The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (25 page)

Danny, Jez, Tonya, Big Michelle and Ella had boarded the
Hollandica
wearing respectable business suits, carrying accountants’ briefcases full of nothing much and small weekend suitcases containing wads of notes wrapped up in towels.

They whiled away the journey there talking about the deal; gossiping about Danny’s contact.

‘He’s called Stijn, man. And it’s pronounced like stain!’ Danny said.

Jez spat beer all over the floor of the bar. ‘No way.’

‘Way. How can people take him fucking seriously with a name like that? His nickname’s the Rotterdam Silencer. I wish I had a nickname like that. These Dutch are off the hook. But they’re good for the gear and no messing around. And they’re opening doors to new business. This, my friends, is just the beginning.’ He rubbed his hands together and grinned a handsome, professionally whitened grin.

Ella could see genuine enthusiasm in Danny’s eyes. The thrill of the chase. A challenge. He was visualising piles of cash and a Bentley, she knew. Over the last twelve months, he had risen from council estate nail in everyone’s tyre to serious contender. No wonder the Gargoyle was so keen to put a stop to him. Danny was a man with a plan.

The Hook of Holland was windy and drab. But Amsterdam …

When Ella emerged from Amsterdam Central Station, she fell immediately in love. Exhilarated by the mix of romance and history and beauty and sleaze, she imagined herself an enraptured, drown-proof Ophelia, drifting willingly down the canals in diaphanous flowing dress with tulips entangled in her hair.

‘This is well smart, man. I am so coming back here one time,’ she told Tonya, keeping the Ophelia reference locked inside her secret box of better quality thoughts.

Tonya looked at her askance. ‘But it’s full of fucking foreigners. These is weirdo Europeans, innit? They is well naff. It’s like twenty years behind the times here.’

‘But you can still get burgers, man,’ Big Michelle said. ‘And smoke dope in public!’

The meet was in a warehouse on a faceless business park, some miles out of town. But even on the tram, until the old part of town gave way to the inevitable modern ugliness of urban sprawl, Ella soaked up every last visual detail she could and savoured the flavour of somewhere new.

Tall, thin buildings with facades that were topped with rooflines like step pyramid peaks or clock faces. Houses listing inwards, outwards, to the side, sometimes propped but always buckling in improbable ways, threatening to dive into the canals. It was green. Tree-lined streets and small parks. Like London but so much nicer. She smiled at passersby through the windows of the tram. They looked well-heeled, carefree, clean. Exotic to her tired eyes.

Exchange of goods was easy. Inside the empty factory, which looked like it was ordinarily used for labelling and packaging up deodorants, judging by the workstations and conveyor belts full of lidless, half-assembled products, Danny handed over the money to Stijn. He was a middle-aged man who looked like an insurance broker. Smart, pale grey, double-breasted suit. Very shiny shoes. Conservative blue tie and white shirt combo. Nothing too flashy. He was flanked by two younger men in casual clothes who could have been bank tellers on their day off. Stijn handed over bags and bags of pills. Ella and the other girls were shown to the toilets and given outfits to put on.

‘Fucking nuns?’ Tonya shouted.

Stijn threw her a roll of surgical tape. ‘Strap the bags close to your body. Under your tits, where they’ll be easily covered. Around your waist. Take your makeup off.’

With a dry mouth and a frenzied heartbeat, Ella had fumbled around in the toilet with dithering fingers. Her aluminium microphone was the size of a matchstick. Its single battery and flash stick took up little space. The equipment was taped just below her breasts, where the bags of pills were also supposed to be concealed.
Don’t damage the mic. Don’t let anyone see. Once you’re on the ferry, you’re home and dry.

The three emerged in full habit and wimple, complete with heavy swinging rosary at the waist.

‘You look gorgeous, girls,’ Danny said. Laughter all round. Witty Danny. Low-rent charmer.

But something was wrong with this picture. ‘Hang on,’ Ella said, frowning. ‘Why aren’t you and Jez dressed up?’

‘I ain’t putting on no dog collar, man!’ Jez said.

Danny folded his arms, played with his earlobe. ‘Me and Jez are making our own way back. Got some other things to discuss, yeah? We’ll meet you back home. You’ll be fine.’

‘Home?’ Tonya said, hand on hip. ‘We’re going to fucking Harwich. How we gonna get home from there without yous? What if we get nicked?’

‘You won’t get nicked. You don’t need me to hold your hand to catch a train, do you, girl?’ Danny held Tonya’s face in his hands and looked into her eyes. Danny the manipulator and his subtle art of persuasion. What Jez achieved with a crowbar or baseball bat, Danny achieved with the right words, the right tone, a reassuring look from those seemingly sensitive eyes.

Tonya looked at the floor at the same time that Ella’s hopes and expectations hit the floor.
No Danny. No Jez. And this mic isn’t feeding into a laptop. I’ve no way of telling the Gargoyle. Shit. This thing could go belly up.

‘Just keep cool, right?’ Tonya said to Ella and Big Michelle as they walked towards passport control. ‘And try to hide your nails. Nuns don’t wear extensions.’

Ella had already tripped up over her habit twice. She was hot and sticky. Wiping her face on her sleeve, she wondered if the recording equipment was sweatproof.

‘Eyes front,’ Big Michelle said. ‘Don’t make no fucking eye contact.’

Please let it be over with.
Ella clutched her falsified passport in a shaking hand.
Sister Aquinata, Sister of Mercy, Hail Mary, full of grace, Deus ex machina be mine.

Customs officials, police, passport control, immigration officers, snuffling German shepherds, all seemed to swoop at once. Ella was cuffed, read her rights, taken away. But during the elaborately staged Euripidean drama, she didn’t spy her Heracles, the Gargoyle.
Where the hell are you, Gordon? This is the bit where you swing in on a crane and carry me off to safety.

George scrubbed briskly at the gas rings from her cooker with wire wool. The water in the sink was scaldingly hot. The corrosive, soapy scouring pad nibbled away at her fingers, but she didn’t care because she felt she deserved it. It was 11am. She had not slept.

Never before had she managed to trash her room with such abandon in such a short space of time. But on returning to her own place, she had received the news from van den Bergen that the bin man had been identified as Remko. She felt certain she had sent Ad reeling into the arms of a murderer.

Now, three hours and forty minutes into her cleaning penance, remaking that which she had unmade in a bid to snuff out her anguish and anaesthetise her grief, she felt idiotic and weak. And though Jan would probably not charge her for the smashed lamp and the broken vacuum cleaner, she would still feel obliged to replace them. She made a mental note to herself never to vacuum cigarette butts or broken glass again.

She said a silent prayer for Ad’s safety.

‘Jesus. Why hasn’t he got his phone switched on?’ she asked the gardenia on her windowsill.

George flung the iron gas rings into the sink, splashing her top with hot, pink soap scum. She thumped the draining board in frustration, dried her hands on her tea towel and retreated to her living area. She punched Ad’s number into her phone. It went straight to voicemail.

‘Balls. Let’s try van den Bergen,’ she muttered. She called van den Bergen’s number for the fifth time. This time, it rang.

‘Van den Bergen. Speak.’ His voice was gruff. Burdened.

‘At last. It’s me. We need to talk. I want to hear what the pathologist said and I’ve got some ideas …’ George’s tired mind tried to assess her options at high speed. Should she tell him about Klaus’ apartment? Should she speak to him before Ad had had chance to debrief her? Should she tell van den Bergen about her stalker?

But George had no input. Her option was selected for her.

‘Listen, I’ve not got time for your thoughts right now. I’m busy solving four murders.’

‘
Four
murders? I thought you said—’

‘One of the critically injured victims of Bushuis died in the night. A librarian. Fifty-four-year-old mother of two. Oh, and I’ve asked my German counterpart to bring Biedermeier in for questioning again. I’ll call you.’ The line went dead. Van den Bergen had gone.

George clutched the phone to her chest and marched to the window. She opened the heavy curtains, flung the window open and growled aloud at the rooftops.

‘For God’s sake. This is killing me!’ she shouted.

Suddenly she heard footsteps stomping up the uncarpeted stairs to her landing. Shuffling outside her door. Someone knocked three times. Impatient knocking. Jan didn’t open up until one on a Sunday. Inneke and Katja wouldn’t be in work until around two. She was not expecting anybody at that time.

George grabbed her broom which had been propped against the wall. She carefully turned the mortise key and released the Yale with her left hand, while gripping the broom handle in the right.

As the Heidelberg police descended on the frat house where Klaus was staying, Klaus strolled along the Philosopher’s Walk, high in the hills above the town. The air was sharp. Clear as a bell. His hangover had gone now and he had every intention of climbing to the café at the summit which served most excellent hot chocolate and cake.

He was wearing borrowed technical outdoor clothes and sturdy hiking boots. But even in Carsten’s thick red fleece and heavy parka, Klaus felt the cold shroud of winter still clinging to the hillside.

Further down, closer to the sparkling Neckar, the pathways were full of strolling families, walking off their rich lunches. But now, climbing steeper and steeper, weaving among the trees, Klaus had not passed a single soul for over twenty minutes. It was a pure, poetic kind of solitude. Solitude that he found most acceptable.

Yes, it had been an enjoyable weekend. He reflected that, despite the need for his hasty departure, Ad had been a game individual for whom he had a new measure of respect. Perhaps the Dutch weren’t so bad after all.

The trees rising up towards the summit carried an inch-thick layer of virgin-white hoar on their branches. The dry brown leaves that carpeted the ground beneath were frosted with glittering ice. He observed that they looked like the topping on a sparkling Streuselkuchen. Klaus loved the Philosopher’s Walk; loved revelling in the thought that he was treading paths worn smooth in the hillside, generation after generation, by owners of the finest German academic minds. This idea appealed to Klaus’ love of continuity. He liked to fantasise that he was a big political thinker, if nothing else.

He came out of the forest into a clearing which held a stone amphitheatre built during Hitler’s reign. Klaus breathed in deeply and smiled at his surroundings. To him, it was a perfect fusion of what man had fashioned and what nature had provided.

For a few minutes, he sat in the weak sunshine and let the warmth bathe the healing cuts on his face.

When he heard a twig snap some way off, he looked around to see what Sunday adventurers were heading his way. He prepared to greet them with a nod and perhaps even a formal, ‘Good day’. Nobody came. Then a twig snapped closer by. Was it a deer? Probably.

George flung the door wide and pounced, treating her visitor to a face full of bristles.

‘Ad!’ George shrieked, dropping the broom.

‘Ow.’ Ad rubbed his jaw. ‘Nice to see you too.’

She pulled him inside and flung her arms around him. ‘Oh, my God! You’re safe. Thank Christ.’ She ushered him to the sofa. ‘Sit! Sit! I’ll make you a … hot water?’

Ad gave her a lopsided smile. At that point, she looked at him properly for the first time. He was wearing a suit that looked as though it had been in a fight with the jaws of a refuse truck. The side of his face was bruised. He sported a fat lip. His eyebrow was cut up and missing … well, his eyebrow. He stank of lager and stale cigarettes.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ she asked.

When they had exchanged stories, George made Ad take a hot shower. She gave him one of her T-shirts and a pair of navy jogging bottoms to wear. The jogging bottoms were six inches too short on him but at least he smelled and looked better. She let him use her toothbrush. She had never let anybody use her toothbrush before.

They sat together in silence while Ad sipped his hot water. George was the first to break the silence.

‘I wasn’t expecting you back so early,’ she said.

Ad looked at her and shook his head. ‘I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I’ve never been punched before, let alone been roped into a bar brawl. It’s a miracle I got to the train station alive. Thankfully they run all night to Cologne. I made the first connection back to Amsterdam.’

George rubbed his arm tenderly. ‘I should never have suggested you go.’

He winced and took her hand. ‘It’s okay. It was my idea too. We got what we wanted. Look …’ He took his phone out of his jacket breast pocket and brought up the series of photographs he had taken. The images were small on the phone’s diminutive screen.

‘Send them to my email. Let’s get them up on the laptop,’ George said.

The photos popped into her inbox one after the other. ‘What are these of?’ George studied the crowd in the heavy metal pub through narrowed eyes. ‘Bloody hell!’ She shook her head slowly in disbelief. ‘Ad, these guys are rough. Look at that one with the SS tattoo!’

‘I know. I just thought, if I get photos, maybe they’ll be of some use to van den Bergen.’ Ad started to point out the characters he had come across and related what he knew about them. ‘They all treated Klaus like a king.’

‘And how was Klaus?’

‘Lapping it up. Revelling in it. And nobody touched him during the fight in the bar. He just stood on the sidelines and watched.’

George told Ad about her discoveries in Klaus’ apartment, while she flicked from one photo to the next. ‘You can smell this lot just by looking at them.’