‘Fine. But I know it’s this guy I been flogging ID and shit to, because I done some digging, and Dobkin had his computer nicked by someone matching the homeless geezer’s description. Too many coincidences, man. Foreigner, needing passports, buying a gun. Maybe someone’s taken a hit out on your key people, and you’re next. I can protect you by keeping my eye on this Jack Frost. Or I can get him taken care of. Your call.’
Examining his fingernails in silence, the Duke’s expression changed like shitty, unpredictable weather. Danny found it hard to read him, especially now his face was tighter since the uplift – a different man from a couple of years ago when they’d first clashed antlers. Some sort of chameleon crap going on. Maybe mid-life-crisis. Maybe hiding from someone who could ID him. Who knew? Guy was a fucking nutcase.
The Duke stood and took a pillbox out of his jacket pocket, pinched white powder between his fingers and snorted hard. He turned back to Danny and smiled.
‘I’m invulnerable. I’m the Duke. What have I got to be afraid of? I’m ferried around in a Rolls Royce. I live in a house that has the security measures of a fortress. The minute I start watching my back is the minute I lose my grip on the reins.’ He snorted another pinch of coke, put the pillbox away, then sat back down as the tailor returned with a tray of drinks.
‘Ah! Perfect, Marcus. Thank you so much.’ He sipped his flat white and downed the brandy in one, then fixed Danny with his one good eye. ‘Keep tabs on our rough-sleeping friend. Deal with other matter, and you might find yourself promoted.’
PART 2
CHAPTER 36
A village South of Amsterdam, 16 January, earlier that year
‘Just pack the fucking rucksacks, you idiot!’ Gabi screamed. ‘We’ve got to be ready. We’ve got to go.’ She looked anxiously at her watch. How long would it be? Minutes? Hours? Another few days? ‘Kamphuis is going to have us arrested. I know it.’
‘I can’t, Gab,’ Piet said. ‘Let them arrest me. I’ve got nothing to hide. I’ve got nothing left to lose.’
TV on in the background. Rolling news channel. A weather report, describing the start of a downwards draft of Arctic chill set to last weeks. Heavy snow falling fast, with the double-digit drop in temperature to accompany it. Climate change to blame. The absurdly chirpy meteorologist was followed by a short feature on a turn in the tide of public feeling towards the Deenens.
Piet turned the sound up and stood blankly in front of the strobing box. Soundbite after soundbite: Gabi did it; he did it; both kids buried in a shallow grave somewhere by parents who were unfeeling monsters, utterly self-obsessed and more bothered about money than their ‘mentally ill’ child.
‘Turn that shit off!’ Gabi shouted. She zapped the slander into silent submission, as though the remote control were a Taser. She pulled her jeans on, picked up Piet’s fleece and flung it at him. ‘You need warm clothes. It’s insane out there. You’ll freeze to death.’
‘Good! I’ve been trying to die for months.’
Enough! She had had enough. Strode over to her husband and grabbed him by the collar of his T-shirt. Put her face right next to his. No space between them. Smelled desperation oozing from his every pore. ‘Do you want to find our children? Well? Do you?’ Shouting at the top of her voice.
Tears rolled lazily onto his cheeks, dropping onto his slippered feet when he inclined his head forwards. Fat, sorrowful droplets from dark eyes, reminding her of Lucy when she cried. She lessened her grip on his collar, and wiped his tears away with the sleeve of her hoodie. She encouraged him to sit on the edge of the bed.
‘What did George tell us in yesterday’s catch-up meeting?’ She was working hard to soften the tone of her voice. She needed Piet with her. This was one undertaking she couldn’t do on her own. ‘The convicted paedophile who took those little children – just like ours – from their back garden. Trevor Underwood. He’s escaped from prison. Trevor Underwood is walking the streets of London. We’ve got his name, Piet!’ She started to count off the facts they were privy to on her fingers. ‘We know he’s been sighted in South East London. George even let slip his mother lives in Lewisham.’
She knelt down before her broken husband, quaking as he sobbed. She held his forearms gently, though she wanted to slap him hard. ‘I can find him, Piet. Research is part of what I do. It’s a lead. The police are less than useless. Kamphuis is poised to fry us alive. We’ve only made it as far as January because Christmas got in the bloody way! Hasselblad’s insisting his detectives look in every direction but the right one. The only allies we’ve maybe got are George McKenzie and Paul van den Bergen. They’ve been following good lines of enquiry with this trafficking thing, but they’ve had no backing from their superiors! In the meantime, everyone’s baying for our blood.’
Piet rose and pushed her away.He picked up the rucksack, starting to line the bottom with underwear. He sniffed hard and met Gabi’s gaze.
‘It’s our last chance, isn’t it? Our last pop at finding Josh and Lucy.’ He hiccoughed the words out, his voice hoarse from crying, and Gabi was pleased to hear them at last.
She nodded.
‘We’ve got some money,’ she said. ‘I’ve not touched the accounts because they’ll only know we’ve gone on the run if I do. But I had a bit of cash knocking around. When Mum died, I found wads of fifties and twenties all over the bloody house. You know what old people are like.’ She chuckled mirthlessly. ‘I didn’t want to declare it.’
Piet looked at her. Frowning. ‘You never told me this.’
Gabi put her hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side. ‘Why would I? You’re financially incompetent. It was rainy-day money. And it’s not just raining. It’s frigging snowing a blizzard!’
Abruptly, he flung the rucksack back down. ‘You’re the one who insists we live beyond our means.’ He held his hands up. ‘I’m not even getting into this bullshit again.’ He blinked hard and exhaled slowly. ‘What’s the plan, then?’
‘London bound,’ Gabi said. ‘It’s big enough to disappear in. I’ve paid a man who sails in and out of South Docklands in a disused lifeboat. He’s got a mooring in Surrey Quays. We’ll be rough sleepers. Nobody notices them. No one wants to.’
‘How are you proposing to find this Trevor Underwood if we’ve no technology?’
‘Internet cafés. Libraries. People do it all the time. Leave that to me. We sail tonight, but we’ve got to stop off at Scheveningen pier first.’
‘Why?’
‘To buy us time. To stop them looking for us.’
As winter-dark evening turned into deep night, Gabi led Piet along the deserted pier, already buried in places beneath snowdrifts of four feet. The wind whipped her face cruelly; a thousand lashes reminding her that she must be punished for her poor mothering. She must be punished for failing to curry the public’s favour. Now, at least, she had a chance at redeeming herself.
‘Got the note?’ she asked.
‘In my coat pocket,’ Piet said.
Together they put their coats and spare shoes gingerly on the ground at the very end of the pier. They held each other for the first time in months, though Gabi knew the warmth of another human being could not thaw her heart. She was numb to the core … had been for years. Looking into the inky black sea, she wished, just for a moment, she could jump into it and wash all conscious thought and the agony away. But she was not like Piet, and those self-indulgent reflections were soon replaced by resolve.
‘Use the snow shovel as we walk back to smudge out your footprints. They’ll soon be covered in this downfall, but we can’t be too careful.’
CHAPTER 37
London, South Docklands, 17 January
Awoken by a thump, Gabi looked up at the oppressive mass above them. A low ceiling, pitch-black but for a shaft of weak light coming in from the far end of the cavity. No windows, this deep in the boat’s keel. With Piet beside her, they were covered by coats and blankets that stank of diesel. An inch of icy water formed a puddle at the
ir feet where the vessel wasn’t quite watertight.
‘Jesus,’ Piet said, sitting up and hitting his head. ‘We could’ve drowned in the night.’
‘But you didn’t,’ came the unfamiliar voice of a Dutchman. More light then as he opened some sort of hatch, daylight streaming in.
Gabi blinked hard. The ceiling above them had been papered with nicotine-stained naval maps and hand-written shipping reports that looked like they’d been torn from a ledger. Lifejackets and rope were piled high around them. Seeing a child-sized lifejacket, she remembered all she had left behind. She felt relief … pain …intense grief. She wondered how bad her hair must look.
‘We’re in London?’ she asked.
‘You bet,’ the hoary old captain of the leaking vessel said, shoving a rolled up cigarette in his mouth. He cupped his hand around the end against the wind, so he could get a light. His craggy, red face looked like it had been marinated for years in the brine of the North Sea. ‘We were lucky with the weather. It was dead calm most of the way. But I’ve never seen snow like it. Good for doing things without attracting the interest of Thames River Police.’ He tapped the side of his bulbous purple whisky-drinker’s nose, and looked expectantly at Gabi. ‘I can swap you a nice breakfast of wafels and hot coffee in exchange for the other fifty per cent of what we agreed.’ He winked.
Scrambling to her knees, Gabi pulled out a bank teller’s plastic bag containing a roll of money. She made her way up onto the deck and peered around at her new surroundings, shivering violently even in her chunkiest sweater and a heavy ski jacket, but elated. Glacially fresh air sliced into her lungs. To the north, some two hundred metres away, the River Thames flowed sluggishly past. Beyond it, the corporate monoliths of Canary Wharf glowed merrily in the whiteout. Red lights winking on the top of each – a giant’s Advent candle. Christmas had come late and her present was freedom from the trolls and the long arm of Olaf Kamphuis. But it came at a price. Josh and Lucy were still missing. They had a battle to fight and prisoners of war to retrieve.
She handed the money to the captain. ‘Count it, if you like. It’s all there. When I make a promise to do something, I keep it.’
Boosting the Transit van was easy, surrounded by the apparently deserted, uniform townhouses of the Canada Water development. Snow swallowed the sound of two opportunist thieves. Nobody would look askance at two middle-aged white people, even if they were carrying the tools of a car thief’s trade.
‘How the hell do you know how to do this?’ Piet asked, quaking with fear as much as near-hyperthermia. Fat flakes settled in his hair, on his shoulders.
‘Google,’ she said.
With the engine running, it was not long before her feet began to thaw a little. The drive to Lewisham took only twenty minutes, even on poorly gritted roads.
‘I don’t like this,’ Piet said, peering grey-faced out of the foggy passenger window. ‘What if we get pulled over?’
‘Stop looking like you’re going to throw up, and then we won’t be pulled over,’ Gabi said, trying to see the way ahead through the greasy windscreen, not helped by windscreen wipers flashing two and fro, scraping against the glass with a whup, whup that set her teeth on edge. It stank of stale cigarettes and sweat in the cab. The diesel in the tank was worryingly low. With the snow settling in earnest on John Silkin Lane, she could only risk fifteen miles per hour. The tyres needed replacing. Typical. She dreaded the hill starts as she manoeuvred the clumsy beast across the Deptford border and into the hilly urban terrain of Lewisham.
‘Can’t we go and find somewhere to stay the night first?’ Piet asked, blowing on his reddened hands.
‘No! I told you. We’ve got no fixed abode now. It’s doorways and underpasses for us. The minute we register in hotels, we’re spending cash we could use better on finding the kids. Plus, most importantly, we’ll have to give some sort of ID, and we left our legitimate passports and driver’s licenses behind. Nobody commits suicide and takes ID with them.’
‘Doorways? Are you fucking mad? In this weather?’
‘We’ve got to suck it up, Piet. Anyway, if we make our move now, we’ll get where we need to go before the owner even realises his van is missing. Vans are easy pickings in bad weather. Builders can’t build in snow. My dad spent thirty years as a ground-worker and we were always skint in January and February.’
They skidded their way into Lewisham, surrounded on either side by elegant Victorian gentleman’s residences that were now split into seedy flats. Dated floral curtains hung crookedly from their poles, like disgruntled erotic dancers; bare bulbs behind filthy windows; dead plants on the sills; wheelie bins out front, covered in thick snow. The odd BMW or Audi on a drive and plantation shutters at the big bay windows said the march of the affluent middle-class hipsters was upon the area, pricing the rough-shod, beleaguered locals out.
‘We’ll park up and go to the local library. Lewisham High Street.’
Putting their rucksacks on their backs, the trudge through the snow towards the pint-sized centre was hard. But it felt something like home to Gabi, after a year of lily-white faces op het platteland – in the Dutch countryside. A small-town existence, rubbing shoulders until static buzzed unpleasantly with bland, Aryan-looking people who talked about the price of cheese more than politics.
Lewisham Library loomed in the snow. An angular mid-century building. More famous as the scene of a stabbing than as a place of literary inspiration or learning, it looked like a smaller version of the police HQ in Amsterdam. Déjà vu.
‘What if the van gets a ticket?’ Piet asked.
‘Jesus. It’s stolen! Relax, will you? We’re soldiers of fortune.’
Inside, with their clothes still fresh, they attracted no attention whatsoever.
Gabi slid onto a computer as a library-user disappeared off to the toilet in the middle of a browsing session.
Her fingers flew back and forth over the keyboard. Confident. Hopeful. Pragmatic.
Underwood. Gladys. Mrs. Registered to an address in SE4.
She turned to her husband. ‘We’re on.’
CHAPTER 38
South East London, later, then 21 January
‘How the hell are we supposed to know what he looks like?’ Piet had asked, adjusting his rucksack on his back, wishing they could get to a café and grab a snack. He’d looked down at his wife, a feverish look about her.
From inside her ski jacket, she had produced a print-out from an online newspaper article. The photograph had showed a dead-eyed white man in his late twenties, with a shaven head and a tattoo of thorns scrolling around his bull neck. Reported in London’s Evening Standard; February, one year ago: Candy Man finally under lock and key after Met police crack down on paedophile ring.
‘He’s been inside for the best part of a year,’ Gabi had said, ‘I guess he might have changed his appearance – especially if he’s on the run. But that tattoo’s got to be a dead giveaway, if it’s visible. And those eyes.’
Her beautiful features had hardened to something akin to a mask of pure hatred. Piet had flinched. He understood why the media had latched onto the possibility of Gabi being a kid-killer. She had no idea she came across like a stark photo, taken with a hi-res camera – no filter or special lens to soften what was there, so that it appeared endearing or sympathetic.
‘This is a waste of time,’ he had said, staring up at the unbecoming low-rise block of flats, facing onto beautiful Victorian villas; reminding the flats’ residents that they had drawn the short straw in life. ‘What do you propose we do, now? Hang around until somebody who looks like a pervert miraculously emerges and says hello.’
‘What else do you suggest?’
Four days later, stiff from spending nights locked inside the freezing stolen van, praying the silence of a snowy backstreet would keep them safe from prying eyes and traffic wardens, they stood together outside the same block of flats, still hoping their optimism would bear fruit.
The pain of a snowball in his
ear took Piet by surprise. He yelped, then sought out its originator, heart pounding as though this were a fight or flight situation. But he sighed with relief, as he connected the dots: school children filing past them, throwing snowballs at each other. He watched them fronting minus twelve out in flimsy uniform trousers and cheap supermarket shoes that had taken a battering on the football pitch. Girls wore skirts, rolled up too many times at the waist, so that they swung a good six inches above the knee. Some of the children were young, accompanied by Mum or Grandma, holding hands, wearing bright wellies and multi-coloured gloves. Hats with earflaps designed to look like woodland creatures. Excited chatter sounded as they made footprints in the virgin snow by the kerb. But the older ones – year six, at a guess – walked unchaperoned. Pre-teens full of SE4 swagger: precocious sexuality in the coquettish girls; alpha male posturing from the still-squeaky boys.
Realisation dawned like the first February sunrise after a five-month-long Arctic night.
‘Where would a perv hang out if he wanted to get to children?’ he asked, feeling the sudden rush of adrenalin, a feeling of anticipation he wasn’t used to. The thrill of the chase. ‘Let’s follow them.’
The wave of school children flowed over the main road and filtered down a side street in twos and threes. Cars double-parked and school-crossing signs said they were nearing the epicentre of this youthquake.
Gabi stopped outside a neat Victorian terrace. Cream-grey bricks and white lintels. She looked up at the single-glazed windows. So picturesque in the snow.
‘What’s the matter?’ Piet asked, noticing the downward turn of her mouth.
‘Nothing.’
But he knew. Apart from the red door, where theirs had been black, the terrace was almost identical to the home they had lived in for almost five years, only two or three miles from that place, as the crow flew. A reminder of better times. She was right. They never should have moved.
The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows Page 21