He raised his eyebrows in greeting. Managed a smile with his eyes only, though he wondered if she and Karelse had kissed and made up in his kitchen. Damned streak of piss had shown up at 7am, ringing his bell and banging on the door. He had been making coffee and burning toast in the kitchen for the two of them. George had been in the shower. A surprisingly strong sun had streamed through the patio doors in the living room that opened onto his balcony, flooding the apartment with spring-like warmth and light. Making everything smell right; George’s coconut shower-gel-scent wafting through from the bathroom; the beeswax fragrance of the wooden flooring he’d allowed her to polish; the fresh smell of linen coming from the guest room which she had designated a truly clean space that she could sleep in. All serving to paint his drab bachelor’s pad in a warmer palette, where a woman was finally present and correct.
Until Karelse had shown up.
Three was a crowd. He had made a rapid exit to work, leaving them to settle their differences. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, though he hadn’t wanted to do it at all. Where had he got this notion of gentlemanly behaviour from? Certainly not his father.
He could see no trace of a feverish lover’s bloom in George’s cheeks. In fact, she looked downright miserable. She shook her head and put her finger to her lips, indicating he should keep her arrival to himself.
Bert continued for a further fifteen minutes, pronouncing like a convincing clairvoyant that the murderer or murderers were probably well mannered and reserved in the course of their day-to-day dealings. To the outside world, they might seem to be religious, studious, hypochondriacs. But beneath the façade, there would lurk a monster. More victims would follow, butchered in increasingly bizarre ways.
Kees sat through the lecture, nodding vociferously, as though the professor was performing with the skill of a seasoned thespian a script he had personally penned and given him beforehand. Elvis played with his hair. Marie scribbled notes avidly. But van den Bergen listened to the sort of textbook analysis he had heard many times before, concentrating in the main on looking into George’s eyes. Darkest brown, ringed with curling black lashes that made them look even larger. Milky white sclera that did not betray the fact she had been awake until the small hours, talking over the autopsy, swigging his Courvoisier from the bottle and smoking her e-cigarettes; Googling organ trafficking on his computer. He had wanted to kiss her. Her full lips had looked so accessible at 2am. There had been no space between them. He had wanted to tell her how he felt. The nights, after all, were mainly made for saying things that he would never say the following day. But he had resisted the temptation. And today there was all the space in the world between them. Worse than that. There was Karelse.
Now, she was silent and brooding in the corner. Casual in jogging bottoms and trainers. A denim jacket on top. Still beautiful, though she was dressed for the laundrette. The others, still unaware of her presence. He had those eyes to himself. Until Bert departed. Then…
‘Well. What did you think of the professor’s profile, children?’ he asked his team.
‘Excellent,’ Kees said.
‘Interesting,’ Marie said.
‘Can I go get a coffee?’ Elvis asked.
‘George?’ It was her opinion that van den Bergen really sought.
George pulled her chair to the board table. Pursed her lips. ‘Pile of shit,’ she said.
‘Why do you say that?’ Marie asked.
‘For a start, I think the murderer is just dealing in trafficked organs. There’s no paraphilia in this instance. No sexy trophies. Nothing kinky.’
‘Bullshit!’ Elvis said.
‘Not bullshit. Admittedly, there is a crazy statistic of something like eighty-one percent of serial killers in prisons rating porn as their highest ranking sexual interest. True, Noor and Lepiks had had sexual intercourse before death. But they were in the sex industry, so it’s hardly surprising. And the Filipino showed no signs of having been sexually active recently. I can see why the professor drew the conclusions he did, but if you ask me, sex as a sole motive doesn’t follow on. I was at that autopsy last night with Pau— the chief inspector.’
She exchanged a knowing glance with van den Bergen. Would the others think they were sleeping together, he wondered? The idea that they might gave him an unexpected lift. The realisation that their conjecture would be but a mirage brought him back down immediately.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘De Koninck is sure we’re after a surgeon. I think the killer is organised, not disorganised. They plan the murders. They’re not roving at all, but take the victims to the same spot to undergo organ harvesting, basically.’
Marie rubbed her forehead. ‘Seriously? Is that all this is all about? There’s nothing underlying?’
George and van den Bergen nodded simultaneously.
‘The Valeriusstraat scene,’ van den Bergen began.
‘Was a hoax,’ George finished. She took out her e-cigarette and toyed with the chewed end. ‘We’ve got three well-planned abductions. Not a single bloody witness. So, our man has a vehicle – another aspect you’d expect from an organised killer. Our victims have been restrained, drugged, rigged for surgery. The killer has the ultimate control over life or death.’
‘What the fuck does she know?’ Kees asked, jerking his thumb towards George. Looking for a reaction from Elvis. Scowling at her. ‘Fucking English girl that makes the coffee.’ He turned to her. Looked her up and down as though she were a substandard side of beef, hanging in a downmarket butcher’s window. ‘Go and make yourself useful, love. Get me a latte, so me and these police officers can get on with some detective work.’
‘Shut your trap, Leeuwenhoek!’ van den Bergen snapped, crumpling up the drawing of Tamara and throwing the balled-up paper at his subordinate’s head. It bounced off and scudded across the table top, coming to a stop by his pad. He was reminded of his father throwing a carpet slipper at his head as a teenager, for mouthing off at the old man about the merits of fine art as a career. Made a note not to throw things at his staff again. A sharp word would suffice. He could not become his father. ‘Georgina is a criminologist from Cambridge University, you dim-witted prick. Show her some respect or go back to sucking on Kamphuis’ titty.’
George leaned forward. Narrowed her eyes at her critic. Sucked her teeth with slow venom but did not rise to Leeuwenhoek’s bait. ‘Our killer is trying to make these murders look like the acts of a deranged lunatic. But they’re not. We’re dealing with a very cunning individual, who’s not going to be easy to catch.’
‘But Ahlers has got to be involved, right?’ Elvis said.
Van den Bergen leaned back and rocked on the hind legs of his chair. He pointed to George and Marie. ‘I want you two to track down Noor and her baby. See where she lived. Find out her story. Maybe someone knows where the baby’s gone. Ahlers can stay in clink until the hole in his arse seals up, for all I care. I’ve checked with the prosecutor. The match on the pube is enough to keep him a while. He still doesn’t have an alibi for the night of Noor’s murder, although he’s in the clear for Lepiks’ because of his little jaunt to the casino.’
Marie nodded and checked the notes on her electronic notebook. ‘The CCTV footage has him playing blackjack at the time Lepiks was being murdered, going by the pathologist’s estimated time of death.’
‘Find out what you can anyway.’ He turned to Elvis. ‘You and I are going to look into the Filipino again. I want to track down the vessels that docked in Rotterdam in the course of that day. We’re going to re-interview the dockers with Wouter.’ Turned to Leeuwenhoek. ‘You get to type up the paperwork for Hasselblad’s witch hunt for the mentally ill.’
Kees grimaced and sighed heavily, like a child being told to go and tidy his room.
‘And you can straighten your bloody face! Every policeman over the age of forty knows your father was a legend on the force, Leeuwenhoek. Legends don’t shy away from doing their paperwork. If it’s good enough for him, it
’s good enough for you.’
Van den Bergen clapped his hands together enthusiastically, though all he wanted to do was crawl back home to bed. The time was coming when he would have to give into the darkness. He could feel it, especially now Karelse had reclaimed George’s light. Best not to show his team, though.
‘The more we find out about our victims, the closer we’ll get to the murderer. The people were chosen, tracked and hunted down. Our man is out there watching and waiting for his next victim.’
CHAPTER 50
Hamburg, Germany, 26 January
‘Put your clothes back on and I’ll take you for an ice-cream,’ the man said, grinning at her over the footboard of the bedstead.
‘I don’t want a fucking ice-cream,’ Ewa said, dimly aware she was slurring.
The man shrugged. Squatted bedside her, low enough to be below her eye-level. She could see his scalp through his greasy ginger hair. Dandruff. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said in a Bavarian dialect she could barely understand. ‘I thought all kids your age liked ice-cream. I was just trying to be nice.’
‘Fuck off, pervert.’ She took another gulp from the vodka bottle they had given her. Just like Mum, now. She understood, finally. The stinging liquid made you numb. Made this nightmare doable. She was going to get through this. Mum and Günther would come for her when they realised she was missing and hadn’t just run off again.
The pervert started to dismantle his camera, unscrewing the long lens and putting it with care back into the foam-lined case on the floor. Next, he switched off the bright lights that had beat down on her like fake suns, making her squint the whole time. The Italian man – at least, she thought he was either Italian or Spanish, judging by his heavy accent when he spoke German – had threatened to slap her when her eyes had started to water because of the glare. Ugly old bastard with his big fat neck and giant shoulders. He was the worst. He was a giant freak.
She swung her legs off the bed. Clasped her hands over her chest and pubic area, though that hardly mattered now. Stumbled drunkenly in the semi-darkness to the stool where her clothes were stacked in a crumpled heap. Pulled her knickers and jeans gingerly over the places where it was sore. The beginnings of bruises on the insides of her thighs from the sheer weight of that pig they had filmed her with. Sweat rolling off him onto her under those lights.
‘I’m going to be sick,’ she said, pressing her hand to her mouth.
‘Not over the equipment,’ the pervert said.
Ewa could not stem the tide. The contents of her stomach splattered everywhere. Her socks were wet. Then, she realised her face was wet. She was crying. ‘I want Mutti. I want to go home. Please. Take me home. I won’t tell.’
There was laughter to her left in the shadows. A man’s laughter. The Italian. ‘Your mummy doesn’t give a shit about you, cara bella. That alcoholic bitch will not come for you! It’s better this way.’ He stepped out of the murk and offered her a towel. Started to wipe her hands, though she grabbed it from him.
‘I can do it myself.’ Staggered with the booze still inside her. Fell over, despite her best intentions.
The Italian pulled her up. ‘I bought you a gift.’ He handed her a childish frilled sundress in pink cotton. ‘You can put this on instead, cara. You will look like a princess.’
She pushed it away. ‘Don’t want your fucking dress. Give me my jeans. Let me out of here, or I’ll scream.’
Fingers like steel rods bit into her shoulder. That was the Italian, all right. Evil bastard with his beady eyes and mean mouth. He released her shoulder and encased her throat in his hot, clammy hand. His fingers went all the way round. She felt the breath starting to leave her. Her eyes popping. If only this was all a bad dream. If only she was in school; sitting in class with Frau Reichmann at the front, droning on about Pythagoras’ theorem. She would listen this time. Honest to God, she would. She wouldn’t smart-mouth the old cow. She wouldn’t even walk out and slink off to the mall with Alia. Anything but this.
‘You scream and I’ll squeeze the life out of your little scrawny neck, cheeky whore,’ he said. He smelled of cigars and beer. ‘You’re nothing! Understand? Nowhere, without me. I look after you. Think of me as your uncle. You do as you’re told like a good girl. Those are the rules. Put the fucking dress on.’
She nodded. He released her from his grip. Her vomit-covered socks were cold and wet. She started to tremble, stripping them off to reveal scabbed, blackened feet.
Suddenly, it was too bright again. Making her blink. Shielding her eyes with her stinking socks until the novelty of light subsided. The pervert had switched on the apartment’s normal lights. Even through the fog of vodka, she saw exactly how things were:
She was alone with these monsters in a filthy two-roomed shithole, not dissimilar from home. But not her home, this time. Ewa knew now, there were worse things than Mum being blotto on the sofa at 10am and Günther scratching himself in front of the TV, smoking dope. Put being bullied by the other kids at school into the shade.
Here were empty glasses on every surface, stinking of stale alcohol. Overflowing ashtrays. Paraphernalia from the drugs they had injected into her ankle. A filthy teaspoon. A lighter. A used syringe with a solitary bead of brown shit mixed with her blood, clinging to the inside, just as she clung to the hope that Mum and Günther would come to save her. A vague memory of the needle stinging her ankle. The Italian said it wouldn’t make as much mess if they injected her there. She hadn’t remembered what had happened after that but had woken up stiff and sore. Bleeding. There had been a party and she had provided the entertainment. That much, she realised.
The pervert had arrived after lunch with his camera. Told her she was going to be a star, like Katy Perry or Taylor Swift. The part of her that was still a child wanted to believe him. Had enjoyed the shawarma kebab the Italian had brought for her to eat. Keep your strength up, cara mia. He only takes your picture because you are so lovely. The rest of her knew better.
‘Hurry up,’ the Italian said, peering between the grimy slats of the Venetian blinds to whatever lay below. Checking his watch. ‘We’ve got to go. The Duke wants to see you.’
‘Go?’ she asked. ‘Leave here, you mean?’
In truth, she had no idea where the apartment was. Had she been there days? Weeks? Longer? She remembered getting into a really nice car, thinking she had been offered a lift into town, to the station. All friendly enough. Felt safe. Next minute, she had woken up on the bed in the apartment with the Italian on top of her.
Outside, there was the hammer and holler of builders. Loud dance music thumping from somewhere close by. Same music day and night. Shouting from drunk men. She had an inkling that they were in Hamburg. It was the nearest big city, after all. She had heard Günther telling Mum about a stag party he had been to that ended up in a brothel in a place called the Reeperbahn. The two of them had laughed hard about it. At the time, she had wondered what a brothel was and what stags did at a party. Had Ewa got herself caught up in that kind of thing?
A knock on the door. The Italian retreated down the hall to answer it. There was an exchange of words in another language. He came back. Smiled like he meant it. Something like pity in those beady fucking eyes. Held his arm out. ‘Change of plan. Come, Ewa. There’s a nice doctor wants to meet you.’
CHAPTER 51
Katwijk asylum seekers’ centre, Netherlands, later
‘We take our jobs very seriously, here!’ The woman snatched the file back. Held it to her blousy, polyester-wrapped body, as though it were a floatation device and she was all at sea. Her tone of voice, which had started out so friendly, was rapidly turning hostile and cold.
‘Then how come you let an asylum-seeking minor slip under your radar?’ Marie asked.
It was the fourth place they had visited. The first couple, battered women’s refuges in the city itself. Then, homeless shelters. George had had the idea to speak to representatives of African community groups. But nobody recognised the photo of No
or in the young arts organisation, Stichting GAM, which, it transpired, was for young people of West African origin, anyway. Blank expressions from the imam at the mosque. Finally, some careful internet research in the unprepossessing café of her favourite shop-full-of-shit, Hema, had allowed George to pinpoint the Asylum Seekers’ Centre in Katwijk. Three-quarters of an hour south of Amsterdam in a car. Just northwest of Leiden.
The drive down had been uncomfortable in a standard issue detective’s car – a Ford Focus. It was dirty inside – empty chocolate bar wrappers, grit on the slip mats from people’s shoes, bits of paper, receipts, a product-laden comb that looked as though it could have belonged to Elvis. The cabin stank of body odour and sour breath, masked badly by one of those cheap air-fresheners in the shape of a tree that hung from the dash. No Merc, with its heated leather seats and comforting thrum. No van den Bergen, smelling of sport deodorant and oranges.
Marie proved a tedious chauffeuse and had said nothing. Ignoring the funk of her infrequently washed body, George had taken the time to study Ahlers’ statement about Noor. Somali, probably. Young – under sixteen. Worked out of the red light district on Monnikenstraat, just by the canal of Oudezijds Achterburgwal, where her body was eventually discovered one block down. No known fixed address that he knew of. Ahlers was refusing to breathe a word about the ultimate fate of her baby.
‘If I was a Somali girl, new to the country, chances are I wouldn’t have made it here under my own steam,’ George mused, as they trundled along the dual carriageway of the A44. Passing a BP garage on their left. Flat green expanses to her right. Nothing of note in this unprepossessing, drab part of the country, beyond the dramatic grey and yellow rain clouds that ravaged the insipid winter-blue sky. At her side, Marie sniffed but said nothing. ‘Either my parents would have paid every penny they had to get me over here, stowed away on a cargo ship and then in a truck. Or I’d have come a more circuitous route, maybe. Noor was a working girl who knew the ropes, right? So—’
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