The Girl Who Broke the Rules (2 page)

When she had arrived in the arid, rubble wasteland of Mogadishu, clutching the squalling infant, her hope had faded quickly. Tears had pricked the backs of her eyes as she remembered Ashkir being plucked from her bosom by those corrupt African Union troops. Burundian men, who had laughed heartily and exchanged easy greetings with her couriers.

She had overheard them saying that her brother was destined for adoption in Milan. But, at thirteen, she had been too old to be adopted.

Magool had cursed the name that marked her out as the early flowering girl. Had cursed her parents, each time the men forced themselves on her. Her own kind, amid the diesel-stink and filth of the ramshackle Somali ship. Then, white men when she reached Rome. There was no distinction to be made between them. By the time she had escaped the cocaine fug of nightly abuse and arrived in Amsterdam on the train, she was already five months pregnant. Not showing yet.

Two full years later, now. Watching the snow and feeling hopeful, just as that charlatan showed up, knocking on her window. She should have known better than to let him in.

He had caressed the jagged, lumpy line of her caesarean scar before putting his hand between her legs.

‘You healed well,’ he said, kissing her neck.

She bit her tongue. Swallowed the retort. Money was money and he’d paid up front.

He lay down on the narrow bed and pulled her on top. Guiding her onto him. Hands on her small breasts. ‘Tell me I’m the best,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘Faster.’ His voice was high. His breath came short. ‘Tell me again how I saved your life.’

As she stared down at his corpulent pink body with its nauseating smattering of fluffy blond chest hair that crawled from one flabby tit to another, she fantasised about strangling him with her bare hands. Her small slender fingers would never stretch around that red bull neck. He was twice her size.

‘I saved you, Noor,’ he said, thrusting himself upwards into her.

Her words slipped out, unchecked.

‘You’re a butcher,’ she said. ‘I have to charge less because of you.’

The fat pig showed no remorse. He did not even open his eyes to look at her. Merely smiled, gripped her tightly by the hips and ground her pelvis harder towards him. ‘Nonsense. I’m a master craftsman. Black skin just scars more.’

Afterwards, they had squabbled over the fee. He snatched up the euros he had given her at the start and stuffed them under the bulk of his body.

‘Come and get it, little Noor!’ he said, starting to laugh. Glee in his eyes.

What was this? Some kind of perverse game? Wasn’t it enough that he had cut her baby out of her in that cold, damp back room he called a surgery and stitched her back up like an old sack? Fury flared within her.

‘Give me my money back!’ she said, trying to roll him over to reach the notes.

He grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her away so that she fell against the wall. Suddenly, fear snuffed out the flames of her anger.

‘What made you think I would pay, you dumb bitch?’ He pulled the foreskin back down on his flaccid, spent manhood. A sea slug stuck to his thigh. ‘You owe me. You’ll always owe me.’

She rose to her feet. Backed into the corner, folding her arms over her naked chest. ‘I already paid through the nose!’ she said, wanting to show this beast that she wouldn’t be trifled with. Wanting him to see that she wasn’t a defenceless little girl. But she knew her body language betrayed her and she was annoyed by the waver in her voice. ‘Give me the cash or I’ll report you to the authorities!’

He smiled brightly. ‘An underage, illegal Somali immigrant, working as a whore? Report me, a pillar of the community? I don’t think I’ll be losing any sleep on that front, little Noor. Do you?’

He was already dressed. Stuffing the notes back into his wallet, now. Magool steeled herself to step forward and snatch it from him. But the doctor sensed her intentions, leaned in and punched her hard in the face.

Her cheek stung. Tears sprang from her eyes against her will. She failed to swallow them back.

‘Get out, then! Go on! Fuck off and don’t come round here again. Ever.’

But as he opened the door, he looked back at her. A pause that perhaps betrayed the flicker of remorse in those bloodshot blue eyes. He reached inside the breast pocket of his overcoat and retrieved the leather wallet. Pulled out a twenty. Threw it at her.

‘No hard feelings?’ he said.

She picked up the money from the threadbare brown carpet. Pushed it back into his hand.

‘Stick your money up your ass,
sharmuutaa ku dhashay
! You need this more than me,’ she said, bundling him out the door and locking it behind him.

Waiting until the clatter on the stairs and the glazed door slamming marked his departure, she crouched in her small room and clutched her knees. Allowed herself to weep, but not for long. Cursed him and vowed she would get even one day. Somehow.

Her thoughts turned to her shared bedsit.

Enough for one night. It was time to shut up shop and go home. Get her shit together so that, tomorrow, she could face a new day. Hell, the weather was terrible anyway.

Outside, the mixture of hail and snow bit into her flesh. Her jeans and even her padded coat seemed to provide no protection from the unforgiving elements. Peering ahead down the street, it was as though she were watching whiteout static on the old black and white TV her parents had in their shack back home. And it had looked so picturesque from inside her booth. It would be an arduous walk back.

At first, she had not noticed the dark Lexus sliding slowly alongside her. She walked ahead of the car, pulling her hood further down over her eyes; following what she saw at her feet as a guide to which direction home lay in. But when the car edged forward and remained at her side, she lifted her hood to see if it was a familiar punter, hoping she might reconsider, retreat and reopen the shop.

The Lexus stopped. The driver’s window opened just enough for her to see who was behind the wheel.

‘You?’ she said. Hard to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

‘Get in!’ the driver said.

Magool clutched her shoulder bag across her chest defensively. ‘I said I never wanted to see you again.’

‘Look, it’s a storm out there. It’s warm in here. I’ll drive you home. You’re wringing wet.’

‘No thanks. I’ll walk it.’

‘Come on! Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve got heated seats.’ Placatory tone. Friendly eyes. The driver’s face and body language were benign. ‘Get in, for God’s sake!’

By now, she was quaking with the cold. Beyond uncomfortable. Despite sensing that the driver’s concerned gesture was off key, Magool walked round to the passenger side. Opened the car’s heavy door and registered the sting between her shoulder blades, as she sank back into the luxurious, leather heated seat…

The snow had stopped falling by the time Magool Osman returned to the red light district. Her makeshift bed was a bench beneath the windows of the Old Sailor Café Bar at the junction of Oudezijds Achterburgwal and the cobbled alley of Molensteen. Fittingly opposite the Erotic Museum, and ironically within spitting distance of her compatriots in their relatively safe, red-lit booths. But she had been dropped off after her final ordeal in the small hours, when only the water rats and the ghosts of Amsterdam’s Golden Age roamed those streets. The darkest hours before an unforgiving, wintry dawn.

Just after 6.30am, Magool’s empty eye sockets stared blankly up at Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen. With a cracking hip, wishing he had had time for breakfast and a coffee before leaving home, he crouched to get a better look at this young woman:

Dark skin. Diminutive stature. Completely naked. Frozen solid, with a dusting of ice that still sparkled like fake diamond dust beneath the harsh light in the makeshift forensic tent.

He thumbed his white stubble in contemplation of her corpse; once a thing of beauty, now defiled and incomplete. It was as though the girl had been unzipped from her throat to her pubic area, revealing all the fragile matter that lay beneath. Chest framed by the white stripes of her ribs, which had been split down the sternum and levered apart. Where once her lungs must have breathed in this sharp, Amsterdam air; where once her stomach might have digested a moreish meal; where once her kidneys and liver might have filtered celebratory wine…now, there were but gaping holes, frozen blood and a mere suggestion of the life and hope that had once inhabited such a young body.

Elvis, one of van den Bergen’s two most loyal protégés, moved the flap of the tent aside. He entered the scene, wearing white plastic overshoes.

Van den Bergen rose to his full height. Noticed the alarmed grimace on his subordinate’s face.

‘Stop gawping, Elvis,’ he said. ‘Show some fucking respect for the dead.’

‘Sorry, boss.’ Elvis covered his nose, though the icy conditions meant there was nothing unpleasant to smell. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Is Marianne de Koninck and her team on their way?’

‘Yep. Due any minute now.’

Van den Bergen nodded. Sniffed. Acknowledged the black dog lurking inside the tent, outside the tent, in the warmth of his car. Bearing down on him. Casting a long shadow over everything. He swallowed painfully, prodding at the swollen glands beneath his ears. ‘My throat’s on fire. Think I’m coming down with something. Just my luck, it will be Ebola. Grab me a coffee, will you?’

Van den Bergen withdrew his phone from his coat pocket and brought up his contacts list. Scrolled down to G. There was the number. George McKenzie. He sighed deeply.

CHAPTER 1

Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, UK, 17 January

The slight man who sat facing her examined the fingernails at the ends of his slender fingers with an expression of intense concentration. George noted that they were always very clean and manicured. His lank, thinning hair hung sullenly over the shoulders of a faded blue sweatshirt. Dirty dark grey. Starting to recede at the temples. Perhaps his haggard, small-featured face might once have been attractive, given its delicate, perfectly symmetrical bone structure. George shuddered at this thought that had popped, unbidden, into her mind. She averted her gaze from his hands and focussed instead on her pad.

‘Cold, Georgina?’ Silas Holm asked. A smile playing on his chapped lips, he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the tall, arched windows of the Victorian building. The perfectly white expanse of snow-heavy sky outside was carved up by peeling painted bars that stretched ceiling-wards. ‘It’s that period of architecture,’ he said. ‘Terribly draughty because of the lofty proportions, you see. Doesn’t matter how much they crank up the heating.’

His gaze found her face and focussed sharply on it, now. George McKenzie knew this much without looking up from her notes. The prison officers said his manner was always one of an attentive vicar, listening with dedicated enthusiasm to the concerns of his adoring flock. It was unclear, therefore, whether Silas Holm was staring at George because he was genuinely engaged by their conversation or whether he was simply fantasising about what he could do to the only woman he was allowed to see on a regular basis, if he still had his liberty. Either way, the fact that he had noticed her shiver – almost imperceptibly, she had thought – made George feel very itchy. She started to arrange her pens in perfectly parallel lines on the desk. Then stopped herself.
Reveal nothing about you as a person or the details of your life,
her Cambridge University supervisor, Dr Sally Wright had told her. Not only was Sally the senior tutor of St John’s College – the Big Boss-woman in what was otherwise still a man’s world – but she was also the country’s foremost criminologist. If she didn’t know what she was talking about where handling dangerous psychopaths was concerned, nobody did.
Dress dowdily. Be on your guard. Don’t get involved.

‘What’s with the tracksuit?’ she asked, deliberately steering the focus back onto her study subject. ‘Where are your tweeds? What did you do?’

Silas Holm gave a small sigh and a resigned smile. Rapped on his leg with his knuckles. The sound was hollow. ‘What could a harmless amputee like me ever do to warrant such a petty punishment? I ask you!’

‘Well you must have done something pretty bad to have your normal clothes taken away,’ George said. ‘It’s not like you’re in prison.’ She shot a questioning sideways glance at Silas’ nurse, who was seated at the end of the desk, within reassuring reach of this small but deadly psychopath.

Graham’s muscle-bound bulk heaved up and down beneath his T-shirt. Laughing heartily. He smoothed a hand over his shaven head. ‘Dr Holm. You are funny,’ he said. His Nigerian accent was pronounced. ‘You are lucky you weren’t transferred back to high dependency. Poor Kenneth! Why don’t you tell Ms McKenzie straight about your little set-to with him?’

The small-featured face of Silas Holm appeared suddenly sharp, grey, remorseless. His voice was clipped. Words came fast. ‘No. I don’t think I will. And I don’t think it warranted being singled out this way.’ The sneer that turned his mouth into a thin, drooping line and the way that he tugged at the sweatshirt with his fingertips marked out his disdain for the garment and that place. ‘The other men look up to me.’ He shuffled in his seat, straightening his posture. But something within him clicked and the friendly smile reappeared. Locked onto George’s face with those ice-blue eyes. ‘They come to me for wisdom, the men in here,’ he told her.

‘What sort of wisdom?’ George uncapped her pen.

‘I know about the world, of course! These oiks know nothing. Most of them are semi-literate at best. I, however, am a man of learning as you know. Before I was subjected to the indignity of coming to this dump, I was celebrated in my field of expertise!’ He leaned forward and stretched his fingers out towards George’s side of the desk.

‘Back up, Dr Holm,’ Graham said calmly.

Silas colluded; withdrawing physically but somehow clinging onto the intimacy he had implied was between them by winking and keeping his voice low. ‘I won the Evelyn Baker Medal from the Association of Anaesthetists, you know.’ Nodding. Matter of fact. Trying to impress.