by J. M. Hewitt
He walks back to his desk and begins to boot up the old computer that he rarely uses. As the screen flickers into life he hears the peal of the doorbell and he rolls back in his chair, looks through the window. Whoever it is seems to be standing right under the porch, he can’t see them at all, so grumbling a little, he hoists himself upright and makes his way to the outer office to open the door.
It’s a new girl, one that he is not familiar with and this one is very young. He looks down at her without speaking.
“Are you Doctor Bastiaan?” she asks in English.
“Yeeees,” he drawls, still looking her up and down. She’s certainly a fresh face, this one. Mixed race, probably diluted by a couple of generations, he guesses, with the telltale ‘Fro hair but green eyes which are certainly Caucasian.
“I was recommended to you, by a … friend. I wonder if I can make an appointment, if it’s not convenient to see me now?”
He pulls the door open all the way, charmed by her polite manner. He stands back and makes a sweeping motion with his arm to show her in. In turn she moves quickly past him, taking care not to brush against him, he notes.
Bram shows her into his office and gestures to the chair opposite to the one he sits himself in behind his desk.
“What can I do for you, my dear?” he asks, and propping his elbows on his desk, he sets his chin on his hands, studies her intently.
She looks away from his gaze, seems to gather herself before speaking. “I’ve been suffering from … some sort of memory problem. I had an incident recently, one that I’d prefer not to discuss.” She shoots a stern look at him and then averts her eyes. “I have nightmares too, ones that are beginning to …” She shakes her head, appears to forget where she had got to and tails off altogether.
Bram can’t take his eyes off her. From all of the women that he deals with on a daily basis, there is something almost exquisite about this one. As he allows this thought to roll around his mind, she turns her attention straight to him and he is taken aback. It’s her eyes, he thinks, they are emerald green, quite stunning against the colour of her skin and hair but, there is no expression in them. They are flat. Dead.
He looks away, clears his throat. “This memory loss, is it short term? Long term?”
She looks like she’s thinking again, brow slightly furrowed. “Short term.”
There is a silence that goes on a little too long, broken by Bram bringing his pad towards him. “I’ll need your details, name.” He tries to make his voice kindly; none-threatening, because for some inexplicable reason, he wants to see this girl again.
She hesitates for the briefest moment before answering, and in turn, her pause tells him so much. “Elian, my name is Elian.”
He writes it down, raising her eyebrows at her in a silent question. She reads what is written on his pad and nods, confirming he has spelt it correctly. He opens his mouth but to his surprise she is speaking again.
“My friend said perhaps an MRI scan, to see if there is any damage.”
What happened to her? He wonders, what happened to this girl to make her think she has some sort of brain injury?
“I think,” he starts, chances a look at her before continuing, “I think we will need to do something that you will no doubt be reluctant to do. And that, my dear, is to explore what actually happened to cause your … injury.” At the horrified look on her face he continues hurriedly. “I can organise a scan, of course, but my feeling is the symptoms might be more deep rooted, psychologically, rather than a physical injury.”
Now she looks resigned and Bram is almost panicking. He must get this girl back here, and he knows how crazy that is; after all he sees beautiful young women all the time, but this girl … oh, this girl.
“I can help you,” he says. “I will help you.”
The conviction in his tone must be apparent, as she smiles. Nervously, and with trepidation, but all the same it is there. A smile. She smiles at him.
She relaxes a little; he sees her shoulders and indeed her whole upper body seem to sit more comfortably in the chair. He doesn’t ask her anything further about what happened to her; instead he questions her on her general health, fitness and exercise habits. From this he learns that she is currently living beachside in Schev, and he thinks back to where he was yesterday afternoon, not far from her home at all. Something stirs in him that he hasn’t felt for years and he crosses his legs uncomfortably.
It seems she did relax at his conversation, because now she sits up, speaks with a tone he can only identify as hope.
“I think I need the other tests, the ones … the ones you give the other girls.”
It’s like a slap in the face and he rearranges his expression to ensure his sudden distaste doesn’t show. “We can do those right now,” he states, moving across to get the swabs and needles, anything to get out of her line of sight so he can recover himself.
Silently he draws blood and wordlessly he leads her over to the bed to swab her. In the silence he watches her chest rise and fall and he works quickly, wanting to get her back in the chair and talking to him again, without this unnecessary unpleasantness.
“When can I expect to hear from you? About the scan, I mean. And what about payment, I have the means to pay, but do I pay you or the hospital?” she asks when she is dressed and seated.
He takes a chance, acts on instinct and reaching across the desk he pats her hand. He is delighted when she doesn’t immediately pull away. “That can all be sorted at a later date. Money is not of importance here.” He wants to add ‘you are’ on the end of his sentence but refrains.
Scribbling on a piece of paper he slips it across to her. “That’s my office number. Can I take your contact details?”
“I don’t have a phone, yet,” she replies as she folds up the piece of paper and puts it in her pocket.
“Then in two or three days you shall telephone me here, or call on me. I should have an appointment for you, my dear,” he pauses, looks at her again. “Will you do that, dear?”
She nods, picks up her bag and with a half-wave leaves his office. He watches her go, his eyes linger on the gentle sway of her hips and the way she carries her upper body; tight and tense. It’s such a juxtapose he finds it utterly fascinating.
Bram waits until he hears the outer door close before letting out his breath. He thinks back on their closing words, wonders anxiously if he sounded too eager. The last thing he wants to do is scare her, this lovely, emerald-eyed girl. And the additional tests she asked for, well, it is only natural, really. She’s a young woman, just taking care of herself, he should be praising her for her forward thinking, not biting against the torrid thought of her screwing some nameless, faceless youth. He’s sure she doesn’t do that, anyway. She seemed too … precious to be promiscuous.
He is smiling as he lifts himself out of his chair and moves to lock his door, but his gaze falls on the report that he has left on his desk. With the unexpected delight that came calling, he had forgotten about the report.
His smile fades. Real life beckons and he still has work to do.
26
ERIK FONS
HOOFDBUREAU
6.7.15 Afternoon
Erik skims through the report on the latest murdered girl. As he reads he compares it to the report on Gabi Rossi. Apart from them both working in the same RLD, frustratingly he can find no other similarities. They talked to each other, but that’s not uncommon. All of the regular girls know who each other are. Or who each other were, he thinks with a grimace. He wishes Naomi was home, although unethical he would run through this with her, after all, she knows these girls, she knows their lives. She would know what to do, where to start.
He rubs at his temples; a headache is starting to form and when his phone rings he snatches it up, snaps a greeting into the receiver.
“Hello, is this Erik Fons?”
“Yes,” replies Erik. “Who is this?”
“My name is Alex Harvey, I work alongside the ME
T police in London. I’m searching for a missing person, a young woman called Elian Gould. Mr Fons, have you seen or heard anything about her?”
Erik, his head filled with the dozens of girls he has been interviewing over the last few days, scratches his head. “I don’t think so, is she a working girl?”
There’s a short pause on the line, and then, “What?”
“Does she work the RLD?” Erik clicks his tongue impatiently. “The red light district?”
“God, no,” the voice on the other end of the phone is aghast. “No, absolutely not. Why?”
Erik shakes his head in despair. “That’s what I’m working on, the RLD murders. I presumed you were calling with regards to that. Sorry, why are you calling me?”
“I’m searching for a missing person, a young woman. I’ve been through a lot of departments and I’m now on the telephone to you.” Alex talks slowly, almost wearily, and Erik imagines how many times he has repeated himself if he’s been through the Dutch legal phone system. “If I email you her details will you put her in your system, see if you can come up with anything?”
“I presume you will send your credentials, along with the missing girl’s information?” Erik asks dryly.
“Yeah, of course,” he agrees, but Erik hears the pause, identifies it almost as reluctance, and Erik wonders exactly what the caller’s relationship to the MET police actually is. “Can I ask one more question, does the name Lev Aliyev mean anything to you?”
Erik hesitates for too long, and the caller picks up on it immediately.
“It does? You’ve heard of him?”
Erik wants to shush the caller, Lev Aliyev is not a name that he has heard, but it is awfully similar to the man he interviewed earlier. He flips through the pages in his notebook until he finds the name he has written there. Levart Abramov. Not the same name, not at all, but similar enough for his interest to be piqued.
“Why are you asking me about that name?” Erik’s tone is louder than he would have liked, and he realises he is half out of his chair, gripping the edge of his desk. “Hello? Mr Harvey?”
There is a click and then a dialling tone in his ear. Alex Harvey has hung up. Erik stares dumbly at the receiver before slamming it down into its cradle and standing up.
“Who put that call through to me?” he shouts across the office.
His colleagues look up at him and then stare at each other. Nobody speaks.
Erik sits down, presses recall on the phone only to be presented with the last call he made. He tries to remember what number flashed up on the phone screen before he answered the call, but doesn’t even think he looked at it. He doesn’t know if it was transferred internally or was a direct call from outside the police building.
He picks up his pen and underneath the name Levart Abramov he writes ‘Lev Aliyev’. He chews on the end of his pen and thinks about the conversation. Under Levart’s name he writes ‘Erin Gold’. His pen hovers over the name; unsure now if that was the name that the man actually said. But he can’t go back in time and have the strange phone conversation over again. He thinks back to the clear disbelief in the caller’s voice when he spoke the name Aliyev and Erik had hesitated. What was this Harvey to do with Levart, or Lev? The caller was English, that much Erik was certain of, and therefore it is plausible that he’s with the MET. He scribbles Harvey’s name down too, circles it twice to remind himself to check out his credentials later.
Erik places the pen on the pad, rubs at his head again. He silently chastises himself, ruminates that he should listen, how many times has he told the young detectives to listen to everything, take a note of everything? Never do you know when something might be important later on.
His thoughts move on from the mystery call. There’s something about this Levart Abramov. Nothing that Erik can pin on him, certainly not with his earlier actions, skirting around the perimeter of the law and busting into his home the way he did, but now it is the second time this stranger’s name has been mentioned in passing. Erik knows Mr Abramov has been enjoying the girls and their wares here in Holland, and so far they have all been rather complimentary about his character. But twice mentioned, by two different sources, means there could be more to Abramov than meets the eye.
Erik stands up again, calls across to the I.T guys. “That CCTV for Gabi Rossi, do you have anything yet?”
Six heads shake, collectively responding in the negative.
“Well, make that a priority,” he barks. “I want to view everyone that moved past that alleyway and I want it by tonight.”
He sits down, breathing hard. Takes a bottle of painkillers out of his desk and throws them in his mouth, gagging a little at the cold coffee he uses to wash them down with.
If Abramov or Aliyev or whatever his name is can be seen on the CCTV, then Erik is pretty sure he’s found his killer.
And this killer needs to be found before he strikes a third time.
27
ELIAN
SCHEVENINGEN to FREDERIKSTRAAT
6.7.15 Afternoon
Elian stands under the awning of the shops that line the road, waiting for Brigitta to emerge from the supermarket. She’s very aware that up there, Lev is settled into his new home. She whispers his name, rolling her tongue around it and remembering how he had been ‘Russian Lev’ when he was referred to by Niko. In the days immediately following her ordeal she had mentioned the name to Sissy, just in passing. Sissy had at first shaken her head, but later, days later, she had said his full name. Lev Aliyev. And why did Elian want to know? - was what Sissy wanted to discover. Lev had been resident only temporarily in Chernobyl and had long since moved on, or so she presumed. Elian and her half memories of this man had been dismissed, but later, back home, she had remembered Russian Lev’s name again, and she had written it down, like she was writing all of the random recollections down. She wonders if he would recognise her, if he were to clap eyes on her would he recall the scared, beaten girl that his associate said he could ‘have a turn on’ if he so desired. Would he look at her again and instantly think of her mother, the poor, addicted wreck that was Afia, a woman so lost in her own world that she let the murder of dozens of innocents pass by her.
But she saved me, twice, thinks Elian, desperate to have a memory of her mother that is not tinged with a feeling of intense dislike.
She drops her head down as a resident clatters down the steps from above, shielding herself until the man passes, only raising her head when she’s sure it’s not him. And it strikes her, how unprepared she is to come face to face with Lev. What’s she going to do? Make a citizen’s arrest and call the local police? Plan to catch him in the act of murdering one of the local women, a crime that she’s almost certain is Lev’s doing. After all, it’s just too much of a coincidence. Not that there was evidence that Lev was responsible for the killings in Chernobyl, from what she could gather he was there for the leftovers, the people and the items that he could sell after Niko had finished. He wasn’t a murderer, he was simply a vulture.
But people change, maybe Niko had held him back before, unwilling to let Lev be what Niko was. Now with Niko out of the way, there’s nobody stopping him.
Elian sighs deeply, there’s so many ifs and buts, it’s hard enough to keep track in a normal body, let alone one which is slowly receding and letting her down.
But regardless of the part – if any – that he has played with the crimes happening here, he still needs to pay. He needs to be punished for what he knew was happening back in Chernobyl and for the way he treated her the time he stumbled upon her in the caravan when she was chained and broken, like she was a piece of meat strung up in a market, on display for all to view and offer up their opinion.
A whistle pierces the air and Elian looks up, cheered to see Brigitta emerging from the supermarket.
“All set?”
Elian nods, and then asks, “Do you recognise new people who come here? Men, I mean who want to … you know.”
Brigitta pops a
stick of gum in her mouth, chews vigorously before putting the packet away without offering it to Elian. “Sometimes, but if they’re not regular they’re just tourists, you know? Why do you want to know?”
Elian shrugs, not wanting to reveal her suspicions about Lev. It wouldn’t help her, Brigitta already thinks she’s halfway to crazy, Elian is sure. And there’s no point in warning her, Brigitta and her friends are already on their guard.
The walk to Frederikstraat is long, but pleasant, although Elian knows if she is going to stay here for a while she will need to get a bicycle. Everyone moves around on bikes here, and it’s not a bad idea. At the very least she’ll be able to get her body back in peak condition, a must if she’s going to get better.
“Don’t you have a bike?” she asks Brigitta with curiosity.
Brigitta shakes her head. “I don’t usually go far enough to warrant one. Although I can see the appeal,” she says with a smile, admiring a youth that races past them in the opposite direction, one hand on the handlebar, the other clutching a surfboard.
Elian says nothing, but envies Brigitta’s attitude. She can’t imagine checking out any men, now or ever. Except Alex, a little voice in her head says, and she feels the heat in her face, allows herself a little smile.
Alex.
Alex Harvey.
Older than her, money-orientated, flashy, eternal bachelor and playboy.
Intelligent, caring, kind, funny and breathtakingly handsome.
And suddenly she misses him so much she has to stop walking. She misses him more than she misses home and London, more than she misses Sissy and the family that she never had. She pauses, knowing that in everything that is so uncertain in her life, Alex isn’t one of them. He’s the only thing that she’s totally and utterly sure of. Is he thinking of her? Or has he moved on, back to his old life, dating model-esque, stick-thin beauties and moving around London in his tailor-made suits and drinking at flashy, men’s only clubs?
