The Girl Who Broke the Rules (42 page)

Sabine had tossed the keys to him. ‘Catch!’

‘I can’t just turn up to another man’s house and make myself at home,’ he had said, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed.

‘It’s not another man’s house, Paul. It’s my house. And sure you can. Be my guest. You won’t be pestered by nosey neighbours. There’s never anyone around anyway. You’ve got the keycode for the gates and the alarm. Relax! Enjoy it. Get the bed warm for me.’

Laren. The sort of neighbourhood and home that had no place even on the periphery of van den Bergen’s conscious mind or memory. Somewhere between a traditional Dutch country house on steroids and a Beverley Hills mansion. Who knew Sabine was so wealthy?

He stared at the beamed ceiling in that house, now, and tried to imagine what kind of a man Thomas Schalks must have been. Incredibly rich, if nothing else. Even the dust motes that drifted in the air here looked like slivers of platinum, falling to the ground like munificence from the warming sunlight. At home, in his place, they just looked like dust. Bits of dead skin and minute dirty particles that drifted in from the diesel-stink of the roads outside. Not here. Here, it was silent but for the sounds of nature. Birds on the wing, excited by the promise of spring in the burgeoning buds of deciduous trees. The wind rustling in the evergreen holly and specimen pines in the garden. Smelled of fresh grass and wealth.

How odd it must have been to be left a widow at forty, in possession of your spouse’s massive family fortune. And now, he, Paul van den Bergen, was apparently dating this merry widow. Laughing out loud at the very thought, he rolled over and hugged the plump pillow. Thought of George’s pillowy bosom. The feel of her curvaceous, womanly shape in his arms. He held the pillow tight and clenched his eyes shut, as the pain crowded out the superficial euphoria of his artificial high. Sabine was not George. She would never be George. He had known that even before she had kissed him.

Why had he allowed himself to be seduced so easily?

‘Poor you,’ she had said. ‘Come back to mine,’ she had suggested. ‘You’re shaking. You need a drink!’ she had observed.

And he had succumbed to the novel oblivion that four brandies on an empty stomach and easy sex with a thoughtful and admirable woman had afforded him. A panacea to the most dreadful turn of events and the ensuing unbearable anguish.

‘I’ve fucked up, Sabine,’ he had said, sipping the Hennessey she had pushed into his hand. Standing by the fireplace in her grand Koninginneweg living room. Gazing at the quaint African figurines on her mantel. Large-breasted fertility figures, by the looks, with no arms or legs. ‘Ahlers is dead. I almost got two young people killed. One’s in hospital with a hole in his shoulder! A couple of inches in another direction and it could have been curtains. This is all down to me.’

‘How can it be? Some things, you just can’t control,’ she had said. Thawing him with a warm smile and a friendly caress on his brow.

He thought of the lonely ache that George’s absence had left in his heart. ‘It’s not just that. I’ve blown it with someone I care for very deeply.’

‘Your English assistant?’

Sabine had been a good listener, nodding sympathetically as he had confided how he admired George’s intellect. Related a deliberately abridged tale of how, despite the close friendship they developed over time, he had pushed George away with harsh words. All the way back to London. He was careful not to mention that he was head over heels in love with her, of course – even more so, since they had both finally given in to a mutual attraction more compelling than anything he had ever before considered possible. There was definitely no need for Sabine to know that.

‘Well, if she’d drop the case and walk out on you like some tantrum-throwing toddler, she’s probably not worth worrying about,’ Sabine had said. ‘Sounds like you misplaced your loyalties.’

‘Oh, she won’t drop the case,’ van den Bergen said. ‘I know George. She’ll be in the UK, mulling things over. Looking into the Ramsgate killings. Last time we hit a bump in the road, she consulted the serial killer, Silas Holm, for advice, would you believe it? And got the information she needed, too! She’s resourceful all—’

Sabine had taken his glass from him and kissed him confidently, interrupting his eulogy.

He had pulled away in stunned silence. Still continuing to berate himself as though the kiss had not happened; as though his brain had not registered the paediatrician’s advance.

‘I’m a failure.’

‘You’re far from a failure, Paul.’

Sabine Schalks had said the right thing to him at just the right time. Touched him in a vulnerable place. And he had fallen at her size 42 feet; uncharacte‌ristically sharing intimacy with her that felt unearned by her, unburdening himself to her about George, letting slip that Ahlers had given him the name of the woman who had bought Magool’s baby only moments before he had been executed. How out of sorts he was.

And yet, here he lay now in an antique bed that might have cost almost as much as his own apartment, in a house worth millions. Downstairs, he thought he heard the front door slam. Sabine must have returned. Another clandestine night of indulgence planned – uninterrupted this time, with any luck. Not a single soul knew his whereabouts or with whom he was consorting, except for the lovely Sabine herself.

When she did not appear in the bedroom, he pulled on her robe that hung on the back of the en suite door and went downstairs.

Finding nobody in the house, he felt a sense of unease.

‘Sabine?’ Nothing. ‘Sabine, is that you?’ Not a sound.

He padded from room to room, until he reached a workshop or studio of some description. It was messy, unlike the rest of the place. Pots on shelves. A potter’s wheel. Here must have been the place where Sabine practised her sculpture. In one corner of the large space stood what appeared to be a kiln – almost industrial in size. Curious, he approached it. Opened the heavy door. Balked when he saw the kiln’s charred contents.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he said.

‘Not Jesus Christ,’ came Sabine’s voice behind him. ‘But not far off it.’

CHAPTER 79

Cambridge, St John’s College, later

‘Christ on a bike, Georgina McKenzie!’ Sally Wright snapped. ‘You’ve got some brass neck, coming back here, after nothing but radio silence. How dare you go over my head! Who the hell do you think you are?’

Standing by the oriel window in her office, into the senior tutor’s face were etched deep lines, accentuated now by the level of ferocity in her intent. Mouth, pruned with dissatisfaction, dragging hard on a cigarette. Her blunt fringe hanging too high on her forehead to obscure wiry grey eyebrows angled upwards in almost cartoon-like rage.

George gripped the sofa’s arms.

‘I can explain,’ she said. But she started to shake violently. Body twitching as though she had been possessed by the devil. ‘Oh, I feel weird.’

Cigarette still in mouth, Sally ran over to her. Put her arms around her.

‘Dear God! What’s going on with you? Don’t you dare have a fit on me!’ she said, dropping ash onto the threadbare red Persian rug that covered the floor boards.

George relished the warmth of her body. Drank in the familiar nicotine and coffee smell of the woman who had not given her life but had given her much more than that: she had given her a future.

‘It’s a-adrenalin,’ she stammered. ‘My brain’s about to b-blow a g-gasket. You wouldn’t believe what happened to me last n-night.’

Sally threw an old tartan blanket around George. Strutted to her tea urn. Steam rising from water near boiling point, spitting all over her hands from the unruly tap. ‘Bastard thing!’ She sucked her scalded skin. Gave George some weak tea in a chipped china cup. Produced a hip flask from her battered briefcase. Tipped amber liquid into the tea. ‘Hot toddy. Cure for all ills,’ she said, winking.

‘Thanks,’ George said, eyeing the cup in disgust. ‘But I can’t drink out of that cup. It’s chipped. I can’t…’

Backing away, Sally glowered at her. Jabbing in her direction with her almost-spent cigarette to emphasise every syllable she spoke. ‘You broke every rule in the book, young lady. You defy my authority. You make a mockery of protocol. I expressly told you not to go to Amsterdam. I told you, it would end in disaster. And here you are, turning your nose up at my fucking hot toddy!’

She stubbed out her cigarette in a large, dirty cut-glass ashtray on an aspidistra stand by the window. Lit another. Tossed one to George who lit up willingly.

‘The least you owe me is an apology.’

George exhaled blue smoke in two billowing jet-streams from her nostrils. Afterburners of indignation. Considered Sally’s demand. Cheeky old bag, pushing her around; browbeating her into deference like she was some wayward charge, rather than a capable woman, all grown-up now. ‘No. No way am I saying sorry for something I don’t regret. You, of all people, should respect my right to autonomy.
My
life.
My
choices.
My
risk. I ain’t no wet-behind-the-ears undergrad, now.’

Sally perched on the edge of her desk. Narrowed her eyes, hard and unforgiving behind those cat’s-eye glasses. ‘Oh. You don’t regret almost having your head blown off by some two-bit hoodie in a church?’

‘You know about that?’ George clutched the blanket close. Defensive. Feeling like Sally’s remark was somehow meant as ridicule. Belittling her stab at independence as haphazard at best, downright dangerous at worst. ‘How?’

‘Van den Bergen. He emailed me soon after you stormed out on him. Warning me that you might be in danger. That the murderer had not yet been caught, despite news reports to the contrary. And news must travel fast on the police grapevine, because there was a missive from him regarding the church shooting sitting in my in-box this morning.’

Under scrutiny in that enclosed space, George felt like she was in the claustrophobic tunnel of an all-seeing MRI scanner. Sally’s eyes, stripping away the layers of artifice to find the truth of George’s secrets laid bare beneath. Was there any limit to the things Sally Wright could gather intelligence on? Did she know about what had happened in that hotel room in Ramsgate with that treacherous, gorgeous disappointment, van den Bergen?

‘You two have got no right, chatting shit about me behind my back,’ George said. ‘Making decisions about my life.
My life
.’ Prodding herself in the chest. Quaking for a different reason, now. ‘Not your fucking life, Sally. Not van den Bergen’s life. I went to Amsterdam because you were keeping me here like it was an open bloody prison. I came back because
my family
needed me.
My family
, Sally.
Flesh and blood
.’

George felt like a fire had been sparked within her. She might scorch all in her path; spitting highly flammable vitriol at this woman who saw herself as her surrogate mother. Except George had fed at the breast of Letitia the Dragon.

Letitia, who had unexpectedly come thundering up that deserted Catford road behind George’s attacker, wielding a discarded exhaust pipe she must have found in amongst the trash that grows like strange and wonderful weeds by the railway stations of South East London.

‘I’m gonna kill you, bastard!’ she had shouted. ‘That’s my fucking daughter.’ Murder in her voice. Aunty Sharon steps behind. Tottering down the road to help, though it was Letitia who had sprinted after the tall attacker in her bare feet. Fast for a fat woman.

George had been lying on her back: a dying cockroach in somebody’s front garden. Thought she was about to be gutted by some six-foot-tall masked wraith bearing a scalpel. Instead, watching the counter attack unfold in what seemed like slo-mo. Straight out of a ninja film, man.

The exhaust pipe had whistled impressively through the air before it had connected with the head of George’s assailant. Hit home with a clunk. Hadn’t knocked him out but another swipe square across the shoulder blades had spooked him enough to make him flee.

‘Yeah, go on, you piece of shit!’ Letitia screaming in her bare feet. The figure, rapidly diminishing as he made his getaway. ‘Come back, and I’ll fucking finish the job. I ain’t scared of you, motherfucking rapist cunt.’ A good fourteen stones of motherly rage, shaking a balled fist in the air. Hair extensions still hanging perfectly in place, though there would be no dawn chorus issuing forth from the cockerel hat now that it had lost its strut.

Lights on inside the house. Twitching curtains revealed an old black man in his pyjamas, looking out. Fearful of whatever oversized cats might be on the prowl, using his tiny garden as their litter tray. Surprised when he saw Letitia the Dragon dragging George up from the bed of crushed hyacinths by her underarms, as though she was an oversized baby. Breathing brandy, whisky, Tia Maria fumes all over her. Aunty Sharon, screaming
Call the cops!
Stumbling around, still pissed on rum n Ting. If someone had flicked a match into life, all three of them would have gone up like plum puddings.

Rescued from certain death by the one person she had never thought would come to her aid. Maybe blood was thicker than water, after all. ‘Family,’ she said once more, under her breath.

A tendon in Sally’s lean, smoker’s face was twitching. Stinging from the slight.

‘Van den Bergen cares about you, young lady,’ she said. Arms folded. Legs folded. Emotional origami, trapping the hurt inside. ‘I care about you. We may not be blood relatives, but it takes more to bind people together than the chance provision of DNA. And those bonds such as we share are not easily undone.’

George could feel an apology trying to force its way out. Swallowed it back – a concession she was not prepared to make. Stubborn. She got that from Letitia too. The bond of shared DNA was perhaps stronger than Sally or George had hitherto appreciated.

Change the subject.

‘Listen, I don’t want to get into all this blame-apportioning bullshit,’ George said. ‘I thought I had a right to get out of the country for a bit. You didn’t. I’m back now. So, let’s agree to differ and move on.’