The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die: The first book in an addictive crime series that will have you gripped. Marnie Riches

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СКАЧАТЬ Get your ass over here immediately. There’s been another bomb.’

      ‘Jesus. I wonder where that is,’ Ad said.

      George felt his heavy breath on her hand. He smelled of deodorant and warm skin. When his knock came at her door, she had been poised to hit this unexpected visitor, thinking it might be her ejaculating intruder. The Stalker. She turned the words over in her mind, sampling how they felt, buckling under their ominous weight. But it had just been Ad, abandoning his early train back into the fluffy, baby pink arms of the Milkmaid. He had come bearing yuletide pity and a gift in a small, carefully wrapped package.

      Happiness burned inside her with the white hot brilliance of magnesium held over a flame. Ad had a gift for her. He had delayed his return to Groningen. For her. She untied the blue ribbon and peeled back the expensive paper with trembling fingers.

      ‘Tea bags?’

      George had not been able to contain the look of horror. She knew it had usurped the delighted smile and planted a flag of bitter indignation on her face. What had she been thinking anyway? Jewellery and perfume were things a man bought his girlfriend. The Milkmaid got those. She got fucking tea bags.

      Ad had looked instantly wounded. ‘Sorry, I thought …’

      Forcing her teeth to show in an encouraging fashion, she had hugged him quickly and assembled the words of gratitude in the right order before speaking them. ‘That’s the perfect present for me! Very sweet.’

      He looked relieved. ‘You’re always out of tea.’ His face flushed. ‘Listen, can I check the train times?’

      George had nodded and passed him the laptop. It was then that they had seen the headline on de Volkskrant’s home page.

      ‘Second suicide blast hits Utrecht. Live footage.’

      Now, she focussed her attention on the YouTube video, posted only moments after the explosion. The amateur cameraman was talking fast as he shot the bedlam. He sounded frightened; exhilarated.

      Springweg, Utrecht.

      As soon as he gave the location, George scrutinised what she could see of the building behind the flames in the early evening twilight. What kind of a place was it? Was it another library? It was too far away from the camera phone for her to see any detail but she was curious.

      ‘It looks central. Let’s see,’ she said.

      She punched up Google Streetview and found the building when it had still been whole – crisp in the daylight and discreet. Hebrew writing was just visible on the portico above the door but otherwise there were no discernible religious markings on the facade. No Star of David. But with its high-pitched roof and adjacent tower, it was unmistakeably a place of worship.

      ‘This is it,’ she said to Ad, tapping a fingernail on the screen.

      ‘A synagogue,’ he said. ‘These bastards are making a statement.’

      George frowned. She made a rasping noise as she sucked her teeth. ‘This isn’t connected to the university, though. There’s no logic to any of it.’

      Van den Bergen drove well in excess of 100mph to bridge the distance between Amsterdam and Utrecht. His tired body was suffused with adrenalin and a grim euphoria of sorts.

      Emergency vehicles with their strobing lights beckoned him towards the mayhem.

      Teun van der Putte was standing at the scene, backlit by the blaze.

      ‘Paul. Good,’ he said, slapping van den Bergen on the upper arm. He proceeded to fill van den Bergen in on what had happened, wincing visibly every time a sheet of glass from a nearby house blew out onto the street.

      ‘Any witnesses?’ van den Bergen asked. The heat was overwhelming. A thick slick of sweat had already started to cling to his body.

      Teun looked over at ambulances already swallowing up casualties and at the fire trucks that lined the street – motherships, connected by hoses to their battling fire crew. He blinked hard and wiped his sooty glasses on his shirt. ‘Not a fucking thing, would you believe it?’

      Van den Bergen nodded sagely. ‘Same in Amsterdam.’ He watched as evacuees trod gingerly over the glass that littered the pavement. Grimaced and wept as they looked up at the flames and their ruined apartments. ‘How many dead or injured?’

      ‘There’s a few neighbours with lacerations from their windows blowing in. But there didn’t seem to be anyone walking on the street when the bomb went off.’ Teun shouted over the hiss of the hoses.

      ‘Christmas Eve. Everyone’s either in with family or out drinking,’ van den Bergen said, watching a weeping man as he was ushered to the place of safety beyond the police cordon. Beneath the blanket that covered the man’s shoulders, van den Bergen saw that he clutched a little girl of about four to his chest. Her forehead was covered in blood.

      ‘It’s impossible to know how many were inside the wreckage until the fire’s out,’ Teun said. ‘But we did find a bit of what we think is the suicide bomber. As soon as we arrived. It had been blown right out of range of the fire.’

      ‘A bit?’

      ‘A big bit.’

       Chapter 6

       25 December

      As George applied her lipstick, she wondered if Ad had lingered well into the evening, delaying his journey home because of her. More likely because of the Utrecht bomb, she decided.

      Wearing her usual tight-fitting jeans, a T-shirt that smelled strongly of washing liquid and thick Primark cardigan that had started to bobble under the arms, she had made no attempt to look festive beyond the slick of colour on her full lips. Like Jan and Katja, her makeshift Christmas family, would give a shit!

      She shrugged at her reflection in the mirror. Then she picked up the framed photograph that she had got an elderly American tourist to take of her and Ad back in October. They had been standing beneath the impressive arched portico of the Rijksmuseum, which Ad had offered to show her around. She was grinning like a fool at the camera. Ad’s arm was draped around her shoulder. He smiled uncertainly, as though he had been caught with his fingers in the proverbial cookie jar.

      ‘Merry Christmas, Ad,’ she said.

      She blew a kiss at the photograph, pulled on her Puffa jacket and left for Jan’s in good time. As she undid the locks on her bike, she looked around and missed the pair of eyes that were fixed intently on her.

      ‘Merry Christmas, darling,’ Katja said, showering George in sticky pink kisses.

      George immediately wiped her cheek with the back of her hand like a horrified child expunging the kisses of a hairy-chinned great aunt.

      Katja seemed unaware of the tacit rejection. She took off the tinsel that was hanging around her waist like a belt and wrapped it around Jan’s neck. ‘I love Christmas. Such a shame it’s not snowing. The one thing I really miss about Polish Christmases СКАЧАТЬ