The Girl Who Broke the Rules (17 page)

‘Why don’t you give him to me?’ Veronica held her arms outstretched to receive the little dog. ‘Come here, puppy!’ She searched for vulnerability and understanding in her mother’s expression. ‘Please, Mama. It’s so boring.’

But her mother swung the dog upwards, out of reach and started to talk to it in that ridiculous baby voice. ‘Rudi-wudi’s coming with me, aren’t you, my darling?’ The dog yapped and strained to be free. Her mother clutched its body tighter, closer to her chest. It pawed at the jewels that studded her Christian Lacroix bolero, revealing more of her bony ribcage than perhaps she had intended. Mama was too thin, these days. Hind legs scampering up her green silk puffball skirt. ‘Yes, Rudi-wudi! Mama’s taking you to meet all her gorgeous friends.’

‘Why couldn’t I have just stayed at home?’ Veronica asked, folding her arms across her chest in the hope of conveying some of her dissatisfaction, even if she dare not say she felt sidelined. ‘I could have hung out with—’

‘You could not have
hung out
with anyone, young lady!’ Her mother rounded on her, setting Rudi down on the gallery floor, who scampered off into a fray of Doc Martens and winkle-picker shoes. Dug her fingernails into Veronica’s upper arms so that the girl yelped. ‘You know how Mama’s parties work. I’ve got a photographer here from
The Face
. When he shoves his camera in my direction, you stay away. But I’ve also got people here from
Harper
’s. In
The Face
, I’m flying solo. In
Harper
’s, you, me and Papa – we’re the Schwartz family. Right? Berlin’s best. Got it? So, when
Harper
’s man wants a pretty smile for the birdie, what do you do?’

‘Jesus! Can’t I even go and get an autograph from—’

‘I’ll Jesus you when we get home, madam. You fucking stay put until I tell you.’ Mama crouched at her side, outwardly smiling as though she were sharing a tender motherly moment with her debutante daughter. But the balled fist next to Veronica’s kidneys told her that Mama was interested only in a public display of affection.

‘Heidi, darling!’ somebody shouted over the hubbub. The voice belonged to a giant of a man, almost as wide as he was tall. He wore a flowery, full-skirted dress, belted at the waist, that reached to the floor. His round face, bull neck and bald head had been painted a ghostly white, but for the black clownish smile that curved upwards from ear to ear. A German WWII helmet on his head. Eyes, obscured by black Ray-Ban Wayfarers over-painted with childish cartoon eyes that looked as though they had been applied to the lenses with white correction fluid. Glaring at her. Terrifying. Angry black stripes for eyebrows. Veronica shrank back into her chair a little at the sight of him, though she was used to Mama’s friends. In his arms, he held Rudi like a trophy. ‘You didn’t tell me Madonna was coming!’

Gales of laughter from the clique of Mama’s champagne-swilling cronies standing nearby said this was hilarious. Said, they were all having a fabulous time. Said, Mama was the best hostess of the most glamorous parties in town – the launch of this art exhibition being nothing short of superlative.

‘Rudi-wudi, come to Mama before the naughty man eats you all up!’

Veronica watched her mother work the crowd, glass in one hand, Rudi in another. Mwah, mwah sycophancy with the great and the good of London’s art, fashion and music scenes. Dead or Alive spinning everyone round like a record, baby through the overhead speakers. There was Mama, puckering up for the camera next to a dark-haired female fashion designer who wore a red T-shirt adorned with black writing, telling everyone she was staying alive in 85. A pretty pop band front-man who regularly adorned the covers of Veronica’s copies of
Smash Hits
proclaimed on his black and white T that Frankie said relax.

On the other side of the lofty white space, standing beneath a canvas of some drab, unidentifiable shit or other, she spotted Papa. The polar opposite of her flamboyant mother, wearing a discreet double-breasted suit in dark grey. Jermyn Street, she had once heard him say. Sober silk tie. Appearances reflecting a reality where Papa was a Harvard med school alumnus and expert in his field. Anyone would think
he
was the old money and Mama was just a flashy wannabe who had married well, although Veronica knew the opposite was true. But Papa was publicly proud that he had climbed his way up from humble origins. What an impressive man to have as your father! And now, here he was, chatting up some ageing minor royal from a European backwater. No doubt persuading the old trout that he should rearrange her crumbling face until she looked like a younger Joan Collins. That old woman had spent more time engaging in conversation with her father on a summer’s evening in a gallery by the Thames than Veronica had spent in an entire month. Papa’s so clever. Papa’s so sought after, these days. Papa’s never there.

Mama and Papa. She was blessed. At fifteen, she was old enough to realise they had enough money. At fifteen, she recognised they gave her everything: skiing in St Moritz; shopping in New York; a bitch of a private tutor who used to teach at Bedales; ferried around the West End in a Bentley that cocooned her from a lesser world she could only longingly glimpse from behind bullet-proof glass. At fifteen, she would still have liked nothing more than for parents to hold her; to tell her it was okay and that they forgave her for being a disappointing child. Mama and Papa. She was cursed.

Listlessly, Veronica eyed the trays of canapés circling the gallery, carried by liveried waitresses. Acknowledged that her stomach was growling but in truth, Veronica was inured to the hunger that these events occasioned. Mama never let her eat with the grown-ups. Mama had always forbidden her to mingle. Until…

‘Veronica, darling, come and have your photo taken!’

Mama calling. She knew the drill. Smile coyly for the upmarket society glossies. Yes, she believed her mother had dressed her in Yves Saint Laurent. Yes, she really enjoyed meeting the interesting people at her mother’s shindigs. No, she didn’t have a boyfriend! Cue embarrassed giggling. Already tall, Veronica had read in their pages that she ‘showed promise’, though as what, she had no idea. But, she was not so naive as to fail to understand, that it was only because she had not yet reached the full flush of early womanhood, Mama did not worry that she would risk having her beauty upstaged. Yet.

There they stood. A happy family under the glare of the gallery lights, amplified by the ice white walls and the limelight cast by the glitterati in attendance. Say, ‘
Fromage!
’ Beneath Papa’s fingers that entwined around her upper arm, old bruises left by her mother were still sore. Rudi, of course, took centre stage. Adorable Rudi! Who could fail to love such an innocent, fluffy soul in his pink jacket?

She was glad when she was sent home with the driver at around 8pm. Pizza cooked by the housekeeper, Tricia. A sneaky half bottle of Papa’s vodka with Tricia’s daughter, Sharon, while they listened to Depeche Mode in the games room.
Super Mario Bros.
on the games console. Mama and Tricia didn’t need to know, right? Veronica would never ever tell. She was good at keeping secrets, and Sharon was her one true friend.

Veronica was woken by her mother’s return at 2am, stumbling through the front door with someone who sounded nothing like her father. She crept down to make sure. Peered through the spindles of the grand staircase. No, Papa had not returned. As usual. Mama and the strange man retired to the games room, giggling as they descended the basement stairs. While the cat’s away…

At least Rudi came and kept her company, warm and eternally accepting at the foot of her single bed. Together, they passed a slumberous couple of hours, until Mama noticed her precious fur ball was missing.

‘Where the fuck is Rudi-wudi?’ Mama screamed, smashing Veronica’s bedroom door against the wall. She still wore last night’s makeup, smudged now, and had a Japanese silk robe tied loosely over her naked, skeletal frame.

Veronica glanced at the clock. 4.30am. Rudi yapped at the foot of the bed. Scampered over to her mistress and leaped into her arms.

‘You stole him!’ Mama said.

‘No. He just wanted to sleep in my room.’

‘Thieving bitch of a girl! Naughty Rudi!’

‘You weren’t here, Mama.’

The slap wasn’t so bad. What stung was the fact that she had really disappointed her mother, this time. She just couldn’t win.

Mama and her young companion slept deeply and late together in a guest room. The French doors to the garden were open. Tricia had baked muffins. The summer morning air was refreshing. Inviting. With a muffin in her mouth, Veronica pulled on her slippers and took a glass of orange juice and a throw onto the small lawn, so that she might sit and enjoy the sunshine.

When she found poor little Rudi under the holly tree, his severed head lying next to his tragic, blood-flecked body, she screamed loud enough for the neighbours’ security guard to leap the fence to see why there was such a commotion.

‘O-our dog!’ she wept, burying her face, wet with tears, in the guard’s shoulder. ‘My-my little Rudi. Who would d-do such a t-thing?’

Her vocal grief at the sight of the dead terrier was evidently enough to rouse her mother. When Mama saw the harrowing tableau, she collapsed onto the grass, clutching at her stomach and sobbing silently.

For the first time that Veronica could remember, her mama reached out for her and gathered her up in her scrawny arms. Rocking her like a baby. Weeping hot tears down her neck.

She reciprocated as any bereft fifteen-year-old would. She hugged her mother back.

Poor Mama.

CHAPTER 35

Amsterdam, police headquarters, 22 January

‘Did you know the women in these photos, yes or no?’ van den Bergen shouted. Poking insistently at a photograph of Linda Lepiks and the image that Marie had put together of the first victim. Bolt upright in his chair. Dwarfing a whey-faced Ahlers, who slouched forwards, toying with his own fingernails and blinking too fast at the table’s surface, some six inches to the right of the images.

‘Can I have a drink?’

‘Look at the damned pictures!’

Elvis stood in a corner of the room. Leaning against the wall nonchalantly. Hands stuffed inside the pockets of his leather jacket. Casual. Doing studied indifference, George could see.

‘You really want to play ball with him while you can,’ Elvis told Ahlers, gesticulating with his quiff towards the grimacing chief inspector. ‘He’s a big man, right? Look at the size of those hands. I’ve seen what he does with guys who piss him around. Honestly, it can get quite messy.’

Ruud Ahlers tugged at the collar on his shirt. Ran a quivering index finger over the swollen side of his face. ‘I want my solicitor present. You so much as touch a hair on my head, I’ll have you for assault.’

Van den Bergen’s mouth curled down at the edges. ‘We find a match between nice blond pubic hairs our pathologist found on the black girl and the hair on your
groin
, you’ll need more than a solicitor to save you, Dr Ahlers. You’ll be wishing Jesus Christ was your legal representation.’ He bore down on his interviewee, placing his fingers on the photographs in a custodial manner. The tip of his nose could not have been more than ten inches from Ahlers’ face. ‘You were struck off the medical register seven years ago for negligence and interfering with your female patients. Both my victims have been scarred by someone who darned them back together like mail bags. Did you perform surgery on them?’

Ahlers was silent. An indolent interviewee, rendering the cross-examination nothing more than a monologue, delivered by a clearly increasingly frustrated van den Bergen.

‘Where were you on the nights of sixteenth of January and eighteenth of January? Hello! Are you listening to me?’ He waved his hand in front of Ahlers’ bloated face.

George’s strange and seemingly murderous lunch companion finally shifted in his seat. Examined his nails. Spoke quietly. ‘Well, for a start, I can tell you I was at the Holland Casino on the eighteenth of January. People saw me there. I won some money.’

‘Did you drive? Walk? Take public transport?’

‘Walk.’

‘What car do you drive?’

‘I don’t have a car.’

‘What time did you return to your place of residence?’ Van den Bergen sounded every consonant clearly.

He opened and closed his mouth several times. George realised she didn’t like Ahlers’ mean lips or the flabby breasts and large gut that lay beneath his dowdy top. Pregnant with ill intentions; corpulent flesh marbled with sleaze and moral decay like a rotten cheese. What the hell had Katja been doing, hanging out with this chump?

‘It was late,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember. But they’ll have everything on CCTV at the casino, if you think I’m lying.’

‘Anyone able to corroborate what time you got back to your place? You got a woman at home?’

Silence ensued.

‘I
said
. What. Time. Did you. Get. Back. To your. Place?’

George peered into the interview room through the one-way glass. Watching van den Bergen’s hooded, grey eyes grow colder and colder as though a dark cloud had cast a chill shadow over him. Drumming his fingers on the table, now. Clearly impatient. Something about him had changed since they had seen one another some months earlier. Though he had always been lean, his clothes looked loose on him. His face, thoroughly drawn. Sunken cheekbones under the harsh interview room light gave him the haunted, desolate look of a man stalking along the outer periphery of his own sanity. His complexion appeared jaundiced, rather than tanned or simply wind-burnt from spending hours in the outdoors. She was glad she had come.

‘Here. I thought you could use a coffee,’ Marie said, pushing a cup of black coffee into George’s hand.

George nodded. Smiled uncertainly, as she eyed the thick band of grease that rendered the red-head’s hair almost brown. ‘Thanks.’ She singed her lips on the boiling liquid. Settled for just warming her hands on the plastic. ‘I honestly thought he was going to shoot me.’ She conjured the memory of van den Bergen, holding the gun with arms outstretched. His expression had had a maniacal quality to it, as though he had been looking at her but had not seen her. Though Ahlers had pushed her to the bathroom floor to make his blundering attempt at escape, it was seeing van den Bergen’s wild eyes that had really shaken her up. ‘He’s not the sort of man you want to get on the wrong side of, is he? Van den Bergen, I mean. I’ve never really seen that in him before. He normally seems so cool. So in control.’