The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows: A gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat

CHAPTER 5

Amsterdam, mortuary, 28 February

‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Amsterdam’s prodigal son. Long time, no see,’ Marianne de Koninck said, eyeing Van den Bergen with what was almost certainly a degree of suspicion. ‘Where the hell have you been for the last god knows how long?’

‘Welded to the frost-bitten bottom of my cold case,’ Van den Bergen said, eyes smiling with mirth.

Almost ten months had passed since he had last seen the head of forensic pathology. The case he had been working on simply hadn’t turned up anything requiring forensic examination beyond the initial couple of weeks.

Today, in her scrubs and rubber sandals, with her normally short hair grown into a sleek blonde bob, Marianne looked younger than her forty something years.

‘Have you got a new man in your life?’ he asked, finally daring to unbutton his anorak. The chilly mortuary seemed warm in comparison to the white world outside.

‘Only this poor chump,’ Marianne said. She stared down at the naked corpse of the man who had been found in the Bijlmer play-area. Lit by the harsh, overhead lights, his body was a grim palette of yellow, purple and grey. The red stippling of the sores around his mouth and nose like the brush strokes of an impressionist’s nightmare. Marianne snapped a fresh pair of latex gloves onto her sinewy hands. Straight to business as usual.

Van den Bergen had always liked that about her.

‘What about you?’ she said. ‘You still cradle-snatching? I’m surprised the young Dr McKenzie isn’t with you. I thought you two were joined at the hip since she saved your life.’

There was nothing Van den Bergen could do to stifle the low growl that escaped his lips. Marianne might as well have gouged at his tired heart with her scalpel.

‘Like that, is it?’

The pathologist walked around the dead man, recording her observations into a Dictaphone. She scrutinised the blemished skin of his face.

‘Aside from the sores around the deceased’s nose and mouth that would suggest drug misuse, I can see tiny lacerations on his face,’ she said. She prized open his mouth with her fingers to reveal blackened teeth. ‘Jesus. Our man was certainly not a regular at the dentist’s.’

‘Show me a junkie who is,’ Van den Bergen said.

‘His lips, gums and tongue show bruising,’ she continued. ‘I’ll check his nasal passages later by microscopy, but I’m guessing it’s the same there. I can see significant amounts of mucus and blood at the back of his gullet. Petechial haemorrhages in his skin. Oedema.’

‘In layman’s terms, please!’

‘All in good time, Chief Inspector. You just sit tight and let me do my job.’ She took samples from beneath the man’s fingernails. Bloods. Swabs. ‘Okay. Let’s see what’s inside,’ Marianne said.

Taking up her scalpel, she began to open up the cadaver, cutting from his chest, working her way down to his pubic area.

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Van den Bergen said. He steadied himself against the built in sink at the end of the stainless steel slab. Flashbacks to waking up on the floor of the Butcher’s panic room. Strapped to a chair. Awaiting his fate. Then, walking towards the light, thinking it was the end and that perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, only to find the source of the brightness came from a doctor’s light pen, checking for the response of his pupils as he emerged finally from his coma in the Intensive Care Unit. Only later, when his wounds were redressed, realising that he had been zipped open from top to bottom.

Just like the body of the Bijlmer man, now.

Marianne set down her scalpel. Staring at him askance as though he was a lunatic. ‘Paul? Are you okay?’

Pull yourself together, you loser. ‘I’m fine. It’s my middle ear playing up.’ He pointed to his ear, as though that made his lie more convincing. She didn’t need to know he was so weak-minded. ‘Vertigo. You know. A lot of viruses going round in this infernal shitty weather.’

‘Have you and Georgina split up?’ She narrowed her sharp blue eyes at him.

He pulled up a typing chair close to the action. His height made it easy to observe as Marianne resumed her dissection. Pointedly said nothing in response.

‘Suit yourself, tight-lipped sod,’ she said.

After the bulk of the examination had been performed, internal organs weighed and measured and the dead man scrutinised for signs of foul play visible to the naked eye, the pathologist scowled.

‘Well?’ Van den Bergen asked, hoping she had not noticed he had been looking anywhere but at the body for most of the procedure. ‘We found a big bag of mephedrone on him. It was odd that his stash hadn’t been taken. Are we looking at a simple drug-related stabbing?’

Marianne tutted. Looked perplexed. ‘This is the weird thing,’ she said. Snapping off her gloves in silence. Scrubbing her arms to the elbows. Silent all the while. ‘He’s clearly lost a lot of blood because he was stabbed with something in the carotid artery. Whoever did it knew what they were doing. The wound is about two inches deep, as though it’s been done with those home-made weapons you get in prisons.’

‘A shiv.’

‘Exactly. The wound is conical, but there’s no evidence of a blade. At first I thought he’d been stabbed with a stake or maybe one of those conical stoppers you get for wine bottles.’

Van den Bergen crossed one long leg over the other, bouncing his fur-lined boot on his knee. Finally, he pulled his beanie hat off and ruffled his thick, prematurely white hair. ‘It’s possible. Don’t rule it out at this stage. We haven’t found a weapon anywhere near the crime scene.’

Marianne pulled up another chair and sat beside him. ‘No, but the thing is, there are traces of water in the wound. I don’t get it. And though he lost pints of blood, his actual cause of death was suffocation. That’s what I was alluding to when I said there were lacerations and bruising in and around his mouth and nose.’

‘What?’ Van den Bergen leaned closer to her. Scrutinising the fine lines around her eyes and the hollows beneath her cheekbones, where long-distance running had stripped the fat away.

‘Someone shoved snow up his nose and into his mouth. They stabbed him first and then made sure they finished the job by suffocation. When I examined him at the scene, I found slush in his nasal passages and mouth. Almost melted, but not quite.’ She touched the tip of her own nose thoughtfully. ‘Even with the victim’s body temperature being a steady 37 degrees, by the time he’d started to bleed out, and his temperature had begun to drop, with the stupid sub-zero conditions we’ve got at the moment, his extremities would have taken barely any time at all to cool to freezing point.’

‘Hence the slush.’

‘Yes. Stay outside for more than ten minutes in this weather in the wrong clothes … It’s not exactly taking a bath in liquid nitrogen, but not far off it!’

Van den Bergen chewed over the information. Rubbing his brow. He could feel the pinching pain of his scar tissue responding to the mortuary chill, now that his coat hung open. Taking a blister pack out of his anorak pocket, he slipped two ibuprofen onto his tongue. Swallowed with spit. ‘What do you think of opportunism? This John Doe had no wallet on him. Could he have been robbed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?’

The pathologist stood and stretched. Glanced over at the dead man, baring his innermost secrets beneath the mortuary lights. ‘Very public place, though. If I wanted to mug a man, I wouldn’t choose that spot. Would you? It’s overlooked by scores of apartments.’

Van den Bergen nodded. Wished he was sitting on his sofa at home, savouring a hot coffee, bouncing ideas back and forth with George instead. Watching the winter sunlight that streamed through the French windows of his apartment kiss the tips of her hair.

‘The bag of mephedrone on the dead man was worth a fair few Euros,’ he said. ‘Who the hell would kill a junkie, take his money, but leave the drugs?’

Marianne de Koninck started to print off labels for the samples she had taken, methodically categorising the bits of the dead man that would be sent to toxicology. ‘You’re the Chief Inspector, Paul. Not me. But I’d be asking what kind of psychopath would commit such a public, brutal but efficient murder if it was just about stealing a wallet?’

CHAPTER 6

St. John’s College, Cambridge, later

‘You’re late,’ Sally said, smiling, though her tone was acidic enough to strip the wax from the grand wooden mantel of the fireplace. She clutched what appeared to be a whisky, or brandy maybe, in a cut-crystal tumbler in her right hand.

George could smell the fumes from the strong alcohol. At 2pm, it felt like too early in the day for a drink. But then it was beyond freezing outside. ‘Can I have one of those?’ she asked.

‘No. I’m cross with you.’ Sally clacked on the side of her tumbler with the two chunky Perspex rings she wore on her gnarled fingers. Marking time. ‘I told you to make sure you got here in a punctual fashion.’

George pulled off her Puffa jacket and released herself from the strangling grip of her scarf. ‘Overslept,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t believe—’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ the Senior Tutor said. Nicotine-stained gritted teeth. Total sense of humour failure. ‘You were notable by your absence, young lady. The Master asked where you were and I had to string him a line about emergency dental surgery. So no fucking drinky for you. If he asks, the anaesthetic still hasn’t worn off.’

‘Oh, you’re harsh!’ George took a coffee, poured for her by one of the formal hall waiting staff into a cup embellished with the St. John’s College logo. Looked grand. Tasted like crap. She grimaced at the bitter, burnt flavour. ‘Better than nothing, I suppose,’ she muttered under her breath.

The other fellows were scattered around the drawing room in clusters: black crows in their floor-length gowns. All pleasantly pissed after a formal lunch that had been put on for some major benefactor or other. Accompanied by a minor HRH, whom George clocked on the other side of the room. Red ears and a flushed face, chatting to the Director of Studies for Modern and Medieval Languages.

‘I should be over there, rubbing shoulders with the Royal,’ Sally said. ‘Not chastising you like you’re an errant child.’

‘Well, don’t then, because I’m not one.’ George set the poisonous coffee down.

‘Get your bloody gown on, for god’s sake!’ Sally said. Fidgeting with her big chunky beads. Tugging at the blunt fringe of her short bobbed hair. ‘Christ, I could murder a cigarette.’

George took her neatly folded gown out of an Asda bag. Pulled it on over her idiotic smart black dress, which she wore only at the grand dinners that constituted the College’s formal hall. Not warm enough by a long stretch in this weather, she had concealed her thermal long johns as best she could beneath the skirt by wearing Aunty Sharon’s knee-length boots – designed for big women, they swam around her calves.

‘I’m in a spot of bother,’ George blurted, feeling overwhelmed in the fire-lit fug of the Master’s drawing room, her thoughts still on the events at 2am, when the hooded figure had appeared at Aunty Sharon’s back door.

Sally fixed her with laser-sharp hooded eyes – no less probing for being behind cat’s-eyes glasses. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.’ The lines etched into her pruned mouth grew deeper. ‘You’re a grown woman, now. You can stand on your own two feet. My time playing nanny for MI6 is over.’

‘It’s nothing like that,’ George said. ‘I don’t think, anyway. But I’ve got this homeless woman who keeps tapping me up for cash.’

Sally stealthily swiped the decanter containing amber alcohol, topped up her glass and sniffed at the contents. Swirled them around the crystal so that jambs dripped in perpendicular lines around the sides. ‘A homeless woman?’

‘It’s a long story,’ George said, sighing. ‘Second time she’s shown up at my Aunty’s, asking for a handout. It was gone two in the morning. I nearly stuck a meat cleaver in her head.’ She exhaled sharply, remembering how the dishevelled woman had screamed for mercy, then shoved her way inside, once she realised George was not about to attack her.

‘What you doing at my house?’ Aunty Sharon had said, kettle in hand. ‘I told you, I don’t want you coming here, pestering my niece.’

The diminutive figure had slid the hood from her head, shedding harsh light on cheeks that were raw from being too long in the cold. She looked far older than her years. Thin, with scabs on her knuckles and stinking like those wheelie bins you get outside restaurants of rotten vegetables and stale cigarettes.

‘Please. Just a twenty would do. It’s so cold out there. I’ve got nothing to eat. No money. I’m sleeping in a freezing van. I can’t even afford to put the engine on to get the heater going.’ Imploring eyes, begging George to help.

Seeing her again in the warmth and light of Aunty Sharon’s kitchen, George had wanted to give the poor woman a bed for the night. ‘Look, I told you not to bother me again,’ she had said, pressing fifty into the woman’s hand. ‘You can’t come round here. It’s not my house. There’s a kid here.’

‘The teenager?’ the woman had asked.

Aunty Sharon had got aggressive then. ‘You been fucking spying on my boy? You fruitloops or something?’ She had waved the kettle at the unwelcome visitor. ‘Cos I got boiled water in here and I ain’t afraid to cob it on your skanky homeless head. We don’t want no trouble here, do you get me? I don’t want no raggedy white arse in my house. So, take your cash and put one foot in front of the other, darling. And stop preying on my niece’s good nature.’

In the end, the woman had stayed until nearly four in the morning. Talking with George and Sharon over a convivial half bottle of rum. Had a shower, using up some of the excessively hot water. Turns out, Aunty Sharon had been just as prone to being a soft touch as George. No surprises there.

Back in the Master’s lodge, Sally dragged George into an adjacent room. Empty in there. Together, they forced the heavy window up and lit their cigarettes. Blowing the smoke into the deep-freeze of the snow-blanketed garden.

‘Who’s the woman?’ Sally asked.

George blew a dragon’s plume of smoke out of her nostrils onto the sub-zero air. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing to do with our work here. Just some other bullshit I’ve got going on. Nothing to do with skeletons in the closet or anything. Don’t worry. I’m cool on that front. I’m not stupid.’

‘Far from it, Dr McKenzie,’ Sally said, flicking her ash onto the sill. ‘Now, I clobbered that benefactor during lunch. Flashed him my wrinkly, ageing senior tutor knees and offered him an honorary doctorate in Criminology in return for some funding to keep us afloat.’

George allowed herself a tired smile. ‘Please god, yes! I’m so skint.’

‘Not for you, smart arse. We need money for the library and to fund your little field trips to interview survivors. Where are you with our research?’

‘I’ve got qualitative stuff from at least twenty people – about twelve are women who were trafficked domestically as young girls in the 1970s and 1980s. Some are participating witnesses in the Operation Oak Tree case. Paedophiles in the media, obviously. The rest were boys in the 1960s and 1970s who were pimped out to some very prominent men in society. Runaways from children’s homes. Abductees. There was a boarding house in Sussex where the boys were taken to be abused. If I could only get that fucking idiot at UCL off my back, once I’ve finished the Home Office shit we’ll have a ground-breaking study on our hands in about a year’s time.’

‘Bugger a ground-breaking study,’ Sally said. ‘We’ll have a non-fiction hardback that tops the Sunday Times bestseller list. Mine and your name on the front.’ She grinned a piranha grin, which George did not entirely like, especially since she was doing all the actual work. Sally just opened the doors.

‘How are you coping?’ Sally asked, breaking into a coughing fit that made her sound as though she was a consumptive war-veteran from the trenches of the First World War. ‘Emotionally, I mean.’

Focusing on the Persian rug in the room, George shrugged. ‘It’s horrific, but then, I’m used to distancing myself from pain. I’m fine.’ Lies. She wasn’t fine. But George knew she had chosen to pursue criminology as a career so that she could give the silenced a voice, as she had been given a voice.

She was just becoming irritated by the fact that the rug was not in perfect alignment with the skirting boards, when a woman – roughly the same age as George – entered the room, wearing a gown that was still deepest black, denoting her newness, though the gown was stained with what appeared to be gravy. She flicked long, unkempt brown hair out of her well-scrubbed face. Dangling earrings with feathers attached told George much of what she needed to know.

‘Can I join you for a smoke, guys?’ she said. A heavy West Country accent. She pulled out a tightly rolled joint.

Sally winked at the woman. ‘Of course, dear.’ Turned to George. ‘This is your new partner in trafficking crime, Georgina. I wanted you to get here on time so I could make the introduction. Meet the new Fellow in Social Anthropology and expert in all matters regarding Roma child abduction.’

The newcomer stuck out her hand; her fingernails painted gaily in rainbow-coloured nail varnish belied a grip like an arm-wrestler who hustled and won. ‘Wotcha, George. I’m Sophie Bartek.’

CHAPTER 7

Amsterdam, Vinkeles restaurant, 2 March

‘What have you got for me?’ Kamphuis asked, shovelling a piece of steak into his mouth that was far too large, even for him.

The exclusive eatery, Vinkeles was rammed with the great, the good and the possibly criminal underbelly of Amsterdam’s high society. Dressed to kill, as though they were impervious to the weather. Understated ritzy decor. Wide armchairs, serving to accommodate even Kamphuis’ fat arse, as he enjoyed his Michelin starred lunch. Chewing with his mouth open, like the moron he was, Van den Bergen mused. Staring out at the Keizersgracht, as though the Chief Inspector sitting to his right was not even worth a cursory glance.

‘You summoned me here, Olaf,’ Van den Bergen said, stomach growling at the sight of the beautifully arranged food. Snatching a bun from a passing waiter bearing a bowl heaped with golden brown orbs – doling them out with metal tongues to those who were still doing carbs. Half the bun gone, in one bite. The morgue always made him hungry. It was something to do with the formalin, Marianne reckoned.

Finally the Commissioner deigned to turn to him. A half-sneer on his face. Sauce hanging in a blob on the side of his mouth. Threatening to besmirch the pristine white tablecloth, or else the jacket he insisted wearing, even in the overheated salon, because brass buttons on top screamed to the other diners that he was top brass. Fucking idiot.

‘It’s Commissioner Kamphuis to you,’ Kamphuis said.

Van den Bergen defiantly chewed his bun in silence for long enough to be irritating. Kamphuis’ trigger-points were big-chested new admin girls, Van den Bergen’s silent treatment and inappropriately stylish shoes on older men – all elicited responses of extreme ardour or intense dislike.

‘Been stood up on a date?’ Van den Bergen asked, bouncing his size thirteen boot on top of his bony knee. Ugg Adirondacks. A birthday present from George before they had had The Argument. Far cooler than anything he ever would have bought for himself. Certainly enough to drive Kamphuis wild with annoyance.

Slamming his cutlery down noisily, Kamphuis’ eye started to twitch. Sure enough, he grimaced at Van den Bergen’s bouncing foot. Took a swig of his sparkling mineral water. ‘I’m a busy man. And a regular here. I don’t need an excuse to have a quick bite in an establishment where I don’t have to look at ugly bastards like you all day. Now, I asked you here to debrief me on the autopsy of that John Doe.’ Shovelled in another oversized medallion of rare flesh. Spoke with his mouth full, of course. ‘Well?’

Van den Bergen helped himself to a glass of water. Swallowed down an extra strong iron tablet. ‘Don’t know why you’ve got your elasticated pants in a twist over some dead junkie.’

‘My city. My reputation. Murder rate’s right down, thanks to my vigilance.’

‘Except it’s not your city, is it? It’s Hasselblad’s. He’s the Chief of Police, not you.’ Van den Bergen could see the colour rising in Kamphuis’ face. Quickly turning florid. Telltale sweat breaking out.

‘We’re a team, me and Jaap. And I don’t need lessons on leadership from you. Facts, please!’

‘Suffocated by snow. Stabbed in the neck. Wallet gone. Looks like a mugging by a mugger who missed the drugs on him. Maybe our killer panicked and ran off. It’s a very public spot.’

‘ID?’

‘Nothing yet. Nothing’s come in from missing persons.’ Van den Bergen peered over the table and through the multi-paned, tall window to the snowy scene beyond. The canals were all completely frozen solid – now thronging with residents who had bunked the day off to ice-skate along the city’s waterways. Wrapped up against the blistering cold, he could even see three women skating along, pushing pushchairs that contained grinning toddlers. A modern day Breughel painting, where wool and fur had been replaced by Goretex.

He imagined for the briefest of moments, skating along the Keizersgracht with George, hand in hand. Losing himself in her soft brown eyes. Skating away from his cares and responsibilities. Just for an hour or so. Remembered doing that with Tamara, when she had been a little girl. One, two, three, wee, suspended between him and Andrea, his ex. Swinging the little four-year-old into the air. Tiny gloved hands. Knitted animals on the end of each finger. Fine times long gone, until George had come into his life and set his heart to thaw.

‘Are you smirking at me?’ Kamphuis asked, snapping Van den Bergen out of his reverie.

‘No.’ A silent beat. ‘It’s a waste of my team’s time. They’re too experienced. We do the serial killers and criminal networks and high-profile cases. You’ve got plenty of junior detectives who could be looking into the dead junkie. I want to keep working on the missing persons’ operation. We’ve spent so long looking for—’

‘Forget it,’ Kamphuis said, belching. ‘I’m the boss now. My priority is the murder rate. You tow my line, you streak of piss, or I’ll put you out to pasture quicker than you can say, “pensioner discount”. Right?’

Early retirement. Arrogant turd. Kamphuis’ words resounded like a bad bout of tinnitus, as Van den Bergen stood on the steps of the restaurant, watching the skaters. Retirement. Consigned to the scrap heap. Nice. And Kamphuis had grounds. Everyone knew Van den Bergen had been struggling since the Butcher. He touched his scar tissue beneath his coat, poking where it ached in the cold.

The windows of the beautiful, four-storey townhouses that leaned in on him felt suddenly oppressive. Spying on him. Marking him out as a failure. A man who should have died. A Chief Inspector who had not succeeded in solving his most recent case. An ageing idiot who had pushed his young lover away. He felt utterly alone.

Opting to walk through the streets back to the police HQ, instead of driving in the shitty, slippery conditions, he hammered out a text to George. Intended it to be conciliatory. Wanted to tell her that he loved her and was sorry. That he could commit, after all. That he would go for more therapy.

Despite his best intentions, he found he had sent:

Assigned to murder case. Suffocation with snow. Strange neck wounds. What do you think, Detective Lacey? P.