George offered her the finger.
Jeering and applause from strangers.
Go on, you pissed-up cow. Show us your tits. Get them off.
As she spun herself drunkenly around the pole, gyrating in non-matching underwear – budget black pants from M&S paired with an expensive red Triumph Amourette bra – she caught sight of someone besides her mother, Aunty Sharon and Dermot Robinson, all staring at her with horrified expressions. A familiar face attached to an unfamiliar body. Blinked. Gone. She must have imagined it. Now, there were men trying to stuff ten-pound notes into her knickers and Letitia was trying to throw her coat around her. Shouting in patois that she should be ashamed of herself, and had she not been brought up to know better?
‘No. I dragged myself up, remember?’ she answered, barely registering the slap across her cheek.
She threw her dress back on. Marched up the stairs, too drunk to feel the bite of the chill night air as she fell through the door onto the street. Hugged her coat tightly around her, trying to make out the time on the face of her watch. Shouldn’t have had that extra glass of wine. Idiot. Tubes and trains still running, hopefully, though she couldn’t remember what day it was. Stumbling along.
On the train back to Catford, she felt eyes on her. Young lads staring at her wig, worn askew. When they got off, she still had that feeling of being the focus of someone’s attention. Too tired to scrutinise the other passengers thoroughly. She kept losing the thread of her thoughts, the posters on the train riding up the walls and down the walls.
Then, off at her stop. Doors bleeping as they started to close. Someone had got off behind her, jamming their body into the doors at the last minute; forcing them to open again. Bleeping. The train moved off, but she heard footsteps behind her. But nobody in her peripheral vision.
It must have been late, because the streets were graveyard-deserted. Not even a fox. Lights out in all the houses. Frost, settling in jagged patterns on car windscreens. Then, footsteps quickening behind her. A tall figure.
George spun around just in time to see the shining blade of the scalpel catch the light from the streetlamp. Blinding her momentarily. She only glimpsed her attacker – wearing a surgical cap and mask. A hand jabbing down towards her neck. She screamed.
CHAPTER 78
Laren, the Netherlands, 15 February
Lying in a strange bed, in a strange home, waiting for the return of a new lover whom he didn’t love. It was a peculiar experience, van den Bergen thought. The last time he had done something so decadent and foolish, he had been a young man, dating Andrea. Except he hadn’t been burdened by guilt back then. Now, old enough to know better, he was thinking of George whilst luxuriating in Sabine Schalks’ Egyptian cotton bedding. Trying to focus on the quiet, elegant ambience of her country house in Laren, which had been a relatively short drive southeast of Amsterdam.
As if her Koninginneweg house hadn’t been grand enough.
‘You’ve got to go right now?’ he had asked the previous afternoon, watching Sabine dress hastily, spraying perfume in the air above her. Masking the fact that she had not even taken the time to shower the scent of him off her body. ‘Seems a little sudden.’
‘Yes. Sorry. I must, must, must be in London by this evening. Business. But you can stay until you’re ready to go.’
‘Why did you invite me over if you knew you’ve got a flight to catch?’
‘Spontaneity,’ she had said. Throwing clothes into a case. ‘Aren’t you glad I did?’ Blew him a kiss.
He picked up his watch from her nightstand. Checked the time. Three o’clock. Hasselblad would haul him over the coals for going AWOL in a time of crisis. ‘Give me five minutes. I’ll be dressed and out of here.’ He had thrown the duvet aside to reveal his nakedness.
Shaking her head. Hastily putting in her earrings. ‘If I don’t go now, I’ll not get a flight. Some things won’t wait, I’m afraid.’ Zipping her small case closed. ‘Now, make sure you lock up this place properly when you go,’ Slipping on her high heels, though she hardly needed the extra height. It was the first time he had not needed to stoop to speak to a woman. ‘Especially after the shenanigans with the building site at the back, I’ve got to be really on the ball about security.’
Van den Bergen cast a glance at the window that faced onto the enclosed courtyard gardens below. Smiled.
‘What were the odds of Marianne’s expert paediatrician living in the very house that backs onto the Valeriusstraat building site?’ He laughed at the curious irony.
‘It was obviously fate,’ Sabine said, grabbing his hand, gathering up her leather skirt and thrusting his fingers into the warm wetness inside her knickers. ‘There. A little something to remember me by while I’m gone. Dior couldn’t bottle that.’
Van den Bergen withdrew his hand. Found himself blushing like a schoolboy.
‘Are you marking your territory?’ he asked. ‘I thought only men did that.’
She smirked and winked. ‘I call it Eau de Sabine. Anyway, listen! I’ll meet you at the Laren house. Three locks. Easy enough. Let yourself in. Get the open fire going. I’ll be back before you know it.’
She had leaned in for a kiss that promised more. Her hair fell onto his face. He drank in the smell of her expensive perfume. But her lips were harder than George’s; her tongue more probing and aggressive. She was a beautiful woman by any standards. And yet, he found her slightly intimidating, despite the fact that they had just made love. Well, less making love – something he had definitely done with George – more, had enjoyed surprisingly perfunctory but adequate afternoon-sex. Still, two different lovers in the same month after years of romantic drought was nothing short of a miracle. On paper, he was a stud. In reality, he was nothing but a love rat, betraying his own heart, as well as his friend. His head was in bits. George had not lied when she had mischievously promised she would ruin him.
Sabine had tossed the keys to him. ‘Catch!’
‘I can’t just turn up to another man’s house and make myself at home,’ he had said, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed.
‘It’s not another man’s house, Paul. It’s my house. And sure you can. Be my guest. You won’t be pestered by nosey neighbours. There’s never anyone around anyway. You’ve got the keycode for the gates and the alarm. Relax! Enjoy it. Get the bed warm for me.’
Laren. The sort of neighbourhood and home that had no place even on the periphery of van den Bergen’s conscious mind or memory. Somewhere between a traditional Dutch country house on steroids and a Beverley Hills mansion. Who knew Sabine was so wealthy?
He stared at the beamed ceiling in that house, now, and tried to imagine what kind of a man Thomas Schalks must have been. Incredibly rich, if nothing else. Even the dust motes that drifted in the air here looked like slivers of platinum, falling to the ground like munificence from the warming sunlight. At home, in his place, they just looked like dust. Bits of dead skin and minute dirty particles that drifted in from the diesel-stink of the roads outside. Not here. Here, it was silent but for the sounds of nature. Birds on the wing, excited by the promise of spring in the burgeoning buds of deciduous trees. The wind rustling in the evergreen holly and specimen pines in the garden. Smelled of fresh grass and wealth.
How odd it must have been to be left a widow at forty, in possession of your spouse’s massive family fortune. And now, he, Paul van den Bergen, was apparently dating this merry widow. Laughing out loud at the very thought, he rolled over and hugged the plump pillow. Thought of George’s pillowy bosom. The feel of her curvaceous, womanly shape in his arms. He held the pillow tight and clenched his eyes shut, as the pain crowded out the superficial euphoria of his artificial high. Sabine was not George. She would never be George. He had known that even before she had kissed him.
Why had he allowed himself to be seduced so easily?
‘Poor you,’ she had said. ‘Come back to mine,’ she had suggested. ‘You’re shaking. You need a drink!’ she had observed.
And he had succumbed to the novel oblivion that four brandies on an empty stomach and easy sex with a thoughtful and admirable woman had afforded him. A panacea to the most dreadful turn of events and the ensuing unbearable anguish.
‘I’ve fucked up, Sabine,’ he had said, sipping the Hennessey she had pushed into his hand. Standing by the fireplace in her grand Koninginneweg living room. Gazing at the quaint African figurines on her mantel. Large-breasted fertility figures, by the looks, with no arms or legs. ‘Ahlers is dead. I almost got two young people killed. One’s in hospital with a hole in his shoulder! A couple of inches in another direction and it could have been curtains. This is all down to me.’
‘How can it be? Some things, you just can’t control,’ she had said. Thawing him with a warm smile and a friendly caress on his brow.
He thought of the lonely ache that George’s absence had left in his heart. ‘It’s not just that. I’ve blown it with someone I care for very deeply.’
‘Your English assistant?’
Sabine had been a good listener, nodding sympathetically as he had confided how he admired George’s intellect. Related a deliberately abridged tale of how, despite the close friendship they developed over time, he had pushed George away with harsh words. All the way back to London. He was careful not to mention that he was head over heels in love with her, of course – even more so, since they had both finally given in to a mutual attraction more compelling than anything he had ever before considered possible. There was definitely no need for Sabine to know that.
‘Well, if she’d drop the case and walk out on you like some tantrum-throwing toddler, she’s probably not worth worrying about,’ Sabine had said. ‘Sounds like you misplaced your loyalties.’
‘Oh, she won’t drop the case,’ van den Bergen said. ‘I know George. She’ll be in the UK, mulling things over. Looking into the Ramsgate killings. Last time we hit a bump in the road, she consulted the serial killer, Silas Holm, for advice, would you believe it? And got the information she needed, too! She’s resourceful all—’
Sabine had taken his glass from him and kissed him confidently, interrupting his eulogy.
He had pulled away in stunned silence. Still continuing to berate himself as though the kiss had not happened; as though his brain had not registered the paediatrician’s advance.
‘I’m a failure.’
‘You’re far from a failure, Paul.’
Sabine Schalks had said the right thing to him at just the right time. Touched him in a vulnerable place. And he had fallen at her size 42 feet; uncharacteristically sharing intimacy with her that felt unearned by her, unburdening himself to her about George, letting slip that Ahlers had given him the name of the woman who had bought Magool’s baby only moments before he had been executed. How out of sorts he was.
And yet, here he lay now in an antique bed that might have cost almost as much as his own apartment, in a house worth millions. Downstairs, he thought he heard the front door slam. Sabine must have returned. Another clandestine night of indulgence planned – uninterrupted this time, with any luck. Not a single soul knew his whereabouts or with whom he was consorting, except for the lovely Sabine herself.
When she did not appear in the bedroom, he pulled on her robe that hung on the back of the en suite door and went downstairs.
Finding nobody in the house, he felt a sense of unease.
‘Sabine?’ Nothing. ‘Sabine, is that you?’ Not a sound.
He padded from room to room, until he reached a workshop or studio of some description. It was messy, unlike the rest of the place. Pots on shelves. A potter’s wheel. Here must have been the place where Sabine practised her sculpture. In one corner of the large space stood what appeared to be a kiln – almost industrial in size. Curious, he approached it. Opened the heavy door. Balked when he saw the kiln’s charred contents.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he said.
‘Not Jesus Christ,’ came Sabine’s voice behind him. ‘But not far off it.’
CHAPTER 79
Cambridge, St John’s College, later
‘Christ on a bike, Georgina McKenzie!’ Sally Wright snapped. ‘You’ve got some brass neck, coming back here, after nothing but radio silence. How dare you go over my head! Who the hell do you think you are?’
Standing by the oriel window in her office, into the senior tutor’s face were etched deep lines, accentuated now by the level of ferocity in her intent. Mouth, pruned with dissatisfaction, dragging hard on a cigarette. Her blunt fringe hanging too high on her forehead to obscure wiry grey eyebrows angled upwards in almost cartoon-like rage.
George gripped the sofa’s arms.
‘I can explain,’ she said. But she started to shake violently. Body twitching as though she had been possessed by the devil. ‘Oh, I feel weird.’
Cigarette still in mouth, Sally ran over to her. Put her arms around her.
‘Dear God! What’s going on with you? Don’t you dare have a fit on me!’ she said, dropping ash onto the threadbare red Persian rug that covered the floor boards.
George relished the warmth of her body. Drank in the familiar nicotine and coffee smell of the woman who had not given her life but had given her much more than that: she had given her a future.
‘It’s a-adrenalin,’ she stammered. ‘My brain’s about to b-blow a g-gasket. You wouldn’t believe what happened to me last n-night.’
Sally threw an old tartan blanket around George. Strutted to her tea urn. Steam rising from water near boiling point, spitting all over her hands from the unruly tap. ‘Bastard thing!’ She sucked her scalded skin. Gave George some weak tea in a chipped china cup. Produced a hip flask from her battered briefcase. Tipped amber liquid into the tea. ‘Hot toddy. Cure for all ills,’ she said, winking.
‘Thanks,’ George said, eyeing the cup in disgust. ‘But I can’t drink out of that cup. It’s chipped. I can’t…’
Backing away, Sally glowered at her. Jabbing in her direction with her almost-spent cigarette to emphasise every syllable she spoke. ‘You broke every rule in the book, young lady. You defy my authority. You make a mockery of protocol. I expressly told you not to go to Amsterdam. I told you, it would end in disaster. And here you are, turning your nose up at my fucking hot toddy!’
She stubbed out her cigarette in a large, dirty cut-glass ashtray on an aspidistra stand by the window. Lit another. Tossed one to George who lit up willingly.
‘The least you owe me is an apology.’
George exhaled blue smoke in two billowing jet-streams from her nostrils. Afterburners of indignation. Considered Sally’s demand. Cheeky old bag, pushing her around; browbeating her into deference like she was some wayward charge, rather than a capable woman, all grown-up now. ‘No. No way am I saying sorry for something I don’t regret. You, of all people, should respect my right to autonomy. My life. My choices. My risk. I ain’t no wet-behind-the-ears undergrad, now.’
Sally perched on the edge of her desk. Narrowed her eyes, hard and unforgiving behind those cat’s-eye glasses. ‘Oh. You don’t regret almost having your head blown off by some two-bit hoodie in a church?’
‘You know about that?’ George clutched the blanket close. Defensive. Feeling like Sally’s remark was somehow meant as ridicule. Belittling her stab at independence as haphazard at best, downright dangerous at worst. ‘How?’
‘Van den Bergen. He emailed me soon after you stormed out on him. Warning me that you might be in danger. That the murderer had not yet been caught, despite news reports to the contrary. And news must travel fast on the police grapevine, because there was a missive from him regarding the church shooting sitting in my in-box this morning.’
Under scrutiny in that enclosed space, George felt like she was in the claustrophobic tunnel of an all-seeing MRI scanner. Sally’s eyes, stripping away the layers of artifice to find the truth of George’s secrets laid bare beneath. Was there any limit to the things Sally Wright could gather intelligence on? Did she know about what had
happened in that hotel room in Ramsgate with that treacherous, gorgeous disappointment, van den Bergen?
‘You two have got no right, chatting shit about me behind my back,’ George said. ‘Making decisions about my life. My life.’ Prodding herself in the chest. Quaking for a different reason, now. ‘Not your fucking life, Sally. Not van den Bergen’s life. I went to Amsterdam because you were keeping me here like it was an open bloody prison. I came back because my family needed me. My family, Sally. Flesh and blood.’
George felt like a fire had been sparked within her. She might scorch all in her path; spitting highly flammable vitriol at this woman who saw herself as her surrogate mother. Except George had fed at the breast of Letitia the Dragon.
Letitia, who had unexpectedly come thundering up that deserted Catford road behind George’s attacker, wielding a discarded exhaust pipe she must have found in amongst the trash that grows like strange and wonderful weeds by the railway stations of South East London.
‘I’m gonna kill you, bastard!’ she had shouted. ‘That’s my fucking daughter.’ Murder in her voice. Aunty Sharon steps behind. Tottering down the road to help, though it was Letitia who had sprinted after the tall attacker in her bare feet. Fast for a fat woman.
George had been lying on her back: a dying cockroach in somebody’s front garden. Thought she was about to be gutted by some six-foot-tall masked wraith bearing a scalpel. Instead, watching the counter attack unfold in what seemed like slo-mo. Straight out of a ninja film, man.
The exhaust pipe had whistled impressively through the air before it had connected with the head of George’s assailant. Hit home with a clunk. Hadn’t knocked him out but another swipe square across the shoulder blades had spooked him enough to make him flee.
The Girl Who Broke the Rules Page 33
