The loud knock on the kitchen window made both of them jump. Nothing to see in the black of the small hours with the light on inside.
‘Who the fuck is that at this time of night?’ Aunty Sharon asked, lurching out of her seat. Grabbing the kettle, still half full of boiled water. ‘I got that back gate padlocked to keep those cheeky little dipshits from down the way out.’
George’s heart thudded beneath her layers. She snatched up a meat cleaver from the magnetized knife-holder on the wall. ‘Stay back, Aunty Shaz,’ she said, switching the light off. ‘I got this.’
Still nothing to see in the empty, snowy yard at the back, except for a washing line supporting six inches of snow on top, icicles, hanging beneath, like a neat row of teeth strung along a cannibal’s necklace. Against the fence were snow-buried wheelie bins, lit by the nearest streetlamp some twenty feet away.
Reaching for the key lodged in the security door, George turned until the lock clicked. Pushed the handle down gingerly, cleaver in her right hand. Pulled the door open suddenly. Blast of arctic wind sucking the air from her lungs. Arm held high ready to slice.
A hooded figure was standing on the back step.
George screamed.
Amsterdam, mortuary, 28 February
‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Amsterdam’s prodigal son. Long time, no see,’ Marianne de Koninck said, eyeing Van den Bergen with what was almost certainly a degree of suspicion. ‘Where the hell have you been for the last god knows how long?’
‘Welded to the frost-bitten bottom of my cold case,’ Van den Bergen said, eyes smiling with mirth.
Almost ten months had passed since he had last seen the head of forensic pathology. The case he had been working on simply hadn’t turned up anything requiring forensic examination beyond the initial couple of weeks.
Today, in her scrubs and rubber sandals, with her normally short hair grown into a sleek blonde bob, Marianne looked younger than her forty something years.
‘Have you got a new man in your life?’ he asked, finally daring to unbutton his anorak. The chilly mortuary seemed warm in comparison to the white world outside.
‘Only this poor chump,’ Marianne said. She stared down at the naked corpse of the man who had been found in the Bijlmer play-area. Lit by the harsh, overhead lights, his body was a grim palette of yellow, purple and grey. The red stippling of the sores around his mouth and nose like the brush strokes of an impressionist’s nightmare. Marianne snapped a fresh pair of latex gloves onto her sinewy hands. Straight to business as usual.
Van den Bergen had always liked that about her.
‘What about you?’ she said. ‘You still cradle-snatching? I’m surprised the young Dr McKenzie isn’t with you. I thought you two were joined at the hip since she saved your life.’
There was nothing Van den Bergen could do to stifle the low growl that escaped his lips. Marianne might as well have gouged at his tired heart with her scalpel.
‘Like that, is it?’
The pathologist walked around the dead man, recording her observations into a Dictaphone. She scrutinised the blemished skin of his face.
‘Aside from the sores around the deceased’s nose and mouth that would suggest drug misuse, I can see tiny lacerations on his face,’ she said. She prized open his mouth with her fingers to reveal blackened teeth. ‘Jesus. Our man was certainly not a regular at the dentist’s.’
‘Show me a junkie who is,’ Van den Bergen said.
‘His lips, gums and tongue show bruising,’ she continued. ‘I’ll check his nasal passages later by microscopy, but I’m guessing it’s the same there. I can see significant amounts of mucus and blood at the back of his gullet. Petechial haemorrhages in his skin. Oedema.’
‘In layman’s terms, please!’
‘All in good time, Chief Inspector. You just sit tight and let me do my job.’ She took samples from beneath the man’s fingernails. Bloods. Swabs. ‘Okay. Let’s see what’s inside,’ Marianne said.
Taking up her scalpel, she began to open up the cadaver, cutting from his chest, working her way down to his pubic area.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Van den Bergen said. He steadied himself against the built in sink at the end of the stainless steel slab. Flashbacks to waking up on the floor of the Butcher’s panic room. Strapped to a chair. Awaiting his fate. Then, walking towards the light, thinking it was the end and that perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, only to find the source of the brightness came from a doctor’s light pen, checking for the response of his pupils as he emerged finally from his coma in the Intensive Care Unit. Only later, when his wounds were redressed, realising that he had been zipped open from top to bottom.
Just like the body of the Bijlmer man, now.
Marianne set down her scalpel. Staring at him askance as though he was a lunatic. ‘Paul? Are you okay?’
Pull yourself together, you loser. ‘I’m fine. It’s my middle ear playing up.’ He pointed to his ear, as though that made his lie more convincing. She didn’t need to know he was so weak-minded. ‘Vertigo. You know. A lot of viruses going round in this infernal shitty weather.’
‘Have you and Georgina split up?’ She narrowed her sharp blue eyes at him.
He pulled up a typing chair close to the action. His height made it easy to observe as Marianne resumed her dissection. Pointedly said nothing in response.
‘Suit yourself, tight-lipped sod,’ she said.
After the bulk of the examination had been performed, internal organs weighed and measured and the dead man scrutinised for signs of foul play visible to the naked eye, the pathologist scowled.
‘Well?’ Van den Bergen asked, hoping she had not noticed he had been looking anywhere but at the body for most of the procedure. ‘We found a big bag of mephedrone on him. It was odd that his stash hadn’t been taken. Are we looking at a simple drug-related stabbing?’
Marianne tutted. Looked perplexed. ‘This is the weird thing,’ she said. Snapping off her gloves in silence. Scrubbing her arms to the elbows. Silent all the while. ‘He’s clearly lost a lot of blood because he was stabbed with something in the carotid artery. Whoever did it knew what they were doing. The wound is about two inches deep, as though it’s been done with those home-made weapons you get in prisons.’
‘A shiv.’
‘Exactly. The wound is conical, but there’s no evidence of a blade. At first I thought he’d been stabbed with a stake or maybe one of those conical stoppers you get for wine bottles.’
Van den Bergen crossed one long leg over the other, bouncing his fur-lined boot on his knee. Finally, he pulled his beanie hat off and ruffled his thick, prematurely white hair. ‘It’s possible. Don’t rule it out at this stage. We haven’t found a weapon anywhere near the crime scene.’
Marianne pulled up another chair and sat beside him. ‘No, but the thing is, there are traces of water in the wound. I don’t get it. And though he lost pints of blood, his actual cause of death was suffocation. That’s what I was alluding to when I said there were lacerations and bruising in and around his mouth and nose.’
‘What?’ Van den Bergen leaned closer to her. Scrutinising the fine lines around her eyes and the hollows beneath her cheekbones, where long-distance running had stripped the fat away.
‘Someone shoved snow up his nose and