The woman dug her fingernails into George’s hand, so that she was forced to let go of her. Nostrils flaring, she had the desperate, haunted look of someone who was standing right at the edge of life and sanity.
‘A thousand by the end of the week, or you can wave goodbye to your research.’
Amsterdam, police headquarters, 5 March
‘What do you think?’ Van den Bergen asked the forensic pathologist. He gesticulated with his unshaven chin towards a pile of paper, the top sheet of which stated this was the property of the Landeskriminalamt Berlin – specifically, the Kriminaltechnisches Institut.
‘Berlin forensics reports on two men found dead a couple of weeks ago,’ he explained. ‘Marie came across the cases during an Internet trawl. From what my German colleague tells me, there are too many similarities for them not to be connected to our Bijlmer guy and this Jack Frost murder in London that George flagged up. The German press is calling the murderer ‘Krampus’ – a kind of Alpine folklore horned monster who punishes badly behaved children around Christmas time. What are the odds, eh?’
‘Let me see.’ Marianne de Koninck hooked her hair behind her ear. She slid a pair of frameless reading glasses on and started to examine the reports that had been sent over from Berlin. ‘You’ll have to bear with me. My German’s not all that.’
‘If you think there’s something in them, we’ll get them translated into Dutch,’ he said.
The chunkiness of her cable-knit black jumper made her hands look more delicate and feminine than usual: elegant fingers, removing the contents from an A4 manila envelope. Images of the dead men, laid on the table side by side, one by one, until there was a long row of photographic evidence that said someone had snuffed out these two lives with unfettered rage. One man fat. One man thin. A deathly balaclava of coagulated blood encased the ruined head of the larger of the two, a mess of spoiled flesh where his penis had been.
‘The thin man’s got the same puncture marks as our Bijlmer victim,’ Van den Bergen said, studying the pathologist’s face in profile. Pointed chin. Sharp nose. No-nonsense features on a no-nonsense woman. ‘And so does the murdered entrepreneur in London.’
‘Hm.’ Marianne steepled her fingers together and pursed her lips. Her gaze shifted back and forth in a contemplative relay race from the start of the row of photographs to the finish.
She was ageing well, Van den Bergen mused. Bright-eyed. Clear-skinned. Obviously slept at night. Clearly untroubled by the fact that she was responsible for introducing him to the Butcher, who had almost sliced and diced him into the next life.
‘You okay?’ she asked, peering over the top of her glasses. ‘You seem a little tense.’
‘Fine,’ he said, turning away from her. Fingering the ever-deepening grooves either side of his own mouth, which bore testament to the fact that he was now not ageing so well. He crossed his legs uncomfortably beneath the low desktop, the uncharacteristic beginnings of a paunch in the way; it has begun to appear when he had stopped gardening quite so regularly.
Presently, Marianne cleared her throat. She nodded slowly, as if processing the facts weighed heavily on her sinuous runner’s neck. ‘I see what you mean. The murders certainly share similarities. Same waterlogged conical wounds in the thin man. Presumably inflicted by an icicle used as a shiv. Snow in the air passages of both victims, though they differ in that the fat man has been bludgeoned to death and his penis has been severed … and not by a sharp blade, by all accounts.’
Van den Bergen breathed in sharply and grimaced. Felt a sympathetic twinge in his groin and thought briefly about getting his testicles looked over and his prostate checked during his next check-up at the doctor’s.
‘Anyway.’ Marianne stacked the reports in a neat pile. ‘Let’s get a translation of these pronto, just to make sure I’ve got the right end of the stick. Maybe I need to see the bodies, if they haven’t been claimed.’
‘They haven’t,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘My guy in Berlin says neither the police nor their forensics service has had a breakthrough in ID’ing them yet.’
‘Well, I think a little jaunt to Berlin is on the cards for us,’ Marianne said, unexpectedly reaching forwards and rubbing Van den Bergen’s forearm. Smiling.
He snatched his arm away and touched the skin there, gingerly, as though he had been burned. Flustered. Felt unwanted heat creeping into his cheeks. Hadn’t he and Marianne been down this road two years before, when she had broken up with that dick, Jasper? Before George. Before the Butcher. Hadn’t they mutually decided there was no chemistry there, though neither had needed to say a single word? Sharing an embrace in her kitchen that had, on paper, supposed to be electrifying but which had been devoid of any spark whatsoever.
He pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘If we’re looking for a killer who’s operating in at least three countries and we’ve only got two of the victims ID’d, we’ll need to look at the modus operandi and try to come up with some kind of a profile. Could be a serial killer, though I think I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime.’ How desperately he wanted to fix her with an accusatory stare. The resentment effervesced inside him. But it wasn’t her fault. Stop being a bastard, Van den Bergen. She didn’t have a crystal ball, for god’s sake. She’s got past the whole unpleasant episode, and so should you. She’s grinning at you! ‘Could be a hit man, if there’s drugs involved. Christ only knows what we’re dealing with. I’m going to get George involved.’
He had hoped the mention of George’s name would dim Marianne’s hopeful smile. It hadn’t.
‘She’ll need to come to Berlin too, of course,’ he said.
Then, the smile faded from Marianne’s face.
‘What do you mean, how do I fancy a trip to Berlin?’ George shouted down the phone. Sitting on the toilet at Aunty Sharon’s, hoping to snatch five minutes of privacy in a packed house. Patrice and Tinesha were downstairs, fighting over the TV remote control whilst their respective girl- and boyfriends sat primly at the kitchen table, making conversation with Aunty Sharon as she prepared a chocolate-orange soufflé. The recently appeared and self-installed Letitia was lying on the couch, awaiting the working class woman’s last rights of barbecue Pringles, a double rum ’n’ Ting and Jeremy Kyle. ‘Fucking hell, Paul. Haven’t you worked it out yet? I’m ignoring you! You’re in the dog house, man!’
The line went silent. ‘Dog house?’
She tried to explain the turn of phrase that had been lost in translation. She spoke quickly in Dutch, laying it on the line that he couldn’t toy with her feelings like this, two years in.
‘You know it’s nothing to do with how I feel about you,’ he said. ‘I just think you deserve better. I’m old, for god’s sake! I’m broken, George. I can’t offer you anything. Not on a personal level. It’s not fair on you if we …’ He sighed heavily, filling the phoneline with melancholy.
Scratching at a patch of mildewed grout that she had missed during her big clean with the end of Patrice’s blue toothbrush, she visualised Van den Bergen lying in the intensive care unit of the Amsterdam hospital. She saw herself weeping over what she had presumed was his dying body, machines no longer beeping. Disconnected. Then being told by the consultant who had eavesdropped on her mournful prayers to an indifferent god that his oxygen had been switched off because he had no longer needed it. He had finally come out of the coma that morning and was just sleeping. The peritonitis had been defeated. The Butcher’s best efforts at killing him had failed.
‘Listen, you miserable, self-indulgent man,’ she said, barely able to