The Girl Who Broke the Rules Page 14

  At least Rudi came and kept her company, warm and eternally accepting at the foot of her single bed. Together, they passed a slumberous couple of hours, until Mama noticed her precious fur ball was missing.

  ‘Where the fuck is Rudi-wudi?’ Mama screamed, smashing Veronica’s bedroom door against the wall. She still wore last night’s makeup, smudged now, and had a Japanese silk robe tied loosely over her naked, skeletal frame.

  Veronica glanced at the clock. 4.30am. Rudi yapped at the foot of the bed. Scampered over to her mistress and leaped into her arms.

  ‘You stole him!’ Mama said.

  ‘No. He just wanted to sleep in my room.’

  ‘Thieving bitch of a girl! Naughty Rudi!’

  ‘You weren’t here, Mama.’

  The slap wasn’t so bad. What stung was the fact that she had really disappointed her mother, this time. She just couldn’t win.

  Mama and her young companion slept deeply and late together in a guest room. The French doors to the garden were open. Tricia had baked muffins. The summer morning air was refreshing. Inviting. With a muffin in her mouth, Veronica pulled on her slippers and took a glass of orange juice and a throw onto the small lawn, so that she might sit and enjoy the sunshine.

  When she found poor little Rudi under the holly tree, his severed head lying next to his tragic, blood-flecked body, she screamed loud enough for the neighbours’ security guard to leap the fence to see why there was such a commotion.

  ‘O-our dog!’ she wept, burying her face, wet with tears, in the guard’s shoulder. ‘My-my little Rudi. Who would d-do such a t-thing?’

  Her vocal grief at the sight of the dead terrier was evidently enough to rouse her mother. When Mama saw the harrowing tableau, she collapsed onto the grass, clutching at her stomach and sobbing silently.

  For the first time that Veronica could remember, her mama reached out for her and gathered her up in her scrawny arms. Rocking her like a baby. Weeping hot tears down her neck.

  She reciprocated as any bereft fifteen-year-old would. She hugged her mother back.

  Poor Mama.

  CHAPTER 35

  Amsterdam, police headquarters, 22 January

  ‘Did you know the women in these photos, yes or no?’ van den Bergen shouted. Poking insistently at a photograph of Linda Lepiks and the image that Marie had put together of the first victim. Bolt upright in his chair. Dwarfing a whey-faced Ahlers, who slouched forwards, toying with his own fingernails and blinking too fast at the table’s surface, some six inches to the right of the images.

  ‘Can I have a drink?’

  ‘Look at the damned pictures!’

  Elvis stood in a corner of the room. Leaning against the wall nonchalantly. Hands stuffed inside the pockets of his leather jacket. Casual. Doing studied indifference, George could see.

  ‘You really want to play ball with him while you can,’ Elvis told Ahlers, gesticulating with his quiff towards the grimacing chief inspector. ‘He’s a big man, right? Look at the size of those hands. I’ve seen what he does with guys who piss him around. Honestly, it can get quite messy.’

  Ruud Ahlers tugged at the collar on his shirt. Ran a quivering index finger over the swollen side of his face. ‘I want my solicitor present. You so much as touch a hair on my head, I’ll have you for assault.’

  Van den Bergen’s mouth curled down at the edges. ‘We find a match between nice blond pubic hairs our pathologist found on the black girl and the hair on your groin, you’ll need more than a solicitor to save you, Dr Ahlers. You’ll be wishing Jesus Christ was your legal representation.’ He bore down on his interviewee, placing his fingers on the photographs in a custodial manner. The tip of his nose could not have been more than ten inches from Ahlers’ face. ‘You were struck off the medical register seven years ago for negligence and interfering with your female patients. Both my victims have been scarred by someone who darned them back together like mail bags. Did you perform surgery on them?’

  Ahlers was silent. An indolent interviewee, rendering the cross-examination nothing more than a monologue, delivered by a clearly increasingly frustrated van den Bergen.

  ‘Where were you on the nights of sixteenth of January and eighteenth of January? Hello! Are you listening to me?’ He waved his hand in front of Ahlers’ bloated face.

  George’s strange and seemingly murderous lunch companion finally shifted in his seat. Examined his nails. Spoke quietly. ‘Well, for a start, I can tell you I was at the Holland Casino on the eighteenth of January. People saw me there. I won some money.’

  ‘Did you drive? Walk? Take public transport?’

  ‘Walk.’

  ‘What car do you drive?’

  ‘I don’t have a car.’

  ‘What time did you return to your place of residence?’ Van den Bergen sounded every consonant clearly.

  He opened and closed his mouth several times. George realised she didn’t like Ahlers’ mean lips or the flabby breasts and large gut that lay beneath his dowdy top. Pregnant with ill intentions; corpulent flesh marbled with sleaze and moral decay like a rotten cheese. What the hell had Katja been doing, hanging out with this chump?

  ‘It was late,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember. But they’ll have everything on CCTV at the casino, if you think I’m lying.’

  ‘Anyone able to corroborate what time you got back to your place? You got a woman at home?’

  Silence ensued.

  ‘I said. What. Time. Did you. Get. Back. To your. Place?’

  George peered into the interview room through the one-way glass. Watching van den Bergen’s hooded, grey eyes grow colder and colder as though a dark cloud had cast a chill shadow over him. Drumming his fingers on the table, now. Clearly impatient. Something about him had changed since they had seen one another some months earlier. Though he had always been lean, his clothes looked loose on him. His face, thoroughly drawn. Sunken cheekbones under the harsh interview room light gave him the haunted, desolate look of a man stalking along the outer periphery of his own sanity. His complexion appeared jaundiced, rather than tanned or simply wind-burnt from spending hours in the outdoors. She was glad she had come.

  ‘Here. I thought you could use a coffee,’ Marie said, pushing a cup of black coffee into George’s hand.

  George nodded. Smiled uncertainly, as she eyed the thick band of grease that rendered the red-head’s hair almost brown. ‘Thanks.’ She singed her lips on the boiling liquid. Settled for just warming her hands on the plastic. ‘I honestly thought he was going to shoot me.’ She conjured the memory of van den Bergen, holding the gun with arms outstretched. His expression had had a maniacal quality to it, as though he had been looking at her but had not seen her. Though Ahlers had pushed her to the bathroom floor to make his blundering attempt at escape, it was seeing van den Bergen’s wild eyes that had really shaken her up. ‘He’s not the sort of man you want to get on the wrong side of, is he? Van den Bergen, I mean. I’ve never really seen that in him before. He normally seems so cool. So in control.’

  ‘He’s not himself at the moment,’ Marie said. ‘He did something totally mental a couple of weeks ago. He was lucky he didn’t get suspended. God knows what’s eating him.’ She sighed. Didn’t expand on what it was her boss had done that had been so out of character. ‘Whatever it is, he won’t talk about it to any of us. Maybe you’ll have better luck.’

  Turning back towards the interview room, George wrinkled her nose at the memory of the suspicious-looking lunch Ahlers had presented her with the previous afternoon. ‘You think that meat was really meat?’

  ‘We’ve sent it to the lab for analysis.’

  She clutched her stomach. Two dead women. Missing organs. The potential ingredients of that lunch had a flavour of tabloid hysteria about them. But George read the broadsheets. She quelled her nausea with a gulp of coffee. ‘I step foot off the plane straight into a pile of steaming shit. What were the odds of me being lured to that pervert’s flat?’

  ‘Amsterdam’s
a small place,’ Marie said, thoughtfully twirling her pearl earrings around in their holes. ‘You mix in vice circles, you’re sure to run into trouble at some point.’

  George shot her a venomous glance. Slammed the coffee down on the sill of the one-way window, so that the hot liquid splashed over her fingers. Wiped her hand angrily on her jeans. Head bobbing aggressively from side to side as she spoke. Pointing. Realising the heady effervescence of the champagne had given way to sharp-tempered hangover words, but unable to stop herself. ‘You making assumptions about me? You judging my mate, Katja? Because I know there’s no way she’s tied up in this mess. She’s going to go fucking ballistic when you question her.’

  Marie held her hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘No. You better not be.’ George jabbed an accusatory finger towards her hair. ‘You get a shower before you come to me with your squeaky clean bullshit. Okay?’

  ‘Jesus! There’s no need to be personal.’ Marie took a step backwards and hastily tied her hair with an elasticated grip into a ponytail. Deepened furrows on her forehead and raised eyebrows etched a show of hurt above watery eyes. ‘Is this how it’s going to be? We’ve got to work together for the next six months, the boss said.’

  George sighed heavily. Reached out to Marie and, defying her inner voice which screamed that touching the woman would mean she would have to wash her hands immediately in very hot water, rubbed Marie’s thin arm in a show of contrition. ‘Take no notice of me. I was up at six yesterday and nearly got myself killed. Twice. Couldn’t sleep a wink last night. Haven’t exactly got off to a good start, have I?’

  Marie nodded, though the tightly folded arms said everything. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘You think you’ve got your man?’ George asked, wishing she had an override button on the smart mouth she had inherited from her mother.

  Marie turned to the view through the one-way glass. Watching as van den Bergen thumped the table.

  ‘I can prove you’ve performed surgery on both women,’ he shouted. Brandished a sheet of paper in front of Ahlers. Read from it through glasses theatrically held high. A half-smile toying on his lips. ‘As fate would have it, there’s an assault report just come in about you from a Chinese man. Says you almost killed his daughter with your unlicensed backstreet butchery.’ He pointed to Ahlers’ swollen cheek. ‘Was it him that rearranged your face?’ He turned to Elvis. ‘I’d say it’s an improvement, wouldn’t you?’

  Elvis nodded. ‘Good job. I hope he sends you an invoice.’

  Van den Bergen turned back to the report. ‘Shall we take a look at the stitching on this Chinese girl?’

  Ahlers stared at him. Silent, though it was hard to tell if it was fear or defiance that had a grip of his tongue.

  ‘Stop wasting my time! I can prove you had sex with the black girl. What was her name?!’ Even with glass separating them, the ferocity of van den Bergen’s voice was undimmed.

  Finally, Ahlers cracked. First, a startled expression hinted at the fissure underlying his composure. Then, he started to weep. Leaking from those bloodshot eyes turned to torrents. Jerking shoulders. Gripping the table top with chubby hands. Snot descending to his top lip in a glistening rivulet. ‘Noor. Her name was Noor.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Marie said, a flicker of a smile warming her face. ‘I think we’ve got our man.’

  CHAPTER 36

  South East London, Aunty Sharon’s house, later

  ‘I didn’t know where else to come, Shaz,’ Derek said, tilting his head back whilst Sharon dabbed at his bloody nose.

  She sighed. Dipped the tea towel into the boiled water and poked him in the eye with it.

  ‘Ow!’ he cried. ‘Why you do that for? Ain’t I suffered enough?’

  Sharon dropped the towel on the kitchen table and sat down heavily on one of the pine chairs. She sipped from her mug of strong tea, considering the man before her, whose face looked like tenderised meat.

  ‘You’re some kind of fucking idiot, Derek de Falco. What unmentionable shit you got yourself wrapped up in, eh? Which particular brand of fucking nightmare you brought to my house this time?’

  Her former lover reached out to grab her hand. She was quick to shake him loose. No point giving that tosser false hope. Bad enough he was Tinesha’s baby-father. Twat.

  ‘It was them fellers from the club. Italian geezers, you know?’ He shifted his position on his seat and winced. ‘Can I have a cuppa tea?’

  ‘Nah. This ain’t no caf for waifs and fucking strays. Talk!’

  Derek pointlessly licked his fingers and dabbed at the large, bloody spatter down the front of his primrose-yellow evening shirt. Sharon reflected that he looked like he had gone to a fancy dress party as a representation of cat sick, but she kept that to herself.

  ‘So, I gets invited to this party out at some farmhouse in the middle of Kent, right? Them geezers is all friendly, cos I let them bring girls to the club.’

  ‘The porn king know?’

  He shook his head and groaned. ‘Dermot Robinson? You must be joking. He’d string me up by the balls. No, these Italians came to me, right, cos of my family connections? Why you smirking like that, Shaz? That’s very cold.’

  ‘Shut it, you fool.’

  ‘Anyway, they make money from the girls. I take a nice cut and don’t ask no questions, right? I’m glad of the cash.’

  Sharon stood and slapped Derek upside the head. ‘You greedy bastard.’

  Melodramatically, he jerked backwards as though she had taken a baseball bat to him. ‘You hurt me, Sharon.’ He thumped his chest where his heart may or may not have been. Sharon wasn’t sure. ‘Right to the core, babe. And I don’t see you moaning when I bung our Tinesha a few quid towards her student digs.’

  Sucking her teeth, she soaked the towel in the hot water in its entirety. Wrung it out and flung it on top of Derek’s head. ‘Thems is underage girls, you morally derelict bastard,’ she said, ignoring his complaints. Advancing to the cake tin and cutting herself a slice of swiss roll. She could see Derek’s eyes on the cake. Hear his stomach growling. ‘You looking at my cake?’ Her mouth was full as she spoke. Brushing crumbs off her pink fluffy dressing gown. Licking buttercream off her fingers. ‘This my cake, not your fucking cake.’

  ‘You got a big slab there, darling. Give us a piece. Go on!’

  Slapping her own ample behind, she waved her finger in admonition; shook her head. ‘You fellers don’t get to take that much delicious out unless I put this much delicious in. My cake. Eyes forward, little man. Talk. And don’t mention my Tinesha in this conversation again. Right?’

  Bloodied head in his bruised hands, Derek began his tale.

  ‘So, I’m thinking, I’m well in here with the correct people, right?’ he said. ‘They picks me up in some fancy Range Rover. Man, you ain’t never seen such a big fucking car in your life. Real drug dealer bling in all white with black wheels et cetera, et cetera. And we drives to this farmhouse out Canterbury way. Big gaff, like Carnegie bloody Hall. Well,’ he grinned. Then thought better of it with a sharp intake of breath. ‘It was a fucking orgy. Serious. I mean drugs coming out of me arsehole. Birds, but not like the sort of birds I normally mix with.’

  ‘Thanks a fucking bundle.’

  Derek tutted. ‘Jeez, Shaz. Don’t be like that. I mean, the birds at the club. Some of these was posh. You know? Professional types. Toffs.’

  ‘Rich, white women looking for a thrill,’ Sharon offered, one eye on her phone.

  ‘Yeah. Exactly. They’re all in the nip or in bondage gear and getting it on with fellers there, in full view, et cetera. I thought – no offence, like – I’m having a bit of that. Right?’

  Through the swelling in his eyelids she could see pleading brown eyes, begging forgiveness. Sharon had acquired immunity to that hangdog expression. Derek de Falco wasn’t really her problem any longer. She ate her cake in silence.

  ‘Anyway, so, I’m going at it with some bird, trousers round my ankles,
like. Out the corner of my eye, I notice this geez holding court on the sofa. He’s got all his clobber on. Looks money. And I’m all ears, right? And he’s chatting to the short Italian – the one who looks like Al Pacino in Serpico.’

  Sharon scratched at her scalp under her hair net. ‘It’s Scarface, dickhead. Wrong film.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever. And some posh bird, built like a brick shithouse. Horsey Helen.’

  ‘What’s the money one look like?’

  Derek rolled some toilet paper into tight bungs and shoved one up each nostril. Tilted his head back. His voice was comically nasal. ‘Well, he was white. Hard to tell how tall he was. He was sitting down. Balding geez with a buzz cut. Diamond in his tooth. Bit of stubble. Slim build. In his fifties, I’d say. Sounded proper upper crust. I ain’t never seen him before. And the three of them’s talking. I can hear something about donors.’

  ‘Donuts?’ Sharon was growing bored. Uncle fucking Giuseppe could naff off back to his own place in a minute. She had washing to do before Patrice came home from school. And dinner to make before her shift at the club started. Nice goat curry. Lovely. And the floor needed mopping. Plus, that bathroom didn’t clean itself. Wandering over to the kitchen window, she started to water the spider plants on the sill with water in an old milk bottle. Adjusted the tie-backs on her gingham curtains. She could quite fancy a donut.

  ‘Nah. I think maybe the bird was a politician or charity type et cetera. Maybe a banker. I don’t frigging know. Cos they was talking about markets and money and pricing and that. Anyway, never mind what they was fucking chatting about. Next minute, Scarface clocks me earwigging. I’m out on my arse, getting beaten to a pulp by the other two on a heated bloody driveway, no less! And them lads can swing a punch, I can tell you.’