The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (17 page)

The kettle clicked. George picked up the jar of coffee only to discover that there was less than half a teaspoon of granules left. She put it into her cup anyway and had the concoction black, as there was no milk in the fridge. She switched on her stereo and cranked Dizzie Rascal up to number seven. She booted up her laptop. Checked Hotmail. There was one message in her inbox. It was from Sally Wright.

‘Oh, here we go,’ George said. ‘What the hell do you want?’

From:
[email protected]
10.02

To:
[email protected]

Subject: Your mother again

Hello George

Sorry to nag but I’ve had your mother on the phone five times in the last couple of days. She says she has urgent news to tell you and desperately wants you to make contact. The number she’s using at the moment is 07777 417321 although she changes that every three weeks and you only have one week from tomorrow left on that one. I’ve tried telling her that you’re out of the country but perhaps it is something worth listening to???

I read your blogpost for ‘The Moment’ and was surprised and a little shocked by it. I trust you will tell me your thinking behind it when next we meet.

Any follow-up with the detective? I hope not.

Stay safe and all best wishes

Sally

Dr Sally Wright, Senior Tutor

St John’s College, Cambridge Tel … 01223 775 6574

Dept. of Criminology Tel … 01223 773 8023

‘Leave me alone!’ George shouted at the screen.

She slammed the lid of the laptop shut. She plugged her dead phone into her charger. Three messages from Ad pinged at her in greeting. She was surprised by a sudden lump in her throat.

‘Pull it together, George! For God’s sake.’

Ad’s voice rang clear on the recording. He sounded happy at first. Had she got the text? Did she want to meet for a late breakfast? In the following message, he sounded jittery. Klaus had been in touch. Ad had made arrangements to go to Heidelberg with him on Friday. The third message sounded like Ad trying too hard to speak in a calm, measured way. She had heard that voice before when he had written essays using her notes and prayed that Fennemans wouldn’t discover the corner-cutting.

‘Hey, George. Let’s meet for a coffee after Fennemans. And why is your phone going straight to voicemail? I hope you’re okay.’

George smiled wistfully. She started to dial his number but remembered he was in the middle of a lecture. She, on the other hand, had to finish off her essay for Fennemans.

Sitting at her little Formica dining table, facing the wall, she started to read through what she had written about Saddam Hussein and the legality of the American invasion of Iraq. As she trawled through her notes, poised to write the ending, the image of the body in the bin popped into her head. It made her drop her Biro.

‘Damn!’

Her concentration levels were like a one-bar connection to the internet, sputtering and cutting out roughly every thirty seconds. She wrote four sentences. Then she texted van den Bergen.

Let me know when you ID the bin man.

She wrote six sentences. Arranged her pens and pencils into parallel lines. Stood up, rubbed her numb bottom and strode over to the window. Peered into the rooms that were also on the top floor in the houses on the opposite side of the canal. It had been a while since she had done that. Normally, she preferred to admire the tiled rooftops.

When she had moved into Jan’s attic, she had been careful to analyse what she could about her neighbours opposite by looking in through the windows. The narrow canal which divided the street below meant that the windows were a good distance away, so she used the zoom on her camera. It wasn’t perfect but it sufficed. From this, she extrapolated that those rooms that technically faced onto her own contained: cardboard boxes stacked about ten high and a bare bulb; what looked to be some kind of artist’s atelier; and, finally, what George reasoned had to be a prostitute’s room, since the brown and orange 1970s curtains were almost always shut.

Feeling her curiosity suddenly piqued, George dug out her camera and used the zoom to look once again into the neighbours’ windows. The atelier still looked like an atelier. Full of large, half-done canvasses. Today, a man in a boiler suit with what seemed to be a very large 1970s Burt Reynolds moustache was painting something rubbish with vigour. The prostitute’s room still had the curtains closed. The box room was still full of boxes but George noticed that there was something reflecting the light in the window itself.

‘Now, what’s going on here?’ she said. She tried to zoom in further but the camera was already doing its best.

Was it a dream-catcher? Was it an optical illusion? Just somebody’s light reflecting from a window on her side of the canal? No, too far away. Then, frowning, she realised what it was.

‘I’ll swear blind that’s a camera lens,’ she said. ‘Or maybe a telescope. Shit!’

Was it angled towards her room? It certainly looked that way. She felt fluttering in her chest. Dizzy. Shaking her head in disbelief.

‘How long has that been there?’

She looked back and forth from the lens to her window, narrowing her eyes and cursing. The angle was right. She was certain of it. And the gabled windows to her right and left – the attic rooms of the adjacent houses – were too far away to be the subject of interest for the unidentified Peeping Tom.

‘Somebody’s been spying on me!’

Feeling a mixture of indignant outrage, panic and curiosity, she threw on a baggy purple mohair cardigan and marched down to the small bridge that led to the opposite side of her street. She was still wearing her slippers. But here in the red light district, where sex shops competed with audience participation sex theatres, the kerb-crawlers and Monday morning passersby paid her no heed.

‘I’m going to fucking nail this bastard right now!’ she promised herself.

As she pushed open the glazed door to the building that provided such an excellent vantage point for her dedicated stalker, her dedicated stalker opened the cardboard box containing his new CCTV equipment, ran a finger over the small but perfectly formed hi-res unit and started to dismantle the old camera tripod set-up that sat in the window. He knew she was only downstairs now. His gaze landed on the lump hammer that sat on the only chair in the room, along with his phone and keys.

He crept down the stairs and watched the conversation unfold through the glass door which stood ajar:

‘Who rents the store room upstairs?’ she demanded of the behemoth of a shop assistant who stood in the sex shop, stacking the shelves with red rubber cocks. These were sandwiched between rubber fists and Jack Rabbit brand vibrators in gaudy pinks and purples. The assistant was easily seven feet tall and around the twenty-stone mark.

Looking her up and down, the assistant shrugged. ‘You police? You don’t look like police.’

‘Do police wear slippers?’

The assistant nodded and pointed at her with a rubber cock. ‘Why you wanna know?’

‘I live opposite at the Cracked Pot,’ she said. ‘I just need to find out who’s renting your store room. They overlook me.’

The assistant scratched his giant head with the cock. ‘I don’t know about the upstairs tenants. I’m just a dildo-peddling sales monkey. The boss isn’t in. Come back later this evening. About seven.’

She gave him a quick smile. ‘Nice cock.’

Should he walk in now and lure her upstairs? His breathing quickened at the thought. A chance meeting on the stairs. Oh, how nice! Fancy that. What a strange coincidence. Yes, come upstairs and inspect the room, by all means.

The lump hammer sat heavy in his trouser pocket; the handle protruding to allow for snap decisions. She turned in his direction.

‘For Christ’s sake, Paul, you’re already up to your neck in it over haranguing Fennemans. Do you really want to rattle a German politician’s cage now?’

Normally, Kamphuis saved a short-tempered bark for van den Bergen, reminding him vaguely of an overweight pit bull terrier that had had steak wafted under its snout, only to have it taken away. Today, he noted that his boss’ voice was more begging than barking.

‘Look, Olaf, it’s not my fault if there’s a neon sign flashing above Biedermeier’s head, saying, “fishy as hell.”’ He cleared his throat and contemplated whether he was chesty today or not. He had been peeing a lot lately and had had back ache. Maybe his kidneys were failing.

‘His father’s a duke! A CDU backbencher. Come on, van den Bergen! And you told me the boy’s alibis are—’

‘He’s a messed-up frat boy!’ van den Bergen shouted. He thought about the clips he had seen on YouTube of young men, dressed like some perverted amalgam of the Marquis de Sade and a medieval knight. Hacking chunks out of each other. Boasting for the camera that they were part of something noble, ancient and brave. ‘Everyone’s saying he has fascist proclivities. I’m going to speak to my opposite number in Baden-Württemberg and pull the kid’s file. Him and Fennemans are the only—’

‘Nearly a thousand people connected to that faculty either as students or employees! And you have to pick the two trickiest bastards to point the finger at. What the hell happened to al Badaar? He was such a lovely, simple hate figure.’

Kamphuis hoisted himself out of his expensive desk chair and paced to the window. Van den Bergen thought he looked haggard and grey. He wondered if the drinks sessions he boasted of in expensive brasseries with the commissioner and the cabinet spin doctor from the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations were so relaxing and enjoyable nowadays. Almost a month and the case was still unsolved. No, perhaps Kamphuis was not immune to stress after all. His ample, obsequious arse was on the line too.

Van den Bergen started to bounce his right foot over his left knee.

‘Stop doing that! You know it irritates me,’ Kamphuis snapped.

Van den Bergen continued to bounce his foot. ‘You’re blinding yourself to the facts, Olaf. Let me do the investigating. It’s what I’m good at. I don’t mind being unpopular. You do. Just let me do my job.’

Despite the personal cost of crippling stomach ache and tension in his shoulders, Van den Bergen had appealed to whatever better nature Kamphuis possessed.

Kamphuis sighed heavily in response. He continued to stare out of the window in silence.

‘Just keep Fennemans off my back,’ van den Bergen said, making his way to the door. ‘Oh, and IT Marie asked if you can stop flirting with her when she’s on earlies? It breaks her out in hives.’

Before Kamphuis could come back with an incensed response, van den Bergen hurried back to his desk. Poking the buttons with excited, determined fingers, he placed the call to the Baden-Württemberg State Police HQ and waited an agonising two hours for Inspector Dieter Mann to come back to him. When the phone eventually rang, he was so charged with coffee and anticipation that he shook.

‘Well?’ he asked.

Van den Bergen pictured a scene that matched the lightness in Mann’s voice: the German inspector (probably well-liked and better paid than him), seated comfortably at his quality oak desk (with a real leather desk chair that was actually adjustable), enjoying cheesecake and coffee (that his team had brought him willingly, without spitting in it first).

‘I hope the Dutch like lurid, scary stories as much as the Germans, Paul, because I’m just about to email you one over that the Brothers Grimm would be proud of.’

‘You’re late!’ Fennemans barked at her.

‘I know. I’m sorry. I’ve got stuff going on,’ George said, flinging her bag to the floor and pulling out her essay.

Fennemans stroked his paunch and smirked. ‘I’m not interested in your personal traumas. Don’t come to my supervision late again.’

George looked at his bouffant hair and willed it to flop or part in the middle – something which might puncture the overblown, overstuffed wanker and let a little of his air out. The hair stayed put. She kept her cool. The telescope and the bin man had damped down her red mist. Thankfully.

‘Read out your essay and we’ll discuss it,’ he said, waving his hand with a circular motion like a king greeting his minions.

‘When can I start going to lectures again?’

‘Read!’

As George read what she had written, the optimist in her felt hopeful that Fennemans would be impressed. Despite the tumult amongst the students generally and the nightmarish half-life she had been leading since identifying Ratan and Joachim, she had managed to read long extracts from over ten academic texts on the subject matter. Tracking them down without the Bushuis library collection at her disposal had not been easy, but George was nothing if not resourceful. She had bought the necessary texts at the VU academic bookshop in De Boelelaan and had photocopied the sections in the faculty, being careful not to open the books so wide as to crease up the spines. Then she had returned the books to the shop along with her receipts and got a refund. George thought that, under the circumstances, that displayed ingenuity and commitment.

Fennemans groaned. ‘Is this confrontational style of argument what they teach you at Cambridge? Because I’m afraid it doesn’t cut the mustard with me or the syllabus here.’

George looked at him, dumbfounded. The optimist inside her quickly keeled over and died.

He rubbed his blobby nose and gave her a nasty smile. When he moved his hand away from his face, her eye followed it and rested on a bottle on a low cabinet behind him. Gin. Was he drunk at 1.45pm? She looked back at his face. He was staring at her cleavage, which was barely on show.

‘You’re going to have to try harder than this, Little Missy.’

George dug as deep as she possibly could to mine the last seam of patience at the very core of her being.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way. I gave that essay my best shot, Dr Fennemans,’ she said. ‘I researched—’

‘You lack self-discipline. You clearly haven’t read the texts on the reading list. You’ve gone off syllabus. Do you think you can make up your own degree course, my dear? Do you think special allowances are made for you? Is that what Cambridge produces? Slackers who think they’re entitled to it all without putting the effort in. Without having natural intelligence. Your attitude stinks and frankly, Little Miss McKenzie, I think you’re lazy.’