The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows: A gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat

‘What about criminal empires in countries where the Roma live?’ George asked.

‘Shqipëtar,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘It’s an Albanian legend.’

At her side, Sophie started to nod. She closed her eyes, as though Graham was about to give a virtuoso performance. ‘It refers to the Son of the Eagle,’ she said.

Graham rubbed his earlobe. ‘Albanian legend has it that there was an eagle soaring in the sky with a fat, venomous snake in its mouth, right?’ He sniffed his fingers. ‘Below it, the eagle’s defenceless eaglet lay in the nest, watched by a young man.’

‘What young man?’ George asked.

‘It’s not important. Just this young man. Anyway, when the eagle dropped the snake, presuming it to be dead, the snake fell into the nest, right? Apparently it was still alive. So, it was about to attack the eaglet, but the youth shot it with an arrow. Then, the youth takes the eaglet but is confronted by its parent …’

‘The eagle,’ Sophie said. Grinning.

‘Right. The eagle who thought the youth was deliberately kidnapping its offspring. So anyway, the eagle realises the boy had saved the eaglet and …’

George checked her phone again. ‘I’m listening. Go on.’

Bunched eyebrows said Graham Tokár was getting annoyed with her. ‘So, the eaglet flies over the boy for the rest of his life, acting as his guardian, and he becomes the best hunter. A real hero. The son of the eagle.’

‘What’s that got to do with—?’

‘Rumour has it that the big-wig who runs trafficking out of Albania – and lots of Roma kids get sucked into that – goes by the nickname Shqipëtar.’

‘I’ve read about him,’ Sophie said. ‘Apparently only people high up in the trafficking network know who he is, but his tentacles stretch into Western Europe.’

George frowned. She wrote three lines of notes, then ate another biscuit in silence. ‘Eagle,’ she said. It rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure why. She rifled through her memory of all the names on her homespun trafficking database but nothing resonated with her. Thought about the pile of handwritten notes from her women’s prison sessions. They, at least, were still at Aunty Sharon’s. There was something in among those notes. Something that almost clicked but didn’t quite. Eagle. She needed to get out of this air-conditioned box and get her hands on that paperwork while her hunch was still fresh.

She stood abruptly. Stuck out her hand. ‘Bye, then. Thanks for the biccies.’

Outside, Sophie ran after her. ‘You are such a dick!’ she said. ‘I thought you were cool, but you’re really not. You’re a fucking … a fucking …’ Her attractive face screwed up in undisguised irritation.

‘Psychopath?’ George offered, walking as briskly as the poorly gritted pavement would allow. She headed towards the Palace of Westminster, the pale stone towers of which seemed to reach up into the white sky; trying to poke a hole in snow-heavy clouds so that they might pull more clement weather forth.

Sophie grabbed her arm.

George shook her loose. ‘Please don’t touch me. I don’t like being touched unless I invite it.’

Halting by Victoria Tower Gardens, which was playing host to a pack of American school kids engaged in a snowball fight, Sophie swung her satchel across her body. ‘I don’t think I want to work with you. Sally seemed to be describing another bloody person. You’re strange!’ Sophie looked her up and down. Those green eyes were now judgemental and hard.

By the time George had thought of the right thing to say to her, Sophie had crossed the road and was already some two hundred yards away, making for St. James’s Park tube, in all likelihood. ‘Fucking hippies!’ George said, thinking wistfully of her former landlord, Jan. He had been one for grabbing her in suffocating hugs. But he had never condemned her. She was torn. She wanted to like Sophie. Found her charismatic. But … perhaps she was becoming strange.

Bound for Waterloo Station, she crossed Westminster Bridge, barely glancing up at Big Ben as it chimed 4 p.m.

Darkness had already fallen. Her breath steamed on the air, catching the light cast from the street lamps. Workers, heading home early in the bitter chill, passed her by. Her heart was heavy. Her feet were leaden. County Hall seemed a long way away, on the other side of the river. The train station, even further.

‘Eagle,’ she said, dodging a red Routemaster that spattered grey slush over the pavement. Aunty Sharon said the new buses weren’t a patch on the old. ‘Son of the Eagle.’

As she traversed the slippery backstreets behind county hall, making her way down to York Road, she saw the homeless making their beds for the night in doorways. Begging for spare change. Selling the Big Issue. Many were drinking super-strong lager and cosying up to their dogs. The lucky ones had cocooned themselves inside cardboard boxes. Poor bastards.

The smell of urine was strong, even in this cold. She shied away from them. When one of the forlorn figures lurched at her from who the hell knew where, she balked.

‘I’m skint, mate!’ she cried, clutching her bag close.

But the face was familiar.

‘You!’ George said, scrutinising the woman’s pinched features, barely concealed by the hood of an old, soiled parka.

The woman’s blue eyes were sharp, focused on her goal. ‘If you want the laptop back, I need a thousand in cash.’

George grabbed her arm, pulling her close so that she could smell the woman’s stale breath. No alcohol on it. She smelled thirsty and of sore throat. ‘You been stalking me? Have you been to my fucking place in Cambridge. Was it you?’

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘But I know where your laptop is. You can have that and the stick back. Intact. For a thousand in cash. I’ll come to your aunts. Call the police, and I’ll make sure it’s destroyed.’

‘But … I haven’t got—’

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.’

CHAPTER 15

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 conceal the irritation in her voice, ‘I’m sick of this.’ She wiped her cousin’s toothbrush on her dressing gown, poised to return it to the beaker, then noticed the beaker had a layer of toothpaste spatter in the bottom and started to wash it out with one hand. She clutched the phone in the other hand as though it were her lover’s cheek. ‘I love you. You love me. We’re right for each other. We always have been. I nearly lost you once, and I’m not losing you again. So, stop dicking me around. You can’t switch me on and off like a tap. It’s not like I’m not asking you for marriage and babies.’

‘Good, because you’re not getting them.’

She wanted to flush her phone down the toilet with exasperation at that moment. ‘Fuck you, Paul! You know I’m not interested in all that!’

‘Maybe might not be right now, but once your clock starts ticking—’

‘Don’t you dare!’ She flung the beaker and five toothbrushes into the sink in anger. She noticed that the bristles of her own toothbrush had touched those of her mother’s and immediately washed it under scalding water from the hot tap. ‘Don’t you patronise me. Telling me what to do with my ovaries! And much as you’d like to be consigned to the trash heap, you bloody masochist, there’s nothing wrong with your spunk, old man. If I wanted a child – which I don’t – you’re perfectly capable of giving me one. All you need is a change of scenery, a more patient therapist and a hot fortnight between my thighs.’

On the other end of the line, she could hear her lover growling with dissatisfaction. Stubborn old bastard missed her, she was sure. She tried to keep the smile out of her voice. ‘Don’t play games with me. They’re a waste of my time. We’re on. Right? That’s it. George and Paul. I don’t own you. You don’t own me. But we fuck like Olympic champions and we fit. I can’t have you acting like we’re some failed formula you’d like to expunge from a bloody whiteboard. Now, what the hell do you want?’

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