The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (28 page)

George felt suddenly like she was being emotionally backed into a corner. Put under a spotlight. But in truth, she did feel idiotic. She had been cheated by Klaus. Everything had pointed to him, and George had been wrong. She, who prized her insight into people’s characters and behaviour so highly. She, who was usually the skilled manipulator, infiltrator, interrogator. She felt the urge to hit back at van den Bergen, lash out at him as he perched on his lofty moral ground.

‘Hey, you roped me into this investigation,
Inspector
. You asked me for help, not the other way round.’

‘I asked you to write an article and keep an eye out for suspicious goings on among students, especially Muslims. Not to steer a multiple murder investigation down the wrong path.’

George silently conceded van den Bergen was right. She swallowed a defensive, pointed retort. It scratched and threatened to choke her on the way down.

‘Listen. You need to find unsolved cases where somebody has been beaten or burned,’ she said. ‘And as it happens, my neighbour mentioned a Thai prostitute who was badly burned by a customer not so long ago. What about that?’

Van den Bergen perched on the edge of the scuffed table. She heard his hip click. He pushed two painkillers from a blister pack that he pulled out of his trouser pocket. Downed them with a swig from his oily-looking coffee. Clutched at his stomach and scowled. ‘I remember that,’ he said. ‘That was nothing like this. He was a drunken john who didn’t get what he wanted. For a start, she’s not a man or a student. The attacker didn’t kill her. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Go home and lock your door, George. Stay out of mischief, young lady.’

George stood up abruptly, knocking her chair to the floor. ‘Fine. I’m going to Cambridge anyway. I need a break.’

To her surprise, van den Bergen moved around to her side of the table, righted her chair and encased her shoulder in his large hand.

‘You’re something else, do you know that? Look, if it’s any consolation to you, I thought you really were on the money with Biedermeier. So don’t be hard on yourself. But cut the private investigator crap, okay? Just enjoy being a kid and keep safe.’

His face softened into a smile which revealed genuine affection. George touched his hand and left without saying anything more.

Fennemans slammed his front door. He slipped his keys into his coat pocket, juggling awkwardly with his briefcase, an umbrella and the post that the postman had just shoved into his hands.

On top of what looked like an electricity bill and a reminder to pay a parking fine he had picked up en route to his mother’s, he spied a letter from the university.

‘Odd,’ he said. ‘I’m not expecting anything.’

Tearing open the envelope, he straightened out the letter. It was from the Executive Board but had not been signed by Saskia.

Gripped by blind panic, he picked out the words, ‘replacing Professor Saskia Meyer while she is on an extended sabbatical’ and ‘Miss Georgina McKenzie has lodged a formal complaint of harassment and bullying, corroborated by other students’.

‘Shit!’ Fennemans shouted.

He crumpled the letter in his sweaty fist and hit himself in the forehead.

‘I’m going to kill that bitch.’

When she returned to the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop, George ate a sandwich of stale bread, tomato ketchup and crisps while she waited until Katja had finished with a client. She knocked on Katja’s door. She was standing by the window, squeezing antibacterial gel onto her hands.

‘Hello, darling,’ she said with a freshly lipsticked smile. ‘Is everything okay?’

George leaned against the door frame and peered at the glowing red light. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘Can you get me an address for the Thai girl who was burned? What was her name again?’

‘Saeng? I don’t know, honey. Maybe if I ask some of the other girls when I get a spare minute. Why?’

‘I wanted to pay her a visit.’

Katja’s eyes widened. She raised an overplucked eyebrow at George. ‘I don’t think she’d want to speak to you, darling. She’s probably gone to London by now, anyway.’

‘If you could get me the address …’ George forced her face into the most earnest shape in her repertoire but could see from the way Katja’s smile faded that she would not willingly oblige. George sensed she had overstepped an invisible boundary.

‘I wouldn’t put money on it, darling,’ Katja said. She struggled to tighten the ties at the side of her white Lycra bikini bottoms with impractical, talon-like nail extensions that reminded George of Letitia.

George was about to leave when she was struck by a thought. She fingered the peeling paint on the door’s deep architrave and then fixed her attention on the roll of kitchen wipes by Katja’s narrow bed.

‘Those Middle Eastern girls …’

‘Yes. The ones from Taliban land that come and go.’

‘Do you know if they’ve ever been attacked by a customer? Have any disappeared that you know of?’

Katja shook her head and stepped into black patent stiletto heels.

‘Like I said, darling, they have a chaperone. You could try asking Indonesian Tom but if I were you I’d keep yourself to yourself.’

‘What do you mean?’

Katja smiled and adjusted her buoyant breasts inside their tiny triangular hammocks. ‘You live with us but you’re not one of us. Don’t go looking for trouble.’

Ignoring Katja with great enthusiasm, George Googled rehabilitation clinics for burns victims. She came up with the Free University Medical Centre in De Boelenlaan, and placed a call to the hospital, putting on a distinctly dubious Thai accent; pretending to be Saeng Pradchaphet’s long lost sister. On six separate occasions, George was told in no uncertain terms that Saeng had been long discharged and the hospital would never give out information about patients’ subsequent whereabouts, particularly not over the telephone. On the seventh attempt, George was put through to a receptionist who had a young voice and seemed inexperienced and uncertain of herself. She gave George the address of sheltered accommodation run by a charitable organisation that provided outreach to prostitutes, including those who were victims of human trafficking from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.

George felt the rollercoaster, powered by her modest triumph, pick her up out of the trough that Klaus, van den Bergen and Ad had left her in. It pulled her along its arc up towards the summit, where she felt sure on reaching it, she would see exactly how the land lay before her.

She printed out the photographs Ad had taken in the Heidelberg heavy metal pub and put them in her bag. Then, she celebrated with a cigarette before donning her coat and boots.

Fennemans concealed his Swiss Army knife in his overcoat pocket. Lectures could wait. Any residual desire he felt for Little Miss McKenzie had been numbed by the public left hook of her formal complaint.

There she was! Fennemans shook with adrenalin as he watched her pull the glass door to the coffee shop open and put on her hood. She had a cigarette dangling out of her mouth. She looked agitated and unkempt. He would give her agitated all right!

Inside his pocket, with practised dexterity, he readied the blade. Took a few steps towards her. In a busy area like this, nobody was paying attention to anything but the girls in the windows.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Not so fast, Doctor. I want a word with you.’

Fennemans looked round. He felt his face collapse as though he had been struck by a palsy of horror.

George sat down on a high-backed chair, facing Saeng. The lounge of the charity-furnished sheltered accommodation had all the elegance of an institutional old people’s home. It smelled of overcooked cabbage and burnt coffee. The sill of the enormous picture window was crammed with overgrown pot plants, making what should have been a bright room dark.

She forced herself to look at Saeng as though there was nothing unusual about her appearance. But everything about her was unusual. George judged her to be late twenties. A diminutive woman, she wore velour blue jogging bottoms and a tight white T-shirt that showed she had a body to die for. But the skin on the lower half of her face looked like partially melted cheese. Where skin grafts had not quite worked, red welts had been left as though somebody had thrown a bottle of cherry syrup onto her mouth, jaw and neck. Mercifully, the upper half of Saeng’s face, her eyes and curtain of shining black hair were unaffected. George could see that she had been stunning.

George spoke in Dutch. ‘Shall we talk in English or Dutch?’

‘English. I speak little Dutch only.’

‘Fine.’

George sipped from the mug of green tea that Saeng’s carer had given her. Saeng watched.

‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ she said.

‘If you friend of Katja and Inneke, I speak to you.’ Saeng spoke broken English with a heavy speech impediment, as though her tongue no longer hit the roof of her mouth. ‘But maybe I don’t tell you thing. What you want to know?’

George cleared her throat and smoothed an invisible wrinkle in her jeans. How could she succeed where the police had failed? She felt certain Saeng would be offended but she resolved to question her anyway.

‘Have you heard about the bombs in Amsterdam and Utrecht?’

Saeng nodded abruptly. ‘Student.’

‘One of the victims was beaten and then set on fire in a dustbin,’ George said, trying to illustrate fire with waggling fingers.

She looked for a reaction in Saeng’s eyes but saw nothing beyond her black irises. Saeng merely sipped her tea through her damaged, too tight mouth and stared at her.

‘You had a client that beat you and then set fire to you. I know you didn’t—’

‘Why you think I talk you about this?’ Saeng’s heavy voice was laced with tart acrimony. ‘Who you? What you want know about me?’

Saeng rose from her chair. George sensed that she was about to walk out. She hastily pulled the photographs from her bag. ‘Please. He’s killed five that the police know of. Please just look at these photos and tell me if you recognise anyone in them.’

Saeng glanced over at the large prints. George could see her curiosity was piqued. She needed to push her, get her to see that George was somebody she could confide in.

‘I’m not the police. I’m just a frightened woman. I could be next. Please look.’

Saeng sat back down and studied the prints, one after another. George noted that her hands were also scarred from her attack. She wondered if the burns were still painful.

Suddenly, Saeng took a sharp intake of breath. The photograph in her hand started to shake.

‘Do you recognise anyone?’ George asked.

Saeng stared blankly at George. Her hands stopped shaking. Instant composure. It was as though she had abruptly let down impenetrable shutters, keeping George out. She shook her head.

But George knew she was lying. ‘I can tell you’ve spotted someone,’ she said. She moved in closer to Saeng and pointed to the man she too had a feeling she recognised. It was the disfigured man. The dealer. ‘Is it him?’

Saeng shook her head violently and thrust the photographs back at George.

‘Nobody there.’

Frustration started to pick at George’s calm veneer. ‘Look, did this guy threaten you? Is that it?’

Saeng stood once again. The photographs cascaded from her lap onto the grey linoleum floor. ‘You leave now. You ask too many question.’

George clasped her hands together in supplication. ‘People are dying, Saeng. I need you to tell the police if you recognise this man as your attacker. They can stop him. They can protect you.’

No reaction. Hard, staring eyes.

‘Why are you so afraid?’

A tear slowly emerged from Saeng’s left eye, followed by a copycat from the right. She perched on the arm of the chair and looked up at the ceiling. ‘You not understand. I have hard life. You come from England, right?’

George nodded.

‘Easy for you. My family live on river in Bangkok. Very poor. I work as prostitute in Patpong from fourteen. Right? Then I get mixed up in Chinese-run brothel and go-go bar. They sell me to German brothel. Say, I go to Europe, earn more money. They pay my family. But I get to Germany and get no money. I live in small room in club with other girls. We prostitute for farang and massage but also must clean club.’

George offered Saeng a clean tissue. She took it with a stiff smile and dabbed at her moist eyes.

‘Go on,’ George said.

‘So I run away and get to Amsterdam. Better life in Holland and I meet other Thai girls in red light area. Meet Indonesian Tom and get window. I work for myself. So it’s okay long time, right? Then this guy,’ she pointed at the disfigured dealer in the photograph, ‘he come to my window and want extra. When I tell him no, he burn me. He say if I tell anyone, he come back and kill me. He say he know where my family in Bangkok. He know people in Thailand and all over. So, I tell police nothing. Maybe now I get to London and work in cousin restaurant.’

George absorbed Saeng’s story slowly, as though digesting a heavy meal.
A man who deals drugs and has international contacts. Germany. Thailand. The Netherlands. Somebody familiar to me. Have I seen him around the Cracked Pot? I must have done. Wait a minute.
George felt a cold sweat break out on her forehead. This was the man that was limping into the sex show the day she had been followed.
This is my fucking stalker.

‘You okay?’ Saeng asked her.

George looked at her, eyes narrowed, cogs in her mind whirring in overdrive.

Van den Bergen was digging over his vegetable patch when George appeared unannounced and uninvited at Sloterdijkermeer. At first, he did not notice her. With his spade, he levered out a stubborn dandelion tap root intact. He breathed in the smell of damp soil, fingering his trophy with some satisfaction.

It was the methanol stink of George’s cigarette that alerted him to her presence. He looked up and smiled. When he saw her thunderous expression, his smile faltered.

‘Detective Cagney. What’s wrong?’

George pulled a photograph out of her bag. She poked at the disfigured face of a man sitting in the shadows. He recognised it as one of the photos that interfering, have-a-go-hero Karelse had taken in Heidelberg.