The Girl Who Broke the Rules Page 21

  ‘She’d have been brought here as a sex worker,’ Marie said, smiling ever so slightly. Flicking the indicator to turn onto the remote and desolate N206.

  How like the fenlands of East Anglia this place was, George thought. She was poised to share that observation with Marie and then thought better of it. It was the sort of thing she could say to van den Bergen. She didn’t yet know Marie well enough.

  ‘Which is why I think she’d have sought a roof at this place,’ George said. ‘Noor – if that’s actually her name, which I doubt – would have qualified for asylum, right? Especially if she’d been a victim of sex trafficking and was young. Pregnant.’

  Overcome with a fierce conviction that, somehow, they would avenge Noor’s terrible end by tracking down her murderer and bringing him to book; find her lost baby and perhaps even place it successfully with a nice Somali family, she squeezed Marie’s arm. Marie looked down at her hand long enough for her to realise she was not happy with the arrangement.

  ‘Sorry,’ George said. ‘It’s just, I’ve got a good feeling about this.’

  Marie scoffed. ‘You’ve obviously not been doing proper police work long enough.’

  The Asylum Seekers’ Centre loomed into view. An institutional red-brick building behind a barrier, that looked rather like the entrance to a hospital campus or high school. George’s heart fell.

  ‘Fucking soulless, man,’ she said in English.

  As they drove through the complex, the larger building gave way to fixed cabins that looked like the prefabs one sometimes still sees in England. Hastily erected bungalows made from prefabricated panels. Flat roofs. Draughty. Damp. Cold. Women, wearing full burka, walked along the pathways between houses, carrying shopping. Men in salwaar kameez; their heads covered by mosque hats. It was a strange theatre. The cast had all the vivacity and diversity of the high streets of London. The backdrop was post-war hell on a disused airfield.

  Had this place been the setting for a scene from Noor’s story?

  In the administrative office, the grey-faced woman, wearing an ID lanyard around her neck that labelled her as Mrs de Witte, sat behind her battered desk. She wore a grim expression that said she did not care for the authorities. Pruned mouth. Cheap gold jewellery. The ill-considered haircut of a social worker.

  Mrs de Witte poked at the computer-generated photo of Noor that Marie had put together. ‘I recognise this face. It’s Magool Osman,’ she said. ‘And she didn’t slip under our radar. This is not a prison, you know.’

  ‘She was a vulnerable girl,’ Marie said. ‘Underaged. No parents. Did she say how she’d come to be in the country?’

  Shaking her head, Mrs de Witte said, ‘She wouldn’t tell us anything. All I know was she came from Mogadishu, but I couldn’t tell you what clan she was in – Somalis are all from different clans. It’s a bit like the Indians’ caste system. She kept herself to herself, as far as I know or remember. Only time she really bothered with others was during her Dutch classes. She picked the lingo up very quickly. Not like some of the others. Most of the women in here are illiterate unfortunately. It’s a cultural thing not to educate girls.’

  ‘Should she not have been in a young person’s unit, where she could be properly protected?’ Marie asked. ‘Isn’t there some government stipulation, says these kids are to be watched, because they’re susceptible to traffickers?’

  Mrs de Witte gazed out of the window at two small boys kicking a ball to one another. ‘She was pregnant and wouldn’t let on who the father was. Said she didn’t know. What do you do with a teenaged girl who’s pregnant? You can’t put her with the other juvenile asylum seekers, can you? So, we put her in with the families.’

  George had arranged some notepaper into a fan shape with almost exactly a centimetre between each sheet. She switched her attentions to the woman’s haggard face. ‘Let me guess. There’s little or no security for families.’

  ‘Asylum seekers don’t have to stay here at all,’ Mrs de Witte said, sighing as she spoke. ‘The government has what’s called a “self care arrangement”. While they’re going through the asylum-seeking process, people can find their own accommodation with friends and relatives, if they like. As long as they check in at one of the centres every week.’

  ‘Please show us her old room,’ Marie said.

  ‘I don’t know which was her room. It’s not on file.’

  ‘Find it, then.’

  Hands in the air, as though she was about to break into interpretative dance, Mrs de Witte laughed too hard. ‘Oh, wait a minute. I’ve nothing better to do than dig out a record from over a year ago and see what room Ms Osman occupied. What do you expect to find there, exactly?’

  Marie slammed her police ID down on the desk. ‘I am a detective in the Dutch police.’

  De Witte checked her watch. A cheap bin-lid of a thing in yellow gold, encrusted with cubic zirconia. ‘I have got several new arrivals turning up any minute now. They’re my priority. I haven’t got the time.’

  ‘Make time!’

  At her side, Marie’s colour started to change from pale pink to an angry shade of homicidal red, but George wasn’t interested in point-scoring with a pen-pusher. ‘Mrs de Witte,’ she said, wondering if reaching out to touch the woman on the arm would forge some kind of connection, but deciding that the chances of succeeding in winning her over with physical closeness did not warrant the risk of touching such slimy-looking fabric and suffering the resulting nausea. Words would have to do. ‘Little Magool was butchered and left naked, to freeze like a piece of meat on a bench in the red light district. We need to find out how she got from here to there. You can help us.’

  Mrs de Witte’s hard-featured face softened almost imperceptibly. She stood up. Keys jangling at her waist. ‘Come on. There’s not much to see.’

  The room was grey. Just about big enough to fit a single bed. One small window. It looked rather like a sports hall that had been divided up by cheap partitions. No carpet. No home comforts. Literally just a roof. George was reminded of her time in a cell, except hers had had bars at the window and her door had been locked for most of the day. Sent a shiver down her spine, though she was more than used to being inside prisons now.

  ‘As you can see, it’s basic,’ de Witte said, standing by the door, as if she couldn’t wait to make safe her getaway.

  George imagined Magool cooped up in here. Pregnant. Thousands of miles from her family. Possibly suffering post traumatic stress disorder from an undoubtedly hellish journey from the boiling, roiling cauldron of an African warzone to the strange, still waters of a cold European land. No real money to speak of. No idea of whether she would be allowed to stay in the Netherlands. The possibility of being deported hanging over her.

  ‘So, Magool slipped out one day and never came back,’ George said.

  Mrs de Witte nodded. ‘Didn’t wait to see what happened with her application, the silly girl. She must have been about six months pregnant when she left.’

  Outside the room, two young black women were chatting in a language George did not recognise. One wore a sequinned pink hijab, tight jeans and a long sleeved floral top. The other wore an austere black hijab and shapeless floor-length black dress.

  ‘Where would a young woman like Magool go when she leaves here?’ she asked.

  De Witte ushered them out of the room and started to lock the door. Jangling keys like rows of teeth. A bigger bite in this dog-eat-dog world. Setting too much store by her own authority, George assessed.

  ‘If you’re refused asylum, you get deported or end up on the street,’ she said. ‘There’s a place in Amsterdam called the Vluchtgevangenis. An old, disused prison where destitute asylum seekers go to find shelter. She may have gone there.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be mainly men?’ Marie asked. ‘What about Somali women’s groups?’

  Together, the three of them walked back to the car. Shivering in the chill afternoon air; wanting to kick against the depressing atmosphere that hung over th
is drab, purgatorial location, where refugees waited in limbo for a new life.

  ‘There’s bound to be a group in Amsterdam,’ Mrs de Witte said, checking her watch. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some very vulnerable new arrivals to make preparations for. You’re the police. Do some detective work!’ She offered Marie her hand to shake, which Marie ignored. ‘Shame about Magool. Real shame. But you can only try your best for people…’ She tutted. ‘Bye, then.’

  George climbed into the car next to Marie and slammed the door. Waved to the woman. ‘Bit of a turd,’ she said, the smile slipping abruptly from her face. ‘How do you cope?’

  Marie turned to her briefly as she pulled onto the main road. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  CHAPTER 52

  Rotterdam, Port Authority, later

  ‘What do you mean, you never saw anyone?’ van den Bergen asked the stevedore, who was taking large bites out of a fat ham sandwich.

  ‘Listen,’ the man said, grinding his way through the thick pink and white layers. Pausing to swallow. Pieces of masticated pink food visible between his incisors as though his gums had started to grow down over his teeth. ‘I operate the computer program that takes containers off the ships and plonks them in stacks.’ He took another bite. Chewed thoughtfully, or perhaps, without any thought whatsoever. ‘Piet, over there…’ he pointed to a colleague who was hunched over a flickering computer terminal ‘…he sorts the stacks so the right box comes out for the right haulage company to pick up.’ Swigged messily from a bottle of cola and belched. ‘We don’t get a view of the ground below. It’s all computerised, see?’ Pointed to his screen. ‘What you want to do, is talk to security or customs or your mate, Wouter. Port Authority police have got more of a clue who comes and goes on the ground than us. Seriously, mate.’

  Van den Bergen allowed a low growl to escape him but clutched his stomach to make it seem like indigestion. Mate, indeed.

  ‘Did you hear any rumours of strange goings on the day that the Filipino man was found? Any of your colleagues mention something untoward?’

  The stevedore shook his head. ‘I came in. Did a long shift. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. Ships came in. Ships went out. You’ve seen the records of what I unloaded. Went home, ate a nice steak and chips. Drank a few beers. Kids were both out, so I boned my wife on the sofa in front of the telly. That was it. A great day.’

  In his peripheral vision, van den Bergen was aware of Elvis approaching. He turned around, wishing he was anywhere but inside this chilly, over-air-conditioned office with this man who stank of cigarettes and sweat. His fingers were like blocks of ice. Perhaps he was developing Raynaud’s disease.

  ‘Any joy with the CCTV footage?’ he asked.

  Elvis was walking with a certain swagger. This boded well, he knew. ‘You got a minute, boss?’

  He followed his detective to the office that housed the security function. With a view through ceiling-to-floor windows of the silvery-grey inlet, Het Scheur, along which a giant freighter was slowly chugging towards the cargo terminal, a small, balding man sat, surrounded by screens. Large screens seemed to float above him. A bank of smaller screens lined his desk, each containing a view of different parts of the Port of Rotterdam campus.

  ‘This is Erik,’ Elvis told van den Bergen.

  Erik offered the chief inspector his hand. It was a weak, damp handshake which made van den Bergen flinch, but the man had an honest, open face, at least. A network of lines were etched in the skin around his eyes. His uneven jawline had perhaps softened with age. Van den Bergen estimated that he was close to retirement.

  ‘Tell my boss what you told me,’ Elvis instructed him.

  Erik clicked a mouse several times and brought a screen up which made little sense to van den Bergen. He had no option but to sit in a typing chair which was too low and too small for him. Felt like a tarantula squeezed into a match box. Yanked his glasses free of their chain that had caught on the button of his overcoat and set them on his nose.

  ‘What am I looking at, Erik?’

  ‘The CCTV footage from the day the body was found,’ Erik said. ‘At first, it seemed the recording from between one pm and five pm was missing. Wiped.’

  ‘And? Who could have wiped it? Who has access to your computer terminals?’

  Erik clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth thoughtfully. Laced his fingers together over his uniform. Didn’t take his eyes off the screen. ‘Chances are, someone’s hacked the system. I suppose in theory, it could have been one of the IT guys. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess, because the fellers here, well, they’re all good men.’ He leaned forward and clicked through several screens. Turned to van den Bergen with shining eyes. ‘But anyway, we back the system up, so I found a copy of the footage. Look. Here you go.’

  Van den Bergen’s heartbeat remained steady while he watched the grainy footage. For a while, even at four times the normal speed, the only things to see of any note were the automated cranes, levering cargo containers off a ship called The Mighty Horn of Africa. Rain slanted hard onto the dock, though the camera’s resolution was only high enough to show the water bouncing up off the asphalt and the steel containers as mist, rather than as the fat beans one would have expected from such a downpour. Dark grey clouds swallowed up the light almost entirely, making it seem more like dusk than just after lunch. Twenty minutes in, however, a dark saloon car slid into view between the stacks. Not far from the ship. Van den Bergen’s heartbeat sped up, now. Thudding in his chest, as he just glimpsed a tall figure getting out of the driver’s side. Clad in dark clothing. Wearing a hood. Impossible to see if he was black or white, young or old.

  When he held his hand up, Erik paused the footage.

  ‘Can you zoom in?’ he asked him.

  Erik shook his head. ‘Not enough to get any fine detail. Your lad, Dirk, already asked me. It was a very overcast day, as you can see. Pissed it down. And there’s gull shit on the camera or something, if I’m not mistaken. Same later on, except it’s dark by then, so the visibility’s even worse.’

  Erik spooled forward, as he was bidden. For almost four hours, the saloon car was absent. Then it reappeared. Not in frame enough to allow van den Bergen to ascertain what make of car it was, let alone to see a number plate. It disappeared behind a stack of containers, in the direction of where they had found the Filipino.

  ‘Wouter Dreyer seen this?’ he asked.

  Erik nodded. ‘Showed it him this morning.’

  Van den Bergen took his leave from the security man. Strode downstairs to the parking lot. Unlocked his car. With the doors closed, he was cocooned in near silence; the din from the clanking metal containers and the wail of the seagulls sounding as though it was muffled by cotton wool. He switched on his engine. Dialled Wouter’s number. Ringing through the hands-free speakers.

  ‘Wouter Dreyer,’ on the other end.

  ‘It’s Paul van den Bergen.’ He ran his long finger round and around the leather steering wheel, feeling he was on the brink of a breakthrough. A smile creeping over his tired face. ‘I’ve just been watching the footage of that car in the security office. I’ll bet a year’s rent on my allotment that you’ve got a record of this guy entering the Port. I think we’ve got our murderer.’

  ‘Ah,’ Wouter said, sounding hesitant. ‘About that…’

  CHAPTER 53

  Amsterdam, Ad’s apartment, later still

  ‘About what?’ George asked.

  She was avoiding making eye contact with Ad. It was late. She was tired. Marie’s body odour had permeated her own clothing; her hair; her nostrils. A shower and a meal was all she wanted. The last thing she needed after flogging up and down the country all day, chasing after elusive African community groups in ramshackle, crumbling buildings, was to be cross-examined like this.

  Ad stood next to the cooker. Apron on, over his jeans and top. Spoon in hand. The lenses of his glasses were fogged slightly with steam from the noodles he was boiling. Pad thai, h
e said he would make. She had failed to share pad thai with van den Bergen only days ago.

  ‘You know what!’ Ad said. ‘I want to know about how you came to arrange work over here. One minute, you’re doing some seedy job or other in London that you won’t tell me anything about. Next minute, you’re working for that bloody miserable bastard van den Bergen. Staying at his flat without telling me.’ He gasped when she did not respond. ‘You’ve still not so much as apologised.’

  ‘Apologise?’ George said. ‘What the fuck for?’ She was out of her chair, though she rose without any purpose, other than to express her indignation. This was Ad’s domain. Not hers. ‘You turn up in London, uninvited, right?’ Pointing. Pointing. Waving her hands around, though there was barely the space in that small, galley kitchen. ‘Expecting me to drop everything.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you being at van den Bergen’s without telling me?’

  George could feel the red mist descending. ‘Since when was I answerable to you? You’re my boyfriend, not my keeper. Don’t you understand that I need my space?’

  Ad threw the spoon into the wok with something bordering on aggression. It bounced straight out and fell between the side of the cooker and the kitchen cabinetry. ‘Jesus! See what you’ve made me do?’

  Hands in the air, now. His back was turned to her. She flipped him the bird and balled her fist at him. ‘Did I throw your fucking spoon in the pan like a twat, Adrianus? Did I? Or did you? Like a big spoiled kid.’

  He was facing her again now. His handsome face devoid of warmth. Bitterness had set his soft mouth into a hard, thin line. But here, his chin was crumpling up. His eyes reddening.