Within five minutes of their overly loud regaling of the Tale of Torremolinos, George’s head was pounding. Her paracetamol had started to wear off and the shakes had begun anew.
‘Ew. You ill?’ Letitia asked, treating her to a look of disgust that could have stripped her nail varnish off. ‘’Cos I can’t be around no invalid with my sickle-cell anaemics. You’d better get a cab and fuck off back up the motorway to Cambridge, ’cos I ain’t ready to trade in my extra legroom on TUI for no crappy lickle hole in Bromley Hill cemetery, cheers all the same.’
‘What’s the matter with you, George? I thought you was working some case in Amsterdam?’
Aunty Sharon had joined in the interrogation, now, and soon George had no option but to reveal that she had decided to leave her long-term lover until he grew a pair. And that she had flu from the stress of his unappreciative behaviour and that whole thing of losing her book deal and her tenure and her contract work for the police. Or possibly the flu was just down to the air con on the ferry over to the UK. Oh, and that the driver for a dangerous Dutch people trafficker had possibly put a brick through the front window.
‘Serious? Oh my days!’ Aunty Sharon hastened into the living room and shouted through to the kitchen. ‘How come I never noticed this when we was getting out of the cab? Jesus Christ on a bike! Didn’t you think to call the emergency glazing? Michael! I left you in charge, man.’
‘Don’t worry, George,’ her father said, oblivious to Sharon’s complaint. He placed warm, comforting hands on her shoulder. Smelled of Marlboro cigarettes, strong soap and sandalwood, just like he had when she’d been a little girl. ‘You’re strong. You can get through this. Get yourself better and fight back! I’ll get the Guardian tomorrow. You can look for a new job. You know I’ll always help.’
‘It’s not that easy, Papa.’ George reached back to place her hand on his, savouring the contact.
It was the spark that lit Letitia’s perennially short fuse.
‘Oh, I see how this has been playing while we’ve been away, Shaz,’ she shouted, standing up suddenly, reaching over the table and swiping George across the face.
George’s cheek stung. Dumbfounded, she stared at her mother as the smouldering fury of the dragon became an inferno. ‘What the fuck did you do that for, you mad cow?’
‘You looked at me funny. You and him.’ She was pointing to George’s father with the glowing tip of her cigarette as though it were a smoking gun. ‘“You know I’ll help you, George.” And you’re lapping it up, girl, ain’t you? My clever Spanish daddy. That’s where I got my brains from. Not my poor old mum. Not this mug who’s spent the last thirty years bringing you up right while he was off gallivanting in fucking South America like Crocodile bastard Dundee with extra chorizo.’
Aunty Sharon walked in on the scene, phone already pressed to her ear, wearing a thunderous expression. She covered the mouthpiece. ‘Shut it. I’m on the phone to the glazing.’
Patrice sucked his teeth and pushed his way out of the kitchen, opting for the solitude of his bedroom instead. Tinesha clapped her hands over her ears, absently reading the copy of the Evening Standard that lay on the table. But now, it was George’s turn to ignite.
‘You? Bringing me up? Are you having a laugh? Seriously, woman. You left me rotting on remand in prison after you’d set me up to be a grass and it all went tits up. To save your arse, ’cos you’d been nicking. My God.’ She sucked her teeth long and low, eyeing her mother’s vindictive, narrow-eyed expression. ‘Snakes make better mothers than you. And you’ve got the cheek to have a pop at Papa, when he spent the last three years in Mexico with a gun to his head! What. The. Hell. Is. Wrong. With. You?’ She folded her arms, sweating profusely as her aching body cried out for analgesics. ‘In fact, I’ll tell you what’s wrong. You’re a frigging sociopath. A narcissist. Yep. That’s it. In a nutshell. Remind me again why I came back from Holland.’
At that moment, as the argument escalated to a pitch even she hadn’t thought possible, George reflected fleetingly on Rivka Zemel, cooped up in a space that had been ten feet by ten with her ailing brother, short-tempered father and withdrawn mother. How intolerable that must have been, and for over a year. How bitterly they must have hated one another by the end – whatever that end may have been. Had Rivka resented not being able to get on that boat or plane to the States for fear of upsetting her family or seemingly skipping out on them?
‘Do you know…’ George muttered to herself, as a bitter war of words raged between her mother and father, with Aunty Sharon trying to placate both but succeeding with neither. ‘I’m flitting like a nomad between London and Amsterdam and neither feels like home. This is fucked up.’
Downing two ibuprofen with a glass of brackish tap water, George battled through the kitchen-based family tempest and dragged her feverish body upstairs. Unsure what to do. Dismayed at the realisation she was crying. She checked her phone. Found a text from Van den Bergen and felt a sudden pang of longing for the peace of his apartment, regardless of his inattentiveness and the nebulous nature of their relationship and living arrangements. Her finger hovered over the button. She was the ball in a video game of Pong, destined to bat back and forth over the battle line drawn between two opposing camps for the rest of her days. Nobody ever won that volley.
Should she call?
CHAPTER 28
Amsterdam, the house of Kaars Verhagen, 23 October
‘Are you going to up your game then?’ George asked as they stood side by side, waiting for the sound of footsteps and for a light to be switched on in the hall.
‘What do you mean? I don’t even know why you disappeared off without so much as a goodbye.’ Van den Bergen pressed the doorbell again. It rang merrily for the fifth time. He knocked on the stained glass. ‘She’s not in, is she?’ He peered through the glass to no avail.
They stood facing each other, there on Kaars Verhagen’s doorstep. Van den Bergen reached out to trace his index finger along the line of her lips, then leaned in to kiss her. George felt her pulse quicken and her cheeks flush. Was it relief, desire or her temperature kicking back in? She looked away and sneezed violently onto the door. Blew her nose noisily on one of the tissues Aunty Sharon had insisted she take in her bag.
‘I mean, you need to make more of an effort, Paul.’ She sighed. What was the bloody point if she had to spell it out to him? ‘I feel like an afterthought since you became a grandfather. Action bloody Opa. It’s ridiculous. I’m not going to take crumbs from the table anymore. Right? You make a proper commitment to our relationship or we’re done. I mean it.’ There. She felt better for saying it, though she realised his response might be the last thing she’d want to hear.
He hammered yet again on the door. But George could tell it was just his way of trying to avoid confrontation.
‘I sent you money for the plane ticket, didn’t I?’
Processing what he’d said, George slapped her thighs in frustration. ‘Jesus, Paul. Thanks for the money. Obviously. But don’t think a Ryanair ticket is a valid alternative to moving in together.’
‘You already stay at mine all the time.’ As he looked down at her, with a perplexed look on his face, George could tell he still didn’t get it.
‘I mean…Jesus!’ She slapped his shoulder with force, only just about staying on the right side of violent. ‘Dossing at yours when I’m over doesn’t mean I have a home with you. I need a home, Paul. Make your damned choice. Either here or in the UK. Your English is good enough, so don’t use that as an excuse. You could easily get a job.’
‘At my age? Ha.’ He checked his watch. Took several steps back.
‘Can I help you?’
The nosy neighbour. Of course, George thought. Hadn’t she seen the curtains twitch as they’d parked up? She stifled a sneeze.
‘Is Cornelia Verhagen in? Have you seen her?’ she asked.
The neighbour ignored George but smiled coquettishly at Van den Bergen. ‘Ooh, you’re a big lad, aren’t
you? I can see you eat your vla every day!’
Van den Bergen produced a card from his wallet. ‘Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen. I’ve been to Dr Verhagen’s home and she wasn’t in. I presumed she’d be here, cleaning her father’s place out. I called her phone, but she’s not picking up, and I urgently need to talk to her. Any ideas where she might be, Mevrouw…?’
‘De Jong. But you can call me Renate.’ The policeman-fancying pensioner treated Van den Bergen to a radiant show of dentures.
‘Very well, Renate. Have you seen her lately?’
Renate stuffed her duster into the waistband of her old-fashioned apron. ‘I miss Kaars. It’s such a shame he’s gone. She didn’t do him in for her inheritance, did she? Ha ha.’
George caught herself looking heavenwards. Realised that would be counterproductive, so opted for standing with her arms folded while Renate undressed Van den Bergen with eyes that were starting to turn milky with cataracts. She could see a handsome man well enough, though, the cheeky old cow. Chill out, George. Stop behaving like a jealous weirdo.
When Van den Bergen didn’t respond, the admiring smile slid from Renate de Jong’s puffy-cheeked face. ‘I saw Cornelia earlier. Some fellow with tattoos all over his arms turned up.’ Suddenly, her face flushed, as though the beginning of a good yarn had suffused her with warmth. She spoke with the conspiratorial air of a woman with sleuthing aptitude and nothing better to do than spy on her neighbours. ‘They were shouting. Bashing about in there.’
‘Were you concerned for Cornelia’s safety?’
The neighbour shrugged. ‘It died down after a bit. I wondered if it was a boyfriend or something. I don’t like that Cornelia. Never did. She used to give me backchat when she was a teenager, and many a time I copped her smoking by the canal and drinking beer with some very unsavoury-looking youngsters. Her father had his hands full, I can tell you. In fact…’ The cloudiness in her eyes seemed to have all but gone. Her cheeks were bright red now. ‘She killed her mother. Of that, I’m certain.’
‘Killed? As in murdered?’ George asked.
Renate de Jong laughed, as though George had said the most stupid thing in the world. ‘No, no, no! The aggravation. The stress of bringing up a snotty little madam like that sent Maartje to an early grave. You mark my words. And now Kaars has popped his clogs too.’
‘He was ninety-five,’ George said, wanting to shove a big spanner in the grinding wheel of this judgemental old battleaxe’s gossip mill. ‘You’ve got to go at some point.’
‘Tell me about the tattooed man,’ Van den Bergen said, shooting a castigatory glance at George. ‘Did he leave?’
‘I didn’t see. Like I said, it all went quiet.’
Nodding, Van den Bergen described Den Bosch to the neighbour, beyond his tattoos.
‘That’s right. Sounds like him. Maybe it’s her boyfriend. I wouldn’t be surprised.’ She curled her lip. ‘That doctorate she’s got isn’t even proper. She does something useless with history. Writes books, that sort of thing. Couldn’t prescribe you a plaster if you cut yourself! Ha.’
George bit her tongue, but fantasised about wrapping Renate de Jong’s fat head in her apron and pulling the ties tight.
‘Maybe she’s still in there.’ Renate’s eyes widened at the possible intrigue. ‘Maybe he’s done her in! Hardly surprising. She’s always been full of it, Mrs Pretend Doctor. Just the type to hang around with dead wrong’uns.’
‘Pretend doctor?’ No more biting her tongue. George had fought hard to become Dr McKenzie and she was sick and tired of hearing people ridicule those with a PhD, just because they didn’t wear a white coat and sit behind a desk, doling out antibiotics. She bodily ushered the nosy neighbour back into her house and pulled the door shut with some force. ‘I’m one of those “pretend doctors”, you wanky old bag,’ she shouted in English through the letterbox. ‘So, stuff your intellectual snobbery up your fat arse!’ She turned to Van den Bergen. ‘We going to do what I think we’re going to do?’
He nodded. ‘Best if we go in through the back where Mrs Nose won’t be able to see us. If there’s even a glimmer of a possibility that Cornelia Verhagen is in trouble inside and unable to raise the alarm, it won’t hurt to give this place another quick once-over. If not, we’d better pay Den Bosch another visit.’
As they scaled the back garden wall behind the Verhagen house, Van den Bergen whispered, ‘Oh, and by the way. When we get back to mine, we’ll have to bunk up in the single guest bed, because Tamara and Eva are staying in the master.’
‘You are taking the piss.’
How tempted George was to push her lover over the wall.
George had never struggled with breaking and entering houses. Van den Bergen knew not to ask her how she’d become so adept at it or where she’d got the skeleton keys from. Relics of her past, not quite forgotten. As the five-lever mortise on the glazed back door clicked open, she grinned.
‘Life skills,’ she said, winking.
Van den Bergen gave her a wry smile, saying nothing more. Hardly surprising, given they were now operating outside of the law. But what did they have to lose? Nothing, George decided.
‘We’re doing our civic duty,’ she whispered, stepping inside. She was trembling, but now from adrenalin, not ill health. Her flu was forgotten.
The cramped, old-fashioned kitchen smelled of stale frying and decades of baking, with base notes of damp and cigarette smoke in the walls. Feeling for his service weapon, holstered against his body, Van den Bergen motioned that she should follow, not lead. As if that was going to happen! George ignored him, grabbing a carving knife from the block on the sticky yellowed worktop. She crept past the Formica kitchen table with its vintage vinyl chairs: a scene from the 1950s, frozen in time. Small wonder Kaars Verhagen had been planning to renovate the place. The room was barely wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair.
Somewhere closer to the front of the house, there was a loud bang. Perhaps a door slamming.
‘For God’s sake,’ Van den Bergen whispered. ‘Let me go first.’
George relented, wincing as the bare board beneath her feet creaked. Further into the house, the air was heavy with dusty plaster and the smell of bricks. She stifled a sneeze with her sleeve.
Scanning the bedroom-cum-dining room, Van den Bergen looked back at her and shook his head. They moved forward to the living room. The stacks of paintings were there, just as they had been the previous day. The study and downstairs toilet were also empty. Their footsteps echoed around the old house.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ he whispered.
George nodded, still clutching the knife tightly. Could the nosy old bag from next door hear their footsteps? Van den Bergen’s large feet clattered on the uncarpeted staircase. Everything was too loud. If Den Bosch were there, they could hardly rely on the element of surprise. She stood at the foot of the staircase, watching Van den Bergen navigate the galleried landing and disappear into the master bedroom. Glancing at the front door, she could hear her own breath coming ragged and quick. If Cornelia Verhagen puts her key in the door right now, we’ll have a lot of explaining to do. Come on, Paul! Hurry up!
Realising there was no rushing the search of a four-storey house of this size, George finally followed him up, advancing ahead of him to the second floor. Every room was empty. Then she heard another loud bang. It was coming from the attic. Steeling herself to climb the now narrow and steep stairs to the very top, George’s hand was slick with sweat. If she was forced to defend herself, she was certain the knife would slip from her grip like a wet bar of soap.
As she entered the low-ceilinged room, it all became clear. A window had been left wide open, presumably to get rid of the strong smell of damp up there. The door to the inner, windowless attic room was slamming shut and blowing open. She exhaled, only then realising that she’d been holding her breath. It was a far cry from the attic room above the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop that she’d lived in when she’d spent that first year in Amsterdam
as an Erasmus student, revelling in the colour and craziness of living in the red light district. This one was freezing cold, for a start, and strung with dusty old cobwebs. She wanted to get out of there, fast.
Back on the first floor, Van den Bergen looked at her expectantly. ‘Anything?’
‘No. Maybe she went out. Maybe Den Bosch is her friend and they’re in it together.’ George ran her finger thoughtfully over the blade of the carving knife. It was blunt anyway. ‘I could ride all the way to Margate and back on this,’ she said in English, smiling. ‘Do you really think she might have bumped her dad for the estate?’
‘He was cash poor and asset rich. It’s possible, if she’s got money trouble. Though it doesn’t explain the deaths of the other old men. Why would she prescribe them all the wrong thing? The lovely neighbour, Mevrouw de Jong, reckons she’s a PhD, not a medical doctor. Unless she’s got the wrong end of the stick…’
‘And there was me thinking André Baumgartner might somehow be in the frame,’ George said. ‘Especially when the Syrian girls I spoke to in London kept mentioning a doctor in Arabic.’
Van den Bergen had begun his descent to the ground floor. He paused, knuckles white as his hand enclosed tightly around the banister. ‘André Baumgartner? What?’
‘Didn’t Marie tell you? About Bosch, Boom & Tuin?’
Those soulful grey eyes narrowed. ‘No.’ He cocked his head to the side, studying her intently.
‘There was this van on the ferry. The name put me in mind of Den Bosch, obviously, and the same font had been used for the van’s livery as Groenten Den Bosch. I found a little kid roaming the lower car deck, purely by accident. I’d been chased down there by this drunken prat. Got lost. Long story. Anyway, my gut instinct told me the boy had been trafficked.’ She related a potted version of her brush with the sinister-looking driver who had taken her photo, and the brick that he may or may not have thrown through Aunty Sharon’s living room window. ‘Then again, it’s South East London, isn’t it? It’s more likely to have been kids, I guess. But Den Bosch co-owns the Bosch, Boom & Tuin subsidiary company with none other than the owner of the practice where Saif Abadi works.’
The Girl Who Got Revenge Page 20