The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (6 page)

Pressing the publish button, she knew she would never be asked to write for
The Moment
again.
Now, let’s wait and see …

It was fiendishly early. With such a lot on his mind, he hadn’t slept a wink. Dawn had not yet broken, but he could put off preparations no longer. Today was the day.

He looked down at Joachim’s unconscious body, lying on the slab. Running a finger along his forearm up to the cannula that stuck out like an angry surgical thorn, he marvelled that Joachim was so sinewy. His skin was almost the colour of the urine that had gathered in a catheter bag attached to his penis. He flicked the warm, heavy bag. It needed to be changed. Last one.

It was time to unhook him now. He pulled out the needle, which had carried saline solution and sedative into Joachim’s body since the snatch. Checked the clock on the wall. He had precisely two hours to get his houseguest prepped and in situ before the sedative wore off. That was okay. The box was already assembled.

Padding to the kitchen, he made himself a coffee. His secret workshop was cold. He needed his fingers to be warm and nimble. Attaching plastic explosive to a man’s body and rigging the wiring was a fiddly job.

He returned to the workshop and began assembling the things he needed from his shelving units. A roll of thin,14-gauge electrical wire, wire cutters, gaffer tape, disposable mobile phone and the other intricate components that a home-made bomb required. Everything was brightly lit by the harsh overhead strip lighting. Freezing concrete beneath his sock-clad feet. Cold air on his skin. Hot coffee in his stomach. His senses were in overdrive now. When his probing gaze fell upon his bolt croppers, that was when he started to get really excited.

He took Joachim’s index finger and wrapped a plastic tie tightly around the base as a tourniquet.

‘Think of it as signing my guest book,’ he said to the sleeping Joachim.

When the bone in Joachim’s finger cracked under the pressure of the bolt croppers’ blades being squeezed together, he thought it sounded just like the walnuts his mother liked to crack open in front of the television during winter. Seeing the severed finger that ended abruptly with a red fleshy cross section marbled with yellow fat, skin, muscle and a nub of bone nestled within … he held it up to the light to get a really good look … that made him think of the strings of raw sausages in the butcher’s shop window from when he was a child. He liked sausages, though his father would never allow him to have them in his presence.

As he opened the deep freeze and put Joachim’s finger into a vacant hole in the test-tube holder, he chuckled to himself. Funny how even the strangest of things could spark off wistful childhood memories.

In the morning, George awoke with a hangover that measured eight point nine on the Richter scale. There were fifty-four comments on her post already. Angry comments. Wishing her dead. Telling her to get back to England with the other stinking foreigners. But there, amongst the vitriol, was exactly what she had hoped for.

Allah is great. We are unified against the immorality and greed of the West. The Maastricht Brothers in Islam will continue to tear down the walls of your universities until Christianity’s unholy teachings are expunged and only the word of Allah is left. Abdul Youssuf al Badaar.

George sucked on her cigarette, staring at the statement until the words looked jumbled on the screen.

She pulled her mobile phone out from under her duvet and punched van den Bergen’s number into it. After three rings he answered.

‘What?’ he barked.

‘Have you read my blog?’

There was a brief pause the other end. ‘Yes.’

‘So? Did I do well?’ George smiled and kicked the duvet off.

‘Great. Thanks. Look, I’m busy with forensics. I’ll be in touch.’

The phone went dead.

‘He put the phone down on me. The cheek of it!’ George stared at the mouthpiece of her mobile.

George stood under a hot shower, watching the tiny beads of water clinging to the glass like glittering strings of binary code. Van den Bergen’s rejection and the prospect of spending another Christmas accompanied only by a bottle of wine and a large bar of chocolate held her spirits down. And Ad would be tucked up with the Milkmaid by now.

‘Goddammit. I hate Christmas!’ she shouted at the mildewed shower tray sealant.

When she returned to her room, she flung her heavy wash bag onto the bed, accidentally knocking her pillow off. Groaning, she picked up the pillow and noticed a greyish stain on the burgundy fabric.

‘That’s odd. This was clean on after Filip,’ she said, frowning.

She scratched at the stain and gave it a tentative sniff. Dried though it was, the smell of semen was still instantly recognisable.

En route to his destination, he had a little extra job to do.

From his vantage point, parked right outside, he could see the jaunty fairy lights twinkling on a Christmas tree within. An advent candle shone on the windowsill. Merry Christmas, cheating bitch.

He looked back at Joachim’s box. No sound. No movement. He had five minutes. That was all he needed.

Wearing black overalls and with blue plastic overshoes stuffed into his pocket, he opened the glove compartment to the van and pulled out the hunting knife and clipboard.

His tread on the block paving was so light that nothing heralded his approach. Pulling on his overshoes. Rapping on the door’s flimsy woodwork with a sure fist. Clipboard in hand. ID at the ready.

When the door was opened, her eyes flicked absently over the ID card in his hand.

‘There’s a possible gas leak?’ she asked.

Still, she had not looked at him properly. She seemed distracted. Her scrutiny finally turned to his face. She balked.

He left her no time to react further or speak. Pushed her inside, spun her round and dragged her along the hall into the house with a strong arm around her neck. Knife at the throat.

‘Make a sound and I’ll puncture your carotid artery. I want the money. Take me immediately to the money. Don’t try anything heroic. I want all of it. If you try to fight, I’ll kill you. Understand?’

She nodded. He held her tightly to him in this tango of terror. Then he noticed from the sudden warm feeling against his leg that she had urinated. Stupid cow.

The tip of his blade had pushed its way into her throat enough for a bead of blood to have appeared.

‘Count it,’ he said as she waved the wad at him. He didn’t look at her face. Only at the money.

‘Please don’t kill me,’ she said in a whimpering, simpering girl voice.

Ordinarily, of course, he loved being begged by a woman but he didn’t have time for that sort of nonsense today.

‘What did I say about making a sound?’ he asked.

With the envelope full of money in his top pocket and his overshoes stuffed back into his overalls, he was back in the van and pulling out of the drive before the girl had bled to death.

Van den Bergen took off his glasses, rubbed his tired eyes and stared blankly at the screen. Cardboard shreds. Clear evidence of plastic explosive and a mobile phone detonator having been used. Several molars containing fillings that weren’t from Europe. And a body part.

He started to chew on his Biro thoughtfully. De Koninck, the forensic pathologist, might eventually be able to track the dental work down to a specific country. Shreds of card intermingled with the human remains meant nothing to him though. Not yet, anyway.

In his peripheral vision, he could see Chief Inspector Olaf Kamphuis pulling on his coat and waving to one of the secretaries. He started to lumber over towards him. Van den Bergen could not stifle a groan.

‘I’m leaving,’ Kamphuis said, chins wobbling. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow evening to see how things are going.’ He ran a finger around his shirt collar and gave van den Bergen’s feet a venomous stare. ‘Am I going to have the pleasure of firing you for incompetence, Paul? Remember, I have the full weight of the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations behind me. It would be quite a Christmas present.’

Van den Bergen gnashed his molars together and considered a response. Kamphuis did love his games.

‘I think the payout for constructive dismissal is quite hefty these days, isn’t it? That’s a very generous Christmas present you have in mind, Olaf. Too kind. Don’t choke on the ginger biscuits, now, will you?’

Kamphuis laughed wryly. ‘Very good, Paul. Touché, you big, lanky arsehole. See you tomorrow.’

With Elvis out for burgers and IT Marie gone for the evening, van den Bergen found himself alone in the office. Alone, baffled yet again by his job and utterly hacked off. His phone rang. It was his counterpart in Utrecht, Teun van der Putte.

‘Yes,’ he snapped.

‘Paul? Get your ass over here immediately. There’s been another bomb.’

‘Jesus. I wonder where that is,’ Ad said.

George felt his heavy breath on her hand. He smelled of deodorant and warm skin. When his knock came at her door, she had been poised to hit this unexpected visitor, thinking it might be her ejaculating intruder. The Stalker. She turned the words over in her mind, sampling how they felt, buckling under their ominous weight. But it had just been Ad, abandoning his early train back into the fluffy, baby pink arms of the Milkmaid. He had come bearing yuletide pity and a gift in a small, carefully wrapped package.

Happiness burned inside her with the white hot brilliance of magnesium held over a flame. Ad had a gift for her. He had delayed his return to Groningen. For her. She untied the blue ribbon and peeled back the expensive paper with trembling fingers.

‘
Tea bags?
’

George had not been able to contain the look of horror. She knew it had usurped the delighted smile and planted a flag of bitter indignation on her face. What had she been thinking anyway? Jewellery and perfume were things a man bought his girlfriend. The Milkmaid got those. She got fucking tea bags.

Ad had looked instantly wounded. ‘Sorry, I thought …’

Forcing her teeth to show in an encouraging fashion, she had hugged him quickly and assembled the words of gratitude in the right order before speaking them. ‘That’s the perfect present for me! Very sweet.’

He looked relieved. ‘You’re always out of tea.’ His face flushed. ‘Listen, can I check the train times?’

George had nodded and passed him the laptop. It was then that they had seen the headline on
de Volkskrant
’s home page.

‘
Second suicide blast hits Utrecht. Live footage.
’

Now, she focussed her attention on the YouTube video, posted only moments after the explosion. The amateur cameraman was talking fast as he shot the bedlam. He sounded frightened; exhilarated.

Springweg, Utrecht.

As soon as he gave the location, George scrutinised what she could see of the building behind the flames in the early evening twilight. What kind of a place was it? Was it another library? It was too far away from the camera phone for her to see any detail but she was curious.

‘It looks central. Let’s see,’ she said.

She punched up Google Streetview and found the building when it had still been whole – crisp in the daylight and discreet. Hebrew writing was just visible on the portico above the door but otherwise there were no discernible religious markings on the facade. No Star of David. But with its high-pitched roof and adjacent tower, it was unmistakeably a place of worship.

‘This is it,’ she said to Ad, tapping a fingernail on the screen.

‘A synagogue,’ he said. ‘These bastards are making a statement.’

George frowned. She made a rasping noise as she sucked her teeth. ‘This isn’t connected to the university, though. There’s no logic to any of it.’

Van den Bergen drove well in excess of 100mph to bridge the distance between Amsterdam and Utrecht. His tired body was suffused with adrenalin and a grim euphoria of sorts.

Emergency vehicles with their strobing lights beckoned him towards the mayhem.

Teun van der Putte was standing at the scene, backlit by the blaze.

‘Paul. Good,’ he said, slapping van den Bergen on the upper arm. He proceeded to fill van den Bergen in on what had happened, wincing visibly every time a sheet of glass from a nearby house blew out onto the street.

‘Any witnesses?’ van den Bergen asked. The heat was overwhelming. A thick slick of sweat had already started to cling to his body.

Teun looked over at ambulances already swallowing up casualties and at the fire trucks that lined the street – motherships, connected by hoses to their battling fire crew. He blinked hard and wiped his sooty glasses on his shirt. ‘Not a fucking thing, would you believe it?’

Van den Bergen nodded sagely. ‘Same in Amsterdam.’ He watched as evacuees trod gingerly over the glass that littered the pavement. Grimaced and wept as they looked up at the flames and their ruined apartments. ‘How many dead or injured?’

‘There’s a few neighbours with lacerations from their windows blowing in. But there didn’t seem to be anyone walking on the street when the bomb went off.’ Teun shouted over the hiss of the hoses.

‘Christmas Eve. Everyone’s either in with family or out drinking,’ van den Bergen said, watching a weeping man as he was ushered to the place of safety beyond the police cordon. Beneath the blanket that covered the man’s shoulders, van den Bergen saw that he clutched a little girl of about four to his chest. Her forehead was covered in blood.

‘It’s impossible to know how many were inside the wreckage until the fire’s out,’ Teun said. ‘But we did find a bit of what we think is the suicide bomber. As soon as we arrived. It had been blown right out of range of the fire.’

‘A bit?’

‘A big bit.’

As George applied her lipstick, she wondered if Ad had lingered well into the evening, delaying his journey home because of her. More likely because of the Utrecht bomb, she decided.

Wearing her usual tight-fitting jeans, a T-shirt that smelled strongly of washing liquid and thick Primark cardigan that had started to bobble under the arms, she had made no attempt to look festive beyond the slick of colour on her full lips. Like Jan and Katja, her makeshift Christmas family, would give a shit!