The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (15 page)

George marched upstairs with her bunch of tulips. She had squeezed them so hard that some of the stems were beyond hope. She slammed her door behind her and double-locked it. She wedged a chair beneath the knob and drew the curtains. Then came the cleaning. She scrubbed her already clean kitchenette. All day long.

Now her dry fingers stank of bleach, as she dragged hard on her spliff. Jan sat next to her in a booth downstairs, nodding sagely at nothing in particular while his number one hippy helper looked after the cash register. Outside, angry rain lashed in torrents against the shop-front window.

‘I was hoping the inspector guy would have called me,’ she said, passing the spliff to Jan. ‘I’ve ruined my reputation for him. Trying to help, you know? Everything’s gone to shit. My head’s a mess.’

Jan took off his steamy glasses and cleaned them on the edge of his batik T. ‘The pigs use you up and spit you out.’

George was just about to tell Jan what she thought about Paul van den Bergen when Inneke and Katja walked in, both wearing civvies. Tight jeans. Hooded tops. Anoraks over the arm. They were barely wet.

Jan looked up. ‘Ladies! Ladies! Is this not peak time for businesswomen such as yourselves?’

Katja pointed to the lashing rain. ‘Business is slack as a pensioner’s fanny.’

‘We made an executive decision,’ Inneke said. ‘Half an hour’s downtime with you and early home.’

Inneke and Katja slumped into the booth, either side of George and Jan. George could smell sex and coconut oil on Inneke. She wondered if she showered before she kissed her kids good morning.

Katja looked over at George and flashed her with a trout pout smile. ‘You okay? You look like you spent a penny and lost a dollar.’

‘It’s lost a pound, found a penny,’ George said, feeling sourness push her internal pH value down to pure acid. ‘I’ve had a weird day.’

‘You got any beer in this place, Jan?’ Inneke asked.

Jan summoned hippy helper to bring over the emergency Heineken.

For an hour, the four of them shared their woes. Jan’s arthritis and maintenance payments to his ex. Inneke’s wrangles with the kids’ school and payments from her ex. Katja’s lopsided nipples and unsavoury client demands. Finally, George told her neighbours about her possible stalker and the matches.

‘Part of me thought it was the guy who stayed over,’ she said. ‘I’ve not returned his calls. But maybe it’s someone far worse … Maybe doing that blogpost has attracted the wrong sort of attention.’

‘Sounds to me like this bomb thing has got you paranoid, honey,’ Katja said. ‘Looking for danger where there is none.’

Inneke straightened up in her seat, coddling her can of Heineken. ‘No, Kat. She’s right to be suspicious,’ she said.

George looked at her with the overly analytical eyes of the very stoned. ‘What do you mean?’

Inneke sniffed conspiratorially. ‘I mean, Amsterdam’s a funky place these days. All sorts of shit going down all the time. Weirdoes and wackos having a pop at the girls. Girls coming in from odd destinations.’

‘Oh?’ George said, inclining her body forward.

Katja seemed to cotton on. She was all nail extensions now, flapping her hands like a drag queen drying his varnish. ‘Yes! Inneke’s right. Back in November, Saeng, the Thai girl who rents space above Fag Butt’s Gay Porn, had a nutcase.’

‘What happened?’ George asked, relighting the spliff and considering Katja through a purple cloud of smoke.

‘Oh, it was terrible,’ Inneke said.

‘This trick gets the hump when she says no to him,’ Katja continued. ‘He brings out a hip flask. Pours vodka down Saeng’s gullet. Sets it alight. She goes up like a torch.’

‘Jesus,’ Jan said.

‘She’ll not work again,’ Katja said, shaking her head solemnly. ‘Think she’s in some kind of rehab for burns victims now. Skin grafts and all that shit.’

George grimaced. ‘Poor girl. Did they get the lunatic?’

Inneke shook her head. ‘No. Nobody could remember him coming or going. Saeng wouldn’t give a description.’

‘Why the fuck not?’ George asked, wiping imaginary dust off the ring-pull of the beer can.

Katja flicked ash that was hanging precipitously from the spliff in the direction of the chunky terracotta ashtray, missed and dropped a shower of black smutty flakes all over the table. George mused that it looked like a lesser Pompeii. She steeled herself to refrain from asking hippy helper for a cloth.

‘Well,’ Katja said, leaning in, passing a wet-tipped spliff on to Jan, ‘the guy threatened he’d find her if she blabbed. I heard she’s going back to Thailand. She’s outstayed her fortnight’s holiday visa by five years anyway.’

‘No,’ said Inneke, ‘she’s going to London.’

‘Would she get into the UK?’ George asked, eyeing the spliff’s wet tip nervously as Jan dragged deeply and passed it to her.

‘A couple of English guys fake Dutch papers for girls if they’ve got the right money. Get them over on an EU visa.’

George nodded and looked at the spliff in her hand. To smoke, or not to smoke? Her choice was heavily laden with responsibility and import. Not to smoke. George knew that the tip would feel cold and damp between her lips from another person’s spit.

‘Inneke?’ She passed it on. Kissing was one thing but cold, second-hand spit was another thing entirely.

Inneke coughed as she inhaled the hot smoke. ‘That’s the other thing,’ she said. ‘You talk about Saeng getting hold of a dodgy visa. Well, these bombings … We’ve noticed girls coming in from the Middle East in the past year. Really young too.’

‘Unusual,’ Jan said, proffering his pouch of tobacco to George, who began to roll a fresh joint. ‘Muslim girls? A long way from home here. Spiritually, I mean.’

George spread the damp, fragrant tobacco along her runway of paper – a blank foil for the green chunks of Californian grass that would light the way for take-off. Up, up and away. ‘Why do you say “these bombings” and then mention Middle Eastern girls?’ she asked Inneke. ‘Middle Eastern from where?’

Inneke sipped her beer and glanced at her watch. ‘Well, you know. The bombers are meant to be Al Qaeda, aren’t they? And these girls … I’ve heard they’re from Taliban land.’

‘Afghanistan?’ George asked.

Inneke nodded. ‘Yeah. That sort of place. A few of us have tried making conversation with them on the street. In the summer. You know, when it’s hot and we hang out.’

‘And?’

‘Well, they don’t speak. They’re drugged. That’s pretty obvious. They have an older woman as chaperone. Indonesian Tom says rent’s paid by some intermediary guy that nobody ever sees. Speaks Dutch on the phone with an accent. I’ve heard rumours that those English dudes provide them with paperwork. A month at most and they’re gone. The girls down the way say they’re going to the UK.’

‘Mules maybe?’ asked George. Her brain had started to effervesce with the logistics of such a conspiracy. She liked the poetry of it and at the same time hated the politics of it. Eastern girls coming west. Trading a prison of the mind for a prison of the flesh, carrying dope like a platter of poisoned dates; a sickly sweet offering of Eastern hospitality. Then, selling their virtuous Muslim souls for asylum in infidel London.

‘Yes. Mules,’ Katja said. ‘Definitely. Then who knows? If they can’t get paperwork, maybe stowaways on board—’

‘Ships that pass the Hook of Holland in the night,’ George muttered. ‘So you think the bombing is some kind of Talibanesque retribution on the Netherlands, allowing itself to be used as a conduit for Afghan prostitutes and drugs?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Katja asked.

‘Because I have a theory that it’s right-wingers,’ George said.

‘A slur campaign?’ Jan said.

‘Precisely. Or a red herring. Pin the tail on the Muslim donkey. Maybe. Might be a neo-Nazi response to girls from the Middle East passing through. Dunno.’

‘Are you going to tell Captain Pig, the detective, about your neo-Nazi thoughts?’ Jan asked.

‘Let’s just say I’m looking into it,’ George said, trying to blow a smoke ring and failing. She thought wistfully of Ad. ‘I have a man on the job.’

‘You okay?’ van den Bergen asked. ‘Don’t puke in the car. It’s just been valeted.’

George was slumped in the passenger seat of Paul van den Bergen’s car, irritated by the way the slip mats weren’t properly aligned. She had spent the rest of her weekend holed up in her room, using cooking wine as a panacea to acute anxiety and loneliness. She knew that asking to meet van den Bergen was attention-seeking behaviour, but she didn’t care. She wanted to feel needed and safe.

‘Posh wheels,’ George said.

Van den Bergen gave a hollow laugh. ‘Perk of the job. Anyway, they had no option. It’s the only thing I can fit my legs into.’

Just the rumble of his voice felt like a hammer hitting her repeatedly at the base of her skull.

‘It’s very … there’s a strong smell of leather in here. I don’t like …’

She pressed the electric window button in the door panel of his gleaming black Mercedes E Class. The window slid down obediently, allowing the biting wind to whip the Monday morning smells of canal water, piss from a nearby public urinal and the weekend’s abandoned kebab garbage into the German precision-engineered haven. She had walked all the way over to Westermarkt for the meet. It didn’t smell any different on this side of town, she noted.
Should I mention the stalker?
she wondered.
No. I don’t need a father. I can deal with it myself.

‘So tell me,’ she said, fixing her attention on the side of his head. He had nice-shaped ears. ‘Any leads?’

Van den Bergen thumbed his goatee. George noted that he still had a strong jawline for a man of his age. No signs of jowling. She liked that too. He smelled of sport deodorant and was dressed casually for a change in jeans, which made his long legs look even longer, and a black polo shirt. It made him appear younger and less formidable in the absence of padded shoulders.

‘Not a one,’ he said. ‘My boss insists I bag him a cleric. We’ve pulled in a couple of copycat fundamentalist bloggers. One was a kid with mental health issues. The other … well, it was just a dead end.’

He smacked the dash three times. ‘Fuck it!’ he said. ‘The real perpetrator is running rings round us. I don’t know how he’s doing it. We thought we’d be able to trace the comment on your blogpost but we couldn’t. I can’t believe this bastard has IT Marie stumped!’

George sighed heavily, wishing she could light a cigarette. She looked up at the fabric ceiling of the car and shut her eyes tight. ‘My instincts tell me … I’ve got this hunch about right-wingers. I really think you should arrest—’

Van den Bergen glared at her, irritated. ‘Leave the investigation to me, okay? I’m only filling you in as a courtesy.’

‘Thought I was your student eyes and ears,’ George said, holding back the urge to poke him hard in the chest. ‘You’d still be trying to ID those body parts if it wasn’t for me.’

George could just feel acerbic words trying to burn their way out of her mouth when van den Bergen’s mobile phone rang. He pulled it out of his breast pocket. There was a brief and clipped exchange with someone who was clearly a superior.

‘Yes, I’m not far from there. Straight away. Of course.’ He rang off and looked at George with narrowed eyes. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Homicide?’

‘You can get out now.’

His implied rejection felt like a stinging slap.

‘No,’ she said, wondering how he would react.

He leaned over her and opened the car door for her in that impressive way that older men with long arms do
.

‘Please yourself,’ she said, not wanting him to see how much it smarted.

Ad walked with purpose and determination towards Amsterdam’s Central Station. It was a dry morning but freezing cold. The biting wind howled up the main thoroughfare of Damrak. He clutched Astrid’s hand, guiding her past the neon plastic smorgasbord of shop signs.

It was 6.12am. Astrid’s Intercity train to Groningen departed Amsterdam Central at 6.26am precisely. With a change at Hilversum, she would be back in Groningen by 8.52am, allowing her to be in work by 9.30am on the dot. It had been the same routine for almost three years and Ad had made sure that Astrid had never missed the train.

He readjusted her heavy, pink weekend rucksack on his shoulder and momentarily let go of her hand to wipe sleep from his left eye. Astrid snatched his hand back and squeezed it hard.

‘I’m going to miss you, honey bunny,’ she said.

He felt her trying to manoeuvre him round so that she could catch his eye but Ad could only think of the twelve minutes she had before the train doors shut irrevocably for departure.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Come on, we’re late.’

He lengthened his stride and pulled her sharply to the left to dodge the second number 5 tram of the day, travelling from Central Station to A’veen Binnenhof. The palatial facade of the station with its red brick and neo-Renaissance spires was just beyond Prins Hendrikkade now. He pulled Astrid over the bridge. The dark green water was filled with queues of empty glass-topped cruise barges, waiting to choke the day’s eager tourists with diesel fumes. He checked his watch again. ‘Faster,’ he said.

Standing on the platform, Ad slowed his breathing to calm his beating heart.

‘Made it,’ he said.

He put the rucksack on the ground between them and held her hands. She was pink-cheeked and out of breath.

‘I’ve had a lovely weekend,’ he said. ‘Thank your mother for the cake.’

Astrid smiled at him with white teeth that were perfect, like small, evenly sized pearls. ‘Are you coming home in a fortnight? It’s Dad’s fiftieth. He’s having a party.’

Ad swallowed and looked at the clock. ‘You’d better get on. They’re going to close the doors.’

He leaned forward for a kiss. Astrid had always been a proficient kisser. In the beginning, they kissed with sweet-sixteen gusto. Sore lips, saliva and hard tongues. He had taken this to be passion, especially when she had let him fondle her boob under her jumper. As the years progressed, she had refined her kissing technique to be deft and clean. Tongue moved in, locked with his. Tongue moved out. Done. Still, he felt a visceral wrench as she boarded the train. Her jaunty hair arrangement bounced in its clip as though it was waving goodbye.