Read the book: «The Girl Who Broke the Rules»
The Girl Who Broke the Rules
MARNIE RICHES
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HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Marnie Riches 2015
Cover design © Lizzie Gardner
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Marnie Riches asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record 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.
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Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780008138349
Version: 2018-01-24
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
PROLOGUE: Amsterdam, red light district, 16–17 January
CHAPTER 1: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, UK, 17 January
CHAPTER 2: Amsterdam, the set of a porn film, then, Sloterdijkermeer allotments, later
CHAPTER 3: Soho, London, later
CHAPTER 4: Amsterdam, mortuary, later
CHAPTER 5: Soho, London, later
CHAPTER 6: Amsterdam, mortuary, later
CHAPTER 7: Amsterdam, private medical surgery, much later
CHAPTER 8: Amsterdam, police headquarters, 18 January
CHAPTER 9: Soho, London, Skin Flicks Media Group, later
CHAPTER 10: Amsterdam, Norderkerk, later, then, van den Bergen’s apartment
CHAPTER 11: South East London, very late
CHAPTER 12: Manhattan, New York, 1981
CHAPTER 13: Amsterdam, police headquarters, then, a building site, 19 January
CHAPTER 14: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 15: Amsterdam, Valeriusstraat building site, later
CHAPTER 16: Stansted Express, East London, later
CHAPTER 17: Amsterdam, Valeriusstraat building site, later
CHAPTER 18: Cambridge, St John’s College, later
CHAPTER 19: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 20: Amsterdam, 20 January
CHAPTER 21: Cambridge, Mill Road, later
CHAPTER 22: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 23: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, later
CHAPTER 24: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 25: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, later
CHAPTER 26: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 27: Amsterdam, mortuary, 21 January
CHAPTER 28: Amsterdam, red light district, later
CHAPTER 29: Amsterdam, van den Bergen’s car, later
CHAPTER 30: Amsterdam, later
CHAPTER 31: Amsterdam, mortuary, later
CHAPTER 32: Amsterdam, Ruud Ahlers’ apartment, later
CHAPTER 33: Amsterdam, van den Bergen’s car, then Ahlers’ apartment, moments later
CHAPTER 34: London, 1985
CHAPTER 35: Amsterdam, police headquarters, 22 January
CHAPTER 36: South East London, Aunty Sharon’s house, later
CHAPTER 37: Amsterdam, the Quick Bite Café, later
CHAPTER 38: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 39: Amsterdam, Ahlers’ private surgery, later
CHAPTER 40: Amsterdam, the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, red light district, later
CHAPTER 41: Over the North Sea, 23 January
CHAPTER 42: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 43: Amsterdam, van den Bergen’s car, en route to Rotterdam, later
CHAPTER 44: Amsterdam, Ad’s apartment, later
CHAPTER 45: Rotterdam Port, later
CHAPTER 46: Amsterdam, police headquarters, 24 January
CHAPTER 47: Amsterdam, mortuary, later
CHAPTER 48: Amsterdam, van den Bergen’s apartment, 25 January
CHAPTER 49: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 50: Hamburg, Germany, 26 January
CHAPTER 51: Katwijk asylum seekers’ centre, Netherlands, later
CHAPTER 52: Rotterdam, Port Authority, later
CHAPTER 53: Amsterdam, Ad’s apartment, later still
CHAPTER 54: Berlin, Germany, 1989
CHAPTER 55: Over the North Sea, then, Ramsgate, England, 27 January
CHAPTER 56: Soho, London, later
CHAPTER 57: Ramsgate, later
CHAPTER 58: Soho, London, later
CHAPTER 59: Somewhere in Kent, an industrial estate, later
CHAPTER 60: Ramsgate, seafront B&B, 28 January
CHAPTER 61: Somewhere in Kent, a field, later
CHAPTER 62: Kent, on a train, then Amsterdam, mortuary, later
CHAPTER 63: South East London, later
CHAPTER 64: Amsterdam, police headquarters holding cell, later
CHAPTER 65: Ashford, Kent, later
CHAPTER 66: Cambodia, 1992
CHAPTER 67: Amsterdam, mortuary, 29 January
CHAPTER 68: South East London, mortuary, later
CHAPTER 69: Amsterdam, later
CHAPTER 70: Amsterdam, Nieuw West area, then, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 71: Amsterdam, Ad’s apartment, then NOS TV studios, then police headquarters, 30 January
CHAPTER 72: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
CHAPTER 73: Amsterdam, hospital, 31 January
CHAPTER 74: Amsterdam, police headquarters
CHAPTER 75: South East London, 14 February
CHAPTER 76: Amsterdam, hospital, later
CHAPTER 77: Soho, London, later
CHAPTER 78: Laren, the Netherlands, 15 February
CHAPTER 79: Cambridge, St John’s College, later
CHAPTER 80: Laren, the Netherlands, 16 February
CHAPTER 81: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, later
CHAPTER 82: A secret location near Laren, later
CHAPTER 83: Stansted airport, Essex, later
CHAPTER 84: Amsterdam, then Laren, later
CHAPTER 85: A secret location near Laren, later
CHAPTER 86: A secret location near Laren, moments later, then, the Laren house
CHAPTER 87: A secret location near Laren, later
CHAPTER 88: Amsterdam, hospital, 18 February
CHAPTER 89: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, later
CHAPTER 90: Amsterdam, hospital, later
CHAPTER 91: Soho, London, later
CHAPTER 92: Berlin, Germany, 23 February
CHAPTER 93: Amsterdam, hospital, later
CHAPTER 94: Amsterdam, women’s prison, 28 February
CHAPTER 95: Amsterdam, the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, then, the hospital, later
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgements
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
Amsterdam, red light district, 16–17 January
The jagged pain between her shoulder blades was fleeting. Magool flinched. Breathed in sharply at the unpleasant sensation. She loosened her seatbelt. Wriggled in the passenger seat to look behind her.
In the dark, there was nothing to see.
Then, she tried to reach behind to feel the leather. But her hands would not move. She stared down at them, bemused. They felt neither leaden nor numb. It was simply as if they no longer existed. And yet, there they sat, chapped from the cold, bitten nails, primly folded over her wringing-wet, jeans-clad thighs.
Frowning, aware of her accelerated heartbeat, she tried to lift her legs, move her feet, wiggle her toes. Nothing. Why was her body not obeying her brain? She looked askance at the driver.
‘I can’t move,’ she said in Dutch. ‘What’s going on?’
The driver stared resolutely ahead. Peering through the windscreen of the car as hail rattled onto the glass, accompanied by fat snowflakes. Swept by the wiper-blades into thin white columns on the windscreen’s periphery that grew thicker and thicker with every second that passed; white screens closing slowly on the real world.
‘Hey! Stop the car! Something’s wrong, I’m telling you. I can’t feel a thing.’ With difficulty, Magool could still turn her head – enough to see the side of her driver’s face. ‘Did you hear me?’
Silence enveloped her, and she realised her words had not sounded at all except inside her head. Through the windscreen, she could just about make out the white-dusted cobbles of the road. The snow, illuminated by the bright, triangular shafts of the streetlights, came down like yellow-gold icing sugar, falling through a sieve. But where the hell were they going on this beautiful, foul night? Not towards her apartment, she was certain. And what was happening to her?
She started to loll forward, held in her seat only by the belt. The driver reached out and with a large, strong hand, pushed her up against the window.
‘Don’t want you to hit your head, do we? Try to relax, Noor. It won’t hurt.’ Her captor had finally spoken in a kindly voice. ‘I’ve given you a very strong spinal block. The syringe was rigged in your seat. But try not to worry. I promise you, I know what I’m doing.’
Magool wanted to scream. Her brain shrieked for help; phantom hands hammered on the window each time they passed a figure on the street, huddled in dark winter clothes, braving the blizzard. Unaware of the young girl who was imprisoned in the same vehicle that had just splattered their work trousers with virgin slush.
With only her mind unfettered, she considered the sequence of events that had brought her to this terrible place.
Standing in her booth, she had watched with fascination when the flakes began to waft down from the heavens. Pink sky overhead, as though the very neon lights of Amsterdam’s red light district were reflected in the snow clouds hanging above her in the night sky. It was the first time she remembered ever having seen snow. The mangroves that clung to the coastline like grasping old men’s hands; the turquoise splendour of the Indian Ocean; the baking heat of her homeland – they were all half a world away. Now, the hail came down among the snow, making the same musical rattling noise against the glass door of her booth that the tropical rains of the Gu and Dayr wet seasons had made on the corrugated iron roof of her family’s shack.
Just hours earlier, watching that snow, Magool had felt something bordering on elation. She was finally safe. On these crimson-lit streets, she was Noor. Different girl. Different continent. Different life. Magool resolved, there and then, as the hail pounded against the glass door to her booth, to look upon her parents’ selling her and her infant brother to the al Shabaab militia men as an act driven by desperation, not greed. They had thought, perhaps, that she and little Ashkir would both have a good life in that exotic, far-off place they called Italy. Hadn’t the soldiers promised?
When she had arrived in the arid, rubble wasteland of Mogadishu, clutching the squalling infant, her hope had faded quickly. Tears had pricked the backs of her eyes as she remembered Ashkir being plucked from her bosom by those corrupt African Union troops. Burundian men, who had laughed heartily and exchanged easy greetings with her couriers.
She had overheard them saying that her brother was destined for adoption in Milan. But, at thirteen, she had been too old to be adopted.
Magool had cursed the name that marked her out as the early flowering girl. Had cursed her parents, each time the men forced themselves on her. Her own kind, amid the diesel-stink and filth of the ramshackle Somali ship. Then, white men when she reached Rome. There was no distinction to be made between them. By the time she had escaped the cocaine fug of nightly abuse and arrived in Amsterdam on the train, she was already five months pregnant. Not showing yet.
Two full years later, now. Watching the snow and feeling hopeful, just as that charlatan showed up, knocking on her window. She should have known better than to let him in.
He had caressed the jagged, lumpy line of her caesarean scar before putting his hand between her legs.
‘You healed well,’ he said, kissing her neck.
She bit her tongue. Swallowed the retort. Money was money and he’d paid up front.
He lay down on the narrow bed and pulled her on top. Guiding her onto him. Hands on her small breasts. ‘Tell me I’m the best,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘Faster.’ His voice was high. His breath came short. ‘Tell me again how I saved your life.’
As she stared down at his corpulent pink body with its nauseating smattering of fluffy blond chest hair that crawled from one flabby tit to another, she fantasised about strangling him with her bare hands. Her small slender fingers would never stretch around that red bull neck. He was twice her size.
‘I saved you, Noor,’ he said, thrusting himself upwards into her.
Her words slipped out, unchecked.
‘You’re a butcher,’ she said. ‘I have to charge less because of you.’
The fat pig showed no remorse. He did not even open his eyes to look at her. Merely smiled, gripped her tightly by the hips and ground her pelvis harder towards him. ‘Nonsense. I’m a master craftsman. Black skin just scars more.’
Afterwards, they had squabbled over the fee. He snatched up the euros he had given her at the start and stuffed them under the bulk of his body.
‘Come and get it, little Noor!’ he said, starting to laugh. Glee in his eyes.
What was this? Some kind of perverse game? Wasn’t it enough that he had cut her baby out of her in that cold, damp back room he called a surgery and stitched her back up like an old sack? Fury flared within her.
‘Give me my money back!’ she said, trying to roll him over to reach the notes.
He grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her away so that she fell against the wall. Suddenly, fear snuffed out the flames of her anger.
‘What made you think I would pay, you dumb bitch?’ He pulled the foreskin back down on his flaccid, spent manhood. A sea slug stuck to his thigh. ‘You owe me. You’ll always owe me.’
She rose to her feet. Backed into the corner, folding her arms over her naked chest. ‘I already paid through the nose!’ she said, wanting to show this beast that she wouldn’t be trifled with. Wanting him to see that she wasn’t a defenceless little girl. But she knew her body language betrayed her and she was annoyed by the waver in her voice. ‘Give me the cash or I’ll report you to the authorities!’
He smiled brightly. ‘An underage, illegal Somali immigrant, working as a whore? Report me, a pillar of the community? I don’t think I’ll be losing any sleep on that front, little Noor. Do you?’
He was already dressed. Stuffing the notes back into his wallet, now. Magool steeled herself to step forward and snatch it from him. But the doctor sensed her intentions, leaned in and punched her hard in the face.
Her cheek stung. Tears sprang from her eyes against her will. She failed to swallow them back.
‘Get out, then! Go on! Fuck off and don’t come round here again. Ever.’
But as he opened the door, he looked back at her. A pause that perhaps betrayed the flicker of remorse in those bloodshot blue eyes. He reached inside the breast pocket of his overcoat and retrieved the leather wallet. Pulled out a twenty. Threw it at her.
‘No hard feelings?’ he said.
She picked up the money from the threadbare brown carpet. Pushed it back into his hand.
‘Stick your money up your ass, sharmuutaa ku dhashay! You need this more than me,’ she said, bundling him out the door and locking it behind him.
Waiting until the clatter on the stairs and the glazed door slamming marked his departure, she crouched in her small room and clutched her knees. Allowed herself to weep, but not for long. Cursed him and vowed she would get even one day. Somehow.
Her thoughts turned to her shared bedsit.
Enough for one night. It was time to shut up shop and go home. Get her shit together so that, tomorrow, she could face a new day. Hell, the weather was terrible anyway.
Outside, the mixture of hail and snow bit into her flesh. Her jeans and even her padded coat seemed to provide no protection from the unforgiving elements. Peering ahead down the street, it was as though she were watching whiteout static on the old black and white TV her parents had in their shack back home. And it had looked so picturesque from inside her booth. It would be an arduous walk back.
At first, she had not noticed the dark Lexus sliding slowly alongside her. She walked ahead of the car, pulling her hood further down over her eyes; following what she saw at her feet as a guide to which direction home lay in. But when the car edged forward and remained at her side, she lifted her hood to see if it was a familiar punter, hoping she might reconsider, retreat and reopen the shop.
The Lexus stopped. The driver’s window opened just enough for her to see who was behind the wheel.
‘You?’ she said. Hard to keep the incredulity out of her voice.
‘Get in!’ the driver said.
Magool clutched her shoulder bag across her chest defensively. ‘I said I never wanted to see you again.’
‘Look, it’s a storm out there. It’s warm in here. I’ll drive you home. You’re wringing wet.’
‘No thanks. I’ll walk it.’
‘Come on! Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve got heated seats.’ Placatory tone. Friendly eyes. The driver’s face and body language were benign. ‘Get in, for God’s sake!’
By now, she was quaking with the cold. Beyond uncomfortable. Despite sensing that the driver’s concerned gesture was off key, Magool walked round to the passenger side. Opened the car’s heavy door and registered the sting between her shoulder blades, as she sank back into the luxurious, leather heated seat…
The snow had stopped falling by the time Magool Osman returned to the red light district. Her makeshift bed was a bench beneath the windows of the Old Sailor Café Bar at the junction of Oudezijds Achterburgwal and the cobbled alley of Molensteen. Fittingly opposite the Erotic Museum, and ironically within spitting distance of her compatriots in their relatively safe, red-lit booths. But she had been dropped off after her final ordeal in the small hours, when only the water rats and the ghosts of Amsterdam’s Golden Age roamed those streets. The darkest hours before an unforgiving, wintry dawn.
Just after 6.30am, Magool’s empty eye sockets stared blankly up at Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen. With a cracking hip, wishing he had had time for breakfast and a coffee before leaving home, he crouched to get a better look at this young woman:
Dark skin. Diminutive stature. Completely naked. Frozen solid, with a dusting of ice that still sparkled like fake diamond dust beneath the harsh light in the makeshift forensic tent.
He thumbed his white stubble in contemplation of her corpse; once a thing of beauty, now defiled and incomplete. It was as though the girl had been unzipped from her throat to her pubic area, revealing all the fragile matter that lay beneath. Chest framed by the white stripes of her ribs, which had been split down the sternum and levered apart. Where once her lungs must have breathed in this sharp, Amsterdam air; where once her stomach might have digested a moreish meal; where once her kidneys and liver might have filtered celebratory wine…now, there were but gaping holes, frozen blood and a mere suggestion of the life and hope that had once inhabited such a young body.
Elvis, one of van den Bergen’s two most loyal protégés, moved the flap of the tent aside. He entered the scene, wearing white plastic overshoes.
Van den Bergen rose to his full height. Noticed the alarmed grimace on his subordinate’s face.
‘Stop gawping, Elvis,’ he said. ‘Show some fucking respect for the dead.’
‘Sorry, boss.’ Elvis covered his nose, though the icy conditions meant there was nothing unpleasant to smell. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Is Marianne de Koninck and her team on their way?’
‘Yep. Due any minute now.’
Van den Bergen nodded. Sniffed. Acknowledged the black dog lurking inside the tent, outside the tent, in the warmth of his car. Bearing down on him. Casting a long shadow over everything. He swallowed painfully, prodding at the swollen glands beneath his ears. ‘My throat’s on fire. Think I’m coming down with something. Just my luck, it will be Ebola. Grab me a coffee, will you?’
Van den Bergen withdrew his phone from his coat pocket and brought up his contacts list. Scrolled down to G. There was the number. George McKenzie. He sighed deeply.
CHAPTER 1
Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, UK, 17 January
The slight man who sat facing her examined the fingernails at the ends of his slender fingers with an expression of intense concentration. George noted that they were always very clean and manicured. His lank, thinning hair hung sullenly over the shoulders of a faded blue sweatshirt. Dirty dark grey. Starting to recede at the temples. Perhaps his haggard, small-featured face might once have been attractive, given its delicate, perfectly symmetrical bone structure. George shuddered at this thought that had popped, unbidden, into her mind. She averted her gaze from his hands and focussed instead on her pad.
‘Cold, Georgina?’ Silas Holm asked. A smile playing on his chapped lips, he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the tall, arched windows of the Victorian building. The perfectly white expanse of snow-heavy sky outside was carved up by peeling painted bars that stretched ceiling-wards. ‘It’s that period of architecture,’ he said. ‘Terribly draughty because of the lofty proportions, you see. Doesn’t matter how much they crank up the heating.’
His gaze found her face and focussed sharply on it, now. George McKenzie knew this much without looking up from her notes. The prison officers said his manner was always one of an attentive vicar, listening with dedicated enthusiasm to the concerns of his adoring flock. It was unclear, therefore, whether Silas Holm was staring at George because he was genuinely engaged by their conversation or whether he was simply fantasising about what he could do to the only woman he was allowed to see on a regular basis, if he still had his liberty. Either way, the fact that he had noticed her shiver – almost imperceptibly, she had thought – made George feel very itchy. She started to arrange her pens in perfectly parallel lines on the desk. Then stopped herself. Reveal nothing about you as a person or the details of your life, her Cambridge University supervisor, Dr Sally Wright had told her. Not only was Sally the senior tutor of St John’s College – the Big Boss-woman in what was otherwise still a man’s world – but she was also the country’s foremost criminologist. If she didn’t know what she was talking about where handling dangerous psychopaths was concerned, nobody did. Dress dowdily. Be on your guard. Don’t get involved.
‘What’s with the tracksuit?’ she asked, deliberately steering the focus back onto her study subject. ‘Where are your tweeds? What did you do?’
Silas Holm gave a small sigh and a resigned smile. Rapped on his leg with his knuckles. The sound was hollow. ‘What could a harmless amputee like me ever do to warrant such a petty punishment? I ask you!’
‘Well you must have done something pretty bad to have your normal clothes taken away,’ George said. ‘It’s not like you’re in prison.’ She shot a questioning sideways glance at Silas’ nurse, who was seated at the end of the desk, within reassuring reach of this small but deadly psychopath.
Graham’s muscle-bound bulk heaved up and down beneath his T-shirt. Laughing heartily. He smoothed a hand over his shaven head. ‘Dr Holm. You are funny,’ he said. His Nigerian accent was pronounced. ‘You are lucky you weren’t transferred back to high dependency. Poor Kenneth! Why don’t you tell Ms McKenzie straight about your little set-to with him?’
The small-featured face of Silas Holm appeared suddenly sharp, grey, remorseless. His voice was clipped. Words came fast. ‘No. I don’t think I will. And I don’t think it warranted being singled out this way.’ The sneer that turned his mouth into a thin, drooping line and the way that he tugged at the sweatshirt with his fingertips marked out his disdain for the garment and that place. ‘The other men look up to me.’ He shuffled in his seat, straightening his posture. But something within him clicked and the friendly smile reappeared. Locked onto George’s face with those ice-blue eyes. ‘They come to me for wisdom, the men in here,’ he told her.
‘What sort of wisdom?’ George uncapped her pen.
‘I know about the world, of course! These oiks know nothing. Most of them are semi-literate at best. I, however, am a man of learning as you know. Before I was subjected to the indignity of coming to this dump, I was celebrated in my field of expertise!’ He leaned forward and stretched his fingers out towards George’s side of the desk.
‘Back up, Dr Holm,’ Graham said calmly.
Silas colluded; withdrawing physically but somehow clinging onto the intimacy he had implied was between them by winking and keeping his voice low. ‘I won the Evelyn Baker Medal from the Association of Anaesthetists, you know.’ Nodding. Matter of fact. Trying to impress.
The session was not progressing as she had hoped. George determined to get her study subject back on track. She tapped the pencil drawing that Silas had brought along to show her. It was the most recent work, contained within a sketch pad that was full of semi-pornographic images.
‘Tell me about this, Silas,’ she said, pointing to the perfectly executed illustration of a woman in a black gimp mask – only her heavily made-up eyes were visible. Startled, yet alluring. Her mouth was contained behind a brutal-looking zip. Her nose transformed into two miserly slits in the black leather. Oddly, she was hanging by her neck from a tree bough. Hanging as though dead, which made the focussed clarity in her eyes all the more alarming. Clad in what appeared to be a black rubber leotard with the breasts and vagina cut out. Two circles. One triangle. ‘Why have you drawn her with one leg?’
Her question was met with laughter. ‘Oh, come on! You know better than to ask that of me!’ Silas said, toying with a strand of his hair almost coquettishly. ‘Am I not famed for my specialist taste in erotica?’
His tone was so smug, so arrogant, that George could not stem her response. Neither could she keep the vitriol out of her voice.
‘Is she one of your victims, Silas? Is she the prostitute from Middlesbrough that you picked up, strangled, partially dismembered and then masturbated over? Oh no! Silly me. Perhaps she was the prostitute from Nottingham, whose arms were found in your freezer at home? Mother of four. First time on the streets because she owed a loan shark money from Christmas. Last time on the streets because you strung her up from the railings of a local school. Or maybe one of the four others that we know about.’
‘Ms McKenzie!’ Graham said, raising his eyebrows.
George’s red mist cleared and revealed a grinning Dr Silas Holm.
‘The trial was a shambles,’ Silas said, flicking his tongue over his narrow, discoloured incisors. ‘I’m putting together a case that I plan to take to the High Court. It was all circumstantial evidence and I intend to get out of this hellhole.’ He examined his fingernails again. Sighed. ‘Anyway, if you must know, that is a portrait of a famous Latvian beauty who stars in all the very best erotic horror films. Quality productions. I was quite a fan before coming in here. I think I got her eyes just right.’
Scratching away at her pad, noting down the salient detail of his response, George considered her next question.
‘Do you find your own artwork arousing?’
No response.
‘What is it about amputation that interests you sexually?’
No response. Silas was peering up at the bars on the windows. He seemed no longer to be listening.
‘Silas!’ George was careful to keep the impatience out of her voice this time. It was a difficult game of cat and mouse with Silas Holm. On the one hand, she found him repugnant, although he was always perfectly calm and charming when she visited, putting her in mind of a great white shark circling slowly, just beneath the surface of shallow waters. On the other, she needed his responses for her study. She knew how lucky she had been to gain access to this place and to secure the willing participation of men like him. Keep a lid on it, George. A psycho like him will never stay quiet for long.
‘In your opinion, Silas, did the pornography you used on the outside in any way influence the manner in which you killed your victims? The strangulation. The dismemberment.’
Seemingly bored now, Silas flung his arms behind his head and rolled his eyes. ‘Did you see that thing in the news about the eviscerated fishermen? That was quite a story. But Kenneth switched the television over to some tawdry soap. Most annoying.’
Dumbfounded. George stopped writing. Stared at him. ‘What has that got to do with your violent sexual proclivities and pornography?’
Silas stood and bowed with a flourish. ‘Always lovely to see you, Georgina.’ He picked up his sketchpad from the desk and nodded to Graham. ‘Lunchtime! I’m famished.’
The frustration of not having got what she needed abated incrementally, with each security door that clanged shut behind her, giving way finally to relief that she had completed another session with one of Broadmoor Hospital’s most infamous and dangerous residents, without sustaining any personal injury – physical, at least. Only once she had had her mobile phone returned to her at reception did she discover the text from van den Bergen. His words caught her breath.
CHAPTER 2
Amsterdam, the set of a porn film, then, Sloterdijkermeer allotments, later
Watching the actress swig from her bottle of Evian was fascinating. She had such ridiculously full lips from too much collagen filler that merely drinking from a sports-cap looked like an obscene act. Her peroxide blonde hair hung in over-processed clumps down her back. Off camera, the cellulite on her thighs and backside was visible between the straps and buckles of the bondage gear. The inverted ‘T’ scarring beneath her bare breasts gave the augmentation away, of course, destroying the illusion of perfectly buoyant, round orbs. But despite the actress’ flaws, she was striking. Still young. The high cheekbones. The good skin. The bright eyes. Naturally white teeth and an otherwise perfectly worked-out body, with its sculpted obliques and defined triceps. This one was an ideal specimen. Healthy. And these porn actresses were such readily available raw material for a killer, whose job it was to hang out in a professional capacity on the sets of erotic film shoots. Easy pickings. Tarts with hearts of gold.
The actress approached, strutting in those ten-inch platforms. Smiling. Kisses on both cheeks, followed by something on the mouth that was overly familiar and tender.
‘Hey! How are you, darling? I didn’t see you there. Nice to have you on set.’
Her English was good for an Eastern European of humble origins. Though this woman was humble no longer. She was revered in her circle. Seemed almost a shame, but then, business was business.
‘We still going for that drink we talked about?’
Wide-eyes betraying excitement or was it the line of coke the actress had hoovered up as the director had shouted ‘Cut’ on the previous scene? She reached out with a manicured hand. Her caress was gentle. Flirtatious and promising.
‘Why not,’ she said. ‘When I finish here, right? Just you and me. I’d like that.’
She turned to walk away, poised to resume her position, artfully strung between two posts on some medieval-style wooden contraption that looked like the base of a trebuchet. Where did they get these ridiculous ideas from? The red stripes on her back looked livid.
‘Do those hurt?’
The actress looked back and smiled archly. Raised a plucked eyebrow. ‘Makeup, sweet thing. You should know that!’
No damage. That was good. And the space was prepared. Perfect.
Van den Bergen sat on a camping stool inside his gloomy cabin, which was situated on a prime plot in Sloterdijkermeer’s allotment complex. He had no intention of gardening, of course. Outside, the frozen ground was too unyielding to work, but the afternoon half-light and silence of a freezing cold super-shed was preferable to enduring another afternoon at the station, gawping into the existential void. Listening to that frog-eyed prick, Jaap Hasselblad, pontificate about the girl they had found.
‘This is a sex pervert. Mark my words!’ Hasselblad had announced. ‘Round up the nutters and serial jerk-offs. Bring them all in for questioning. We can’t have a dangerous woman-hating psycho on the loose.’
Just because he was the commissioner and had recently been on a criminal psychology refresher course, Hasselblad thought he knew everything. That uniform-clad, industrial strength arse-kisser had not done a day’s decent detective work in about fifteen years, van den Bergen mused. Why did he always end up with such utter morons above him?
He cracked open a can of Heineken and swallowed down a tablet for gastric reflux. Thumped himself on the chest as the beer winded him. No, Hasselblad’s field of expertise was drinking Kir Royale in Michelin-starred brasseries with slimeball politicians and the other top brass.
‘Guy’s a wanker,’ van den Bergen told the poster of Debbie Harry that was fastened to a damp wooden wall. Curling up in one corner and mottled with mould. ‘He’s no better than Kamphuis.’ He raised his can to the once universally adored singer. ‘Just me and you, kiddo. We don’t need them.’ Then, he turned to the mildewed photo of his father that sat on the table amongst empty pots, seedling trays and a split bag of ericaceous compost. ‘Five years.’ Made a contemplative clicking noise with his tongue and breathed out heavily. ‘Five years, now. Long time.’ A fleeting memory of his father, sitting in a chemo chair at the hospital, with the hopeful poison running into his wasted, sinewy arms through a drip. ‘Miss you, old man. I hope you’re somewhere better. Cheers!’
Van den Bergen drank the freezing lager and was surprised and angered by the tears that seemed to leak from his eyes unbidden. For the second time that day, he thumbed out a text to George, telling her the other dreadful thing that had happened. But as he was about to press send, the phone rang.
‘Van den Bergen. Speak!’
‘It’s Daan Strietman,’ a man said.
‘Who?’
‘Marianne’s colleague. Forensic Pathology. We met last May at her birthday party. Remember?’
Van den Bergen cast his mind back to a balmy evening, standing on the balcony at Marianne’s apartment, wishing he didn’t have to make small talk with her inane boyfriend, Jasper, who had brought that sap, Ad Karelse, along because George had been in England and Karelse was ‘lonely’. Boo hoo. What a pity. He had no recollection of a Daan Strietman. ‘No. Where the hell is Marianne?’
‘Norovirus. Listen, come and see me. I’ve finished the autopsy on your Jane Doe.’
‘And?’
‘Oh, you’ll be interested in this! I’ve never seen anything like it.’
CHAPTER 3
Soho, London, later
Are u coming back? the text demanded to know. I miss u. xxx
Ad had only been holed up at Aunty Sharon’s for three days, this time, and already he was moaning he was bored. He had British television to watch, for God’s sake. In all its multi-channelled, digital and Sky Plus glory. In fact, Aunty Sharon had a dish on top of her garage that was so big and contravened local authority regulations by such an excessive margin, that he could probably pick up broadcasts from outer space, if he used his initiative. How could he possibly be bored? Or he could simply go for a walk. Okay, so maybe a white boy going for a walk down the high street of Aunty Sharon’s South East London neighbourhood at dusk was not such a bright idea. But still…
‘Stop nagging, man!’ she told the phone. Typed out her response:
Missing u 2. Back by 9.x
One kiss. One was enough. The three were getting on her nerves. Always three, sent and expected in return. He was being demanding.
‘I’ve come over here especially,’ he had said; hurt visible in those sensitive brown eyes. ‘I don’t understand why you can’t take time off.’
What was there for him to understand? The bills didn’t pay themselves. After all, he had just turned up on her doorstep. A surprise wooing that she hadn’t solicited, using birthday money from his parents for the flight. Bet they didn’t know he was squandering it on his English girlfriend. That sour-faced cow, his mother, certainly wouldn’t have given the trip her blessing. Wonder what excuse he’d given them this time? Four years of excuses.
Ad would just have to suck it up.
In the confines of her store cupboard, George squatted on the floor and checked that the thick wad of notes she had taken from her morning meeting with Silas Holm was securely zipped away in the side pocket of her bag.
‘Holm’s such a perv,’ she told the mop.
She donned her polyester overalls and changed into her beat-up old sneakers. Filled the bucket with hot, bleachy water at the crackle-glazed Victorian butler’s sink, shoved a range of cleaning products into her deep pockets and emerged into the dimly lit fug of the club. The air was rank with heady, synthetic air fresheners, barely masking the cheap, over-perfumed smell of the girls; the floor sticky with spilled alcohol from the night before.
‘Ciao, bella!’ the manager said, checking his watch. He leaned in for a kiss, which George dodged.
She slammed the heavy bucket onto the floor and started to wring the mop out. Mop, mop, mop by his feet, almost soaking his hand-stitched loafers and brown Farah slacks. ‘Wotcha, Derek. Sorry I’m a bit late. I’ve been rushing around interviewing people. Part of my doctorate, you know?’
Out of earshot of the girls, who were already limbering up on the poles or else in the back, exchanging squealed gossip about the previous night’s punters whilst they back-combed their hair, Derek rounded on her. Grabbed her by the arm. Whispering sharply so that nobody else could hear.
‘Not fucking Derek! Giuseppe. I told you.’ His grip was sharp – the kind of grip George might have expected from a ratty-looking man who ran a titty bar.
Wanting to knock his ill-fitting toupee from his head but resisting, George pulled her arm free. ‘Get off! Just because you’re my boss and Aunty Sharon’s your barmaid doesn’t give you the right to manhandle me,’ she said. ‘Anyway, you were Derek when you were with Aunty Sharon. What changed?’
He stood poker-straight momentarily and eyed George. A thin-lipped mouth and puffy eyes from too many late nights and vodkas. Aunty Sharon said he had been a royal pain in the arse, but generous with it. Here, beneath the half-light of dusty crystal chandeliers, however, with no other employees within earshot, George didn’t like his expression at all.
‘Sharon was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘But me and her are still good mates. Only ’cause of her working here and being something more than a colleague to me that you got this job, right? And I’m running in different circles, now. So, if I say I’m Giuseppe de Falco and not Derek, then it’s Uncle Giuseppe to you. Like the other girls. Uncle Fucking Giuseppe. Same as Daddy Fucking Warbucks, but more Italian.’
‘Suit yourself, Uncle G,’ George said, sucking her teeth and steeling herself to desist from drowning his loafers with mop water.
When she sprayed the brass handrail of the staircase that led down into the club with anti-bacterial spray, she did so with venom. When she wiped the laminate fixtures and PVC upholstery, she applied the rough, hot cloth with something bordering on aggression. Polishing mirrors, dappled with greasy fingerprints and, in the VIP area, traces of coke. Wiping semen from the walls of the men’s toilet cubicles. Unblocking the women’s toilets that choked with stinking discarded tampons and paper towels. It was demeaning, backbreaking work. But the job earned her an honest crust, where her PhD funding wouldn’t quite stretch to trips to Amsterdam and the odd night of decadence inside London’s better clubs. At least the act of cleaning was therapeutic. Especially after spending a morning with Silas Holm. Especially for someone like George.
As she polished the metal pole on the main stage, she paused to check her phone again. Peered in the gloom at the glowing screen which offered up van den Bergen’s alarming, unanswered words.
CHAPTER 4
Amsterdam, mortuary, later
‘Paul. Thanks for coming.’ The wholly unfamiliar man stood in the spot that Marianne usually graced, by the side of the steel mortuary slab.
Van den Bergen refused to shake his latex-clad hand. ‘It’s Chief Inspector van den Bergen. And I prefer to deal with Marianne,’ he said.
He looked this interloper up and down, though it was difficult to get the full measure of him in his scrubs. He looked young. Fresh face and shiny eyes. Certainly in his early thirties. And small. Though at six feet five, van den Bergen could see the top of pretty much everyone’s heads as they scrabbled about beneath him. Maybe the guy wasn’t small. But he definitely had the upright posture of a cocky little arsehole, van den Bergen decided, and he wasn’t the lovely Marianne de Koninck.
Daan Strietman smiled at him. ‘I’m her number two. You knew that, right, Paul? She introduced us at the party. Ha! You’re such a funny guy. You’re pulling my leg, now, aren’t you?’
‘No.’ Van den Bergen scratched at his aching hip. Fingered his scabbed-up knuckles. Hadn’t he just told this idiot he was Chief Inspector van den Bergen? Was this guy deaf? And where did this notion of funny come from? ‘I want number one. If I want second best, I’ll—’
Daan put his clipboard and pen down. Slapped van den Bergen across the back in a chummy style. ‘Look, your Jane Doe’s in good hands, big feller.’
‘But Marianne… She was at the scene this morning.’
‘I told you. She’s ill. Throwing her guts up. Forget Marianne. Okay?’
Van den Bergen noticed a pause before the okay, which meant Daan Strietman had finally decided that being challenged by a policeman was not okay, even if it was by a senior one. He smiled again. What was with all the smiling? Was this guy simple? The smile disappeared once the idiot noticed his scabbed knuckles.
‘Just give me the lowdown on my victim, Strietman. Okay?’
Now that she was on the slab, van den Bergen was hoping the girl would look like any other cadaver – a spoiled mannequin, devoid of any remaining trace of vitality; deserted by her humanity, so that only an abstract husk was left; dissected like an oversized scientific experiment. He would find it easy to give a corpse like that the once-over and then listen to the pathologist’s report. But she didn’t, this Jane Doe. Her elfin face, framed by the wisps of black curly hair that still remained – after her cranium had been removed to allow examination of her brain – was outlandishly at odds with those unseeing eye sockets, staring out at him. Ghoulish. Vulnerable. Her dark skin, which must have been a warm hue when she had breath in her body, was flat grey. But so slight was her build with those spindly little arms and legs, so lost did she look in the aseptic white glare of the mortuary’s overhead lights, that van den Bergen had to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. He almost felt compelled to hug the girl, though she had been utterly disembowelled both by her murderer and by the process of the post mortem. George was slightly built like that. George’s skin was dark like that.
Feeling momentarily dizzy, he steadied himself on the steel sink at the dead girl’s feet.
Daan Strietman chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t have put an old hand like you down as squeamish! You want to sit?’
Van den Bergen glared at him. ‘I’m not squeamish.’ He pointed to his ear. ‘I have this balance thing. Sometimes it… Anyway. What did you find?’
‘You’re not going to believe this.’
CHAPTER 5
Soho, London, later
I did a really stupid thing & I can’t tell anyone else. I’m losing my grip. Call me. Paul.
George read the words out loud, as though giving voice to them would reveal the truth behind the cryptic, partial revelation. Should she call? She had been sitting on his text all day. Staring at her phone, as the train had carried her back from Broadmoor. Her heart told her to respond to this wonderful, troubled man. Didn’t she spend at least as much time with him during her trips to Amsterdam as she did with her boyfriend? Pottering at the allotment. Talking about music. Life, the universe and everything. Hadn’t their bond become the elephant in the room, whenever Ad questioned why she had grown distant and disengaged?
‘All right, darling? What you looking so shifty for?’ Aunty Sharon asked, grabbing her in a bear hug and planting a lipsticky kiss on her cheek.
‘Just a text,’ George said.
She made to turn the phone’s screen off and slip it into her back jeans pocket beneath her overalls. But surprisingly for a woman of small statue and large volume, Aunty Sharon was agile enough to reach around and snatch the phone right out of her George’s hand.
She gazed down at the screen, grinning.
‘Aunty Sharon! Gimme the phone, man.’
Her aunt brought the text back up and read the words. ‘Paul? Oh, yeah?’ Fixed her niece with a knowing look. Nudged her joyfully and a little too energetically, so that her flamboyant head attire wobbled – a sculpture fashioned from a scarf, the colours of the Rasta flag, intertwined with platinum blonde, curly hair extensions that looked incongruous next to her mahogany skin. ‘You two-timing that poor Ad with some geez named Paul? Girl, you’re harsh!’
George snatched the phone back. Jammed it into her pocket. Relieved that in the dingy light, Aunty Sharon would never suss she was blushing. ‘I’m not two-timing anybody. I told you about Paul. It’s just van den Bergen.’
‘The Dutch cop?’
George nodded. ‘He’s just a friend, yeah?’
‘Oh, really? That why you hiding your phone, then?’ For all George’s qualifications and finesse and Aunty Sharon’s lack of them, this one-time Jamaica Road rose in Betty Boop heels and laddered sparkly tights had the measure of her, all right.
George was searching for a way to change the subject, when three men entered the club. Two of them were tall, burly, wearing outmoded single-breasted leather jackets and cheap shoes. Cropped hair, dark eyes, olive skin. The third was small in stature and somewhat older-looking than the man-mountains that flanked him. Had the beady-eyed look of a coke-head, George swiftly estimated.
‘Get out the way and keep your gob shut,’ Aunty Sharon said, grabbing the bucket. Thrusting the mop into George’s hand. ‘Don’t attract no attention to yourself. Thems is bad news.’
As she ushered George behind the bar, the men escorted inside four bewildered-looking white girls, who were quickly divested of their fun-furs by a sycophantic, scuttling Derek. Beneath their coats, they wore either string bikinis or lacy lingerie, all covered only by sheer net babydolls, as if they had been provided with uniforms. Heavy makeup. Fluttering eyelashes and bouffant hair. Flawless, tight behinds, which only the really young could boast, George noted. On their feet they wore identical Perspex-soled platform shoes.
‘Jesus,’ George said, pretending to dust down the vodka and whisky optics that lined the walls when in fact, she was scrutinising the girls. ‘They don’t look much more than about fourteen.’
Walking uneasily in the vertiginous footwear, they advanced towards the main stage and came to a halt, as if awaiting instruction.
‘They’re crippled in them bloody stripper shoes, that’s for sure!’ Aunty Sharon said, wiping a wine glass with a tea towel. ‘They’re gonna end up with fallen arches.’
The sound system was not yet switched on. George could clearly hear the girls chattering nervously to one another in an Eastern European language. Could have been Russian. Could have been Polish. Who knew? Not George. They blinked fast. Flutter, flutter, butterfly lashes. Taking in their new surrounds, while their escorts spoke to Derek. Clapping him on the shoulder. Nodding. Smiling like old buddies at a reunion.
‘Listen that! See how they’re chatting in Italian?’ Aunty Sharon said, raising an eyebrow. She sucked her teeth long and hard.
‘That why he’s going round asking everyone to call him Giuseppe?’ George spritzed the till with anti-bacterial spray.
Aunty Sharon shook her head. ‘He’s into something, that scrawny fucking idiot. Well out of his depth. Them geezers been round here three or four weeks running, now. New girls every time. Young foreign girls. They dance for a night or two. Rake it in. Then they’re gone. Sometimes it’s African girls. Sometimes from the Far East. They don’t talk no English. Derek thinks cos his grandfather came from some tin-pot shithole outside Rome that he’s fucking mafia or something.’
‘Porn king that owns this place know?’
Aunty Sharon shook her head. ‘Nah. Don’t reckon so. These girls ain’t legal. He’d lose his bloody licence. Dermot Robinson ain’t that daft. But I’d put money on it that Derek’s on some kind of fiddle. Fucking Uncle Giuseppe. Rarseclart.’
The tallest man locked eyes with George. Started to walk towards her.
‘You!’ he said. Clicked his fingers, as though she were a willing waitress. ‘Come here!’
CHAPTER 6
Amsterdam, mortuary, later
‘Her vital organs are all but gone. Can you believe it? Kidneys, bladder, pancreas, liver… you name it,’ Strietman said. ‘Everything except the two biggies – her brain and heart. Hard to tell with so much of her missing what the actual cause of death was. I’d put my money on cardiac arrest. I’ll need more time to examine her brain properly.’ He gestured towards the girl’s groin area with his pen. ‘She shows signs of having had rough sexual intercourse either just before death or shortly afterwards. Difficult to tell. No semen, but we lifted a couple of pubic hairs that didn’t belong to her. There are some signs of a struggle – thumb prints to her wrists. Bruising to the left side of her face, as though she’s been struck, but not trauma like you’d expect from a blunt instrument. Maybe a fist. Beaten, then raped, I guess.’
‘Don’t guess,’ van den Bergen said. ‘The sex may have been consensual and the bruising part of rough play.’
Daan Strietman shook his head. ‘She’s been murdered! It’s got to be rape, hasn’t it?’
‘Has it? That’s for me to discern. Continue.’
‘Well, I’ve really never seen anything like it.’ The pathologist was smiling again. Almost feverishly. ‘I think we’ve got some kind of ritual sex murder on our hands, here.’
Van den Bergen peered inside the girl’s chest cavity where the ribs had been peeled back to reveal black, coagulated blood and a rag-tag confusion of muscle and sinew. ‘Have we, indeed? Ritual sex murder. Why do you say that?’
‘Well, her uterus is gone.’
‘Yes, along with pretty much everything else, you’re telling me. Any trauma to the genitals other than what you’d normally expect from intercourse?’
The sombre proceedings were interrupted by a woman, knocking at the door.
‘Knock, knock! Can I come in?’ she asked. A cheerful voice. Searching eyes. Looked over at Strietman and smiled. ‘Hello, Daan. They said it would be okay for me to come straight down here.’
‘Sabine!’ Strietman beckoned the woman inside. ‘Perfect timing! Paul, this a good friend of Marianne’s – a very well-respected paediatrician.’
Van den Bergen moved away from the slab and was leaned against a tall storage cabinet. Arms folded; long legs entwined around each other. Wasn’t sure about this interloper.
Strietman offered the woman a typing chair to sit on. ‘I felt I needed a second opinion from someone who knows more about children’s physiology than me, since our Jane Doe shows signs of aggravated sexual assault and has given birth underage.’
Sabine perched elegantly, with the perfect posture of a yoga enthusiast on the edge of her chair. Ran a manicured hand through her long, thick chestnut-coloured hair. Van den Bergen assessed she was in her early forties, but she had that youthful glow to her skin that said this was a woman who looked after herself. Expensive-looking clothes. Nothing flashy. Pale grey co-ordinated knitwear. Leggings that emphasised her long, slender legs.
‘Anyway. Formal introductions,’ Strietman said, clapping his hands together. ‘Paul, this is Dr Sabine Schalks. Sabine, this is Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen. There. Now we all know one another.’
Sabine examined the Jane Doe. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘There are signs of partial female genital mutilation, but the scar tissue is old, indicating that it was performed years ago and not related to this girl’s death. Your Jane Doe must come from an Islamic country. Possibly East African.’
Van den Bergen nodded. ‘Anything else?’
Sabine Schalks backed away from the body and sighed. ‘She’s definitely a victim of sexual abuse. She could only have been about thirteen when she was carrying her child. Tragic. Absolutely tragic. Worse still that she’s ended up in here.’ She turned to Strietman, eyebrows raised. ‘What are the other circumstances of her death, in your opinion?’
Strietman thumbed his chin. ‘She’s suffered what we call a catecholamine “storm”.’ The pathologist made exclamation marks in the air with his blue, gloved fingers. ‘Her body’s been flooded by catecholamines – hormones made by the adrenal glands – and that’s caused ventricular damage to the heart. It’s often related to an overdose of cocaine or psychedelic drugs. There are MAOIs in her blood.’ He turned to van den Bergen. ‘Know what those are?’
‘Monoamine oxidase inhibitors,’ van den Bergen offered. ‘Used to treat depression.’
‘How do you know that?’ Strietman’s eyebrows shot up. He studied the chief inspector with something bordering on fascination. As though van den Bergen himself was a subject to be dissected, weighed and pronounced upon.
Van den Bergen wasn’t giving this over-enthusiastic dipshit anything. He remained silent. Peered down his nose at the younger man. Shot a furtive glance at the paediatrician. ‘What the hell have anti-depressants got to do with ritual murder?’
The feverish grinning continued.
Did this asshole think he was putting forward a case for winning the Nobel Prize? Or did he aspire to swap careers, trading his coroner’s stink and the solitude of the morgue for the lingering, heady musk of IT Marie’s three-day-old BO when they were pulling overnighters on a big case? Van den Bergen longed for the familiar sparring he enjoyed with the entirely sober Marianne. Wondered if George had read his text. He’d heard nothing. Yet.
Strietman expanded: ‘Well, Paul, MAOIs are used by spiritual drug users to increase the bioavailability of the hallucinogenic, DMT. In other words, MAOIs help them get a better psychedelic high. And this girl…guess what else she has in her blood!’
Van den Bergen swallowed down a fireball of gastric discomfort. ‘Tomato ketchup? Coriander? Anti-bacterial gel? I don’t know. Just tell me.’
‘MDMA.’ Strietman punched the air triumphantly with his pen. ‘Ecstasy.’
Groaning, van den Bergen removed his glasses and cleaned them on the bottom of his shirt. Replaced them and almost glimpsed a younger Elvis in this interloping pathologist. ‘The girl lives in Amsterdam, Daan. We’re at the European epicentre of ecstasy production. It’s entirely possible she went out and got bombed the night before this…’ he described the girl’s remains with a wave of his large hand ‘…happened to her.’
‘Daan might have a point,’ Sabine interjected. ‘Child abuse victims are often drugged by their attackers.’
‘No, Paul,’ Strietman went on. ‘She’s definitely been drugged, and that’s ultimately caused her heart to fail. There’s a puncture wound from a cannula in her arm.’ He lifted a grey/brown arm and displayed a tiny black mark, the top of which was encrusted with a small, dried bead of blood. ‘Abrasion up her nostril and the remnants of surgical tape, which suggested a tube has been put down her nose. Think about it! The missing organs. The sexual intercourse. The fact that she’s maybe of Eastern African origin, given the presentation of her genitals. Voodoo ritual killing. Ever hear about the torso of the African boy they found in the UK in the River Thames?’
‘Please stick to the medical facts and stop trying to play detective. That’s my job. What else have you got?’ van den Bergen asked, impatient now. Wishing he could somehow turn back time. That Marianne would get better and come back into work with her nice neck and strong runner’s physique. Wishing he didn’t find this new woman so attractive. This was neither the time nor the place to be checking out women. Keep your dick under control, you moron.
‘We’re waiting for more refined information to come back from the path lab regarding her blood,’ Daan continued. ‘But initial tests show hypernatraemia. Electrolyte imbalance. Dehydration. Consistent with ecstasy misuse. She’s undergone a caesarean delivery within the last twelve to eighteen months,’ Daan said. ‘The suturing style is unusual. Unidirectional barbed suture instead of bidirectional or traditional knots.’
Studying what was still evident of the scarring to the girl’s abdomen, van den Bergen grimaced. ‘That means nothing to me. Explain!’
‘She’s been delivered of a baby and sewn up by someone who clearly knew the theory of what they were doing. But I guess they weren’t very good with a needle and thread. The lumpy scar tissue’s a giveaway. I don’t think a qualified surgeon would do a bodge job like that in the Netherlands.’
CHAPTER 7
Amsterdam, private medical surgery, much later
The instructions told him to enter his user name, which he did. His password had been stored. Unsurprising, given how frequently he visited the website. He ordered five sterile suture packs – the budget ones – three blue disposable couch rolls, although he saved money by using a length twice if it hadn’t ripped, and a new scalpel. The blade on his other one had snapped off from the handle, despite still being pretty sharp. What a waste. Rummaging through the other supplies on the shelf in his surgery, he ascertained that he still had an adequate supply of syringes and needles. He was good for butterfly cannulas and tourniquets. Ah, but he was on his last speculum, so made a last-minute addition to his basket. Clicking on the checkout icon, he looked at the running total.
‘Fucking rip-off merchants!’ he told the screen. ‘Decimating my bottom line. What am I? A bloody charity?’ Took a large swig from the bottle of single malt. Swilled the hot, stinging liquor around his teeth before swallowing with a gasp.
It had been much easier when he could lift these supplies from the hospital in the normal course of duty. Nobody seemed to notice for a long, long time that stocks were depleting. Once they did, he was the last person to come under suspicion. Happy days, long gone.
He sighed. Took another slug of whisky. Pulled a scuffed-up credit card out of his wallet and typed in the details, which the website had not saved. At least business was brisk. The Pole was coming at 5pm. That was more cash, plus she would help him magic away the guilt.
The guilt. Oh, how he struggled beneath its weight. He hadn’t meant to do that to the girl. Noor had always been harmless enough. And she was some kind of hot with those narrow hips and big, brown eyes. But he had so little control over the monster within. The beast that had somehow, over time, made it from the shadows under his cursed childhood bed into his head. Just as the dragon, Ladon, had guarded the golden apples of Hesperides, the monster had always been his saviour. His downfall, too. When the monster wanted to take charge, he had no option but to submit.
The doorbell sounded shrilly. He put his wallet away and moved from the cold, damp surgery to the waiting room at the front. Peered briefly into the mottled mirror on the wall. Licked his fingers and smoothed his strawberry-blond hair down. Pulled his trousers over his gut. Undid the three heavy-duty locks and grinned at the leggy Pole, who was primping her fire-engine-red curls.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said. Pouting. Kissed him on both cheeks. Grabbed his crotch. ‘Botox time for Katja! My lips are pruning like an old man’s testicles and my forehead’s like a road map.’
‘You brought the money?’ he asked, eyeing her buoyant breasts in the tight top she wore beneath her puffa jacket. He had done an excellent job on those puppies.
She pushed past him and strode inside. With some effort, given the skin-tightness of her jeans and the length of those pink talons she called nails, the Pole levered an envelope out of her back pocket. Waved it under his nose. ‘It’s all there.’
‘You brought the whip?’
She giggled. Actually, it wasn’t a giggle. More of a cackle. He could tell she was looking forward to that bit, as a sweetener to take the edge off the pain of having her face poked and prodded with fine needles; filled with botulism until it was shining and tight. From inside her bulky jacket, she produced a black leather cat-o-nine tails. Swung it around her head so that it made a pleasing swishing noise, as it cut through the dank air. Slapped his behind with it playfully, though he was hoping that once her cosmetic surgical needs had been met, it would hurt enough to make his eyes water. Yes, that would be a tremendously rewarding punishment for the terrible, unpredictable way the monster was behaving at the moment.
‘A promise is a promise, darling. A fifty-euro reduction for the beating of your life. Seems a bargain.’ She set the cat-o-nine tails down on the waiting room coffee table as he locked the door. Removed her coat. Strode into the surgery at the back and sat on the crumpled blue covering on the examination couch. ‘Have you been a bad boy, then?’ She raised an eyebrow archly.
He snapped on blue latex gloves, took up his prepared syringe and ejected a sprightly fountain of the Botox solution from the end of the fine needle. ‘Appalling, my dear. A modern-day Caligula. Truly appalling.’
The free sample has ended.
