The Girl Who Had No Fear. Marnie Riches

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      Elvis touched the stiff gel of his quiff and wondered if it made him hypocritical to think ill of the Head’s immaculate ponce-hands. Hid his own nicotine-stained fingers inside his pockets.

      ‘Honestly? I know nothing about Floris at all,’ the Head said. ‘He was a completely private man. Kept himself to himself. An enigma, you might say. I invited him, along with other teachers, to dinner parties and soirées, but he would never come and always managed to sidestep any digging into his life outside work. And I did try. To dig, I mean.’

      Van den Bergen rearranged himself in the leather armchair. His bones cracked audibly as he did so. Jesus. Is that what a lifetime of supervising door-to-doors in the rain did for a man? Elvis shuddered.

      ‘Where did he work before here?’ he asked.

      ‘He came from the Couperus International Lyceum in Utrecht. Glowing references. He’d been there for ten years.’

      The Head glanced at the grandfather clock that struck in the corner of the room. Stood abruptly. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, gentlemen.’

      All the way to the unprepossessing apartment in Amstelveen’s Brandwijk, Van den Bergen imagined himself shaking and shuddering his way to a premature end with Parkinson’s like Elvis’ mother. The bullet hole in his hip had been causing him great pain, of late, with all the damp. Were there any signs of tremors in his movement? George would be able to tell him. By the end of the week, she would be back in Amsterdam. In the meantime, he made a mental note to visit the doctor’s to rule out some debilitating degenerative disease.

      Curtains twitched as he parked up outside the three-storey block, with its garden view and balcony. This was perhaps the most suburban, nondescript place in the world, Van den Bergen mused. A place where nothing ever happened. Except something had happened to one of its residents.

      ‘What do you make of this, boss?’ Elvis said, running a latex-clad finger along the spines of the books on the bookshelves. Five boring-looking academic tomes about physics. Fall of Man in Wilmslow – a book Van den Bergen vaguely recognised as being about Alan Turing. The rest were interior design and architecture textbooks. Several British fiction titles among them that Van den Bergen had never heard of.

      ‘He was a maths teacher, so the physics stuff fits,’ he said. Casting an eye over the mid-century-style furniture in the apartment, he realised it was more Ikea repro than genuine Danish antiques. But there was a strong design element to it. That much he could see. Nothing like his thrift-shop dump, which was still reminiscent of a garage sale no matter how many times George scrubbed through. ‘Somebody here knows their décor onions. No photos of women anywhere apart from this.’ Using a latex-gloved hand, he picked up the portrait of a woman who was roughly in her sixties. Perhaps Engels’ mother. She had the same hazel eyes, judging by the school’s online profile picture of him.

      Movement suddenly caught the Chief Inspector’s attention. Or was it a shadow? With his heartbeat picking up pace and his policeman’s instincts sharpening, he turned towards the doorway, beyond which lay the bedroom.

      ‘Is somebody in here with us?’ he whispered to Elvis. Mouthed, ‘In there.’ Pointed to the bedroom.

      Elvis shook his head. Continued to look at the books.

      Van den Bergen strode briskly into the bedroom, his plastic overshoes rustling as he crunched on the shag pile rug underfoot. Held his breath. Scanned the neat, masculine room for intruders. There was nobody there but a whiff of aftershave hung in the air. Or was he imagining things?

      ‘I need to drink less coffee,’ he muttered, running his fingers over the pistol in its holster, strapped to his torso.

      He flung open the wardrobe doors to reveal immaculately presented suiting; ties, pants and socks stowed in colour co-ordinated compartments, perhaps specifically designed for ties, pants and socks. Jumpers and tops stacked in neat piles on shelving. One set of shelves containing sombre colours. The other, less conservative combinations of teal, pink, yellow …

      ‘Different sizes on the right side of the wardrobes to the left,’ he said. ‘Two men. Our victim and a lover.’

      Elvis pulled open the drawer to the bedside cabinet. ‘This is always the most revealing place in anyone’s bedroom,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an asthma inhaler, hair putty and a men’s health magazine from 2002. What about you?’ He smirked.

      ‘Proton pump inhibitors, floss and Tiger Balm,’ Van den Bergen said, grimacing at the contents Elvis had revealed. ‘Jesus. It’s like the storeroom in a sex shop. Look of the size of those bloody dildos. And what the hell is that?’ He pointed to a black rubber string of balls, growing progressively larger in size.

      ‘Anal beads, boss.’ Elvis guffawed with laughter.

      ‘And that fucking thing?’ He pointed to what appeared to be a stainless-steel egg.

      ‘You jam it up your—’

      Van den Bergen held his hand high. Thought of George’s middle finger inside him and blushed. A world away from this little haul in terms of adventurousness. ‘Stop. You’re making my prostate twitch.’ He considered his intermittent suffering with haemorrhoids and snorted with derision at the anal beads. Appraised the carefully made bed and the dust that was beginning to settle on the bedroom furniture. ‘Any sign of post addressed to somebody else? Check the kitchen. Everybody puts post in there.’

      Elvis left the bedroom. Nobody had reported Floris Engels missing. There had been no evidence of a suicide note in the man’s clothing. Who and where was his partner?

      ‘Nothing,’ Elvis said. ‘Weird.’

      ‘Unless he’s left in a hurry and taken any documentation with him.’ Van den Bergen thumbed at the jowls that were beginning to burgeon on his previously taut jawline, deep in thought. Jumped when a door slammed shut within the apartment.

      ‘There is someone in here with us!’ he shouted. He ran into the living room, gun in hand, trying to glimpse whoever the visitor was. ‘Hello?!’

       CHAPTER 6

       Cambridge, Huntingdon Road, then, Stansted Airport, 29 April

      ‘You just keep a lookout,’ George told Aunty Sharon, shouting above the gusting Cambridgeshire wind. Her pulse thudded in her neck as she calculated how long it would take Sally Wright to grind and wobble her way up the hill to the student house on the Huntingdon Road. Surely a chain-smoker like her would asphyxiate before she’d be able to scale Cambridge’s infamous Castle Hill on a sit-up-and-beg bicycle. Calm down, George. Chill your boots. You get in. You get out. You get gone. ‘I’ll be down in ten. I’ve only got a couple of bits to get. Honk if you see an angry white woman with a bad fringe. Okay? Honk!’

      This was a flying visit to Cambridge, precipitated by two texts she had received the evening she had returned to Aunty Sharon’s after interviewing Gordon Bloom in Belmarsh. Relieved to find that she was not, after all, being followed through the Catford backstreet by anything more sinister than an inquisitive cat and СКАЧАТЬ