The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die: The first book in an addictive crime series that will have you gripped. Marnie Riches
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it another library? It was too far away from the camera phone for her to see any detail but she was curious.
‘It looks central. Let’s see,’ she said.
She punched up Google Streetview and found the building when it had still been whole – crisp in the daylight and discreet. Hebrew writing was just visible on the portico above the door but otherwise there were no discernible religious markings on the facade. No Star of David. But with its high-pitched roof and adjacent tower, it was unmistakeably a place of worship.
‘This is it,’ she said to Ad, tapping a fingernail on the screen.
‘A synagogue,’ he said. ‘These bastards are making a statement.’
George frowned. She made a rasping noise as she sucked her teeth. ‘This isn’t connected to the university, though. There’s no logic to any of it.’
Van den Bergen drove well in excess of 100mph to bridge the distance between Amsterdam and Utrecht. His tired body was suffused with adrenalin and a grim euphoria of sorts.
Emergency vehicles with their strobing lights beckoned him towards the mayhem.
Teun van der Putte was standing at the scene, backlit by the blaze.
‘Paul. Good,’ he said, slapping van den Bergen on the upper arm. He proceeded to fill van den Bergen in on what had happened, wincing visibly every time a sheet of glass from a nearby house blew out onto the street.
‘Any witnesses?’ van den Bergen asked. The heat was overwhelming. A thick slick of sweat had already started to cling to his body.
Teun looked over at ambulances already swallowing up casualties and at the fire trucks that lined the street – motherships, connected by hoses to their battling fire crew. He blinked hard and wiped his sooty glasses on his shirt. ‘Not a fucking thing, would you believe it?’
Van den Bergen nodded sagely. ‘Same in Amsterdam.’ He watched as evacuees trod gingerly over the glass that littered the pavement. Grimaced and wept as they looked up at the flames and their ruined apartments. ‘How many dead or injured?’
‘There’s a few neighbours with lacerations from their windows blowing in. But there didn’t seem to be anyone walking on the street when the bomb went off.’ Teun shouted over the hiss of the hoses.
‘Christmas Eve. Everyone’s either in with family or out drinking,’ van den Bergen said, watching a weeping man as he was ushered to the place of safety beyond the police cordon. Beneath the blanket that covered the man’s shoulders, van den Bergen saw that he clutched a little girl of about four to his chest. Her forehead was covered in blood.
‘It’s impossible to know how many were inside the wreckage until the fire’s out,’ Teun said. ‘But we did find a bit of what we think is the suicide bomber. As soon as we arrived. It had been blown right out of range of the fire.’
‘A bit?’
‘A big bit.’
As George applied her lipstick, she wondered if Ad had lingered well into the evening, delaying his journey home because of her. More likely because of the Utrecht bomb, she decided.
Wearing her usual tight-fitting jeans, a T-shirt that smelled strongly of washing liquid and thick Primark cardigan that had started to bobble under the arms, she had made no attempt to look festive beyond the slick of colour on her full lips. Like Jan and Katja, her makeshift Christmas family, would give a shit!
She shrugged at her reflection in the mirror. Then she picked up the framed photograph that she had got an elderly American tourist to take of her and Ad back in October. They had been standing beneath the impressive arched portico of the Rijksmuseum, which Ad had offered to show her around. She was grinning like a fool at the camera. Ad’s arm was draped around her shoulder. He smiled uncertainly, as though he had been caught with his fingers in the proverbial cookie jar.
‘Merry Christmas, Ad,’ she said.
She blew a kiss at the photograph, pulled on her Puffa jacket and left for Jan’s in good time. As she undid the locks on her bike, she looked around and missed the pair of eyes that were fixed intently on her.
‘Merry Christmas, darling,’ Katja said, showering George in sticky pink kisses.
George immediately wiped her cheek with the back of her hand like a horrified child expunging the kisses of a hairy-chinned great aunt.
Katja seemed unaware of the tacit rejection. She took off the tinsel that was hanging around her waist like a belt and wrapped it around Jan’s neck. ‘I love Christmas. Such a shame it’s not snowing. The one thing I really miss about Polish Christmases is the snow.’
Katja gazed towards the window wearing an almost wistful expression. She pulled her bright red hair back in a ponytail and quickly turned her attention to Jan’s food preparation. ‘But what the hell is that you’re cooking, darling? It looks like a dish of festive turds.’
Katja peered over Jan’s shoulder and into the large crock pot that he was stirring. George sidled up on his left and saw that he did in fact seem to be preparing stewed turds.
‘Is this some vegetarian crap?’ George asked, wrinkling her nose.
Jan banged the spoon on the side of the crock pot and looked at her with a raised eyebrow through his steamed-up Trotsky glasses. His roll-up cigarette hung artfully out of the corner of his mouth.
‘It’s sausage surprise,’ he said in an exasperated tone.
‘But I thought you were a veggie,’ George said.
‘Vegan.’
‘Vegan?’ shrieked Katja. ‘That’s a crime against nature, you hippy.’
George could see a hurt expression on Jan’s face. He pushed his glasses up to his forehead, revealing large, puffy eyebags beneath red-rimmed, small blue eyes. He spoke with his cigarette still in his mouth.
‘I’m cooking pork sausages just for you, you judgemental Polish tart. I knew you wouldn’t understand the finer philosophical points of veganism.’
George felt frivolity wash over her as she watched her landlord threaten Katja with a drippy spoon. He was wearing a batik kaftan today with his stick-thin hairy ankles clearly on view. The fact that he was cooking in bare feet made George feel slightly itchy. The fact that the kitchen floor was strewn with lentils, what appeared to be Rice Krispies and garlic peelings made her positively twitchy. But Jan in his own natural habitat full of ethnic handicrafts, burnt-down candle stubs and second-hand pockmarked furniture was still a comical sight.
‘How can a vegan cook meat in his own pots, Jan? Let alone eat it,’ George said.
Jan was still stirring conscientiously. ‘I’m a practising hypocrite. Now go and fetch me my packet of Drum from the sideboard.’
As George returned to the cooker with Jan’s pouch full of tobacco, she noticed the inch of ash from Jan’s cigarette fall into the stew. For a split second, he looked blankly at the ash, sitting on top of the sauce. Before she could comment, he sniffed and stirred it in.
George opened a bottle of strong Duvel for herself. The only way she was going to survive the food hygiene non-standards of Jan’s Christmas dinner would be to down as much beer as possible. She reasoned that the alcohol would kill off any germs in her stomach.
When George’s phone pinged with a text from van den Bergen, Katja was busy explaining how a woman could still breastfeed if silicone implants were inserted through the nipple. Jan was assembling pudding. George was busy chasing the last of the surprisingly tasty sausages around her plate, more than half way on her journey towards being medicinally