The Girl Who Broke the Rules

by Marnie Riches

  Small wonder, given the din, that George could not, at first, be sure that her phone was ringing. But after a few seconds, as the specially designated Aretha ringtone got louder, George realised it was Ad. Again. Given she and van den Bergen were being led by a behemoth of a stevedore in a high-viz jacket to the container where the body had been discovered, Ad could think again if he thought she was going to talk to him now.

  ‘Wouter!’ van den Bergen shouted, waving to the detective that was heading up the Rotterdam port police investigation.

  His long strides seemed to lengthen. She had to jog to keep up with him.

  ‘Wait for me, Paul!’

  But he was not listening. Clapping the back of his former colleague instead. Chummy bromance handshakes, like they were besties of old, though he had never mentioned this man once in conversation. Van den Bergen had twenty years on her. How many more people had he got to know during his working life alone than she had met over the course of her entire twenty-four years, simply because he was that much older? It was a bewildering thought.

  Wouter Dreyer had a head like a large potato, George thought, with raisins for eyes, a broken carrot for a nose and the most terrible cauliflower ears she had ever seen. She blinked hard, looked again and saw an ageing jock instead of Mr Potatohead. Couldn’t remember whether the Dutch played rugby. He certainly looked as though he did.

  ‘George, this is my old buddy from cop school.’ Finally her friend was not just smiling but grinning. Why had Mr Potatohead succeeded in eliciting a grin where she had failed?

  She eyed Wouter’s ears suspiciously. They were the wrongest ears she had ever seen. The retro-stylish brown sheepskin coat that he wore was his only redeeming feature and not dissimilar to hers. How had she ended up hanging out with a bunch of older men – either cops, perverts or psychopaths – who had all the sartorial elegance of septuagenarian refugees from the ice-clad mountains of central Asia? Aunty Sharon had warned her that she was becoming reclusive and odd. That she should have more friends her own age.

  ‘Come and take a look,’ Wouter said. He held the police tape up for them to walk under. Nodded at George and called her ma’am – at least, the Dutch equivalent. All very formal and pleasantly respectful. Perhaps cauliflower ears were not an indication of poor character. ‘The body’s at the morgue. We’ve arranged for it to be transported to your head of forensics this afternoon. Let your guy—’

  ‘Woman,’ van den Bergen said, prising his glasses from their resting place on his chest and pushing them onto his nose. He peered down at Wouter through the thick lenses. His eyes, suddenly far larger than usual. ‘It’s Marianne de Koninck. Remember her?’

  Wouter sniggered in a way George did not entirely like. ‘She still—’

  ‘Oh, yes. Very much so.’ More grinning, for God’s sake. A knowing look passed between them.

  An elbow in the ribs from his Rotterdam compatriot suggested van den Bergen might have something to hide, but he merely blushed in answer and shook his head. ‘No. Nothing like that.’

  George hadn’t realised men did telepathy. Their levity in the midst of death was almost unbearable, but only because she didn’t feel part of it.

  The uniformed officers guarding the site parted to let them through. The shape of the victim had been outlined in white on the base of the giant metal box. Arms raised above the head. Legs splayed slightly. George was struck by the diminutive stature of the Filipino. It was a relief that the body had been removed, although she had a nasty feeling she would accompany van den Bergen to the morgue once they were back in Amsterdam. Seeing photographs and film clips of violent porn was one thing. Being in the same room as the dead, another entirely.

  Van den Bergen looked around, clearly surveying the scene. Stacks of containers all around. Mechanised movement. Off the ship. Into the stack. One by one, driven away during a designated slot by the designated haulage company. ‘Not many people around,’ he said.

  Wouter nodded. Hands stuffed deeply inside his pockets as a foil to the bitter North Sea wind. ‘Easy to operate unseen, especially after dark, which we think this was.’

  ‘Problem is getting inside the compound,’ van den Bergen said, removing his glasses and appearing suddenly ten years younger. ‘You’d need to drive a body to this point. It’s too far from the periphery. Too dangerous to walk, even if you had the strength to carry dead weight. Have you interviewed the port staff?’

  ‘Yep. I know all these guys,’ Wouter said. ‘Working men. An endangered species, now this place is all run by robots and computer nerds. They’re pretty damned straight. And even if they weren’t, they’re pretty damned tight. So, none of them would blab if there were crooks among them!’ He laughed heartily. Gave a knowing look to the behemoth stevedore in his high-viz jacket. Winked. Didn’t get so much as a nod in response.

  Van den Bergen snapped on a latex glove. Fingered the lock. ‘I thought this had been broken into,’ he said.

  ‘It had.’

  Shook his head. ‘Looks more like it’s been deliberately dented, if you ask me, to give the impression of a break-in. I don’t think this has been forced at all. And I think you’d better check the CCTV to see any unregistered vehicles that may have come and gone last night.’

  ‘We’re in the process of doing that now,’ Wouter said, looking at his shoes, as if he had been chastised by a teacher. The rapport between them seemed to have changed subtly; an icy down-draught of implicit criticism that had sucked the warmth out of the spot. Brotherly levity all but gone, George noted.

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ van den Bergen said, ‘if the Filipino victim met a sticky end at the hands of our killer, then it’s possible he was picked up off one of these ships.’ He gesticulated with his glasses towards the enormous cargo ship that was being unloaded at the quayside. ‘Did you manage to get on board the ship that was docked around the time of discovery?’

  His Rotterdam colleague nodded. ‘They didn’t speak Dutch, obviously. Most of them didn’t speak a word of English. The crew was mainly West African guys. Couple of Asians. Spoke French, native dialects, God knows what else. The one who did speak English really well – the Congolese captain – claimed he’d never seen the victim before in his life. Like he could tell from a naked, butchered corpse!’

  ‘Where is that ship now?’

  ‘Sailed. We couldn’t hold it. Their paperwork was all above board. The Port needed the mooring spot for MS Berge Stahl, the iron ore freighter. This is only one of two places in the world deep enough for a ship of its size to dock and the tidal window is tighter than a mouse’s fanny.’

  Appraising his colleague, with his still-dark eyebrows sitting heavy above those hooded grey eyes, it was clear that van den Bergen was disappointed by his friend. And his friend knew it.

  ‘It’s just one of those things, Paul,’ Wouter said. Looking down at his loafers. Apologising tacitly, though an apology was probably not owed to a chief inspector of Amsterdam’s force. ‘We never even had time to get a translator down to interview the crew. We did what we could.’

  Van den Bergen looked away. Stroked his stubble and contemplated the white outline on the floor of the steel container. ‘So, our victim was presumably taken from a ship, though we can’t be certain of it. He was murdered elsewhere – it’s a process that seems to demand time and privacy, by all accounts – and put here for you to find. Not an easy mission for our killer. So, he’s almost certainly getting help and cover from someone who works in the Port.’

  Wouter raised his hands defensively. ‘It’s early days. No eyewitness statements. All we can do is trawl through CCTV footage and hope we find a rogue vehicle with its number plate clearly visible. Pray for a modern-day bloody miracle.’

  ‘Let’s see what Marianne de Koninck finds,’ van den Bergen said. ‘Maybe if this third body is conclusively linked, it will cast new light on the investigation.’

  Finally, he turned to George, as though he had only just remembered she was there. Maki
ng her feel like an afterthought, though she doubted he had intended the slight. ‘What do you think?’

  George hugged her coat closed against the bitter dockland wind and narrowed her eyes. Watched the grey-brown soup of the sea heaving up and down, throwing spurts of white foam into the air as it fought against the land.

  ‘This is about vulnerable immigrants in some way,’ she said. ‘It’s the common denominator between the three cases.’

  CHAPTER 46

  Amsterdam, police headquarters, 24 January

  ‘Can I at least get a coffee and something from the vending machine?’ he asked.

  The lumpy-faced detective looked glassy-eyed and hyper. ‘No. State your name for the recording.’ Pointed to some outdated-looking recording equipment at one end of the table, next to the wall. Short, fat index finger with a bitten nail, though his hands were generally clean and soft-looking like a woman’s. You could tell a lot from a man’s hands. These said this arrogant son of a bitch had never done a day’s proper graft in his life. A pot-bellied Dutch pig-boy, sitting drinking coffee while his interviewee’s stomach rumbled.

  The discovery of the mattress had been the beginning of this waking nightmare. Leaving his tools out had been a bad idea.

  His stomach growled audibly. ‘I didn’t even get chance to eat my lunch. You’ve already had me—’

  ‘Name!’

  ‘You already know my name is Iwan Buczkowski.’ It was difficult to be pleasant when his blood sugar was so low. He had to eat and fast. Perhaps worse than the hunger and thirst was that the sweat from his morning’s labour had pretty much dried on his body but left his damp clothes freezing cold. He folded his arms tight across his chest but still couldn’t get the blood to his fingers. ‘I must make a phone call. I have to let my girl know I’m here. She’ll worry.’

  The Dutchman did not answer. Started scratching at a stain on his navy jumper with a non-existent thumb nail. ‘How long have you been here?’

  Iwan checked his battered watch that was pinned by its strap to the inside pocket of his work trousers. ‘Three hours.’

  ‘I mean in this country, smart arse.’ The detective had opened a notebook and was poised to write in it. The pages were blank but for ‘Iwan Buczkowski’ written at the top and underlined three times.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything? I’m an EU citizen. I pay tax. I pay my rent. I’m law-abiding. What do you want with me?’ In his head, he tried to say a rosary but the words wouldn’t come. He had a feeling he should ask for a solicitor – one who spoke Polish as well as Dutch or English. But he didn’t even know if such a person existed. And he hadn’t actually been charged with anything. Should he just get up and walk out of this place, as he had done last time? Could they lock him up for uncooperative behaviour? Stefan might know. He’d help. He had already said yes to bending the truth about his alibi. ‘I’ve got to call my boss. Give me my phone back. You’re not arresting me for anything, right?’

  The chubby blond leaned forward. Kees Leeuwenhoek. That was his name. Dressed like a fifty-year-old man but couldn’t be more than thirty. He remembered their conversation when he had been leaning against the van outside Valeriusstraat, having a smoke. The guy had been so chummy, then. But like a dog turned nasty, now.

  ‘You’ve got mental health issues, haven’t you, Iwan?’ He drummed his pen against the pad in an irritating manner. Produced a sheet of paper with a photocopied likeness of himself as a youth at the top. ‘I pulled your record, thanks to our police colleagues in Poland.’ Started to read from the sheet. ‘A former drug user, it says here.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Seems you’ve got quite an interesting story, Mr Buczkowski. Breaking and entering. Car theft. Aggravated assault. Becoming a nuisance and a threat because of psychotic episodes. They locked you up for a while, didn’t they, Iwan? Your folks had you sectioned.’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘And oh, looky here! Involved in a motorcycle gang with a “known interest in Satanism”. Seems your local police were keeping an eye on you. So, I was right, wasn’t I?’ Pointed to his tattooed arm. ‘About the pentangles and upturned crucifix shit.’

  Iwan shrugged. He had been to confession. Unburdened himself to the priest. That was the way Catholicism worked. Why should he discuss in intimate detail the things he had sought sanctuary from within the walls of the Catholic Church? With a Dutch detective, of all people. After years of formal repentance, he owed no more explanations. You sinned. You confessed. You prayed for forgiveness. It was a perfect system for a flawed man like him and allowed him to indulge some of his residual weaknesses. What he didn’t confess to the priest remained between him and God.

  The porky Dutchman leaned forward and cocked his head to the side, as though he were about to confide in him. ‘I’m having your place turned over as we speak, you know. You’re my favourite suspect. And a little bird tells me, you might be a little bit obsessed by ritual murders. I wonder what we’ll find.’

  Iwan decided to roll his eyes. Let this Leeuwenhoek bastard think he hadn’t a care in the world. But inside his chest, his tainted heart was beating at a thunderous pace. He was treading uncomfortable ground. It was definitely time he called Stefan again.

  CHAPTER 47

  Amsterdam, mortuary, later

  ‘How do you feel?’ van den Bergen asked.

  He placed a hand on George’s shoulder. She knew it should feel comforting, but she was too tense to appreciate the physical contact. Shied away from it.

  ‘Dreading this,’ she said, as they walked along the windowless, institutional corridor to the mortuary. Visualised a gore-fest beyond her imagination behind those doors. ‘Will they all be laid out? You know. Ribs akimbo.’

  She looked up at van den Bergen’s thin face. His eyes crinkled and a deep groove etched its way along the side of his mouth. A half-smile, but a smile nonetheless. ‘It’s not going to be as bad as you think,’ he said. ‘Just remember it’s police work, not violence.’

  He pushed open the double doors, and they made their way to the principal examination room. More like the operating theatres she had seen on television, George thought, squinting at the glaring overhead lights. Except this place was silent; without the beeping life support or myriad surgical staff bustling about the patient that one would expect to attend the sick and still-living. And here were three steel slabs with their own in-built drainage. And there were three…

  ‘Aw, man. Ribs a-fucking-kimbo,’ she said, pinching her nose against the formalin stink and other smells – what they were, she simply couldn’t articulate. They toyed with her gag-reflex in a worrying way. At first she averted her gaze from the objects on the slabs. Mindful of the fact that ‘objects’ seemed a harsh label to bestow on the victims of brutal murder. But these spoiled, semi-preserved cadavers were so unlike anything she had seen before, it was difficult to attribute any qualities of the living to them, including language. Focus, bitch. Show some respect. George steeled herself to look at them. This mess of flesh was the only body of evidence left that bore witness to the one-time existence of three humans. It was a pitiful sight.

  ‘You okay?’ van den Bergen asked, wheeling a typing chair up behind her. Bidding her to sit, which she did.

  ‘I’m fine.’ She patted his arm.

  A man she had not hitherto noticed, dressed in scrubs with the beginnings of a bald patch, approached her and offered to shake her hand, which she declined. He looked unpleasantly moist, with a shining domed forehead. His ears were red; the lobes too fleshy.

  ‘Strietman,’ van den Bergen said. Disdain hung in jagged tracts off those two syllables. ‘Where’s Marianne? I was told she would be doing this secondary examination.’

  Strietman grinned and chuckled, as if van den Bergen had told a mildly amusing joke. ‘She’s writing up reports on the norovirus gang,’ he jerked his thumb in the direction of a door. ‘Doesn’t feel too clever. I think she’s going home in a bit.’

  The muscles in van den Berge
n’s jaw were flinching. Up, down. Up, down. Small yet significant movements, like the flicker of a transmission switch on an early warning system. George saw he had balled his fists and realised suddenly that the pink skin on his knuckles must have been caused by punching somebody. Hard. But that could wait for later. His irritation was obvious. If van den Bergen didn’t trust this pathologist, neither did she.

  George rose out of her chair, marched to the closed door Strietman had gesticulated towards and walked in.

  Marianne de Koninck was sitting at her desk, dabbing watery, bloodshot eyes with a screwed-up tissue that had long passed its best. Sniffing. ‘What are you doing in here?’ she asked, standing abruptly.

  George appraised the situation. Considered what van den Bergen had told her in the car of de Koninck’s break-up with Ad’s occasional flatmate.

  ‘Jasper has bad breath,’ she said. ‘You can do better. Now, get out there and help us solve these goddamn murders!’

  With Strietman sent home, de Koninck circled the three bodies. But for the Filipino’s genitalia marking him as the odd one out, even George’s untrained eye could see that all three had been defiled in an apparently identical manner. In silence, de Koninck examined them. Read the reports on the composition of their blood. Disappeared off for a while, leaving George to gawp and grimace undisturbed at the victims’ remains. Returned, bearing a cup of coffee and a clipboard under her arm.