The Girl Who Broke the Rules (37 page)

‘Please. We want to talk to you about Magool Osman,’ George said. Looking directly into the girl’s eyes. Trying to convey her sincerity.

The flap to the letterbox clattered shut. Clicking, clacking as locks were undone. The door opened abruptly. ‘Magool?’ the girl asked. Alarm clearly visible in the way her hand and lips trembled. The girl looked furtively onto the landing. Beckoned them in.

The interior of the apartment was sparsely furnished. A couple of threadbare Tree of Life rugs. A smoked glass coffee table and battered tan leatherette sofa that looked as though it might convert into some kind of double bed arrangement. Smears on the windows said they hadn’t been cleaned in years. Mattresses stacked against the living room wall – one, two, three, four…seven, George counted. Smelled of a strange mixture of cooking, sweat and fresh washing.

‘Please, sit down!’ the girl offered them a seat on basic, collapsible wooden chairs that had been hanging on nails on the wall.

‘How many people live here?’ Marie asked, pen at the ready.

‘There are ten of us. But please, to keep your voice down. A couple of the women are sleeping. They are working nights.’

The girl explained that her name was Amaal Samatar, also from Mogadishu, and that she had been sent to the Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, whereupon a trip to Nairobi to visit relatives had seen her threatened with deportation to Mogadishu. Though her aunt had been herded onto a plane and shipped back to Somalia under spurious grounds that her refugee-status document was not in order, Amaal had managed to gain the support of the United Nations Refugee Agency and had boarded a flight to the Netherlands.

‘So, you’ve been here how long?’ Marie asked.

Amaal shrugged. ‘Nearly two years. Something like that.’

‘And how did you meet Magool?’

Amaal scratched beneath her headscarf and clutched her cardigan shut over her floor-length dress. ‘What has happened to her? Is she okay?’

‘How did you meet Magool?’ Marie asked again.

George nodded at the girl. Encouraging her to speak.

‘We were both at Katwijk together,’ she said. ‘Both young and without parents or chaperones. I am remembering her when she arrived. They are putting her in the room next to mine. She was in a mess.’

‘What happened then?’ George asked. ‘How did you come to be here?’

‘I am wanting to learn while my asylum application goes through,’ Amaal said. ‘I study science and Dutch at college.’ She smiled only very slightly, as if she daren’t allow herself more than a glimmer of relief, George thought. ‘They are letting me rent this place with some of the other women under the self-care agreement.’

‘Some!’ Marie scoffed, eyeing the mattresses.

‘We cannot afford bigger apartment.’

‘And when was the last time you saw Magool?’ George asked.

Frowning momentarily, Amaal said, ‘Two weeks ago or more. She went out to work and is not coming back. I am wondering if I will get the police showing up at the door.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Marie said, tugging at the pearl in her ear. Starting to grin like a suspicious hyena, sensing a kill was nearby. ‘Are you telling me Magool lived here?’

Amaal stared blankly at the detective. ‘
Lived?
So, something is wrong with her!’

George reached out and grabbed Amaal’s hand. ‘Look. She’s dead. I’m so sorry.’

As Marie turned to George, her shoulders seemed to stiffen. ‘That’s not how we break that kind of news. You’re not following protocol.’

‘Fuck protocol,’ George said. ‘You’re stringing her along. It’s not right.’ She turned back to Amaal. ‘Magool was murdered. Brutally. We need to know everything you can tell us about her life. Where she worked. Who she hung out with. What happened to her baby. If you help us, we might be able to find her killer.’

Crumpled up on the makeshift chair, suddenly looking like a lost child swathed in too much fabric, Amaal started to weep. Wiping her face on her pretty headscarf, the pink floral border turning a deeper hue with hot tears, until George produced a clean tissue from her coat pocket.

‘She is always going out at night,’ Amaal began, haltingly. ‘She says she works as a cleaner in offices. One job as a waitress. She is sending money home to her relatives, she told me one time. But she does not ever speak of her family. Except her brother. She says her little brother was adopted by a rich white family and is living in Italy. To be honest, I do not know any of her friends. She has very western tastes. Not an observant Muslim like me and some of the other women here. She goes to nightclubs. Drinks alcohol. Mixes with men.’

‘What men?’ Marie asked.

‘I do not know.’ Amaal shrugged. ‘I am never meeting any of them, but people in the Somali community gossip about her a bit. They say she is loose-moraled.
Haram
.’

‘Did she say if she had a boyfriend?’ George asked.

A shake of the head. More tears.

‘And the baby?’

‘She is going out one morning, when she was heavily pregnant and was coming back in a taxi. No baby.’ Amaal blew her nose and sat up straighter. Wiped her eyes. Looked resolutely at George. ‘She has said she had the baby adopted because she needs the money and cannot offer the baby a respectable Halal life. But she says one day, when she is older and has her own place and a good job, she is hoping,
Insha’Allah
, to use some of the money she is earning to buy the baby back.’

Her breathing was uneven. Her expression utterly sorrowful and bewildered. She rose from her chair, disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a grey, lockable cash tin.

‘Magool asks me to look after this when she is out. I hide it from the other women because three of them are thieves from Tanzania.’ She unlocked the tin and revealed roll after roll of money inside, all high euro denominations. ‘This is her money for her family and the baby.’

‘Jesus!’ Marie said, unfolding one of the rolls and flicking through the notes. ‘There must be twenty thousand or more in there. Maybe thirty.’

George whistled low. Turned to Amaal. ‘You’re a good, honest friend, Amaal, to hide this cash for her. And you’re doing really well,’ George said. ‘I hope one day, we can give this money to Magool’s son or daughter. Now, we know the doctor who delivered the baby, but do you know who bought it? Did Magool ever tell you that?’

Amaal looked suddenly uncertain. Narrowed her eyes. Clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Then, finally, nodded.

‘Who the hell is Daan Strietman?’ van den Bergen asked. Swaying slightly now the codeine had taken hold. Staring down at the folder full of provocative and highly sexualised images of children.

‘Who knows, boss?’ Elvis said, taking photos of the books on the bookshelf in Strietman’s little office.

Van den Bergen sat heavily in Strietman’s desk chair. A leather affair that was a damn sight better than his at the office. He adjusted the height so that his legs were no longer bunched up near his ears. Banged his knees on the too-low desk. Caught his large foot in the tangle of cables that were left behind now Marie had taken the pathologist’s laptop.

‘Fucking dwarves!’

‘Boss?’

‘Nothing.’ He placed the folder back onto the desk, feeling slightly nauseous. Hoping those photos had been photoshopped in some way to
look
like children performing lewd acts. ‘I don’t know how Marie ploughs through this kind of crap all day.’ Took his glasses off, letting them hang on their chain. Steepled his fingers in contemplation. Staring out at the attractive Old South apartments opposite. ‘Tell me what you think, Elvis,’ he said. ‘Regardless of what Kamphuis’ lackey keeps dripping into your ear.’

Elvis perched on the edge of the desk and glanced up at the proliferation of Scandi-noir whodunits, real-life-crime tomes, written by jazzy-sounding American criminologists, and non-fiction books about cultures that practised voodoo. These constituted about seventy percent of the literature on Strietman’s bookshelves. The other thirty percent seemed to be medical textbooks and the occasional fantasy or sci-fi box set. Tolkien. George R. R. Martin. Frank Herbert. He sighed.

‘I don’t know, boss.’ He counted his observations on his fingers. ‘There’s a connection to Buczkowski, who’s got mental health problems and a shady past. This place is only three streets away from Valeriusstraat. How the hell does he afford a pad like this, unless he’s on the take from a job he does on the side? Forensics pays okay, but not
that
well for someone in his thirties! And Strietman can’t give us – or
won’t
give us – alibis for the nights that any of those murders took place. He’s got the surgical skills. He’s into dead men and kids, sexually. And he seems to have vanished some of the Lepiks forensics info.’ He turned to van den Bergen and sniffed. ‘Buczkowski’s DNA is all over the Valeriusstraat hoax scene. How can they not be our prime suspects?’

‘But has he been to England?’

Elvis scratched at his sideburns and smiled wryly. ‘Would you believe it? Yes! He went to some medical conference recently. The timing fits with your Ramsgate man.’

Nodding thoughtfully, van den Bergen slid his glasses back on and looked at the photograph of a naked little girl. ‘Jesus. This is a potential PR disaster for the Dutch authorities.’ He rubbed his face with his broad palms. ‘Let’s get that paediatrician in tomorrow for her thoughts. I don’t care what she’s doing. I want her input first thing. It looks like Leeuwenhoek Junior has found us our murderers. Shit.’

CHAPTER 71

Amsterdam, Ad’s apartment, then NOS TV studios, then police headquarters, 30 January

‘What’s wrong?’ Ad asked, biting into his toast. Chewing noisily.

George had only recently noticed that he chewed like the goats at the urban farm Letitia used to take her to. Grinding his food methodically between those big white molars of his. He had good teeth. Good skin. Lovely soft dark hair. A decent brain. A well-meaning soul. Why the hell wasn’t he enough? Why was she such a philandering shitbag?

‘Wrong? What do you mean?’ she asked, spooning the bran flakes carefully into her mouth.

Ad reached out and put his hand on top of hers. ‘You seemed down before, but you’re a million miles away since you got back from England. Did everything go okay? Did something happen between you and that grumpy old fart?’

Could he hear that her heart was banging against the inside of her chest? Could he see the sweat beading on her top lip? Feel it emerge hot, wet and shameful from her palms?

‘Happen? What do you mean?’ She giggled nervously. ‘Nothing happened.’ Withdrew her hand and stood too quickly. Rush of blood to the head. Bowl, flung into the sink with a clatter.

Tell him, you coward!
her conscience yelled.
Just finish this. It’s over. It’s run its course. You’re not happy. He’s not happy. You love him but not in the right way. Let him go. You’re not a twenty-year-old undergrad, impressed by his accent any more. He’s suffocating you. You want to be with Paul.

Glaring through the window at the car park below, George wished she could blame someone else for this mess she had got herself into; blame something else – hell, if she could blame the neighbours’ cars, she would.

She was going to do it. Fess up. Come clean. Thought about the lies Letitia told. The lies her father had told. Lies were cankerous.
If you can tell it how it is in your working life, you can sodding well do it in your personal life too. You deserve that much.

But the tendency towards petty dishonesty ran thickly through George’s veins, it would seem. Bonded the basic decency that formed the very core of her being with corrupt genetic material from her deceitful parents. Polluted her, so that in the matter of her sexual transgression in Ramsgate, she could not tell the truth. At best, she could continue to keep quiet, letting the blissful memory of van den Bergen making her body sing, fester instead of blossom.

‘I’m going to work.’

She kissed Ad half-heartedly on the forehead, pulled on her coat and left.

Wobbling along the canals precariously on a bicycle van den Bergen had lent to her, built and adjusted to suit a man who had legs that reached up to her chest, George heard her phone ringing inside her coat pocket. She ignored it. Then it pinged three times in succession. The call was almost certainly from Ad. One ping would be voicemail. But what were the texts or emails about?

As she pedalled her way towards the police station, she checked her watch. Already sweaty despite the freezing drizzle and mist. Too early for work, because she had made the fast getaway from Ad. The timorous sun had only been up an hour and showed no signs of clawing its way through the dense, low-hanging cloud. It even smelled foggy.

On Nassaukade, she juddered to a halt. Barely able to operate the back-step brakes on the bicycle. Threw herself sideways, praying she would land upright on her left foot. Her crotch was sore where the saddle and its owner had been digging in. She smiled mischievously at the thought. Then felt immediately guilty. Flung the bike against the wall. Sat down on the stone steps to one of the beautiful old apartment blocks and lit a cigarette.

Gazing at the bobbing row-boats that were tethered to the canal wall on the opposite side was a soothing enterprise. The water was wide here, though not wide enough to remind her of the Thames back home, and the area too built up to be the picturesque Cam, with its Cambridge colleges and the backs, transcending any shitty East Anglian weather with their sheer medieval beauty. Still, this Amsterdam had not lost its charm for her.

‘Now, who’s trying to get hold of me this early in the morning, then?’ she said, dragging on her clandestine cigarette.

She took out her phone and read a text from Sally Wright. Full of righteous indignation as had recently been the case? No. The words rang with alarm.

Have done some digging into how Silas Holm came to send you a letter. He has had a visit from someone purporting to be a doctor…

But the phone was ringing shrilly, now. Distracting her as she read. Who on earth used the word ‘purporting’ in a bloody text, anyway? Before the screen was dominated by the incoming caller, she registered the additional words: