The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows

by Riches, Marnie

  ‘Just stay put for another couple of days!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘No ways!’

  ‘Paul, they’re going to walk straight back into the lion’s den!’ Now, more than ever, she needed Chief Inspector Van den Bergen to sideline his investigation in favour of her. Be her lover, not a high-ranking policeman. Just for two minutes. Just long enough for him to pick up the phone and say something authoritative that would stop Sharon in her tracks. ‘Paul! Are you listening?’

  She leaned on the edge of his uncluttered desk top, trying to engage him, but he was in the tunnel, sifting through forensics reports with Marianne de Koninck’s signature on the bottom, by the looks.

  George slammed her hand down on the wood. His photo of Tamara fell over.

  Finally, Van den Bergen looked up, his grey eyes seeming too large through the lenses of his reading glasses.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got to stop my stupid, boneheaded family from getting on the next flight back to London. Aunty Shaz is having a meltdown. And I still haven’t heard from Letitia since that text,’ George said. Even though they had agreed that the police HQ was not the place to show affection to one another she wanted more than anything for him to hold her.

  ‘Someone’s tampered with the evidence for the Jack Frost murders,’ he said, taking the glasses from his nose and chewing on the arm.

  She hated it when he did that. So unhygienic.

  She glared at him. Hurt, fatigue and irritation reacted inside her – a chemical experiment that would end badly if he didn’t pay attention. ‘I’m talking to you about my family. My family. Remember? Living people who are in mortal fucking danger, Paul.’

  He waved dismissively, wrinkling his nose. ‘I’ll make a call at lunchtime. They’ll be fine. Stop worrying.’ His hooded eyes widened, focussing back on the report, which he snatched up and waved in the air. ‘Marianne went through the evidence again and lo! Some new samples have mysteriously showed up. Kamphuis’ hair allegedly taken from Tomas Vlinders’ body. That wasn’t there before. I had a MET detective in London on the phone this morning, telling me Trevor Underwood’s body has been found in a skip outside a derelict pub – details that only Gabi and Piet knew about, because they bloody well killed him. And yet, their forensics guys are saying there’s one of Olaf Kamphuis’ fingernails snagged on Underwood’s clothing. Then, Elvis digs out two victims’ mobile phones from Kamphuis’ private car. One of them, Underwood’s!’ He rammed his glasses abruptly back onto his nose, scratching at the overgrown white and iron-filings stubble that betrayed over-long shifts, working the case, falling wordlessly into bed beside George at 2 a.m. ‘This stinks.’ His dark eyebrows gathered like storm clouds above those melancholy grey eyes. ‘Someone’s framing Kamphuis for those murders. We know the Deenens did it.’

  ‘They confessed!’ George perched on the corner of his desk. She longed for some physical contact to calm her mounting anxiety, feeling annoyed with herself for needing him.

  ‘Yes. They confessed to us. In the confines of my super-shed. You know that counts for nothing. I wasn’t wearing a wire.’ He slapped himself in the forehead and winced. ‘I thought when they agreed to come back to Amsterdam that they’d just hand themselves in if the children were found.’

  ‘They stayed at the allotment all this time,’ George said. ‘You weren’t to know any of this would kick off.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t think they’d start invoking their right to silence. And now, this, out of the blue. Nothing points to the Deenens. Everything points to a dead, disgraced policeman. Jesus, George! They’re going to get away with serial murder.’ Desperation etched into his face. A man who liked to tie up loose ends with the correct, regulation knots. Fastidious. Unimpeachable. Some of the things she loved about him.

  ‘Could they have somehow paid someone to plant the evidence?’ She knew it was shit theory but it was all she had.

  ‘They were locked in that cabin the whole time until we carted them off to the station on fraud charges. I had the key! Only me. When the hell would they have had chance to do a deal?’

  ‘Piet’s had access to his mobile phone. Waiting for Bloom to make contact, wasn’t he? For all you know, he could have called someone.’

  Van den Bergen narrowed his eyes, pursed his lips, then shook his head. ‘No. Whoever planted this new evidence knew about forensics procedures and investigation techniques. It’s got to be an inside job.’

  There was something about the way he looked at her then that George steadfastly, wholeheartedly, did not like.

  ‘What?’ she asked, standing tall, which wasn’t tall at all, feeling like he was assessing her in the same way he sized up suspects in an interview room. ‘Why you looking at me like that?’

  ‘What was it between you and Gabi? Why did she keep coming to you and Sharon?’

  CHAPTER 64

  Amsterdam, prison services’ family centre, 1 April

  ‘Are you ready?’ the social worker asked Piet and Gabi.

  Gabi patted her hair, tied up in a tight chignon. She smoothed her jeans along her legs – so loose-fitting, after her stint on the streets, eating whatever scraps she could find in the bins behind sandwich shops and restaurants. She knew the lines of her face were that much sharper now. She prayed they would recognize her, despite the physical changes, and hoped they would still come running to her. Cleave to the very essence of her being, as the woman who had given them life. Chubby arms outstretched, just as she’d fantasized over and over in her mind’s eye, sleeping outdoors under an unforgiving winter moon, giggling and gleeful that Mummy was back. Or would they smell murder on her, knowing instinctively that she had taken life? Snuffed it out willingly in a violent frenzy. They might reject her, and then, she would have failed. Failure on a biblical scale. Gabi didn’t do failure. Now, her heart was thudding so hard and fast, her voice had its own vibrato. ‘I’ve been ready for months,’ she said.

  Sitting next to Piet on the brightly coloured sofa, in that jaunty playroom where they conducted supervised visits, she wondered what sort of expression she should wear. A grin? Something more demure? Should she laugh when they came in?

  ‘You okay?’ her husband asked, taking her hand into his. Happiness in his eyes, though she could see it was diluted and polluted with the blood of those men. Always would be, now.

  She nodded. A flicker of a smile. A sob accumulating inside her. Stuff it down. You were always brilliant at that. Muscles have memories, Dad used to say. ‘Fine. Can’t wait.’

  Commotion in the corridor beyond the glazed door. Childish, squeaky voices, speaking in a mixture of Dutch and English. Gabi leaped to her feet, unable to contain those emotions. Today, her muscles only had memories of happy times, of holding her children, of wrapping her family in a protective wall of love, however stilted the outside world might perceive that to be.

  A frumpy, middle-aged woman with short grey hair opened the door, looking behind her, beckoning her temporary charges forwards. No surprise when Josh pelted beneath the woman’s arm into the room ahead of Lucy. Yelling. Pretending to be an aeroplane with arms outstretched. He made straight for Piet.

  ‘Paps!’ Headbutting his father’s thighs. Piet swung him into the air, blowing a raspberry on his belly.

  Through a waterfall of hot tears, Gabi spied Lucy, trotting in behind him, holding the social worker’s hand. Reticent. Looking up at the woman for reassurance, a teddy tucked under her arm. Chewing coyly on the stuffed toy’s ear. Teething, maybe. Flaming cheek on the left-hand side pointed in that direction. All those years when she had bitched about being kept up at night by teething toddlers, chomping amid tears on ice cool teething rings. Gabi could think of nothing better now.

  She held her arms out, forcing a bright, sunshiny Mummy voice from behind the sorrow and loss and relief. ‘Lucy! Come to Mummy.’

  But Lucy was so much younger than her brother. A tiny girl, yet bigger than she had been at the
time of the abduction, dressed in unfamiliar clothes that Gabi had not bought, wearing her hair in a style that Gabi had not determined. She looked startled by this unfamiliar visiting room, with its gaudy children’s posters and colourful roadmap rugs. And still, she hadn’t run to Gabi.

  Sinking to her knees, Gabi simply waved at her daughter. ‘Hello, Lulu,’ she said, hoping the pet name would act as an immediate aide memoire.

  ‘Lulu!’ Lucy said, cocking her head to the side, examining her mother with the sparkling, razor-sharp curiosity of a two year old. ‘Where’s Carly Mummy?’

  Sucking the sobs back into her body, Gabi fixed a smile on her face, willing herself not to show the hurt and rejection to her confused toddler. ‘I’m Mummy, Lulu. Remember? Come to Mummy for a snuggle.’

  The girl smiled. ‘Snuggles!’ she said, cackling with delight. She approached her mother with a bouncy, rigid legged run, typical of her age and size, and buried her face in Gabi’s chest and sniffed. ‘Mummy.’

  Sandwiched between her and Piet, Josh fidgeted and wriggled and even punched them in their bellies with impish delight. And though she had always excelled in self-containment – prided herself on her iron discipline and poise – in that visiting room in the foster home, with her children in her arms, Gabi let the joy and the grief and the regret flow forth in equal measure.

  Remembering how it felt to be a family. Remembering the encouraging email from her solicitor that had said the fraud case against them would be thrown out. Remembering the wink from the red-headed police woman as she had slipped out of Van den Bergen’s cabin, carrying Hauptmann’s and Underwood’s mobile phones.

  The meek shall inherit the Earth, she had said, before locking them back in.

  Today, Gabi’s legacy was not the Earth, but a small slice of purity in a world gone bad.

  CHAPTER 65

  Amsterdam, Hasselblad’s house, 2 April

  ‘Gordon?!’ Hasselblad said, opening the front door. A tentative smile on his bug-eyed face said an unscheduled visit from a criminal associate at eight in the morning was not welcome. ‘You look well. Been away? Haven’t seen you on the golf course for a few weeks.’ He was babbling, fiddling with the buckle on his belt. Off guard. Good.

  ‘Alone, are we?’ Bloom pushed his way into the hall.

  He had asked the question, though he already knew the answer.

  The ambushed Chief of Police closed the heavy door behind him. ‘Mieke’s at the gym. Do you want a coffee?’

  Bloom surveyed the familiar interior of Hasselblad’s house as he walked through to the kitchen, all marble work surfaces and crystal chandeliers. Mieke’s taste. He had fucked her up against the wine chiller only a month ago, making the Bollinger bottles rattle on their wire shelving with every thrust. The perverse thrill of banging another man’s wife in his home and castle while that other man was out, pretending to solve crimes that he had a secret, sordid vested interest in. It was a poetry, of sorts.

  ‘Go on. Make mine a strong one,’ he said. ‘I’m still jetlagged.’

  Watching Hasselblad boil the kettle and prepare the pot, he realised the Dutchman was nervous. Frog-eyes darting from the kettle to the sink, clearly avoiding making eye contact with his uninvited guest.

  ‘You know why I’m here, don’t you?’ Bloom asked, deliberately keeping it relaxed. For now.

  ‘No. It’s always nice to see a buddy, though. Nothing wrong, is there?’ Hasselblad poured the black brew into dainty espresso cups. He pushed one towards Bloom, then checked his watch. ‘I do have to go soon, mind you. I’ve got a press conference about Kamphuis. You know? My Commissioner. You met him once at some drinks thing.’ A downcast expression that seemed rehearsed. Knowing Hasselblad, he’d been practising in the mirror ready for the cameras. ‘He’s dead.’ He looked back up at Bloom. It was difficult to read him, then. Those bug eyes gave little away apart from the suggestion of thyroid eye disease. A flicker of satisfaction, perhaps, lurking behind a slick show of respectable, measured grief.

  ‘I know,’ Bloom said. Time to drop the bombshell. He tried to conceal the grin behind the espresso cup. ‘I had him killed.’

  His host slammed his cup down with such force that black liquid spurted all over Mieke’s precious worktops.

  ‘You did what?’ Colour rose in this overweight, overinflated, overpromoted Chief of Police. ‘You were behind that?’

  Bloom nodded. Smiled. Fixed Hasselblad with his one good eye, savouring the man’s obvious discomfort. Veins bulging in Hasselblad’s wide, proletarian neck. His type were built for manual labour on the flat land, farming Friesian cows. Not the seats of power.

  ‘Kamphuis was onto us, you fucking plum. Why do you think he took those kids? He was gunning for us. Everything I’ve built over decades. Every triumph. Every war I won. I’m not the Duke for nothing!’ He stretched himself upwards, standing as tall as he possibly could, and puffed his chest out. ‘He was lighting a fire beneath my tower. If I hadn’t had him taken out, he’d have brought the whole bloody shebang down.’ He poked Hasselblad in his gassy stomach. ‘And you with him, you remedial arsehole.’

  The surge of colour in Hasselblad’s cheeks drained fast. He took a step backwards in his stockinged feet. Mouth flapping open and shut like a faulty letterbox as he tried to find the worlds. Lips, greying. ‘Van den Bergen never mentioned any of this in our last briefing.’ Blinking fast.

  Bloom removed his coat and suit jacket. He threw the coat onto a leather sofa at the end of the kitchen island, then hung the jacket on the back of the ornate bar stool, weighted down on one side by the insurance policy in his breast pocket. He started to roll up his sleeves. ‘Use your brain, Hasselblad. Why would Van den Bergen let slip that he was looking into rumours about your involvement with my illegitimate business empire?’

  Hasselblad shook his head, mouth open, momentarily. ‘Van den Bergen knows?’

  ‘That bitch he’s shagging … she’s the one who took my eye! McKenzie’s the only person outside my circle of trust who could ID me as the Duke. For two years, I’ve been praying I would never run into her ever again. She’s the reason I had this work done.’ He bared his filled incisor, pointing at his nose. ‘One loose end I wish I’d had the sense to tie off when I had the chance. Except, she’s got some pretty hard-core people in the British government watching out for her, for some reason. So, I decided to let sleeping dogs lie. You don’t go looking for trouble when MI6 is involved. But there she was, in a railway arch in London. Me, McKenzie, the Deenens and one of my men. I had a gun pointed at my head, Jaap.’ He poked at his temple. ‘Deenen’s a psychopath. He thought I’d taken his precious children. But it was Kamphuis, setting Van den Bergen and his whore on the trail like over-enthusiastic fucking sniffer dogs. I was going to die! I had to give you up to save my own skin.’

  ‘Bastard!’ Hasselblad lunged at him, then pushed him hard into the opposite bank of units, swinging a punch at him.

  But Bloom was in better shape. Younger. Quicker on his feet. He spun Hasselblad around and slammed him into the wine chiller, pinioning him to the glazed door using his forearm held against Hasselblad’s neck. Hasselblad’s eyes bulged even more than usual. A vein had risen in his forehead like a fork of green lightening.

  ‘All this time, I’ve given you generous back-handers,’ Bloom hissed. ‘All these long years, Mieke’s sat on various boards, coining it in. Fancy cars. Expenses through the nose. I looked after you. We were buddies. What did you have to do in return, eh?’

  ‘Let me go, you nutcase!’ Hasselblad sputtered, deep red colour surging to his rubbery lips as he strained against Bloom’s arm.

  ‘All you had to do was keep your trap shut. That was it! But I have ears and eyes everywhere, Jaap. I hear you’ve been mouthing off over drinkies with Kamphuis and some ministerial types. Boasting, like some schoolboy in a game of one-upmanship. You infernal cunt! He’s a cop. Didn’t you think he’d put two and two together? Did you think he’d let human trafficking and class A drug
s and paedo rings slide? Did you?’ He was screaming, now. Craving the thrill of ending a life. Only, the part of him that made cool business decisions was still running in the background like a small but crucial file on a computer’s overloaded hard drive.

  Should I just choke him to death and have done with? Do I need him? Maybe once Van den Bergen and the girl are gone, things can get back on an even keel. No. Kill him! You’re top of the food chain. You’re the Duke.

  He deliberated for five seconds too long. Bloom had a good grip on Hasselblad, but his arm was tiring, the balls of his feet stinging. He shifted his position by an inch or two.

  It was all Hasselblad needed. He pushed Bloom away with his bulk, and was suddenly on top of him on the floor, like a cuckolded lover engaging in revenge seduction.

  ‘I’m going to knock that glass eye out of your head, you pompous English bastard!’ Hasselblad yelled, punching Bloom repeatedly on the temple.

  Though he felt the blows raining on him, one after the other, Bloom delighted in the fight. It made him feel vital. It made his blood race faster though his veins. He brought his knee up fast between Hasselblad’s legs, hitting the sweet spot with force.

  His opponent fell off him, buckled up, clutching his crotch with eyes squeezed tight.

  Bloom lost no time in rounding on him. Hands around his neck. Pressing on his windpipe. Excited that death was in the room an erection made its presence felt in his trousers. He rubbed the swelling against Hasselblad’s back.

  ‘I fucked your wife a thousand times in this house. In this kitchen. In your bed! Bet you didn’t know that, either, eh?’

  Beneath him, Hasselblad made spluttering noises, trying to buck Bloom off. He started to ram him into one of the cupboard door handles to their right, rhythmically forcing the sharp metal into Bloom’s kidneys: agony he couldn’t afford to bear for long.

  Bloom stood, staggering backwards. Hasselblad was back on his feet, fists raised like a drunken pugilist. But Bloom was fast, pulling a cook’s knife from a wooden block on the island.