Surreptitiously, she reached into her jeans pocket. Arranged her keys into a makeshift knuckleduster – one key between each finger. Had to be quick. Right arm flung upwards, praying her fist would make contact with the Englishman’s face. The jagged keys found their mark. Soft tissue yielded.
The man screamed. Dropped to his knees. Mortise key in the eye. Blood rolling down his cheek, dripping onto his crisp clothes. A scene from a horror movie.
‘Give me my fucking keys back, man!’ George pulled the knuckleduster free with a revolting squelch. Punched him again as hard as she could. Again.
He clasped his hands to his face, still screaming. ‘Kill her, Roni! End the bitch.’
George kicked him in the neck with her steel toecap. He fell silent and still.
Schwartz lunged for the gun by van den Bergen’s head. Shot at George again. Missed, plugging the concrete floor, throwing up a residue puff of grey. Held the long pistol in front of her. Arm wavering. Those things weighed a ton.
But George had run out of tricks. She knew she was bleeding to death. On the operating table, van den Bergen was every colour apart from good. Blue around his lips, his earlobes. His fingertips purple. The chasm down his middle had filled with blood that was so rich, it was almost black. How long did he have? His heartbeat was frenetic, coming through on the monitor in a flurry of beeps. The alarm going off. Oxygen monitor clipped to his finger, protesting that his brain was dying.
‘Save him!’ George yelled at Schwartz. ‘Save Paul, and kill me. Take my organs.’
Her strength was failing her in earnest. Her hoodie drenched in a circle of warm blood, rapidly turning cold. Skids of red on the floor, where she had trodden a path that led to her own demise. But George was aware of several things. The Englishman was either dead or out cold. A persistent, wailing sound broke through above the beeping of those infernal monitors. If she could distract Schwartz even momentarily, she might take this killer down with her.
The chair. First thing inmates went for when a riot broke out. Whatever furniture ain’t nailed down.
‘The cops are coming,’ George said, peering hopefully over Schwartz’ shoulder.
It was a childish trick, but Schwartz was high. Fell for it. Turned momentarily.
George snatched up the chair and used whatever strength she had left in her broken body to bring it crashing down on her opponent’s outstretched hands. The gun flew from Schwartz’ grip, sliding across the floor to the opposite side of the room. Raised the chair again. Smashed it against Schwartz’ singed head. Wood, splintered into pieces. Schwartz’ eyes rolled to reveal the whites. She slumped towards the floor, falling against the rubber mattress of the operating table. Grabbing on. Glazed expression. She was fading. But George took no chances. She picked up a large shard of corrugated Perspex from the shattered skylight and drove it into the surgeon’s shoulder, pinning her to the operating table.
Van den Bergen’s heart monitor flat-lined. But it was too late for George to do anything. She had blacked out.
CHAPTER 88
Amsterdam, hospital, 18 February
‘There she is!’ Marie said, smiling.
George opened her eyes blearily. Focussed on the large yellow-headed spot on Marie’s chin. Jesus. Is this what being alive held in store for her? She closed her eyes again, but remembered van den Bergen. Lids shot open.
‘Where’s Paul? Is he—?’
‘He’s in intensive care,’ Elvis said, standing just beyond Marie.
Tears welled in George’s eyes. ‘But he was blue! He was dying. Will he live? Will he be…all right?’ Looking hopefully at Marie. Reaching out to take her hand and thinking better of it. Putting her hand beneath the thin hospital blanket.
Marie chewed her bottom lip. ‘It’s touch and go. He’s got a perforated bowel. Schwartz was coked off her head. She cut too deep. It’s developed into peritonitis. They’ve got him on strong antibiotics but—’
George felt tears stab at the backs of her eyes. ‘Tell me he’s not going to die. Tell me I didn’t kill him.’
Elvis shook his head. ‘You didn’t kill him, George. None of this is down to you. Don’t blame yourself.’ He put his hand on her good shoulder. ‘If it wasn’t for you jumping through that skylight, he’d definitely be dead.’
Looking into Marie’s eyes for the truth, George blinked aside hot tears. ‘Brain damage? There were alarms going off.’
Marie examined her fingernails. Eyes glassy but no tears came. ‘Look, the boss is in a coma. They don’t know if he’s going to wake up. And if he wakes up, it’s too early to tell what state he’ll be in.’
‘The main thing is, they’ve done an MRI scan on his brain and it seems okay,’ Elvis said. ‘And no vital organs were damaged. When he comes round…’ he glared at Marie, who only fleetingly made eye contact with him and then sniffed dismissively ‘…there’s every likelihood he’ll be back at work in no time, driving us all mental and moaning about his prostate gland.’
George chuckled, though her heart was breaking. Stop this crap, you self-indulgent, spoiled little cow. You’re awake. You will live. He’s in a coma. He may not live. You should have been quicker. You should have fought harder for him. You could have stayed in Amsterdam and been there to defend him. You’re a failure of the worst, most treacherous kind and you don’t deserve to feel hurt.
At that moment, though he had never asked for her forgiveness, she forgave van den Bergen. He had rejected her passionate love in favour of meaningless sex with a murderous psychopath with legs. But that was fine. Her feelings were irrelevant. All she wanted was for her friend – her beloved idiot, stubborn, prescription painkiller junkie of a friend – to recover. No doubt, his reasoning for favouring Sabine Schalks had been sound and had come from a good place. Can this nonsense ’til later. Don’t let them see.
‘What happened after I passed out?’
George tried to sit up in bed, the bullet wound beneath the bandages stinging. She clasped her hand to her chest but her movements were hampered. Realised she was hooked up to a drip. Stared in horror at the needle in her arm. Thought briefly about MRSA and how dirty hospitals could be. Said nothing.
Marie poured George a glass of water from a plastic jug. ‘We arrived on the scene, expecting a shoot-out, but when we got there, everyone was unconscious. Schwartz was pinned to the boss’ operating table by a splinter of Perspex. You were out cold. The boss was technically dead.’
‘I did mouth to mouth,’ Elvis said. ‘Until the ambulances arrived, that is. We’d phoned for backup and paramedics on the way from the Laren house. They came really quickly.’
George examined the plastic cup Marie had given her. Lip marks on the plastic. Not hers. Marie’s fingerprints on the side. ‘I’m not thirsty thanks.’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Marie said. ‘You’ve been given a few bags of blood and some saline but the doc said you’re still dehydrated as hell.’
Rolling her eyes, George took a sip of the iced water. Half expected it to come pouring through the hole in her chest.
‘That bullet missed your heart by about six millimetres,’ Elvis said, grinning. ‘That earns you legend status at the station.’
‘Hang on.’ George cocked her head to the side, mentally reversing over Marie’s words. ‘Where was the man? The English guy I stabbed in the eye with my keys? I thought I’d broken his neck.’
The two detectives turned to one another. Shook their heads. Looked quizzically at George.
‘There was nobody else at the scene apart from you, the boss and Schwartz,’ Elvis said.
‘The gun! The gun!’
‘No trace of a gun. We’ve got the bullet they pulled out of your body. But nobody’s found the weapon yet.’
George groaned. ‘Shit. There was this guy – with a diamond in his tooth. Upper-class Brit, by the sounds. Drove a Bentley. He’d been screwing with Schwartz. You could smell it. She must have got high with him. There was a credit card on the side. Coke.’
‘He was definitely there, that guy. Well-dressed. Sharp suit. A smart coat. The works. I took him for a player in this organ-trafficking ring.’ She tutted. Thumped the bed. ‘And he’s gone?’
‘Leave it to forensics, George,’ Marie said. ‘De Koninck’s all over the place with Strietman.’
George frowned. Sipped her water. ‘I thought Strietman was banged up. The kiddy pictures. He’s a paedo, right?’
‘Turns out he’s been studying at night for a psychology qualification. He’d been writing some semi-autobiographical thesis about child abuse,’ Elvis said. ‘Used the pictures for that. His tutor verified his claims.’
‘That Kees screwed up big time,’ George said. ‘How is he?’
Marie gave a wry smile. ‘He caught one in the shoulder. Got discharged yesterday. He’s going to be back at the station next week, smarming up to Kamphuis with his arm in a sling.’
‘More like his ass in a sling,’ Elvis said. ‘Strietman’s suing.’
‘Thought Kees was your big pal,’ Marie said.
Elvis merely blushed and scratched at his sideburns.
‘But what’s happened with that lanky witch, Schwartz?’
Fingering the bruise on her forehead, Marie smiled. ‘They stitched her up and threw her back in our direction. We’ve got her banged up where she belongs. She’s pleading diminished mental capacity.’
‘No way will a judge fall for that,’ George said, thinking about the complex web of deceit and criminality that underpinned the murders.
‘They might, if we can’t prove the links to organised crime,’ Marie said. ‘I’m close to pinpointing the hacker who wiped the Port Authority and pathology records. The missing forensics report on Linda Lepiks’ place showed up just before you caught your flight back to the Netherlands. The guys at the government data centre found it on a backup server. Fluids on Lepiks’ sheets prove she had slept with another woman the night she was murdered – I’m putting my money on Schwartz – and I think this hacker’s on somebody’s payroll. If we can find the hacker and find the guy who took out Ahlers and—’
‘Where’s Magool’s baby?’ George asked.
Marie shook her head. ‘We still don’t know. There are piles of records at Schwartz’ Laren house, hidden under floorboards in her office. It’s going to take weeks to unravel. Problem is, we need someone to testify to her being a calculated murderer. Seems she kept up an immaculate front at work and in her social life. Her lawyer might try to go for schizophrenia or multiple personality thingy or something. I don’t know all the terminology.’
George closed her eyes and saw a man in scrubs, standing in the Cambodian jungle. Tanned and pearly-toothed, with close cropped hair. A once-handsome man who had won the Evelyn Baker Medal from the Association of Anaesthetists. A man with an axe to grind as much as wield.
‘I don’t know if it would be admissible in court, but… Leave it with me,’ she said.
CHAPTER 89
Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, later
‘So melancholy,’ he said, quietly to the pencil drawing of Linda Lepiks. ‘So beautiful.’ Mimed the intricate moves with those perfect fingers of his along the edge of the desk.
In his room, Silas Holm was listening to the soaring, searing piece of music that was ‘The Heart Asks Pleasure First’ by Michael Nyman. Arpeggios of painful longing and desire, which had been performed with surprising finesse by Holly Hunter on a beach in The Piano. Later, Silas had taught himself to play it, though his musical accomplishments were nothing to write home about. It had always been a favourite of his when he and Veronica had been in love, when he and Veronica had argued and eventually when he and Veronica had split because of her persistent infidelity with the South African pig.
He had discovered her treachery the very night he had proposed to her. A helicopter ride to view the romantic majesty of Mount Kilimanjaro. Down on one knee – still in possession of both legs, then. He couldn’t have planned it better. And yet, she had turned him down.
I want to be free, she had said. I’ve met someone new. It’s over.
How could she have thought she could ever start fresh with another man and another name? Unlearn what he had taught her: that taking a life offered the most narcotic high imaginable, and that to kill and kill again wiped away the anger and hurt in almost palpable increments? Every ending, the promise of a new beginning.
She thought she had bought her freedom and safe departure from him by agreeing to take his leg.
Veronica Sabine Schwartz. The woman he had worshipped so fervently. The woman he had been spurned by. The woman he had vowed to have his revenge upon. This music, so inextricably linked to his memories of her, was as much a soundtrack to love as it was to misery. Today, it was a soundtrack to triumph.
He picked up his pen and wrote in a hand so neat, so controlled, it looked almost like the work of a word-processor.
Dear Georgina,
I cannot be certain this letter will ever reach you, but I wanted to say thank you. Thank you for engaging so willingly in my little game. Thank you for indulging me and reminding me what it is to flirt with a woman like a man, not a murderer. Thank you for helping me to bring things full circle – I hear through the grapevine that you followed the noise made by those empty vessels right back to someone I once loved but who betrayed me. Treachery is perhaps the hardest thing to forgive. It makes easy victims of us all.
Revenge is a dish best served cold, however, and you have been instrumental in mine being frosted with dazzling ice crystals akin to diamonds.
I look forward to our next tryst, Georgina.
All my love
Silas
Silas took his pen, replaced the lid and scratched at his stump, smiling all the while. Now, he could lay the ghost of his broken heart to rest.
He looked at a dog-eared copy of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew which lay on his desk. Like Petruchio, he had sought to tame his Katherina. In simpler times, he might have brought this wayward lover to heel by encasing her head in a Scold’s bridle. He could have killed her! But Silas had succeeded in punishing his once beloved Roni with something so much worse than public ridicule or the physical restriction of her freedom or even death. The cracked ribs of her very own victims trapped Veronica, instead of an unforgiving iron cage. Georgina McKenzie was the spike in the tongue which had finally silenced her. Now, exchanging the metaphorical bars of a bridle for the very real bars of a prison cell. Adieu, Frau Doktor Schwartz.
CHAPTER 90
Amsterdam, hospital, later
‘You’re not supposed to get out of bed,’ the nurse told George. ‘Miss McKenzie, please get back into bed. Doctor’s orders.’
Clutching the tight, itchy bandaging around her chest, propping herself with the drip stand, George glared at the nurse. A woman with big, mottled red arms who had seen too many chocolate thank-yous from her patients. ‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ she said. ‘I’m going to see my friend. Chief Inspector van den Bergen. He’s in intensive care.’
She slid her bare feet into her boots, only now aware that her back was entirely exposed to the world in this ugly sack of an operating gown.
‘Where’s my pyjamas?’ she asked the nurse.
Folded arms and downturned thin lips said nursey was not impressed. ‘You haven’t got any pyjamas. Your own clothes were soaked in blood. Haven’t you got family who can bring you something in?’
Thinking about Letitia and Aunty Sharon on the other side of the North Sea prickled more than the wound. Would Ad even show? He had every right not to.
‘That’s all right,’ she told the nurse. ‘People want to see my arse, they can have a good look. My pleasure. It’s my only redeeming feature.’
Garnering alarmed glances from visitors, doctors, auxiliary staff as she shuffled, semi-clad in boots and an ill-fitting operating gown, George wheeled her drip all the way to intensive care.
‘Are you family?’ the male n
urse asked through the intercom. She felt a camera on her somewhere.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m his…’
But she hadn’t needed to clarify her status. The locked door clicked, offering her entry to this inner sanctum for the desperately ill. There, in a ward containing four men, she saw van den Bergen. White hair, plastered to his head. Cocooned by tubes and IV lines. Topped off by an oxygen mask. At his side, a young woman sat, dabbing at her eyes. A shining yellow-gold band on her wedding finger. Long-limbed and dark-haired. Hooded, grey eyes beneath brows that looked like they had been overplucked. She was almost the image of her father.
‘Tamara?’ George asked.
Tamara looked up at her. Those eyes were bloodshot. Mournful. A window to a sensitive soul, as were van den Bergen’s. ‘I told them you could come in,’ she said.
She stood and grabbed George into a bear hug. Though agony lanced through her, George did not seek to push her away. She instinctively liked this girl.
‘How is he?’ she asked, accepting the blanket that the nurse brought her to cover her semi-nakedness. Seated herself gingerly next to van den Bergen in that place where machines hissed and bleeped as they sustained fragile life.
‘Responding to the antibiotics, thankfully.’ Tamara blew her nose. The same sharp, triangular nose as her father. Turned to George. ‘I didn’t want to believe he’d ditched me on my wedding day. Dad’s a good man. But he forgets. Gets obsessed and ends up in this little bubble. He makes bad decisions.’ She reached over and took her father’s hand into hers. Stroked the dried blood that had turned to black powder. ‘You know he’s been in love with you for years?’
The directness of the revelation took George by surprise. She clasped the blanket close. Imagined van den Bergen in bed with Schwartz. Doing the things that lovers do, as they had. Only days before. It stung worse than her injuries. She thought about Letitia’s cruelty and neglect. Danny’s manipulation. Jez’s violence. So many arseholes. And yet, van den Bergen had to be the exception, didn’t he?
The Girl Who Broke the Rules Page 37