The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows

by Riches, Marnie

  When her smile faltered, he knew things were about to go wrong.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said, her finely plucked eyebrows gathering together in apparent consternation. ‘There seems to be a problem with your card.’ She handed his card back. Bright smiles once more. ‘Have you got another method of payment?’

  He tapped his pockets, as though he were making a genuine effort to pluck a card from some forgotten hidey-hole in his jacket. He started to back away from the cash desk.

  ‘Sir, shall I put it behind the counter for you?’

  He turned quickly and walked away.

  Two women with pushchairs recognized him on the way out. They were pointing, nudging, nodding, tittle-tattling that he was the one from the television. The man from the newspapers. The one who had lost his kids. Shit Dad. Irresponsible husband. Loser.

  ‘Move!’ he shouted to another shop assistant who was now standing between him and the door. He could feel the walls drawing in on him, like curtains closing on a theatre scene. Threatening to swallow him. But he was still in the spotlight. Too bright. Too bright. Faces turned to scrutinize him in that bastion of appearances-mattering, with its neatly folded, colour-coordinated jumpers and novelty ranges of children’s wear. ‘Get out of my damned way!’ He pushed an elderly woman aside and stepped out into the fresh air.

  Breathe. Breathe deeply. He leaned forwards and clutched his knees. In and out through his nostrils. Heartbeat slowing. Back on Pieter Cornelisz Hoofstraat, where Tiffany & Co. tipped the wink to Tommy Hilfiger and Dior that everything was fine, here. The beautifully renovated three- and four-storey houses that were now home to Louis Vuitton and pals were going to shelter him from the ugliness in the world. Here he was, just a regular man, pushing the boat out for his exemplary family amongst the tanned and toned patricians of Amsterdam.

  ‘You can’t sit here, sir,’ a doorman said. He emerged from his perfumed and air-conditioned haven with its buzzer-entry door, looking like an upmarket bouncer, and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. ‘Not on the step. Move it elsewhere, pal.’

  ‘I felt funny,’ Piet said. Looking round, bewildered. ‘I’m fine now.’ He pushed the brute away.

  His phone started to ring, but there, at last, he had spotted Lucy and Josh. Shopping with some woman he didn’t recognise. Lucy in a Bugaboo pushchair. Josh at the side, walking like a big boy.

  ‘Ah, at last!’ he cried. ‘There you are, you little monkeys!’

  The woman was walking away from him now. Her back turned to him. The children had not seen him. He started to run, ignoring the phone. That could wait. When Gabi found out he’d found the kids at long last, she’d be overjoyed!

  ‘Lucy! Josh!’ He was shouting now. People were looking at him askance, as he pelted down the street after his children. Twenty paces away. Ten. Josh’s hair had started to grow. But it was definitely him, with those sturdy little legs. Except he was narrow in the hips. No nappy peeping out the top of his camouflage-patterned shorts.

  ‘Josh!’ he reached out to touch his boy on the shoulder.

  The boy yelped and looked around. Angry little face. Not Josh’s. The woman had swung around too, revealing the small girl in the Bugaboo. So like Lucy. But not Lucy.

  ‘Do I know you?’ she asked. Hard eyes and a grimace on her immaculately made-up face said she was unimpressed by this interloper touching her son. Handbag at the ready, like a weapon.

  ‘Sorry.’ Piet felt the sorrow pushing upwards in his throat, constricting everything, an anguished ache in the glands beneath his ears that quickly crippled his entire body. ‘I thought you were somebody else.’

  And the phone was still ringing. Gabi’s photo was on the screen, insistent that he should pick-up. The tears made it difficult to speak. The ice in his stomach made it impossible to stand. He sat down in the middle of that grand street, with its temples to consumerism, where the tables were never overturned.

  ‘Piet! Where the hell are you? I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes. I’m starting the interview without you.’ No pause for breath. Gabi was on a roll. She didn’t need him anyway. He knew where he was going.

  An hour later, he had driven to the canal that the police had dredged only days earlier to no avail. He stood and peered at his fractured reflection in the dank, still water. Maybe his babies were in there, entangled in some weeds growing on the bed. Maybe they weren’t. But he needed to sleep. He needed respite. And that overgrown bed of forgetful silt with its blanket of sluggish, dark water seemed as good a place to lie quietly as any other.

  ‘Let’s just start without him,’ Gabi said, turning to the journalist with a half-smile.

  She felt suddenly alone and exposed inside this pub – dismal, silent, all but empty, apart from a surly-looking landlord who was wiping glasses clean with a filthy rag. It was hardly surprising they were the only customers inside, given the glorious sunshine. The cobbled pavement directly outside was still festooned with tourists who looked like bunting, dressed in colourful Hawaiian shirts and sun dresses. Soaking up Amsterdam’s cosmopolitan vibe, they sank beer after beer until the flimsy stainless-steel tables groaned under the weight of different-shaped beer glasses. Cherry beer. Trappist ale. Duvel was your date with the devil. Hoegaarden with a lemony twist. Not a care in the bloody world, those nauseatingly chipper Americans and photo-frenzied, deferential Japanese.

  ‘Are you okay?’ the journalist asked. He touched her upper arm briefly. A caring gesture. ‘You look nervous. Honestly, you don’t have to be nervous. We’re just chatting.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Gabi said, blinking away the thought of Piet on the other end of the phone before he had cut her off. Who knew where he was or what he was doing? He was a liability. She had lost two children and gained a third.

  The journalist clicked on his voice recorder and smiled blankly as he set it on the table between them. His twinkling, inquisitive blue eyes were impervious to the suffering of others, she could tell. Just chatting. Gabi knew journalists better. They never just chatted. He was after his story and that was that. But she needed all the publicity she could get.

  ‘How does it feel to know all the leads from your big campaign have come to nothing?’ he asked.

  Somewhere inside her, her pride – patched up so regularly of late like an old cycle inner tube, beset by unforgiving road surfaces – was punctured. She felt herself deflate until she had to lay her hands on the sticky table or else risk collapse.

  Sit up straight. Show him no weakness, you idiot.

  ‘It’s devastating, obviously,’ she said, willing her voice to remain even and strong. ‘The Chief of Police was convinced the gypsies were involved, but—’

  ‘What do you say to the accusations on social media that you’ve deliberately steered the investigation towards the Roma to deflect attention from you and your husband?’ He was a smiling assassin, teeth bared, ready to go in for the kill. They all were now.

  Gabi paused. She visualised the tweets that plagued her the moment she opened her eyes in the morning to the moment she closed them at night. Sometimes even pushing memories of Lucy and Josh out of her mind. Hate-soaked vitriol and misogyny, trending on Twitter. Never for Piet. Always for her.

  @Gabi_Deenen You killed your fucking kids. You deserve to die, heartless bitch. #KillingDeenens #infanticide

  Why pick on the Roma? Because they’re easy scapegoats! @Volkskrant #racism #FindTheDeenens

  Gabi Deenen cares more about money & fame than finding her children. @ADnl @telegraaf #BadMothers #FindTheDeenens

  ‘I can’t control how the public perceives us,’ she said. She looked down at her fingernails, and strove to hide the chipped polish by shoving her hands beneath her thighs. ‘I’m only concerned with finding my children.’

  The journalist drained the dregs from his espresso. ‘But it’s true, isn’t it? That you are the driving force behind the PR campaign, and that includes the telephone hotline for witnesses to report sightings. Which the police are using as a
basis for their investigation. That’s a conflict of interest, right? You could potentially influence—’

  ‘No! I couldn’t bloody influence anything!’ she shouted. She leaned in to this young interrogator, poking him on the shoulder. ‘I had a big career in PR. I know how to drum up public support. If people forget about us, they forget to look for Lucy and Josh, you damned—’

  ‘Have you run out of money, Gabi?’ The journalist sat back in his threadbare seat, put his right foot onto his left knee and his hands behind his head. He glanced down at the recorder.

  This wasn’t supposed to be that kind of interview. Staring down at her half-drunk coffee, Gabi felt confusion roll in like bad weather.

  Consider your answer. Don’t snap back. That’s what he wants you to do. It’s cat and mouse.

  ‘Why are you attacking me?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘It’s just we’ve had a few close family friends speak to us in confidence.’ He opened his palms outwards, as if showing her quite how transparent and honest he was. Fucking snake. ‘And they’ve told us about your financial difficulties. You know? Your personal cash-flow problems.’

  ‘What has that got to do with you?’ she asked, folding her arms. Feeling her neat bun too tight against her scalp. ‘That hasn’t the slightest bearing on this—’

  ‘Is it true you were trying to get Josh diagnosed as having Asperger’s in the hope of getting disability payouts?’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ Blinking hard, as if she could somehow scratch him from her vision with her eyelashes alone. Should I leave? Will it make me look worse? Could I threaten him? ‘This is slander!’

  ‘No. It’s not slander,’ the journalist said, producing an official-looking report, printed on headed paper. ‘I have a copy of the paediatrician’s report concerning Josh, his condition and how you and Piet as parents were coping with it.’

  Gabi made to snatch the paperwork out of the man’s hand. ‘Where the hell did you get that?!’

  ‘I don’t have to reveal my sources.’

  ‘Oh, you bloody well do if the information’s confidential.’ She narrowed her eyes, scrutinising his cock-sure behaviour as he slid the papers back into his man bag with steady hands, nothing given away by his rictus grin beyond smugness. Never one for reading the subtleties of people’s body language correctly, she tried to decide what his was telling her. Piet would know. He had always been the more intuitive of the two. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re bluffing!’

  Keep it together, Gabi. You’re a professional. But her heart was beating too fast like an overwound clock. Sweat poured down her back, her palms ice cold and clammy. She was unused to listening to its prompts. Get out of here. Get away from this creep. You’re digging a hole.

  ‘I’m going,’ she said, standing abruptly so that the battered table between them rocked, spilling what was left of her drink. She reached out and clicked off the recorder. ‘You print any of that in your tabloid rag, I’ll sue you so fast it’ll knock that supercilious grin off your coked-up face.’

  Outside, her bottom lip trembled. Her hands shook. The canal-side drinkers were an attentive audience, more than just a flicker of recognition on the Dutch faces. Nudging. Tipping each other the wink. There’s that woman. There’s the terrible mother. Gabi Deenen. Nation’s Number One Bitch. Though mercifully, at least those dressed in the bright colours of tourists paid her no heed.

  Just walk. Walk quickly. Find that bloody idiot you’re married to and go home, for god’s sake.

  Smoothing down her skirt, she made her way on legs made from jelly towards the smart street where Piet had been shopping. ‘For a surprise,’ he’d said. And now, he was missing too.

  She took out her phone, poised to dial her husband. She jumped when it rang in her hand unexpectedly, showing the name of the Chief Inspector in charge of the case.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, willing the swell of tears to break without causing a splash.

  ‘I need you to come down to the station, Gabi.’ His rich, deep voice sounded tinged with something else, though the nature of it was just beyond her grasp.

  ‘Do I have to? Only, I seem to have mislaid Piet and I must find him. You should never let men go shopping on their own.’ She giggled, putting on a show of confidence, ignoring the gnawing sensation in her gut.

  ‘I’m afraid you do,’ the policeman said. ‘Social services would like to have a word with you both.’

  There was that sensation in her chest again. An over-wound clock, except now, she felt as though the seconds hand was jammed, flicking back and forth, back and forth over the same number. She wanted to run. Run away from this unending nightmare. Run to her children.

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope,’ she said. Giggling again.

  ‘Just come straight down to the station, Gabi. Now, please.’

  CHAPTER 30

  Amsterdam, police headquarters, later

  ‘Why are you bringing this up, for god’s sake? It was an accident!’ Gabi appraised the row of judgemental eyes before her: one set of steely-grey, partially obscured behind the smudged lenses of reading glasses that hung from a chain; one set, dark and inquisitive, impossible to interpret; one set of blue with watery irises. Sympathetic-looking, maybe; another pair of brightest blue – the pair staring at her, right now – felt like a borehole being sunk into her to see what comprised the hidden strata of her soul.

  The woman who owned the hard blue stare poked at her paperwork with a biro, a ring on almost every finger and cheap, polyester clothing. She needed to eat less, do more and shop elsewhere, Gabi assessed. Name badge said Wilhemina van den Broek was something big in child protection. There was that gut-wrenching, icy feeling in the pit of her stomach again. Wilhemina van den Broek was bad news.

  ‘You took your son to A&E on the 24th April this year,’ she said. Her thin lips clicked together as though they were magnetised, forming an unyielding straight line.

  ‘Did I?’ Gabi asked. The memory of cradling a screaming Josh in her arms, of trying to contain his flailing body in the A&E waiting room jabbed at her.

  ‘With a fractured arm.’ Wilhemina had all the details, it seemed.

  ‘Oh, yes. Poor Joshy. He was beside himself.’

  Eyes down, scanning the notes, the social worker read out dated entries in a voice that had just too sharp an edge to it to be a monotone. The police and the criminologist on the other side of the table merely looked on in silence.

  ‘It seems you’ve visited A&E with your son rather a lot. Head injuries. Bad bruising. Sometimes injuries to your daughter, Lucy too. And I’ve had notes emailed over from London’s King’s College Hospital …’ Wilhemina produced another sheaf of A4 ‘… that show this pattern in the UK, too.’

  Gabi folded her arms, and crossed her legs, wishing Piet were there as moral support, even if he would just sit there like a mute while she did all the talking. ‘You know my son has Asperger’s, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘That doesn’t explain these injuries.’

  ‘Oh, but it does.’ Gabi sat up straight, willing herself to hold this judgemental monster’s gaze. ‘Do you know how difficult it is to raise a child on the Autistic spectrum, Ms Van den Broek?’

  ‘Did you break his arm, Gabi?’

  ‘How dare you!’ She looked over at the Chief Inspector, who was sitting with his hands on his stomach, head cocked to one side in non-committal contemplation. Was he an ally or a foe? ‘Are you going to let this happen?’ she asked him, looking at the two younger women. The red head and the black girl. ‘You know I can’t have anything to do with such bullshit! I told you about my Josh and his problems. His anger. His fearlessness. The fighting. And you’re letting this polyester-wrapped blimp insinuate that I’ve abused my own children?’

  ‘Well, have you?’ the social worker asked, eyebrow raised as if she were awaiting full and heartfelt disclosure that the Deenens were child-beaters.

  Gabi felt her brain trying to disengage from her mouth. She was
aware of anger trying to sear through the veneer of cool professionalism that had taken years to harden to a point where it was both opaque and unyielding. ‘My son pulled the television on himself from the top of the TV cabinet because he was frustrated that I had called time on his jigsaw puzzle at 7 p.m. He’s strong. He’s determined. He has absolutely no understanding of physical danger or consequences, which is probably why he was lured away by a stranger. You. Unfeeling. Patronising. Cow.’ Drumming her nails on the table for emphasis.

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘All I want to do is find my children and bring them home safe. You speak to Josh’s paediatrician. You get references from my doctor. My employers. Any professional you like. You see then if I strike you as a bloody abuser of children.’

  Wilhemina van den Broek blanched. ‘It’s my job to—’

  ‘It’s your job to what? Conduct a witch-hunt? Who put you up to this?’

  Gabi looked at the social worker, who in turn looked pointedly at the three others in the room. All suddenly examined their knees or doodled in pads, clearly not wanting any part in this farce.

  The social worker bitch spoke, jowls wobbling, scratching at a nervous rash at the base of her bull neck. ‘Commissioner Kamphuis felt certain that child protection services should—’

  ‘The Commissioner?’

  ‘Okay. Enough,’ the Chief Inspector said, removing his glasses. ‘I think Mrs Deenen has answered all your questions for now, Wil.’ He rose from his seat, towering above them all like a judge presiding over court proceedings. He ushered Gabi into the hallway and beckoned that the young criminologist should follow them. ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  Wondering. Wondering. Wandering through those sterile police headquarters. Gabi was Alice, trapped on the wrong side of the looking glass. A bad trip. Falling, falling down the rabbit hole where her children may or may not lie broken at the bottom.