The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (39 page)

The little girl in George thought briefly about calling Letitia.
Cold comfort there. What on God’s earth are you thinking?

On the hour, the news began. She stuffed damp, bendy crisps into her mouth and watched the anchorwoman speaking. A smiling, bland Barbie, coiffed to within an inch of her life and wearing too much makeup. She prattled on and on about remarkable schoolchildren meeting the Queen in Hilversum and other inane matters.

‘Get on with it, bitch.’

Then George’s broken heart was freshly torn asunder when Ad’s picture flashed up on screen.

Has anybody seen this man? Adrianus Karelse. Aged twenty. Medium build. One hundred and eighty centimetres tall. Dark hair and eyes. Last seen making his way to a bus stop in Groningen. Rumours that an English serial killer operating in the Amsterdam area and responsible for the Bushuis and Utrecht bombings, dubbed ‘the Firestarter’ by British police, has been caught in the UK. Victim is still missing. Call this hotline with information.

A tearful plea from Ad’s parents, speaking into a long microphone at a police press conference. Flashing lightbulbs. The Milkmaid, of all people, red-faced and weeping black mascara onto a white tablecloth for the cameras.

‘What use is that, you cow? You’re not going to find him by blubbing and snotting everywhere on TV!’ George shouted, hurling her remote control at the TV set. She made a mental note to cry less.

George’s remote control broke in two when it hit the thin carpet. The batteries rolled under the 1930s battered cabinet that held the bulbous TV set. Grumbling, she forced herself to trudge over and retrieve them.

‘Where have they gone? Why do I screw everything up? Even the remote!’

Tapping the floor, being careful not to brush the underside of the cabinet with her bruised fighter’s knuckles, her fingertips came across a piece of paper. She pulled it out. Frowned. There had not been a piece of paper under there before she had gone away. She knew this because she had pulled the cabinet out to vacuum underneath, of course. She unfolded it. The childish handwriting was familiar. The spelling was appalling.

Van den Bergen took his service pistol out of his holster. With his left hand, he pulled the iron handle of the trap door up quickly. Immediately, he was hit by a dreadful stench.

Beckoning Elvis to follow him down the stairs, he crept into the murk, following his nose, straining to hear the sound of an attacker above the thud of his heart. Behind him, Elvis hit the light switch.

‘Fennemans!’ van den Bergen said, feeling like his heart would rupture with the simultaneous thrill and horror of the discovery.

Fennemans’ eyes were screwed up against the sudden light. But when he opened them and met van den Bergen’s icy, appraising stare, he made a muffled sound behind the duct tape that sounded very much like a groan.

‘Hello, Dr Vim. You look indisposed,’ van den Bergen said, gesturing to Elvis that he should radio for backup and forensics immediately. ‘And who is this poor unfortunate young lady chained to the radiator? Why, Elvis, I do declare it’s an underaged, probably illegal prostitute with her throat cut. Fancy that. And look! A murder weapon.’

Van den Bergen donned a pair of latex gloves. Carefully, he picked his way across the human waste and detritus of death to where Fennemans lay. He grabbed the academic gingerly by his collar.

‘Where’s Ad Karelse, you perverted fucker?’

Fennemans squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

Dear Ella,

Whats’ upp? Youre boyfriend iz @ Jezes house. I feel bad knowing he iz there. I ain’t like Jez. For wot its’ worth, I still luv u. But u was wrong 2 grass us up.

Jezes house is The Farmhouse, 2 Achterveldlaan, Nieuw Naardendrecht. Its’ south of Amsterdam.

Don’t come looking 4 me n I won’t come looking 4 u.

Luv Danny xxx

Pulse racing, breath short now. George felt lightheaded as she dialled van den Bergen’s number. No answer.
Fuck
. Taxi then. Running down the street without a coat, flagging one down. Arriving at the station only to be told that van den Bergen was at a crime scene. Screaming at the uniform on reception until he was radioed. Hooking up with him on the way. Squad cars following them, as he floored his Mercedes. Sirens wailing and lights flashing all the way out to the countryside. Counting the minutes as the flat fields sped by. Ambulance and fire service already there, as they arrived outside a traditional Dutch barn-style farmhouse. In the middle of nowhere. Guns drawn.

‘Get that door broken down now!’ van den Bergen yelled, pistol in hand, just in case.

A ram battered against the door as George quaked, whipped by the freezing wind and wordless dread outside the remote farmhouse.
Is he alive? Please God let him be alive.

The door wouldn’t open.

‘He’s behind the door. He’s on the floor, boss.’

Van den Bergen blanched visibly. Tears uncontrollably coming now, as George imagined Ad dead. Grey and lifeless on the floor. A bubble in his bloodstream. Firemen breaking in through the garage. Paramedics and police all jostling to secure the house, to get Ad out.

George tore at her hair in anguished silence. Found herself crossing her fingers like a child.

‘He’s been shot,’ came the cry. ‘And there’s head trauma.’

An ambulance gurney was taken inside. The front door was still shut. George could bear it no longer. She ran inside, pushing her way through a blur of people. She slid on the polished wooden floor of a grand entrance hall and there he was. Foot in a puddle of blood. Wearing only jeans. Out cold but still the colour of someone who breathed. Just.

George reached out to touch his face as two paramedics lifted him onto the gurney.

‘Ad,’ she shouted, wanting desperately to reach him inside his sleep.

She found herself being grabbed from behind by van den Bergen. His strong arms lifted her out of the way like a doll.

‘Let them take care of him.’ His normally gruff voice was soft and comforting. His grip was unyielding as iron.

As the gurney rattled past her on its supermarket trolley wheels, pushed in concerned haste by the paramedics, Ad opened his eyes. He looked straight at George. She saw recognition flicker in his pale, blood-streaked face. She held her hand out, anticipating he would reach for her, perhaps even manage a smile. But he clamped his eyes shut again.

She turned to van den Bergen, looking up at him questioningly.

‘Try not to worry,’ he said, squeezing her shoulders, ‘I’m sure it will all pan out fine.’

But George trusted her gut instinct, and the irritable butterflies in her stomach told her everything might not pan out fine. At all.

The croissants George had bought from a boulangerie in Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal were still warm in their greasy paper bag. She peered through the glass in the hospital door and winced at the limited view she had of Ad. His head was bandaged. His foot was in plaster, raised off the bed by a pulley system. He was wearing his second-best pair of glasses and a pair of blue and red striped pyjamas. Sipping water from a glass. Where were the peonies she had delivered to him via van den Bergen the previous evening?

As she was about to push the door and walk in, all romantic, patisserie gestures and declarations of amour, she caught sight of a frumpy, overweight middle-aged woman. She was reading through several get well soon cards on Ad’s nightstand. Sitting in a chair in a corner of the room, looking bored, was a middle-aged man. The woman had a Gallic, olive complexion and dark hair. The man had the same features as Ad but they seemed weighted down; made heavy by a disappointing provincial life. They had to be his parents.

George combed her fingers through her curls. Could she do this? Could she make nice with these people, whom Ad had not even bothered to damn with faint praise? Yes. She could do it. She had to. They had both been to hell and back so that they could be together, hadn’t they?

George put her hand against the door and took a deep breath. But then an apparition in candy-pink jeans and a prissy white sweater wafted past the window at close range. Blonde bouncing hair in a ponytail. Pink cheeks. Imitation pearls. Homespun, homecoming queen. It was the Milkmaid.

‘Oh, hang on a minute. This wasn’t mentioned in the small print,’ George said. She looked despairingly at the hapless Ad, who had just been annexed by the Milkmaid: sitting on his bed, all concerned smiles and taking his hand into hers like a benevolent dictator.

Hastily, George backed away from the window. She chewed furiously on her bottom lip. Started to rearrange some health information posters on a corridor pin board so that they hung properly perpendicular to the ceiling. Cancer awareness. Detect the early signs of dementia. Just say no to drugs. Stop smoking.
But
I
want to be there for him.

Astrid. Still on the scene, putting her territorial paws all over
her
man.

George started to shake. She fled down the shiny-floored corridor, past grey-faced people with flattened, greasy bed-head, wearing pyjamas, as they were being pushed to the café in wheelchairs by glum relatives. She forced her way through too-slow-to-open automatic doors. The aseptic, institutional walls started to close in on her. Bewildering signs hanging from the walls and ceiling, shouting that it was this way to the oncology department, that way to the radiology department. Way out, dead ahead. The air conditioning sounded too loud in her ears, too hot on her skin.

‘Chocolate. I need chocolate,’ she said.

She sought out the cafeteria, where she was surrounded by squalling babies and foul-smelling old people and drunks. Chewing on her chocolate bar with salty tears streaming down her face, she realised that she was suffering from delayed shock. Post traumatic stress disorder or whatever it was the shrinks called it. Hadn’t they spoken about it in group therapy and at her psych-assessments in prison?

A foul tsunami of memories suddenly threatened to drown her. She allowed each and every gruesome twist and turn a moment in the spotlight of her mind.

She gave this display of vulnerability a full fifteen minutes but fifteen minutes only.

She sobbed aloud, without inhibition. People gawped. Mothers pulled toddlers away from her. She chewed her way through three chocolate bars and a bag of crisps. Then she pulled herself together as she had always done. Downed a hot latte. Went back up to Ad’s side room before visiting time ended.

As she approached, she passed Ad’s parents and Astrid in the corridor. She held her head high. Finally, she would get Ad to herself. There was a whiff of recognition from the Milkmaid as she looked a little too long at George and frowned. But the only time the Milkmaid had seen George was now a long while ago, and George had looked different back in the autumn. She had been wearing her makeup and hairpiece. She hadn’t had a swollen face or puffy eyes.

Deep breath now and into Ad’s room. All smiles on her part.

Ad had been sitting, propped in bed, surrounded by his family when he had first seen George peeking into his room. The morphine stripped him of any visceral excitement or anger or passion, but his brain registered that he didn’t want the cuckoo in the nest coming to visit. Her peonies were in the bin, put there by a vengeful, mistrusting Astrid. He had not tried to stop her.

Here she was again. Danny’s girl. The liar. The betrayer. Ella Williams-May was persistent, if nothing else. When she walked in, he was overcome by weariness. He suppressed any urge to smile.

She, on the other hand, was all smiles. ‘Hey, stranger,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to get to see you since last night. You’re in demand.’

George made her way to his bedside and kissed him tenderly on the nose, below his bandages.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

Although he didn’t really want to engage in conversation with her, he answered in what was more of a reflex action. Looking down at his bandaged hand, scratching the morphine itch on his arm, he sighed.

‘Terrible. Okay. Alive, at least,’ he said. ‘Better than expected. You?’

There was something suddenly tentative and wary about the way she sat. Upright. Stiff. Hesitant.

‘Not bad,’ she said. A gush of emotion brought forth what could only be crocodile tears. ‘Oh, Ad, I’m
so
relieved we found you. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I’m so so sorry.’ Then, abruptly, she stemmed the tide. ‘Did you hear what happened in Cambridge? They’ve caught him.’

Ad breathed out heavily through pursed lips and snatched a look at her before turning to the television that flickered in silence in a corner of the room. ‘Yes. I heard. He was going to blow you up.’

‘It was fake. Can you believe it? He just wanted to blackmail me.’

The bitterness effervesced inside him; an antidote to his anaesthesia. ‘And how did you come to know him, George?’ he said pointedly. ‘How did you come to know a drug-pushing people-trafficker from London?’

Now
he turned to look her directly in the eye. He made his face hard like granite, with the downturned mouth of disappointment, not dissimilar from his father’s.

George’s eyes darted around the room, seemingly searching for something neutral to land on.

‘It’s complicated. Look, I don’t know where to begin.’

‘You can begin by telling me the truth.’

She stared at him; probing behind the protective Perspex veneer of his glasses. Was she wondering how he knew? Van den Bergen had clearly not yet told the full story of Ad’s frank exchange with Danny Boy.

‘Ad, I don’t—’

‘Why don’t you start with Danny? Tell me about Danny,
Ella
.’ He made sure his voice dripped thickly with sarcasm.

George grabbed Ad’s hand, but he pulled it away; put it out of her reach beneath his blanket. She looked at his neck, spiky with days’ worth of black stubble. Her eyes would not meet his now.

‘Look at me! Tell me about Danny,’ he demanded.

Her voice was small and thin. ‘He was the one who told me where you were,’ she said. ‘He broke into my room and left a note with the killer’s address on it. Said he saw you. He felt bad about what Jez had done.’