the stairs. Collected the bucket containing his trowel and saw.
‘You seen the rest of my tools?’ he asked the others.
They replied that they hadn’t. He shrugged. They’d be around. Trudged to the top. There was a strange smell on the air. Something more than just dust, damp and rotten wood. The precise nature of the scent eluded him. Never mind. He’d have a cigarette and a coffee from the flask Krystyna had made him, first. Fuck Stefan!
As he passed beneath the threshold that marked the smaller of the attic rooms, he heard Michal shout downstairs.
‘Someone’s been in! Back door’s been jemmied, by the looks.’
‘Anything taken?’ Stefan shouted between floors.
Iwan backed onto the landing and bellowed down the stairwell, ‘My drill is still here. They’d have taken that. You sure you’re not still pissed, Michal?’
‘Nothing missing here,’ Stefan shouted. ‘Have a good look round, lads. Then, screw the door shut for now. Can’t have cats or squatters getting in.’
Iwan nodded. Sighed. Progressed beyond the threshold, traversing the smaller ante-room that would be divided into a hallway and en suite to a master. Entered the main room. The one with the window. The one he had been dreading entering. He dropped his drill case and bucket. Screamed. Then, he vomited over the steel toecaps of his boots.
Amsterdam, police headquarters, later
Van den Bergen was sitting in the disabled cubicle on the top floor. Clutching at his spasming stomach. Contemplating the frenzy of excitement that had been almost palpable during the press conference. Imagining the dressing-down he was going to get from Hasselblad when he eventually emerged from his hideaway. His throat burned as though he had swallowed razor blades. Maybe he wasn’t coming down with a throat infection. Perhaps he was just hoarse from talking to George for ninety minutes or more, in the freezing cold of the small hours. Last night. Seemed a lifetime ago now.
‘Paul, you’re driving me mad,’ she had said. Whispering at almost normal pitch above the noise of what could have been an extractor fan. Her voice sounding tinny, as though she were in a tiled space like the bathroom. ‘Just spit it out. What the hell have you done?’
He had sighed. ‘I’m struggling. I’ve been…you know? And I took these…’
‘What? What did you take, you silly bastard?’
‘Too many codeine.’
There had been a silence that he wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to breach.
‘You telling me you OD’d?’
He had nodded, though she couldn’t see him, sitting as he was on the end of his bed in his pants and his frayed work shirt. Head in his left hand, staring dolefully at his bare feet.
‘You okay? Paul? Speak to me!’
‘They pumped my stomach. I’m fine, now,’ he had lied.
In the ensuing silence, he had held the phone close against his heart and let out a silent sob. Glad that nobody was watching. Took a deep breath and returned the phone to his ear. ‘It’s all getting on top of me. I—’
‘For God’s sake, Paul, get some help. Go to Narcotics Anonymous or something. See a doctor. Anything. But acknowledge you’ve got a problem.’
‘Come over.’
‘How can I just drop everything and come running? To Amsterdam! It’s not round the corner. And you’re not the only one with commitments. I’m in the middle of a PhD. I’ve got Ad here, for Christ’s sakes!’
‘Oh?’
It had not been his intention to let that out, and especially not in that piqued tone. An indicator of how he felt about Karelse. Nearly four years on, and his resolve to keep his misgivings about George’s boyfriend to himself had morphed into regular, semi-naked scorn.
‘Stop! Before you start, just bloody stop!’ George had warned him.
So, he had quickly changed the subject and told her about the first dead girl, then the gruesome discovery of the second earlier that evening. An equally troublesome scenario, where a woman’s mutilated body had been found naked, dumped in a public place. And yet, nobody had seen a thing. Not yet. She didn’t have enough face left to make an ID possible. Strietman had bleated on about ritual sex killings yet again. Worse still, Hasselblad agreed.
‘What are the similarities?’ George had asked.
Van den Bergen picked at his toenail and recalled the second victim’s body on the slab. ‘Unzipped from neck to vagina. Disembowelled. Organs removed. Signs of rough sexual intercourse and lacerations on her back commensurate with a whipping. Similar scarring on her breasts that suggest maybe the same guy had given her a breast augmentation as performed the caesarean on the first girl.’
At the other end of the phone, it was easy to detect George’s immediate interest. The silence and quickening of her breath said it all. Two unidentified women. Mutilation. Probable sexually motivated murders. After all these years, van den Bergen knew which buttons to push to get her intellectually fired up. He certainly knew better than that loser, Karelse, who wouldn’t know finesse if it was a silk-clad fist, punching him in the face. That mamma’s-boy had no mastery of the subtle art of manipulation. You needed years of wisdom to really get a feel for that. If he could only get George hooked on the case, perhaps she’d come over. Visit. Stay a while. But her silence continued for a couple of beats beyond what might pass for curiosity.
‘You think you can lure me over there with this?’ George asked.
Not so subtle. How the hell did she know? Maybe he was losing his touch.
‘I’m not trying to lure—’
‘I’m hanging up, Paul. Go see your doctor.’
‘But George, you could work as a profiler. You always said you’d love to do that. We could be a team.’
‘You don’t need me to solve this case! You’re a pro.’
‘It’s the perfect opportunity for both of us. Think about it!’
‘Tell me you’re not going to try any more funky OD bullshit.’
He gave her silence this time. Hated himself for not responding. As manipulation went, he knew this was low.
‘Hanging up. Night.’
The line had gone dead and he was left in the oppressive loneliness of his bedroom, clutching the phone to his cheek, as though the smooth warmth of the casing were her face.
Checking the phone’s display now, in the privacy of the disabled cubicle, he contemplated sending her an apologetic text. Started to type
