The Girl Who Broke the Rules Page 23

  ‘Fantastic news, isn’t it?’ he told Mama, beaming. ‘The blood sample we took from your daughter last time shows she will be able to donate with a high likelihood of success, Frau Schwartz.’

  At her side, looking like a tracksuit-clad coat hanger in a Gucci headscarf, her mother started to weep loudly. ‘Oh, thank you, God! Thank you. Thank you. I’m going to live.’ She turned to Veronica and grabbed at her arm, though the strength of old was no longer in her fingers. ‘You look so much like your father, but you’ve got your mother’s blood in your veins.’

  The heat leached out of Veronica’s body as the enormity of what the oncologist suggested registered with her. ‘Will it hurt?’ she asked, clutching the hem of her miniskirt.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a very painful procedure,’ the doctor said. ‘But on the bright side, you get to be a hero!’

  She glanced at her mother. It was as if all of her own vitality had poured back into this invalid, leaving her feeling drained, and in turn, injecting Mama with some of her old vivacity and spunk. Had she somehow transformed into the Georg Bendemann of Kafka’s Judgment? Doomed to be usurped by an ailing parent; the proper course of nature inverted by her mother’s triumph and her own downfall and death? Perhaps. Perhaps.

  ‘When I’m better, I’ll throw a party to celebrate like Berlin has never seen,’ Mama said, closing her eyes. A solitary tear trickling down her cheek. ‘Then, I’ll throw more in New York and London. If this isn’t worth celebrating, then I don’t know what is!’

  At home, Papa was waiting.

  ‘I don’t want to do it,’ Veronica told him, as he sat stiffly in his study, sipping brandy whilst scanning a medical journal. ‘They said it would be agony, Papa. He said they had another match, in case I didn’t work out.’ She approached her father, hoping to appeal to whatever paternal instinct this distant man might have towards her. Touched the sleeve of his cashmere sweater. Finally, he met her pleading gaze. ‘Please, Papa. I’m only eighteen. I’ve got university to look forward to.’

  But Papa merely stared at her blankly over his round spectacles. Fingering his Rolex. Pulling his arm from her reach.

  ‘You think we want some filthy proletarian bone marrow inside your mother’s body?’ he said, sipping the liquor. ‘We’d never know the donor. It could be anyone. It could be a bloody foreigner. The register is confidential. No way.’ He shook his head, as if to emphasise how little he thought of the idea. Swivelled his leather armchair around so that he was facing a large Bang & Olufsen television screen, partially concealed inside a limed oak built-in TV cabinet. Slid a tape into the Betamax and pressed play. Golf appeared on the screen.

  ‘Papa.’

  ‘You’ll donate the marrow, you spoiled little shit,’ he said. ‘Don’t you want to save your mother’s life?’

  As promised, the surgery had proven excruciating. When Veronica stood by her mother’s graveside, amongst the great and the good of the international jet-set, she was still sore and sobbing, more from pain than loss.

  Clad in black Chanel, concealing her agony behind a pair of Wayfarers and a wide-brimmed hat, it took more than an hour for the mourners, sycophants and voyeurs to file past her and her father to pay their respects to them and to say a final farewell to this doyenne of high society; this beloved patron of the arts. The cemetery was splashed bright, like an impressionist’s painting, with colour from the incredible floral tributes. Mama would have loved it. Simply everyone was there. Including the paparazzi.

  Some European minor-royal, whom Veronica did not really recognise, patted her hand. Spoke Americanised English, as they mainly did.

  ‘My dear, it must be so hard for you. You’ve been so, so brave.’

  A grimace for the cameras. Flash. Flash. Hand on hip. Knee slightly tilted. Still fabulous in YSL.

  Next, some medical man whom her father knew from the golf course. An anaesthetist with a strange old-fashioned first name that she remembered from a George Eliot novel. Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe.

  He kissed her hand. Years older than her but attractive, with a small-featured, symmetrical face. Spoke words she recognised from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in a rich voice with deferential, lowered gaze, still holding her hand:

  Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath

  Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty;

  Thou art not conquer’d; beauty’s ensign yet

  Is crimson in thy lip, and in thy cheeks,

  And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.

  She was smitten.

  CHAPTER 55

  Over the North Sea, then, Ramsgate, England, 27 January

  The light came on overhead, telling them to fasten their seatbelts. It preceded a stomach-turning jolt only by moments. The dense cloud enveloping the plane, which scudded over the wings in long grey wisps like wizards’ beards, gave no indication of their altitude. But they were descending. In the seat beside her, van den Bergen fidgeted.

  ‘I hate turbulence,’ he said. Yanking at his belt. ‘The fat bastard next to me is sitting on the buckle. I can’t—’ Yank. Yank. His brows knocking together in consternation or irritation or both.

  George leaned across and tugged the buckle free.

  ‘Ow! What are you doing?’

  ‘You were sitting on your own buckle, you berk!’ She fastened the seatbelt for him, as though he were a large child. Gave him a disapproving look but winked. ‘Remember the last time we flew together?’

  He rested his head back and looked at the panels and air con above them. His Adam’s apple pinged up and down in his sinewy throat. Rough red skin that said he’d shaved in haste. But he smelled good, permeating the aircraft funk of stale vomit and industrial cleaning fluid with citrus scent, or was it something like bergamot?

  He turned to her, looking rather like a man who hadn’t slept for days, judging by the dark circles beneath despondent grey eyes.

  ‘Last time we flew, we were coming back from Cambridge after you’d been abducted by that psychopath,’ he said, the corners of his mouth turning upwards; laughter lines deepening, making those sunken cheekbones even more pronounced. ‘I made you drink gin.’

  Impulsively, she grabbed the back of his head, pulled him down towards her and kissed him squarely on the cheek. Memories of the many inappropriate scenarios she had imagined herself in with this middle-aged policeman grappling for prominence in her mind’s eye.

  ‘What’s that for?’ he asked, touching his face.

  She was surprised that he looked more amused than startled, as he would have been in the beginning. He hadn’t shuffled up towards the fat man seated on his other side, next to the aisle.

  ‘You,’ she said. ‘You’re a curmudgeonly old sod.’ Pointed to his curling shirt collar. ‘You need to go bloody shopping and get yourself some new threads, man. And you need to sort your fucked-up head out. But you’re my hero. You saved my life back then.’

  Colour crept into his face. He blinked hard, cleared his throat and pointed to the green quilt of England’s countryside that spread out below them, now that they had dropped beneath the clouds, passing the jagged white line of the UK’s coastline.

  ‘Ready for some detective work, Cagney?’ he said.

  ‘I thought I was Lacey and Ad was Cagney,’ she said, grinning furtively out of the window.

  ‘Don’t spoil it by saying that prick’s name,’ her travel companion said. ‘He gives me indigestion.’

  She turned back to him. Stared at his thick white hair. Would it be dry like hers? Soft like Ad’s? Coarser? Did it stand up that way because he had product in it or was it just too thick to flop? ‘Ad went mental when I said you’d booked us into the same hotel. Where the hell did he think I was going to stay?’

  Spied a degree of mischief in his tired eyes, now. Another flicker of a smile.

  ‘Good job I didn’t tell you we’re in adjoining rooms, then.’

  Before she could respond, she was taken aback by their little KLM Fokke
r 70 bouncing onto the runway at Kent International airport.

  ‘Jesus.’ She grabbed van den Bergen’s arm. Peered out in disbelief at the flat landscape and terminal building scudding past at speed. ‘That was quick!’

  He patted her hand but only momentarily, in favour of switching on his phone. Within seconds, it pinged. He frowned.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ she asked.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, nodding. ‘There’s been a development with the Polish builder. Leeuwenhoek has stumbled onto something you won’t believe!’

  The biting north sea wind whipped George’s unruly curls this way and that. Her eyes streamed, barely able to glimpse the silver clouds that threatened the Kentish coastline with sleet, hail or possibly snow. Even in her sheepskin coat and a thick jumper, she was shivering almost to the point where her teeth clacked together. At her side, van den Bergen was grey-faced but for a red nose, his head bent against the wind, his white hair beaten flat against his skull.

  ‘Jesus. Even if you don’t wind up dead with your innards missing,’ he said, as they followed the detective from the Kent police across the tarmac to the sea wall, ‘it must be one hell of a come-down turning up on these shores when you’re from somewhere hot like the bloody Congo.’ He called after their guide. ‘Rob, was it the Congo your victim was from or…?’

  Rob looked back with watery eyes and a ruddy face that said even in his parka and beanie hat, he was as freezing as they were. ‘Democratic Republic of. Not Congo on its own.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ van den Bergen asked George.

  George cast her mind back to BBC news reports on world news that she had followed over the last few years. Articles she had read about the ‘child witches’ of Kinhasa. ‘It’s in turmoil,’ she said. ‘War between at least six countries – Rwanda, Angola, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Namibia – and fighting between factions within the Democratic Republic itself. Like the land that God forgot. Millions of kids have been killed. Young boys are made to fight by warlords. There’s no infrastructure. The western world doesn’t give a shit…oh, and it’s one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a girl or a woman. Sexual violence is endemic.’ She wished the Kentish detective would slow down so that she didn’t have to jog. Would have liked the arsehole to turn around. Instead, she spoke to the back of his head and the fur on his hood.

  ‘Rob, if the victim was naked, how do you know where he came from?’ she asked.

  Still facing straight ahead, he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Tattoos and scarification on his back – specific to the area, our forensics guys reckon. Some tribal thing shows the victim’s been a child soldier. He was only about nineteen.’

  The detective came to an abrupt stop, backing away from the sea wall where an arc of spray shot some twenty feet or so into the air and cascaded down to the ground, drenching the blue and yellow chequered Kent Police Range Rover that had been parked too close to the edge.

  ‘Mind out!’ he said, ushering George and van den Bergen backwards. ‘Can’t believe that twat, Grayson, parked the sodding car there!’

  George took in the backdrop to the drab scene. A roll on, roll off ferry was docked not far away. Behind them, heavy goods vehicles were parked diagonally, forming orderly chevrons on a large expanse of tarmac. Dated, low buildings housed the port terminal. In the distance, a colourful marina looked more picturesque and promising than Ramsgate had looked close-up when they had driven along the harbour road, past Victorian houses which were shabby and neglected.

  ‘What a shit place to die,’ she said.

  Rob led them to where the brine of the sea had already washed away most of the white outline that had been sprayed on the ground, marking the spot where the body had been found.

  ‘He didn’t die here,’ he said, staring dolefully at the smudged paint. He scratched beneath his beanie hat and sniffed his fingers. ‘We’ve no idea how he got here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ van den Bergen asked. ‘Doesn’t the port authority have cameras trained on this area.’

  Rob nodded. ‘Yeah. They do. But here’s the thing.’ He reached into the pocket of his parka and pulled out a cigarette packet. Looked inside. Seemed to think better of it and put it away again. ‘Someone hacked the security software and erased the records from the day we found him.’

  George exchanged a knowing look with van den Bergen.

  ‘Same your end?’ Rob asked, blowing on his reddened fingers.

  Van den Bergen nodded. ‘I’ve seen the photographs of your man and the forensics report. There’s no doubt we’re hunting the same killer, although in Amsterdam, he’s also targeted women.’

  ‘Could the victim have been a stowaway on one of those ferries?’ George asked, pointing to the giant red and white tub onto which cars were driving in a sluggish trail. Bound for Ostend, no doubt.

  Rob shrugged. ‘Usually, when you get a guy comes into the country from some war-torn shithole, he’s come in through Dover. Cargo ships dock from West Africa all the time there. Some of them are bona fide sailors. Some are trafficked slave labour.’ He stamped his feet on the ground and slapped his hands on his arms. ‘I don’t know. He could have been an asylum seeker came in through another route and got on the wrong side of some two-bit gangster in the Big Smoke. Fellers like this get into trouble too easily. Especially young ones. They’re vulnerable to crime.’

  ‘And the other murders?’ van den Bergen asked. ‘You had two more disembowelled fishermen last month.’

  The Kentish detective started to walk back towards the Range Rover, beckoning them to follow. ‘Those poor sods were from Africa too. At first, we were convinced it was gangland activity. Eyes gouged out. Gutted, like you say.’ He squinted and looked up at the gulls overhead that were buffeted on the stiff wind like kites. Crying out for better weather and perhaps a nicer view in that sorry, down-at-heel seaside town. ‘But unlike this latest victim, their hearts were still in the right place. He he. If you get my meaning.’

  His half-smile and attempt at a pun was met with a grimace from van den Bergen.

  ‘And one of the victims – the older one of the two, who was reported to be about forty – still had his lungs,’ Rob continued, the mirth now absent from his face. ‘Pathologist said he had lung cancer – a tumour about the size of a golf ball, apparently, growing into the outer wall of the right side of his lung.’

  ‘Lung cancer?’ van den Bergen said, suddenly blanching. He grabbed George by her upper arm.

  Feeling something was amiss, George looked at her friend. Took hold of his cold, cold hand. ‘Are you okay?’

  His lips were pale purple. He started to shake. Eyes glazed and staring. Breathing raggedly. ‘I feel a bit dizzy. There’s flashing lights. I—’ He opened and closed his mouth. Gazed around him, appearing bewildered. A large, lost boy, all at sea. Held his other hand aloft to reveal white fingers. Started to shake. ‘My fingers have gone numb, George.’

  Rob unlocked the Range Rover. ‘Come and sit in the car, mate,’ he said, helping George to usher van den Bergen to the sea-drenched vehicle – no mean feat, given van den Bergen’s size and the fact that his legs were starting to give way.

  ‘I think I’m going to faint,’ he said. Grabbing George by the arm, as he wedged himself onto the back seat of the Range Rover. Wide-eyed. Ashen-faced. ‘Help me, George! I think I’m having a stroke or a brain haemorrhage.’

  Palpitations made George’s own breath come quick. I’m going to lose him. He’s going to go before I get a chance to tell him anything. All those words I rehearsed in my head, over and over. ‘Don’t leave me, Paul! You’re going to be fine. Keep breathing.’

  Van den Bergen’s skin was as cold and pale grey as marble. His lips barely moved; his voice hardly audible.

  ‘George, I…’

  At that moment, his eyes rolled back into his head.

  CHAPTER 56

  Soho, London, later

  ‘Get into the fucking car, Giuseppe,’ the short-arsed Italian said, p
ushing the barrel of that snub-nosed handgun into his back. ‘You going for a little ride.’

  ‘Luigi, mate,’ Derek began, holding his quaking hands up. Where the hell was Sharon when you needed her?

  ‘Mr frigging Gera, to you, pigliainculo!’

  Eyes darting to and fro with tiny pupils said this loon was speeding like a choo-choo train, Derek assessed. He turned around slowly and looked down at the gun. Wondered if getting shot dead would actually hurt. Flick, flick to the left with the barrel, in the direction of some big, posh car or other. Not the four-wheel drive, this time. A Jag, maybe. Or one of those big Beemers. No, an Audi. Maybe. In any case, he was going to die in the back of a fucking nice car at the hands of Psycho di Roma, aka Mr Gera. Looked like a shiny-shoed accountant in a Crombie overcoat who had been shrunk on a fucking hot wash. Great. Would he get Harvey Keitel to come and clean up the mess, like Keitel did when John Travolta shot Marvin in the fucking face in Pulp Fiction? Is that how this was going to roll?

  ‘Don’t shoot me, Mr Gera,’ Derek said, trying to connect with the loon. Trying to remember some Italian phrase from Nonna, although, given she’d left the old country before the war, she was about as Italian as Dolmio. A proverb sprang to mind. ‘A chi dai il dito, si prende anche il braccio.’ Shit. What did that even mean?

  ‘You want I take your arm as well as your finger?’ Gera asked, grinning. ‘Good. I like this idea.’

  Fuck it if he hadn’t landed himself straight in a damned Tarantino film. Che cazzo. Sharon had always said he was prize knob. Check everything out, he counselled himself. Remember the details to tell the coppers. Black saloon. Check the registration plate on the car. But Derek’s brain was in overdrive, denying him the ability to absorb detail. And what did it matter anyhow, if he was being taken somewhere with this crazy bastard?