The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (24 page)

Klaus held open the toilet door. ‘You Dutchmen have no breeding, do you? But that’s all right because I’ve got another educational surprise up my sleeve.’

Inside a heavy metal pub on the other side of town, atonal death metal blasted from large wall-mounted speakers in every corner of the pub with screaming, snarling vocals that could have been recorded by the Devil himself. The sticky floor shook with the unrelenting thud of the music’s frenzied base drum. The walls were black. The clientele stank of patchouli and sweat. Almost everyone there was tattooed, full of piercings, with shaven heads or short Mohicans.

Klaus and Carsten looked like flamboyant stuffed parrots on a supermarket shelf full of bald battery chickens. But several of the men at the bar greeted Klaus with obvious warmth and familiarity.

‘Hey, fellas! It’s the Graf. All right, Graf?’ one of the men said in a thick Swabian dialect.

They engaged in a complicated handshake with Klaus, nodded at Carsten, looked suspiciously at Ad.

Ad noticed that two of the men had badly executed blue-grey swastika tattoos on their necks. Like almost everyone else in the room, the three men wore washed out heavy metal T-shirts and drainpipe jeans or long combat shorts. One, with a bad blond Mohican and a strange ring embedded in his earlobe that made his ears look distended like an Amazonian tribesman’s, wore a beat-up biker’s leather jacket. He had a tattoo of a skull and ‘SS’ in gothic script on the side of his shaven head. These men were clearly in their late twenties or early thirties. Their pot bellies and prematurely lined faces betrayed a decade of heavy drinking and smoking.

‘What’s up then, Klaus?’ the Mohican said. He gesticulated at Klaus’ face with his beer glass. ‘You been fighting again?’

Klaus laughed. He shifted from one foot to another; jittery, animated. ‘You know me. Keeping up traditions. Now I’m looking for a bit of R&R.’ He winked at the Mohican and put a wad of notes on the bar.

‘You want the usual?’

Klaus nodded. ‘Yes.’

The Mohican counted the money out of Ad’s line of sight. He stuffed the wad in his inside pocket and gestured to one of his skinhead friends with a nod of his head. The skinhead walked over to a man sitting in a corner on the other side of the pub. Ad struggled to get a good look at the man through the clusters of drinkers gathered around tables in the pub. A girl stood up at the wrong moment and obscured his view.

Klaus seemed to be following the skinhead’s progress. The skinhead started to make his way back and nodded to Klaus. Both men moved towards the toilet and disappeared behind the door. Carsten followed two minutes later, leaving Ad standing at the bar with the Mohican. The numb feeling Ad had experienced after the duel was quickly stripped away and replaced by blind panic.

‘Who are you?’ the Mohican said, eyeing Ad’s suit up and down.

‘Friend of Klaus.’

The Mohican nodded and smiled, revealing four gold incisors in the front of his otherwise rotten smile. ‘Any friend of Klaus is a friend of ours, isn’t that right, Friedrich?’

Friedrich, the second skinhead, grinned at Ad and punched him hard in the shoulder. ‘You’re a bit dark, though. You sure you’re not a Jew boy? You’ve got a funny accent.’

Ad swallowed hard and pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘I’m Dutch. My mother’s family were French. Olive skin, see.’

The Mohican seemed to be weighing up this information. He frowned and looked into his stein of beer. ‘The French are okay. Some good boys down there. Especially in the South of France. Got to keep on top of all those Muslim bastards. But the Dutch. Bunch of nigger-loving fucking hippies …’ He looked back up at Ad with hard blue eyes. ‘Are you a nigger-loving fucking hippy?’ He grabbed Ad roughly by his shirt collar and pulled a scabbed fist back, ready to strike.

Ad closed his eyes tightly.

‘Only joking, pal!’ the Mohican said, putting Ad down. He brushed the front of his suit carefully with the same hand he had been about to punch him with. ‘You’re all right if you’re Klaus’ mate,’ he pronounced. ‘Now drink.’

The Mohican ordered Ad a stein of strong lager, and Ad, more frightened at that point than at any other time during the weekend, was obliged to drink. He wondered in merciful silence if these men were behind the bombings. Was Klaus just some upper-class current account to them? This is what Moni had meant by the wrong company.
I’ve got to get the hell out of here.

Klaus emerged from the toilet looking waxy and talking too fast. He rubbed Ad’s cropped hair. ‘Fancy a couple of lines?’ he asked.

Ad looked at him blankly and then made the narcotic connection. ‘Er, no thanks. I have painful sinuses. I’ll stick to beer.’

While forcing himself to make small talk about music with the skinhead, Ad strained to eavesdrop on a conversation between Klaus, Carsten and the Mohican above the death metal din. He picked up on Joachim’s name and mention of the NDP but that was all he could make out.

Ad’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He repaired to the toilet, holding the door open for a man with a limp. The man’s face was so badly disfigured that Ad was felt compelled to look away.
What a crazy place.

Inside a cubicle, he read the text. It was from George.

Van den Bergen confirmed Remko’s dead. Get evidence if u can. Come home 1st thing.

Ad was uncomfortably hot in his suit, but that was just the beer, not panic or grief. He felt bolstered by alcohol; gripped by determination. This weekend would not be a waste of time.

He willed himself to urinate, flushed, splashed his face with water and went back into the fug of the pub. He threw himself into raucous chatter, pretended to get blind drunk and pulled out his best politically incorrect jokes, much to the delight of the others. He clasped Klaus, Carsten, the Mohican and the two skinheads to his chest and took pictures of himself with them using his cell phone. Over the course of two hours, Ad made sure that he took chummy photos that encompassed everyone in the room from different angles.

By 3am, a fight had broken out between four skinheads. One was bottled in the head. Another sliced his best friend’s finger off with a pen knife. The floor was wet with blood and beer. But the Mohican still stood, propping the bar and watching in amusement.

Ad had just made the silent decision to leave when someone planted a punch on one of the skinheads, sending him reeling into the barstool next to Ad.
That’s it. I’m off. I don’t care if I have to sleep in the doorway of the train station until the first train leaves.

Ad sidestepped the mayhem and put on his jacket but the Mohican seemed to anticipate his departure. He gripped Ad’s shoulder with fingers of iron.

‘Where do you think you’re going, Jew boy?’

A nun’s habit and wimple are hot garments to wear, particularly in the lounge of an overheated ferry. But the layers of heavy cloth were not the only reason for Ella fanning her face with a fast-food menu. Underneath her vestments, her pulse thumped furiously as though it was counting down the seconds to the grand finale, the showdown, the shootout.

‘I’m dying in here,’ she said to Tonya, rolling her eyes. She shoved a finger underneath her wimple and had a good scratch. ‘I don’t know how those poor cows wear these.’

Serviette in hand, Tonya lifted up her habit, showing thick black stockings, wrinkled at the ankle. She surreptitiously shoved her hand under the black cloth and up to her chest. She looked around cautiously and started to rub her midriff with the serviette. ‘My tits are pouring with sweat ’cos of the plastic. It’s fucking minging.’

‘Oi. Stop swearing,’ Ella said, feeling a rictus grin set hard on her clammy face. ‘Nuns ain’t supposed to swear.’

An elderly woman in a lilac fleece and polyester elasticated trousers passed close by to them and nodded. ‘Sisters,’ she said, smiling.

Tonya sucked her teeth at the woman. The woman gave Tonya a confused look, smile faltering now.

Ella was forced to kick Tonya under the table. ‘You’re carrying weight under this shit and so am I,’ she said. ‘If we’re rumbled, we’re gonna get nicked. Now stop acting like you’re cussing in Catford and be nice, yeah?’

Tonya tutted. ‘Where’s Big Michelle at? She’s been gone forever.’

Ella pointed at the toilet door on the other side of the lounge. At that moment, Big Michelle wobbled out, pulling up tights through the habit’s thick fabric. She made the sign of the cross at Ella and started to laugh raucously.

Inside, Ella felt stretched tight like an over-wound clock. Any minute now, and the whole thing would be blown apart. She wiped her mouth repeatedly with a hot hand until her grin disappeared; perused the menu in morose silence, taking care not to touch the microphone and small recording device strapped to her torso along with the bags of ecstasy. It was not going as she and the Gargoyle had hoped.

The Gargoyle. She thought about him; pictured him the last time they had met before this final Sister Act.

‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ the Gargoyle had asked her.

‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ she said, gripping the car’s passenger seat as though it was going to save her from what was to come.

The Gargoyle had smiled sympathetically at her. His whisky drinker’s nose was even more veined than before. He was red in the face and breathless. He looked old.

‘You okay?’ Ella had asked, offering him a piece of gum.

The Gargoyle nodded. ‘It’s giving up smoking. Bloody stressful after forty years. I’m not sure I’ve got the moral fibre. But the old ticker, you know …’ He had patted his chest and given a hollow chuckle. ‘This is a young man’s profession.’

‘So, can we run through the plans again?’ Ella had asked, polishing his dashboard with her sleeve.

The Gargoyle had taken out his pad and read his notes back to her.

‘You’re sailing to the Hook of Holland on the
Stena Hollandica
with Danny, Jez, Tonya and Big Michelle. You’re wearing a microphone. The mic will record up to one hundred and four hours of material but it’s saved onto a memory stick which will be on your person. You give that to us when you finish. Now, you’ve got six and a half hours there and back on the ferry to talk. Make sure you get Danny to sing like a bird about his networks, the nutter Jez and all the heavy stuff he does on Danny’s say so, the lot. The Dutch police are aware of the situation. They’ll be watching.’

‘They won’t jump the gun, will they?’ Ella had asked, feeling her fingers go cold with nerves.

‘No. Don’t worry about them. My opposite number there is a man who really knows his onions. He’s after the Dutch supplier but he’s playing the long game. There’ll be no jumping the gun.’ The Gargoyle had closed his eyes as though he was trying to marshal his interrupted thoughts. ‘So, you get to Amsterdam. Danny makes the connect.’

‘He won’t see the mic, will he?’

‘No. Just don’t let him grope you and make sure you change into whatever fancy dress he’s got planned in a toilet. Now, stop butting in and listen.’

Ella breathed in too deeply and felt lightheaded. She looked at the Gargoyle’s shirt collar and spied a line of grey grime inside. She knew he was divorced. Men never looked after themselves properly once they’d got used to a woman doing everything. That was his excuse. But the grime still made her cringe slightly. Lately, things like that had been really bothering her. She had been washing her hands. A lot.

‘You divvy up the gear and bring it back on the ferry as planned,’ he said. ‘If you have any doubts at all, dump the mic behind the counter in the Riva Bar. Got it? We’ve got someone there. Last thing we want is you blowing your cover.’

‘He’s going to find the mic, I just know it.’ Ella could hear in her voice the judder of her heart against the inside of her chest.

The Gargoyle patted her hand. It was a fatherly pat. It felt reassuring. ‘Stop worrying. You’ll be fine.’ He inclined his head towards her, frowning. ‘Look, you’re sure you can do this? I mean, it’s been a long time now. You haven’t got … attached, have you?’

Ella shook her head but in the private space of her thoughts, she nodded, just slightly.
It had been the best time of her life, gift-wrapped in shit
. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she told the Gargoyle. ‘This isn’t just about saving my mother’s arse any more.’

The Gargoyle nodded, smiling in a kindly way. ‘You’re a clever young woman. And a sticker too. I admire you for that, Ella. And I’m personally grateful for everything you’ve sacrificed. I can’t begin to imagine how horrible it must have been.’

Ella walled the violent memories, the dirty feelings and the guilt up inside her head.
This was always about me and the Gargoyle and doing the right thing in the end.

‘I knew what I was getting into,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t feel bad. You’ve been okay. Just make sure you deliver your side of the bargain and I’ll deliver mine.’

The Gargoyle smiled. His relief was almost tangible. She knew he was a man of principles. An old-fashioned straight cop. ‘Good,’ he said, patting her hand again. ‘And I want you to know, if you want, there’s a future for you in the police. You could be an undercover detective any day of the week.’

Respect. The Gargoyle was the first person ever to show her respect, and she liked that. Better than a hit from a bong. Better than a line of coke. It was as though the clouds had parted and the sun had shone through warm and bright, just for her. The feeling quelled some of her fear.

‘Cheers,’ she said simply. ‘Go on. Plans.’

‘Right. You all get nabbed by our fellas. We bang you up like the others. Don’t want to blow your cover, do we? Not yet. But I’ll be there at the port. I’ll get you out, of course, and then we’ve got all the evidence. We sort it out from there. Simple.’

‘And then, new life, here I come?’ Ella had said. It was the fourth time she had asked the Gargoyle this since she got in the car.

‘Yes. New life, here you come. After you’ve testified, obviously.’

It had all seemed so simple in the car, talking in confidence with the Gargoyle. And it had all gone according to plan – up to a point.