The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows: A gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Marnie Riches
pulling his woollen hat off, realising that it was sub-zero in the cabin too, and promptly pulling it back on again. ‘I’ve been calling you for the last hour. When you didn’t pick up and didn’t answer the landline at your apartment, I figured you were here.’ He gestured at the mildewed chair that sported a bag of compost on the opposite side of the beat-up table. ‘Can I sit?’
Eyes darting side to side, Van den Bergen towered above him, still holding the tartan-patterned flask, as though he might hit him again should he put a foot wrong.
‘No. What does the fat bastard want? Am I not entitled to some space? Am I some wet-behind-the-ears constable that I should be at his beck and call all the sodding time?’
‘He insists you come back with me to Bijlmer to do door-to-doors. Marie’s doing Internet research on that London Jack Frost case George emailed you the details of.’
‘Insists, does he?’
Van den Bergen was staring at a curling poster on the wall of Debbie Harry from the early 1980s. There was an embarrassing moment where he noticed Elvis watching him ogle the faded, semi-naked star.
Elvis blushed and cleared his throat. ‘Kamphuis said you need the fresh air, boss. And I need the backup.’
‘Get in your car and bugger off back to the station. I don’t need a babysitter and neither do you. We’re men, Elvis. Men!’
‘I can’t boss. Came in a taxi.’
Van den Bergen switched off the fan heater and made that telltale growling noise that always said he was utterly pissed off. It was going to be a long morning.
There was silence in the car as they skidding along the icy patches, going too fast at times.
Elvis wondered if the boss was going to kill him before he made his thirtieth birthday. Not long, now. Mum was going to go into the home for the weekend, so he could have respite and go out for a drink with the lads.
He stared at the side of Van den Bergen’s face. Saw the split veins that had appeared around his nose. The open pores. Dark circles underneath his eyes said he rarely slept. Funny, how he had to guess at what went on in the boss’s private life. Neither of them knew that much about each other after all these years. He knew the Chief Inspector had been having an affair with George McKenzie for quite some time. Knew he popped those painkillers like sweets and disappeared off to sulk or wank or both in his super-shed at Sloterdijkermeer. But that was all. And did the boss have an inkling that his mother was on her last legs with Parkinson’s? That he was the main carer? Probably not. Van den Bergen had never asked.
The flats in Bijlmer were soul-destroying. As Elvis and the boss moved their way through the block, proceeding along landing after landing, climbing from floor to floor, front doors were opened reluctantly by the residents. Hitting them time and again with a fug of exotic cooking smells, unsanitary living conditions, piss, pet-stink, unwashed bodies, carbolic soap. All of life was here. But Elvis had just long enough to glimpse the common denominator of poverty beyond the threshold, before those doors were slammed resolutely in their faces.
‘No. I didn’t see a thing. Nope. I was at work/my parents’/the mosque/in town.’
Ghanaians. Somalis. Moroccans. Sometimes pretending not to speak Dutch. Hell, maybe they couldn’t. Every ethnicity Amsterdam sheltered lived here fearfully, silently, treading lightly. You could see the fear in their eyes and smell the desperation coming off their bodies. Please don’t ask to see my paperwork, their pleading glances said. When the El-Al jumbo had crashed in one of the old multi-storey blocks in 1991, the death toll had been officially set at forty, but had been estimated to be over two hundred in reality, since most of the dead had been illegal immigrants.
‘Are you sure you don’t recognise the photo of this man?’ Van den Bergen said, stooping to speak to an old Asian guy who couldn’t have been taller than five foot five. A shake of the head said no.
After an hour with no joy, and the boss getting more and more surly, they followed a woman dressed head to toe in black Arabic robes, wearing an oversized anorak over the top. She kept looking back at them furtively.
‘Look at this! Someone knows how to spot a cop when she sees one,’ Elvis said.
The boss nodded. ‘My instincts say, stay on her.’
The woman picked up her pace. Shuffling along the communal landing at speed, she looked over her shoulder. Wide-eyed. Shoved her key in the lock of a door some twenty metres away. Ten. Five. Desperately trying to wriggle her key free. Still clocking their approach with a nervous expression that screamed guilty conscience. Key free, she disappeared into the apartment’s hallway. Tried to close the door. Except the door wouldn’t shut.
The woman glanced down and frowned at Van den Bergen’s enormous foot in the way.
‘Police, madam,’ the Chief Inspector said, showing his ID.
Tears in her eyes. Screaming in Arabic maybe, to people beyond the hallway out of sight. Hands flailing, she ran inside. Van den Bergen took out his service weapon and pushed his way in.
Ten or more men scattered at the sight of them – some white, some black – into the bedrooms and kitchen. The air rang with the sounds of panic in several different languages. In the middle of the living room were two kids on mattresses, playing some board game or other. They looked up at the policemen. One had a familiar face.
‘It’s the boy from the playground,’ Elvis said. ‘Imran.’
Amsterdam, apartment in Bijlmer, then, police headquarters, later
‘We’re not interested in whether you’re legal or not,’ Van den Bergen said. Shouting at volume as though his audience were communally deaf. Might as well be, judging by the silence. Holding his hands up in the hope of demonstrating to the cowering gaggle of eight men, one woman and two children that he meant them no harm. It was hard enough to inspire any kind of trust in the residents of Bijlmer. Now that the two uniforms had shown up as backup for what was potentially a combustible situation, he could see the naked scepticism on their faces.
He turned to Elvis. ‘Tell them, for God’s sake! Tell them we don’t give a shit about their status.’
Elvis shrugged. ‘I don’t know Arabic, boss!’ He sighed heavily. ‘Does anybody here speak Dutch? English? French? Come on! Vous … Oh, fuck it. I can’t speak French either. Nobody?’ He pointed at the two white men. ‘What nationality are you?’
Kneeling with their hands in the air, as though they were about to pray to the Netherlands Police for absolution, or, at least, asylum, the two men spoke in what sounded like Russian. Polish, maybe.
Feeling the agitated lava of his stomach acid spurt into his gullet, Van den Bergen stalked towards the boy from the playground. ‘You!’ he said. ‘You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? Imran, right?’ The boy peered sullenly down at the board game. English Monopoly. Pieces strewn over the dirty mattress. Metal car, iron, top hat. Half-eaten remnants of lunch on a plastic plate. A piece of pitta bread on Trafalgar Square. He remained silent, looking intently at the younger boy who was building a house out of Community Chest cards.
Van den Bergen knelt and tried to gain the boy’s attention. ‘It’s okay, Imran. I just want to ask you some questions about the man that died. The man in playground.’
The woman lurched forwards. Prodded Imran in the back. Said something in her native tongue, though the tone was castigatory, Van den Bergen could tell.
‘Is this your mother?’ Van den Bergen asked.
Imran shook his head at the same time that the woman nodded.
‘Mother. Yes.