‘Shit! Shit! No!’
He couldn’t flash his badge among this lot of psychopaths. It would be suicide. But wait! Was that Den Bosch he glimpsed right by one of the mosque minarets? Disappearing around the corner. What was the sneaky bastard up to now?
Elvis harnessed the determination to get away from this rabble and pushed against the tide of muscle and hatred. He broke free like a drowning man finally finding which way the surface lies – just in time to see Den Bosch disappearing through a side door, beckoned in by a middle-aged man with a large beard, mosque hat and salwar kameez. Instantly recognisable as the imam Abdullah al Haq, thanks to several recent TV news appearances.
Elvis stopped as Den Bosch peered through the murky streetlight in his direction, then followed as he turned away. Caught the two men shaking hands. ‘What the bloody hell is going on here?’
CHAPTER 15
Van den Bergen’s apartment, 18 October
Aware of the noise, George opened one eye to check the time on her bedside clock. The digital display read 05:30. Jesus. It’s still night-time. A floorboard creaked. The sound of a drawer sliding open. She rolled over abruptly. Van den Bergen was standing by his chest of drawers in his pants.
‘Where are you off this early?’ she asked, watching as he rummaged inside for a clean shirt and pulled it on hastily over his scarred torso. ‘The allotment? You’re not going to the allotment in a smart work shirt, are you?’ She propped herself on one elbow, scratching at her tangle of black curls. Rubbed her nose and sneezed. The bedroom would need dusting with a damp cloth. Again.
‘Tamara’s,’ he said. No hint of a smile. Just a look of mild panic – the kind he got when he was summoned for Opa duties. Action Gramps on a mission. George knew it well.
‘Oh yeah? You said you were taking me out for breakfast. We were going to have a proper conversation about me and you…and the future. Remember?’ Two bloody minutes of wakefulness and already George could feel her blood simmering.
Van den Bergen donned his reading glasses and buttoned his cuffs. Fiddling and faddling in haste. ‘Andrea was supposed to take Eva this morning while Tamara goes for a job interview.’ He pulled his trousers over his long legs and sat on the end of the bed to tackle his socks. ‘You know what a waste of space Numb-Nuts is. God forbid he should get off his lazy arse and get a proper job. Like I did.’
Lurching out of the warmth of the bedclothes, George embraced Van den Bergen from behind. Felt the curvature of his long spine against her chest. ‘You’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.’ She kissed his freshly shaved cheek, drinking in the smell of shower gel, deodorant and toothpaste. Aware of her own early morning breath, she backed away, sitting cross-legged on the bed in her T-shirt and knickers. He didn’t look round. ‘You’re spreading yourself too thinly, Paul.’
‘I’ve only got one granddaughter,’ he said, tugging his socks up.
‘But you’re treating Eva like your own child, stepping in where her parents should be doing the hard graft.’ Malcontent wriggled inside her like an unwelcome parasite. George knew exactly which emotion it was feeding off. She felt like a petulant child. But thought of how readily the people around her took her for granted, sidelined or betrayed her in order to fulfil their own petty ambitions. Danny. Letitia. Sally Wright… ‘You’ve done your time! You gave up your dreams to bring home the bread and play dutiful daddy.’
‘I never would have made much of an artist, anyway.’
‘Bullshit. You gave your entire future to Tamara when she was born. And you’re still giving it! Now it’s time for you to invest more in your life. In us. What about us, Paul? Do we not matter anymore?’
Finally, Van den Bergen turned to her, surveying her with his body at an awkward angle, as though he didn’t think her query warranted a straight response. ‘I’ll not be long,’ he said.
‘So you can’t even commit to an answer?’
‘You never wanted formalised commitment before. Why now?’ He rose from the bed. Donned the watch she’d bought him. ‘You’re just feeling insecure, Georgina.’
‘Fuck you.’ She lay back down and threw the duvet over herself. Turned away from Van den Bergen. Silently, she hoped that he would at least approach the bed and plant a placatory kiss on her cheek. A hand of solidarity on her shoulder. Anything to show he cared and that she mattered.
‘You’ve lost your job in the UK. Your family situation is more chaotic than ever. I get it. You want to settle down, finally. Didn’t I say you would?’ He chuckled, the sanctimonious bastard, but stayed on his side of the bedroom. No kiss. No hand on the shoulder.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, not bothering to hide the sulk in her voice. ‘I’m going to read more of Rivka Zemel’s diary. I’ll report back if I find anything untoward or interesting, Chief Inspector. Enjoy babysitting. Opa.’
Closing her eyes, she could hear him taking his suit jacket from its hanger in the wardrobe. Maybe his granddaughter would hawk up all over him. It would serve him right. Dad, can you just pop over? Dad, can you help with bath time? Dad, can you lend me and Willem a thousand euros? Dad. Dad. Fucking Dad. Every time his kidult of a spoiled, entitled daughter called, he went running. He never refused her. Never. He just couldn’t or wouldn’t see that Tamara had turned over the last few years into her spoiled, demanding, selfish cow of a mother, Andrea. Now the baby had conferred even more power on her. And what did George have?
‘Do me a favour, will you?’ he asked.
Had he even picked up on her pointed tone or use of Opa? No. Insensitive arse-wipe.
‘What?’
‘If I’m not back by 11 a.m., can you and Marie interview Dr Baumgartner? He’s the—’
‘The owner of the practice where Abadi works. Yes. I know. Fine. Give Eva a kiss from me.’
George bit back the sarcasm that was infusing itself on the tip of her tongue. It wasn’t the baby’s fault that her grandfather was being a spineless twat.
With Van den Bergen gone, George found she couldn’t get back to sleep. Now was an ideal opportunity to venture further into Rivka Zemel’s world to find out more about how life had inevitably taken a turn for the tragic for her. George was certain that this tale would not have a happy ending. She thought of the idealistic young love that was developing on the pages of Rivka’s diary between her and Ed Sijpesteijn. Swallowed hard to quash the pain and disappointment that the cynical arrangement she and Van den Bergen had stoked up within her.
‘Oh, fuck Van den Bergen! Come on, George. Earn your money, seeing how that’s all he seems to think you’re good for.’
Picking up where she had left off, she discovered who had thumped with such aggression on the Zemels’ front door…
I have to say, when Mama opened up, I feared the worst. I honestly thought the SS had come for us. Some Dutch Jewish men had been arrested not so very long ago and tensions have been growing in the city. The local authorities put up signs months ago, ring-fencing the Jewish quarter, as though we’re animals to be penned into a restricted area. A few of the parks bear notices saying Jews are forbidden entry, which is horrid. I used to love strolling in the Vondelpark with Mama, Papa and Shmuel when there was nothing else to do on a Sabbath.
Hendrik’s new girlfriend, Anna Groen, says she has an uncle and an aunt in Poland who wrote recently, saying that all the Jews there are being made to wear a yellow badge, marking them out in public as such. So, imagine my relief when the insistent knock at the door turned out to be our neighbour Mr Wolff. He broke the news that Shmuel can no longer attend the local school but must attend a new special school for Jewish children only. Ed says it’s something called ‘segregation’. I say it’s outrageous! Shmuel has so many friends in his class. For a boy who really suffers with his health, seeing his schoolmates is the only thing that gets him to leave the house some days. When he was little, Mama home-schooled him, but he got so lonely. I really don’t think it’s fair. How long before I’m not allowed to work in a genti
le household? What will we do for money then? Papa already had to sign his business over to his non-Jewish business partner. That was a whole year ago, and we’ve been struggling for money ever since, though Mr Van den Broek says he’s being fair.
Anyway, my time at the Verhagen house is the only thing that keeps me from despair these days. When Ed comes over, we snatch some time alone in the scullery (only when Famke’s out on errands, of course). We hold hands and talk about how we will be together after the war. I think the other Sijpesteijns are not nearly as keen on Jews as Ed. His parents are really quite formal and conservative. You’d never believe Mr Verhagen and Mrs Sijpesteijn are siblings! Mrs Sijpesteijn, who occasionally drops round on her own to discuss ‘family matters’ with Mr Verhagen, is a po-faced old bat, if ever I met one. She still wears ankle-length skirts like they wore in 1910, for a start! I don’t doubt it is to hide her horrid, swollen ankles. She looks the type to have swollen ankles.
When I bring her coffee and cake, she sneers at me and always finds something unpleasant to say about the wrinkles in my stockings or the dry skin on my hands. I often catch her deliberately dropping crumbs and putting her cup directly on the table, leaving a ring, knowing that I will have to clean up after her. Airs and graces, as if she’s the Queen! And she never, ever laughs. Small wonder, then, that Ed seems to think the Jews’ clannish love of family, colourful use of Yiddish, dry humour and, of course, our good old chicken soup and kneidlach are quite the thing. I wonder if Her Royal Highness, with her mean-spirited Calvinist sensibilities, who almost certainly regards the Nazis as an efficient, bureaucratic machine to be admired (that’s what Ed said), realises that her son is a free-spirited resistance fighter?
Pausing to make a coffee, George contemplated the modern Dutch people. She recognised the irony in the Netherlands historically being a liberal haven for the world’s vulnerable people – now, more than ever. And yet, weren’t the likes of the PEGIDA supporters and the rising alt-right the antithesis of that reputation? How very like the po-faced, apparently anti-Semitic Mrs Sijpesteijn the contemporary conservative Dutch were, George assessed.
‘Fucking hypocrites,’ she said, settling down for another few pages. Skimming forward, she sighed deeply as she came across the next major change in Rivka’s life.
17 July 1942
The winter was so hard, and though the canals were frozen solid, my family and the other Jews of Amsterdam couldn’t even enjoy skating on them. Imagine that! Unsurprisingly, everyone was been filled with joy to see the trees come into bud once again. Papa has been hopeful that the Germans are starting to lose their power, especially after failing to defeat the Soviets thanks to the dreadfully cold weather. Germany has joined forces with Italy and Japan, but the United States has stepped into the fray, making everything suddenly possible.
Mama has always maintained that we should have gone to England or else followed Uncle Joost to New York when we had the chance. When the German army started to falter, though, Papa started saying that she shouldn’t be so pessimistic. By his reckoning, if the British and Americans gain the upper hand and the Soviets keep fending off the Nazi advance, the Germans will be crushed and we’ll all be able to get back to normal, soon. When they’re gone, we Jews will be able to ride the trams again and go shopping in the mornings, like normal people!
Famke’s not exactly happy that I can’t help her anymore if she has to run errands in the afternoon. Really, she should be grateful that I still work here at all. Jews aren’t supposed to visit non-Jews in their homes these days. And when I stay late to darn the Verhagens’ clothes, I’m being incredibly daring, I suppose. The eight o’clock curfew is nonsense. Mama and Papa shout at me for staying out, but how am I to have any life at all if I can’t be at the Verhagen house in the evening when the boys are all together?
The last few days have been great fun, I have to admit. Summer is in full swing. Hendrik’s girlfriend accompanies him whenever he comes over for a Force of Five meeting. She sings the most beautiful songs for us. I’m not officially allowed out at night, of course, but Anna, who’s only two years older than me, is a chanteuse in a fine restaurant on the Keizersgracht. She sings for the SS officers, and says some of them are terribly charming and dapper. I can’t say I feel that comfortable when she comes out with things like that, but if Hendrik’s happy that she’s trustworthy, then so be it. Anna is awfully beautiful, with gleaming blonde hair and bright red lips. Just like Marlene Dietrich! She really has cheered the Verhagen house up.
The thing is, Anna had just offered to dye my hair blonde – to give Ed and me an opportunity to sneak into the Vondelpark together – when everyone in the Jewish Quarter was issued with an order to wear a yellow Star of David badge. No chance of blending in now. It really feels like the final straw. It’s bad enough to be quarantined in our own little ghetto (as Papa says), but now I feel so embarrassed to have ‘Jood’ written on my chest – labelled like a piece of meat in a butcher’s shop window. People gawp at us. When Rebbetzin Meijers was caught not wearing hers by an SS officer, she was beaten about the head with his pistol. Poor old lady! But I suppose we should be grateful. Apparently they’ve just deported all the Jews in Eisenach, Germany, saying they’re going to be resettled in Bełżec in the east, but everyone has worked out what that means. Hard labour, and then…who knows what?
Last week, Brechtus intercepted a German telegram that said some Dutch Jews were going to be called up for ‘work duty’. Sure enough – and this is far worse than wearing the silly old yellow star. It’s also the reason for Papa’s change of heart – Shmuel and Papa had letters this morning saying they had to register for work. Papa is now saying this is it. This is where it all goes horribly wrong. He doesn’t have a clue what to do next, but I told him not to panic because Kaars does!
CHAPTER 16
Amstelveen, Tamara’s house, later
Checking his rear-view mirror once again, Van den Bergen wasn’t sure if his early morning dyspepsia was to blame for his growing sense of unease, or if he was right in thinking that the Jaguar that had been behind him for the last few miles was actually following him.
‘Don’t be such a berk,’ he told himself, now unable to distinguish the Jag’s round headlights from the other cars that had subsequently overtaken it. ‘You’re letting things get on top of you. You need to get to the allotment.’
Pulling into Tamara’s street in the leafy Elsrijk area of Amstelveen, he reminded the tree outside her terraced house that this was an area where nothing ever happened. Parking up, he told the orderly hedgerow that he needed a holiday – or perhaps an entire career change. Maybe Maarten Minks should offer him early retirement and a nice, fat payout. Locking his car, he approached the mid-century, not-quite-starter home. It had generously sized picture windows that overlooked the canal – just about – and a loft conversion that he’d taken on a loan to fund. He told this place, which was beginning to feel like a second home, that he had tried to shoulder too many responsibilities all at once. George was right. The part-time parenting of a baby at his age was an impractical arrangement for a chief inspector with a heavy caseload. And yet…
Craning his neck to see the car that had flashed by at the end of Oud Mijl – the utterly uneventful street that Tamara and Numb-Nuts called home – he could have sworn it was the Jaguar. With the early morning sun now beginning to rise in earnest, he had even caught a glimpse of the colour: British Racing Green. He made a mental note to look out for it again before he pressed the bell.
Numb-Nuts answered with Eva on his hip, crying and covered in snot. A ridiculous grin on his son-in-law’s unkempt mess of a face, though.
‘Morning, Pops.’
His baby granddaughter turned to him with outstretched arms and fat tears in her eyes. Van den Bergen plucked her from Numb-Nuts’s grasp. ‘I’m not your Pops, Willem, so don’t call me that. Why haven’t you wiped her face, you feckless arsehole?’
If there was any animosity simmering beneath the surfac
e of his son-in-law’s Prozac-happy expression, he wasn’t able to detect it. ‘We were just having breakfast, weren’t we, little honeybee-bee?’
‘Hi, Dad!’ Tamara called from upstairs.
As Van den Bergen swiped the wet wipes from the console table in the narrow hall and tried to tug one loose with his free hand, he saw a blur of grey as his daughter marched across the landing at the top of the stairs, tucking her blouse into her skirt.
‘I don’t understand why Willem couldn’t have—’
‘Thanks so much for this. You really are the best opa in the world.’ There was the sound of brisk footsteps and drawers slamming as she hurried to get ready. ‘I’m praying I get this job. Honestly, if I don’t, we’re in big trouble.’ Her voice became muffled as she closed a door somewhere upstairs.
Where the hell was Numb-Nuts now? Heading out the door with his guitar on his back. At 6 a.m. The lazy turd wasn’t usually even awake until Tamara left for work at eight thirty.
‘Wait a minute!’ he shouted, feeling like the last rat left aboard a sinking ship.
But the front door slammed in his face, leaving him with a fractious baby who smelled suspiciously of dirty nappy. Where was the changing bag?
‘Tamara!’ Standing at the bottom of the stairs, he imagined he could hear George’s castigatory told-you-so’s cutting through even the shrill protestations of his crotchety granddaughter. ‘Is she running a temperature?’ The back of his hand on the baby’s chest and a generous wipe of snotty nose all over his clean shirt gave him the answer. ‘And why couldn’t Daddy have looked after her? You do realise I’m a busy, busy man?’
But there was no response. Moments later, Tamara thundered down the stairs in stockinged feet. She kissed him fleetingly and disappeared into the living room. Re-emerged, carrying a crocodile clip for her hair.
The Girl Who Got Revenge Page 11
