The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (12 page)

‘Can I go now?’ she asked. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

Van den Bergen nodded and thanked her. When she had left, the small room still felt too full with the four of them. George could smell Fennemans’ sweaty feet and dog biscuits. She hated that smell of ridicule. She rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth in a quiet, reflex rebellion. Sat down on the chair with Ad perched on the arm.

‘Do you want me to take notes?’ the younger detective asked van den Bergen.

George had seen him at the police station, around the Bushuis bomb site but she had never spoken to him. She didn’t like the way he looked her up and down with miserly black eyes that were too close together. Stupid quiff haircut. He put her in mind of a young, thin Fennemans.

Van den Bergen laced his fingers over his lap and pressed his thumbs together, smiling like an indulgent teacher.

‘No, Elvis. Let’s hear what my two young friends have to say that’s so urgent,’ he said.

George sat on the edge of her seat.

‘Klaus Biedermeier,’ she said.

‘Yes?’ van den Bergen asked, raising his eyebrows.

‘You haven’t arrested him.’

‘Why do you think we would want to arrest him?’ Elvis said.

Van den Bergen held up his hand. ‘Let Georgina speak,’ he said.

‘He’s got to be your prime suspect. Hasn’t he?’ George said, hotly.

Van den Bergen stroked the fledgling goatee on his chin. ‘He doesn’t look much like a Muslim cleric.’

‘Oh, come on!’ George said. ‘He could have rigged that bullshit on the web.’

Van den Bergen leaned forward. ‘Leave the detecting to the detectives, Georgina. We can’t charge Biedermeier with anything. His alibis check out. There’s not a shred of hard evidence to link him to Joachim’s or Ratan’s death. If we made convictions based only on hunches, the Netherlands police would be no better than a gang of gossiping pensioners, would it? I’m not in the business of witch-hunting.’

George thought it odd that the bequiffed detective snorted. But she was more preoccupied by the embarrassment that had sneaked up on her like an unwelcome visitor. She flushed hot.

The shame of making a scene twice in the space of thirty minutes drove George from the office quicker than a wet sneeze on a packed tube train carriage.

‘Coffee, then?’ Ad asked as they trudged out into the cold comfort of the winter sunshine.

George nodded.

‘Don’t worry about Fennemans,’ he said.

She shook her head, suddenly, unexpectedly feeling tears pool in her eyes
.
She looked away so that Ad would not see. Undid the lock on her bike in silence, trying to digest the curdling, indigestible knot of regret, fear and curiosity.

‘Have you got any Charlie on you?’ Klaus asked Fennemans.

He gripped Fennemans’ arm and then let go, realising that, if anyone came into the men’s toilets at that moment, it would look strange.

‘Don’t even speak to me, unless we’re in class and it has to do with your studies,’ Fennemans said. He spoke with all the venom of a cornered cobra. ‘Certainly not while the police are here.’

‘But the guy’s not in his room.’

Klaus had had a difficult morning. Returning to the wholly abnormal ‘normality’ of the new term without Joachim was hitting him harder than he had anticipated. In fact, it was unexpected. He felt cold and clammy. He definitely needed a pick-me-up and wasn’t prepared to wait.

Fennemans stood at the urinal. Klaus could see he was trying to piss but had dried up with an audience.

‘Get out, Klaus.’

Klaus felt panic surge through him. ‘I’ve got to score.’

‘Not my problem. Goddammit! I can’t pee with you watching.’ Fennemans hastily zipped his trousers and washed his hands.

‘Will I see you at the club?’ Klaus asked, feeling somehow that Fennemans’ scorn felt almost like his father’s.

‘Just keep your mouth shut, Biedermeier.’

When they sat together, coddled in the UV glow and heavy, leafy stink of Jan’s coffee shop, George turned to look at Ad. She pushed away the desperate ache; the longing to be held by somebody that gave a hoot. She dredged her soul for the discipline that she knew was buried there, beneath the frustration. She found it, pulled it to the surface and cleaned it off. And then she turned her attention to the task in hand, like always.

‘We’re all exposed,’ she said. ‘I think everyone on that course is a target.’

Ad nodded. Thoughtful brown eyes framed by the bows of his strong, dark eyebrows.

‘What was that thing with Filip before Christmas?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. Listen. We need to find out more about Klaus if the cops are just going to sit on their hands.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ad put his arm along the length of the backrest behind her.

‘How about you cosy up to Klaus? See what he and his Nazi friends get up to.’

Ad threw his head back and laughed. ‘You’re funny!’ he said. Then he stopped laughing. ‘You’re not serious?’

George placed her Cambridge mug on the table carefully. She aligned the handle perfectly at ninety degrees to the side of the coaster. She pulled a cigarette from her packet and tapped it on the side. She flicked her lighter into life and dragged hard. Exhaled the plumes of blue smoke. Locked onto Ad’s eyes.

‘Deadly fucking serious,’ she said.

Sitting by the window in the language lab, Ella stared blankly down at the hockey pitch below. Girls with blue legs, wearing short skirts, scrabbled around after the ball like bantam hens. Jerky movements, twisting this way, now that. Jolly bloody hockey sticks.

‘Williams-May!’ Bradbury shouted. ‘
Ecoutez et repetez!
’

Ella heard Bradbury but was too tired to answer. She turned around to face the teacher. White, dumpy, middle aged, secure in the knowledge that she would have a satisfyingly solid pension from an unsatisfactory, stolid life.

‘What?’ Ella asked.

Tittering from her schoolmates. Nudging each other. Waiting to see how Bradbury would react.

‘What?’ Bradbury said, rounding on Ella, all floaty viscose and righteous indignation. ‘Did you just “what” me? You need to make more effort than this, young lady, if you want to do well.’ She bore down on Ella with well-meaning and bad coffee breath. ‘And that doesn’t just go for your studies.’

The bell rang shrilly throughout the school, cutting Ella free from the noose of the school’s surrogate umbilical cord. Ella lost no time in gathering up her things and brushing past Bradbury on the way out.

As she headed to the bus stop, navigating her way through the Mercedes, BMWs and Audis that flanked the school, parked selfishly, crookedly, awkwardly by stay-at-home mothers that cared only for transferring darling Tamsin, Olivia, Arabella and Labia to their next structured activity in air-conditioned, four-wheel-driven luxury, Ella thought about her task.

‘You get pally with Danny’s slippery little bastards,’ the older detective had said. ‘You feed us information that can lead to a conviction further up the food chain. We turn a blind eye to your mother’s itchy fingers. Simple.’

That had been the deal. Detective Gordon Thomson – more gargoyle than man, with his too-high colour and bulbous purple boozer’s nose – had thrown Letitia a lifeline. But to reap the happy handbag harvest, Ella was designated sacrificial lamb to appease the gods.

She sat on Hades’ bus as it flowed against the course of the Styx, taking her from the suburban paradise of Dulwich back to her concrete hell on earth.
How am I going to get with those lunatics?
she thought.
Nearly a fortnight now and still nothing.
What did I ever do that’s so bad?

The Victorian grey brick houses moved closer together and grew smaller and dirtier. More kids got on the bus. Ella clutched her bobbled black wool coat over her blazer, hiding the private school badge. Shouting black boys and white boys who wanted to be black boys from tougher schools, full of crisps and patties and attitude, bounced around the top deck. Taunting her. Taunting each other. Boastful and free now. Hastening home to change their clothes, trading one uniform for another. Some becoming Buffalo child soldiers, fighting for easy money in the tower blocks.

Ella tried to make herself small. She grasped her rucksack and held it close to her chest. The bus stopped. Heavy feet thundered up the stairs and there, in a bright pink Juicy Couture velour tracksuit, was her opening. Tonya. One of Danny’s girls. When Tonya swung herself into the seat diagonally opposite Ella, she seemed only to register the boys’ wolf whistles.

‘She got some cushion for the pushing, man. I’d like a go on that,’ one of the boys said.

Tonya was all hands held high and head swaying from side to side now. Earrings jangling against her beautiful, hard little face.

‘Yeah, and you look like your cushion’s already being pushed by your mates, fat boy.’

Ella’s sharp ears picked out some murmuring amongst the boys.
Danny’s girl. Danny’s girl. Leave well alone, mate. Don’t know what you messing with, innit?

When it was almost time to alight, Ella knew she had her chance.

‘Love your tracksuit,’ she said to Tonya as the bus slowed. ‘Where’s it from?’

Tonya looked her up and down. Her sneer was so pointed that Ella felt she had been scratched from head to toe.

‘I know you. You is freak girl from down the way,’ she said.

‘Ella. My name’s Ella.’ Her heart threatened to jump up into her throat but Ella forced it back down.

Silence. The doors to the bus hissed open. It was her last opportunity to make a connection.
Damn you, Letitia. You owe me big time for this.

Ella pulled a crushed packet of cigarettes out of the side pocket of her rucksack.
Quickly now. Quickly before she walks away.

‘Want a cig?’ she said to the back of Tonya’s bouncy, tongued extensions. Her voice trembled. She prayed it would stop.

Tonya turned round, hand on hip. With the swift hands of an experienced snatcher, she swiped the packet from Ella’s grip and offered Ella one of her own cigarettes.

‘
You
want a cig?’ she asked Ella, grinning.

Ella grinned back.

‘Sad cow,’ Tonya said, grin gone. She threw the cigarettes on the floor and stamped on them with her Nike hi-top-clad foot. ‘Let’s see what you got in your fucking bag then.’

Ella had a split second to decide how to play it. Run, or a face-off too far from the relative safety of home? Maybe only hangdog persistence was left.

‘Look, I was only trying to be friendly, yeah?’ Ella said. She steadfastly held onto her rucksack. If her textbooks were stolen, Letitia wouldn’t replace them for the school. The school wouldn’t understand about a run-in with a Tonya.

Tonya raised her hand to slap Ella but stopped short. ‘Why you wanna be friendly with me all of a sudden?’ she asked, frowning. ‘You like it when we smash your windows in, do you? Is you one of them perverts that like being treated like shit? A machoist?’

‘It’s masochist.’

‘Yeah, whatever, weird girl.’

Ella conceded silently that Tonya was not a total idiot. She was right to question her sudden friendly advances. What answer could she give?
Think, for Christ’s sake. You might not get her on her own again.

‘I’m sick of being inside looking out. You look like you get all the fun. Maybe I want some,’ she said.

Tonya twirled her hair around her index finger. ‘You think a skank like you can muscle in on my scene? You fancy me or something? Or maybe you fancy Danny. Yeah, I bet that’s it. All the girls want him but see, he’s mine.’

Ella could feel frustration starting to heat her blood. She was so sick of being in the middle of everyone else’s games when all she wanted was to go to school and quietly learn her way out of the ghetto. She quickly wracked her brain for stratagems to connect with Tonya but her memory served up only the basic child psychology that she had seen Letitia using on her boyfriends.
Maybe it will do the trick.

‘Fuck you, Tonya Perkins,’ Ella said. ‘I thought you were different. A bit cleverer than the others. But you ain’t that different. So fuck you.’

She walked away, counting … She’d got to four when she heard Tonya’s voice.

‘Oi! Wait up, weird girl,’ Tonya shouted.

I’m in.

Ella began by doing what she knew best. What Letitia had trained her to do all her life. She became a mirror, offering Tonya the reflection of herself that she most wanted to see.

Yeah, you is well pretty. Yeah, you is so witty and clever, man, that you could piss all over them stand-up comedians and them
University Challenge
dicks. Yeah, you so have the finest arse in all of South East London. I’m telling you, Danny really loves you, girl. No doubt, you is so going to be blinged-up and looking like a rich woman when Danny pulls off a big job.

Scratch the surface, and Ella recognised Tonya as the crude, dumb sadist that she always guessed she would be. And yet …

Her persistence had got her to the gates. But entry to Danny’s crew comes with a price tag, of course. Ella had started with the small stuff. Lookout while Tonya and Big Michelle did over an old lady for her pension. Tonya and Big Michelle had smacked that old bitch up good, leaving her weeping on the stairs of the flats. Ella had applauded, dying quietly inside, cursing Letitia. Then came slashing a grass’ tyres. At least there had been no look of bitter disappointment or fear to contend with. Then, a bit of graffiti on the shop shutters. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Finally, she became responsible for cutting, weighing and bagging up lumps of hash.

‘You getting the knack for this, spod girl. You been wasting your time with all them boring books,’ Tonya had pronounced and Big Michelle agreed.

‘She got a well innocent-looking face, innit?’ Big Michelle pointed out, big arms flapping. ‘We gonna get away with blue murder ’cos ain’t nobody gonna suspect her mug.’

Cackling laughter. Clickety clack heels through the alleys some nights. Thighs on show. Nikes the rest of the time. Good for making a quick getaway. Ella started to like the adrenalin buzz. But the silent remorse afterwards was suffocating.