The Girl Who Wouldn't Die Part 28

Jez the Firestarter, twisting Firestarter. How could she have forgotten?

Panic and adrenalin surged through George's body. Suddenly, she felt like the entire cafe was spinning around her like a carousel, while she remained still at the centre. All there was, was her and Let.i.tia, trapped on a ride that they couldn't get off.

He decided against removing the Dutchman's p.e.n.i.s, instead whistling happily while he calculated how much plastic explosive to put in. And when should he do it? Decisions, decisions ...

As he walked over to his shelves, he caught sight of something s.h.i.+ny poking out of Ad's jacket pocket. He retrieved it. It was Ad's mobile phone. Oh. Interesting. A chance to see inside this loser's world. He would quite like to send her a text from this phone. That would be a nice touch.

Curious to see the extent of her relations.h.i.+p with this Ad, he flicked through the many texts that were stacked in his inbox. Lots from the girlfriend.

Here was the latest one from her. Kisses at the end. She'd taken a flight somewhere and would be away for a week. But where? d.a.m.n. This messed up his plans. He couldn't keep this Ad on a drip for a full week until she returned. There was no point dispatching him unless she was around to see it either. No, he had to find out where she was. Needed to see when she was coming back. Or if she wasn't too far away, it might be quite nice to pick her up and bring her back.

'So, what you doing here, then?' Let.i.tia asked, gesticulating at the charm of the safe, privileged world outside.

George held her hand up, fighting to catch her breath. Her head nodded in time with her thunderous pulse. 'Wait. Let me think.'

The room opposite with the camera. The limping man who had followed her from the flower market. Scarred. By burns of course. No fingerprints. Someone who knew Klaus and Joachim. Still supplying drugs. Still the crazy f.u.c.ked-up grandson of a right-wing, blacks.h.i.+rt Millwall supporter. Speaking Arabic, a Taliban go-between, spouting English Defence League bulls.h.i.+t. Except now, of course, he was operating in Europe, so it was the National Democratic Party of Germany or whatever other bunch of subnormal morons with persecution complexes he had allied himself to. Someone who had at least seen Ratan, Remko ... all of them every day. And Ad. Ad.

George switched on her phone. She had one message. It was from Katja.

Brit who does pa.s.sports called Danny.

Shorter breathing now. Brain whirring round like a supersonic fan. Overheating. Danny doing dodgy pa.s.sports. Jez in charge now. How did that happen? But Jez was always brighter. Or maybe he's just the one taking the risks for Danny. But still working. Ad. Ad now.

She punched Ad's name into her phone and waited for him to pick up. Three, four, five seconds. Nothing. Six, ten, straight to voicemail. She didn't have his mother's number in Groningen.

'No, no, no.'

'So, I was thinking of going on holiday with Leroy,' Let.i.tia said, clearly unaware of the maelstrom of panic and fear that whirled relentlessly around George.

'Shush, for G.o.d's sake.'

Van den Bergen's name. In the phone now. Ringing. Answering. Thank G.o.d.

'Yes?'

'It's George. Listen, I can't get hold of Ad. I know who the killer is. His name is Jeremy Saddiq. I know him. He was one of Danny's crew. The gang I ran with before. He's dealing in Amsterdam and Germany. He's an arsonist.'

'Georgina, slow down,' van den Bergen barked down the phone. 'There's a patrol car stationed outside Karelse's house. And Jeremy Saddiq is not the name we've got. We know who our killer is. He's a German called Brandon Khler. We traced him through Stuttgart hospital burns unit. He lives in Heidelberg on the Neckarstaden. German police are storming his apartment now. It's okay. We're one hundred percent certain he's the right man.'

George worked her way through the tangled meaning of van den Bergen's words. It didn't make sense. She was sure about Jez. Jez, the Firestarter. But Danny was knee-deep in falsified ID. Brandon Khler. Click.

'It's a false ident.i.ty,' she shrieked down the phone. 'Brandon Khler. Sounds like mashed-up Dutch for flaming and German for hot coals. Come on! Think about it.'

'Let's just see-'

'Look, Dr Wright thinks our guy works at the faculty in a domestic capacity. He has transport. Look at the list of non-academic staff. See if you can find a Jeremy or a Jez or this Brandon on the roll. Please.'

Silence the other end of the phone. Then: 'Look, George, apparently the German police have just gained entry to the killer's apartment. I'll see what they've found and I'll call you back.'

Predictably, van den Bergen rang off without saying goodbye.

Chapter 28.

Amsterdam, 27 January

The Baden-Wrttemberg State Police had raided the Heidelberg address in the late afternoon of the previous day, around 4pm Central European Time. One of the officers carried a b.u.t.tonhole camera, enabling live footage of the break-in to be streamed to a Kripo detective's laptop, which, in turn, was emailed within minutes as a video file to van den Bergen in Amsterdam.

Ten hours later, van den Bergen leaned back in his ergonomically incorrect typing chair, put two painkillers on his tongue, took a swig of his cold coffee and wiped his reading gla.s.ses on the tails of his s.h.i.+rt.

'd.a.m.n this b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' he told the computer screen. 'Flaming Hot Coals? He's making utter fools out of the Dutch and German police and there's nothing I can do about it.'

Jabbing a long finger awkwardly onto his mouse b.u.t.ton, he let the high-resolution footage spring forward yet again.

He had been expecting a house that allowed s.p.a.ce and privacy. Instead, the address had taken the German police to a Neckarstaden apartment on the second floor of a building which looked like it had been put up in the sixties. The staircase leading up was some way inside, set back from the street. The battering ram had to work hard for its money against the plethora of locks. The alarm had the sort of sophistication one would find in a high-cla.s.s jewellers or a small bank. Then ... masculine elegance.

Le Corbusier sofa. Stylish mid-twentieth-century furniture, otherwise. Was that a Persian rug? An Isfahan, judging by its intricate pattern and bright colours. Yes, van den Bergen had let his ex-wife keep theirs along with his daughter.

Further into the large, open-plan living room, which the officers, clutching at guns, reported was clear, were bookshelves full of medical textbooks, chemistry books, poetry books, philosophy tomes. Was this really the drug-dealing serial killer they were looking for? And if George was right, and it was the pyromaniac thug she had been allied to as an informant, could he actually read and understand those books?

'Self-taught? Or just self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt?' van den Bergen asked the screen.

The rest of the apartment had the same feel to it. Interior designer chic. There were scant but corruptible contents in the fridge that the camera-wearing officer pointed out. A lettuce, still fresh. Cheese and milk, both used but not mottled with mould or curdled into lumps.

'Of course. You were in the heavy metal pub when Karelse was playing the Last Action Heidelberg Hero, weren't you?' Van den Bergen chewed thoughtfully on the end of a Biro and then tapped his nose with the damp pen. 'But how do we know Brandon Khler and the killer are one and the same?'

Van den Bergen scrutinised the artwork on the walls of the apartment: a canvas depicting fire on one wall. Possibly Grace Turnbull. On another wall, the Great Fire of London, where people rowed for their lives in overcrowded boats on the River Thames to escape the inferno behind them. Finally, as if van den Bergen needed any more visual corroboration, over the leather sofa, there hung a large traditional Chinese painting of a red dragon, floating in a rough sea, coiled around a beautiful woman who looked perfectly at ease.

'A fire breather. A symbol of n.o.bility, power, ambition ... are these all qualities you see in yourself, Mr Flaming Hot Coals? Jesus. What kind of a delusional monster have I come up against this time?' van den Bergen said. He sighed heavily, feeling the twinge in his hip; a memento left long after the Rotterdam Silencer's bullet had been removed.

George sat on the dais in hall, next to Sally Wright, feeling uncomfortable in her L.K.Bennett dress and black, billowing undergraduate gown. A council estate crow in a debutante's frock, crumpled and a little too tight around the waist. She thought fleetingly of Let.i.tia's fat neck and the rolls of flesh around her middle. Instinctively, she grabbed at her own stomach beneath the table. Snap out of it.

Pheasant on the menu too. Jez and Danny were on her trail and here she was, sawing away at too-tough pheasant and industrially tasteless gravy.

Sally Wright leaned in, disturbing George's sour introspection.

'How did it go with your mother?' she asked.

George bit into her stringy pheasant thoughtfully, ground it between her molars, swallowed, took a sip of pinot grigio and said, 'My cover has been blown.'

Sally looked at her and stopped chewing the potato she had just daintily put into her pruned mouth.

'Oh?'

'And she wanted to borrow money. No surprises there.'

Sally Wright set her cutlery down carefully on her plate. 'Scroll back to the bit where you say your cover has been blown.'

George felt a deep blush proclaim her embarra.s.sment loudly. Under the potential scrutiny of over a hundred of her fellow students and within earshot of the Master of St John's, George was forced to give a brisk synopsis of all Let.i.tia had said.

George could still see fear in Sally's hooded eyes, behind the lenses of her gla.s.ses.

'First you tell me you're up to your neck in the investigation of these serial killings. Next you say the psychopath and gang leader that you infiltrated as a supergra.s.s are on your trail? My G.o.d. It's like a terrible story in a tabloid newspaper. How the h.e.l.l did that happen?' Sally said. 'You are deep deep in the mire, young lady. I take this as a personal betrayal of trust between you and me.'

George rubbed the grosgrain ribbon trim on her dress. One, two, three with the left hand. One, two, three with the right. She loathed the feeling of being chastised by someone she respected and consciously sought the approval of. What could she say in her own defence? Nothing. It wasn't really her fault. Arrange the cutlery. Position the cruet set as it should be. She opened and closed her mouth, wanting to apologise but the words were lodged in her throat.

Finally she managed, 'I don't know how it happened. I was discreet.'

Sally looked at her from over the top of her gla.s.ses. Accusatory eyes. 'If this serial killer is your former squeeze's muscle,' Sally said, 'the Dutch and German police are going to be unwittingly stomping all over a drugs and vice case that CID has been trying to put together for years; which you were only the start of. Years of surveillance wasted. And you've exposed yourself as well, which will probably mean you will need a.s.signing a new ident.i.ty. Again.'

New ident.i.ty? George felt the food sitting like a stone in her stomach. 'I can't do this again. I don't want to change from who I am now,' she said, polis.h.i.+ng her dessertspoon on her napkin. She needed to make Sally understand and hopefully forgive. 'Do you realise how it feels to live a lie? To live as someone with a manufactured past and no contact with the world she knows. It's like ... like trying to wear in an unforgiving shoe. It was hard but I've managed to become George McKenzie. Respectable orphan, left behind by tax-paying folk who died in a car crash. Come on, Sally! I haven't got the energy to become another person and I'm not giving this up.'

She looked up at the vaulted, intricately beamed ceiling of the ancient hall, atmospherically lit by chandeliers and casting splendid shadows. She could not see the colours in the tall, ecclesiastical leaded windows, as darkness had fallen outside, but she remembered what they looked like in the day. The musky, beeswax aroma of the parquet floors and wood panelling. The dusty gilt-edged portraits of old Masters and Fellows.

A poor girl who earned her own slice of rich man's heaven. I ain't giving that back. No way. And Ad, of course. Her first chance of love. How could she throw that into the Herengracht and watch it sink?

Sally frowned. 'You make it sound like starting fresh was a ch.o.r.e. You told me you were delighted to leave your old life behind.' She picked at the pheasant carca.s.s with her knife and fork and ushered some stringy dark meat into her mouth. 'Wasn't that why you agreed to work with the police in the first place? So you could begin again from scratch? Bury your skeletons, you said.'

George thought about the intimacy she had shared with her skeletons, Danny and Tonya. They ruined people's lives with boundless enthusiasm. But, when all was said and done, the three of them had been bonded by s.e.x and the irrefutable knowledge that they had all been failed by their parents. Theirs were drunks and drug addicts. Hers was just plain selfish and manipulative. And now, the hateful mother that she had once loved as a small child was Gloria, born-again housewife to Leroy, consigned to a brick built box in Ashford. Danny was G.o.d knows where, probably selling fake pa.s.sports in Amsterdam and Tonya was, she was fairly certain, still banged up in women's prison both, no doubt, with Ella Williams-May's betrayal scratched indelibly on their hearts. Those bridges would never be unburned. Thankfully.

'Yes,' George said. 'My life was terrible. That's why I'm desperate to hang onto this one. George lives the life of Reilly. Ella Williams-May is dead. Long live the McKenzie.'

Sally drank from her gla.s.s of red wine and breathed out heavily through her nose. 'One thing's for certain,' she said. 'You are not going back while the killer's over there on the prowl.'

George immediately thought of Ad. Felt for her handbag at her feet which contained her phone. Wondered if he'd texted yet. 'I can't stay in England. There's people I care about ... They're in danger.'

Hooking her hair behind her ear, Sally stared in silence at George. Was she making her stew in her own juices? Or just reflecting on what she was about to say? George didn't have Sally down as the cruel type.

Finally, she sniffed and said, 'If you try to go back, I will have the police incarcerate you. I know you wouldn't like that, now would you?'

George stared at Sally open-mouthed. For the first time, it made sense that this middle-aged woman who rolled her eyes back into her head, showing only disconcerting whites when she was deep in thought or explaining something complicated to a student, this deep-voiced woman who seemed at times scatterbrained and odd should be the senior tutor of one of Cambridge's wealthiest colleges.

'Sally!'

Sally put her veined hand on top of George's arm. Her index finger was nicotine-stained brown. Her palm was surprisingly warm but clammy. 'Georgina, I am responsible for you. I care about you. The college cares about you. n.o.body but you, your mother and I knows you're in Cambridge. While you're here, you're safe.'

He saw her from the street below. Her blood-red hair was curled like corkscrews and backcombed into a big frizz. She had the high Baltic cheekbones typical of an Eastern European. Her pneumatic b.r.e.a.s.t.s strained against a tiny bikini that would be easy to get off with one tug of the ties at the back. Research had its bonuses. It had been a while since he had been with a female over the age of fifteen but this one was pert and he was in the mood.

'What's your name?' he asked, after they had negotiated a fee.

She licked lips that were the same bright red as a fire engine. In the h.e.l.lish glow of the red light, up close, she looked seedy and past it.

'Katja, darling.'

She didn't even wince when she looked at his face, though. A real pro.

When she had yanked the drab, brown curtain across the window and switched off the red light, he grabbed her around the middle.

'I've thought about coming to you for a while,' he said. 'I've seen the girl upstairs too. Is she expensive? I'd pay more for you and her. Together. Now.'

'She's no wh.o.r.e, darling and she's not here anyway.'

'Oh? Where has she gone?'

Drumming his pen against his front teeth, van den Bergen thought about what George had said. He should check the non-academic staff attached to Fennemans' faculty.

'Elvis!' he shouted. 'I've got a spot of urgent research for you.'

Elvis swaggered over, leather jacket slung over his shoulder. 'I was just going out to get something for dinner, boss. Want a kebab?'

Van den Bergen hadn't eaten for twelve hours. His appet.i.te for anything but resolution was dead.

'I want you to run a name check on the Social and Behavioural Sciences faculty's staff roll,' he told Elvis. 'See who we've interviewed so far. See who's still down to be questioned. Anyone called Jeremy Saddiq. Jez. Abdul Youssuf. Al Badaar. Brandon Khler or any combination of those names. Look for office staff or domestic in particular.'

Elvis had grabbed a notepad from his jacket breast pocket and was scribbling away furiously with a furrowed brow.

Van den Bergen noticed that he had s.n.a.t.c.hed up his chewed Biro. 'Get your own pen,' he said, holding his hand out.

Elvis looked at the wet, heavily masticated pen, wrinkled his nose and nodded. 'Sorry, boss.'

'Oh, and fine work with the Marienhospital match, Elv ... er ... Dirk.' He cleared his throat; felt suddenly righteous in his heart that he had said something pleasant to somebody that day.

'Dirk? Seriously? You going to start using my real name?'

'Don't push it.'

Now van den Bergen needed to get away to think. It was too late to go out to Sloterdijkermeer, so he had to content himself with twenty minutes' peace and quiet in the disabled toilet on the top floor, scratching at the grout in between the tiles with his fingernail until his eye had calmed down or he had a stroke of blinding inspiration.

Seventeen minutes into his retreat, he heard footsteps and a knock on the door made him jump.

'Boss,' shouted Elvis. He sounded high-pitched. 'Are you in there?'

Van den Bergen looked up at the strip light overhead and sighed heavily. 'What is it that's so exciting it couldn't wait for nature?' He emerged from his cubicle reluctantly.

'I think I've found your man, boss. Brandon Saddiq. British pa.s.sport. Tax-paying janitor of the Social and Behavioural Sciences faculty on Roeterseiland. A disabled man, interviewed originally by Dr Vim Fennemans and employed by the university on a one-year renewable contract. Clean criminal record under that name, but Jeremy Saddiq is wanted by British Intelligence in connection with a vice and drugs ring that has its roots in Afghanistan's Taliban, no less. He's on Interpol and Europol's wanted lists along with his number two, Daniel Spencer.'

Van den Bergen washed his hands in stupefied silence as he mentally, piece by piece, slotted the jigsaw together and saw a picture of a disturbed London back-street gangster, usurping his own king and then burning and pillaging his way around Europe like a marauding Viking until one day he spots the turncoat, former girlfriend of his sidekick, right under his very nose. Perhaps with his change in fortunes, what he once coveted as the underling, he now saw as rightfully his.