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CHAPTER 4
Amsterdam, mortuary, later
‘Paul. Thanks for coming.’ The wholly unfamiliar man stood in the spot that Marianne usually graced, by the side of the steel mortuary slab.
Van den Bergen refused to shake his latex-clad hand. ‘It’s Chief Inspector van den Bergen. And I prefer to deal with Marianne,’ he said.
He looked this interloper up and down, though it was difficult to get the full measure of him in his scrubs. He looked young. Fresh face and shiny eyes. Certainly in his early thirties. And small. Though at six feet five, van den Bergen could see the top of pretty much everyone’s heads as they scrabbled about beneath him. Maybe the guy wasn’t small. But he definitely had the upright posture of a cocky little arsehole, van den Bergen decided, and he wasn’t the lovely Marianne de Koninck.
Daan Strietman smiled at him. ‘I’m her number two. You knew that, right, Paul? She introduced us at the party. Ha! You’re such a funny guy. You’re pulling my leg, now, aren’t you?’
‘No.’ Van den Bergen scratched at his aching hip. Fingered his scabbed-up knuckles. Hadn’t he just told this idiot he was Chief Inspector van den Bergen? Was this guy deaf? And where did this notion of funny come from? ‘I want number one. If I want second best, I’ll—’
Daan put his clipboard and pen down. Slapped van den Bergen across the back in a chummy style. ‘Look, your Jane Doe’s in good hands, big feller.’
‘But Marianne… She was at the scene this morning.’
‘I told you. She’s ill. Throwing her guts up. Forget Marianne. Okay?’
Van den Bergen noticed a pause before the okay, which meant Daan Strietman had finally decided that being challenged by a policeman was not okay, even if it was by a senior one. He smiled again. What was with all the smiling? Was this guy simple? The smile disappeared once the idiot noticed his scabbed knuckles.
‘Just give me the lowdown on my victim, Strietman. Okay?’
Now that she was on the slab, van den Bergen was hoping the girl would look like any other cadaver – a spoiled mannequin, devoid of any remaining trace of vitality; deserted by her humanity, so that only an abstract husk was left; dissected like an oversized scientific experiment. He would find it easy to give a corpse like that the once-over and then listen to the pathologist’s report. But she didn’t, this Jane Doe. Her elfin face, framed by the wisps of black curly hair that still remained – after her cranium had been removed to allow examination of her brain – was outlandishly at odds with those unseeing eye sockets, staring out at him. Ghoulish. Vulnerable. Her dark skin, which must have been a warm hue when she had breath in her body, was flat grey. But so slight was her build with those spindly little arms and legs, so lost did she look in the aseptic white glare of the mortuary’s overhead lights, that van den Bergen had to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. He almost felt compelled to hug the girl, though she had been utterly disembowelled both by her murderer and by the process of the post mortem. George was slightly built like that. George’s skin was dark like that.
Feeling momentarily dizzy, he steadied himself on the steel sink at the dead girl’s feet.
Daan Strietman chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t have put an old hand like you down as squeamish! You want to sit?’
Van den Bergen glared at him. ‘I’m not squeamish.’ He pointed to his ear. ‘I have this balance thing. Sometimes it… Anyway. What did you find?’
‘You’re not going to believe this.’
CHAPTER 5
Soho, London, later
I did a really stupid thing & I can’t tell anyone else. I’m losing my grip. Call me. Paul.
George read the words out loud, as though giving voice to them would reveal the truth behind the cryptic, partial revelation. Should she call? She had been sitting on his text all day. Staring at her phone, as the train had carried her back from Broadmoor. Her heart told her to respond to this wonderful, troubled man. Didn’t she spend at least as much time with him during her trips to Amsterdam as she did with her boyfriend? Pottering at the allotment. Talking about music. Life, the universe and everything. Hadn’t their bond become the elephant in the room, whenever Ad questioned why she had grown distant and disengaged?
‘All right, darling? What you looking so shifty for?’ Aunty Sharon asked, grabbing her in a bear hug and planting a lipsticky kiss on her cheek.
‘Just a text,’ George said.
She made to turn the phone’s screen off and slip it into her back jeans pocket beneath her overalls. But surprisingly for a woman of small statue and large volume, Aunty Sharon was agile enough to reach around and snatch the phone right out of her George’s hand.
She gazed down at the screen, grinning.
‘Aunty Sharon! Gimme the phone, man.’
Her aunt brought the text back up and read the words. ‘Paul? Oh, yeah?’ Fixed her niece with a knowing look. Nudged her joyfully and a little too energetically, so that her flamboyant head attire wobbled – a sculpture fashioned from a scarf, the colours of the Rasta flag, intertwined with platinum blonde, curly hair extensions that looked incongruous next to her mahogany skin. ‘You two-timing that poor Ad with some geez named Paul? Girl, you’re harsh!’
George snatched the phone back. Jammed it into her pocket. Relieved that in the dingy light, Aunty Sharon would never suss she was blushing. ‘I’m not two-timing anybody. I told you about Paul. It’s just van den Bergen.’
‘The Dutch cop?’
George nodded. ‘He’s just a friend, yeah?’
‘Oh, really? That why you hiding your phone, then?’ For all George’s qualifications and finesse and Aunty Sharon’s lack of them, this one-time Jamaica Road rose in Betty Boop heels and laddered sparkly tights had the measure of her, all right.
George was searching for a way to change the subject, when three men entered the club. Two of them were tall, burly, wearing outmoded single-breasted leather jackets and cheap shoes. Cropped hair, dark eyes, olive skin. The third was small in stature and somewhat older-looking than the man-mountains that flanked him. Had the beady-eyed look of a coke-head, George swiftly estimated.
‘Get out the way and keep your gob shut,’ Aunty Sharon said, grabbing the bucket. Thrusting the mop into George’s hand. ‘Don’t attract no attention to yourself. Thems is bad news.’
As she ushered George behind the bar, the men escorted inside four bewildered-looking white girls, who were quickly divested of their fun-furs by a sycophantic, scuttling Derek. Beneath their coats, they wore either string bikinis or lacy lingerie, all covered only by sheer net babydolls, as if they had been provided with uniforms. Heavy makeup. Fluttering eyelashes and bouffant hair. Flawless, tight behinds, which only the really young could boast, George noted. On their feet they wore identical Perspex-soled platform shoes.
‘Jesus,’ George said, pretending to dust down the vodka and whisky optics that lined the walls when in fact, she was scrutinising the girls. ‘They don’t look much more than about fourteen.’
Walking uneasily in the vertiginous footwear, they advanced towards the main stage and came to a halt, as if awaiting instruction.
‘They’re crippled in them bloody stripper shoes, that’s for sure!’ Aunty Sharon said, wiping a wine glass with a tea towel. ‘They’re gonna end up with fallen arches.’
The sound system was not yet switched on. George could clearly hear the girls chattering nervously to one another in an Eastern European language. Could have been Russian. Could have been Polish. Who knew? Not George. They blinked fast. Flutter, flutter, butterfly lashes. Taking in their new surrounds, while their escorts spoke to Derek. Clapping him on the shoulder. Nodding. Smiling like old buddies at a reunion.
‘Listen that! See how they’re chatting in Italian?’ Aunty Sharon said, raising an eyebrow. She sucked her teeth long and hard.
‘That why he’s going round asking everyone to call him Giuseppe?’ George spritzed the till with anti-bacterial spray.
Aunty Sharon shook her head. ‘He’s into something, that scrawny fucking idiot. Well out of his depth. Them geezers been round here three or four weeks running, now. New girls every time. Young foreign girls. They dance for a night or two. Rake it in. Then they’re gone. Sometimes it’s African girls. Sometimes from the Far East. They don’t talk no English. Derek thinks cos his grandfather came from some tin-pot shithole outside Rome that he’s fucking mafia or something.’
‘Porn king that owns this place know?’
Aunty Sharon shook her head. ‘Nah. Don’t reckon so. These girls ain’t legal. He’d lose his bloody licence. Dermot Robinson ain’t that daft. But I’d put money on it that Derek’s on some kind of fiddle. Fucking Uncle Giuseppe. Rarseclart.’
The tallest man locked eyes with George. Started to walk towards her.
‘You!’ he said. Clicked his fingers, as though she were a willing waitress. ‘Come here!’
CHAPTER 6
Amsterdam, mortuary, later
‘Her vital organs are all but gone. Can you believe it? Kidneys, bladder, pancreas, liver… you name it,’ Strietman said. ‘Everything except the two biggies – her brain and heart. Hard to tell with so much of her missing what the actual cause of death was. I’d put my money on cardiac arrest. I’ll need more time to examine her brain properly.’ He gestured towards the girl’s groin area with his pen. ‘She shows signs of having had rough sexual intercourse either just before death or shortly afterwards. Difficult to tell. No semen, but we lifted a couple of pubic hairs that didn’t belong to her. There are some signs of a struggle – thumb prints to her wrists. Bruising to the left side of her face, as though she’s been struck, but not trauma like you’d expect from a blunt instrument. Maybe a fist. Beaten, then raped, I guess.’
‘Don’t guess,’ van den Bergen said. ‘The sex may have been consensual and the bruising part of rough play.’
Daan Strietman shook his head. ‘She’s been murdered! It’s got to be rape, hasn’t it?’
‘Has it? That’s for me to discern. Continue.’
‘Well, I’ve really never seen anything like it.’ The pathologist was smiling again. Almost feverishly. ‘I think we’ve got some kind of ritual sex murder on our hands, here.’
Van den Bergen peered inside the girl’s chest cavity where the ribs had been peeled back to reveal black, coagulated blood and a rag-tag confusion of muscle and sinew. ‘Have we, indeed? Ritual sex murder. Why do you say that?’
‘Well, her uterus is gone.’
‘Yes, along with pretty much everything else, you’re telling me. Any trauma to the genitals other than what you’d normally expect from intercourse?’
The sombre proceedings were interrupted by a woman, knocking at the door.
‘Knock, knock! Can I come in?’ she asked. A cheerful voice. Searching eyes. Looked over at Strietman and smiled. ‘Hello, Daan. They said it would be okay for me to come straight down here.’
‘Sabine!’ Strietman beckoned the woman inside. ‘Perfect timing! Paul, this a good friend of Marianne’s – a very well-respected paediatrician.’
Van den Bergen moved away from the slab and was leaned against a tall storage cabinet. Arms folded; long legs entwined around each other. Wasn’t sure about this interloper.
Strietman offered the woman a typing chair to sit on. ‘I felt I needed a second opinion from someone who knows more about children’s physiology than me, since our Jane Doe shows signs of aggravated sexual assault and has given birth underage.’
Sabine perched elegantly, with the perfect posture of a yoga enthusiast on the edge of her chair. Ran a manicured hand through her long, thick chestnut-coloured hair. Van den Bergen assessed she was in her early forties, but she had that youthful glow to her skin that said this was a woman who looked after herself. Expensive-looking clothes. Nothing flashy. Pale grey co-ordinated knitwear. Leggings that emphasised her long, slender legs.
‘Anyway. Formal introductions,’ Strietman said, clapping his hands together. ‘Paul, this is Dr Sabine Schalks. Sabine, this is Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen. There. Now we all know one another.’
Sabine examined the Jane Doe. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘There are signs of partial female genital mutilation, but the scar tissue is old, indicating that it was performed years ago and not related to this girl’s death. Your Jane Doe must come from an Islamic country. Possibly East African.’
Van den Bergen nodded. ‘Anything else?’
Sabine Schalks backed away from the body and sighed. ‘She’s definitely a victim of sexual abuse. She could only have been about thirteen when she was carrying her child. Tragic. Absolutely tragic. Worse still that she’s ended up in here.’ She turned to Strietman, eyebrows raised. ‘What are the other circumstances of her death, in your opinion?’
Strietman thumbed his chin. ‘She’s suffered what we call a catecholamine “storm”.’ The pathologist made exclamation marks in the air with his blue, gloved fingers. ‘Her body’s been flooded by catecholamines – hormones made by the adrenal glands – and that’s caused ventricular damage to the heart. It’s often related to an overdose of cocaine or psychedelic drugs. There are MAOIs in her blood.’ He turned to van den Bergen. ‘Know what those are?’
‘Monoamine oxidase inhibitors,’ van den Bergen offered. ‘Used to treat depression.’
‘How do you know that?’ Strietman’s eyebrows shot up. He studied the chief inspector with something bordering on fascination. As though van den Bergen himself was a subject to be dissected, weighed and pronounced upon.
Van den Bergen wasn’t giving this over-enthusiastic dipshit anything. He remained silent. Peered down his nose at the younger man. Shot a furtive glance at the paediatrician. ‘What the hell have anti-depressants got to do with ritual murder?’
The feverish grinning continued.
Did this asshole think he was putting forward a case for winning the Nobel Prize? Or did he aspire to swap careers, trading his coroner’s stink and the solitude of the morgue for the lingering, heady musk of IT Marie’s three-day-old BO when they were pulling overnighters on a big case? Van den Bergen longed for the familiar sparring he enjoyed with the entirely sober Marianne. Wondered if George had read his text. He’d heard nothing. Yet.
Strietman expanded: ‘Well, Paul, MAOIs are used by spiritual drug users to increase the bioavailability of the hallucinogenic, DMT. In other words, MAOIs help them get a better psychedelic high. And this girl…guess what else she has in her blood!’
Van den Bergen swallowed down a fireball of gastric discomfort. ‘Tomato ketchup? Coriander? Anti-bacterial gel? I don’t know. Just tell me.’
‘MDMA.’ Strietman punched the air triumphantly with his pen. ‘Ecstasy.’
Groaning, van den Bergen removed his glasses and cleaned them on the bottom of his shirt. Replaced them and almost glimpsed a younger Elvis in this interloping pathologist. ‘The girl lives in Amsterdam, Daan. We’re at the European epicentre of ecstasy production. It’s entirely possible she went out and got bombed the night before this…’ he described the girl’s remains with a wave of his large hand ‘…happened to her.’
‘Daan might have a point,’ Sabine interjected. ‘Child abuse victims are often drugged by their attackers.’
‘No, Paul,’ Strietman went on. ‘She’s definitely been drugged, and that’s ultimately caused her heart to fail. There’s a puncture wound from a cannula in her arm.’ He lifted a grey/brown arm and displayed a tiny black mark, the top of which was encrusted with a small, dried bead of blood. ‘Abrasion up her nostril and the remnants of surgical tape, which suggested a tube has been put down her nose. Think about it! The missing organs. The sexual intercourse. The fact that she’s maybe of Eastern African origin, given the presentation of her genitals. Voodoo ritual killing. Ever hear about the torso of the African boy they found in the UK in the River Thames?’
‘Please stick to the medical facts and stop trying to play detective. That’s my job. What else have you got?’ van den Bergen asked, impatient now. Wishing he could somehow turn back time. That Marianne would get better and come back into work with her nice neck and strong runner’s physique. Wishing he didn’t find this new woman so attractive. This was neither the time nor the place to be checking out women. Keep your dick under control, you moron.
‘We’re waiting for more refined information to come back from the path lab regarding her blood,’ Daan continued. ‘But initial tests show hypernatraemia. Electrolyte imbalance. Dehydration. Consistent with ecstasy misuse. She’s undergone a caesarean delivery within the last twelve to eighteen months,’ Daan said. ‘The suturing style is unusual. Unidirectional barbed suture instead of bidirectional or traditional knots.’
Studying what was still evident of the scarring to the girl’s abdomen, van den Bergen grimaced. ‘That means nothing to me. Explain!’
‘She’s been delivered of a baby and sewn up by someone who clearly knew the theory of what they were doing. But I guess they weren’t very good with a needle and thread. The lumpy scar tissue’s a giveaway. I don’t think a qualified surgeon would do a bodge job like that in the Netherlands.’
CHAPTER 7
Amsterdam, private medical surgery, much later
The instructions told him to enter his user name, which he did. His password had been stored. Unsurprising, given how frequently he visited the website. He ordered five sterile suture packs – the budget ones – three blue disposable couch rolls, although he saved money by using a length twice if it hadn’t ripped, and a new scalpel. The blade on his other one had snapped off from the handle, despite still being pretty sharp. What a waste. Rummaging through the other supplies on the shelf in his surgery, he ascertained that he still had an adequate supply of syringes and needles. He was good for butterfly cannulas and tourniquets. Ah, but he was on his last speculum, so made a last-minute addition to his basket. Clicking on the checkout icon, he looked at the running total.
‘Fucking rip-off merchants!’ he told the screen. ‘Decimating my bottom line. What am I? A bloody charity?’ Took a large swig from the bottle of single malt. Swilled the hot, stinging liquor around his teeth before swallowing with a gasp.
It had been much easier when he could lift these supplies from the hospital in the normal course of duty. Nobody seemed to notice for a long, long time that stocks were depleting. Once they did, he was the last person to come under suspicion. Happy days, long gone.
He sighed. Took another slug of whisky. Pulled a scuffed-up credit card out of his wallet and typed in the details, which the website had not saved. At least business was brisk. The Pole was coming at 5pm. That was more cash, plus she would help him magic away the guilt.
The guilt. Oh, how he struggled beneath its weight. He hadn’t meant to do that to the girl. Noor had always been harmless enough. And she was some kind of hot with those narrow hips and big, brown eyes. But he had so little control over the monster within. The beast that had somehow, over time, made it from the shadows under his cursed childhood bed into his head. Just as the dragon, Ladon, had guarded the golden apples of Hesperides, the monster had always been his saviour. His downfall, too. When the monster wanted to take charge, he had no option but to submit.
The doorbell sounded shrilly. He put his wallet away and moved from the cold, damp surgery to the waiting room at the front. Peered briefly into the mottled mirror on the wall. Licked his fingers and smoothed his strawberry-blond hair down. Pulled his trousers over his gut. Undid the three heavy-duty locks and grinned at the leggy Pole, who was primping her fire-engine-red curls.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said. Pouting. Kissed him on both cheeks. Grabbed his crotch. ‘Botox time for Katja! My lips are pruning like an old man’s testicles and my forehead’s like a road map.’
‘You brought the money?’ he asked, eyeing her buoyant breasts in the tight top she wore beneath her puffa jacket. He had done an excellent job on those puppies.
She pushed past him and strode inside. With some effort, given the skin-tightness of her jeans and the length of those pink talons she called nails, the Pole levered an envelope out of her back pocket. Waved it under his nose. ‘It’s all there.’
‘You brought the whip?’
She giggled. Actually, it wasn’t a giggle. More of a cackle. He could tell she was looking forward to that bit, as a sweetener to take the edge off the pain of having her face poked and prodded with fine needles; filled with botulism until it was shining and tight. From inside her bulky jacket, she produced a black leather cat-o-nine tails. Swung it around her head so that it made a pleasing swishing noise, as it cut through the dank air. Slapped his behind with it playfully, though he was hoping that once her cosmetic surgical needs had been met, it would hurt enough to make his eyes water. Yes, that would be a tremendously rewarding punishment for the terrible, unpredictable way the monster was behaving at the moment.
‘A promise is a promise, darling. A fifty-euro reduction for the beating of your life. Seems a bargain.’ She set the cat-o-nine tails down on the waiting room coffee table as he locked the door. Removed her coat. Strode into the surgery at the back and sat on the crumpled blue covering on the examination couch. ‘Have you been a bad boy, then?’ She raised an eyebrow archly.
He snapped on blue latex gloves, took up his prepared syringe and ejected a sprightly fountain of the Botox solution from the end of the fine needle. ‘Appalling, my dear. A modern-day Caligula. Truly appalling.’
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