The Girl Who Had No Fear Read online

  ‘Well, Floris is—’ The head teacher was suddenly preoccupied by his hairy fingers. Frowned. ‘Was a very well-respected member of my staff.’ His voice shook with emotion.

  Elvis tried to memorise everything about the man. Discreet gold jewellery. Expensive, pin-stitched suit befitting the head of a fee-paying school that catered for Amsterdam’s bekakte bourgeoisie – the chattering classes – where the darling Lodewijks and Reiniers and Petronellas of wealthy parents could receive their top-drawer educations in wood-panelled, exclusive splendour. Even the dust in the air smelled expensive at Boudewijn de Groot Lyceum. Elvis’ psoriasis itched beneath his leather jacket.

  ‘And?’

  Closing his eyes, the Head pushed the photographs away. ‘Floris started working here three years ago. He is …’ His brow furrowed. ‘… was always impeccably polite, got great results from his pupils. Popular among parents. He was a model teacher.’

  ‘What kind of man was he?’ Elvis asked, wishing the Head would make eye contact with him. It irked him that he kept looking over at Van den Bergen even though it was he who was asking the questions.

  The Head shrugged. ‘I told you. Polite. Hard-working. Bright.’

  ‘No,’ Van den Bergen said, doodling absently in his notebook. ‘That tells us what kind of employee he was.’ Scratching away with his biro at a miniature sketch of his granddaughter. Finally he looked up at the Head. Put his glasses on the end of his nose and peered at the brass-embossed name plate on the desk that marked him out as Prof. Roeland Hendrix. ‘Who was Floris the man, Roeland? Did you see him socially? What was his home life like? I can see from public records that he hasn’t been married and that his parents are both dead. Did he have a girlfriend? Kids somewhere?’

  Elvis checked his watch. Wondered if the carer was making his mother the right sort of lunch. Carby snack with the meds. Carby snack with the meds, he intoned, wishing his thoughts would somehow travel across town to his mother’s dingy little house. He’d left all the ingredients out on the side in the kitchen. Mum kept gunning for the shitty cheap ham the carer had snuck into the fridge at her request. But he had prepared her a chickpea and bean pasta salad with rocket. Meds three-quarters of an hour before meal.

  ‘Come on, Professor Hendrix,’ Elvis said. ‘I bet an intelligent man like you has got the measure of all his employees.’

  The Head shrugged. Toyed with the silk handkerchief in his top pocket. His nails had been varnished.

  Elvis touched the stiff gel of his quiff and wondered if it made him hypocritical to think ill of the Head’s immaculate ponce-hands. Hid his own nicotine-stained fingers inside his pockets.

  ‘Honestly? I know nothing about Floris at all,’ the Head said. ‘He was a completely private man. Kept himself to himself. An enigma, you might say. I invited him, along with other teachers, to dinner parties and soirées, but he would never come and always managed to sidestep any digging into his life outside work. And I did try. To dig, I mean.’

  Van den Bergen rearranged himself in the leather armchair. His bones cracked audibly as he did so. Jesus. Is that what a lifetime of supervising door-to-doors in the rain did for a man? Elvis shuddered.

  ‘Where did he work before here?’ he asked.

  ‘He came from the Couperus International Lyceum in Utrecht. Glowing references. He’d been there for ten years.’

  The Head glanced at the grandfather clock that struck in the corner of the room. Stood abruptly. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, gentlemen.’

  All the way to the unprepossessing apartment in Amstelveen’s Brandwijk, Van den Bergen imagined himself shaking and shuddering his way to a premature end with Parkinson’s like Elvis’ mother. The bullet hole in his hip had been causing him great pain, of late, with all the damp. Were there any signs of tremors in his movement? George would be able to tell him. By the end of the week, she would be back in Amsterdam. In the meantime, he made a mental note to visit the doctor’s to rule out some debilitating degenerative disease.

  Curtains twitched as he parked up outside the three-storey block, with its garden view and balcony. This was perhaps the most suburban, nondescript place in the world, Van den Bergen mused. A place where nothing ever happened. Except something had happened to one of its residents.

  ‘What do you make of this, boss?’ Elvis said, running a latex-clad finger along the spines of the books on the bookshelves. Five boring-looking academic tomes about physics. Fall of Man in Wilmslow – a book Van den Bergen vaguely recognised as being about Alan Turing. The rest were interior design and architecture textbooks. Several British fiction titles among them that Van den Bergen had never heard of.

  ‘He was a maths teacher, so the physics stuff fits,’ he said. Casting an eye over the mid-century-style furniture in the apartment, he realised it was more Ikea repro than genuine Danish antiques. But there was a strong design element to it. That much he could see. Nothing like his thrift-shop dump, which was still reminiscent of a garage sale no matter how many times George scrubbed through. ‘Somebody here knows their décor onions. No photos of women anywhere apart from this.’ Using a latex-gloved hand, he picked up the portrait of a woman who was roughly in her sixties. Perhaps Engels’ mother. She had the same hazel eyes, judging by the school’s online profile picture of him.

  Movement suddenly caught the Chief Inspector’s attention. Or was it a shadow? With his heartbeat picking up pace and his policeman’s instincts sharpening, he turned towards the doorway, beyond which lay the bedroom.

  ‘Is somebody in here with us?’ he whispered to Elvis. Mouthed, ‘In there.’ Pointed to the bedroom.

  Elvis shook his head. Continued to look at the books.

  Van den Bergen strode briskly into the bedroom, his plastic overshoes rustling as he crunched on the shag pile rug underfoot. Held his breath. Scanned the neat, masculine room for intruders. There was nobody there but a whiff of aftershave hung in the air. Or was he imagining things?

  ‘I need to drink less coffee,’ he muttered, running his fingers over the pistol in its holster, strapped to his torso.

  He flung open the wardrobe doors to reveal immaculately presented suiting; ties, pants and socks stowed in colour co-ordinated compartments, perhaps specifically designed for ties, pants and socks. Jumpers and tops stacked in neat piles on shelving. One set of shelves containing sombre colours. The other, less conservative combinations of teal, pink, yellow …

  ‘Different sizes on the right side of the wardrobes to the left,’ he said. ‘Two men. Our victim and a lover.’

  Elvis pulled open the drawer to the bedside cabinet. ‘This is always the most revealing place in anyone’s bedroom,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an asthma inhaler, hair putty and a men’s health magazine from 2002. What about you?’ He smirked.

  ‘Proton pump inhibitors, floss and Tiger Balm,’ Van den Bergen said, grimacing at the contents Elvis had revealed. ‘Jesus. It’s like the storeroom in a sex shop. Look of the size of those bloody dildos. And what the hell is that?’ He pointed to a black rubber string of balls, growing progressively larger in size.

  ‘Anal beads, boss.’ Elvis guffawed with laughter.

  ‘And that fucking thing?’ He pointed to what appeared to be a stainless-steel egg.

  ‘You jam it up your—’

  Van den Bergen held his hand high. Thought of George’s middle finger inside him and blushed. A world away from this little haul in terms of adventurousness. ‘Stop. You’re making my prostate twitch.’ He considered his intermittent suffering with haemorrhoids and snorted with derision at the anal beads. Appraised the carefully made bed and the dust that was beginning to settle on the bedroom furniture. ‘Any sign of post addressed to somebody else? Check the kitchen. Everybody puts post in there.’

  Elvis left the bedroom. Nobody had reported Floris Engels missing. There had been no evidence of a suicide note in the man’s clothing. Who and where was his partner?

  ‘Nothing,’ Elvis said. ‘Weird.’

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nbsp; ‘Unless he’s left in a hurry and taken any documentation with him.’ Van den Bergen thumbed at the jowls that were beginning to burgeon on his previously taut jawline, deep in thought. Jumped when a door slammed shut within the apartment.

  ‘There is someone in here with us!’ he shouted. He ran into the living room, gun in hand, trying to glimpse whoever the visitor was. ‘Hello?!’

  CHAPTER 6

  Cambridge, Huntingdon Road, then, Stansted Airport, 29 April

  ‘You just keep a lookout,’ George told Aunty Sharon, shouting above the gusting Cambridgeshire wind. Her pulse thudded in her neck as she calculated how long it would take Sally Wright to grind and wobble her way up the hill to the student house on the Huntingdon Road. Surely a chain-smoker like her would asphyxiate before she’d be able to scale Cambridge’s infamous Castle Hill on a sit-up-and-beg bicycle. Calm down, George. Chill your boots. You get in. You get out. You get gone. ‘I’ll be down in ten. I’ve only got a couple of bits to get. Honk if you see an angry white woman with a bad fringe. Okay? Honk!’

  This was a flying visit to Cambridge, precipitated by two texts she had received the evening she had returned to Aunty Sharon’s after interviewing Gordon Bloom in Belmarsh. Relieved to find that she was not, after all, being followed through the Catford backstreet by anything more sinister than an inquisitive cat and her own burgeoning paranoia, she had hastened to her aunt’s house, walking straight through to the kitchen. She had put her bag squarely on a kitchen chair, so it had aligned with the edges. Rearranging it until it was just right. The routine had been like every other evening.

  ‘All right, love,’ Aunty Sharon had said. ‘I’ve made goat curry. Fancy it?’ She had lifted the lid on a simmering pan, the contents of which had smelled like heaven but had resembled diarrhoea. George had embraced her aunt, barely circling her chunky middle. Had kissed her on the cheek, feeling whiskers that hadn’t been there twelve months earlier. But at least Aunty Sharon had ditched the raggedy extensions and had covered her desperately stressed natural hair with a decent wig.

  Beneath her apron, Sharon had already been wearing her clothes for the club, where she served watered-down shots to the pissed denizens of Soho’s Skin Licks titty bar.

  ‘Oh my days, Aunty Shaz! I could eat a scabby horse on toast. I only had a bag of cheese balls all day. Bring it on. It smells bloody gorgeous.’ George had flung herself onto another kitchen chair, contemplating how empty the house had felt with her cousin, Tinesha, long departed to live with her boyfriend, and Patrice who was more out than in, now that he was in the upper sixth. Once again, George – past the point where she had been the fresh young thing, out on the tiles all night long and now having reached the age where her contemporaries were married with children – had only her own company to look forward to, as the evening had stretched ahead of her. Hadn’t one of the new male Fellows at college jokingly referred to George as a spinster? Some long-legged floppy-haired arsehole in a pseudo-intellectual tweed jacket, originally from Eton. Tim Hamilton. Dickhead. He’d stared at her tits when he’d said it. George had batted the thought aside. ‘You go to the community centre today? Any news?’

  Sharon had shaken her head and had plonked too much rice onto a plate with a giant serving spoon. ‘Nah, love. Nobody’s seen her. Nobody’s heard nothing on the grapevine. Not a fucking sausage. Even that nosey old cow Dorothea Caines didn’t have a clue, and I had to eat one of her rock-hard cupcakes to find that much out.’ She had put her hand on her hip and had grimaced. ‘She’d not sieved the flour. Can you get over it? I mean!’ She’d made a harrumphing noise. ‘Talk about taking one for the team. My God! If the Black Gang or Pecknarm Killaz or whatever the fuck those gangsta rarseclarts call themselves used her cupcakes as missiles, all there’d be left of Southeast London would be fucking craters. Craters, darling!’

  Nodding, George had forked her curry into her mouth with the enthusiasm of the semi-starving. Surreptitiously grabbing at her spare tyre beneath the table, thinking it time she had a chat with Aunty Sharon about portion size, now there were fewer of them in the house.

  Sharon had been unaware of George’s dietary preoccupation. She had been waving the spoon at her with dangerous intent. ‘I’d take that Dorothea Caines out like a fucking ninja if we was going head-to-head in a bake-off.’ Droplets of curry had spattered the dated splashback tiles.

  ‘So, still no news of Letitia. Or my dad?’ George had asked, feeling irritation prickle at the roots of her hair. Same questions. Every. Single. Day.

  Her aunty had fallen abruptly quiet, sniffing pointedly. Her eyes had become glassy without warning. ‘Sorry, love. If anyone had seen your mum knocking around on the estate, that do-gooding righteous witch Dorothea would be the first to hear it and crow about it. Honest. Your mum’s evaporated into thin air, like.’ She had reached out and had grabbed George’s hand, squeezing it in a show of solidarity. ‘Nothing on your dad, either.’

  Noticing the curry and grains of rice stuck to Sharon’s index finger, George had pulled her hand away, stifling a sigh.

  As she had crawled into Tinesha’s old bed and had pulled the duvet up to her chin, she had thought about this impasse she had reached. An unwelcome tear had tracked along her cheekbone, running into her ear. Annoyed, she had poked at it, wondering if Letitia had been thinking about her; if she had even still been alive.

  ‘Like fuck she is,’ she had said to floral curtains, backlit by the yellow streetlight.

  She had wondered yet again if there had been even the slightest possibility that her father had sent the untraceable emails, courting contact with her; saying he was watching her.

  ‘Not after nearly twenty-five years of silence. No way,’ she had told the glowing numbers on the old ticking alarm clock.

  With sleep beckoning her towards yet another fitful night of tossing, turning and imagining the gruesome fate of her possibly enucleated mother, she had been jolted wide awake by her phone vibrating with two new emails. The first had been from Marie.

  Police in Maastricht have found a man who may be of interest!

  The second had been from Van den Bergen.

  Come back to Amsterdam. I need you for something.

  Now, Aunty Sharon was wedged behind the wheel of her old 53-plate Toyota Corolla, parked badly on Huntingdon Road, peering up with a puzzled look at the tired Gothic student house that loomed above them. Yellowing chintz curtains at the window and a broken pane of glass in the 1960s replacement front door.

  ‘You live here?’ she asked, curling her lip with clear disgust. ‘In that dump? You having a laugh with me?’

  George frowned. Shook her head dismissively and tutted. ‘Save it, yeah? Beggars can’t be choosers. Now remember. If you see Sally Wright—’

  ‘What about Sally Wright?’ Sally Wright asked, emerging from behind the overgrown privet that bordered the end-of-terrace. She clapped her hands together in George’s face. ‘Ha! Got you, you sneaky sod!’

  Opening and closing her mouth, George foraged in her mental lie-box for a good, feasible excuse as to why she had kept her flying visit to Cambridge a secret. Tried to work out how the aerobically challenged Senior Tutor had hoofed it from her office in St John’s College up the road to the house inside ten minutes. Ten goddamned minutes since Aunty Shaz’ car had rolled into town.

  ‘How—?’

  ‘Sophie Bartek,’ Sally explained, marching to the taxi that George had only just clocked, parked all the while in front of Aunty Sharon. She explained to the driver that she had decided to hitch a ride back in Sharon’s Toyota, paid him and sent him on his way.

  ‘Fucking Sophie,’ George said under her breath. ‘Shit-stirrer owes me one.’

  She forced a smile for the Professor of Criminology who ruled her academic life like a benevolent dictator; the woman she would always be indebted to for having allowed her to learn her way out of a future where petty crime or prison or stacking supermarket shelves would otherwise have beckoned.

  �
�Why haven’t you been taking my calls, young lady?’ Sally asked, glowering at George. Pointing with a gnarled, amber-coloured finger. ‘It’s our bloody book launch tomorrow evening, and Sophie tells me you’re buggering back off to Amsterdam.’ She folded her arms across her narrow chest, squeezing the leather of her eccentrically cut coat until she was akin to a municipal bin bag with the drawstrings pulled tight. The pruning around her mouth deepened. But that fierce gaze had lost none of its potency behind the red acetate cat’s-eye glasses. ‘I’ll never be able to show my face in Heffers again. And all because you can’t resist the pull of that old flake, Van den Bergen. The man’s like a disappointing Svengali with prostate trouble. Our big night will be ruined. Now, what do you have to say for yourself?’

  ‘You don’t need me to help you blow your fucking trumpet in public, Sally. You’ve got that one covered all on your own, I reckon.’ George didn’t like being indebted. And apologies were overrated. She jammed her fist onto her hip defiantly. ‘And Paul is hardly a flake, is he? He’s one of the best coppers in Europe, actually. And if you must know, I’m going to Amsterdam because there’s been a development regarding Letitia.’

  ‘What?!’ Aunty Sharon shouted from inside the Toyota.

  ‘What?!’ Sally Wright said, clutching George’s arm.

  George pulled herself loose from the grip of the Senior Tutor. Immediately regretted saying anything, as her aunt unbuckled and started to heave herself out of the car.

  ‘Georgina, why on earth didn’t you say anything?’ Sally said, her brow furrowed, perhaps with genuine empathy.

  Before George could retreat, Sharon had rounded on them both, booting Sally Wright aside unceremoniously with her ample bottom. She clasped George into a suffocating hug. The threat of tears audible in her voice.