The Girl Who Broke the Rules (22 page)

Van den Bergen flung the road map into her lap. Mouth arced downwards in a sneer. ‘You’ll have children one day. Then you’ll understand.’

Was he being patronising? It felt like it. She quelled the temptation to come back with a smart-arsed remark. Turned on the stereo. The angry buzz of distorted guitars blasted from the speakers.

‘Jesus. Aren’t you supposed to, like, get better taste in music when you have a mid-life crisis, man? What is this shit?’

He poked a long, slender finger at the on/off switch and the car’s cabin was silent once more. ‘Why are we arguing?’ he asked.

‘Are we arguing?’ she said.

‘I’ve been waiting for you to come over. And now you’re here. Can we save the psychoanalytic therapy session for a nice meal and a bottle of wine? That was what I was planning for last night. Right now, I feel like dredging up my innermost anguish like a hole in the bloody head.’

George held her hands up. Sensed she had trespassed on uncomfortable territory. Slapped his thigh. ‘You know you’re my favourite copper, don’t you, you big old lanky sod?’

‘Did you really just slap my thigh?’ he said. The smile broke through like reluctant sun shining on a storm-ravaged coastline. It seemed to plant a hopeful flag in the stern promontory of his face. ‘That’s sexual harassment in the workplace, young lady.’

She gasped in faux horror. Placed a melodramatic hand on her chest. ‘
Moi?
’

He briefly turned to her. Those heavy eyes seemed to have cleared. When he winked, she felt certain the van den Bergen she knew and loved was still present beneath this dry husk. All he needed to do was shed his sorrow like a reptile jettisons dead skin, and she felt optimistic that her friend could return from the shadows. Couldn’t he?

‘Hey!’ he said, almost smiling as he stared at the road ahead. ‘There’s this paediatrician I want to introduce you to. Sabine. She’s offering Marie some advice on signs of child abuse. Paedophilia. That sort of thing. And she’s…well, you’ll like her. A friend of Marianne’s.’

She? George didn’t like the sound of ‘she’. Perhaps her friend had already returned from the shadows with somebody else’s assistance.

‘But never mind that. Tell me about Karelse,’ he said, unexpectedly changing tack.

Then, it was George’s turn to feel the sluggish, draining weight of expectation bearing down on her.

CHAPTER 44

Amsterdam, Ad’s apartment, later

The walk down to the postbox in the communal entrance hall felt like an arduous trek. Ad was still wearing his slippers. T-shirt and boxers beneath the navy velour dressing gown that George had bought him their first Christmas together. The novelty of it being from the English store, Marks & Spencer, had long worn off. It felt heavy on him and had discoloured in parts, hanging in the sunshine on the bathroom door for over three years, now.

The front door to the apartment block was open. Two bags of shopping on the coir mat. Syrup waffles. Eggs. Washing powder. Frozen spinach. Out in front, that nosey, well-meaning old twit, Mrs de Klerk, was locking up her bike. Ad groaned. Turned to go back upstairs.

‘Adrianus!’ Mrs de Klerk said.

He was forced to look round. There she was, waving, as though she were flagging down a bus. Taking laboured long strides with those short, varicose veined legs of hers, mercifully hidden today by green waterproof walking trousers. Summer was a nightmare when she insisted on wearing shorts. He felt certain the first words out of her mouth would be, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask about…’ Same every time.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask about that noise,’ she said, toying with the silver cross that hung around her neck. ‘A terrible racket, it was, coming from your apartment.’

Cornered now, there was no opportunity for escape. Ad withdrew the key from his dressing gown pocket and opened the box that was labelled ‘Karelse/Meerdinck’. Took out a sheaf of post, mainly bills and junk. A pink envelope with Astrid’s sloping hand on the front. A white envelope from England with a Crowthorne date stamp on it. Written by hand in block capitals that were so neat, they looked almost as though they had been word-processed. Sent two days ago, by the looks. Addressed to George.

‘The noise, Adrianus! It was ungodly. I mean, you know I have heart problems.’

She sounded flustered and out of breath. Perhaps it was all those waffles and eggs. He silently rebuked himself for being so intolerant.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs de Kl—’

‘I think you had a party, didn’t you? And you know you’re to get the written consent of all the other occupants in this block if you have a party.’

Ad tried to focus on his disgruntled neighbour but his glance was inexorably drawn to the white envelope by the strangely neat handwriting and by George’s name. Why had someone written to her at his address?

‘Party?’ he asked, vaguely aware that he was being taken to task for a transgression he hadn’t committed.

‘People, coming and going. Doors slamming. Thumping music until four am! You’re lucky I’m a Christian, else I would have called the police.’

Finally, he focussed on her. ‘I’ve been away. It must have been Jasper. He’s moved back in full time.’

Mrs de Klerk picked up her shopping bags and plunged them into Ad’s hands, so that he almost dropped his post. Forced to wedge the mail in his mouth. He carried the bags up to her front door.

‘Are you ill, dear?’ she asked, sticking her key in the lock. ‘Only you’re normally quite clean-looking for a student. I like that about you. I said to the ladies at church, I like this young man who lives next door. He’s very respectable, even though he’s dating an English nigger.’

Ad plonked her bags heavily on the floor – heavily enough that he was fairly certain at least one or two of her eggs must have broken. Took the dribble-drenched mail out of his mouth and thoughtfully stroked the two days’ worth of stubble that had sprouted on his face and neck. ‘I’m fine, thank you. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use the N-word when you’re talking about my girlfriend. It’s racist.’

Mrs de Klerk looked startled. ‘Cheeky boy!’ Whipped her shopping bags inside and slammed the door, leaving him alone on the landing.

The strange letter had a certain magnetism to it. With the rest of the mail stuffed under his arm, his fingers hovered over the sealed flap. Should he open it? It wasn’t addressed to him. But if it had been sent to his flat, that meant he could open it, right? And George, should she ever answer his calls ever again, would want him to open it and read it out to her, wouldn’t she? Much quicker than forwarding.

‘Screw you, George!’ he muttered under his breath as he ripped a line down the fold of the envelope. Pulled out the letter. Shivered when he read the name of the sender at the bottom of a page of inhumanly neat, handwritten prose.

Charging back inside his flat, he bolted the door and put the mortise lock on. Felt cold sweat prickle forth from pores that seemed to know things were amiss before his brain had time to think such a thing. Where was his phone? Where was the damned thing? There! On the kitchen table next to Jasper’s cycle helmet and the empty cans of lager from last night. Found George’s number and pressed dial. Her face on the wallpaper. A photo from the Stansted Express. Smiling, though he knew the smile hadn’t reached her eyes. Ringing. Ringing, now.

‘For Christ’s sake, George. Please pick up!’

CHAPTER 45

Rotterdam Port, later

Clanging, clashing. Whirring of heavy machinery moving from this grid reference to that stack. The throaty, guttural sound of horns from vessels approaching their birth. Wind, gusting between the towers of multicoloured blocks, like a whistle from the pursed lips of steel giants. Dockside is a very noisy place. Unsurprisingly, since the hundred or so square kilometres that constitute the Port of Rotterdam house everything from the unassuming, picturesque historic harbour, Delfshaven, to the vast tracts of land and water dedicated to processing cargo shipments from all over the world. Shipped in from afar. Sorted into stacks on Dutch soil. Transported by train to the hinterlands of the Netherlands and Germany. George was surprised to see how few people were actually on the ground. A stevedore here, a stevedore there, but mainly, it was a place where those steel containers in an array of different weather-beaten colours were swung around in an almost graceful dance by robotic cranes, driven by automated vehicles, choreographed by computer programs that were manipulated from a distance inside the port’s administration buildings.

Small wonder, given the din, that George could not, at first, be sure that her phone was ringing. But after a few seconds, as the specially designated Aretha ringtone got louder, George realised it was Ad. Again. Given she and van den Bergen were being led by a behemoth of a stevedore in a high-viz jacket to the container where the body had been discovered, Ad could think again if he thought she was going to talk to him now.

‘Wouter!’ van den Bergen shouted, waving to the detective that was heading up the Rotterdam port police investigation.

His long strides seemed to lengthen. She had to jog to keep up with him.

‘Wait for me, Paul!’

But he was not listening. Clapping the back of his former colleague instead. Chummy bromance handshakes, like they were besties of old, though he had never mentioned this man once in conversation. Van den Bergen had twenty years on her. How many more people had he got to know during his working life alone than she had met over the course of her entire twenty-four years, simply because he was that much older? It was a bewildering thought.

Wouter Dreyer had a head like a large potato, George thought, with raisins for eyes, a broken carrot for a nose and the most terrible cauliflower ears she had ever seen. She blinked hard, looked again and saw an ageing jock instead of Mr Potatohead. Couldn’t remember whether the Dutch played rugby. He certainly looked as though he did.

‘George, this is my old buddy from cop school.’ Finally her friend was not just smiling but grinning. Why had Mr Potatohead succeeded in eliciting a grin where she had failed?

She eyed Wouter’s ears suspiciously. They were the wrongest ears she had ever seen. The retro-stylish brown sheepskin coat that he wore was his only redeeming feature and not dissimilar to hers. How had she ended up hanging out with a bunch of older men – either cops, perverts or psychopaths – who had all the sartorial elegance of septuagenarian refugees from the ice-clad mountains of central Asia? Aunty Sharon had warned her that she was becoming reclusive and odd. That she should have more friends her own age.

‘Come and take a look,’ Wouter said. He held the police tape up for them to walk under. Nodded at George and called her ma’am – at least, the Dutch equivalent. All very formal and pleasantly respectful. Perhaps cauliflower ears were not an indication of poor character. ‘The body’s at the morgue. We’ve arranged for it to be transported to your head of forensics this afternoon. Let your guy—’

‘Woman,’ van den Bergen said, prising his glasses from their resting place on his chest and pushing them onto his nose. He peered down at Wouter through the thick lenses. His eyes, suddenly far larger than usual. ‘It’s Marianne de Koninck. Remember her?’

Wouter sniggered in a way George did not entirely like. ‘She still—’

‘Oh, yes. Very much so.’ More grinning, for God’s sake. A knowing look passed between them.

An elbow in the ribs from his Rotterdam compatriot suggested van den Bergen might have something to hide, but he merely blushed in answer and shook his head. ‘No. Nothing like that.’

George hadn’t realised men did telepathy. Their levity in the midst of death was almost unbearable, but only because she didn’t feel part of it.

The uniformed officers guarding the site parted to let them through. The shape of the victim had been outlined in white on the base of the giant metal box. Arms raised above the head. Legs splayed slightly. George was struck by the diminutive stature of the Filipino. It was a relief that the body had been removed, although she had a nasty feeling she would accompany van den Bergen to the morgue once they were back in Amsterdam. Seeing photographs and film clips of violent porn was one thing. Being in the same room as the dead, another entirely.

Van den Bergen looked around, clearly surveying the scene. Stacks of containers all around. Mechanised movement. Off the ship. Into the stack. One by one, driven away during a designated slot by the designated haulage company. ‘Not many people around,’ he said.

Wouter nodded. Hands stuffed deeply inside his pockets as a foil to the bitter North Sea wind. ‘Easy to operate unseen, especially after dark, which we think this was.’

‘Problem is getting inside the compound,’ van den Bergen said, removing his glasses and appearing suddenly ten years younger. ‘You’d need to drive a body to this point. It’s too far from the periphery. Too dangerous to walk, even if you had the strength to carry dead weight. Have you interviewed the port staff?’

‘Yep. I know all these guys,’ Wouter said. ‘Working men. An endangered species, now this place is all run by robots and computer nerds. They’re pretty damned straight. And even if they weren’t, they’re pretty damned tight. So, none of them would blab if there were crooks among them!’ He laughed heartily. Gave a knowing look to the behemoth stevedore in his high-viz jacket. Winked. Didn’t get so much as a nod in response.

Van den Bergen snapped on a latex glove. Fingered the lock. ‘I thought this had been broken into,’ he said.

‘It had.’

Shook his head. ‘Looks more like it’s been deliberately dented, if you ask me, to give the impression of a break-in. I don’t think this has been forced at all. And I think you’d better check the CCTV to see any unregistered vehicles that may have come and gone last night.’

‘We’re in the process of doing that now,’ Wouter said, looking at his shoes, as if he had been chastised by a teacher. The rapport between them seemed to have changed subtly; an icy down-draught of implicit criticism that had sucked the warmth out of the spot. Brotherly levity all but gone, George noted.