on all sides. ‘Please. I’m your best customer, aren’t I? You said it yourself. Can’t you make a call?’
There was a pause and some laboured breathing at the other end of the phone. ‘Six o’clock at the house. Bring cash and give it to Aunty Fadilla.’
Fennemans hung up, gripped his steering wheel and allowed himself to exhale slowly through pursed lips. He reached over to the glove box and took out the packet of cigarettes that he kept there as an emergency. One wouldn’t hurt. He took out the box of matches and lit up, enjoying the nicotine rush as it slapped him about the head. Smiling to himself, he tossed the match out of the car window.
‘Of course you can come in,’ Janneke’s mother said to van den Bergen, holding the door wide.
Though the rims of her eyes were bloodshot, van den Bergen could see the likeness between the mother and the photo of the dead daughter that had been stapled to the case notes, accidentally left in his in-tray by the Christmas admin temp.
She wrung her hands. ‘They’ve only just let me come back and clear up. I was at my sister’s when I heard. I don’t really want to be …’ Her words tailed off and headed down a blind alley.
Van den Bergen smelled death and grief in the air. It made his hip ache.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs Polman.’
He looked around the tidy house and felt empty on the woman’s behalf when he saw the Christmas tree with its fairy lights turned off. There was a large dark stain on the wood floor.
‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘No thanks. Can I see Janneke’s room please?’
‘But the police have already been.’ She looked helplessly towards the stairs. ‘I suppose you’re just doing your job. You’ll find him, right?’
Van den Bergen watched as Janneke’s mother’s chin dimpled up and her eyes filled with glassy tears.
‘I’ll be in the kitchen,’ she said.
In the dusty silence of the dead girl’s room, he looked around at her things and tried to get a feel for who the girl had been. Who did she know that wanted her dead? Why would somebody want to cut her throat? And what the hell was he doing here, snooping into another detective’s case when he should have been concentrating on al Badaar?
Quietly, at the back of his mind, van den Bergen acknowledged that she had been a Social and Behavioural Science student. Like Joachim Guttentag, who had just been reported missing by his parents. Both belonging to the same faculty that had been targeted by a suicide bomber. He made a mental note to get Elvis and Marie to look into Guttentag’s disappearance if he still hadn’t showed by the New Year.
He looked through her books. There were no academic texts. Nothing to indicate that she had been a studious girl. There was no makeup. No posters of bands on the walls. No photographs of boyfriends. The room had an impersonal feel to it and yet he could tell from the slept-in bedding and the drawers full of clothes that this was indeed her main abode. He decided that she had stripped from it any trace of femininity or her previous life as a student. Why? What had happened to Janneke Polman?
‘I brought you a coffee anyway,’ her mother said.
Van den Bergen jumped and turned around to see the weary woman standing against the architrave of the door. He smiled at her. ‘Thanks,’ he said. The coffee was black. He hated black coffee but he drank it anyway and steeled himself not to pull a face. ‘It’s good coffee. Listen, Mrs Polman.’
‘Call me Lydia.’
‘Lydia. Why did Janneke drop out of college?’
Lydia pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. ‘She was struggling with her studies. Weird really. She’d done so well in her first two years. Then suddenly, she starts doing really badly in class. Had trouble with her accommodation too.’
‘Didn’t she live here with you?’
‘We’re too far out here, really. She wanted to be in the centre, near all her friends. Wanted to be independent, you know. They fly the nest and you never expect to get them back.’
Lydia sighed and wiped a stray tear with shaking, work-worn fingers.
‘I thought she’d do okay when she moved in with Dr Fennemans.’
Van den Bergen cocked his head to the side and held up his enormous hand. ‘Wait. What did you say?’
Lydia was still wringing her hands, except this time, van den Bergen noticed that she was toying with something purple and woollen. A purple bobble hat that he had last seen in Central Station.
‘You?’ George said, trying not to let the alarm show in her face. Despite the calming effects of the beer flowing through her veins, her heart was thumping hard against her ribcage. ‘What do you want?’
She had only just got to the communal door and put her key in the lock. The whole of the red light district was almost empty of punters, neighbours and passersby. Now that the early evening darkness and cold had cloaked everything in semi-silence and shadow, the canal was a black, stagnant blood vessel bisecting a dead street. So, the tap on her shoulder was wholly unexpected. Inexplicably, here was Fennemans, standing two feet away from her, smiling like a creepy fucking idiot beneath the streetlight. His nose seemed more bulbous than usual. Though his bouffant hair had lost some of its va va voom, she noted. And the shaft of yellow light from above revealed the dusting of dandruff on the collar of his overcoat. He smelled of rotten meat and cheese beneath an old fashioned fug of what George recognised as Paco Rabanne.
‘I was passing this way,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You Brits make a big deal out of Christmas Day, don’t you? So, I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.’
George took her key out of the lock and stood perfectly still. She stared at him, willing him to go away.
‘Can I come up for a drink?’ he asked.
George’s mind was racing. This was wrong in so many ways. Fennemans hated her. She hated him. This was her personal space. Her turf. He was encroaching.
‘How do you know where I live?’ she asked, taking a step towards to him so that the gap between them had closed uncomfortably. She was mindful of her body language. Careful to thrust her shoulders forwards and make herself look as threatening and large as possible. This arsehole was not to get any wrong messages. Happily, he took a step backwards.
‘I’m your tutor. I just …’ The childish smile had started to fall from his face.
‘Don’t come to my home,’ George said. She felt bolstered by the 8.5 percent alcohol content in not one, but six Duvel beers. Ordinarily, she knew she would have skirted around the issue and tried to politely brush Fennemans off. But now …
‘This is inappropriate. You’re not welcome here. It’s my space. Do you understand, Dr Fennemans?’
George stood her ground, balled fists on hips. His expression changed. The smile was suddenly replaced by something else. George couldn’t tell if it was weary resignation or annoyance. It was difficult to assess under the streetlight. But all the while she stood there, willing him to walk away without a confrontation, she
