The Girl Who Broke the Rules

Van den Bergen withdrew his phone from his coat pocket and brought up his contacts list. Scrolled down to G. There was the number. George McKenzie. He sighed deeply.

CHAPTER 1

Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, UK, 17 January

The slight man who sat facing her examined the fingernails at the ends of his slender fingers with an expression of intense concentration. George noted that they were always very clean and manicured. His lank, thinning hair hung sullenly over the shoulders of a faded blue sweatshirt. Dirty dark grey. Starting to recede at the temples. Perhaps his haggard, small-featured face might once have been attractive, given its delicate, perfectly symmetrical bone structure. George shuddered at this thought that had popped, unbidden, into her mind. She averted her gaze from his hands and focussed instead on her pad.

‘Cold, Georgina?’ Silas Holm asked. A smile playing on his chapped lips, he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the tall, arched windows of the Victorian building. The perfectly white expanse of snow-heavy sky outside was carved up by peeling painted bars that stretched ceiling-wards. ‘It’s that period of architecture,’ he said. ‘Terribly draughty because of the lofty proportions, you see. Doesn’t matter how much they crank up the heating.’

His gaze found her face and focussed sharply on it, now. George McKenzie knew this much without looking up from her notes. The prison officers said his manner was always one of an attentive vicar, listening with dedicated enthusiasm to the concerns of his adoring flock. It was unclear, therefore, whether Silas Holm was staring at George because he was genuinely engaged by their conversation or whether he was simply fantasising about what he could do to the only woman he was allowed to see on a regular basis, if he still had his liberty. Either way, the fact that he had noticed her shiver – almost imperceptibly, she had thought – made George feel very itchy. She started to arrange her pens in perfectly parallel lines on the desk. Then stopped herself. Reveal nothing about you as a person or the details of your life, her Cambridge University supervisor, Dr Sally Wright had told her. Not only was Sally the senior tutor of St John’s College – the Big Boss-woman in what was otherwise still a man’s world – but she was also the country’s foremost criminologist. If she didn’t know what she was talking about where handling dangerous psychopaths was concerned, nobody did. Dress dowdily. Be on your guard. Don’t get involved.

‘What’s with the tracksuit?’ she asked, deliberately steering the focus back onto her study subject. ‘Where are your tweeds? What did you do?’

Silas Holm gave a small sigh and a resigned smile. Rapped on his leg with his knuckles. The sound was hollow. ‘What could a harmless amputee like me ever do to warrant such a petty punishment? I ask you!’

‘Well you must have done something pretty bad to have your normal clothes taken away,’ George said. ‘It’s not like you’re in prison.’ She shot a questioning sideways glance at Silas’ nurse, who was seated at the end of the desk, within reassuring reach of this small but deadly psychopath.

Graham’s muscle-bound bulk heaved up and down beneath his T-shirt. Laughing heartily. He smoothed a hand over his shaven head. ‘Dr Holm. You are funny,’ he said. His Nigerian accent was pronounced. ‘You are lucky you weren’t transferred back to high dependency. Poor Kenneth! Why don’t you tell Ms McKenzie straight about your little set-to with him?’

The small-featured face of Silas Holm appeared suddenly sharp, grey, remorseless. His voice was clipped. Words came fast. ‘No. I don’t think I will. And I don’t think it warranted being singled out this way.’ The sneer that turned his mouth into a thin, drooping line and the way that he tugged at the sweatshirt with his fingertips marked out his disdain for the garment and that place. ‘The other men look up to me.’ He shuffled in his seat, straightening his posture. But something within him clicked and the friendly smile reappeared. Locked onto George’s face with those ice-blue eyes. ‘They come to me for wisdom, the men in here,’ he told her.

‘What sort of wisdom?’ George uncapped her pen.

‘I know about the world, of course! These oiks know nothing. Most of them are semi-literate at best. I, however, am a man of learning as you know. Before I was subjected to the indignity of coming to this dump, I was celebrated in my field of expertise!’ He leaned forward and stretched his fingers out towards George’s side of the desk.

‘Back up, Dr Holm,’ Graham said calmly.

Silas colluded; withdrawing physically but somehow clinging onto the intimacy he had implied was between them by winking and keeping his voice low. ‘I won the Evelyn Baker Medal from the Association of Anaesthetists, you know.’ Nodding. Matter of fact. Trying to impress.

The session was not progressing as she had hoped. George determined to get her study subject back on track. She tapped the pencil drawing that Silas had brought along to show her. It was the most recent work, contained within a sketch pad that was full of semi-pornographic images.

‘Tell me about this, Silas,’ she said, pointing to the perfectly executed illustration of a woman in a black gimp mask – only her heavily made-up eyes were visible. Startled, yet alluring. Her mouth was contained behind a brutal-looking zip. Her nose transformed into two miserly slits in the black leather. Oddly, she was hanging by her neck from a tree bough. Hanging as though dead, which made the focussed clarity in her eyes all the more alarming. Clad in what appeared to be a black rubber leotard with the breasts and vagina cut out. Two circles. One triangle. ‘Why have you drawn her with one leg?’

Her question was met with laughter. ‘Oh, come on! You know better than to ask that of me!’ Silas said, toying with a strand of his hair almost coquettishly. ‘Am I not famed for my specialist taste in erotica?’

His tone was so smug, so arrogant, that George could not stem her response. Neither could she keep the vitriol out of her voice.

‘Is she one of your victims, Silas? Is she the prostitute from Middlesbrough that you picked up, strangled, partially dismembered and then masturbated over? Oh no! Silly me. Perhaps she was the prostitute from Nottingham, whose arms were found in your freezer at home? Mother of four. First time on the streets because she owed a loan shark money from Christmas. Last time on the streets because you strung her up from the railings of a local school. Or maybe one of the four others that we know about.’

‘Ms McKenzie!’ Graham said, raising his eyebrows.

George’s red mist cleared and revealed a grinning Dr Silas Holm.

‘The trial was a shambles,’ Silas said, flicking his tongue over his narrow, discoloured incisors. ‘I’m putting together a case that I plan to take to the High Court. It was all circumstantial evidence and I intend to get out of this hellhole.’ He examined his fingernails again. Sighed. ‘Anyway, if you must know, that is a portrait of a famous Latvian beauty who stars in all the very best erotic horror films. Quality productions. I was quite a fan before coming in here. I think I got her eyes just right.’

Scratching away at her pad, noting down the salient detail of his response, George considered her next question.

‘Do you find your own artwork arousing?’

No response.

‘What is it about amputation that interests you sexually?’

No response. Silas was peering up at the bars on the windows. He seemed no longer to be listening.

‘Silas!’ George was careful to keep the impatience out of her voice this time. It was a difficult game of cat and mouse with Silas Holm. On the one hand, she found him repugnant, although he was always perfectly calm and charming when she visited, putting her in mind of a great white shark circling slowly, just beneath the surface of shallow waters. On the other, she needed his responses for her study. She knew how lucky she had been to gain access to this place and to secure the willing participation of men like him. Keep a lid on it, George. A psycho like him will never stay quiet for long.

‘In your opinion, Silas, did the pornography you used on the outside in any way influence the manner in which you killed your victims? The strangulation. The dismemberment.’

Seemingly bored now, Silas flung his arms behind his head and rolled his eyes. ‘Did you see that thing in the news about the eviscerated fishermen? That was quite a story. But Kenneth switched the television over to some tawdry soap. Most annoying.’

Dumbfounded. George stopped writing. Stared at him. ‘What has that got to do with your violent sexual proclivities and pornography?’

Silas stood and bowed with a flourish. ‘Always lovely to see you, Georgina.’ He picked up his sketchpad from the desk and nodded to Graham. ‘Lunchtime! I’m famished.’

The frustration of not having got what she needed abated incrementally, with each security door that clanged shut behind her, giving way finally to relief that she had completed another session with one of Broadmoor Hospital’s most infamous and dangerous residents, without sustaining any personal injury – physical, at least. Only once she had had her mobile phone returned to her at reception did she discover the text from van den Bergen. His words caught her breath.

CHAPTER 2

Amsterdam, the set of a porn film, then, Sloterdijkermeer allotments, later

Watching the actress swig from her bottle of Evian was fascinating. She had such ridiculously full lips from too much collagen filler that merely drinking from a sports-cap looked like an obscene act. Her peroxide blonde hair hung in over-processed clumps down her back. Off camera, the cellulite on her thighs and backside was visible between the straps and buckles of the bondage gear. The inverted ‘T’ scarring beneath her bare breasts gave the augmentation away, of course, destroying the illusion of perfectly buoyant, round orbs. But despite the actress’ flaws, she was striking. Still young. The high cheekbones. The good skin. The bright eyes. Naturally white teeth and an otherwise perfectly worked-out body, with its sculpted obliques and defined triceps. This one was an ideal specimen. Healthy. And these porn actresses were such readily available raw material for a killer, whose job it was to hang out in a professional capacity on the sets of erotic film shoots. Easy pickings. Tarts with hearts of gold.

The actress approached, strutting in those ten-inch platforms. Smiling. Kisses on both cheeks, followed by something on the mouth that was overly familiar and tender.

‘Hey! How are you, darling? I didn’t see you there. Nice to have you on set.’

Her English was good for an Eastern European of humble origins. Though this woman was humble no longer. She was revered in her circle. Seemed almost a shame, but then, business was business.

‘We still going for that drink we talked about?’

Wide-eyes betraying excitement or was it the line of coke the actress had hoovered up as the director had shouted ‘Cut’ on the previous scene? She reached out with a manicured hand. Her caress was gentle. Flirtatious and promising.

‘Why not,’ she said. ‘When I finish here, right? Just you and me. I’d like that.’

She turned to walk away, poised to resume her position, artfully strung between two posts on some medieval-style wooden contraption that looked like the base of a trebuchet. Where did they get these ridiculous ideas from? The red stripes on her back looked livid.

‘Do those hurt?’

The actress looked back and smiled archly. Raised a plucked eyebrow. ‘Makeup, sweet thing. You should know that!’

No damage. That was good. And the space was prepared. Perfect.

Van den Bergen sat on a camping stool inside his gloomy cabin, which was situated on a prime plot in Sloterdijkermeer’s allotment complex. He had no intention of gardening, of course. Outside, the frozen ground was too unyielding to work, but the afternoon half-light and silence of a freezing cold super-shed was preferable to enduring another afternoon at the station, gawping into the existential void. Listening to that frog-eyed prick, Jaap Hasselblad, pontificate about the girl they had found.

‘This is a sex pervert. Mark my words!’ Hasselblad had announced. ‘Round up the nutters and serial jerk-offs. Bring them all in for questioning. We can’t have a dangerous woman-hating psycho on the loose.’

Just because he was the commissioner and had recently been on a criminal psychology refresher course, Hasselblad thought he knew everything. That uniform-clad, industrial strength arse-kisser had not done a day’s decent detective work in about fifteen years, van den Bergen mused. Why did he always end up with such utter morons above him?

He cracked open a can of Heineken and swallowed down a tablet for gastric reflux. Thumped himself on the chest as the beer winded him. No, Hasselblad’s field of expertise was drinking Kir Royale in Michelin-starred brasseries with slimeball politicians and the other top brass.

‘Guy’s a wanker,’ van den Bergen told the poster of Debbie Harry that was fastened to a damp wooden wall. Curling up in one corner and mottled with mould. ‘He’s no better than Kamphuis.’ He raised his can to the once universally adored singer. ‘Just me and you, kiddo. We don’t need them.’ Then, he turned to the mildewed photo of his father that sat on the table amongst empty pots, seedling trays and a split bag of ericaceous compost. ‘Five years.’ Made a contemplative clicking noise with his tongue and breathed out heavily. ‘Five years, now. Long time.’ A fleeting memory of his father, sitting in a chemo chair at the hospital, with the hopeful poison running into his wasted, sinewy arms through a drip. ‘Miss you, old man. I hope you’re somewhere better. Cheers!’

Van den Bergen drank the freezing lager and was surprised and angered by the tears that seemed to leak from his eyes unbidden. For the second time that day, he thumbed out a text to George, telling her the other dreadful thing that had happened. But as he was about to press send, the phone rang.

‘Van den Bergen. Speak!’

‘It’s Daan Strietman,’ a man said.

‘Who?’

‘Marianne’s colleague. Forensic Pathology. We met last May at her birthday party. Remember?’

Van den Bergen cast his mind back to a balmy evening, standing on the balcony at Marianne’s apartment, wishing he didn’t have to make small talk with her inane boyfriend, Jasper, who had brought that sap, Ad Karelse, along because George had been in England and Karelse was ‘lonely’. Boo hoo. What a pity. He had no recollection of a Daan Strietman. ‘No. Where the hell is Marianne?’

‘Norovirus. Listen, come and see me. I’ve finished the autopsy on your Jane Doe.’

‘And?’

‘Oh, you’ll be interested in this! I’ve never seen anything like it.’

CHAPTER 3

Soho, London, later

Are u coming back? the text demanded to know. I miss u. xxx

Ad had only been holed up at Aunty Sharon’s for three days, this time, and already he was moaning he was bored. He had British television to watch, for God’s sake. In all its multi-channelled, digital and Sky Plus glory. In fact, Aunty Sharon had a dish on top of her garage that was so big and contravened local authority regulations by such an excessive margin, that he could probably pick up broadcasts from outer space, if he used his initiative. How could he possibly be bored? Or he could simply go for a walk. Okay, so maybe a white boy going for a walk down the high street of Aunty Sharon’s South East London neighbourhood at dusk was not such a bright idea. But still…

‘Stop nagging, man!’ she told the phone. Typed out her response:

Missing u 2. Back by 9.x

One kiss. One was enough. The three were getting on her nerves. Always three, sent and expected in return. He was being demanding.

‘I’ve come over here especially,’ he had said; hurt visible in those sensitive brown eyes. ‘I don’t understand why you can’t take time off.’

What was there for him to understand? The bills didn’t pay themselves. After all, he had just turned up on her doorstep. A surprise wooing that she hadn’t solicited, using birthday money from his parents for the flight. Bet they didn’t know he was squandering it on his English girlfriend. That sour-faced cow, his mother, certainly wouldn’t have given the trip her blessing. Wonder what excuse he’d given them this time? Four years of excuses.

Ad would just have to suck it up.

In the confines of her store cupboard, George squatted on the floor and checked that the thick wad of notes she had taken from her morning meeting with Silas Holm was securely zipped away in the side pocket of her bag.

‘Holm’s such a perv,’ she told the mop.

She donned her polyester overalls and changed into her beat-up old sneakers. Filled the bucket with hot, bleachy water at the crackle-glazed Victorian butler’s sink, shoved a range of cleaning products into her deep pockets and emerged into the dimly lit fug of the club. The air was rank with heady, synthetic air fresheners, barely masking the cheap, over-perfumed smell of the girls; the floor sticky with spilled alcohol from the night before.

‘Ciao, bella!’ the manager said, checking his watch. He leaned in for a kiss, which George dodged.

She slammed the heavy bucket onto the floor and started to wring the mop out. Mop, mop, mop by his feet, almost soaking his hand-stitched loafers and brown Farah slacks. ‘Wotcha, Derek. Sorry I’m a bit late. I’ve been rushing around interviewing people. Part of my doctorate, you know?’

Out of earshot of the girls, who were already limbering up on the poles or else in the back, exchanging squealed gossip about the previous night’s punters whilst they back-combed their hair, Derek rounded on her. Grabbed her by the arm. Whispering sharply so that nobody else could hear.

‘Not fucking Derek! Giuseppe. I told you.’ His grip was sharp – the kind of grip George might have expected from a ratty-looking man who ran a titty bar.

Wanting to knock his ill-fitting toupee from his head but resisting, George pulled her arm free. ‘Get off! Just because you’re my boss and Aunty Sharon’s your barmaid doesn’t give you the right to manhandle me,’ she said. ‘Anyway, you were Derek when you were with Aunty Sharon. What changed?’

He stood poker-straight momentarily and eyed George. A thin-lipped mouth and puffy eyes from too many late nights and vodkas. Aunty Sharon said he had been a royal pain in the arse, but generous with it. Here, beneath the half-light of dusty crystal chandeliers, however, with no other employees within earshot, George didn’t like his expression at all.

‘Sharon was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘But me and her are still good mates. Only ’cause of her working here and being something more than a colleague to me that you got this job, right? And I’m running in different circles, now. So, if I say I’m Giuseppe de Falco and not Derek, then it’s Uncle Giuseppe to you. Like the other girls. Uncle Fucking Giuseppe. Same as Daddy Fucking Warbucks, but more Italian.’

‘Suit yourself, Uncle G,’ George said, sucking her teeth and steeling herself to desist from drowning his loafers with mop water.

When she sprayed the brass handrail of the staircase that led down into the club with anti-bacterial spray, she did so with venom. When she wiped the laminate fixtures and PVC upholstery, she applied the rough, hot cloth with something bordering on aggression. Polishing mirrors, dappled with greasy fingerprints and, in the VIP area, traces of coke. Wiping semen from the walls of the men’s toilet cubicles. Unblocking the women’s toilets that choked with stinking discarded tampons and paper towels. It was demeaning, backbreaking work. But the job earned her an honest crust, where her PhD funding wouldn’t quite stretch to trips to Amsterdam and the odd night of decadence inside London’s better clubs. At least the act of cleaning was therapeutic. Especially after spending a morning with Silas Holm. Especially for someone like George.

As she polished the metal pole on the main stage, she paused to check her phone again. Peered in the gloom at the glowing screen which offered up van den Bergen’s alarming, unanswered words.

CHAPTER 4

Amsterdam, mortuary, later

‘Paul. Thanks for coming.’ The wholly unfamiliar man stood in the spot that Marianne usually graced, by the side of the steel mortuary slab.

Van den Bergen refused to shake his latex-clad hand. ‘It’s Chief Inspector van den Bergen. And I prefer to deal with Marianne,’ he said.

He looked this interloper up and down, though it was difficult to get the full measure of him in his scrubs. He looked young. Fresh face and shiny eyes. Certainly in his early thirties. And small. Though at six feet five, van den Bergen could see the top of pretty much everyone’s heads as they scrabbled about beneath him. Maybe the guy wasn’t small. But he definitely had the upright posture of a cocky little arsehole, van den Bergen decided, and he wasn’t the lovely Marianne de Koninck.

Daan Strietman smiled at him. ‘I’m her number two. You knew that, right, Paul? She introduced us at the party. Ha! You’re such a funny guy. You’re pulling my leg, now, aren’t you?’

‘No.’ Van den Bergen scratched at his aching hip. Fingered his scabbed-up knuckles. Hadn’t he just told this idiot he was Chief Inspector van den Bergen? Was this guy deaf? And where did this notion of funny come from? ‘I want number one. If I want second best, I’ll—’

Daan put his clipboard and pen down. Slapped van den Bergen across the back in a chummy style. ‘Look, your Jane Doe’s in good hands, big feller.’

‘But Marianne… She was at the scene this morning.’

‘I told you. She’s ill. Throwing her guts up. Forget Marianne. Okay?’

Van den Bergen noticed a pause before the okay, which meant Daan Strietman had finally decided that being challenged by a policeman was not okay, even if it was by a senior one. He smiled again. What was with all the smiling? Was this guy simple? The smile disappeared once the idiot noticed his scabbed knuckles.

‘Just give me the lowdown on my victim, Strietman. Okay?’

Now that she was on the slab, van den Bergen was hoping the girl would look like any other cadaver – a spoiled mannequin, devoid of any remaining trace of vitality; deserted by her humanity, so that only an abstract husk was left; dissected like an oversized scientific experiment. He would find it easy to give a corpse like that the once-over and then listen to the pathologist’s report. But she didn’t, this Jane Doe. Her elfin face, framed by the wisps of black curly hair that still remained – after her cranium had been removed to allow examination of her brain – was outlandishly at odds with those unseeing eye sockets, staring out at him. Ghoulish. Vulnerable. Her dark skin, which must have been a warm hue when she had breath in her body, was flat grey. But so slight was her build with those spindly little arms and legs, so lost did she look in the aseptic white glare of the mortuary’s overhead lights, that van den Bergen had to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. He almost felt compelled to hug the girl, though she had been utterly disembowelled both by her murderer and by the process of the post mortem. George was slightly built like that. George’s skin was dark like that.

Feeling momentarily dizzy, he steadied himself on the steel sink at the dead girl’s feet.

Daan Strietman chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t have put an old hand like you down as squeamish! You want to sit?’

Van den Bergen glared at him. ‘I’m not squeamish.’ He pointed to his ear. ‘I have this balance thing. Sometimes it… Anyway. What did you find?’