There was Josh’s room at the end of the hall. He advanced towards it. Everything else undisturbed since the Deenen’s disappearance. Into the little bedroom. Smelling now of dust instead of little boy and washing powder. Looking down at the nightstand, he expected to see Where the Wild Things Are. But the wild things weren’t there.
The book was missing.
CHAPTER 51
Amsterdam, The Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, then, consulting rooms, then, Kamphuis’ home near Vondelpark, later
‘Tell them to get in the fucking taxi, will you?!’ Letitia shouted through the half-opened rear window, face almost trapped as she tried to lower it further but succeeded in doing the opposite. Engine ticking over; meter running; Letitia in a sparkly batwing top, looking her best for the Dutch doctor, having taken over an hour in Van den Bergen’s bathroom, using all the hot water. Impatient now.
‘Come on, Aunty Shaz,’ George said. She held the door to The Cracked Pot Coffee Shop open, acting as an intermediary between a disgruntled Letitia and a fretful Aunty Sharon.
Jan hovered inside, clutching a jug full of a liquid that looked like treacle and – George knew through experience – smelled like barbecued horseshit, trying to foist it onto Patrice who was sitting in a booth with narcotic intent. His mother, standing over him with hands on hips, turned to George, wearing a thunderous expression.
‘I ain’t coming until I’ve told this little rarseclart that if he touches so much as a Rizla, I’ll stop his spends.’
‘I am sitting here, Mum,’ Patrice said, holding his cup up to Jan.
Jan started to wheeze with laughter, as though he’d remembered an old joke. He pointed to the neon mural above the booth of a black girl in hotpants with an Afro. The mural glowed under the UV lights, making the poor execution of her eyes seem worse. One up. One down. At least her tits were on an even keel, George mused.
‘This glorious portrait of your big cousin is my lucky talisman,’ Jan said. ‘She’ll keep an eye on you.’
‘A boss-eye.’ Patrice held his head in his hands, grimacing at the cup of murky coffee on the table in front of him. He looked back up at his mother, wearing a winsome expression. ‘I won’t touch so much as a blim, Mum. I promise. Leave Tin behind if you don’t trust me.’
Jan strode over to the door and planted a wet kiss on George’s cheek, immune to the family wrangling going on in his coffee shop.
‘Will you come and share a joint with me when you’ve finished?’ he asked. His oversized eyes stared at her, blurry behind the thumb-smudged lenses of his tortoiseshell Trotsky glasses. ‘That Five-O hogs you. I barely ever see you when you’re over.’
‘Five-O.’ George smirked at his reference to American crime series, The Wire. ‘You fucking loon.’ She looked down at her biker boots, thinking about the grim afternoon she had ahead of her. ‘Maybe.’ When had life got in the way of fun? It didn’t seem fair.
The specialist peered over the top of his glasses at the motley gathering of people on the other side of his desk.
‘Which one of you is Letitia Williams-May?’ he asked, skipping over Patrice, Tinesha and George to the older duo of Letitia and Sharon.
‘Her,’ Sharon said, folding her arms, shuffling up towards George.
‘Me, of course,’ Letitia said, batting her false lashes at the long-limbed, fair-haired doctor, flicking her caramel-coloured hair extensions out behind her. A budget Gloria Gaynor, all at once afraid and petrified, despite the show of bravado. Her breath coming short. A wobble in her voice.
‘Then, why are the others here?’ An appraising, uncomprehending look at his audience.
‘Family,’ Sharon said, as if this explained everything. She curled her lip at her older sister. ‘You know?’
‘We already paid you, innit?’ Letitia said, pursing her lips. Now she was strong. And she knew how to get along. ‘Just gimme the low-down and stop judging my moral support.’
Sighing, smiling, the doctor clicked on his mouse and turned a screen around to face Letitia. CT scans of a large oval shape. He clicked again and white blobs started to move on the screen. Getting larger. Shrinking. Changing. A macabre animation moving from top to bottom through the cross-section of Letitia’s torso.
The specialist pointed to various blobs with his biro. ‘There is congestion in your pulmonary arteries. See? The walls are thickening, preventing the easy flow of blood. There’s a build-up of pressure.’
Letitia gripped her chest, gasped sarcastically. ‘Yeah, I fucking already knew that.’
Nodding, the doctor went on. ‘Okay. So, the pulmonary hypertension is because of your sickle cell anaemia, which has shown up in your blood tests, which your GP in Britain suspected. I’m surprised you haven’t had this diagnosed decades ago.’
‘I don’t trust you quacks, innit? No offence, like.’
‘Your condition is more common in people of Afro-Caribbean origin, I’m afraid.’
George could see her mother in profile. Gulping. Keeping a brave face. Shitting herself, judging by the sheen of perspiration seeping through the carefully applied layer of foundation on her forehead. ‘I ain’t afraid. What you going to do about it? That’s what I wanna know.’
‘You’ve described several sickle cell crises to me that have occurred inside the last twelve months.’
‘Yeah. I always kept a lid on my suffering.’ She touched her synthetic hair as if to check her artificial halo was still shining above it. ‘But these ones lately was fucking painful. Worst was, nobody bloody believed me.’
Letitia shot a withering glance at her sister to her right. George to her left. Point-blank range. The stench of festering resentment in the room.
The doctor started to talk about putting her on Hydroxycarbamide or some outlandish-sounding medication with oxy in it. George stopped listening to the detail and stared at her mother intently, feeling the thumbscrews of guilt pinion her to her chair. All these long years, she had sought to avoid contact with this loveless woman. Hadn’t believed a word that came out of her mouth, blisters on her acerbic tongue from telling so many lies. Crocodile tears seeping from a cold-blooded reptile of a mother. Now, it transpired that Letitia had been lounging on Aunty Sharon’s sofa because she had been genuinely too ill to move. In pain. Suffering. Crumbling from the inside out. Fallible and feeling, like any other human being. George felt like a prize shit.
‘Am I gonna die, then?’ Letitia asked.
‘Life expectancy can stretch into your early fifties, nowadays.’ The doctor smiled.
A sob from Aunty Sharon. A sharp intake of breath from Tinesha and Patrice. Five pairs of bewildered eyes staring at the man in the white coat.
‘What the fuck you talking about? I’m in my late forties now,’ Letitia said. Her voice sounded thin, as though her vocal chords had been ripped from her throat and only the ghost of speech remained. A shuddering intake of breath. She gripped George’s hand with those curling claws.
George stiffened, unsure how to react. She felt she ought to hug Letitia to offer some physical solace but instinctively shrank away from her touch, leaning heavily into Tinesha on the other side.
A snapshot of the here and now.
This frightened dragon, with all her bombast, falling away like the shedding of scales, as her short future was mapped out for her in a spartan Amsterdam consulting room.
A snapshot of the there and then.
The warm-hearted woman who had raised her daughter alone, planting petunias in a window box of their small house, taking little Ella to church on Sundays, with pure white socks digging into the backs of her knees.
And George’s father.
George thought of the separate folder in her email inbox, where she had stored his missives. Asking after his former partner – a woman he had once loved enough to stand by, despite her acerbity. Should she tell Letitia? If her mother’s days were numbered, should she give her the opportunity to make her peace with her babyfather?
Outside, George held the re
ar door to Van den Bergen’s Mercedes open, as her family – uncharacteristically stunned into silence – piled into the car.
‘There’s too many of you!’ he shouted. Switching to Dutch for George’s ears only. ‘I said I’d give you and Letitia a lift back. Not half of South East London.’ Furrows, deepening in his brow.
George glared at him. Rapid fire retort the others would never understand. ‘Just get us all back to The Cracked Pot, for Christ’s sake. She’s actually really ill.’ Her lover looked even more harried and grey-faced than usual, she noted. ‘Anyway, you’re late.’ She checked her watch; she wished she could turn back time, return to a place where Letitia was indestructible and it was safe to hate her.
‘I had to go somewhere first,’ he said.
She slammed the passenger door shut with a resentful thunk and buckled up. At least she had an ally at her side who wasn’t caught in a web of family politics. Letitia weeped dramatically in the back, hiccoughing as though she were choking on what was left of her vitality. Sharon, offering words of solace, volleyed by her elder sister with frosty, ‘like you actually give an actual fuck.’
‘Let’s just get the hell back to Jan’s and split these two up before they kill each other,’ George said.
Van den Bergen bit his lip. ‘Well, before I drop you, there’s something I need to … just bear with me. It’s not far.’
The six of them were crowded like sardines suffering from ennui and low blood sugar, in the luxurious tin can that was Van den Bergen’s car.
He pulled up alongside the kerb, approximately one hundred metres down the street from a large, detached house. It was a standout building on Van Eeghenstraat – an exclusive road full of red-brick period apartments that had been carved out from expansive four-storey houses. So pretty, they could have been fashioned from gingerbread and plucked from a Hansel and Gretel adaptation. Just south of Vondelpark, this was the exclusive address of boutique hotels and home to urban sophisticates. A world away from Van den Bergen’s mid-century utilitarian neighbourhood, George assessed. Two cars parked in bays outside the detached house – one, a Range Rover. The other, an Audi.
‘Hey! Where the fuck is this?’ Letitia asked, leaning through the gap between the front seats. ‘I’m dying with sickle anaemic, you know. I’m supposed to be resting.’ She sucked her teeth. ‘And I need a smoke.’
‘Doctor told you, you got to stop all that bad habit shit,’ Sharon said. ‘You’re digging yourself an early grave.’
‘Nobody fucking asked for your opinion, did it?’ Letitia spat, visible in the rear view mirror, smoothing down the front of her glittering top. ‘I ain’t dead yet.’
‘Shush!’ Van den Bergen turned round abruptly, holding his long finger to his mouth. Hooded, grey eyes spoke neither of mirth nor of sympathetic indulgence.
The car’s occupants fell silent. Everyone staring solemnly out of the windows, though they knew not what they were looking for.
‘What’s going on?’ George asked.
‘Kamphuis’ house,’ Van den Bergen said, pointing to the elegant home with its impressive stone portico and wide bay windows.
‘Why are we here?’
‘I think he has the Deenen children.’
‘What?’ George looked at the back of Van den Bergen’s head, as he craned his neck to observe the house. ‘Kamphuis? Olaf Kamphuis has got the Deenen kids? Where in God’s name did you get that idea from?’
‘Who the fuck is Camp House and why’s he getting between me and the bleeding sofa?’ Letitia asked, rummaging in her handbag for her cigarettes, tutting and cussing until Sharon slapped her hand away.
In sullen silence, Van den Bergen took out his phone and thumbed a text to Marie and Elvis. George peered over his shoulder.
Marie - Start looking into Kamphuis’ finances a.s.a.p. and Elvis – you and me are on surveillance from end of working day. Strictly confidential! Meet me in HQ foyer at 5 p.m. VDB
He and George exchanged a knowing glance. He hadn’t given her a shred of an explanation, but she knew instinctively he was onto something.
CHAPTER 52
Amsterdam, outside Kamphuis’ home, much later
‘Did Marie say anything before you left?’ Van den Bergen asked, stretching his long legs into the driver’s side footwell. He pinched a clumsy mouthful of takeout Indonesian noodles between two disposable chopsticks, dropped them, then started again. ‘Had she started on the money?’
‘Nope,’ Elvis said, chewing his burger. ‘She was struggling. We haven’t got a warrant, have we? She couldn’t even get bank details.’
‘Shit. This is going to be harder than we thought.’
An awkward pause. Not quite the man-bonding session Elvis had been looking forward to.
Stuffing his takeout wrappings into a plastic bag and tying the handles tight to avoid his boss’ wrath, Elvis gazed idly at Kamphuis’ family home – brightly lit on the inside with warm light from chandeliers. The floodlighting on the outside made it look even more stately than it was. 9.30 p.m. now. Frost forming outside, making the cobbles on the street sparkle optimistically. The boss kept having to start his engine and put the windscreen heater on to clear the gathering condensation.
‘I think we should call it a night,’ Elvis said, wishing there was a nearby toilet.
‘Yes. You’re probably right. I’m sorry I’ve ruined your evening. Did you have a date?’ Van den Bergen asked.
A vision of his mother, shaking as she heated a meagre tin of soup for dinner. Too stubborn to let the care worker in. Too ill to reach the pizza he had bought for her and placed in the freezer. ‘No.’
Van den Bergen gasped as he shifted his position in the driver’s seat, hip clicking audibly. He started the engine. ‘Come on. We’re on a fool’s errand. And if he gets wind of the fact that we’re keeping an eye on him, we’ll be really pissing in the wind.’
The car thrummed. The heated seats, warming Elvis’ body, felt like an attempt to reanimate the dead. A subtle change in the position of the car told him the handbrake was off. Ready to go back to his empty flat with the weight of expectation heavy on him to pop over to his mother’s. Check she was okay.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said, softly.
But, just as Van den Bergen turned his steering wheel to leave their parking space, Kamphuis appeared above them, standing in the window of his master bedroom.
‘Hang on, boss!’
Kamphuis was fastening the cuffs of a fresh shirt. Non-uniform. Running a hand through his hair, gazing at something just to the left of the window, as though he were looking into a mirror.
‘He’s going out,’ Van den Bergen said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Bet it’s nowhere special, though. That egotistical prick would do his hair just to go for frites and mayonnaise from the local snack bar.’
‘Looks like he’s prettying himself up, boss. Maybe our luck’s in.’
The Chief Inspector made a harrumphing noise at the back of his throat, like he was clearing phlegm. ‘At best, it’ll be some bar or restaurant where we can’t even follow him.’
Five minutes later, Kamphuis appeared at the front of the house, silhouetted against the light of his hallway. The door closed and the light disappeared. Clad in a dark overcoat, he whistled as he walked down the road, hands shoved deep into his pockets. He advanced towards Elvis and Van den Bergen. Elvis’ breath caught in the back of his throat. He slid down into his seat, fearful that their position would be discovered.
‘He’s getting into a car,’ Van den Bergen said, peering into his rear-view mirror.
Elvis opened his eyes, and aw yellow lights flashing in the wing mirror as a car alarm was deactivated two or three cars back. Sure enough, Kamphuis was manoeuvring himself awkwardly into an Audi four-wheel-drive.
Their quarry slid off down the road. Van den Bergen allowed one car to pass before following through elegant, icy back streets to the outskirts.
‘I think he’s making for the motorway,’ Elvis said.
> ‘E19. Maybe the airport.’ Van den Bergen allowed another car to overtake him, now separated by two cars. ‘Did he have a case with him? I don’t remember.’
‘No. And I checked his online diary before I left HQ. He’s in tomorrow.’
Kamphuis’ car sped past the giant Schiphol complex, travelling south along the empty road. Rush hour long gone now, everyone tucked up for the night this far out of the city. But then, some way down, indication that he was pulling off. He drove approximately a mile towards a small village, turning into a service station that incorporated a motel.
‘Oh, I see,’ Van den Bergen said, a wry smile visible in the glow cast by the carpark’s floodlights.
‘What?’
‘Fancy cufflinks? A clandestine meet in the middle of nowhere? What do you think? Our Olaf is playing away from home.’
Elvis’ heartbeat picked up its pace as the boss pulled into a space on the far side of the complex, sufficiently out of sight of Kamphuis. The prospect of stalking the Commissioner was perhaps the most daunting challenge he had faced in all his years as a cop. He tugged at his quiff nervously, wishing he’d gone to his mother’s after all. That spinach and chicken he had refused to prepare for her and an evening on the receiving end of her verbal abuse that he had turned down sounded quite appetising now.
‘Come on!’ Van den Bergen slammed the car door shut before Elvis could protest, striding across the almost-empty car park, immediately visible to anyone who happened to be looking their way at the right moment.
Some ten metres ahead, Kamphuis was spraying something into his mouth, then breathing into his hand and sniffing.
Elvis slowed his pace, falling in behind the boss, feeling somehow that their presence there was intrusive. If Kamphuis was meeting a woman, who was he to stand in judgement? He already thought the Commissioner was an amoral piece of shit. How did this risky act of voyeurism ennoble his stance in any way?
The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows Page 30
