The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (19 page)

‘I’m fine,’ she said, deciding to keep the problem to herself until she was sure it wasn’t her overly fertile imagination.

George stood up and stretched. She leaned over and rubbed the dirt off van den Bergen’s cheek carefully, gently.
Yes, I’ll try fighting my own corner first, but van den Bergen will protect me if I mess up.
She was possessed by a sudden urge to kiss him and lingered a little too long. She moved closer into his personal space, close enough to feel his warm breath on her chin. She parted her lips.
What am I doing?
Her cheeks glowed hot. Van den Bergen looked at her with surprised eyes.

‘George!’ he said. His voice sounded strangled. He was still sitting but he arched backwards to put distance between them.

The spell was broken and George stood up. ‘Sorry. I felt dizzy after kneeling or something. Lost my balance,’ she said.

The inspector looked at her with an air of suspicion but his expression quickly returned to normal. He rummaged in the front pocket of his dungarees and pulled out twenty euros. He held them out.

‘Get a taxi back into town. Keep the receipt and the change. I’ll get them from you when I next see you.’

George stooped down to pick up her bag. As she was about to step out of van den Bergen’s allotment, back onto the path that led towards the exit, she turned back. Van den Bergen had already returned to his dahlias.

‘Why are you involving me in all this?’ she asked him. ‘Confiding in me, like I’m one of you lot?’

He looked up and smiled. ‘You may think I’m an old fart but I have good instincts. My old fart’s instincts tell me you are …’ He seemed to search for the words as he studied the tuber in his giant hand. ‘You understand people from here.’ He clutched at his belly through the yoke of his dungarees. ‘You’re a natural. That’s what my old fart’s instincts tell me.’

George grinned reluctantly.

‘Just keep your eyes peeled but stay out of mischief,’ he said.

Like hell, I will.

‘Ow!’ the giant cried, lips splayed against the unyielding surface so that he spoke like a man with toothache. ‘That hurts, you loony bitch.’

Back in the sex shop, George yanked the giant’s head to the side and pushed her face right into his so that she could smell his eggy breath. ‘There was a camera pointed at my room this morning. Now it’s gone. Who is renting that room?’

Just as suddenly as George’s brain had succumbed to red mist, normality seemed to strongarm its way back into the room. George realised that the giant had just the sort of ears she didn’t like. They had black tufts of hair growing from the ear-holes and long, red, fleshy lobes. They felt greasy. George hated greasy ears. Feeling disgusted, she let the giant go.

He sat up and rubbed his ears. ‘Mad cow,’ he said.

He reached under the counter. George snatched up a jumbo-sized blue dildo, wondering if the giant was going to pull out a weapon. When he didn’t, she set the dildo back on its shelf, next to the gimp masks, as though she had just been browsing. A crawling feeling of deep stupidity started to infest George as she realised what a risible situation she was in; engaging in a stand-off with a man twice her size, threatening him with a range of sex toys and the prospect of ear injury.

The giant had in fact pulled out a blue, canvas-backed ledger – the kind that book keepers use. He opened it and leafed through several pages. His lips moved as he silently read the book’s contents to himself.

‘University.’

George took a step back, puzzled. She frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘The university rents that space.’

‘You’ve been telling every horny little fucker in town about the set-up I’ve got,’ his thoroughly indigestible associate said.

‘No. Absolutely not. I’ve been utterly discreet,’ Fennemans said, as he scrutinised this man – his accuser, his out-of-hours social secretary.

His associate jangled a bin lid of a gold and diamond watch that was unutterably crass. And who did he think he was impressing in those ridiculous low-hanging jeans?

‘If you’re so tight-lipped, why’ve I got another fucking kid on the phone to Aunty Fadilla, asking for a go with the girls?’ This asinine oik’s aggression visibly rippled off him, like heatwaves over a desert dirt track. ‘By invitation only, Fennemans! It’s not playgroup for your students.’

Fennemans didn’t like dealing with him face to face and certainly not in his own home. Making arrangements over the phone or liaising with him over a coffee at the faculty was one thing. But this very physical confrontation on his own turf … it dampened Fennemans’ spirits. He had been looking forward to an early night. Being challenged in this way simply did not make for the right ambience.

‘Before you point the finger at me,’ Fennemans said, ‘you should give Biedermeier a grilling. I don’t know what a young lad like him is doing in a place like that anyway.’

‘He needs discreet too. He’s got a thing for girls that wouldn’t cut the mustard in the circles he moves in.’ He prodded Fennemans in the shoulder. ‘Unlike you, he’s got the money.’

Fennemans felt like he was being poked with a sharp stick. ‘
I’ve
got the money,’ he said defensively. ‘You got back everything you were owed, didn’t you? Within twenty-four hours! My tab’s clear.’

The man lit a cigarette, tossed his match into an ashtray that was really only intended for display and exhaled acrid, blue-brown smoke into Fennemans’ face.

‘You’d better have a fucking big pile of cash for Aunty Fadilla when you next come over, then. It’s new girls. Fresh in. You’ll have a nice time.’

The man slapped his shoulder and grinned at him in a way that made Fennemans itch.

‘W-What happened to the other girls?’ Fennemans wondered if the anxiety strangling his own voice was obvious.

‘What I do with the girls isn’t your business. Saying that though, one’s done a runner. The one who always wears her hair in pigtails. If you see her, give us a shout.’

Fennemans nodded in a staccato manner. ‘Yes.’

‘Just make sure you come and fill your boots before they get too manhandled.’ He started to laugh, as though he had made an excellent joke.

‘I don’t think I’ll come round for a while,’ Fennemans said. ‘I need to keep a bit of a low profile.’

The man stubbed out his stinking cigarette. ‘Suit yourself. You’ll be back. An old dog like you.’

Fennemans was relieved that the banging downstairs had started up after his rancid little associate had left.

The persistent knocking was so loud that Ad’s heart sped up. As he walked down the hall, armed only with a wooden spoon, he visualised himself as one of the three little pigs, waiting with knees like jelly for the wolf to huff and puff his door down. He glanced through the spy hole, breathed a sigh of relief and opened up.

‘You’re early,’ he said.

‘Someone from the university is stalking me,’ George said. ‘I’d put my money on Klaus.’

Ad was sure she had been crying. Puffy eyes and a constant sniff were a dead giveaway. She pushed past him and went into the living room, which was mercifully free of housemates. The smell of Indian curry wafted in from the kitchen. He heard her stomach growl loudly.

‘When did you last eat?’ he asked.

‘Rice Krispies at breakfast.’

He wanted to put his arms around her but he sensed she was prickly and agitated.

‘I’ve made something traditionally British for you!’ Ad said, grinning. He was wearing a striped butcher’s apron.

George flung herself onto his sofa, rubbed her face with her hands and groaned.

‘Did you hear what I said? Klaus is stalking me.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ad took off his striped apron so that she could see he was wearing a smart blue shirt and a pair of Diesel jeans underneath. He had never worn such trendy jeans before but they had been reduced by seventy-five percent and he was fairly sure they were the sort of thing George would like. He had been careful to hide them from Astrid.

When he caught George looking at him suspiciously, he felt himself blush. She had noticed. She was definitely going to say something about the jeans.

‘Somebody’s been putting things in my room. A Peeping Tom,’ she said.

Maybe she hadn’t noticed his clothes at all.

Ad listened in horrified silence as George related a sinister tale of being followed, observed like a lab rat and subjected to trespass. She blinked continually like a blind man desperately trying to see the way forward. Waiting for his reaction.

He had to sound reliable and knowledgeable. ‘Can’t you get Jan to put extra locks on your doors?’ he asked. ‘Tell van den Bergen!’

George shook her head. ‘I don’t want to tell anyone else. I’m not a baby. I’ve got my pride.’

Ad took hold of George’s hands and looked at her palms. He liked the way the creases in the skin looked like a map of somewhere interesting. He wanted to protect her.

‘Stay at mine,’ he said. ‘Especially while I’m in Heidelberg. Stay here.’

‘No. You’re the one at risk. You’re going away with the prime suspect! I mean—’

‘Please. I can’t go to Germany worrying that somebody’s trying to … Even if Klaus is with me, where I can keep an eye on him, he might … he’s probably got an accomplice.’

He hoped she could see the pleading in his eyes. His body was pulsating as she drew fractionally closer. The air was still between them. He hardly dared to breathe. He noticed everything. Her eyelashes. The warm tone of her skin. The heavy floral smell of her perfume. Closer now. Then:

‘Oh, and Remko’s possibly been murdered,’ she said.

Ad backed away, breaking the current of electric desire that connected them.

‘Jesus,’ he said. He stood up, snatching up his wooden spoon. ‘The rice is burning.’

His heartbeat started to slow as he entered into the kitchen, fighting back the cloud of steam.

As he scraped the slightly singed basmati rice from the bottom of his pan, George then told him all about the man found burnt to a crisp in a refuse bin, with Remko’s wallet providing the only funereal trimming in an otherwise spartan plastic tomb.

‘So, you’re probably spending the weekend with the faculty’s very own serial killer,’ she told him, wearing a smile that was devoid of all mirth.

‘I need some money,’ Letitia said, fingers drumming on the sticky top of the fridge, hip thrust to the side in indignation. She held her free hand out, all nails.

Ella sucked her teeth. ‘I ain’t got no money,’ she said.

‘Lying little cow. I know you getting big backhanders off Danny. You selling his stash now. And since when did you talk like some sassy two-bit drug pusher? That school of yours squashed the street out of you years ago.’

Ella clutched her bag tight to the side of her body. She wasn’t letting Letitia get anywhere near her hard-earned cash. She knew she would only spend it on vodka and cigarettes and an expensive trip to the hairdressers. Ella was saving it for something better. She had opened an account that only she knew about. In the money she deposited there were enshrined all her hopes and dreams. It was for university.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Letitia said. She straightened up and flicked her hair extensions over her shoulder. ‘Running with the pack now like that bastard never made our lives a misery.’

‘Oh, spare me the guilt-trip,’ Ella said. ‘You decided to stay round here. The Head offered to pull strings for a better place in a better area when I started at that school. Why didn’t you take it?’

Letitia opened and closed her mouth. Ella knew she was thinking up a barbed response or some bullshit to throw back in Ella’s face.

‘No way was I moving to some stuck-up boring shithole full of wanky, curtain-twitching bastards. You got to be amongst your own.’

‘Bollocks! It’s because you were too busy wallowing in the crap. It’s all you know! And it’s you that got me into this lie.’

‘You got
me
nicked, remember?’ Letitia’s voice was shrill. Her eyes were flashing with anger.

But Ella felt bolstered by her subterfuge. She knew being one of Danny’s girls was only temporary and there were elements of her new life that made her stomach turn. The violence. Being part of that. Making other people’s lives a misery. It brought her down; pushed her into black corners where she felt as though all the happiness in the world had been sucked into a vacuum beyond reach. It was a price she had to pay though. She had to keep up the front. Eyes on the long game. But at least now, her world didn’t just revolve around this house, that mother, those threadbare, broke-ass circumstances.

‘No, I don’t remember!’ she shouted. ‘You were the one flogging bent handbags. You ruined your little fiddle all on your ownsome,
Let-it-ia
.’ Head wobbling from side to side like she’d seen Tonya do to Jez when he was being a dick.

‘Show some respect!’

‘I haven’t got a shred of respect for you. You pimped out your own kid so you could avoid getting your collar felt.’

‘I would have done time.’ Letitia spoke through gritted teeth. She started to edge towards Ella, aggressive and puffed up like an angry adder.

Ella fleetingly wondered if Letitia was going to slap her. She hadn’t been slapped by her mother in a long while. For that, at least, she was thankful.

‘It was your first offence,’ Ella said. ‘You would have just got a fine or a bit of community service at worst. Anyway, thanks to me, everyone’s off our backs now. Police and Danny’s lot.’

Letitia lunged for Ella’s handbag. ‘Give it me, you cheeky little tart!’ she snapped.

Ella swung the bag out of her mother’s reach, but Letitia swiped at it with determined talons, scratching Ella’s skin deeply as she did so. Rummaging through the contents like a rabid dog snaffling through meat scraps, she pulled out a wad of notes.

‘Jackpot!’ She was smiling now, rubbing the twenties between her fingers.

‘What you going to do with it? Buy meat? Make us a nice dinner for once?’

Letitia laughed out loud and stuffed the money into her jeans pocket. ‘Meat? You fucking joking? I got a date with Primark now, you dopey bitch. Think of it as tax. Mum tax.’ Letitia grabbed Ella by the neck and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Ta, darlin’.’