‘Come on, then!’
Hasselblad’s focus drifted down to Bloom’s crotch. A look of disgust and disbelief on his face. ‘Oh, you’re demented. I never should have got involved with you. Do you fuck the children you steal and sell on?’
Bloom grinned. ‘Who’s the bad guy here, Jaap? I’m in the business of supply and demand. But you’re a cop who should know better. I’ve got Daddy issues. What’s your excuse, you fucking hypocrite?’
Panting from exertion, unsteady on his feet, Hasselblad reached for the bar stool but grasped Bloom’s jacket instead. Stumbling. Pulling the jacket to the floor where it landed with a metallic thunk. Hasselblad frowned down at it, clearly puzzled.
‘Leave it!’ Bloom said. ‘Leave it where it is, or I’ll stick this knife in you, so help me God.’
Why didn’t you keep your mouth shut, you bloody fool? Bloom chided himself. Eyes on the jacket, now knowing what was in the pocket.
But there was Hasselblad, snatching up the jacket too quickly, pulling out the hidden contents. His damned gun, of course. Pointing it at him.
‘All this time, you had this on you?’ Hasselblad said, smiling at the fortuitous turn of the tables in a game of deadly weapons top trumps. ‘Why didn’t you pull it on me straight away? If you wanted to kill me, I’d have been dead by now.’
Bloom held the knife up. Unflinching, though his kidney ached. This was going badly. ‘I fancied a fight. I like fighting. Okay? Guns are too easy.’
Hasselblad clicked off the safety, grinning. ‘Not for me, they’re not.’
The doorbell rang shrilly, interrupting their standoff.
‘Shit,’ Hasselblad said. He glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s my driver. He’s early.’
Banging on the door, now, but it was too insistent and booming to be a brass knocker. More like a battering ram. One, two, three. The sound of splintering wood. Footsteps thundering towards them down the hall. An armed unit wearing full riot gear. Van den Bergen at the front, holding a pistol, wearing a Kevlar vest over his shitty Chief Inspector’s clothes.
‘Hands in the air,’ he shouted. A towering menace. ‘You’re both under arrest.’
‘It’s all lies!’ Hasselblad shouted. A dark stain seeped through the crotch of his trousers, betraying his fear. ‘It’s Bloom. He’s a criminal.’
‘I know he’s a criminal, you donkey,’ Van de Bergen said. ‘And you’re a corrupt piece of shit. That’s why I’m arresting you both.’
Bloom swallowed hard. He saw in his flinty, angular face that Van den Bergen was not a man to bribe or reason with. He’d been too slow to have the big idiot bumped off. Too much coke. Too much confidence. Shit! He should have put the hit on him first; Kamphuis second. But at least the bitch of a girl would not get off so lightly. She’d be feeling the vengeful wrath of the Duke before he’d even made the call to his solicitor.
As the uniforms yanked his and Hasselblad’s arms uncomfortably behind their backs, snapping on the cold, unyielding cuffs, Bloom scrolled back through the morning’s events, trying to remember whether or not he had been followed to Hasselblad’s place.
‘How the hell did you know we were here?’ he asked Van den Bergen.
A wry smile from this oddity of a man. With the longest fingers Bloom had ever seen, Van den Bergen pointed to the top of the kitchen cupboards, where scrolling cornicing obscured whatever lay behind. ‘See that small black tube?’
Bloom scanned the woodwork with his good eye. ‘No.’
‘Kamphuis did his job properly, then.’ A broad grin from the smug, white-haired son of a bitch.
‘What do you mean?’ Hasselblad asked, squinting up at the dusty tops of his cabinetry. Then, spotting whatever it was that Van den Bergen had referred to. He blanched suddenly. ‘Oh.’ He turned to his underling. ‘Kamphuis installed cameras in my bloody house?’
Van den Bergen belched quietly, gun holstered now, those good teeth of his flashing like an annoying fluorescent strip light. He thumped his stomach and popped a pill from a blister pack. ‘He was onto you, Jaap. Say that for the prick, he knew how to do surveillance. He had every room tapped and wired, feeding into a laptop in his en suite.’
‘Is this some kind of sick joke?’ Hasselblad yelled.
‘Nothing like a bent cop to take down another bent cop, eh? I’ve got Marie and Elvis watching you from HQ, now. It’s a live feed.’ Van den Bergen waved to the camera, clearly euphoric at his own wit, the wanker. ‘Say hello! They’ve been working 12-hour shifts apiece, bless their cotton socks. We’ve been praying for a moment like this. So was Kamphuis, evidently.’ He winked at Bloom. ‘And when you showed up at the door, we had a feeling our prayers were going to be answered.’ He gazed up at the ceiling, hand over his heart, as if invoking heavenly spirits. ‘Poor Olaf. Pity he didn’t live to see his own finest moment as a documentary-maker.’
His phone rang.
‘Ah, this is Elvis, now.’ He listened attentively, those ugly hooded eyes sparkling with his own self-importance, and ended the call in a theatrical manner. ‘Yep. We’ve got everything loud and clear on tape. And Kamphuis even had a warrant for this.’ He gestured towards the camera with his phone. ‘Kept that one quiet, didn’t he? Clever, dead sod. You underestimated him, Jaap.’ Another wink. Van den Bergen clapped the Chief of Police on the back.
Bloom emulated the policeman’s swagger by winking back. ‘If you think you’ve got this all neatly sewn up, I think you’ll find you’ve underestimated me, my friend.’
CHAPTER 66
Amsterdam, Van den Bergen’s apartment, then, Vinkeles restaurant, later, 4 April
‘Do you want some toast then or not?’ George asked, waving a blackened piece of bread at Van den Bergen. Wanting to slap him over the head with it. Or kiss him. Or both.
Van den Bergen looked up from his copy of de Volkskrant. Holding it aloft like a trophy. Mugshots of Kamphuis, Hasselblad and Bloom on the front page. Pan-European disgrace that had made it onto every TV station from the UK to Poland, according to the police’s PR people. The headline, clearly the reason for her lover’s chipper expression: Amsterdam’s first son of law enforcement cleans up a continent.
‘You basking in the glow of your triumph?’ she asked, scraping the burnt outer layer of the toast into the sink, forcing herself to bear the heinous black mess in the shining stainless steel bowl she had scrubbed vigorously, because she knew the sound would set his teeth on edge.
His smile waned, giving way to a grimace. ‘There’s nothing to celebrate.’ He folded the paper shut and flung it onto the kitchen table as though it was radioactive. ‘This whole thing’s an almighty cock-up.’ He rose and approached the sink, enveloping her slowly from behind.
George revelled in his post-shower scent, the warmth of his torso pressed against her back. She felt certain he was going to rebuild the crumbling bridge between them.
‘You brought down a transnational trafficking ring, for God’s sake! That’s hardly a cock-up.’ He would definitely stoop to kiss her now. She was mad at him, but she needed this.
Abruptly he snatched the toast and knife out of her hands, edging her out of the way with his hip. ‘Stop doing that, George! You know it goes right through me.’ He threw the toast into the compost bin and washed the knife, putting fresh bread in the toaster. No kiss. No apology. No relief from the ill feeling that hung in the air, making his apartment a place where she felt suffocated, rather than safe.
‘You still think I did it, don’t you?’ She pulled at his sleeve, trying to get him to look her in the eye. He focussed on her hair instead. ‘You sleep next to me. You share a bed with me. But you think I framed Kamphuis because I felt sorry for the Deenens? You’re a fucking arsehole of gigantic proportions!’
Just as he placed a hand on her upper arm, she pulled away and made for the living room, casting a penitent eye over the empty sofa.
‘George!’ Van den Bergen shouted after her. ‘Don’t run off!’ He came to the door with a tea tow
el over his shoulder, contrition all over his handsome face, though she knew, as she flung her door keys into her bag, that it was bullshit.
‘Forget it. I asked you to stop my family from getting on a plane, and you didn’t! I asked you to look for my mother, and you haven’t. It’s all work, work, work.’
‘That’s not fair!’ He advanced into the living room, leaning awkwardly against a bookshelf as though he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with his long body. ‘We’ve both been toiling away to solve not one, but two fucking cases! Letitia’s a force of nature. She comes and goes in your life as she pleases, leaving a trail of devastation and cigarette butts behind her. I wasn’t putting police resources into finding a woman who texted you to say she doesn’t want to be found. And I tried to get Sharon to stay. What did she do?’
‘Don’t start laying into my Aunty Shaz, man. You’re out of line. She’s a good—’
‘She threatened me with calling the British Consulate!’
‘She was highly emotional,’ George said, pulling her coat on. ‘Her windows are overdue a clean. That’s the way my family thinks. Small stuff is big stuff.’ She lambasted him with ghetto-attitude measuring nine point five on the Richter scale. ‘But you don’t care, because you’re a cynical workaholic, and your precious principles and dead people come first!’
Tears sprang to Van den Bergen’s melancholy eyes. ‘That’s such a cruel …’ he looked at his feet as if the words were embroidered into his black socks ‘… and unfair and hypocritical thing to say. You’re every bit as bad as me, Georgina McKenzie.’
‘Fuck you!’ George said, thumbing through her emails. ‘I’m off to the library, and then I’m going to meet my estranged father for a fancy lunch. Maybe he can fulfil my emotional bloody needs.’
So much to think about. Too much to think about. Heavy books testing the engineering resolve of an Albert Heijn shopping bag in one hand. A cigarette in another, almost as an act of rebellion against her contrary lover.
‘Cantankerous old arsebiscuit,’ George muttered, shouldering stubborn tourists and students out of the way, visualising Van den Bergen. The black ice that covered the Keizersgracht cobbles beneath her feet was as treacherous as he was. The falling fat snowflakes that hit the ground, only to melt within seconds, were as cold and fair-weather as he was. She was failing to get a grip, even in her best winter boots. ‘Calling me a hypocrite! Fuck you very much, Paul!’
An elderly man stood aside to let her pass as she barrelled her way through a group of ambling pedestrians. He looked at her askance as she argued with fresh air.
‘Cheer up, lovey!’ he shouted after her.
George turned back. Rheumy eyes still on her. Bemused old gadge in a fur hat with floppy ears.
She smiled. Turned away. Said, ‘Piss off!’ too loud, knowing she was probably still within earshot.
Trouble was, George was struggling with the notion that she should be happy. The Deenens had their kids back. Brilliant. Kamphuis’ name had been besmirched, while the Deenens walked free. Even better. The Deenens deserved a break and she had no regrets about having helped the beleaguered Gabi. And yet, in many ways, she had footed the bill for everybody else’s happy ending. Van den Bergen’s resulting lack of trust in her had turned her own relationship from a highroad to happiness into an overpass to nowhere. Riddled with concrete cancer. Doomed to collapse.
‘Bastard!’
And Danny was dead. And Letitia had absconded with her pulmonaries. And Sharon, Patrice and Tin were back in South East London, risking life and limb for clean windows and better-stocked supermarkets.
‘Idiots. Why do I come from a family of congenital twats?’
Her long scarf kept falling loose, getting wrapped around her thighs. Irritated, she tossed it over her shoulder. She felt like there was some kind of super gravity in the canal, pulling her towards its freezing deadly blackness, though she was not normally one for wallowing in self-pity.
I’m going back to Cambridge after this, she thought, gazing at the four-storey houses. Today they seemed to lean in towards her in an accusatory manner, windows bearing down on her, like a judgemental audience, clock-tower rooflines marking time before her happy house of cards with Van den Bergen came tumbling down. I wish I didn’t love the cruel, unfair, judgmental bastard. We’re on. We’re off. Make up your fucking mind! And that Letitia can rot in whatever bolthole she’s found for herself. I’m sick of it. Everyone puts their shit onto me. I’m so tired.
But Vinkeles was within sight now; the prospect of her estranged father loomed like the mist that rose from the freezing canals when it wasn’t snowing. One shithouse, displacing another.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ she told the yellow plates of a Mini, parked diagonally to the inky river. ‘I must be mental.’
A vision in her mind’s eye of a battered photograph of her father that Letitia had kept in the old-photos-suitcase: an olive-skinned man with dark straight hair giving his Spanish origins away: a smile that had lit up her childhood; Daddy’s strong, hairy arms, swinging her though the air; the graze of his stubble on her face when he had kissed her goodnight; the boom of his voice, his black eyebrows knitting together when he and Letitia had argued.
For the first time that day, her heart fluttered. The lightness of butterfly wings. She was buoyed towards the eaterie by optimism and curiosity. It felt good. The gravitational pull of the river lessened.
‘I’m meeting someone here,’ she said to the maître d’: an elegant man in a sharp black suit. The place smelled of garlic, warmth and lilies. ‘Michael Moreno. I think he’s got a table reserved.’
‘This way, mevrouw,’ he said, deftly taking her coat and heavy plastic bag, then showing her to the window where a good length of Keizersgracht was there for her to admire. ‘He has not arrived yet, but there is a package for you.’
‘For me?’ She started to unravel her scarf, then stopped and sat down, eying the small white box with bemusement. It looked like the sort of package chocolates might come in. Sitting on the pristine white tablecloth, it looked like expensive packaging.
Left alone with a menu and the promise of water – at her request containing only three ice cubes, in a clean glass with no lemon at all – George touched the box. She giggled nervously when it suddenly started to vibrate.
‘What the hell?’
Music emanated from inside. Desmond Dekker signing Israelites. Getting up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir. Plinking bassline. Unmistakeably, her mother’s ringtone.
Feeling the blood drain from her face, flashbacks to the Firestarter, flickering past in the microfiche archives of her memory, George gingerly opened the box. Gasped. There was Letitia’s mobile phone.
‘Excuse me!’ she shouted, waving at the waiting staff that were facing the other way.
The phone was still ringing. Other diners looking at her, askance, as they put their cutlery down with a clink. One gesticulated that she should turn it off.
With her pulse racing, George took the phone out of the box. There was something wrapped in tissue beneath. A typed note with it.
Holding her breath, she read the five words.
An eye for an eye.
George unwrapped the tissue to see an enucleated bloodshot, brown eye staring back at her.
‘Letitia,’ she whispered hoarsely.
She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
Letitia’s phone rang again and again. The Israelites, in their biblical struggle for survival. George trapped in a waking nightmare. She felt Amsterdam fading from view as she slid beneath the table, consciousness leaving her at the sight of that unseeing eye. And before she passed out, she realised what she had done.
For too long, she had walked in the shadows, believing she could always find her way back to the light. Paying little heed to the consequences. But all the shadows had yielded was evil: a cloying darkness that she couldn’t shake off, that she could never leave behind. Infecting everyone arou
nd her. Nobly, foolishly, selfishly, George had crossed the Devil himself. Now, she was being made to pay.
Acknowledgements
The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows was a complicated book for me to write, tackling very difficult subject matter. In the main, it’s a story about the relationships between parents and children, and if it has turned into something dark and raw, that’s mainly because the period during which it was written has been a dark and raw time in my own life. When the going gets tricky, we rely on the supportive people around us. I certainly have and continue to do so. So, I’d like to thank the following folks:
Christian, for ably stepping into the parenting void on those occasions when my workload demanded and for ensuring a nice G&T was always on hand when I needed it most.
My children, Natalie and Adam for their constant cheerleading and inspiring gorgeousness.
My literary agent, Caspian Dennis for his ongoing encouragement, loyalty and guidance and his inimitable daft anecdotes that keep me smiling when I should be concentrating on more serious matters.
His colleague, Sandy Violette and their staff at Abner Stein for their professional excellence: namely Ben Fowler, Laura Baxendale and Felicity Amor.
The wonderful team at Avon, who continue to be so enormously supportive of me and enthusiastic about George and Van den Bergen, in particular, Oli Malcolm, Eli Dryden, Helen Huthwaite, Kate Ellis and Natasha Harding. I’ll raise a glass to us really taking the crime fiction world by storm with this third George book, guys!
Dr. Rosemary Broad, criminologist extraordinaire at Manchester University for her practical wisdom regarding George’s career path.
My wonderful friends - in particular, my bez, Louise Owen and fellow writers, Steph Williams and Wendy Storer who are always full of wise words.
The success of the series has in no small part been down to the support of many book reviewers and bloggers, including the splendid Ann Giles, Steph Broadribb, Garrick Webster and Keith Nixon for Crime Fiction Lover, Gordon Mcghie, Victoria Goldman, Christine from Northern Crime, Kindle Ninja (I’ll keep his identity a mystery), Julie Boon and Celeste McCreesh. There are more, and they are all utterly terrific people, but I’ve got to hand in a book by June, so… This thanks also extends to the wonderful people who run and participate in online book clubs. I’m proud to feel welcomed in circles of such avid, savvy readers.
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