees like dark chocolate blancmange. White ankle socks digging into her chubby legs. She rubbed her belly. Twanged the elastic in the waistband of her knickers. ‘That’s better. That new manager is some corny little rarseclart. He’s got me dressing up in 1950s shit and bobby socks, like I’ve escaped some pensioner’s mental home. I’m an experienced barmaid in a Soho titty bar. Not some kid serving chips in a themed bloody chicken shop. Cheeky bastard, he is. It’s -20 out there tonight. My toes are like frozen meatballs, man! If my fucking legs fall off with hypothermia, I’m going to sue his skinny white arse. At least Derek didn’t take the piss, trying to tell me what to wear. And he could have done! But even though he was my baby-father and long-time boss, he never pulled this kind of shit! Fucking novelty nights and all the girls in sodding bunny costumes like the twenty-first century ain’t even here!’ She sucked her teeth long and low. Paused for breath. Looked at her niece. ‘Well? What you been crying for, puffy eyes? Tell your Aunty Shaz.’ She reached out to her with a robust, welcoming arm.
George ignored the gesture. Stood steadfastly by the sink, wearing one of Patrice’s hoodies on top of her own. Arms folded tightly with sleeves down over her hands. Couldn’t get warm, even with the heating on 27 and the gas meter lifted onto a bucket so that the wheel had stopped turning. Fuse wire through the electricity meter too, so that they could put fan heaters throughout the house without worrying about bills. George had gored a hole through the casing with a hot bodkin herself. A trick Letitia had taught her as a child, passed on to a reluctant, law-abiding Aunty Sharon. Chalk and cheese, those two.
‘I haven’t been crying,’ George said.
‘Suit yourself.’ Aunty Sharon trotted over to the bread bin. Took out a fruit loaf. Cut herself an ample slice, slathered in butter. Made appreciative noises. ‘I make the best fruit loaf in the world,’ she said. ‘Derek used to love my fruit loaf.’ She started to cut herself a second piece and dropped the breadknife. Wracking sobs, suddenly.
‘Not you as well,’ George said, wrapping Sharon in a bear hug as she heaved with grief.
‘So, you w-was crying,’ Sharon stuttered.
‘No. Yes. Never mind me. You let it out, Aunty Shaz.’
Sorrow streamed forth from Sharon’s face; tears quickly dripping from her jowls. Speech coming in hiccoughs. ‘It’s still hard, love. Especially working at that place. Porn King and them girls what have been there a while are always banging on about Derek, like he was some fucking saint or something. Uncle Giuseppe, this. Uncle Giuseppe, that.’ She looked up at George with ghoulish mascara-besmirched eyes. ‘Derek de Falco managed a titty bar badly. Some claim to fame, right?! He fucked himself up. He fucked me and Tin’s life up too. Selfish dickhead.’
‘They’re all selfish dickheads,’ George said, wiping her aunt’s second-hand make-up off her jumper with a hot cloth. Knowing Aunty Sharon knew the score and wouldn’t take it personally.
‘Yeah. Stuff Derek, the stupid bastard!’ Sharon grabbed the kitchen roll off the worktop and blew her nose loudly into a clean sheet. Dabbed gingerly at her eyes. Tugged at her elaborate arrangement of platinum blonde extensions and brightly coloured headscarf until it all came away in one cumbersome piece. Short greying hair underneath. Receding hairline. A little too thin in parts from stress-alopecia, where cheap hair extensions over the years had taken their toll.
George touched her own head of thick dark curls reflexively. Curls which Van den Bergen liked to grip when he kissed her passionately.
‘Anyway. Uncle Giuseppe’s old news. Tell your Aunty Sharon what’s eating you,’ Sharon said, pulling her sizeable bra from beneath her jumper and hanging it over the taffeta skirt. ‘It is laughing gas, in there?’ She gestured towards the living room.
George shook her head. ‘No. She’s the least of it. I keep getting texts from Van den Bergen. We’re on. We’re off. He loves me. He never says it, the arsehole. Up one minute. Down the next.’
‘Thought he was always like that, anyway. Didn’t you say he was depressed?’
George nodded. ‘He’s not been the same since the Butcher. Physically, he’s healed. But mentally … They’ve had him chasing missing persons for two years. Sat on his arse in the office, checking online reports or sat drinking coffee in people’s houses while he does interviews. Insisting he’s not well enough to face active service. But they’ve got him working a new murder, Marie’s telling me. I haven’t spoken to the tosser for weeks because of what happened. Now he wants me over there under the pretence of it being in a professional capacity, I’ll bet. Wants me to hold his hand, more like. He’s full of shit.’
The beginnings of a smile played on Sharon’s chapped lips. ‘Your fellers always end up in bits, thanks to you, don’t they? You’re more high maintenance than that mother of yours.’
A heavy sigh. ‘Actually, I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t doing my head in, too,’ George said, breathing out heavily. Glaring at the door to the living room, behind which her mother slept. ‘She was such a pain in the arse while you were at work. I’m trying to write my research up, and she’s chatting in my ear, giving it, I’m dying. I’ve got pulmonary hypertension – she can barely bloody pronounce it. I’ve got sickle cell anaemia – she doesn’t even know what the fuck that is. You don’t give a monkey’s about me. I can’t deal with it.’
‘Take no notice of that attention-seeking bitch, love,’ Sharon said, frowning and shaking her head. ‘My sister will play every last dirty card in her hand to get what she wants. I’ll believe that “I’m dying shit” when I see it. She’s got some brass neck, threatening to die when she’s strong as a horse.’
‘She’s got some brass neck, kipping on your sofa!’
Sharon was unexpectedly silent. Tremors, rippling across her chin and cheeks, gave the impression that she was about to be sick. Her face crumpled rapidly, the silence giving way to wailing loud enough to wake her sister and her sleeping son. Fleshy hands balled into tight fists.
George was taken aback. Barely knew how to react to this secondary outburst. ‘Try to remember Derek the way he was,’ she said, turning to tend to the tea. Stirring the cup too briskly. Nice and strong. Three sugars and a healthy wallop of rum. That’s how Aunty Shaz liked it after work on a cold night. Set the cup down on a coaster with handle perfectly perpendicular to the edges.
With electric blue nail extensions to match her abandoned dress, Sharon wrapped her hands around the mug, spitting and sputtering her words one by one. ‘It ain’t Derek,’ Sharon said. ‘Not really. I’m crying cos of …’ She flapped her hand in front of her fact, as though she was wafting away unwanted emotion. ‘It’s just … it’s little Dwayne.’ She stared off into the middle distance.
‘It’s not today, is it?’ George asked, glancing at the calendar.
Sharon nodded. Looked suddenly feeble and frail, clutching at the silver locket around her neck. Dimpled chin and downturned mouth. Streams of glistening, sorrowful tears and snot, lit up by the kitchen lightbulb, looked like strange tinsel, two months too late for Christmas.
‘Shit. I’m so sorry,’ George said, sitting by her side and hooking her arm around her aunt’s shoulders. Suddenly her own problems seemed paltry in comparison. Guilt jabbed at the soft spots that were already raw.
‘I told you, didn’t I?’ Sharon said, snapping the locket open, shut, open, shut, revealing the faded colour photo of a small, smiling boy inside. ‘No agony in this world like the pain of losing a child. Ten, twenty years later, them wounds never heal.’
The loud knock on the kitchen window made both of them jump. Nothing to see in the black of the small hours with the light on inside.
‘Who the fuck is that at this time of night?’ Aunty Sharon asked, lurching out of her seat. Grabbing the kettle, still half full of boiled water. ‘I got that back gate padlocked to keep those cheeky little dipshits from down the way out.’
George’s heart thudded beneath her layers. She snatched up a meat cleaver from the magnetized knife-holder on the wall. ‘Stay back, Aunty Shaz,’ she said, switching the light off. ‘I got this.’
Still nothing to see in the empty, snowy yard at the back, except for a washing line supporting six inches of snow on top, icicles, hanging beneath, like a neat row of teeth strung along a cannibal’s necklace. Against the fence were snow-buried wheelie bins, lit by the nearest streetlamp some twenty feet away.
Reaching for the key lodged in the security door, George turned until the lock clicked. Pushed the handle down gingerly, cleaver in her right hand. Pulled the door open suddenly. Blast of arctic wind sucking the air from her lungs. Arm held high ready to slice.
A hooded figure was standing on the back step.
George screamed.
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