‘Snow-related deaths. Ice as a weapon. Right. Come on, Google. Come on, Europol database. You’re my best girls. Don’t disappoint me.’
Marie was happy to be alone. The silence was comforting. There was no expectation for her to make polite conversation with Elvis and the boss, although she rarely did these days, in any case. She could just concentrate on the information that came whizzing down the fibre-optic cables to her machine. A world of pain. A world of hate. But, a firewall of gigabytes and machinery that put a couple degrees of separation between her and the places where the world was truly broken.
As the results appeared on the various search engines, she slurped from her lukewarm coffee. Pulled the collar of her top wide, sniffing and wondering if it had another day in it. Probably not. She knew what the other detectives said about her, although she had never heard Van den Bergen or Elvis complain about the smell. That George could be cutting, though. But then, she had a problem with OCD and was okay otherwise. It was the admin-bitches Marie couldn’t stand. Other women were always the worst.
‘Harpies,’ she said, staring at the wall whilst visualising the cows upstairs. Kamphuis’ harem. She looked fleetingly at the photo of the six-month-old boy on her desk. Swallowed hard. The world at this end of those fibre optic cables was broken too.
Her focus returned to the Google list that went on for page after page after page. Jack Frost was not the only damaged soul using snow and ice to kill. Mother Nature had previous. She was the Queen of the psychopaths. Avalanches. Ice falling from a great height that could take out an entire car. Frozen corpses scattered along the base of K2’s North Face; marble-white near-perfection in perpetuity, only broken in the parts that had trifled with the mountain on the way to the bottom.
Marie skimmed over Marianne de Koninck’s forensic report again. Conical wound. Water permeating the surrounding cells. No trace of a blade.
‘Got to be an icicle. What else could it be?’ she muttered.
Her practised, analytical gaze scanned the contents of story after story. Page after page. Deftly click-clicking her mouse, until she happened upon what she had half hoped the search would throw up. She allowed herself a broad grin.
‘Ha! Hello, Jack Frost. Looks like you have very itchy feet.’
Her private celebration was interrupted by Van den Bergen bursting in. Grim-faced.
‘I need you to be my wingman. I’ve got to question a minor. Now, please!’
In the quiet of the meeting room – the only relatively relaxed space they could source at short notice where a child might be questioned – Marie sat next to Van den Bergen. She studied the little boys, who, in return, seemed to be getting the measure of her. Two sets of clear brown eyes fixed on her red hair. Two furrowed brows. Cynical expressions that, by rights, belonged to far older children. The smaller boy couldn’t have been more than six.
‘Imran,’ Marie began, turning to the older boy. A flicker of a smile playing on her lips. She scratched an angry patch of dry skin on her chin. ‘You told the Chief Inspector, here, that the woman in the apartment isn’t your mummy.’
The boy shook his head. ‘No. She’s not my mother.’
‘Where is your mother, then?’
No answer. She turned to the younger boy, who started to suck his thumb, stroking his nose with his index finger.
‘What does she do, that woman? What do those men in the apartment do? Do you know them?’
Imran shrugged. ‘She looks after us. The man says she’s our aunt, but she’s not our aunt. She’s mean.’
Van den Bergen leaned forwards. Kept his voice deliberately quiet. ‘Mean in what way?’
‘She beats us, sometimes.’
‘Why?’
‘When we don’t do our job. I hate her. She stinks.’
Running her fingers along the edge of the table, Marie breathed in sharply, as though she had considered something and then decided against saying it. ‘What’s your job, Imran? I bet a clever boy like you can do lots of things?’
‘If I tell you, she’ll beat me.’
‘The woman?’
Nodding. The smaller of the two boys said something in his native tongue to Imran. Startled eyes. A look of fear. Wiped his thumb on his trousers and started to hug himself. Imran spat harsh, unfamiliar words at the side of his head in response.
‘What about the dead man?’ Van den Bergen asked. ‘What’s his name?’
The boy’s reluctance to respond made the air in the meeting room feel heavy, loaded with stifled possibility. In a sudden eruption of emotion, the smaller child started to sob. Van den Bergen’s fatherly instincts screamed at him to hug the little boy. His professionalism held him in his seat. Rigid. Unflinching on the outside. Anguish manifesting itself as chest pain on the inside.
‘Let’s turn them over to social services, boss,’ Marie said. ‘Get them a safe bed for the night and hot meal. We’ll try again tomorrow.’
Angered by the haunting phenomenon of the crying boy, Van den Bergen marched into the interview room that held the woman, her interpreter and Elvis. At his behest, Elvis switched on the recording equipment.
Carefully, deliberately, Van den Bergen shoved a photo of the dead Bijlmer man under the woman’s nose. Tapping on the table next to the photo, he said, ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’ He scowled at her impassive face. ‘I’ve got a man in A&E, found in that apartment … looks like he’s going to die from septicaemia. A drug mule. I’ve worked enough drugs cases in my time to know that much. Carrying bags in his stomach and shitting them out once he’s been safely trafficked from some far-flung shithole to Amsterdam. Bringing poison and death into my town. Are you a drug mule, too? Are you a dealer? Did the dead man use those boys as dealers? Scouts? What? Tell me!’
‘No comment,’ the interpreter told him. ‘She has no comment. She wants to speak to someone at her embassy.’
He turned to the diminutive woman who was acting as linguistic go-between and steeled himself to remember she was just the messenger, that he should not shoot her. ‘There are two little boys who are going to spend the night in an emergency foster placement. Frightened out of their wits, saying she’ll beat them if they speak. Tell the hatchet-faced cow that if she doesn’t give me the info I require now I’ll have her on the next flight to whatever warzone she’s crawled out of.’ He was shouting. He knew he was shouting. He didn’t care. Let this bitch come at him with whatever she could muster. Let her try to level an accusation of intimidation or sexism or racism at him.
‘Syria.’
‘Right. Well, Syria can fucking have her back before the weekend, unless she talks.’
‘She wants a Dutch passport.’
‘Talk!’
There was a heated exchange in the woman’s native tongue. She treated Van den Bergen and Elvis to looks of utter disdain, as though she were a Red Cross nurse, rather than a woman somehow embroiled in drug-dealing and human trafficking.
Finally, the interpreter turned to Van den Bergen, alarmed and disconcerted, judging by her look of disgust. ‘The dead man is called Tomas Vlinders. He paid her to take the boys to rich men’s houses. They were delivering drugs for parties. Parties held by powerful men.’
Van den Bergen sat back down. Pushed his knees beneath the low table. Leaned forward in a measured manner. ‘What powerful men?’
CHAPTER 12
A village south of Amsterdam, 25 May, the previous year
‘Phone, door keys, bag,’ Gabriella Deenen said, staring blankly at her possessions on the passenger seat. ‘Car keys. Where’s the—?’
The police officer leaned in through the driver’s open window. His hat and the bulk of his navy and yellow Politie jacket filling the space. ‘Are you sure you want to drive yourself?’ He sounded incredulous. His furrowed brow said he didn’t believe her. ‘You can come in the squad car and get someone to pick your vehicle up later.’
Gabi started the engine. The key had been in the ignition all the time! Which made sense, sin
ce she was sitting in the damned car and had to have had the key to unlock it in the first place. Pay attention, for god’s sake. Breathe in. Breathe out.
‘I’m fine. I’ll meet you at the house.’
She was surprised by how strong her voice sounded. She didn’t feel fine. She felt like she was going to be sick. Pull yourself together, you weak woman, she counselled herself. You’ll get home. This will all be a big mistake. With a click of a switch, the window closed, shutting the irritating, well-meaning and concern of the policeman outside.
Pulling out of the parking space, she almost crashed into the police car. Almost. Not quite. She was fine. This was okay. It was going to be a mistake. Except she had that horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. Not butterflies. More like flapping, desperate moths, blind to the direction in which the light lay.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
When they had turned up, in the middle of her fundraising presentation, at first she had been annoyed. Knock, knock on the door of the meeting room, right as she was delivering a heart-rending speech about the hope that the charity’s medical research brought to families affected by traumatic brain injury. The donor – a director in a multi-national mining company with a shocking health and safety record – had been rapt with attention; chequebook open, hoping to buy the company a better public image. But just as things were going well and she had enjoyed that rush she used to get back in London, when she had pulled off a particularly good PR campaign, propelling Schoen Engineering Systems to the top of the aerospace heap, they had barged their way in. Flashing ID.
Yes. She had had a bad feeling. The moment she had seen them in the doorway. Eyes only for her.
‘Can you come with us, please, Mrs Deenen?’
The policewoman’s face had been arranged into an expression of kindliness and sympathy. She wondered if the Dutch Police HR department had arranged training for that kind of thing. Body language was so important.
Now, her hands shook, though she was gripping the steering wheel as tightly as possible. Skin stretched tight over white bony knuckles.. As she waited at the traffic lights, fragmented thoughts punctured her apparent composure. Josh and Lucy missing. A slight chip on her bronze nail varnish. Trip to the nail bar was in order. But Josh and Lucy were missing. Missing.
The traffic lights turned to red. Slamming hard on the brakes, the police car almost ran into the back of her. Suddenly, her foot was disobeying her brain. Trembling. Jerking. Kangaroo petrol, she lurched away on green.
‘What do they mean, missing?’ she asked the road sign as she pulled into their street.
There were two police cars outside their hydrangea-fronted house. The lawn needed a trim, she noted. Her Dutch home in this Amsterdam satellite town – quiet but for the Schiphol to Rotterdam line that ran at the back of the long garden – was hardly in the same league as the Victorian house they had had in London. But at least it was detached. She didn’t feel ashamed to have the police officers in and offer them a cold drink. Perhaps Piet would already have made them one. The kids were almost certainly playing in the back garden in this weather.
The kids.
The kids weren’t playing in the garden. The police were here. Josh and Lucy were missing.
Almost ploughing into the back of a small white van that overhung the paved driveway by a small margin, Gabi parked up abruptly, only an inch or so between the bumper and the brick wall. Light-headed, she patted her hair. Phone. Bag. Keys. Going through the routine. Imposing some normality on the abnormal. Staring at everything but seeing nothing. Fingers fumbling with the fob. Locking the car. Turning her ankle as she walked in through the open front door. Unaware of the pain. Past the constable on the step, talking into his hissing walkie-talkie. He reached out to try to stop her but she strutted on into the kitchen.
Look for Lucy and Josh. They’ll be there. Sitting at the table, drawing. Bet Piet hasn’t washed their hands all morning. If they’re not there, they’re in the garden. Yes, they’ll be outside.
At her back, the police officers who had come to the office were saying something to her, though she wasn’t listening. She heard her name. ‘Mrs Deenen.’ But the rest was rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.
‘Rhubarb,’ she said under her breath, remembering stage instructions for extras in the school play when she had been a child, though she had always taken the leading role. ‘Rhubarb.’ Josh’s favourite kind of crumble pudding, though Lucy often gagged on the stringy consistency.
Steeling herself to connect with here and now, Gabi took in her surroundings. So many police officers were encroaching on her space. There was a man in plain clothes, talking to Piet, taking notes at the island in the middle of the kitchen. He had a glass of water by his right hand. Good. Piet had offered them all refreshments.
Beyond, she saw the empty lawn. The enormity of the situation started to dawn on her.
Piet was crying, staring at her, with tears coursing down his cheeks. Red-eyed. Red-nosed. Snot on his upper lip and the white fluffy remnants of kitchen roll stuck in his stubble.
He held his arms out as he stood and stumbled towards her. ‘I’m so sorry, darling.’
Gabi put her bag carefully on the work surface. Pushed Piet back towards his stool, walked to the sink and washed her hands carefully, running the water until it was boiling hot. Rubbing and rubbing the astringent lemony hand-wash between her fingers. She dried her hands methodically on a clean towel. The garden appeared empty of children. Nobody on the slide. No Josh, jumping up and down on the sun-lounger, trying to launch himself onto his sister or clutching his ears as the train roared past.
The policeman who wore his own clothes was speaking to her – a detective. Yes. He must be a detective. She stared at him blankly. Little Gabi, blinded by the glare. Silenced by the attention. All eyes on her. Struggling to remember her opening lines. Rhubarb. Rhubarb. ‘You’re in shock, Mrs Deenen. Shall I make you a cup of coffee?’ a policewoman said. Who was she? Oh, that’s right. One of the constables who had shown up at the office.
‘Where are Lucy and Josh, Pieter?’ Gabi asked her husband. No longer was she a child. Big Gabi needed to take control of this shambles. Big Gabi would sort it. ‘What have you done with our children, you fucking useless bastard?’
She marched up to Piet and thumped him squarely on the side of the head, with such force, that he fell off his stool onto the kitchen floor. ‘All you had to do was babysit them for half a day, while I went in to give that presentation.’ Big Gabi was screaming. ‘And you couldn’t even do that. You miserable, useless fucking wimp.’
‘Mrs Deenen! Please to try stay calm.’ The detective grabbed her by the forearms. He was tall. Authoritative.
This badge-toting turd wasn’t the boss of her. She shook him off.
She ran into the garden, screaming at the top of her lungs. ‘Josh! Lucy! Mummy’s here. You can come out now!’
‘Can you think of anyone who might have taken them, Mrs Deenen? A relative? A friend? Neighbour?’ the detective asked. He had followed her outside. Now, he was standing between her and the climbing frame.
Interfering pain in the arse, she thought. She could find her own children. They were obviously just playing hide and seek.
‘Move! I want to check under there,’ she said, pointing to the void beneath the platform.
‘We’ve had a team combing the garden and all along the train track at the back for the last hour. There’s no way in. There’s no way out. The train track is clear for a mile in each direction, though they’ve stopped the Schiphol to Rotterdam service until we’ve searched the entire line. No trace of them.’
When she tried to push him aside, he stood his ground.
‘Mrs Deenen. Your children aren’t hiding, I’m afraid. They’re gone. They can’t have wandered off. They’re not in the house or the garden. They’ve been taken. Abducted.’
Gabi looked at the Sesamstraat tricycle and an abandoned Iggle Piggle doll Lucy had brought from the UK. She sank to her kn
ees, arms crossed tightly over her bosom. Big Gabi, wrapping Little Gabi in a protective embrace. Keening. Cursing god that her babies were gone. That her life had been thrown into chaos.
‘This can’t be happening. This can’t.’
The detective put a large hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry.’
CHAPTER 13
The City of London, 5 March, present, mid-morning
‘My Lord,’ the chauffer said, holding the door of the Rolls Royce wide. He touched the brim of his cap.
Gordon Bloom shook his head. He looked longingly at the plush cream and truffle interior of his car; he knew that the heated leather seats would offer some measure of comfort in these infernal sub-zero temperatures. Last night on the TV, the weatherman had been bleating on about Arctic Sea ice melts causing high-pressure weather systems over the Barents Sea and northern Russia, icy wind blasting mainland Europe and the UK as a result. Nobody had seen off-the-charts temperatures like this in England since the big freeze of 2012. Global warming or some bullshit. Whatever the cause was, he was sick of it. Sick of having to wear uncomfortable thermal underwear. Tired of having to be driven everywhere. Bored with being under constant scrutiny since Rufus’ death.
‘Thanks, Kenny, but I’ll walk,’ he said, stamping his feet. The snow at least a foot deep, even in EC1 where his meeting had taken place. Strange, to sit at the head of a boardroom table, discussing a major acquisition and then having to change back into skiwear in the men’s. A man like him shouldn’t be inconvenienced by this nonsense. Though he may not quite have all the money in China, his assets bettered many a country’s GDP. He was an übermensch, after all. A Titan from a long line of Titans. Shame then, that those like him blessed with demigod status couldn’t control that insane bitch, mother nature. ‘It’s not far. You can pick me up afterwards. Go and treat yourself to a hot coffee and a cake or something.’ He unfurled a twenty from his wallet. ‘You need a break. I need some air. This weather is making fools of us all.’
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