The Girl Who Broke the Rules (26 page)

The pervert had arrived after lunch with his camera. Told her she was going to be a star, like Katy Perry or Taylor Swift. The part of her that was still a child wanted to believe him. Had enjoyed the shawarma kebab the Italian had brought for her to eat.
Keep your strength up,
cara mia
. He only takes your picture because you are so lovely.
The rest of her knew better.

‘Hurry up,’ the Italian said, peering between the grimy slats of the Venetian blinds to whatever lay below. Checking his watch. ‘We’ve got to go. The Duke wants to see you.’

‘Go?’ she asked. ‘Leave here, you mean?’

In truth, she had no idea where the apartment was. Had she been there days? Weeks? Longer? She remembered getting into a really nice car, thinking she had been offered a lift into town, to the station. All friendly enough. Felt safe. Next minute, she had woken up on the bed in the apartment with the Italian on top of her.

Outside, there was the hammer and holler of builders. Loud dance music thumping from somewhere close by. Same music day and night. Shouting from drunk men. She had an inkling that they were in Hamburg. It was the nearest big city, after all. She had heard Günther telling Mum about a stag party he had been to that ended up in a brothel in a place called the Reeperbahn. The two of them had laughed hard about it. At the time, she had wondered what a brothel was and what stags did at a party. Had Ewa got herself caught up in that kind of thing?

A knock on the door. The Italian retreated down the hall to answer it. There was an exchange of words in another language. He came back. Smiled like he meant it. Something like pity in those beady fucking eyes. Held his arm out. ‘Change of plan. Come, Ewa. There’s a nice doctor wants to meet you.’

CHAPTER 51

Katwijk asylum seekers’ centre, Netherlands, later

‘We take our jobs very seriously, here!’ The woman snatched the file back. Held it to her blousy, polyester-wrapped body, as though it were a floatation device and she was all at sea. Her tone of voice, which had started out so friendly, was rapidly turning hostile and cold.

‘Then how come you let an asylum-seeking minor slip under your radar?’ Marie asked.

It was the fourth place they had visited. The first couple, battered women’s refuges in the city itself. Then, homeless shelters. George had had the idea to speak to representatives of African community groups. But nobody recognised the photo of Noor in the young arts organisation, Stichting GAM, which, it transpired, was for young people of
West
African origin, anyway. Blank expressions from the imam at the mosque. Finally, some careful internet research in the unprepossessing café of her favourite shop-full-of-shit, Hema, had allowed George to pinpoint the Asylum Seekers’ Centre in Katwijk. Three-quarters of an hour south of Amsterdam in a car. Just northwest of Leiden.

The drive down had been uncomfortable in a standard issue detective’s car – a Ford Focus. It was dirty inside – empty chocolate bar wrappers, grit on the slip mats from people’s shoes, bits of paper, receipts, a product-laden comb that looked as though it could have belonged to Elvis. The cabin stank of body odour and sour breath, masked badly by one of those cheap air-fresheners in the shape of a tree that hung from the dash. No Merc, with its heated leather seats and comforting thrum. No van den Bergen, smelling of sport deodorant and oranges.

Marie proved a tedious chauffeuse and had said nothing. Ignoring the funk of her infrequently washed body, George had taken the time to study Ahlers’ statement about Noor. Somali, probably. Young – under sixteen. Worked out of the red light district on Monnikenstraat, just by the canal of Oudezijds Achterburgwal, where her body was eventually discovered one block down. No known fixed address that he knew of. Ahlers was refusing to breathe a word about the ultimate fate of her baby.

‘If I was a Somali girl, new to the country, chances are I wouldn’t have made it here under my own steam,’ George mused, as they trundled along the dual carriageway of the A44. Passing a BP garage on their left. Flat green expanses to her right. Nothing of note in this unprepossessing, drab part of the country, beyond the dramatic grey and yellow rain clouds that ravaged the insipid winter-blue sky. At her side, Marie sniffed but said nothing. ‘Either my parents would have paid every penny they had to get me over here, stowed away on a cargo ship and then in a truck. Or I’d have come a more circuitous route, maybe. Noor was a working girl who knew the ropes, right? So—’

‘She’d have been brought here as a sex worker,’ Marie said, smiling ever so slightly. Flicking the indicator to turn onto the remote and desolate N206.

How like the fenlands of East Anglia this place was, George thought. She was poised to share that observation with Marie and then thought better of it. It was the sort of thing she could say to van den Bergen. She didn’t yet know Marie well enough.

‘Which is why I think she’d have sought a roof at this place,’ George said. ‘Noor – if that’s actually her name, which I doubt – would have qualified for asylum, right? Especially if she’d been a victim of sex trafficking and was young. Pregnant.’

Overcome with a fierce conviction that, somehow, they would avenge Noor’s terrible end by tracking down her murderer and bringing him to book; find her lost baby and perhaps even place it successfully with a nice Somali family, she squeezed Marie’s arm. Marie looked down at her hand long enough for her to realise she was not happy with the arrangement.

‘Sorry,’ George said. ‘It’s just, I’ve got a good feeling about this.’

Marie scoffed. ‘You’ve obviously not been doing proper police work long enough.’

The Asylum Seekers’ Centre loomed into view. An institutional red-brick building behind a barrier, that looked rather like the entrance to a hospital campus or high school. George’s heart fell.

‘Fucking soulless, man,’ she said in English.

As they drove through the complex, the larger building gave way to fixed cabins that looked like the prefabs one sometimes still sees in England. Hastily erected bungalows made from prefabricated panels. Flat roofs. Draughty. Damp. Cold. Women, wearing full burka, walked along the pathways between houses, carrying shopping. Men in salwaar kameez; their heads covered by mosque hats. It was a strange theatre. The cast had all the vivacity and diversity of the high streets of London. The backdrop was post-war hell on a disused airfield.

Had this place been the setting for a scene from Noor’s story?

In the administrative office, the grey-faced woman, wearing an ID lanyard around her neck that labelled her as Mrs de Witte, sat behind her battered desk. She wore a grim expression that said she did not care for the authorities. Pruned mouth. Cheap gold jewellery. The ill-considered haircut of a social worker.

Mrs de Witte poked at the computer-generated photo of Noor that Marie had put together. ‘I recognise this face. It’s Magool Osman,’ she said. ‘And she didn’t slip under our radar. This is not a prison, you know.’

‘She was a vulnerable girl,’ Marie said. ‘Underaged. No parents. Did she say how she’d come to be in the country?’

Shaking her head, Mrs de Witte said, ‘She wouldn’t tell us anything. All I know was she came from Mogadishu, but I couldn’t tell you what clan she was in – Somalis are all from different clans. It’s a bit like the Indians’ caste system. She kept herself to herself, as far as I know or remember. Only time she really bothered with others was during her Dutch classes. She picked the lingo up very quickly. Not like some of the others. Most of the women in here are illiterate unfortunately. It’s a cultural thing not to educate girls.’

‘Should she not have been in a young person’s unit, where she could be properly protected?’ Marie asked. ‘Isn’t there some government stipulation, says these kids are to be watched, because they’re susceptible to traffickers?’

Mrs de Witte gazed out of the window at two small boys kicking a ball to one another. ‘She was pregnant and wouldn’t let on who the father was. Said she didn’t know. What do you do with a teenaged girl who’s pregnant? You can’t put her with the other juvenile asylum seekers, can you? So, we put her in with the families.’

George had arranged some notepaper into a fan shape with almost exactly a centimetre between each sheet. She switched her attentions to the woman’s haggard face. ‘Let me guess. There’s little or no security for families.’

‘Asylum seekers don’t have to stay here at all,’ Mrs de Witte said, sighing as she spoke. ‘The government has what’s called a “self care arrangement”. While they’re going through the asylum-seeking process, people can find their own accommodation with friends and relatives, if they like. As long as they check in at one of the centres every week.’

‘Please show us her old room,’ Marie said.

‘I don’t know which was her room. It’s not on file.’

‘Find it, then.’

Hands in the air, as though she was about to break into interpretative dance, Mrs de Witte laughed too hard. ‘Oh, wait a minute. I’ve nothing better to do than dig out a record from over a year ago and see what room Ms Osman occupied. What do you expect to find there, exactly?’

Marie slammed her police ID down on the desk. ‘I am a detective in the Dutch police.’

De Witte checked her watch. A cheap bin-lid of a thing in yellow gold, encrusted with cubic zirconia. ‘I have got several new arrivals turning up any minute now. They’re my priority. I haven’t got the time.’

‘Make time!’

At her side, Marie’s colour started to change from pale pink to an angry shade of homicidal red, but George wasn’t interested in point-scoring with a pen-pusher. ‘Mrs de Witte,’ she said, wondering if reaching out to touch the woman on the arm would forge some kind of connection, but deciding that the chances of succeeding in winning her over with physical closeness did not warrant the risk of touching such slimy-looking fabric and suffering the resulting nausea. Words would have to do. ‘Little Magool was butchered and left naked, to freeze like a piece of meat on a bench in the red light district. We need to find out how she got from here to there. You can help us.’

Mrs de Witte’s hard-featured face softened almost imperceptibly. She stood up. Keys jangling at her waist. ‘Come on. There’s not much to see.’

The room was grey. Just about big enough to fit a single bed. One small window. It looked rather like a sports hall that had been divided up by cheap partitions. No carpet. No home comforts. Literally just a roof. George was reminded of her time in a cell, except hers had had bars at the window and her door had been locked for most of the day. Sent a shiver down her spine, though she was more than used to being inside prisons now.

‘As you can see, it’s basic,’ de Witte said, standing by the door, as if she couldn’t wait to make safe her getaway.

George imagined Magool cooped up in here. Pregnant. Thousands of miles from her family. Possibly suffering post traumatic stress disorder from an undoubtedly hellish journey from the boiling, roiling cauldron of an African warzone to the strange, still waters of a cold European land. No real money to speak of. No idea of whether she would be allowed to stay in the Netherlands. The possibility of being deported hanging over her.

‘So, Magool slipped out one day and never came back,’ George said.

Mrs de Witte nodded. ‘Didn’t wait to see what happened with her application, the silly girl. She must have been about six months pregnant when she left.’

Outside the room, two young black women were chatting in a language George did not recognise. One wore a sequinned pink hijab, tight jeans and a long sleeved floral top. The other wore an austere black hijab and shapeless floor-length black dress.

‘Where would a young woman like Magool go when she leaves here?’ she asked.

De Witte ushered them out of the room and started to lock the door. Jangling keys like rows of teeth. A bigger bite in this dog-eat-dog world. Setting too much store by her own authority, George assessed.

‘If you’re refused asylum, you get deported or end up on the street,’ she said. ‘There’s a place in Amsterdam called the Vluchtgevangenis. An old, disused prison where destitute asylum seekers go to find shelter. She may have gone there.’

‘Wouldn’t that be mainly men?’ Marie asked. ‘What about Somali women’s groups?’

Together, the three of them walked back to the car. Shivering in the chill afternoon air; wanting to kick against the depressing atmosphere that hung over this drab, purgatorial location, where refugees waited in limbo for a new life.

‘There’s bound to be a group in Amsterdam,’ Mrs de Witte said, checking her watch. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some very vulnerable new arrivals to make preparations for. You’re the police. Do some detective work!’ She offered Marie her hand to shake, which Marie ignored. ‘Shame about Magool. Real shame. But you can only try your best for people…’ She tutted. ‘Bye, then.’

George climbed into the car next to Marie and slammed the door. Waved to the woman. ‘Bit of a turd,’ she said, the smile slipping abruptly from her face. ‘How do you cope?’

Marie turned to her briefly as she pulled onto the main road. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

CHAPTER 52

Rotterdam, Port Authority, later

‘What do you mean, you never saw anyone?’ van den Bergen asked the stevedore, who was taking large bites out of a fat ham sandwich.

‘Listen,’ the man said, grinding his way through the thick pink and white layers. Pausing to swallow. Pieces of masticated pink food visible between his incisors as though his gums had started to grow down over his teeth. ‘I operate the computer program that takes containers off the ships and plonks them in stacks.’ He took another bite. Chewed thoughtfully, or perhaps, without any thought whatsoever. ‘Piet, over there…’ he pointed to a colleague who was hunched over a flickering computer terminal ‘…he sorts the stacks so the right box comes out for the right haulage company to pick up.’ Swigged messily from a bottle of cola and belched. ‘We don’t get a view of the ground below. It’s all computerised, see?’ Pointed to his screen. ‘What you want to do, is talk to security or customs or your mate, Wouter. Port Authority police have got more of a clue who comes and goes on the ground than us. Seriously, mate.’