‘Am I? Anything happens to me or my wife, the whole world will know the identities of those perverts. You fail to return Josh and Lucy, my list will be published in every newspaper you can think of. The police will know. You’ll be—’
A remorseless face of a man that possessed no remaining shred of humanity spoke then, heartless, empty words coming from his mouth. ‘I’m the Duke. The king of the fucking heap, you piece of shit. My business interests are far-reaching. And I’m not afraid of the police. I’m untouchable.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Gabi said, rounding on Bloom, holding the razor blades aloft in a fan as a warning, narrowing her eyes. ‘Who have you got in your pocket? High-ranking top brass in Scotland Yard? Some of your fellow backbenchers? Someone in the cabinet?’
Bloom shrugged. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’ He winked. ‘Crazy tits.’
Grabbing his hands, Gabi gleaned a certain sadistic pleasure in ramming the blades back under Bloom’s stubby fingernails. Whimpering, panting, he strained against his bonds but refused to scream.
‘Who is protecting you in the police?’ she asked, inserting the stiletto knife into Bloom’s ear. She cocked her head to one side and frowned. ‘I can’t hear you!’
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Bloom closed his eyes. ‘I heard it was a brutal attack. I don’t think it was him at all.’ He fixed Piet with a disdainful sneer. ‘You killed the Germans. Some mother figure you are.’
*
Piet had been gone for some twenty minutes. Gabi had not expected to be defenceless against an unfit man who was unarmed. But a moment of weakness where she had had to use the toilet had been her undoing. Hauptmann’s bulk on top of her had been unassailable. Within minutes, a second man had appeared answering to the name Hans: a weedy, sallow-faced man with a comb-over, who fulfilled every physical stereotype of a child molester. She had struggled, at least, and left Piet a desperate clue as to where they were taking her. Possibly her last testament, daubed in her own blood.
It had been unbearably cold in the zoo. Bound and gagged by the periphery wall of the polar bear enclosure, she had felt the end was near, bereft at the loss of her children. Guilty that not only had she failed to protect them, but she had also failed to rescue them. She deserved to die and had been now merely curious as to what form that violent end would take.
She had tried to decipher Hauptmann’s conversation with his co-conspirator. Talking, talking in a Germanic monotone. When Hauptmann had leaned her over the top of the thick enclosure wall and grappled inside his trousers to reveal a small, hard cock, she’d realised that a simple death did not await her. Perhaps she deserved the additional pain and humiliation, she’d thought.
She’d braced herself as the thin assailant tore off her jeans, exposing her delicate skin to the sub-zero night, then hope had surged anew at the sight of Piet sprinting up behind him. Carrying a snow shovel in one hand. Wielding an icicle that glistened in the moonlight in the other. Puncturing the man’s neck so that blood arced freely onto the snow. Steam coming from the hot liquid, hissing on the frozen ground.
The killing had happened quickly. Frenzied. Snatching the snow shovel from Piet, she had beaten Hauptmann repeatedly over the head with it until he became docile and confused. Severing his penis with the blunt blade. Violence that had been fermenting inside her all these years had suddenly issued forth with every blow; every kick; every fistful of snow that she had forced into his windpipe. Retribution for the suffering of those children. Revenge for the disappearance of her own. With his dying breath, he had uttered but six words.
‘Gordon Bloom. Find Dobkin. He knows—’
She had pronounced her final judgement upon him and brought his end with the blade of the shovel, a deadly smile rent across his face. There had been silence at last in the Zoological Gardens.
‘What have I done?’ she had asked, still clutching the snow shovel. Staring at the two men that were now nothing more than macabre trim on the edges of the polar bear enclosure. ‘I’m a murderer, Piet. You’re a murderer.’ Holding her blood soaked hands aloft like Lady Macbeth. Out damn spot. Out, I say. ‘How can we live with ourselves after this?’
‘Look, neither of us ever wanted any of this to happen,’ Piet had said, plucking a mobile phone from Hauptmann’s trouser pocket, then searching Meyer’s body. Eventually he had stopped, regarded his wife, then held her shaking body to him. ‘But I could have lost you back there. Those men were going to rape you.’ He had touched her bloodied head. ‘They would have killed you. I went to that house in Kreuzberg and set a load of kids free. It broke my heart to see them huddled together in a squalid basement. Wouldn’t anyone kill to stop that?’
Gabi had shook her head. ‘Going off grid was a mistake. We’ve ruined our lives.’
‘Our lives were already ruined.’
‘You’re turning into someone I don’t recognise, Piet. We both are.’ She had searched those killer’s eyes to find traces of the warm, gentle soul that had once been evident in them. She had seen a hopeful glint, but realised it was merely moonlight reflecting on their glassy surface.
Piet had led her away from Hauptmann and Meyer’s bodies – already covered with a dusting of snow. ‘The police failed us. So, we’ve become the police. This is our life now, Gabi. We’re going find our kids. We’re going to bring these bastards to justice.’
*
‘I’ll ask you one more time,’ Gabi said, pressing the stiletto further into Bloom’s ear. ‘If you don’t answer me and or I think you’re lying, I’ll drive this knife right through to your brain.’ She took a deep breath, remembering Piet’s words, spoken with such conviction in Berlin’s Zoological Gardens. We’re going to bring these bastards to justice. ‘Who in the police is protecting you? It is someone in Scotland Yard?’
Silence.
‘You have a house in the Netherlands, don’t you? I remember you telling me when I was handling the Bloom Group account.’ Memories flickered through her mind like damaged footage from an old movie. Gabi, working on a PR presentation. Cheesy smiles, cheesy patter all to keep the big cheese happy. She knew he had been checking out her arse in her tight skirt and heels. Those moneyed types always treated women as though they were ornaments, positioned strategically in the workplace like exotic arrangements of plants: pleasing to the eye but superfluous to the real business of work, which was tended to by men. ‘When I told you I was married to a Dutchman. Remember? A mansion in Wassenaar, you said.’ She dug further into his ear. Blood starting to trickle out. ‘Is it someone on the continent?’ Pieces of the puzzle arranged themselves into a coherent pattern … the upper echelons above Van den Bergen insisting their Chief Inspector hare down blind alleys in the search for Josh and Lucy, always pointing the finger everywhere but in the direction of child traffickers. ‘A member of the Dutch police?
Bloom winced, then sighed heavily, contemplating his fate, perhaps. He looked over at Sophie, slumped in her chair with the potato sack still on her head.
‘He’s just a golfing buddy, but a buddy nobody would ever dare cross,’ he said.
‘Tell me!’ Gabi shouted.
‘The Chief of Police. Jaap Hasselblad.’
CHAPTER 45
South East London, at the same time
Tailing Danny was hard work. Fresh from a crime scene, his tendency to look over his shoulder regularly meant that George had to hang a good way back, darting into doorways, whenever he jerked his head in her direction. Her composure disintegrated fast, like decay on an overused cassette recording, leaving her feeling thin and exposed, jittery with hunger. Paranoid. It wasn’t helped by her phone going into overdrive.
Letitia, of course.
‘Yes, I got your bloody texts. I’ll speak to you later, for god’s sake,’ she had told her mother, praying the wind didn’t carry her voice to Danny. Four times, now, with the same bullshit. No. Five. Letitia – insistent, shrill, making George’s eardrums quiver, bitching about Aunty Sharon, as if her aunt were anyt
hing but hospitable and long-suffering. Hospital appointment this. Pulmonaries and sickle cells that. ‘No, I can’t come back,’ George said. ‘I’m in the middle of something. I ain’t telling you. That’s none of your business. Listen, if you phone back again, I’m putting you straight to voicemail. Right?’ Verbal abuse coming at her in a tinny, crackling package. Pain in the arse. Fuck you very much, Mommie Dearest.
When Danny had ducked into London Bridge station, George had lost sight of him for five minutes. Maybe more. Heart thumping. She couldn’t see him. Perhaps her momentary lapse in concentration had left her exposed; he was now the predator and she the prey. But no. There he was, only three or four metres away, emerging from a coffee kiosk. Mercifully not looking in her direction, rising on the escalators to the main concourse. The Shard outside, towering above them – a dizzying dagger of glass and steel – made her think of the icicles used by Jack Frost. Piet Deenen, impaling the delicate necks of men on winter’s weaponry. She shuddered.
There was Danny, juggling his coffee and an Oyster Card. A flash of his perfect teeth as he smiled at some girl in a short skirt, wiggling her way to the tube. He was strutting towards the barriers in that blinging parka, the spoils of an urban war, well-won on his back, carrying the muscular bulk of the man he had promised to become as a lithe young brother, when he and George had been together. She felt a strange pang of nostalgia, though she had sought to bring him down for good.
Sucking Danny off in her tiny, dingy council house, when Letitia had been at work. Kissing Danny in a stolen car and imagining just for a second that he cared. Fucking Danny’s friend, at his insistence, while he watched, Tonya sprawled naked on his lap. George ushered the memories into a box and locked them safely away.
Concentrate, girl! And don’t get too close. At this time of day, if he was taking an overground train, she would be too easy to spot.
South-easterly bound, he alighted after only one stop. New Cross Gate. George sought the cover of a group of rambunctious pensioners making their way home from town, carrying Blue Cross sale bags. She waited until Danny had rounded the corner and then crept forwards, spotting him making his way down a busy street. Chicken shop, newsagents, cash your gold, a barber’s shop for the super-fly of SE5. Checking his watch. George had a feeling he was heading to meet somebody. A change in his deportment. Walking with even more swagger. Keeping tabs on time. Anticipatory behaviour she had seen many times in this man she had once known too well.
Advancing towards some railway arches that were boarded up, he took out his phone. Made a call. Turned around towards George. But she had already darted behind a board that had become all but dislodged. A soggy, torn notice on the mildewed ply saying that the entire row was condemned. Trespassers keep out. Fly posters will be prosecuted. Partially covered, of course, by a fly poster.
Downwind of the conversation, George could hear Danny speaking.
‘Yeah, man. I’m here, now. Yeah. I got them. You better have the cash and you better not be short, right? Alright. In a bit.’
Her hiding place was flawed. If he were to look in her direction, not only would he see her feet peeping out from beneath the board, but he would undoubtedly see her face through the gap, where the wood had been ripped askew from its fastenings. Worse still, once his rendezvous was over, Danny would have to pass back this way. How the hell could she hide from him then? And what if Letitia or Van den Bergen called? In this quiet alley, she was sure he would hear her phone. Cold sweat started to roll down George’s back. A myriad of things that could go wrong.
The distinctive sound of a Zippo lighter springing into action told her that her ex-lover was waiting patiently. She smelled the smoke from his cigarette carried to her by the wind. Caught sight of him thumbing a text to someone. Then, finally, footsteps approaching from the far reaches of this dead end street. George pressed her eye right to the gap to get a clear view of whom he was meeting, gripped by curiosity and dread in equal measure.
A shuffling, ragged figure coming towards him. Getting closer, closer.
‘You’ve got them?’ the man asked in English with a barely discernible Dutch accent. ‘Amoxicillin?’
‘I got what you asked for. You wrote it down yourself, didn’t you? My man can fucking read. It’s on the packet, see?’ Danny proffering what appeared to be a box of tablets. Pointing at the label. Cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth. Eyes screwed up.
And there was Danny’s clandestine customer. Barely recognisable, now with overgrown, greasy hair – suddenly silvered as though he had aged ten years in those few weeks. Florid scabs had colonised his haggard face. But still, a trace of the sensitive-looking architect that George had met several times in Amsterdam’s police HQ, whose eyes had been continually puffy from the desperate tears of the grieving.
‘Piet Deenen,’ she whispered to the chill wind.
Money changed hands. Danny moving off, now. Advancing in her direction. George stood to attention, rigid with fear. A solitary sheet of ply standing between the huntress becoming the hunted. Perhaps he wouldn’t see her. Walk on by, she thought. The Dionne Warwick ringtone of dearly departed Derek’s phone suddenly springing to mind.
Just walk past. Just walk past. Thudding words in time with her heartbeat. Walk on by.
But the spirits of the musical greats were busy in George’s world today. James Brown in her pocket, singing that Papa had a brand new bag. Letitia the infernal dragon. Why hadn’t she turned her phone’s ringtone to silent? Idiot!
Danny’s eyes swivelled toward the sound. He stopped walking, shoving a hand inside his coat, where a bulked pocket implied he was packing, a puzzled look on his overly groomed face.
George held her breath. The godfather of soul, still warbling away in her pocket, immune to the danger he and Letitia had put her in. Please god, please god, please god.
Too late for disingenuous prayer.
‘Who’s there?’ Danny said, marching up to her arch. ‘I can see your fucking feet! Come out, you spying bastard.’
A tight, tumorous knot of panic in her stomach sapped the strength from her. How should she play this? Give in to fear or front it out?
‘What you going to do, Danny Spencer?’ she asked, stepping out from behind the flimsy board. Speaking loud enough, hopefully, for Piet Deenen to hear, still visible, as he trudged further and further away from her. It was a punt, but it was the only card she had to play. ‘You going to put a bullet in a criminologist? You really wanna fuck with someone under Her Majesty’s special protection? Cos I know you’ve been staking out my aunt’s place, like some shitty little child-trafficking pervert.’ Shouting, now. Desperate for her voice to be heard by anyone. A passing stranger would do. Just buying her enough time to bluff her way out of this.
Surprise registered on the man with a plan’s face. A raised eyebrow. A half-grin that could denote anything from genuine pleasure to menace, knowing Danny. Turned out, it was menace. Something metallic being pulled from Danny’s coat. Of course, it had to be a semi-automatic. Pointing at her head, he clicked the safety off.
‘Ella. Just the girl I wanted to see. You must be telepathetic, innit?’
In George’s peripheral vision, hope blossomed at the sight of Piet turning around.
‘Georgina?’ he shouted. ‘Georgina McKenzie.’
‘Yes! Over here! Piet! I’ve got news for you. I’ve been looking for you.’
A gun in Jack Frost’s hand, now, though. This changed things. Did Piet view her as an ally or a foe?
‘Put your weapon away,’ he told Danny. ‘I don’t give a shit what sort of beef you have with her. I want to hear what she’s got to say.’
Danny sucked his teeth, grimacing at Piet, and swung his weapon around to aim at the ragged man’s head. A ludicrous standoff, where George was certain Danny would always win. His turf. His formidable reputation. And his upper hand wasn’t shaking with ill health.
When the gun went off, George yelped. Ears ringing for the second time that
day, she stared in horror at the bloody mess of Danny’s knee. The tall, powerful figure of a two-bit backstreet gangster lay prone on the cobbled ground, writhing in agony.
‘You fucking psycho bastard!’ Danny cried, wide-eyed and incredulous as he looked up at Piet.
‘Get up,’ Piet said, holding the gun with two quivering hands, smoke rising on the icy air from the barrel. ‘You’re coming with me.’
‘I can’t walk!’ Danny shouted.
‘You’ll walk if you don’t want another bullet somewhere more deadly.’
Piet turned to George. ‘Let’s go somewhere private.’
Van den Bergen. I have to tell Paul. Could I text him? But what good would that do? He’s in Amsterdam. I’m here. Jesus. I never expected this. Fuck. I’m such a dick. I could dial 999, but I don’t want the Met crawling all over this. So much more at stake than a dead millionaire. Feeling like she was trapped in some surreal dream, George ran through her options silently. It took her only moments. Her only option was to follow Jack Frost.
With Danny limping ahead of her, dripping blood onto the cobbled street and Piet at her back, holding the gun, George silently considered the arguments she could use for her life being spared, should things turn nasty. Had she not helped the Deenens thus far? Could she not act as a go-between with the law? Surely, all she had to do was remain positive and confident.
I’m going to die. I’m going to end today with a bullet in my head on the floor of a condemned railway arch, and I haven’t eaten since the bowl of Rice Krispies at breakfast. Thanks, God, for fucking nothing. What a shit life.
‘Get in there!’ Piet said, using the gun to point to the ominous black opening in the penultimate arch. Bypassing a white van that was parked, discretely obscuring the fact that a board had been ripped clean off the entrance.
The stench inside made George gag. Intense mildewed damp, rotting vegetation. Something else. She peered down at the cracked concrete of the floor, once painted red, now peeling with naked buddleia stalks bursting through. Noticed small, round figures dart quickly out of view. Telltale black balls dotted everywhere. Rat faeces. Plus, the ammonia stink of their urine. But another scent on the air. Metallic tang. Unmistakeably blood.
The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows Page 26