The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows: A gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Marnie Riches
We do the serial killers and criminal networks and high-profile cases. You’ve got plenty of junior detectives who could be looking into the dead junkie. I want to keep working on the missing persons’ operation. We’ve spent so long looking for—’
‘Forget it,’ Kamphuis said, belching. ‘I’m the boss now. My priority is the murder rate. You tow my line, you streak of piss, or I’ll put you out to pasture quicker than you can say, “pensioner discount”. Right?’
Early retirement. Arrogant turd. Kamphuis’ words resounded like a bad bout of tinnitus, as Van den Bergen stood on the steps of the restaurant, watching the skaters. Retirement. Consigned to the scrap heap. Nice. And Kamphuis had grounds. Everyone knew Van den Bergen had been struggling since the Butcher. He touched his scar tissue beneath his coat, poking where it ached in the cold.
The windows of the beautiful, four-storey townhouses that leaned in on him felt suddenly oppressive. Spying on him. Marking him out as a failure. A man who should have died. A Chief Inspector who had not succeeded in solving his most recent case. An ageing idiot who had pushed his young lover away. He felt utterly alone.
Opting to walk through the streets back to the police HQ, instead of driving in the shitty, slippery conditions, he hammered out a text to George. Intended it to be conciliatory. Wanted to tell her that he loved her and was sorry. That he could commit, after all. That he would go for more therapy.
Despite his best intentions, he found he had sent:
Assigned to murder case. Suffocation with snow. Strange neck wounds. What do you think, Detective Lacey? P.
Shit. Why was he such an emotional cripple?
Feeling the lead-weight of disappointment snuff out any lightness of step, he trudged back towards police headquarters. Passed some makeshift stalls that had sprung up on the icy Prinsengracht, selling mulled wine, stroopwafels and greasy doughnut-like ollieballen to tourists and ice-skaters who had overestimated the length of time they could bear in the cold without libation. The sweet cinnamon smell was intoxicating, but he had no appetite. This lingering smell of Christmas was a false God. It was early March now, and only the remaining dead weeks of winter stretched and stretched ahead of him.
He stood in the glazed portico of the police headquarters when a text pinged back. It was from George.
Is that an attempt at romance, arsehole?
She had attached to the text a jpeg of an article from The Times newspaper. The headline made Van den Bergen draw a sharp breath: An icy end for entrepreneur. Who is Jack Frost?
A village South of Amsterdam, 25 May, the previous year
A glance into the garden confirmed that the children were both playing happily. Clambering onto the small plastic climbing frame. Josh was even helping Lucy to get up the three steps. There they both were, squealing as they slid down the Day-Glo pink slide, then crawled into the space beneath the platform, poking their little heads out of the ‘window’. Good. And the play area was still in shadow, as the morning sun had not yet moved round from the front. No need to apply sunscreen just yet. They were safe. Perfectly safe. He could concentrate. Even if it was only for twenty minutes or so, that would be enough.
Peering down at the architectural drawing of the Wagenaar family’s poky three-bedroomed house, Piet Deenen could see how he could utilise the dead space to the side. Where a washing line currently hung forlornly, he could create an open plan living area. Bring more light into that horrible galley kitchen. Theirs was another poorly designed boxy house on the outermost fringes of Amsterdam. A garden suburb. A post-war poor-man’s utopia, thrown together by shortsighted town-planners in response to a burgeoning population and the need for slum clearance. The Netherlands was now crying out for men like Piet: architects with modest ambitions, an easy-going nature and an affordable rate. Gabi had been so wrong about his earning potential. Fuck London with its cut-throat property- and job-market.
A few clicks on the mouse, and he manipulated his design software to create an extra five feet of usable floor space for Mr and Mrs Wagenaar and their three children. Better.
He drank from his coffee. Scattered crumbs onto his jeans from the appeltaart he had knocked up for him and the kids. Gabi wouldn’t touch anything containing carbs, of course. She was still on the corporate treadmill in her head. Sharp-dressing. 8 a.m. starts, though she no longer needed to keep those ridiculous hours. An hour of exercise every day: disciplined body, disciplined mind. Old habits weren’t dying hard.
Leaning forward, knocking his coffee all over the plans of the existing front elevation, he opened the window.
‘Kids!’ he shouted in his native Dutch. ‘Ten minutes and I’ll bring you out some cake and milk. Okay?’
Delighted squeals from outside. Josh jumping up and down, Lucy not really understanding much beyond cake and milk, no doubt. They waved up at him. All, ‘love you, Paps!’ Sticky juice hands. Dirty knees. Both with flaxen hair just like he had had as a child. But their curls had come from Gabi’s side of the family.
Piet surveyed this perfect domestic scene. Perched atop the Day-Glo pink climbing frame were his very own small people. His family. Here – the middle of nowhere – had to be the safest place in the world to raise children, hadn’t it? Here, they had green space. Privacy. You wouldn’t even know there was a train line running behind the garden. It was a glorious sight. The relocation had been worthwhile. Gabi would come round without water eventually.
Except Josh ruined the perfect snapshot in time, as usual. He started to dangle Lucy by her ankles over the ladder of the climbing frame. Shrieks of excitement from his tiny sibling, quickly turned to anguished screaming.
‘Stop that, Josh! Leave your sister alone. Don’t make me come down there!’
Shit. Bloody kids. Coffee spillage or Lucy: which was the more urgent? Suddenly, he found himself flapping, and ran to the bathroom to get toilet roll. At least he could blot the worst of it.
‘I’m coming down!’ he shouted through the open window.
‘Pappie!’ Cries from Lucy.
Mischievous laughter trilling on the air from Josh.
But then the phone started ring.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Gabi on the other end.
‘Did you put the wash on?’ she asked. Sounded harried.
‘What? Yes. No. Hang on, darling. The kids are going mad in the garden. There’s coffee— I’ve got to …’ Looking out at the precarious scene below, he could see that Josh had released his sister from his tyrannical grip but was now holding the sides of the climbing frame, rocking the plastic tower back and forth. Trying to topple that which was not designed to be toppled.
Gabi’s voice, tinny but insistent down the phone-line. ‘Piet! I told you to put the bloody washing in. The one time your mother actually comes to babysit overnight and there’s no clean bedding.’ Her tone had quickly turned from undisguised mistrust to naked fury.
‘I’ll do it! Darling, I can’t—’
‘Can’t? Can’t? Then how come I manage? I’m sick of it, Piet. You promised me we’d have some time for ourselves. That was the whole damned point, wasn’t it? Better quality of life, you said!’
‘Gab, the kids are—’
‘Did you put Josh’s assessment on the calendar like I told you?’
Piet tore himself away from the window. He turned to the calendar, pinned to a corkboard in his little office, one ear still on the mayhem in the garden. Feeling torn between answering his wife’s demands and monitoring his ebullient charges, he was relieved when it became