It was the man with the plan.
No more than ten feet away. Perhaps instinctively, the man with the plan turned towards the shadows where he crouched with a shivering Bartek. And for a split second, the ragged assassin could have sworn that they had locked eyes.
CHAPTER 32
St. John’s College, Cambridge, then, Cambridge train station, 18 March
‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t seen her,’ Alf, the porter said, scratching his bald pate.
He turned around and checked the pigeonholes behind him – a beehive of dark wooden boxes, mainly stuffed with post, though some were empty. Uselessly he ran his finger around the pigeonhole labelled Dr Sophie Bartek. ‘Pretty sure she’s had quite a lot of post this week.’ He raised an eyebrow and adjusted his glasses on the end of his nose, as though that might change the view. ‘She must have been in recently.’
Amid the hubbub of students filing in and out on George’s side of the counter, Alf turned to his identically dressed colleague, policing the act of some tweed-clad man, who smelled strongly of pipe tobacco and mothballs, signing into the visitor’s book.
‘Dave,’ Alf said. ‘Dr McKenzie here is looking for Dr Bartek. You seen her this morning?’
Dave momentarily abandoned his visitor and took his place next to Alf. Now both men were staring at the empty pigeonhole.
‘She’s collected her post,’ Dave said, also scratching his scalp, as though the two men were connected on some basic level. Taking his time with those words, as the elongated vowels of the East Anglian accent demand. ‘Must have been in yesterday, at least. I didn’t see her though.’ He turned back to the visitor’s book.
‘Have you tried Dr Bartek’s room, my dear?’ Alf asked.
George nodded. ‘I’ve tried the Archaeology & Anthropology faculty, too. She was meant to give a lecture this morning and she hasn’t shown.’ She ran the nail of her index finger up and down the zipper teeth on her Puffa jacket. ‘I need to talk to her.’
Alf’s frown gave way to a cheerful expression. The way he rocked back on his heels said he took disappearing Fellows in his stride. ‘I’m sure she’ll show up. Perhaps she’s had some family emergency crop up. I’ll try her number if you like.’ He took a ledger from a shelf at the back and started to leaf through its alphabetised entries.
‘No, that’s fine, Alf,’ George said. ‘I’ve tried her phone a few times and it went straight to voicemail. She’ll be knocking around.’ Underneath the down-filled wadding of her coat, George’s blood cooled fast. Moisture on her fingertips told her something was wrong. But she had to meet Van den Bergen from the station. The ticking clock on the wall said she could spare the mystery of a missing Sophie not a minute longer. Now, she must focus on her troubled lover, fresh from his breakfast meeting at Scotland Yard.
‘If she comes in, tell her I’m looking for her, will you? Cheers, Alf.’
‘Yes, ma’am!’ The head porter smiled warmly, saluting and clicking his heels together as though George was some captain in the army of academia. Same rigmarole every time. His expectant grin said he was waiting for her retort in this set piece.
‘At ease, sir!’ She offered him a show of teeth, though all she wanted was to get out of that place and spark her e-cigarette into life.
Negotiating Trinity Street was heavy going in the slush. Skidding over the flagstones that had finally begun to peek through the white covering. The morning had brought with it the first true rain since January, yet the weather could still not make up its mind. Icy precipitation of one form or another, biting through skin that yearned for the tropical climes of her ancestors. Rain. Sleet. Snow. Hail. Last night, Cambridge had borne witness to all four, plus the howl of the omnipresent, chill Siberian wind. It had been a sleepless night for George following her return from London; she wondered about Dobkin, Aunty Sharon’s theory and listened to the elements as they had whipped against the draughty window of her room in that hellhole of a shared house.
She dragged hard on her e-cigarette, pure white smoke discharging itself from the tip and from her nostrils. Got to get in a cab, she mused. Got to be there for Paul. But I’ll give it one last go for Sophie. Maybe she just pulled someone hot and couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed. Maybe she got caned and can’t face getting up. Would it be weird to go to her place? Haven’t got time, though. Not today. Check her hangouts first …
George walked round the whole of Heffers, drinking in the smell of brand new books. Feeling the thick carpet, springy beneath her snow-boots. No Sophie. Peered into every café window. Still no Sophie, though she spied Sally Wright, sipping an espresso and chatting in patient, measured spurts with Professor Stephen Hawking, immediately identifiable from the back in his specially adapted wheelchair with its glowing computer screen. George marched smartly past, keen not to be spotted and subjected to a lecture of one sort or another by her well-meaning mentor. She trudged through the market place where stall-holders were setting up for the day, expecting yet more brisk trade from tourists and students who demanded mulled wine, steaming cups of chai, hotdogs and hand-made tat produced in Taiwan and Thailand but ostensibly from Germany. An opportunistic Weihnacht’s Markt, though the traders were mostly locals, cashing in on the cold, or Romanians on the make. Christmas was long, long gone, leaving only Jack Frost (aka The Krampus) as a hangover.
‘Fuck it. I’ve got to shelve this.’ George checked her watch. It was time.
Her pulse rate was thunderous as she stepped onto the platform. She watched the train pulling in, its cab looming larger and larger. The carriage doors beeped as they unlocked, ready to release the human cargo of mainly tourists grunting over their unwieldy suitcases on wheels, as they took in the famous ivory towers on their whistle-stop tour of this strange, quaint continent. They filed off in clusters at first. Then, one or two. No sign of Van den Bergen. George started to walk the length of the train, breath coming short. Where was the pain in the arse?
‘Hello, Detective Lacey,’ a rich voice said behind her.
Grinning, she spun around. There he was. Six foot five of misanthropic policeman, looking different in this British air than he had in Amsterdam. Less grey. More handsome. Would he embrace her, or continue this ‘let’s just be friends’ crap? She didn’t wait for a prompt and grabbed him in a bear hug.
‘There you are, you grumpy old fart.’
She drank in the smell of his sport deodorant, still evident beneath the layers of winter clothing. She revelled in his gathering her to him, though her face only reached as high as his sternum. She reached up and caressed the stubble that covered his jaw. Iron filings, prickly like sandpaper, whereas his freshly clippered white hair was bristle-soft. Clasping his face between her hands, she pulled him down for a kiss. She turned her head to the side, open-mouthed, intending to meet his tongue with hers.
He offered her his cheek, which she licked unintentionally. Sharp, against her tongue.
‘You’re kidding,’ she said, taking a step backwards, as the apparent connection was broken.
Those steel-grey hooded eyes refused to meet hers. ‘Come on, Detective Lacey. We’ve got serious work to do. Lives are at stake.’
CHAPTER 33
Doubletree Hilton hotel in Cambridge, later
In the taxi to the hotel; in the hotel lobby as he checked in; in his room, as he unpacked his meagre belongings, where the double bed screamed her failure to seduce a man she had thought loved her, and now, in the dining room, George’s head was filled with, Prick, prick, prick, prick! Emotional cripple! Why the hell am I here? Why should I give a shit about this mind-fucking, milky-white anus-hole?
But she knew precisely why she gave a shit.
‘Give me your bloody notepad, then,’ she said, ignoring the disapproving looks of the waiting staff as she covered the floor around their table with paper from Van den Bergen’s lever arch file. ‘Let’s see what Scotland Yard coughed up.’
‘Eat your lunch first,’ he said, taking a predatory bite out of hi
s steak baguette. ‘You look like you’ve lost some weight.’ As he chewed, he took his steel-framed glasses out of their case and hung them on their chain around his neck. He fixed them on the end of his nose, squinting out at the serene, Christmas-card-perfection of the still-frozen river Cam – the start of the Grantchester section. Brave winter birds hopping on its bright surface, providing the only movement in an otherwise stationary scene. He looked around at their dark restaurant surrounds, with its browns and burgundies and teak wood. ‘It’s weird in here. Like staring out the window of a Bangkok boutique hotel. Except, I’m expecting to see the yellow waters of the Chaophraya river but here we are in Cambridge!’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ George said, stuffing a chip into her mouth, talking as she chewed. ‘I haven’t been to Bangkok.’
She could feel Van den Bergen’s eyes on her. She saw his hand reach out towards her … felt his uninvited caress on her neck.
‘Bruising?’ he said. ‘Have you been mugged?’
She pushed her chair out just far enough to ensure she was beyond his reach. ‘What do you care? Maybe I was attacked. Maybe it’s medals from an elaborate sex game with the other Fellows after last night’s formal hall. Maybe I’ve developed a penchant for auto-asphyxiation or dogging in Peterborough.’ George registered the warning prickle as tears gathered behind her eyes, felt the aching lump in her throat. She willed herself to banish this show of weakness. ‘Spare me the fake concern, Paul. We’ve got work to do.’
‘Scotland Yard have got nothing on Rufus Lazami,’ Van den Bergen said, plopping an effervescent tablet into his glass of water.
‘But I know he was the Son of the Eagle,’ George said, curious as to what he was poisoning himself with now but steeling herself not to ask.
‘You don’t know for sure.’
‘I’m pretty bloody certain,’ George said, standing to arrange the pertinent notes in a long, perfectly straight line that reached to the large picture window. ‘And I’ve got interview subjects for my Women in Prison study who are in their twenties and thirties, talking about a “hawk” who was trafficking underage girls domestically well over ten years ago.’
Van den Bergen pushed his chair away from the table and crossed his long legs. He folded his hands over his slight paunch, fingering the ridge of his scar tissue through a gap in his shirt. ‘Tomas Vlinders supplied kids – illegal immigrants and presumably Dutch passport-holding ones too, who he’s maybe abducted personally – to a paedo ring in Berlin.’ He thumbed his stubble and pursed his lips, the hollows beneath his cheekbones more pronounced than they had been of late. ‘It’s possible he took the Deenen children who went missing last year, you know.’
George clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She sucked her teeth thoughtfully, savouring the noise it made.
‘You never did let that one drop, did you?’
He shook his head. ‘The only people looking for traffickers in that case were me and you. Kamphuis insisted the parents had murdered them. Hasselblad had a hard-on for gypsies.’
‘Turns out the Roma might be involved in this case after all …’ George said, thinking of Sophie and her enthusiastic friend, Graham Tokár, with his plastic shoes ‘…cos now we’ve got four traffickers dead, one of whom – Lazami – seems to have been of Albanian Roma descent. He was almost certainly getting a 20% cut of the action, if Marie’s research holds water. As if he needed the money! And one who had Roma kids locked up in the basement of a squat in Kreuzberg.’
‘I think the Deenen case and these murders are connected,’ Van den Bergen said, putting his large hands behind his head. ‘We’re fairly certain our Jack Frost and Krampus are one and the same man. Thing is, I can’t put my finger on who the hell he might be, but he’s out to get a tight circle of kiddy-fiddling scum-bags.’
Their musings were interrupted when a young waiter dressed in black approached. He leaned into Van den Bergen conspiratorially.
‘Can you ask your friend to tidy away the paper, sir?’ he asked. ‘It’s a trip hazard. The other guests … in a restaurant of this calibre. I’m sure you understand.’
George sat open-mouthed, selecting her outraged words and putting them into the correct order before she fired them point blank at this scabby-faced little wanker. Except she didn’t have time. Van den Bergen looked at the boy’s knees, where the black fabric of his trousers had worn to shiny grey. He peered over his glasses at George. His long fingers reached into the pocket of his chunky cardigan hanging on the back of his chair, and he withdrew his police ID. Flashed it in the waiter’s face.
‘There’s nobody else in the bloody restaurant, sonny, and we are conducting police business. Please don’t interrupt me or my colleague again. Do you understand?’
George’s cheeks flamed merrily in response to Van den Bergen’s chilvalrous outburst. But the warm glow was quickly extinguished by the reality of an unpredicatble lover. He loves me. He loves me not. She entertained an unbidden memory of childhood, pulling petals off the daisies in the park with Letitia and her father. Optimism bloomed, then, as it always had in childhood. Maybe he does love me.
‘Who’s next on his hit-list, then?’ George asked. ‘We know he looks like a rough-sleeper.’
The Chief Inspector inclined his head towards her. Dark eyebrows heavy over those large, grey eyes. ‘Do we?’
George nodded. Pointed to her neck. ‘See these war wounds, old man? I did get mugged – well, not mugged, but attacked by another academic, the other day.’ She held her hand up. Didn’t want to be interrupted. ‘Dobkin from University College London. Total twat, but was doing some serious undercover exposé shit on major players in a child trafficking ring. He also had his research stolen a month ago.’
‘Also?’
She shushed Van den Bergen and bit her lip. ‘I’ll get to that. Thing is though, the guy who was spotted running away from Dobkin’s office after the break-in was described by witnesses as homeless. Now, you’re telling me Scotland Yard has a big, fat zero on Lazami, and Vlinders. Hauptmann and Meyer weren’t on a sex-offenders’ register or anything. So, it stands to reason, the only way anyone could have known all four victims’ names was if they’d either been a player in this trafficking ring themselves, or had somehow got their hands on Dobkin’s research. And the woman, who blackmailed me for money in return for my stolen laptop and USB stick—’
‘When did this happen?’
‘About two weeks ago.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
George stood. She fell silent with her hand on her hip. She snatched a rogue chip that had been left in Van den Bergen’s little wire basket, pointed at him with it and spoke deliberately slowly, speeding up and getting louder as she gained momentum and lost control. ‘Like you give a shit. Like I’m anything to you beyond a fucking colleague these days. Two years of a relationship. Tamara gets knocked up and suddenly Granddaddy-to-be can’t bear to stick it to someone old enough to be his daughter no more? Nice, Paul. Real classy.’
He held his hands aloft. ‘There’s no need for this, Georgina.’
‘Don’t fucking Georgina me! And what would you do if I did this?’ She marched up to him, grabbed his face and kissed him passionately on the mouth, expecting him to respond, despite his best intentions. She felt like he had thrown a snowball squarely in her face when he didn’t.
‘Stop being silly, for god’s sake.’ He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. His words were few but burned like acid.
‘Silly?’ George could feel the red mist descend.
‘I’ve made my position clear,’ he said. ‘You’re making a fool of yourself.’
He was looking at those ridiculous size thirteens of his. Perhaps he didn’t mean any of what he was saying, but those words seared deeper and deeper to the soft places where she hurt. George took a deep breath, not caring that a waitress and the waiter from earlier were eavesdropping from behind a screen. She calmly took his glass of effervescing whateverthefuckitwas and threw it
over his chest.
He looked at her with wide-eyed surprise and something bordering on contempt.
Between gritted teeth, she spoke from the blazing river of strength that ran inside her: Letitia the Dragon’s daughter, hot jets of indignation buoying her. ‘Don’t you fucking ever mistake my sexual confidence and emotional honesty for silliness and foolishness, Paul van den Bergen. This is not 1950. I am not some little kid. This is all about you acting like some mid-life-crisis prick entering his second fucking childhood. Or maybe you just didn’t finish your first.’
Dabbing himself with the dry napkin, she could see his Adam’s apple pinging up and down like a barometer, assessing the temperature in that room. Boiling for her part. Icy for his.
‘You’re unfair. Let’s get back to the debrief.’
‘Am I unfair?’ She sat back down. ‘You won’t allow yourself a shred of happiness, so you’re pissing all over mine. Is that fair? You use cruel and cutting words to push me away after we’ve meant so much to each other. Silly. Foolish. Do you think I don’t have fucking feelings? Am I some robot or something? Should I be punished for falling for you? Seriously? What planet are you from, cos it sure as hell ain’t mine?’ She examined the bafflement in his expression as if it were a menu. Trying to read into his silence. ‘Oh. What? Did you think I’d let it slide? Like I wouldn’t come back at you and have my say?’ She started to shake her head with ghetto-fabulous drama, normally reserved only for arguments with her mother. ‘Cos if you thought we could just rumble on with you insulting me and without me telling you how it is, Paul van den Bergen, then turns out you didn’t know me at all, my friend.’
The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows Page 19