Book Read Free

The Girl Who Broke the Rules

Page 1

by Marnie Riches




  The Girl Who Broke the Rules

  MARNIE RICHES

  A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  MAZE

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

  Copyright © Marnie Riches 2015

  Cover design © Lizzie Gardner

  Cover images © Shutterstock.com

  Marnie Riches asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780008138349

  Version: 2015-07-28

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE: Amsterdam, red light district, 16–17 January

  CHAPTER 1: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, UK, 17 January

  CHAPTER 2: Amsterdam, the set of a porn film, then, Sloterdijkermeer allotments, later

  CHAPTER 3: Soho, London, later

  CHAPTER 4: Amsterdam, mortuary, later

  CHAPTER 5: Soho, London, later

  CHAPTER 6: Amsterdam, mortuary, later

  CHAPTER 7: Amsterdam, private medical surgery, much later

  CHAPTER 8: Amsterdam, police headquarters, 18 January

  CHAPTER 9: Soho, London, Skin Flicks Media Group, later

  CHAPTER 10: Amsterdam, Norderkerk, later, then, van den Bergen’s apartment

  CHAPTER 11: South East London, very late

  CHAPTER 12: Manhattan, New York, 1981

  CHAPTER 13: Amsterdam, police headquarters, then, a building site, 19 January

  CHAPTER 14: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 15: Amsterdam, Valeriusstraat building site, later

  CHAPTER 16: Stansted Express, East London, later

  CHAPTER 17: Amsterdam, Valeriusstraat building site, later

  CHAPTER 18: Cambridge, St John’s College, later

  CHAPTER 19: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 20: Amsterdam, 20 January

  CHAPTER 21: Cambridge, Mill Road, later

  CHAPTER 22: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 23: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, later

  CHAPTER 24: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 25: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, later

  CHAPTER 26: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 27: Amsterdam, mortuary, 21 January

  CHAPTER 28: Amsterdam, red light district, later

  CHAPTER 29: Amsterdam, van den Bergen’s car, later

  CHAPTER 30: Amsterdam, later

  CHAPTER 31: Amsterdam, mortuary, later

  CHAPTER 32: Amsterdam, Ruud Ahlers’ apartment, later

  CHAPTER 33: Amsterdam, van den Bergen’s car, then Ahlers’ apartment, moments later

  CHAPTER 34: London, 1985

  CHAPTER 35: Amsterdam, police headquarters, 22 January

  CHAPTER 36: South East London, Aunty Sharon’s house, later

  CHAPTER 37: Amsterdam, the Quick Bite Café, later

  CHAPTER 38: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 39: Amsterdam, Ahlers’ private surgery, later

  CHAPTER 40: Amsterdam, the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, red light district, later

  CHAPTER 41: Over the North Sea, 23 January

  CHAPTER 42: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 43: Amsterdam, van den Bergen’s car, en route to Rotterdam, later

  CHAPTER 44: Amsterdam, Ad’s apartment, later

  CHAPTER 45: Rotterdam Port, later

  CHAPTER 46: Amsterdam, police headquarters, 24 January

  CHAPTER 47: Amsterdam, mortuary, later

  CHAPTER 48: Amsterdam, van den Bergen’s apartment, 25 January

  CHAPTER 49: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 50: Hamburg, Germany, 26 January

  CHAPTER 51: Katwijk asylum seekers’ centre, Netherlands, later

  CHAPTER 52: Rotterdam, Port Authority, later

  CHAPTER 53: Amsterdam, Ad’s apartment, later still

  CHAPTER 54: Berlin, Germany, 1989

  CHAPTER 55: Over the North Sea, then, Ramsgate, England, 27 January

  CHAPTER 56: Soho, London, later

  CHAPTER 57: Ramsgate, later

  CHAPTER 58: Soho, London, later

  CHAPTER 59: Somewhere in Kent, an industrial estate, later

  CHAPTER 60: Ramsgate, seafront B&B, 28 January

  CHAPTER 61: Somewhere in Kent, a field, later

  CHAPTER 62: Kent, on a train, then Amsterdam, mortuary, later

  CHAPTER 63: South East London, later

  CHAPTER 64: Amsterdam, police headquarters holding cell, later

  CHAPTER 65: Ashford, Kent, later

  CHAPTER 66: Cambodia, 1992

  CHAPTER 67: Amsterdam, mortuary, 29 January

  CHAPTER 68: South East London, mortuary, later

  CHAPTER 69: Amsterdam, later

  CHAPTER 70: Amsterdam, Nieuw West area, then, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 71: Amsterdam, Ad’s apartment, then NOS TV studios, then police headquarters, 30 January

  CHAPTER 72: Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  CHAPTER 73: Amsterdam, hospital, 31 January

  CHAPTER 74: Amsterdam, police headquarters

  CHAPTER 75: South East London, 14 February

  CHAPTER 76: Amsterdam, hospital, later

  CHAPTER 77: Soho, London, later

  CHAPTER 78: Laren, the Netherlands, 15 February

  CHAPTER 79: Cambridge, St John’s College, later

  CHAPTER 80: Laren, the Netherlands, 16 February

  CHAPTER 81: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, later

  CHAPTER 82: A secret location near Laren, later

  CHAPTER 83: Stansted airport, Essex, later

  CHAPTER 84: Amsterdam, then Laren, later

  CHAPTER 85: A secret location near Laren, later

  CHAPTER 86: A secret location near Laren, moments later, then, the Laren house

  CHAPTER 87: A secret location near Laren, later

  CHAPTER 88: Amsterdam, hospital, 18 February

  CHAPTER 89: Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, later

  CHAPTER 90: Amsterdam, hospital, later

  CHAPTER 91: Soho, London, later

  CHAPTER 92: Berlin, Germany, 23 February

  CHAPTER 93: Amsterdam, hospital, later

  CHAPTER 94: Amsterdam, women’s prison, 28 February

  CHAPTER 95: Amsterdam, the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, then, the hospital, later

  Keep Reading

  Acknowledgements

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Amsterdam, red light district, 16–17 January

  The jagged pain
between her shoulder blades was fleeting. Magool flinched. Breathed in sharply at the unpleasant sensation. She loosened her seatbelt. Wriggled in the passenger seat to look behind her.

  In the dark, there was nothing to see.

  Then, she tried to reach behind to feel the leather. But her hands would not move. She stared down at them, bemused. They felt neither leaden nor numb. It was simply as if they no longer existed. And yet, there they sat, chapped from the cold, bitten nails, primly folded over her wringing-wet, jeans-clad thighs.

  Frowning, aware of her accelerated heartbeat, she tried to lift her legs, move her feet, wiggle her toes. Nothing. Why was her body not obeying her brain? She looked askance at the driver.

  ‘I can’t move,’ she said in Dutch. ‘What’s going on?’

  The driver stared resolutely ahead. Peering through the windscreen of the car as hail rattled onto the glass, accompanied by fat snowflakes. Swept by the wiper-blades into thin white columns on the windscreen’s periphery that grew thicker and thicker with every second that passed; white screens closing slowly on the real world.

  ‘Hey! Stop the car! Something’s wrong, I’m telling you. I can’t feel a thing.’ With difficulty, Magool could still turn her head – enough to see the side of her driver’s face. ‘Did you hear me?’

  Silence enveloped her, and she realised her words had not sounded at all except inside her head. Through the windscreen, she could just about make out the white-dusted cobbles of the road. The snow, illuminated by the bright, triangular shafts of the streetlights, came down like yellow-gold icing sugar, falling through a sieve. But where the hell were they going on this beautiful, foul night? Not towards her apartment, she was certain. And what was happening to her?

  She started to loll forward, held in her seat only by the belt. The driver reached out and with a large, strong hand, pushed her up against the window.

  ‘Don’t want you to hit your head, do we? Try to relax, Noor. It won’t hurt.’ Her captor had finally spoken in a kindly voice. ‘I’ve given you a very strong spinal block. The syringe was rigged in your seat. But try not to worry. I promise you, I know what I’m doing.’

  Magool wanted to scream. Her brain shrieked for help; phantom hands hammered on the window each time they passed a figure on the street, huddled in dark winter clothes, braving the blizzard. Unaware of the young girl who was imprisoned in the same vehicle that had just splattered their work trousers with virgin slush.

  With only her mind unfettered, she considered the sequence of events that had brought her to this terrible place.

  Standing in her booth, she had watched with fascination when the flakes began to waft down from the heavens. Pink sky overhead, as though the very neon lights of Amsterdam’s red light district were reflected in the snow clouds hanging above her in the night sky. It was the first time she remembered ever having seen snow. The mangroves that clung to the coastline like grasping old men’s hands; the turquoise splendour of the Indian Ocean; the baking heat of her homeland – they were all half a world away. Now, the hail came down among the snow, making the same musical rattling noise against the glass door of her booth that the tropical rains of the Gu and Dayr wet seasons had made on the corrugated iron roof of her family’s shack.

  Just hours earlier, watching that snow, Magool had felt something bordering on elation. She was finally safe. On these crimson-lit streets, she was Noor. Different girl. Different continent. Different life. Magool resolved, there and then, as the hail pounded against the glass door to her booth, to look upon her parents’ selling her and her infant brother to the al Shabaab militia men as an act driven by desperation, not greed. They had thought, perhaps, that she and little Ashkir would both have a good life in that exotic, far-off place they called Italy. Hadn’t the soldiers promised?

  When she had arrived in the arid, rubble wasteland of Mogadishu, clutching the squalling infant, her hope had faded quickly. Tears had pricked the backs of her eyes as she remembered Ashkir being plucked from her bosom by those corrupt African Union troops. Burundian men, who had laughed heartily and exchanged easy greetings with her couriers.

  She had overheard them saying that her brother was destined for adoption in Milan. But, at thirteen, she had been too old to be adopted.

  Magool had cursed the name that marked her out as the early flowering girl. Had cursed her parents, each time the men forced themselves on her. Her own kind, amid the diesel-stink and filth of the ramshackle Somali ship. Then, white men when she reached Rome. There was no distinction to be made between them. By the time she had escaped the cocaine fug of nightly abuse and arrived in Amsterdam on the train, she was already five months pregnant. Not showing yet.

  Two full years later, now. Watching the snow and feeling hopeful, just as that charlatan showed up, knocking on her window. She should have known better than to let him in.

  He had caressed the jagged, lumpy line of her caesarean scar before putting his hand between her legs.

  ‘You healed well,’ he said, kissing her neck.

  She bit her tongue. Swallowed the retort. Money was money and he’d paid up front.

  He lay down on the narrow bed and pulled her on top. Guiding her onto him. Hands on her small breasts. ‘Tell me I’m the best,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘Faster.’ His voice was high. His breath came short. ‘Tell me again how I saved your life.’

  As she stared down at his corpulent pink body with its nauseating smattering of fluffy blond chest hair that crawled from one flabby tit to another, she fantasised about strangling him with her bare hands. Her small slender fingers would never stretch around that red bull neck. He was twice her size.

  ‘I saved you, Noor,’ he said, thrusting himself upwards into her.

  Her words slipped out, unchecked.

  ‘You’re a butcher,’ she said. ‘I have to charge less because of you.’

  The fat pig showed no remorse. He did not even open his eyes to look at her. Merely smiled, gripped her tightly by the hips and ground her pelvis harder towards him. ‘Nonsense. I’m a master craftsman. Black skin just scars more.’

  Afterwards, they had squabbled over the fee. He snatched up the euros he had given her at the start and stuffed them under the bulk of his body.

  ‘Come and get it, little Noor!’ he said, starting to laugh. Glee in his eyes.

  What was this? Some kind of perverse game? Wasn’t it enough that he had cut her baby out of her in that cold, damp back room he called a surgery and stitched her back up like an old sack? Fury flared within her.

  ‘Give me my money back!’ she said, trying to roll him over to reach the notes.

  He grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her away so that she fell against the wall. Suddenly, fear snuffed out the flames of her anger.

  ‘What made you think I would pay, you dumb bitch?’ He pulled the foreskin back down on his flaccid, spent manhood. A sea slug stuck to his thigh. ‘You owe me. You’ll always owe me.’

  She rose to her feet. Backed into the corner, folding her arms over her naked chest. ‘I already paid through the nose!’ she said, wanting to show this beast that she wouldn’t be trifled with. Wanting him to see that she wasn’t a defenceless little girl. But she knew her body language betrayed her and she was annoyed by the waver in her voice. ‘Give me the cash or I’ll report you to the authorities!’

  He smiled brightly. ‘An underage, illegal Somali immigrant, working as a whore? Report me, a pillar of the community? I don’t think I’ll be losing any sleep on that front, little Noor. Do you?’

  He was already dressed. Stuffing the notes back into his wallet, now. Magool steeled herself to step forward and snatch it from him. But the doctor sensed her intentions, leaned in and punched her hard in the face.

  Her cheek stung. Tears sprang from her eyes against her will. She failed to swallow them back.

  ‘Get out, then! Go on! Fuck off and don’t come round here again. Ever.’

  But as he opened the door, he looked back at her. A paus
e that perhaps betrayed the flicker of remorse in those bloodshot blue eyes. He reached inside the breast pocket of his overcoat and retrieved the leather wallet. Pulled out a twenty. Threw it at her.

  ‘No hard feelings?’ he said.

  She picked up the money from the threadbare brown carpet. Pushed it back into his hand.

  ‘Stick your money up your ass, sharmuutaa ku dhashay! You need this more than me,’ she said, bundling him out the door and locking it behind him.

  Waiting until the clatter on the stairs and the glazed door slamming marked his departure, she crouched in her small room and clutched her knees. Allowed herself to weep, but not for long. Cursed him and vowed she would get even one day. Somehow.

  Her thoughts turned to her shared bedsit.

 

‹ Prev