Walk, goddamn it! Don’t look. Those beds aren’t empty. That dust is not gathering on the toys. Walk.
Glimpsed Piet in bed as she passed their bedroom. Body quaking beneath the duvet. Crying again.
Under the shower in the family bathroom, the hot water was invigorating. Washing away the memory of the death threats.
@Gabi_Deenen Die, heartless bitch. #FindTheDeenens
@Gabi_Deenen Jesus took your children because you didn’t love them. #JesusLoves
@Gabi_Deenen @telegraaf So much money. So little time to look after your kids properly. #BadMothers
Haters got to hate. It came from having a nice life where others didn’t. Beautiful children, where others weren’t. A luminous career, where others couldn’t. Wash that envy down the drain.
Luminous career.
It was then that the way forward unfurled itself like a fine rug. What was she equipped to do, better than anybody else? How could she seize control of this fiasco?
Under the steaming water, she clapped her hands together. ‘Mummy’s got a plan!’ she told Josh and Lucy in her mind’s eye. ‘Mummy’s going to sort it all out.’
A phone call was all it took. London was poised and ready. Strings pulled.
Throwing her best clothes into the case – the quality stuff she had worn before this lo-fi, homespun crap she was forced to endure in the Dutch backwater – she imagined herself around the boardroom table of Pickwick Welcome PR. West End offices. Intelligent, quick-thinking people who knew how the world worked. Yes! This was where she could usefully take centre stage in this tragedy that their lives had morphed into.
‘What are you doing?’ Piet asked, standing in the doorway.
How long had he been there? Had she been speaking to herself?
‘I’m flying to London,’ she said, unable to keep the odd mixture of relief and vitriol out of her voice. ‘I’ll be back in three days. I’m going to sort this.’
Piet scratched his head. Scratching, scratching, like a monkey in the zoo. Flea-bitten. Semi-sentient. Useless, if he was unable to provide food and a roof.
‘We’ve got to go to Amsterdam this afternoon,’ he said. ‘The police are expecting us. We’re going to get an update. They’ve got more questions.’
‘I’m going,’ she said, slipping into her killer heels. ‘I’ll text.’
She carried the case downstairs as he shuffled along behind her, hand down his trousers, playing pocket billiards, hair plastered to his head because he hadn’t showered in days. A week’s worth of stubble, now more of a beard, masked his face.
Bracing herself for the flashbulbs and questions from the remaining journos, hand on the door handle, she turned back to him.
‘And do me a favour,’ she said. ‘Pull yourself together while I’m away. Or else …’
‘Or else.’ Piet repeated his wife’s words. Or else what, precisely? What could she possibly threaten to do that would be any worse than what he was already going through? If she ran a knife through his heart, she’d be doing him a favour.
The cameras belonging to the remaining paparazzi whined and clicked as they snapped at the heels of Gabi Deenen. Currently The Netherlands’ most famous mother. Gabi holds it together. Gabi, the super-stylish Brit, mourns the abduction of her little ones. And there, standing by her side, is her loser of a husband. Pathetic Pieter. The man who lost his children.
‘Look at the camera, Piet!’ one photographer shouted – a man with a giant beer-gut and a hairstyle that was way too young for him, trying to make a living out of someone else’s misery.
‘Where’s Gabi going, Piet?’ shouted another, advancing down the path. Click, click, click.
But Piet flung the door wide, momentarily, not caring that they could all see him for the unwashed, unkempt mess that he had become.
‘Get off my property!’ he shouted, emerging to meet the trespasser. A slight man in his thirties, maybe. If need be, he’d punch the bastard. Yes he would. ‘What gives you the right to intrude on our lives like this? Camped out at the end of my drive every goddamn morning, like we’re some kind of side-show curiosity?’
Click, click, click. Still snapping away at the ranting and raving shambles of a man.
‘Well, the lot of you can go to hell. Do you hear me? Go home. Leave me alone, you parasitic bastards.’
Tears streaming down his face. Bare feet, slapping up and down on the rough flagstones, as though he might somehow yet anchor himself to this cursed life simply by gripping the ground with his toes. He approached the photographer with a balled fist as an offering of non-hospitality. The anguish and emptiness left by the disappearance of his children had amassed to become a canker, infecting him, eating him from the inside out, leaving only a shell of a man. Perhaps he could take this intrusive fucker with him.
‘I’ll call the police!’ he shouted.
The photographer backed away, still snapping.
‘Are you having a breakdown, Piet?’ someone asked to his right.
Piet swung around to see where the voice had come from. A woman’s voice. Gabi’s voice? No! Of course not. Through the blur of tears, beyond the bobbing heads of these piranhas with zoom lenses, he could see Gabi’s car, already a black speck at the end of the long, long road.
‘Come back,’ he said under his breath.
Suddenly, he felt foolish and exposed. If he were Gabi, he would never have said those things to the paparazzi. If he were Gabi, he wouldn’t be standing in the middle of his front garden in his pyjamas. If he were Gabi, he’d be holding it together for the kids. For their little family.
Pain lanced through his head, suddenly. A thunderclap of agony. He’d been getting them the last day or two. Blinding pain. Like being shot in the head. Clutching his temples. Sinking. Sinking. Not here, Piet. Don’t lose it in front of strangers.
He ran inside and up the stairs. Opened a barrel of the tablets his doctor had prescribed. Poured fifty or so into his hand. Might give him peace. Might plug the chasm inside him that his children had filled.
‘I can’t do this anymore,’ he said. ‘I can’t live without them. I can’t live with myself,’ he told his reflection in the mirror.
Three or four at a time, he started to take the tablets, swallowing them down with a glass of water. Looking forward to oblivion, now, he could feel his world getting fuzzy at the edges. More tablets. More water, until he sank to his knees. An unbearable feeling of wanting to vomit and feeling he might pass out. And then, when the darkness came, it was sweet relief.
CHAPTER 24
South East London, 15 March
Wrapping himself in the fleece blanket he had stolen from the mountaineering shop on Oxford Street, he wriggled down onto the thin, single mattress in the back of the Transit van. Parked unobtrusively in a side street of South East Docklands. Surrey Quays and Canada Water stations nearby, where the respectable tax-payers filed in and out during the week on their quotidian travels to some heated workplace, perhaps suspecting but studiously not thinking about what went on just in their peripheral vision. The saying goes, you are never more than a couple of feet away from a rat in the city. And he was now that rat.
How did he feel?
He felt nothing. Just glad he had broken into this van, seemingly forgotten by its owner during this spell of extreme weather – a builder’s vehicle, judging by the mud encrusted workman’s boots and bucket in the back. Who could build in two feet of snow and rising? The van was unobtrusive. Dry. Most importantly, he was finally away from the other rough sleepers.
Try to get some sleep, he counselled himself. At least it was quiet, here, close to the icy vastness of Greenland Dock and the Thames on a frozen Sunday night. Outside, the snow was falling yet again, but still only covering the dirt of London with a superficial pristine layer. Underneath, the filth was still present, merely awaiting a thaw to reveal everyone’s dirty secrets. And the thaw was long overdue.
Slowly his body began to relax. The stolen paracetamol and ibuprofe
n were keeping the shakes and sweats at bay. For now, at least. The newspaper strapped next to his skin with parcel string kept him as warm as possible, though the piss in the lemonade bottle had turned to ice next to him. Pissicle, he thought as fractured dreams started to push the salient thought aside. A soldier must defend his island of beauty. All’s fair in love and war. Fleeting memories of the enemy that had been felled. The entrepreneur. The locksmith. The fat man. One more, that the police knew nothing of. Icicles burning the pads of his fingers and palm through the rotten woollen glove. So cold that the makeshift shivs had stuck to him. Difficult to cast off down the drain, along with the guilt. All’s fair in love and war. Childrens’ tiny hands trying to press their way upwards through the bars of the storm-drain covers. Don’t worry. I’ll pull you free.
The banging on the side of the van woke him. Heartbeat pounding, he wondered momentarily where he was. Sat up suddenly in almost pitch-black. There was nothing with which to defend himself, so he held one of the heavy work boots aloft. Opened the door a crack, -20°C whipping inside.
‘It’s me.’
The familiar voice and silhouette told him this man was not a threat. Not police moving him on. Not the van’s owner. Not another homeless person, vying for somewhere to get their head down for a few hours. Torchlight shone inside, making him squint. He held his hand over his eyes.
‘Turn the damned torch off!’
Then he saw the visitor clearly in the phosphorescence of dancing snowflakes that had taken the shaft of glum yellow streetlight and refracted it into a shower of gold leaf. The fake ID man. The man who can, as those in the know called him. Tall, young, mixed race with shapely eyebrows that gave him an over-groomed, feminine appearance. He was wearing a Canada Goose Parka. Real fox fur-trimmed hood. The kind of down-filled technical outdoor wear you could wear at the North Pole and successfully fend off the jaws of the biting cold.
‘Nice coat. Can I have it?’
‘Fuck off.’ One of those shapely eyebrows raised. ‘Let me get in, man. Can’t have no-one eyeballing me while we’re doing business, yeah?’
Sliding the van door aside, he let the visitor clamber in. He squatted carefully. The torch sat on the floor of the van, lighting everything from a strange angle. Sinister.
‘I wanted to steal one of those coats from the outdoors shop the other day. They’ve got more security than a bank.’
‘You can’t afford one of these, bruv,’ the man who can said, running his gloved fingers along the snow-sodden fur. ‘Not if you want what I’ve got in my pocket. Now where’s the money at?’
‘Show me the weapon first.’ His voice was hoarse. He wished this ghetto-glam Arctic arsehole had brought him a hot coffee.
‘Money. Don’t fuck me around. You know I’m packing my own.’
Counting the notes out, now. One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred. Lost count. Tutting from the man who can. Eventually he approached a thousand. A tenner short.
‘Sorry. I was starving and freezing. I needed to eat. Ten pounds won’t make a difference, will it?’ He looked into the young man’s dark eyes. Hoped that the sensitivity he saw there wasn’t a mirage.
It was. The cuff on the side of his head stung.
‘Cheeky scavenging bastard with your skanky rash face!’ Sucked his teeth. ‘You wasting my time, you short-changing arsehole! If I say it’s a thou, it’s a thou. You axed me for a gun and new ID. I brought you a gun and new ID, right? Because business is business and I don’t wanna know what the fuck you want all this shit for. I just provide the product. And you pay for it, innit? That’s a transaction, man.’
‘Please!’ He was desperate. All he could do was appeal to the better nature of this cocky, corrupt bastard. ‘I’m just trying to—’
Holding his hands up, the man who can shrunk back into the shadows at the rear of the van. ‘Woah, mate! I don’t want to know what you trying to. That ain’t my problem.’
‘Come on! I paid in full in the past. I’m ten lousy pounds short. You know I’ll be back. I’ll make it up next time. I’ll pay you double what I owe.’ Coughing. Wheezing so that the breath was almost squeezed out of him.
The visitor emerged from the dark again. Contemplative look on his face. ‘Next time, you’ll pay me two hundred in lieu of the tenner you owe. No negotiation. You’re fucking me around and it ain’t like there’s some other mug you can go to for this kind of thing, right?’
What choice did he have? He had a job to do. His role had been agreed. He received his orders. He knew he was in no position to bargain. The cough came on again, even more violently this time. A hacking cough that just wouldn’t shift. A sitting tenant, abusing his hospitality; slowly usurping its host.
‘Jesus. You need to see a fucking doctor with that. You sound like an old tramp.’
The visitor was grimacing, screwing up that pretty-boy face. He held his sleeve up to protect his own nose and mouth from contamination.
‘I am an old tramp, remember?’
‘Nah. You ain’t no tramp. Tramps don’t buy guns and fake passports for a grand. You some MI5 shit? Nah. You ain’t that neither, cos you would get that from them. I reckon you’re a renegade, innit? Getting your money from somewhere, but deep undercover.’
Suddenly, he felt his bloodlust rising. Maybe this little shit knew too much. Maybe he could just kill him and take his coat, leave him in the shitty van. Eyeing the bulging pockets on that parka, he realised his gun was in one, but what was in the others? Money. Drugs. Enough to live on for a few weeks. But then, where would his project be without this chump and his ready access to counterfeit ID?
‘Can you get me broad-spectrum antibiotics?’
‘A monkey.’
‘What is a monkey?’
‘Five hundred quid. Includes the two hundred you owe me for being short tonight.’
Breathing heavily through flared nostrils, coughing as the van’s dusty interior and the astronomical fee caught the back of his throat, he felt something hot and semi-solid plop into his mouth. Spat it into an already wet tissue. ‘Fine. Give me the gun and the ID and just go.’
‘Where will I find you next time?’
‘I’ll need a couple of days to get the money.’
‘You might be dead in a couple of days, man.’ The man who can handed over the gun.
It was surprisingly heavy and painfully cold to touch. But he knew how to use it. Not dissimilar to the weapons he had handled during National Service. He pocketed it, along with a box of bullets. Flicked through the fake passport. Looked convincing. Even had a decent photo of him. He looked nothing like his old self, obviously. But then, that man had been replaced by a machine. Now, he was Jack Frost. The Krampus. The bringer of cold endings. His orders were nearly all fulfilled. The finale was surely near.
‘Just get me the meds. I’ll let your boy know where you can find me.’
‘Where you going to with that passport? Warmer climes?’
‘Roma.’
CHAPTER 25
Amsterdam, police headquarters, 16 March
Footsteps clicked from the sink to the hand-dryer. The hot air began to blow. A man was sniffing. Belching. Blowing his nose. Footsteps away from the hand-dryer. The main door of the toilet slammed shut. Van den Bergen was finally alone.
‘Son of the Eagle,’ he said, spreading the sheaf of notes over the tiled floor of the disabled cubicle. ‘Come on, you bastard. Have you been mentioned in here somewhere?’
He sat back down onto the pan, regarding the paperwork. Rubbed his scarred stomach and popped an anti-spasmodic tablet onto his tongue. Menacing noises emanating from his abdomen. He grimaced, though more from the frustration of feeling that he had many of the jigsaw pieces laid out before him, but that they still steadfastly would not fit together.
‘Fifty-odd interviews with gypsies and not a single mention of eagles or hawks or even so much as a bloody pigeon.’
A disproportionately lavish media campaign for the missing persons had had J
aap Hasselblad in an apoplexy of vengeful enthusiasm.
‘When we find these fuckers and bring their kidnappers to book, the whole of Europe will celebrate my police force,’ he had eulogised, frog-eyes bulging, shaking those infernal brass buttons like he had some kind of shamanic powers. Prat.
Faces of the missing had been all over the tabloids: the television, on every radio station, with posters in every school, workplace, shop window and every transport hub, throwing up the general public’s favourite hate figures as potential kidnappers. Somali, Italian, Russian gangsters. Immigrants, obviously. One week in, with a flurry of phone calls to the missing persons hotline, the gypsies had suddenly trumped every other ethnic group and the Netherlands’ least-wanted.
‘I want dawn raids!’ Hasselblad had shouted, showering Van den Bergen and Kamphuis with evangelical prejudice and spit.
Twenty targets in five different illegal Roma encampments spread around Amsterdam suburbs and satellite towns. The late summer sun had risen just enough to light up the scrap metal, makeshift toilets, refuse and the embers of camp fires that caused the local tax-paying residents to complain so bitterly about these uninvited new neighbours.
Young men, brought in in their underpants. Processed, interviewed, released.
‘It’s a waste of time,’ Van den Bergen had reported back to Kamphuis. ‘Investigative cul-de-sacs, the lot of them. A tonne of admin. No kidnappings. No ransom plans. No forced migration or slave labour.’
Kamphuis, for perhaps the first time in all the years Van den Bergen had known him, had put his hands behind his head, revealing those dark-stained armpits, had nodded sagely and had committed the ultimate act of betrayal. ‘I think our Chief of Police is wide of the mark with those gypsies.’
‘You? Disagree with Hasselblad? Sorry! I seem to have lost my hearing.’ He remembered having poked at his ear for dramatic effect. Provoking his nemesis into some sort of prickly smart-arsed reaction that would set the world back on its usual axis.
Kamphuis had started to stroke the naked lady statue on his desk, eye twitching. There was no hint of sarcasm in his voice.
The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows Page 14
