Aunty Sharon wedged her chair backwards and manoeuvred herself so that she was facing George. Her judgemental eyes narrowed, still tired-looking from her night shift, working the bar at Skin-Licks. She tapped on her locket, now hanging round her neck. ‘You grass these poor fuckers up, girl, maybe you ain’t got my blood.’ She sucked her teeth long and low. ‘Maybe you got too much of Letitia in you. And you know, she’s so cut-throat, she ain’t got any real blood left in those clogged-up veins of hers. She’s a fucking reptile, your mother.’
‘Please, George,’ Piet said. ‘Help us find Josh and Lucy.’
Torn between the law and her innate empathy, George was swayed finally by the strength of her aunt’s conviction that the Deenens were victims who deserved a chance. She sighed, and ruffled her hair. ‘OK. If my Aunty thinks I should cut you the slack, then I will. It must be dreadful for you. I really genuinely feel for you guys. But why have you come here? How the hell did you even find me?’
‘Doesn’t matter how we found you,’ Piet said. ‘The fact is …’ He seemed to be mulling something over, chewing his bottom lip, looking at his wife as some sort of unseen exchange of information took place. ‘We’ve got a lead. I don’t want to discuss it right now, because I don’t want to incriminate you in any way. What you don’t know won’t jeopardise your career, will it?’
‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ George said, biting into her toast, handing her aunt a plate of her own.
‘It’s nothing to worry about. Nothing criminal, like I said. Gabi’s very good at Internet research, so we’re just having a feel around.’ He produced a slim smartphone from his coat pocket. ‘It’s just we wondered if you knew someone who could unlock this.’
George pulled her sleeve over her hand and took the phone from him. She wiped it clean on her pyjama leg and pursed her lips. ‘Whose is this?’
‘Nobody’s.’
‘Doesn’t look like nobody’s. Nobody doesn’t generally fork out on an iPhone.’
Piet rubbed at several-day-old stubble with his index finger, eyes darting furtively to the cooker and back. ‘I picked someone’s pocket. That’s all. Someone of interest in a pub last night. He won’t miss it. Not his type. It’s probably stolen anyway. Best you don’t ask.’
Four digits. No idea of whose phone it was. At 5 a.m., George’s mind was sluggish. She keyed in the obvious ones that she remembered from her days as one of Danny’s girls.
‘Nada.’
‘Give us it here,’ Aunty Sharon said, reaching out for the white lozenge. She left the kitchen. The sounds of footsteps on the stairs. Patrice, in the room above. Complaining that he’d been woken in the middle of the night. Sharon’s voice was shrill in response. Footsteps back down. A smug look on her face as she handed the phone to Piet. ‘There ain’t no pin on it now. Some things only kids can do. Like believing in Santa and that.’
Circumnavigating the cramped kitchen, George peered over Piet’s shoulder, munching toast that had already turned cold and damp, watched him scrolling through the contacts list. Then, checking the gallery, where photo after photo of children, snapped from a distance, were stored. His thumb slowed as there appeared a series of blurry shots of two small blond children. One boy. One girl. It was hard to tell if they were Josh and Lucy, but George intuited from the knowing look that the couple shared – loaded with anguish and optimism, both – that they felt they had glimpsed their abducted son and daughter.
She swallowed hard, unexpectedly touched by their optimism after all this time.
‘That it?’ she asked.
‘Can you lend us some money?’ Piet asked. ‘We’ve only been here for a few days and we’re already out of cash.’
Shaking her head, she held out empty hands. ‘I’m on the bones of my arse myself. I haven’t been paid yet.’
But Aunty Sharon marched over to the tins cupboard, reached in and pulled out a clean, empty Heinz container with the lid missing, in amongst the legitimate beans.
‘There’s a couple of hundred, here. Electric bill money. But go on. I’m getting good tips at work at the moment.’
‘I’ll give it you back, Aunty Shaz,’ George said. ‘It’s my fault they’re here.’
Her aunt shook her head and pressed the roll of cash into Gabi’s hand. ‘Go on. Have it. Find your kids, for the love of God. But don’t bloody come back here no more. If you get caught and you go down, I can’t have you taking my niece down with you. Right?’
By 5.23 a.m., the only sign that Piet and Gabi Deenen had ever outlived their alleged suicide attempt were two dirty tea mugs sitting in the sink.
PART 3
CHAPTER 41
London, Liverpool Street Station, 19 March
‘I wish you’d come back with me so I can protect you,’ Van den Bergen said, holding George’s hands on Liverpool Street Station concourse as though they had never argued, his nose touching her nose, he, stooping, and she, forced to stand on tiptoes. A tingling lover’s kiss in the rush-hour chill air as commuters scurried hither and thither, marching smartly towards another day of corporate containment and profitability.
‘I don’t need protecting, Paul,’ George said, pulling his head towards her so that her face pressed against his, feeling the warmth of his freshly shaven skin caressing his forehead. ‘If Piet Deenen wanted to kill me, he’d have done it by now. And searching for him in a city of nearly ten million makes trying to find a needle in a haystack look like a piece of piss. This isn’t Amsterdam.’
Van den Bergen sighed resignedly, holding her so her close that she could smell the residue of hotel shower gel on his body through the fabric of his coat.
‘I should tell my colleagues at the Met,’ he said. ‘There aren’t ten million homeless men in London. I’m sure they’d pick him up. Every day we leave it, there’s a risk he’ll kill again.’
She shook her head. ‘Things have gone quiet. Gabi’s bound to come and find me next time she runs out of cash. She knows I’m a soft touch. And if she knows where Piet is, I’ll convince her to give up his whereabouts. If she knows. But I’ll put feelers out myself in the meantime. Contact homeless shelters. There’s a few places I can look. And when I find them, I’ll string them some bullshit so we can get them back to Amsterdam. Under your jurisdiction.’
‘I don’t like it.’ He gazed blankly at the busy blur of other travellers, darting to their various destinations. ‘It’s my duty to go after Jack Frost. This is my case. I catch criminals.’
George felt a knot of anxiety in her stomach; her instincts screamed that doing things by the book was no way to skin this particular alley cat. ‘Paul, if you launch an international manhunt, we’ll never see either of them again. You know I’m right. The Deenens have already proven they’re pretty astute at staying off-grid. And who knows what they’ve found out? Dobkin was onto something. Piet and Gabi are onto something. Their kids are still missing, but there’s something much bigger lurking just over the horizon than two abducted toddlers. A real fucking kill, if you can bide your time and use the Deenens to hunt it down. You want medals in the war on crime, General? You’ll get the Victoria Cross if you bring a huge trans-national trafficking network to justice! And more importantly …’ she poked him affectionately in his shoulder ‘… as far as your sanity goes, Kamphuis will be toast!’
‘Jesus.’ Van den Bergen emitted a low growl. He grimaced, then rolled his eyes and treated her to a half smile. ‘Okay. Why the hell are you so good at destroying my resolve, Detective Lacey? First, in the bedroom, now—’
‘Ha! I knew you’d put out in the end, old man,’ she said, winking. ‘I’m irresistible. Admit it.’ She put his hand on her bottom.
Van den Bergen coloured up. He smiled knowingly and sighed, looking up at the departures board. ‘You’re persistent and a corrupting influence, Georgina McKenzie,’ he said. ‘I have to go. I’m going to miss my flight.’
In amongst the din of thoughts vying for precedence in her head, all George could think of was h
er lover’s naked body entwined with hers: a triumph where he had promised failure.
After they had finally been shooed out of the brasserie of the hotel by the maître d’, they had repaired to Van den Bergen’s room with the various sheaves of case notes. They’d discussed Gabi Deenen’s three impromptu visits to Aunty Sharon’s house, where Gabi had told them she and Piet had fallen out – that his mental health had worsened. She had thrown George off the scent by saying her husband had absconded on a coach to the South of France, or even Spain, maybe, where the freak Arctic weather manifested itself as cold showers of rain and the odd gusting wind, instead of minus twenty with two or three feet of snow.
‘She tapped me up for cash,’ George had told him, remembering Gabi’s thin frame and filthy clothes. ‘I helped her out. She cut a sorry bloody figure, I can tell you. No woman should have to live on the streets. Especially not in this weather. We let her get showered and Aunty Shaz slung her clothes in the wash.’
At that point, she had been sitting on the end of Van den Bergen’s bed. He had been perched at the head, propped on cushions, sketching her, using hotel stationery.
‘I still can’t believe you kept it from me,’ he’d said, and stopped sketching, studying the line of her face with his pencil held in front of him to get the angle right. ‘All this time. You didn’t trust me.’
George had tutted. ‘It was a bond between women. For Aunty Shaz, it was about the pain of losing a child – whether through illness or abduction. Two bereaved mothers. Gabi was looking for her kids and didn’t feel she could ever go back to her old life until they were found. I swore I’d keep quiet. Promises like that, you just can’t renege on, man. It’s not cool.’ George had straightened the wrinkled bedspread as she’d considered the spectre of an ailing Leitita and the unexpected communications she had suddenly started receiving from her father, who had found her on the St. John’s College website. ‘I may not have my own kids, but I’ve got enough emotional intelligence to understand the strength of even the shittiest parent-child bond.’
Paul had put his sketching materials to one side, folded his hands in his lap and appraised her with those shrewd grey eyes. ‘Then you should understand why Tamara’s pregnancy has made me think twice about us,’ he’d said. ‘You’re my daughter’s age.’
She had crawled the length of the bed to meet him, sinuous movements designed to weaken his resolve. She knew he would be seeking out her cleavage, visible in the V-necked top she was wearing.
‘But I’m not your daughter, old man,’ she had said, pulling his shirt free from his trousers with her teeth. Toying with the naval hair that grew thick on his abdomen, looking for the line where the Butcher had unzipped him. Kissing along the scar tissue until she reached his chest. Butterfly kisses along his collarbones. Caressing him with her breasts. She’d felt his body relax and his desire registering hard and insistent against her inner thigh.
He had grabbed her by the waist and rolled her over, peeling her clothes off as though she were the last shrink-wrapped snack in a chiller cabinet and he were a starving man.
‘You said I’d have to come running with my tail between my legs,’ he’d said, caressing the sides of her breasts, tracing a line around her erect nipples, deliberately not touching them.
‘I’m not very good a bearing a grudge,’ she’d replied, voice hoarse as he’d teased the resolve out of her. She’d stroked herself with his erection so he could feel the hot pool of her own desire. ‘Anyway. Tail seems present and correct, old man.’
‘You drive me insane,’ he had murmered, pinning her arms above her, describing a figure of eight as he caressed the curves of her body, finally licking her nipples with a firm tongue.
‘It’s my job.’ She had pulled him inside her without further preamble, and for the first time in more than two months, they had made love. It had been urgent and intense, all of Van den Bergen’s reticence evaporating in the burning passion of their union.
The following morning, beneath the departures board in Liverpool Street station, she registered the satisfied warmth between her legs and a heart that felt full. ‘I love you, you know,’ she said. ‘Now, are you going to stop shutting me out?’
‘I’m so sorry I’ve been an arsehole.’
The creases at the sides of his eyes said he was happy. For now. He stroked George’s cheek with his forefinger and sighed contentedly. The unforgiving angles of his face seemed to have softened into something more hopeful and youthful.
‘You’re so fit,’ she said, smiling. ‘I forgive you, arsehole.’
As he pushed one of her wayward curls to the side, a memory pressed its way to the fore: Sophie calling Paul a pig; Sophie, pissed in a pub, waxing lyrical about stolen Roma children; Sophie, now also missing in action.
‘What is it?’ Van den Bergen asked, pulling up the handle on his small suitcase, the lines in his brow deepening.
George shook her head, as though she might shake her hazy thoughts into sharper focus. ‘Nothing.’ She kissed her ageing lover on his sizeable hand and started to back away. ‘Go back to Amsterdam. I’ll call you tonight,’ she said. ‘I’ll be over within a week or two. I promise. Granddad!’ She winked, waved and then was gone.
Sophie. Piet targeted Dobkin, who had information on the Son of the Eagle. Now, Sophie’s absent without leave. Christ on a bike. How could I have been so fucking blind?
As George marched smartly towards the Underground station, she called Graham Tokár, asking if he’d seen his Roma-championing ally. He hadn’t. Shit.
But there was an email from her father, saying he was in town for ten days only and did she want to meet for coffee? Shelve it for now. He’s waited twenty years. He can wait a bit longer. A text from Letitia, saying her consultant’s appointment had come through for her pulmonaries and that, and would George come with her to it? She can fucking take a ticket and wait her turn too. Finally, a text from Patrice.
Danny Spencer is living Greenwich.
The world stopped turning. Her lips prickled, blood draining away at the whiff of a ghost. There was her old flame’s address, displayed in black and white on the small screen. George Googled it. A penthouse in a block of recently constructed executive apartments right by Crowley’s Wharf in Greenwich – the jewel in South East London’s crown. Blistering views of the river. Isle of Dogs on the opposite shore with the upturned fruitbowl dome of the O2 Arena visible in the distance as the river bent round to the right.
‘Nice one, Dan the Man,’ she said, feeling jealousy, like sickly poison creeping along her veins, leeching the well-being from her body that a night with Paul had given her. ‘Crime really does pay, you bone-headed, egomaniac, plucked-eyebrow twat.’ Fleeting memories of being ensconced in Danny’s drunken mother’s unmade bed with him and Tonya. Two’s company. Three’s more limbs than an Argos divan could technically cope with. Teenage kicks in a filthy, standard issue Borough of Southwark box.
George thought, then, about the cramped conditions at Aunty Sharon’s and her revolting room in the college house. On a material level, Danny’s life had improved significantly. Hers had not.
‘Cunt.’
How would she feel when she saw him? Would she even see him? As she disembarked the Docklands Light Railway at Cutty Sark, the harsh wind blowing off the Thames almost knocked her off her feet. With a thunderous heartbeat and thoughts of Van den Bergen and Sophie long gone, she made her way past the National Maritime Museum and down to the river. There was hardly any snow left here, apart from huge grit-strewn mounds that looked like dirty icebergs. They had been shovelled by council workers from the site surrounding the Cutty Sark. And there, to George’s left, was the fully refurbished tea clipper, looking resplendent in the harsh winter light. Masts, towering above her, with the vessel’s taut rigging and fluttering international bunting lending itself more to a summer’s day than deep mid-winter and one criminologist’s hunt for a two-bit crimelord.
Catching her breath, she walked gingerly a
long the river, slippery in parts where the melting snow had hardened to ice. On her left, the Thames flowed into town, bearing all the secrets of the sea, large tracts of ice still floating on its surface. Snow clung stubbornly to the lesser towers of Canary Wharf’s skyline in the distance. The old Royal Naval College loomed in front of her, to her right, with its neo-classical columns and Georgian windows. Christopher Wren would be turning in his grave, George mused, had he known a Danny was living within spitting distance of this World Heritage Site that was still crawling with tourists even on the shittiest of mornings.
Having weaved her way through the historic complex, she finally came out the other side. Danny’s lair in her sights.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ she said, peering up at the penthouse. Using her smartphone to zoom in on the large living room window. As if she’d even see him from this angle! It was ridiculous. ‘This is bullshit.’
George hung around by the block of apartments for another half an hour, feeling silly. Obviously there was no Danny to be seen … what the hell had she been thinking? And what would she even do if she saw him?
At midday, with a rumbling stomach, she walked back into Greenwich Village. She decided she’d reward her failed sleuthing attempts with an opportunistic trip to Noodle Time on Nelson Road. A nice bowl of ramen would defrost her fingers and toes.
Picking up her pace, she walked past Nauticalia, selling all manner of maritime-related nick-nacks, the orange and white frontage of Noodle Time visible further down on the other side of the street. Giant photographs of various dishes hung in the window. Noodles. Chicken. Hot, salty broth. Van den Bergen’s sizeable manhood finally having put in an appearance, thank fuck. These were her only thoughts as she prepared to cross the road. So when a tall, athletic figure emerged from Greggs bakery in her peripheral vision, she almost didn’t register him.
The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows Page 23