The Girl Who Broke the Rules (36 page)

Sabine finished examining the girl. Hooked her hair behind her ears, as she scanned Marianne’s preliminary report. Tutted. ‘This girl’s been raped repeatedly – by several different men. I’ve seen this level of abuse before in living victims, of course. But all those missing organs… Maybe it
is
ritual killing by a member or members of a paedophile ring. It’s not unheard of.’

‘Haven’t you been listening?’ George said. ‘This is about trafficked people. Trafficked organs.’

Sabine folded her arms and stood a little straighter. ‘I think it’s
wholly
plausible that ritual satanic—’

‘Violent sex offenders and serial murderers often dress their brutality up as something to do with satanic worship,’ George said, raising her voice. ‘But the ritual side is almost always superficial and for dramatic effect.’ She blinked repeatedly at the paediatrician.

‘What do you know?’ Sabine asked. ‘I thought you were an assistant.’

Narrowed eyes said George was disgruntled. ‘Oh, I know, all right. This is a complex case. The backdrop to these murders is almost certainly gangland trafficking. But the killer himself – recruited for his surgical abilities, in all likelihood – is a different kettle of fish. He’s shown escalating sadistic behaviour. Taking more of the organs with each victim we find. The term for it is conducting “in vivo trials”. Maybe now, he’s perfected his technique. But what’s he doing it for really? Business…or pleasure?’

Sabine turned away from George back to the dead girl. ‘The contents of her stomach – still in situ, thankfully – have not been digested yet.’

Marianne nodded. ‘Yep. Pitta bread, lamb meat, salad. She’d had a kebab shortly before death.’

‘Exactly,’ Sabine said, snapping her fingers and pointing. ‘Perhaps she’d been brought in on a flight from Turkey.’

‘Bullshit!’ George shouted, causing everyone to turn to see what had caused such an impassioned response.

She wheeled her typing chair rapidly from side to side. From the left to the right to the left to the right. Playing with some forceps. Open, shut. Open, shut.

‘I’m sorry?’ Sabine said.

George glanced over at the girl’s body. ‘You can buy a kebab on any street in Amsterdam. Why the fuck would this girl necessarily have come from Turkey? She’s white, for a start. Lily-white. So, unless she’s an abducted holidaymaker from Bodrum – and I doubt that, since it’s off season and school term time – then she’s got to be local, or at least, northern European. Anyway, a flight from Turkey takes hours. She’d have digested food during that time, right? And I never went on a plane that served up a nice kebab as your in-flight meal. Have you?’

‘Georgina’s got a point,’ van den Bergen said, moving discreetly over to her chair and holding the back so she was forced to stop fidgeting. Placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, to show he was on her side. ‘I’ll get my team to look into missing persons in the Benelux countries, France, Germany. Maybe Europol knows something. Dead porn stars and immigrant fishermen are one thing, but the murder of a European child who has been abducted, forced into sexual slavery and eventually used as part of a supply chain for black market organs suddenly takes this to a different league. That’s the stuff of international news headlines.’

‘We’re looking for a sociopath,’ George said, though it seemed only van den Bergen was now listening, as Sabine engaged in an entirely different, altogether personal conversation with Marianne about her failed love life. She shouted over their chatter. ‘A sophisticated, skilled individual who likes to kill and has no conscience whatsoever.’

A rogue tear rolled down George’s cheek. While the other women weren’t looking, gossiping away as though they were on a nice coffee break at a seminar, rather than talking in the presence of a murdered child, van den Bergen put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry you have to see this. I forget you’re—’

She took his hand into hers surreptitiously. He felt he could almost see the essence of her being in those sorrowful, passionate, dangerous eyes.

‘It’s fine. This is what I do, now. I realise it’s going to take years to really harden to it though. The things that killers do…’

He chuckled and withdrew his hand. ‘Oh, you never harden to it. Not if you have a soul.’

CHAPTER 68

South East London, mortuary, later

The doors to the lift opened. Sharon stepped out gingerly into the dark corridor. Noticed the shiny, navy-blue linoleum floor, wondering how they got it so sparkling. One of those buffer machines, most likely. Funny the things you thought of when there was crap all over the fan and your heart was teetering on the brink.

‘You okay?’ the copper asked.

He had a kind face. She was normally distrustful of his ilk, but given the circumstances, his bulk was somehow comforting. Those Ds were always built like brick shithouses – as had been the uniforms who had shown up on her doorstep. All hissing walkie talkies and big hats and Kevlar vests. It was like fucking RoboCop at your door. Hope the neighbours couldn’t see. Except, bugger the neighbours, because something had gone wrong, obviously. Bad news, always, when a squad car rolled up outside your house, and the coppers’ mugs were respectful and solemn like they were at church.

‘My Patrice been in trouble?’ she’d asked, barely able to breathe her way through the fear that seemed to crush the air from her lungs. ‘You come about my son? Cos he’s a good boy, you know.’

‘No. Nothing like that, Ms Williams-May. Can we come in?’

When they had told her, the tears took a good twenty minutes and a sweet cup of tea to appear. She felt she had to conjure the memory of Derek and instruct her heart to break. Detached from the announcement. Shock, they called it. How could she break the news to her baby girl, if it did turn out to be her dad?

‘How comes you’re sure it’s him?’

‘We found a wallet on the deceased,’ the lady copper had said. ‘But we’ll need you to ID him. If it is Derek de Falco, you’re down as his next of kin.’

Now, the end was near, and now she faced the final curtain. Derek had always said he wanted a Frank sonata at his funeral. Maybe the poor bastard’s wish was going to come true. Half of Soho and Bermondsey, sitting in a cold hall at the crem or lining the pews in The Most Holy Trinity RC Church or wherever it was he got sent as a kid. Floral tributes making everyone sneeze. Readings and a world of hypocritical shit. She would have to arrange it all. Jesus. She could barely put one foot in front of another, but the moment of truth had come.

Followed the policeman to the viewing room or whatever they called it. There was a body under a white sheet. She could already tell it was him from the size. Grief struck her down and her heart was no longer teetering. Worse, when she saw his battered grey face.

‘Stupid fucker, Derek de Falco!’

She hadn’t expected her sorrow to be tinged with anger. Hot tears pouring onto her décolletage, wishing Letitia was there to hug her and tell her it was gonna be all right, like she had when Mum had gone for the belt.

She turned to the D. Hiccoughing through her words. ‘You need to line me up with an interview with your boss, right? My Derek – he was in some deep shit, man. And it’s got him killed. I ain’t scared of grassing no more. Not if you can guarantee me protection like yous did with my niece.’

‘What do you mean, Sharon?’ the detective said, taking out his notepad and pen.

‘I know some stuff you’re gonna want to hear.’

CHAPTER 69

Amsterdam, later

‘Do you think we’ll track her down?’ George asked Marie, peering up at the faceless office block on Weerdestein, uncomfortably eating messy falafel in the pool car.

‘Maybe,’ Marie said. ‘It’s nice to get out, though.’ She spoke whilst crunching crisps, spraying the dash with globs of white pulp. Oblivious to George wincing beside her. ‘After a morning of trawling through the crap on Strietman’s laptop, I was glad of a change of scenery.’

‘What do you mean?’ George marvelled at how Marie was utterly oblivious to her own spit-mess.

‘Kinky photos of men in body bags. Like, necrophilia porn.’ Marie laughed and blushed through to the roots of her red hair. ‘I mean, it makes sense, when you consider the job he does, but I’ve known Daan Strietman for years.’ She looked directly at George. A shard of crisp clinging to the down above her top lip. ‘I’d never have had him down as a pervert. Never. He’s a total dick, but not perv material.’

‘Shows how much you can ever know about a colleague,’ George said, thinking about van den Bergen’s unexpected sense of adventure and athleticism in the bedroom.
Not here. Not now, George. Put that shit out of your mind.
She peered up at the office block. ‘I’m a bit disappointed. I thought they’d know Magool personally.’

‘The Emancipation Servicepoint just deal with offering financial guidance to women,’ Marie said, rustling the crisp packet. ‘Older women, at that.’ Trying to get the dregs out. Pouring them in her mouth directly from the bag, so that crumbs fell onto her top, which she brushed all over her knees, the car and George.

George dumped her half-eaten falafel dramatically onto the dashboard. ‘Can you watch what you’re doing, for Christ’s sake? I didn’t come out to get a shower in your chewed-up lunch.’

Marie screwed up her crisp packet and threw it in the back of the car. Defiant. Unapologetic. ‘Oh, and you’re not stinking out the car with the smell of bloody garlic and onions?’

Stalemate. George could see arguing was pointless.

‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘So, what have we pieced together? Magool went to the Emancipation Servicepoint place, asking for advice on how to make money and how to set up a bank account. Right? But you’ve got to be twenty-five at least to qualify for the organisation’s services, so they put her in touch with IFTIN.’

‘Yes. The Somali women’s thing on Mercatorplein,’ Marie said, reading her notes. ‘And all they could give us was an address of another asylum seeker who went looking for support around the same time as Magool. We’re going round in circles a bit. Could be a dead end.’

‘We won’t know until we try,’ George said, wiping her fingers with an anti-bacterial wipe and buckling up.

‘So, I come back to find Ahlers in hospital, Strietman and Buczkowski are both in the cells and the forensics from Linda Lepiks’ flat missing?’ van den Bergen shouted, his irritation fighting its way up and out through the numbing fuzz of codeine. ‘I go away for two days – not twenty-two, but
two
days, for God’s sake – with my phone switched on.’

Elvis cleared his throat. ‘Actually, boss. I tried to get hold of you sooner, but your phone kept going to voicemail for most of the time you were there. I wondered if something bad had gone down. You know…? On a personal level.’

Van den Bergen tried to disguise being wrong-footed by Elvis’ perspicacity by thumping his chest, as he did when he had crippling stomach acid. ‘Bloody English food. Plays havoc with—’

‘Strietman’s guilty as hell,’ Kees said. ‘Has Marie told you about the gay snuff on his hard drive?’

‘No, actually, Detective Leeuwenhoek. I’ve been too busy attending the post mortem of a child and meeting a paediatrician who is coming in to advise you all on paedophile rings, so I suggest you cultivate a little tact and good manners. And she comes from a world where they dress like real professionals. So, it might help if you actually took off that grubby old anorak.’

Kees was sitting astride his chair. Cocky. Van den Bergen felt instinctively that in his absence, this borrowed detective had been engaging in some very successful arse-kissing with Hasselblad. Time to let a little air out of the puffed-up idiot.

‘Marianne de Koninck personally wants your head on a platter if it turns out you’re wrong,’ he told the gap-toothed, irritating shit. ‘Did you even check first to see if he has an alibi? Or have you lot just conspired behind my back to ridicule this department and my good name as rapidly and thoroughly as possible?’

The reddening in Kees’ face was revealing. ‘Strietman says he has a cast iron alibi but won’t tell me what it is. I like to think I inherited my dad’s legendary Leeuwenhoek bullshit-detector, and I’d say he’s like a dirty stall in a dairy farm.’

Elvis turned to Kees. ‘Kees, mate. They don’t have bulls on dairy farms,’ he said. ‘Cows are female. You know that, right?’

‘Stud farm, you remedial idiot,’ van den Bergen said. ‘Strietman won’t give his alibi up, eh?’

An image of George, naked, luxuriating post-coitally in their hotel bed, popped unbidden into his mind. He batted it away. There were some alibis a man simply couldn’t confess to. He turned to Elvis.

‘What did you find at his apartment?’

‘Ah, well,’ Elvis said, tugging at a stray hair in his otherwise perfectly sculpted quiff. ‘That’s the most interesting part…’

CHAPTER 70

Amsterdam, Nieuw West area, then, police headquarters, later

‘What do you want?’ the girl asked, speaking through the letterbox.

‘We’re police. Come on! Open up,’ Marie said, flashing her ID through the gap.

‘No,’ said the girl. ‘I am alone. That is maybe counterfeit.’

‘It’s not fake.’

George crouched so that she was level with the letterbox. Got a clear view of the girl. She was about seventeen, dark-skinned like Magool, wearing a yellow hijab trimmed with a floral pattern. Trepidation in her eyes. Though her Dutch was good, even if the woman at IFTIN had not already told George this girl was a Somali, her accent would have betrayed her as a recent immigrant. Plus, the Slotervaart Overtoomse Veld block of flats that the apartment was in, and the Nieuw West area in general, were the sort of grim places only recent arrivals in the country and the very poor would want to live in. 1960s concrete, medium to high rises. Grey, brightened here and there with almost arbitrary splashes of green that the council had seen fit to provide, when the area had been planned as overspill from the city. Panels of colour, where blocks had been given a facelift by some hip and trendy architect or other who didn’t have to live there. Hardly any different from the sort of area George had grown up in on the other side of the North Sea. Except this place was actually clean.