The Girl Who Wouldn't Die Part 14

Van den Bergen leaned over and opened the car door. 'Forensics have just arrived. I'll be in touch.'

George looked at him askance. 'Is that it? Cla.s.s dismissed?'

'Go home, George. Lock your doors and do your internet thing. Ask around about Biedermeier. Discreetly, you know. The other kids on the course.'

'But I got thrown out of lectures. I've got to have one-on-ones with Fennemans.'

'Do what you can and watch yourself around Fennemans. I'm not supposed to say anything but I'm pretty sure he's ...' He chewed on his bottom lip as if debating whether to tell George exactly what he thought Fennemans was. 'Just be on your guard, okay?'

Ad put on a pot for one of strong Douwe Egberts, clipped out the savings coupon from the new packet and filed it into his coupon tin. When the coffee was brewed, he a.s.sembled a milky koffie verkeerd in a gla.s.s. George liked it that way, although she preferred to call it a latte.

She had not been home when he had swung by on the way back from the station. He had been hoping she would at least return his calls. When his phone did ring, it made him jump. He didn't recognise the number.

'h.e.l.lo,' he said.

'Hey, Ad! Klaus.'

Ad fought to keep the surprise out of his voice. 'Hi, Klaus. How are you?'

He dropped his teaspoon onto his saucer with a clatter. Willing his senses to sharpen, he took a swig from his coffee.

'Good,' Klaus said. 'I know you're at the lecture later but it's hard to talk when everyone's there. I wanted to fill you in on Joachim's informal memorial thing.'

Klaus spoke on the phone with warmth in his voice that Ad had hitherto not heard. Was he seeing the side of Klaus that so many of the other students found charming and charismatic, but which he had only interpreted as arrogance and idiocy? He felt suspicion poke him in the back of the neck. Klaus hated him because he hung out with George. The friendly overtures had to be off-key.

'Yes,' Ad said, grabbing a pen and pad from the kitchen drawer with his free hand. 'Go on.'

'It's going to be in Heidelberg. Is travelling a problem for you?'

Ad searched for mockery in Klaus' voice but there was none. He thought about the cost of a return train journey to southern Germany. Apart from rent, he only had three hundred euros left in his account to last him the term. Ouch. Maybe Jasper knew of some pharmaceutical company trials he could earn money from by being a guinea pig.

'No. Fine. I've not been to Heidelberg since I was a kid.'

'I'll show you around.' Klaus' intonation was so flat that the offer sounded more of a command than a suggestion. 'We can get the same train.'

'Oh, great. I'd like that. I'd like that very much.' What the h.e.l.l am I agreeing to?

Ad thought about backing out from George's hare-brained scheme, but then the image of Ratan's severed foot and Joachim's lifeless head prodded his conscience. He stayed on the line.

'Right,' Klaus said, breathing out, almost as though he was relieved. 'We'll go Friday night, if that's okay with you. My frat buddies can put you up in their house. You'll like it. It's very comfortable. The train departs Amsterdam at 16.41. There's a change at Cologne. We'd get in just before midnight but that's not going to be a problem, is it?'

'No.'

'I can meet you under the departures board in Central Station.'

Ad nodded. 'Yes. I'll meet you at about quarter past, just to be on the safe side.'

In his head, a voice screamed, This is exactly what happened with Joachim! He's going to blow you up and say he had flu. Or maybe he'll get one of his cronies to do it. You're an imbecile, Karelse!

'And Ad ...'

'Yes?'

'I'm really glad ... I really appreciate ...'

'It's okay.'

'It seems I got you all wrong.'

Ad wondered how he could bolster Klaus' belief in him; make his facade more solid and convincing. 'Yes, well,' was all he could manage.

When he rang off, his hands shook violently. He redialled George's number. Straight to voicemail.

'd.a.m.n! Where the h.e.l.l are you when I need you?' he shouted into the phone.

Chapter 15.

Later

George returned to her room. Before doing anything else, she carefully scanned the carpet for matches. Then she wedged the dining chair under the door. Next, she picked up an unopened bottle of wine by the neck and looked behind or under all large furniture. Finally, she flung open all the cupboard doors. Clear.

She washed her hands in very hot water twice, being careful to rub each soapy hand three times before rinsing. She started to polish the leaves of her gardenia while the kettle boiled. Tears were trapped inside her, as though today her emotional rollercoaster had stuck half way up.

Was it Remko? Was it Remko? What if it was?

She drove the memory of the bin from her mind. Knew she couldn't afford to be sucked into a downwards trajectory. After all, she had her one-on-one rendezvous with Fennemans at 1.30pm.

The kettle clicked. George picked up the jar of coffee only to discover that there was less than half a teaspoon of granules left. She put it into her cup anyway and had the concoction black, as there was no milk in the fridge. She switched on her stereo and cranked Dizzie Rascal up to number seven. She booted up her laptop. Checked Hotmail. There was one message in her inbox. It was from Sally Wright.

'Oh, here we go,' George said. 'What the h.e.l.l do you want?'

From: [email protected] To: Subject: Your mother again h.e.l.lo George Sorry to nag but I've had your mother on the phone five times in the last couple of days. She says she has urgent news to tell you and desperately wants you to make contact. The number she's using at the moment is 07777 417321 although she changes that every three weeks and you only have one week from tomorrow left on that one. I've tried telling her that you're out of the country but perhaps it is something worth listening to???

I read your blogpost for 'The Moment' and was surprised and a little shocked by it. I trust you will tell me your thinking behind it when next we meet.

Any follow-up with the detective? I hope not.

Stay safe and all best wishes Sally Dr Sally Wright, Senior Tutor St John's College, Cambridge Tel ... 01223 775 6574 Dept. of Criminology Tel ... 01223 773 8023 'Leave me alone!' George shouted at the screen.

She slammed the lid of the laptop shut. She plugged her dead phone into her charger. Three messages from Ad pinged at her in greeting. She was surprised by a sudden lump in her throat.

'Pull it together, George! For G.o.d's sake.'

Ad's voice rang clear on the recording. He sounded happy at first. Had she got the text? Did she want to meet for a late breakfast? In the following message, he sounded jittery. Klaus had been in touch. Ad had made arrangements to go to Heidelberg with him on Friday. The third message sounded like Ad trying too hard to speak in a calm, measured way. She had heard that voice before when he had written essays using her notes and prayed that Fennemans wouldn't discover the corner-cutting.

'Hey, George. Let's meet for a coffee after Fennemans. And why is your phone going straight to voicemail? I hope you're okay.'

George smiled wistfully. She started to dial his number but remembered he was in the middle of a lecture. She, on the other hand, had to finish off her essay for Fennemans.

Sitting at her little Formica dining table, facing the wall, she started to read through what she had written about Saddam Hussein and the legality of the American invasion of Iraq. As she trawled through her notes, poised to write the ending, the image of the body in the bin popped into her head. It made her drop her Biro.

'd.a.m.n!'

Her concentration levels were like a one-bar connection to the internet, sputtering and cutting out roughly every thirty seconds. She wrote four sentences. Then she texted van den Bergen.

Let me know when you ID the bin man.

She wrote six sentences. Arranged her pens and pencils into parallel lines. Stood up, rubbed her numb bottom and strode over to the window. Peered into the rooms that were also on the top floor in the houses on the opposite side of the ca.n.a.l. It had been a while since she had done that. Normally, she preferred to admire the tiled rooftops.

When she had moved into Jan's attic, she had been careful to a.n.a.lyse what she could about her neighbours opposite by looking in through the windows. The narrow ca.n.a.l which divided the street below meant that the windows were a good distance away, so she used the zoom on her camera. It wasn't perfect but it sufficed. From this, she extrapolated that those rooms that technically faced onto her own contained: cardboard boxes stacked about ten high and a bare bulb; what looked to be some kind of artist's atelier; and, finally, what George reasoned had to be a prost.i.tute's room, since the brown and orange 1970s curtains were almost always shut.

Feeling her curiosity suddenly piqued, George dug out her camera and used the zoom to look once again into the neighbours' windows. The atelier still looked like an atelier. Full of large, half-done canva.s.ses. Today, a man in a boiler suit with what seemed to be a very large 1970s Burt Reynolds moustache was painting something rubbish with vigour. The prost.i.tute's room still had the curtains closed. The box room was still full of boxes but George noticed that there was something reflecting the light in the window itself.

'Now, what's going on here?' she said. She tried to zoom in further but the camera was already doing its best.

Was it a dream-catcher? Was it an optical illusion? Just somebody's light reflecting from a window on her side of the ca.n.a.l? No, too far away. Then, frowning, she realised what it was.

'I'll swear blind that's a camera lens,' she said. 'Or maybe a telescope. s.h.i.t!'

Was it angled towards her room? It certainly looked that way. She felt fluttering in her chest. Dizzy. Shaking her head in disbelief.

'How long has that been there?'

She looked back and forth from the lens to her window, narrowing her eyes and cursing. The angle was right. She was certain of it. And the gabled windows to her right and left the attic rooms of the adjacent houses were too far away to be the subject of interest for the unidentified Peeping Tom.

'Somebody's been spying on me!'

Feeling a mixture of indignant outrage, panic and curiosity, she threw on a baggy purple mohair cardigan and marched down to the small bridge that led to the opposite side of her street. She was still wearing her slippers. But here in the red light district, where s.e.x shops competed with audience partic.i.p.ation s.e.x theatres, the kerb-crawlers and Monday morning pa.s.sersby paid her no heed.

'I'm going to f.u.c.king nail this b.a.s.t.a.r.d right now!' she promised herself.

As she pushed open the glazed door to the building that provided such an excellent vantage point for her dedicated stalker, her dedicated stalker opened the cardboard box containing his new CCTV equipment, ran a finger over the small but perfectly formed hi-res unit and started to dismantle the old camera tripod set-up that sat in the window. He knew she was only downstairs now. His gaze landed on the lump hammer that sat on the only chair in the room, along with his phone and keys.

He crept down the stairs and watched the conversation unfold through the gla.s.s door which stood ajar: 'Who rents the store room upstairs?' she demanded of the behemoth of a shop a.s.sistant who stood in the s.e.x shop, stacking the shelves with red rubber c.o.c.ks. These were sandwiched between rubber fists and Jack Rabbit brand vibrators in gaudy pinks and purples. The a.s.sistant was easily seven feet tall and around the twenty-stone mark.

Looking her up and down, the a.s.sistant shrugged. 'You police? You don't look like police.'

'Do police wear slippers?'

The a.s.sistant nodded and pointed at her with a rubber c.o.c.k. 'Why you wanna know?'

'I live opposite at the Cracked Pot,' she said. 'I just need to find out who's renting your store room. They overlook me.'

The a.s.sistant scratched his giant head with the c.o.c.k. 'I don't know about the upstairs tenants. I'm just a d.i.l.d.o-peddling sales monkey. The boss isn't in. Come back later this evening. About seven.'

She gave him a quick smile. 'Nice c.o.c.k.'

Should he walk in now and lure her upstairs? His breathing quickened at the thought. A chance meeting on the stairs. Oh, how nice! Fancy that. What a strange coincidence. Yes, come upstairs and inspect the room, by all means.

The lump hammer sat heavy in his trouser pocket; the handle protruding to allow for snap decisions. She turned in his direction.

'For Christ's sake, Paul, you're already up to your neck in it over haranguing Fennemans. Do you really want to rattle a German politician's cage now?'

Normally, Kamphuis saved a short-tempered bark for van den Bergen, reminding him vaguely of an overweight pit bull terrier that had had steak wafted under its snout, only to have it taken away. Today, he noted that his boss' voice was more begging than barking.

'Look, Olaf, it's not my fault if there's a neon sign flashing above Biedermeier's head, saying, "fishy as h.e.l.l."' He cleared his throat and contemplated whether he was chesty today or not. He had been peeing a lot lately and had had back ache. Maybe his kidneys were failing.

'His father's a duke! A CDU backbencher. Come on, van den Bergen! And you told me the boy's alibis are-'

'He's a messed-up frat boy!' van den Bergen shouted. He thought about the clips he had seen on YouTube of young men, dressed like some perverted amalgam of the Marquis de Sade and a medieval knight. Hacking chunks out of each other. Boasting for the camera that they were part of something n.o.ble, ancient and brave. 'Everyone's saying he has fascist proclivities. I'm going to speak to my opposite number in Baden-Wrttemberg and pull the kid's file. Him and Fennemans are the only-'

'Nearly a thousand people connected to that faculty either as students or employees! And you have to pick the two trickiest b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to point the finger at. What the h.e.l.l happened to al Badaar? He was such a lovely, simple hate figure.'

Kamphuis hoisted himself out of his expensive desk chair and paced to the window. Van den Bergen thought he looked haggard and grey. He wondered if the drinks sessions he boasted of in expensive bra.s.series with the commissioner and the cabinet spin doctor from the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations were so relaxing and enjoyable nowadays. Almost a month and the case was still unsolved. No, perhaps Kamphuis was not immune to stress after all. His ample, obsequious a.r.s.e was on the line too.

Van den Bergen started to bounce his right foot over his left knee.

'Stop doing that! You know it irritates me,' Kamphuis snapped.

Van den Bergen continued to bounce his foot. 'You're blinding yourself to the facts, Olaf. Let me do the investigating. It's what I'm good at. I don't mind being unpopular. You do. Just let me do my job.'

Despite the personal cost of crippling stomach ache and tension in his shoulders, Van den Bergen had appealed to whatever better nature Kamphuis possessed.

Kamphuis sighed heavily in response. He continued to stare out of the window in silence.

'Just keep Fennemans off my back,' van den Bergen said, making his way to the door. 'Oh, and IT Marie asked if you can stop flirting with her when she's on earlies? It breaks her out in hives.'

Before Kamphuis could come back with an incensed response, van den Bergen hurried back to his desk. Poking the b.u.t.tons with excited, determined fingers, he placed the call to the Baden-Wrttemberg State Police HQ and waited an agonising two hours for Inspector Dieter Mann to come back to him. When the phone eventually rang, he was so charged with coffee and antic.i.p.ation that he shook.

'Well?' he asked.

Van den Bergen pictured a scene that matched the lightness in Mann's voice: the German inspector (probably well-liked and better paid than him), seated comfortably at his quality oak desk (with a real leather desk chair that was actually adjustable), enjoying cheesecake and coffee (that his team had brought him willingly, without spitting in it first).

'I hope the Dutch like lurid, scary stories as much as the Germans, Paul, because I'm just about to email you one over that the Brothers Grimm would be proud of.'

'You're late!' Fennemans barked at her.