The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (34 page)

Sally drank from her glass of red wine and breathed out heavily through her nose. ‘One thing’s for certain,’ she said. ‘You are not going back while the killer’s over there on the prowl.’

George immediately thought of Ad. Felt for her handbag at her feet which contained her phone. Wondered if he’d texted yet. ‘I can’t stay in England. There’s people I care about … They’re in danger.’

Hooking her hair behind her ear, Sally stared in silence at George. Was she making her stew in her own juices? Or just reflecting on what she was about to say? George didn’t have Sally down as the cruel type.

Finally, she sniffed and said, ‘If you try to go back, I will have the police incarcerate you. I
know
you wouldn’t like that, now would you?’

George stared at Sally open-mouthed. For the first time, it made sense that this middle-aged woman who rolled her eyes back into her head, showing only disconcerting whites when she was deep in thought or explaining something complicated to a student, this deep-voiced woman who seemed at times scatterbrained and odd should be the senior tutor of one of Cambridge’s wealthiest colleges.

‘Sally!’

Sally put her veined hand on top of George’s arm. Her index finger was nicotine-stained brown. Her palm was surprisingly warm but clammy. ‘Georgina, I am responsible for you. I care about you. The college cares about you. Nobody but you, your mother and I knows you’re in Cambridge. While you’re here, you’re safe.’

He saw her from the street below. Her blood-red hair was curled like corkscrews and backcombed into a big frizz. She had the high Baltic cheekbones typical of an Eastern European. Her pneumatic breasts strained against a tiny bikini that would be easy to get off with one tug of the ties at the back. Research had its bonuses. It had been a while since he had been with a female over the age of fifteen but this one was pert and he was in the mood.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, after they had negotiated a fee.

She licked lips that were the same bright red as a fire engine. In the hellish glow of the red light, up close, she looked seedy and past it.

‘Katja, darling.’

She didn’t even wince when she looked at his face, though. A real pro.

When she had yanked the drab, brown curtain across the window and switched off the red light, he grabbed her around the middle.

‘I’ve thought about coming to you for a while,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen the girl upstairs too. Is she expensive? I’d pay more for you and her. Together. Now.’

‘She’s no whore, darling and she’s not here anyway.’

‘Oh? Where has she gone?’

Drumming his pen against his front teeth, van den Bergen thought about what George had said. He should check the non-academic staff attached to Fennemans’ faculty.

‘Elvis!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got a spot of urgent research for you.’

Elvis swaggered over, leather jacket slung over his shoulder. ‘I was just going out to get something for dinner, boss. Want a kebab?’

Van den Bergen hadn’t eaten for twelve hours. His appetite for anything but resolution was dead.

‘I want you to run a name check on the Social and Behavioural Sciences faculty’s staff roll,’ he told Elvis. ‘See who we’ve interviewed so far. See who’s still down to be questioned. Anyone called Jeremy Saddiq. Jez. Abdul Youssuf. Al Badaar. Brandon Köhler or any combination of those names. Look for office staff or domestic in particular.’

Elvis had grabbed a notepad from his jacket breast pocket and was scribbling away furiously with a furrowed brow.

Van den Bergen noticed that he had snatched up his chewed Biro. ‘Get your own pen,’ he said, holding his hand out.

Elvis looked at the wet, heavily masticated pen, wrinkled his nose and nodded. ‘Sorry, boss.’

‘Oh, and fine work with the Marienhospital match, Elv … er … Dirk.’ He cleared his throat; felt suddenly righteous in his heart that he had said something pleasant to somebody that day.

‘Dirk? Seriously? You going to start using my real name?’

‘Don’t push it.’

Now van den Bergen needed to get away to think. It was too late to go out to Sloterdijkermeer, so he had to content himself with twenty minutes’ peace and quiet in the disabled toilet on the top floor, scratching at the grout in between the tiles with his fingernail until his eye had calmed down or he had a stroke of blinding inspiration.

Seventeen minutes into his retreat, he heard footsteps and a knock on the door made him jump.

‘Boss,’ shouted Elvis. He sounded high-pitched. ‘Are you in there?’

Van den Bergen looked up at the strip light overhead and sighed heavily. ‘What is it that’s so exciting it couldn’t wait for nature?’ He emerged from his cubicle reluctantly.

‘I think I’ve found your man, boss. Brandon Saddiq. British passport. Tax-paying janitor of the Social and Behavioural Sciences faculty on Roeterseiland. A disabled man, interviewed originally by Dr Vim Fennemans and employed by the university on a one-year renewable contract. Clean criminal record under that name, but
Jeremy
Saddiq is wanted by British Intelligence in connection with a vice and drugs ring that has its roots in Afghanistan’s Taliban, no less. He’s on Interpol and Europol’s wanted lists along with his number two, Daniel Spencer.’

Van den Bergen washed his hands in stupefied silence as he mentally, piece by piece, slotted the jigsaw together and saw a picture of a disturbed London back-street gangster, usurping his own king and then burning and pillaging his way around Europe like a marauding Viking until one day he spots the turncoat, former girlfriend of his sidekick, right under his very nose. Perhaps with his change in fortunes, what he once coveted as the underling, he now saw as rightfully his.

‘George was right. And her Firestarter is top dog now.’ He splashed his face with water and spoke to his own reflection in the water-splattered mirror. ‘But cocky, using his real surname. Too cocky. Got you, you little scrotum!’

‘Boss?’ Elvis said, interrupting van den Bergen’s monologue. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Yes.’ Van den Bergen straightened up and bent sideways to loosen his locked hip. ‘We need Mr Saddiq’s home address.’

It was almost one in the morning now but van den Bergen was buoyed by adrenalin. He felt alive. The net was coming down on this monster’s head. He knew it.

The sight of George’s neighbour, Katja, instantly recognisable as a prostitute with her big red hair, heavy night-time makeup and her tight fitting denim jacket and hotpants, jerked him out of his euphoria. She was sitting in a chair by his desk, dimpled, false tanned long legs crossed. The clothes said seductive. The body language said, ‘Shut up and take me seriously.’

‘You’re George’s neighbour, right?’ van den Bergen asked. ‘Want a coffee?’

Katja stuck out her hand, which he duly shook. Businesslike. Manly, in fact, despite the flashing pink nail extensions and hand-cream soft skin.

‘I’ve not come here for a hot drink, darling,’ she said.

He studied her face. Under scrutiny, she was late thirties. Polish or Latvian maybe. A ballbreaker with Botox.

‘What can I do for you then, Miss …?’

‘Just Katja. Look, I’ve had a punter. I didn’t like him.’

‘Would you like to report an assault?’

‘I can handle myself good, believe me. No, the thing that gave me the creeps was that he was asking about the people in the house. Before we’d even agreed a price, he asked about Jan. Okay, no big deal. Jan runs the coffee shop, so the public see him all day long. Then Inneke. Well, maybe he’s interested in visiting her some time. That’s fine. But then he starts asking about George. Wanted to know where she was. Really grilling me, you know?’

Katja locked eyes with van den Bergen. Van den Bergen shook his head slowly and groaned aloud as he wiped his face in his shovel-like hands. ‘Did you tell him where?’

Katja chewed on her bottom lip and looked at her stiletto shoes.

‘I’m
so
sorry. I just didn’t think. But I remembered you guys had been dusting her place for prints, and hell, there’s a killer on the loose.’

‘What did this man look like?’ Van den Bergen asked, wondering, just wondering if his hunch would be ghoulishly correct.

‘Well?’ van den Bergen asked.

Elvis approached, looking uncharacteristically grim faced, although that could have been down to fatigue and unflattering strip lighting, under which even Marianne de Koninck looked rough.

‘Sorry, boss. No address for Saddiq. Only a PO box contact on the university’s books and the bank account he uses for salary payment. And another thing. Adrianus Karelse’s mother has reported him missing.’

‘But there’s a patrol car outside his damn house!’ van den Bergen bellowed.

Elvis shrugged.

Van den Bergen thumped his desk. Was he doomed to keep hitting dead ends? George wasn’t answering her phone and the killer had actively sought out her whereabouts. Karelse was gone.
For Christ’s sake!
He looked at the clock as the seconds ticked by ominously, feeling that time was something he didn’t have enough of.

Drained and dizzy, now. Silently, he prayed that George was still safe.

‘How do you fancy heading up the team for a bit?’ he asked Elvis.

‘What do you mean, boss?’

‘I’ll be back by dinner time at the latest.’

George woke stiff and dry-mouthed on her friend Caroline’s sofa. Only the need for a cigarette and a feeling of general unease had driven her out of King’s Cellars, where they had danced until the early hours. Now, she got up and wandered into the unfamiliar kitchenette. Nauseated by the smell of stale kebab wrappings, she washed her hands with boiling hot water and a pan scourer full of washing-up liquid. She hastily opened the kitchen window to allow fresh air in.

Outside was an empty courtyard. George stared blankly at the drab scene until she heard Caroline’s phone buzz in the adjacent bedroom. Then, she remembered she’d had three missed calls from van den Bergen. Her phone had died on her before just as she was poised to call him back.

‘Got to get my charger, man. What does that old bugger want?’

Leaving a note on her sleeping friend’s desk by the window, she put on her shoes, gathered her coat and hastened down paths, thick with early morning frost, to her guest room in the 1960s boxy annex, Cripps.

Her walk took her over the Bridge of Sighs. She allowed herself a moment to take in the crisp, heavenly view of willows, horse chestnuts and beeches that would soon be in leaf along the backs of the River Cam. The earliest cherries had already started to bloom, oblivious to and showing no signs of intimidation by the chill Siberian winds that blow through that flat land unhindered.

At 6am, there was nobody around but the odd porter, a member of college domestic staff wheeling a trolley or small gaggles of early rising rowers, making their way to the boat house. But she still felt uneasy. She felt eyes on her.

When the plane landed at Stansted, van den Bergen hastily unbuckled and switched on his phone. He was immediately greeted by a text from Elvis, saying Kamphuis was going to book him a one-way ticket to a euthanasia clinic when he returned. There was still no sign of Karelse.

Was it possible that Karelse was still alive? The whole of van den Bergen’s department was searching desperately for him. Van den Bergen berated himself silently for thinking that while the killer was occupied with him, at least there was a strong possibility that George would still be safe.

George was careful to wedge a chair under the door handle once she had shut the door. The room that Sally had allocated to her was kitted out in utilitarian non-style; intended to double both as student accommodation and as a room for conference guests. It was clean. She was also pleased to note that it had a tiny en suite shower room as well as tea and coffee making facilities. George immediately gobbled down the two complimentary shortbread biscuits as a makeshift breakfast. The coffee sachet spilled everywhere as she emptied it into the cup.

It felt good to strip off her stale clothes and laddered tights. She took her charger out of her weekend bag and plugged in her phone. Immediately, there were two pings, showing she had new phone messages or texts in addition to the missed calls from van den Bergen. She booted up her laptop and put the kettle on.
Phone
,
then shower, then email.

The first text was from van den Bergen. Cryptic as ever, all it said was:

Call me a.s.a.p.

The second text was from Ad. George smiled as she opened it.

I love you. I’m finally coming to get you.

She grinned at the message. ‘He loves me,’ she said to her reflection in the en suite mirror. Her lips stretched wide over her teeth. She almost felt happy enough to weep. But then she realised there was something about the wording that seemed at odds with Ad’s usual style. He was not one for gushing confessions. He was a careful man. Though she didn’t doubt he was privately passionate, he chose his words with thought and spoke about his emotions sparingly. The proclamation of love via text did not ring true, neither did use of the word ‘finally’.

‘Oh stop being so cynical!’ she told her reflection. Then she allowed herself another grin. ‘He must have jacked in the Milkmaid. He must be coming to England!’ She clapped her hands.

When she tried to call Ad, his phone went straight to voicemail. Maybe he was flying. Yes, that was it. He would call when he landed.

The kettle clicked. She poured boiling water into her coffee cup, being careful not to spill any on her naked body. She was flushed warm with happiness. She started to sing about how, like Aretha Franklin, Ad made her feel like a natural woman.

Though his reflection in the chrome of the kettle was clear, she was too distracted by thoughts of Ad to notice the disfigured man, standing perfectly still by the curtain.

‘St John’s College, please,’ van den Bergen told a cab driver at Cambridge station.

He had been travelling for four hours. It was just past 8am. George was still not answering his calls.

The cab driver dropped him in a narrow side street.