The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (33 page)

And if Jez, Danny’s favourite arson-obsessed handyman, never left mainland Europe, is it not inconceivable that Jez is my little serial-killing stalker?

She flicked hastily through her archived memories; travelled all the way back to her conversation with Jez in the South London park on a cold, moonlit night. That night that he had asked her out. What had he said about fire as the moonlight had reflected on his black, unfathomable eyes?

‘It’s beautiful and deadly both, Ella. Giver of heat and light and death. And now, I’m the Firestarter. It’s the language of anger. It’s the language of love. Bringer of endings and new beginnings.’

Jez the Firestarter, twisting Firestarter. How could she have forgotten?

Panic and adrenalin surged through George’s body. Suddenly, she felt like the entire café was spinning around her like a carousel, while she remained still at the centre. All there was, was her and Letitia, trapped on a ride that they couldn’t get off.

He decided against removing the Dutchman’s penis, instead whistling happily while he calculated how much plastic explosive to put in. And when should he do it? Decisions, decisions …

As he walked over to his shelves, he caught sight of something shiny poking out of Ad’s jacket pocket. He retrieved it. It was Ad’s mobile phone. Oh. Interesting. A chance to see inside this loser’s world. He would quite like to send her a text from this phone. That would be a nice touch.

Curious to see the extent of her relationship with this Ad, he flicked through the many texts that were stacked in his inbox. Lots from the girlfriend.

Here was the latest one from
her
. Kisses at the end. She’d taken a flight somewhere and would be away for a week. But where? Damn. This messed up his plans. He couldn’t keep this Ad on a drip for a full week until she returned. There was no point dispatching him unless she was around to see it either. No, he had to find out where she was. Needed to see when she was coming back. Or if she wasn’t too far away, it might be quite nice to pick her up and bring her back.

‘So, what you doing here, then?’ Letitia asked, gesticulating at the charm of the safe, privileged world outside.

George held her hand up, fighting to catch her breath. Her head nodded in time with her thunderous pulse. ‘Wait. Let me think.’

The room opposite with the camera. The limping man who had followed her from the flower market. Scarred. By burns of course. No fingerprints. Someone who knew Klaus and Joachim. Still supplying drugs. Still the crazy fucked-up grandson of a right-wing, blackshirt Millwall supporter. Speaking Arabic, a Taliban go-between, spouting English Defence League bullshit. Except now, of course, he was operating in Europe, so it was the National Democratic Party of Germany or whatever other bunch of subnormal morons with persecution complexes he had allied himself to. Someone who had at least seen Ratan, Remko … all of them every day. And Ad. Ad.

George switched on her phone. She had one message. It was from Katja.

Brit who does passports called Danny.

Shorter breathing now. Brain whirring round like a supersonic fan. Overheating. Danny doing dodgy passports. Jez in charge now. How did that happen? But Jez was always brighter. Or maybe he’s just the one taking the risks for Danny. But still working. Ad. Ad now.

She punched Ad’s name into her phone and waited for him to pick up. Three, four, five seconds. Nothing. Six, ten, straight to voicemail. She didn’t have his mother’s number in Groningen.

‘No, no, no.’

‘So, I was thinking of going on holiday with Leroy,’ Letitia said, clearly unaware of the maelstrom of panic and fear that whirled relentlessly around George.

‘Shush, for God’s sake.’

Van den Bergen’s name. In the phone now. Ringing. Answering. Thank God.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s George. Listen, I can’t get hold of Ad. I know who the killer is. His name is Jeremy Saddiq. I know him. He was one of Danny’s crew. The gang I ran with before. He’s dealing in Amsterdam and Germany. He’s an arsonist.’

‘Georgina, slow down,’ van den Bergen barked down the phone. ‘There’s a patrol car stationed outside Karelse’s house. And Jeremy Saddiq is not the name we’ve got. We know who our killer is. He’s a German called Brandon Köhler. We traced him through Stuttgart hospital burns unit. He lives in Heidelberg on the Neckarstaden. German police are storming his apartment now. It’s okay. We’re one hundred percent certain he’s the right man.’

George worked her way through the tangled meaning of van den Bergen’s words. It didn’t make sense. She was sure about Jez. Jez, the Firestarter. But Danny was knee-deep in falsified ID. Brandon Köhler. Click.

‘It’s a false identity,’ she shrieked down the phone. ‘Brandon Köhler. Sounds like mashed-up Dutch for flaming and German for hot coals. Come on! Think about it.’

‘Let’s just see—’

‘Look, Dr Wright thinks our guy works at the faculty in a domestic capacity. He has transport. Look at the list of non-academic staff. See if you can find a Jeremy or a Jez or this Brandon on the roll. Please.’

Silence the other end of the phone. Then: ‘Look, George, apparently the German police have just gained entry to the killer’s apartment. I’ll see what they’ve found and I’ll call you back.’

Predictably, van den Bergen rang off without saying goodbye.

The Baden-Württemberg State Police had raided the Heidelberg address in the late afternoon of the previous day, around 4pm Central European Time. One of the officers carried a buttonhole camera, enabling live footage of the break-in to be streamed to a Kripo detective’s laptop, which, in turn, was emailed within minutes as a video file to van den Bergen in Amsterdam.

Ten hours later, van den Bergen leaned back in his ergonomically incorrect typing chair, put two painkillers on his tongue, took a swig of his cold coffee and wiped his reading glasses on the tails of his shirt.

‘Damn this bastard,’ he told the computer screen. ‘Flaming Hot Coals? He’s making utter fools out of the Dutch and German police and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

Jabbing a long finger awkwardly onto his mouse button, he let the high-resolution footage spring forward yet again.

He had been expecting a house that allowed space and privacy. Instead, the address had taken the German police to a Neckarstaden apartment on the second floor of a building which looked like it had been put up in the sixties. The staircase leading up was some way inside, set back from the street. The battering ram had to work hard for its money against the plethora of locks. The alarm had the sort of sophistication one would find in a high-class jewellers or a small bank. Then … masculine elegance.

Le Corbusier sofa. Stylish mid-twentieth-century furniture, otherwise. Was that a Persian rug? An Isfahan, judging by its intricate pattern and bright colours. Yes, van den Bergen had let his ex-wife keep theirs along with his daughter.

Further into the large, open-plan living room, which the officers, clutching at guns, reported was clear, were bookshelves full of medical textbooks, chemistry books, poetry books, philosophy tomes. Was this really the drug-dealing serial killer they were looking for? And if George was right, and it was the pyromaniac thug she had been allied to as an informant, could he actually read and understand those books?

‘Self-taught? Or just self-aggrandisement?’ van den Bergen asked the screen.

The rest of the apartment had the same feel to it. Interior designer chic. There were scant but corruptible contents in the fridge that the camera-wearing officer pointed out. A lettuce, still fresh. Cheese and milk, both used but not mottled with mould or curdled into lumps.

‘Of course. You were in the heavy metal pub when Karelse was playing the Last Action Heidelberg Hero, weren’t you?’ Van den Bergen chewed thoughtfully on the end of a Biro and then tapped his nose with the damp pen. ‘But how do we know Brandon Köhler and the killer are one and the same?’

Van den Bergen scrutinised the artwork on the walls of the apartment: a canvas depicting fire on one wall. Possibly Grace Turnbull. On another wall, the Great Fire of London, where people rowed for their lives in overcrowded boats on the River Thames to escape the inferno behind them. Finally, as if van den Bergen needed any more visual corroboration, over the leather sofa, there hung a large traditional Chinese painting of a red dragon, floating in a rough sea, coiled around a beautiful woman who looked perfectly at ease.

‘A fire breather. A symbol of nobility, power, ambition … are these all qualities you see in yourself, Mr Flaming Hot Coals? Jesus. What kind of a delusional monster have I come up against this time?’ van den Bergen said. He sighed heavily, feeling the twinge in his hip; a memento left long after the Rotterdam Silencer’s bullet had been removed.

George sat on the dais in hall, next to Sally Wright, feeling uncomfortable in her L.K.Bennett dress and black, billowing undergraduate gown. A council estate crow in a debutante’s frock, crumpled and a little too tight around the waist. She thought fleetingly of Letitia’s fat neck and the rolls of flesh around her middle. Instinctively, she grabbed at her own stomach beneath the table.
Snap out of it.

Pheasant on the menu too. Jez and Danny were on her trail and here she was, sawing away at too-tough pheasant and industrially tasteless gravy.

Sally Wright leaned in, disturbing George’s sour introspection.

‘How did it go with your mother?’ she asked.

George bit into her stringy pheasant thoughtfully, ground it between her molars, swallowed, took a sip of pinot grigio and said, ‘My cover has been blown.’

Sally looked at her and stopped chewing the potato she had just daintily put into her pruned mouth.

‘Oh?’

‘And she wanted to borrow money. No surprises there.’

Sally Wright set her cutlery down carefully on her plate. ‘Scroll back to the bit where you say your cover has been blown.’

George felt a deep blush proclaim her embarrassment loudly. Under the potential scrutiny of over a hundred of her fellow students and within earshot of the Master of St John’s, George was forced to give a brisk synopsis of all Letitia had said.

George could still see fear in Sally’s hooded eyes, behind the lenses of her glasses.

‘First you tell me you’re up to your neck in the investigation of these serial killings. Next you say the psychopath and gang leader that you infiltrated as a supergrass are on your trail? My God. It’s like a terrible story in a tabloid newspaper. How the hell did that happen?’ Sally said. ‘You are deep deep in the mire, young lady. I take this as a personal betrayal of trust between you and me.’

George rubbed the grosgrain ribbon trim on her dress. One, two, three with the left hand. One, two, three with the right. She loathed the feeling of being chastised by someone she respected and consciously sought the approval of. What could she say in her own defence? Nothing. It wasn’t really her fault. Arrange the cutlery. Position the cruet set as it should be. She opened and closed her mouth, wanting to apologise but the words were lodged in her throat.

Finally she managed, ‘I don’t know how it happened. I was discreet.’

Sally looked at her from over the top of her glasses. Accusatory eyes. ‘If this serial killer is your former squeeze’s muscle,’ Sally said, ‘the Dutch and German police are going to be unwittingly stomping all over a drugs and vice case that CID has been trying to put together for years; which you were only the start of. Years of surveillance wasted. And you’ve exposed yourself as well, which will probably mean you will need assigning a new identity. Again.’

New identity?
George felt the food sitting like a stone in her stomach. ‘I can’t do this again. I don’t want to change from who I am now,’ she said, polishing her dessertspoon on her napkin. She needed to make Sally understand and hopefully forgive. ‘Do you realise how it feels to live a lie? To live as someone with a manufactured past and no contact with the world she knows. It’s like … like trying to wear in an unforgiving shoe. It was hard but I’ve managed to become George McKenzie. Respectable orphan, left behind by tax-paying folk who died in a car crash. Come on, Sally! I haven’t got the energy to become another person and I’m not giving this up.’

She looked up at the vaulted, intricately beamed ceiling of the ancient hall, atmospherically lit by chandeliers and casting splendid shadows. She could not see the colours in the tall, ecclesiastical leaded windows, as darkness had fallen outside, but she remembered what they looked like in the day. The musky, beeswax aroma of the parquet floors and wood panelling. The dusty gilt-edged portraits of old Masters and Fellows.

A poor girl who earned her own slice of rich man’s heaven. I ain’t giving that back. No way.
And Ad, of course. Her first chance of love. How could she throw that into the Herengracht and watch it sink?

Sally frowned. ‘You make it sound like starting fresh was a chore. You told me you were delighted to leave your old life behind.’ She picked at the pheasant carcass with her knife and fork and ushered some stringy dark meat into her mouth. ‘Wasn’t that why you agreed to work with the police in the first place? So you could begin again from scratch? Bury your skeletons, you said.’

George thought about the intimacy she had shared with her skeletons, Danny and Tonya. They ruined people’s lives with boundless enthusiasm. But, when all was said and done, the three of them had been bonded by sex and the irrefutable knowledge that they had all been failed by their parents. Theirs were drunks and drug addicts. Hers was just plain selfish and manipulative. And now, the hateful mother that she had once loved as a small child was Gloria, born-again housewife to Leroy, consigned to a brick built box in Ashford. Danny was God knows where, probably selling fake passports in Amsterdam and Tonya was, she was fairly certain, still banged up in women’s prison – both, no doubt, with Ella Williams-May’s betrayal scratched indelibly on their hearts. Those bridges would never be unburned. Thankfully.

‘Yes,’ George said. ‘My life was terrible. That’s why I’m desperate to hang onto this one. George lives the life of Reilly. Ella Williams-May is dead. Long live the McKenzie.’