The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows

by Riches, Marnie

  ‘No wonder junkies’ baths are always bloody filthy,’ George said. ‘They’re too busy snorting their cleaning products to use them on scum rings!’

  A flicker of a smile played on Marie’s lips. Perhaps she was uncertain as to whether George had cracked a genuine joke or not.

  ‘Marianne de Koninck phoned through and arranged for Strietman to take a forensics team there yesterday,’ Marie said. ‘Results won’t be back for a few days yet.’

  ‘Any evidence of child abuse? Kids’ toys?’ George asked.

  Shaking her head. ‘Nothing obvious.’

  Van den Bergen steepled his fingers together and frowned. ‘Any computer equipment?’

  ‘Yep. Quite a bit of it, actually. A PC and a laptop. Lots of CD-ROMs and USB sticks. A digital camera. I’m going to start going through it all, now I’ve finished looking at his bank stuff and phone records. But it’s his credit card transactions that I wanted to tell you about.’ She flicked the page with her index finger, raised an eyebrow and looked at Van den Bergen. ‘Vlinders had travelled to Berlin. He bought train tickets for one adult and two children.’

  It was as though a shadow had been cast over Marie. Her eyes were dirty sapphires once more, put back into the ground by sorrow and loss. Van den Bergen opted to say nothing.

  ‘And Gerhard Hauptmann’s number was on his phone, right?’ George asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Marie said, scrutinising her grubby fingernails.

  The train-track furrows across her forehead were more pronounced than usual, Van den Bergen observed. And not just down to the cold weather and a redhead’s delicate skin.

  ‘I had a call from Hakan Güngör’s tech person, Franz,’ she said. ‘Now they know where to look, they’re going to be seizing all Hauptmann’s computer equipment and any phones they find in the houses he owns. The other guy too.’

  ‘Hans Meyer. The locksmith.’

  ‘Yep. Between me and Franz, we should be able to unravel at least a motive for our killer. As if the killer needed one, apart from the fact that all three guys seem to be raving paedos.’

  The shadow lifted somewhat, along with the corners of her mouth. Van den Bergen detected the spark of intrigue in his junior detective.

  ‘And here’s the interesting thing …’

  George leaned forwards in her seat. Van den Bergen sat upright. All ears on the always oh-so-humble Marie.

  ‘… The two children that accompanied Vlinders to Berlin never came back with him. According to the ticket bookings, it was a one way trip.’

  ‘Trafficked!’ George gasped. ‘He’ll have passed the kids off as his own and then dumped them onto Hauptmann for a finder’s fee, maybe. I bet they ended up in that basement with the Roma kids.’

  ‘It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the children have been abused by a paedophile ring,’ Van den Bergen said, feeling suddenly queasy. ‘The Kreuzberg house was in too busy an area for men to be coming and going without raising suspicion. So, possibly they were taken to the zoo at night. Let in by Meyer. I’m guessing Meyer liked to watch the visiting children during the day, when he was working on the zoo’s locks. School kids. That sort of thing. Perhaps it gave him the idea to use it as a venue.’

  ‘Or, perhaps he pursued the zoo account – doing the zoo’s lock repairs – because there were children around and he wanted to gain easy access to a place where you can just get lost at night,’ George said. ‘Paedophiles work in professions where they can get easy access to children.’

  Van den Bergen nodded. ‘Anyway, my guess, given the modus operandi of our killer, is that we’re looking for some kind of organised crime hitman taking out traffickers who weren’t dealing with a clean deck.’ He turned to George. ‘We need to find out more about this British victim. What was his name again?’

  ‘Rufus Lazami,’ George said. ‘Millionaire captain of industry. Respectable, by all accounts, if you believe what you read in the papers. But maybe he’s got skeletons in his closet too. Didn’t you tell me that the kids from Bijlmer were pushing drugs and being pimped to rich and famous men?’

  ‘Exactly. You need to go straight back to London and do some snooping.’

  George narrowed her eyes at Van den Bergen.

  He gulped, knowing he’d said the wrong thing.

  She was out of her seat. A greyhound chasing the rabbit, as though ripping its throat out would be the finest sporting pursuit life had to offer.

  ‘You fucking what?’

  CHAPTER 22

  Amsterdam, Marie’s apartment, later

  ‘Dinner time, Hugo!’ Marie said, emptying the tin of cat food into the bowl.

  Soiled kitty litter pebble-dashed the kitchen tiles where Hugo had kicked out the tray’s contents. It embedded itself uncomfortably in the soles of her bare feet. But after a hard day chasing the bad guys, even if Marie had been bothered about that sort of thing, she would be too tired to stand there with a remedial dustpan and brush at the ready. To hell with it.

  ‘Hugo! Come to Mummy!’

  The tortoise-shell, emasculated tomcat padded up to her, mewing. He arched his lithe back and rubbed himself against his mistress’s legs.

  Marie stroked the cat, scratching behind his ears as he started to chomp away at the fishy-smelling lumps she had spooned out for him. ‘You’re my gorgeous man, aren’t you, little puss?’ The cat ignored her now, of course. Like most of the men she had met in her thirty-one years, his interest was only ever fleeting. Once his needs were met, that was the end of that.

  Sighing, she flung the dirty spoon into the sink and the unwashed tin into the recycling bag. She wiped her hands on a tea towel, which she would definitely throw in the laundry by the weekend. Definitely. No point putting the washing machine on for one tea towel, though. Especially not before she had washed the dishes from the last few days. Peering cursorily into the sink, she wrinkled her nose and shrugged.

  None of that mattered, because Marie had a Skype conversation lined up with a certain Berlin police cyber specialist.

  ‘Franz Dinkels,’ she said, wrapping her tongue around the German name. It had a happy ring to it. She liked it. Wondered what Franz Dinkels would look like. Perhaps as friendly and approachable as his name and the affable, almost jokey tone of his emails suggested.

  Clicking the kettle on, Marie made her way along the dark hall to the bathroom, passing the wooden crucifix she had bought in Spain whilst on holiday with her mother some years ago, and the Jan Breughel the Elder reproduction of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She made the sign of the cross and then glared at the BVM.

  In the mirror of her admittedly underused bathroom, she spied a medium-sized spot on her chin. That would be easily sorted with some concealer. Her hair was probably reasonable. She pulled her ponytail free, bushed the shoulder-length hair out and assessed that it was not entirely reasonable as hair cleanliness went. To shower or not to shower? Looking at the mildewed shower curtain and contemplating taking her three layers of clothing off when the apartment was so darned cold, she decided there was no real logic in showering. She sniffed her armpits. They seemed okay and, besides, Franz could hardly smell her through his computer monitor.

  ‘Mascara!’ she told the mirror. Rummaged in a make-up bag that was stuffed full of out-of-date cosmetics her mother had bought her. Five-year-old Chanel eyeshadow, pretty much untouched. Yves Saint Laurent lippy. In blood red, for god’s sake! The old lady liked expensive beauty care and insisted her daughter was fashioned from the same mould. Marie chuckled at the thought, accidentally stabbing her eyeball with the mascara wand. It was as though her mother was punishing her remotely for her slovenly grooming ways with a bloodshot right eye.

  ‘Fuck!’

  BVM wouldn’t appreciate the swearing, but she and the BVM weren’t exactly on normal speaking terms since Nicolaas. And she had not quite made her peace with the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit.

  A film of glassy wet sorrow appeared unbidden on her already aggravated eyes. Stung like sti
nk. She blew her nose, even redder now. ‘Pull yourself together, idiot!’ She switched off the flickering light above the vanity mirror, refocused on the prospect of Skyping, and checked her notes.

  ‘Hi Franz. Is that you?’ She adjusted her camera. ‘Can you hear me?’ She tapped the speaker on and off but still couldn’t hear him, though his lips were moving.

  A hairy arm in close-up said Franz was faffing with his camera. It looked as though he was in his living room, maybe. Shelf after shelf was laden with books behind him; crime novels, judging by the bold print on the spines. Grinning. Blushing. Looking at himself. Looking at her. Nobody ever seemed to know where to look on Skype.

  Marie cringed anew at the sight of her own head and shoulders, cast in an unflattering light beneath the living room ceiling lamp. Mascara made her look like a prostitute. She turned the footage of herself off. No need for that.

  ‘Hiya, Franz. Nice to put a face to the email address. Ha ha.’ Was that stupid or acceptably friendly? She could feel a rash crawling up her neck and that terrible flush of red seeping through the powder that covered her cheeks, making her look as though she’d been slapped hard.

  Franz nodded. ‘Ja. I am pleased to see you also.’ His English was not as fluent as hers. But she liked his face. It was a kind face. Double chin and eyes slightly squinty. He wasn’t too perfect. Good. Mousy hair, thinning on top, but that was fine. That bastard Diederik had had magnificent caramel-coloured hair and he had brought her world crashing down around her. Hair counted for nothing. No evidence of children or a woman’s influence on those bookshelves. Good.

  Except, now she had run out of conversation. ‘Do you like cats?’ she asked.

  ‘Ja. I have a ginger cat.’ He made kissing noises, leaned out of shot and presently filled the screen with the fattest cat she had ever seen. The cat struggled free. ‘Lancelot,’ he explained, taking a deep breath from an asthma inhaler. ‘I am loving him but also allergic to him.’

  Laughter between them. Good.

  Except, she had definitely run out of conversation. And apparently, so had he. He was grinning at his camera like a slightly demented schoolboy. Opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish gasping at the top of a dirty tank.

  ‘So!’ He had broken the awkward silence. Thank God. ‘We are finding that Hauptmann has an apartment near Zoologische Garten, and that he is running a child pornography website from there.’

  Marie felt herself relax a little. Onto business. That was a territory in which she felt comfortable.

  ‘I suspected you might. What’s the web address?’

  Franz told her. She inserted the URL into her browser and a standard porn site popped up.

  ‘Is it encoded?’ she asked.

  ‘Several clicks through, there is a login page for extra content. A site within the site.’ He talked her through the various firewalls which users had to penetrate to gain access to the illegal content. Eventually, the illicit material came up. She hadn’t told Van den Bergen, but of late, since Nicolaas, she was finding it harder and harder to look at this bilge. Realising, now that those were people’s children: missing, miles from home, their abuse photographed, filmed, shared and billed for. Before Nicolaas, it had seemed almost an abstract concept but now …

  ‘Are you okay?’ Franz asked. ‘You are crying?’

  Marie hastily wiped her eyes with the end of her jumper sleeve. ‘No. I’m having a reaction to my mascara,’ she said. Chiding herself for allowing the vulnerability to show through in front of a camera, of all things. Idiot.

  She cleared her throat.

  ‘I’ve been unravelling Tomas Vlinders’ phone records this end. Seven calls between him and Hauptmann in a seventy-two hour period. Several emails exchanged – cagey about the nature of the product that was changing hands for money but talking about a finder’s fee for Vlinders and a purchase price, payable by Hauptmann and 20% on the top as a kind of royalty to someone our people found out is ‘The Son of the Eagle’. Whoever this Eagle is, he seems to be a, if not the, lynch pin in a transnational child trafficking network. Judging by the locations Vlinders had been calling from, he was taking those two kids with him to Hauptmann’s house in Kreuzberg.’

  Franz was nodding now. Smiling.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘We have not been finding Hauptmann’s phone, unfortunately. But with a little more work, I should be able to crack the encrypted credit card information from the porno website and have a list of names of those accessing images. So, we have established that all three men are involved in the same chain of supply and demand.’

  Marie wondered if she dare ask Franz if he would like to come and visit the Amsterdam head office at any point if he was ever in the area. She rehearsed the words in her head. They came out perfectly in her head. Poised to say them, however, she could not find enough spittle to speak.

  ‘Are you sure you are okay?’ Franz asked.

  Bordering on breathless, Marie nodded. A toxic mix of emotions. Anticipation, hope, sorrow, dread.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said and turned her camera off hastily.

  But Franz’s voice continued though his image had been replaced by a blank screen.

  ‘Will we speak again tomorrow? I am finding this very useful and also enjoyable.’

  Marie severed the Skype connection. She allowed herself a glimmer of a smile, but immediately hated herself for it because she didn’t deserve happiness. Not if she said the rosary every day. Not if she went to church every single Sunday. Not even if she read the Bible in her every spare moment.

  Marie deserved to suffer.

  CHAPTER 23

  A village South of Amsterdam, 8 June, the previous year

  Leafing through de Volkskrant and de Telegraaf, Gabi could see nothing of their plight until ten or more pages in. Grim photos of the two of them, snapped by the paparazzi that had set up camp on the curtilage outside for the first week, much to the neighbours’ chagrin; a throng of fifty, maybe, plus TV vans, which had dwindled to about ten now. She scowled at the photo of herself in a tabloid newspaper, Algemeen Dagsblad, leaving the house with her hair in a mess. They had been going to Amsterdam to endure yet another seemingly pointless conflab with the police.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ she snapped, slamming the papers down onto the counter, one after the other. Glaring at Piet who was slumped over a coffee, as usual. Bloodshot eyes and a hangdog expression, like that would fix things. ‘Two weeks and nothing! Nothing!’ He still didn’t look up at her, even when she started to shout. ‘The Roma sighting turned out to be a dead end. Two thousand calls to the missing persons’ helpline and not one lead has panned out. Not one! The public’s losing interest.’ She reached out and grabbed his arm. ‘We’ve got to do something, Pieter!’

  But he merely looked up at her, tears standing in his eyes. ‘I’m going back to bed. I never should have got up. I can’t …’

  He shuffled off, scratching the arse of his pyjamas. Typical.

  ‘That’s right!’ she bellowed after him. ‘You go and curl up like a bug under a stone. Don’t bother talking this through.’

  ‘I haven’t got the energy to talk,’ came his voice from the stairwell. ‘I’ll see you at lunchtime.’

  ‘Wanker!’ Gabi said under her breath. ‘I married a weak-willed man-child. Jesus. What the hell was I thinking?’

  Rinsing her breakfast pots and loading the dishwasher, she contemplated her next move. Ever-decreasing publicity for the case meant the public wasn’t on the lookout for Josh or Lucy any more. The charity didn’t want her to go back into the office, although she would have loved to have done so, if only to enjoy some semblance of normality for an hour or two. Her buffoon of a boss had bandied about the word ‘inappropriate’ like he was in a position to decide what was and wasn’t an acceptable way to deal with such intolerable stress and loss. Dick. She couldn’t deal with her feelings. And they weren’t important anyway. What was important was having a plan. Seizing some control from this. Imposing order
on chaos. Grief must not compute. Only positive action.

  ‘Gabi! Gabi! Come to the door!’ One of the photographers camped on her driveway had caught sight of her through the kitchen window. Goddamn it. And she was still in her nightie. How embarrassing.

  But her thoughts were diverted by the sound of the mail plopping onto the doormat. Be positive. Stay focussed.

  ‘Aw, I don’t believe this!’

  Hard to do when the post included three death threats, a bank statement that showed they were overdrawn by several thousand and five large overdue bills.

  ‘Piet! I told you to pay the car and you still haven’t paid it, you arsehole!’ she shouted up the stairs.

  No response. She gnawed at the inside of her cheek. This was down to him, of course. If he’d held it together, he’d still be working. Billing for plans. Getting on with the day-to-day like a man. A provider. Leaving the evenings free to fall to bits. Selfish, self-indulgent prat of a kiddult.

  She closed her eyes as she walked past Lucy’s room. Tasteful John Lewis zoo animals theme, imported from London. Mismatched Frozen bedding, which Lucy insisted on, even though she was too young to do anything but burble and hum along to the theme tune of ‘Let it Go’.

  Don’t look inside. She’ll be back soon.

  She kept her eyes tightly shut as she walked past Josh’s little den with its Noddy-themed decor. Noddy’s on his way. Noddy will sort things out. Bright yellow walls. Noddy with his Toy Town full of friends. A sunny disposition, unlike Josh. But often getting into trouble. Like Josh.