The Girl Who Broke the Rules (14 page)

‘You can see we’re snowed under,’ Marianne de Koninck said. ‘I’m off for a matter of days, God forgive me!’ She rolled her eyes. That, coupled with the undisguised sarcasm, gave her an uncharacte‌ristically dramatic air. ‘And I come back in to find this.’ She waved a clipboard animatedly in the direction of the bodies. ‘It’s winter. Half of Amsterdam is dropping like flies from flu complications, pneumonia and dehydration due to norovirus. These people don’t realise how inconsiderate they’re being. They don’t tell anyone they’re ill. Nobody sees them for days. Next minute, a neighbour notices the stink and rings them in as dead. Coroner wants to know if foul play’s involved. Maybe a lot of people bump off their relatives just after Christmas.’

‘Can you blame them?’ Strietman chimed in. ‘They’re probably murdering for kicks. The television’s terrible this time of year.’ He laughed at his own joke as he logged the weight of the woman’s brain on a computer.

‘Where’s my scalpel gone?’ Marianne asked. She slapped her clipboard against van den Bergen’s chest. ‘Hold this. I’ve lost my bloody scalpel. And where have you put the formalin, Daan? You’ve moved it!’

Strietman looked apologetic. ‘We’re out. Sorry. I forgot to reorder.’

De Koninck stopped rummaging through a glass-fronted cabinet and turned to face her junior colleague. Stony-faced. ‘You
what
?’

Strietman laughed heartily. ‘Gotcha!’

‘Ha ha.’ She didn’t sound as though she had found the practical joke funny in the slightest. She still looked like she might turn him to ice with her stare alone.

Van den Bergen leaned against the white tiled wall and appraised Marianne. He had never seen her so agitated before. Ordinarily, with her athletic form and her neat, short hair, she exuded an air of quiet self-discipline.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get under your feet, but I have to get the results from that mattress and the weapons we found on Valeriusstraat. I need to know about Jane Doe two’s dental records. I’ve got a double murder on my hands.’

‘Voodoo ladykiller on the loose,’ Strietman told Marianne, wide-eyed. Miming strangulation with blue gloved hands. He sat heavily on a wheeled typing chair by the steel worktop and whizzed himself backwards, half way across the mortuary to a computer terminal.

‘We don’t know that, actually,’ van den Bergen said.

‘Dr Schalks agreed with me.’

‘You met Sabine?’ Marianne asked van den Bergen, her mouth curling upwards into a half-smile. ‘Oh, I knew you’d like her. Me and her go back a long way, you know.’

‘I didn’t say I liked her,’ van den Bergen said. ‘But, yes. She’s very nice. Although that does
not
necessarily mean we’re after a “voodoo ladykiller”!’

With a few clicks on his mouse, Strietman brought a screen full of results up. ‘Here you go. The blood on the mattress does
not
match that of either victims. It’s universal type “O” – the stuff you’re given in a blood transfusion. There was so much DNA on that filthy old mattress, though. Hairs. Semen. Stale vomit. I think half of Amsterdam’s down-and-outs must have slept on that thing at some point. See what your perp database throws up, but there’s no match to either of your victims.’

Van den Bergen thumbed his stubble. Took several steps towards the glowing computer screen. Pushed his glasses onto the end of his nose and stared at the baffling numbers, medical terms and statistics. ‘We lifted prints off the hammer and chisel that matched the builder who was first on the Valeriusstraat scene,’ he said. ‘Any DNA? What about the scalpel and the cleaver? The other bits: the thong. The whip.’

Strietman smiled, as he read through the results. ‘
Cow
DNA found on the scalpel and cleaver! Ha. Ever heard the English phrase for a vagina:
beef curtains
?’ He snorted with laughter. ‘Maybe your murderer took that too literally. Nothing on the thong.’ Clicked open several more tabs. ‘But, oh! Looks like the dental records you asked for came in quickly.’ He brought up two x-rays of teeth side-by-side. ‘The name you gave me last night…’

‘Linda Lepiks.’

‘You bet, kemosabe.’ He turned around to face van den Bergen, seemingly oblivious to the chief inspector’s withering look of disapproval, and winked. ‘Looks like you’ve got yourself a perfect match.’

‘Strietman, did you seriously just call me kemosabe?’ van den Bergen asked.

Strietman’s smile was sunny and seemingly guileless. ‘Lighten up, pal. We’re both on the same side here. We’re both in the stiffs business.’

Van den Bergen took his glasses off. ‘Marianne, can I talk to you in private for a moment, please?’

In the flickering fluorescent strip lighting of the corridor, Marianne looked harried and tired.

‘You read the case notes?’ van den Bergen asked. ‘His report?’

She nodded. Looked sickly, where the green of her mortuary scrubs reflected on her skin. Her eyelids were still swollen and red. She held her hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I know Strietman’s a pain in the arse,’ she said. She chuckled and looked down at her rubber clogs. ‘God knows, you don’t need a sparkling personality to work with the dead.’

‘Well, he’s certainly not got one of those. That guy’s got no respect. He called me “kemosabe”! He said I was
funny
. What a prick.’

Marianne clasped the chief inspector’s arm and walked him to the coffee machine, as if they were long-standing elderly friends out for a stroll. She kicked the machine in a sweet spot, which caused it to malfunction – red flashing lights and a string of digital gobbledegook on the display. Presently it provided her with a scalding cup of something she hadn’t chosen for free.

‘Daan’s conclusions are sound,’ she said. ‘Logical and well-founded. He knows his onions, Paul. The shoddy barbed sutures on both victims puts me in mind of something.’ She held a sinewy, veined hand over her forehead, as if she were trying to tease some enlightening piece of information from her memory. ‘Something I heard on the grapevine a while ago. I don’t know. I’ll have a think. Reading the report, though…I’d agree with Daan that you’re looking for a vet or a medically trained person who actually did the cutting. You mustn’t judge his scientific nous by his witty repartee.’

Van den Bergen tried to convey his scepticism with sighing alone. ‘I can’t come up with a motive to save my life apart from sex-pervert medic going on the rampage! This thing’s a mess. Can’t
you
give the women the once-over for me? Outside hours. Please! I’ll take you to dinner now the amazing idiot toyboy has cut you loose.’

Marianne de Koninck looked at van den Bergen sideways on. Shook her head. ‘No. This is winter. Crazy time. I can’t let the bodies stack up to duplicate work that’s already been done. I haven’t got the resources or the energy. When I finish my shift this evening, I’m going home. Okay? I’m going to open a bottle of wine, eat potato salad from the tub and play “me and Jasper’s song” over and over until I’ve drowned in my own sorrow.’

‘Since when was it okay for people like us to feel sorry for ourselves?’ van den Bergen said. ‘This is not like you at all.’

The pathologist pushed past him, though there was ample room in that basement corridor. She glanced back over her shoulder. Tears stood in her eyes but did not fall. Her lips trembled, as though she were about to cry. But her voice was strong and even and full of cold anger.

‘You get yourself a broken heart and see how “not like you at all” you suddenly feel.’

CHAPTER 28

Amsterdam, red light district, later

Sitting in the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, he dragged hard on the ready-made joint and held the smoke in his lungs for the requisite amount of time. The sensation of the blood draining from his cheeks was almost instant. His brain felt sluggish. Good. It had been a while since he had smoked dope, but he knew it would give him the numbing sensation he needed.

‘Here’s your coffee, feller,’ the old hippy who owned the place said. He slammed down onto the table a chipped mug containing some oily-looking liquid. Seated himself on the opposite side of the booth, as though they were old friends. ‘Not seen you around here in a long time.’ The hippy took off his round spectacles and started to clean them on the bottom of his batik-print T-shirt. ‘Short term memory’s a joke, but my long term… I never forget a face. You’re the doctor. Right? How’s tricks?’

Taking his hip flask out of his coat pocket, he poured some whisky into the coffee. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asked the hippy.

A shake of the head said he didn’t. ‘Booze and dope don’t mix, man. But it’s a free country.’ He took a drag from his own funnel-shaped joint. Switched to American-style English. ‘As long as no feds come in. I haven’t got a liquor licence.’ Back to Dutch. ‘You understand?’

He nodded. Of course he bloody understood. ‘Do you mind? I’ve had a rough morning. I just want to get stoned in peace.’

‘You do look like somebody took a piss in your vla, man. Inneke’s upstairs. What a lovely woman that is.’

Perhaps silence would make him go away.

‘She’s got special hands, like a reiki healer for your dick. You should treat yourself, if you’re feeling low.’

Perhaps not.

He was just about to tell the hippy to leave him the hell alone, when the doorbell to the shop tinkled. Some young black woman walked in. Put him briefly in mind of poor little Noor, with her dark skin and wild hair. Although the one who had just come in had the fully-formed hourglass shape of a grown adult.

The hippy leaped to his feet and yelled. The woman shrieked and they started to hug one another and gabble in English. Good. At least that got the 60s-throwback idiot off his back.

What a fiasco, before the day had even got started. Before breakfast, for Christ’s sake. He dragged on the joint and recalled with some distaste how the man had burst into his surgery under the pretext of making an outstanding payment. All, my-daughter’s-in-hospital-fighting-MRSA-and-poisoned-tubes-because-of-you. All, we’re-going-to-get-deported-because-of-you. For a slightly-built Chinese, he had been damned strong too. Stroking his jaw gently, he could feel that it had already swollen up like a balloon where the Chink had punched him.

He let his ash droop mournfully into the ashtray. At least now the slant-eyed fucker could legitimately join his daughter in the emergency room. The cracking noise had told him he had definitely broken Concerned Daddy’s arm with the baseball bat. Served him right. Although now, of course, there was a risk he’d have the cops on his back. The Chink had nothing left to lose by ratting out his little backstreet business. Shit.

He was so absorbed by the conundrum he found himself in that he hadn’t noticed the coffee shop’s doorbell sound a second time. Had failed to notice the eye-catching, fire-engine red of the Pole’s hair. He caught her eye immediately.

‘Ruud, darling! Are you waiting for me?’

Upstairs, George stood in her old room with Jan. Same gabled ceiling. Same old furniture. Same scuff marks on the magnolia walls. Nothing had changed, except the place now stank of stale frying and the carpet had been replaced by something cheap and nasty in medium beige. A colour that betrayed too well all manner of spillages and soiled outdoor shoes being worn indoors. Reflexively, she scratched her scalp at the thought. Was torn between wanting to slip her own shoes off but feeling the carpet was too dirty to risk sullying her clean socks. She felt tears prick at the backs of her eyes.

‘I first got a grip of Ad on that chaise longue,’ she said quietly.

She had written political blogposts on her laptop in that lumpy old 1930s bed. Had loved to gaze out at the red light district’s rooftops through that window. But then, she remembered the frightening spectacle of discovering somebody had intruded on her territory – marking it by leaving their stain on her pillowcase; their used match on the floor. Now, she fingered the gold chain Ad had bought her. It hung around her neck like some dog tag. She was his, because he had named her in nine-carat gold. Her very body had become his territory. Silently, she took the necklace off and slid it into her jeans pocket.

‘The place isn’t tenanted at the moment. You can stay here for a couple of nights,’ Jan said, pulling clean bed linen from the larder unit in the kitchen.

The door was hanging off its hinges now, George noted, but at least the pile of linen he threw onto the bare mattress looked clean.

Her old landlord patted her hand and smiled at her benignly, his eyes crinkling up merrily behind the smudged lenses of his glasses. ‘Just like old times.’

‘I bloody hope not!’ George said, forcing herself to smile.

But sure enough, from downstairs, she could hear squeaking bed springs and the rhythmic grunting of a man, as Inneke entertained a punter.

The clatter of high-heeled boots on the stairs heralded Katja’s arrival. She strode into the room. Even if her hair had been an anonymous shade of brown rather than bright red, in her skin-tight, diamanté-studded jeans and sequinned pink top, she would have made the place seem even drabber. She looked around. Rearranged her fat red lips with some apparent difficulty into a shape that conveyed disgust.

‘You’re such a cheap bastard, Jan, darling. I can’t believe your tenants don’t charge
you
for this shithole.’

Jan started to wheeze with the somewhat inexplicable laughter of the very stoned. ‘Too good for the Cracked Pot now you’re a film star, are you?’

‘Yes.’ She turned to George, hands on hips. Her face appearing slightly startled even though George could see there was an intended smile behind it. ‘How come you’re not staying with loverboy?’

George groaned. ‘Oh, I will. I just need a couple of days. To myself, you know? I only just put him on the flight back here. He turned up unannounced in London.’

Both Jan and Katja inhaled sharply.

‘Trouble in paradise,’ Jan said. Nodding sagely. ‘Shame.’

‘No!’ George protested. ‘It’s fine. It’s—’

‘She’s come for the detective!’ Katja said, grabbing George’s chin between her fingers. Almost scratching her with those hot pink talons. Reminiscent of Letitia the Dragon, but only just. ‘Tell Katja, darling. Is the pretty boy no good in bed?’