Read The Girl Who Broke the Rules Online
Authors: Marnie Riches
The Girl Who Broke the Rules (7 page)
Of course, there was the hunt for the next subject to look forward to. And it would be imperative to keep an eye on that tall policeman who was heading up the case. The haunted-looking one with the white hair. Perhaps a little trip out to his apartment was in order. The view was astoundingly clear and uninterrupted from the street below…
At home, as the pan of pasta boiled, van den Bergen leaned over the kitchen worktop. Clutched at his stomach.
‘Jesus, help me,’ he implored a God he had no faith in whatsoever.
The pains were sharp tonight. Presenting near his kidneys. Perhaps he had kidney failure. Was that one of the symptoms? Maybe. He would Google it, although George had told him the internet was not his friend, as far as Googling illness was concerned. Every spasm, every ache, every blemish was cancer. Fast-forward to the apocalypse. He’d been that way for a long time. But now the five-year mark was upon him, it was worse. And, of course, he had something legitimate to worry about, given what he had stupidly done to his body.
He stared down at his phone, as if that had the answers. ‘Text back, goddamn it!’
Reflected in the shine of the grey tiled splashback, he considered the fragmented representation of himself that stared back at him. A scowling middle-aged man with sunken cheekbones and dark patches under his eyes. Glasses hanging at the end of a chain around his neck atop an old shirt that had a frayed collar. All wrapped up in a moth-eaten cardigan he’d had since 1995.
‘You’re a mess!’ he shouted at the grey cubist counterfeit. ‘Who would ever find you attractive? Not Andrea, that’s for sure.’ He conjured an image in his mind’s eye of his ex-wife. Happy now, with that balding prick, Groenewalt. Both of them living high off the hog thanks to the maintenance payments he still had to fork out from his modest chief inspector’s salary; atoning for a teen romance that outlived its natural best-before-date because of Tamara’s arrival. A marriage which had now been defunct for more than a decade. No, that hard-faced cow, Andrea, wouldn’t look twice at him any more. ‘Tamara thinks her dad’s some geriatric joke, too. And George…’
Feeling irritation bite, he dug his long finger inside the frayed hole in the shirt fabric and ripped along the collar’s edge. ‘Sort yourself out, van den Bergen. Get a fucking haircut!’
When the pasta pan started to spit water all over the hob, he flung it into the sink in temper, fusilli everywhere. Poured himself a glass of orange juice. Downed two codeine and winced.
He was poised to call George when his phone rang shrilly.
‘Van den Bergen. Speak!’
It was Elvis. Sounding hyper. As if Elvis sounded anything apart from bloody wired, like a kid on sugar. ‘We were just finishing up, boss, when we got a call.’
Involuntarily, he groaned down the phone at his detective. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Sorry, boss. I know you’re coming down with this stomach thing or something but—’
‘Spit it out.’
‘There’s another body. A woman. Left at the back of the Norderkerk.’
Van den Bergen sighed. Hastily grabbed a fistful of almost-boiled pasta from the bottom of the sink. Poised to down this makeshift dinner to keep the codeine company. ‘I’m on my way.’
‘Hey. You’re back,’ Ad said, sleepily.
He rolled over, putting himself at the edge of the single bed, facing her. Flicked back the duvet, so she could clamber in and nestle into his bare chest. Groggy. He had only half-slept, of course. One ear constantly on alert for the key in the door. It wasn’t lost on him that she’d actually returned from work a full hour ago, and had sat downstairs with Sharon, swigging that drink they drank. What was it? Rum n Ting. Conspiratorial giggling about something or other. He only hoped he wasn’t the butt of their jokes. But how could he be? He’d been there for more than forty-eight hours and had only seen George for about three of those in a state of wakefulness. ‘Good day?’
‘Knackering,’ she said.
Failing to ask him about his day, which he had spent sprawled on Aunty Sharon’s fishy sofa, propped on overstuffed cushions that stank of baking and hairspray, watching some daytime soap on television called
Doctors
. Stuffing his face with fruitcake to stave off boredom.
George disrobed and pulled on a baggy T-shirt that sported some musician’s name. One of those English acts he didn’t recognise. Dubstep something or other. Maybe that wasn’t even a musician. He couldn’t keep up with George’s likes and dislikes. Deep house. Garage. Old skool. It was an entirely different language for a small-town Groningen boy like him; serving only to estrange, where once it had exerted a strong, magnetic pull. But still. She was a sight for sore eyes, even silhouetted against the landing light.
‘Come here, hard working genius. I’ve missed you.’ He had kisses for her, filled with desperation and longing and ardour and not a little disappointment. Here was his erection, pressed into her warm, voluptuous body. ‘Oh, I love you so much.’ A hand between her legs. He would show her how he had been thinking of her all day long. Surely, she must have given him some thought, in amongst her mysterious schedule of ‘research’ and ‘work’, none of which she ever expanded on.
George pushed him away. Treated him to a peck on the cheek. ‘Aw, I’m sorry, Ad. Do you mind if we don’t?’ Turned her back on him and shuffled to the other side. ‘I’m proper shattered. I’ve not stopped all day.’
In such a narrow bed, his knees inside her knees, his erection touching her bottom technically counted as spooning. Didn’t it? Spooning was what you did when you were in a comfortable relationship. He could definitely do spoons.
Deflating slowly, he asked, ‘How come you’re always back so late? Last night. You were even later. I asked and you never answered me.’
There was a pause. A considered intake of breath.
‘Sometimes new people turn up. Last night, there was a bit of a set-to between Aunty Sharon and the manager. Then, there was some mess to clean up. I had to work longer, is all. It’s one of those jobs. It’s complicated. I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
In the darkness, breathing in the musty smell of old wallpaper and eavesdropping on the soporific sound of passing cars, at odds with the disconcerting whistles of insomniac youths, roaming the local streets and up to no good (he knew he was beginning to sound like his mother), he decided privately that she was being evasive. He wasn’t even entirely sure what ‘one of those jobs’ constituted. Cleaning something or other, though he didn’t know where. He would quiz her about it over breakfast, before he left for the airport.
When her phone buzzed insistently at 2am and she left the bedroom to answer it, he made another mental note to quiz her about that over breakfast too.
Laughter trilled from somewhere along the hall, carried laterally to the sleeping, dreaming girl along with a rotten perfume of cigarette smoke and alcohol. Though it was ring-fenced beyond several thick walls, the tendrils of this throbbing organism – her mother’s own experiment in grafting rare cultivars with exotic pond life and social climbers, fed by hedonism and infamy – crept under her bedroom door nonetheless.
The Police were in attendance, reggae beats syncopating badly with the even rhythm of her dream. Sting’s voice ushering her towards wakefulness. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Daddy’s home: sitting with his legs crossed in the modest garden of their large Mayfair townhouse, reading a medical journal in summery warmth. Watching him intermittently, revelling in his presence, she frolicked with her mother’s beloved terrier, Rudi, beneath the whippy branches of their small maple tree. Helping Gretchen to pour into glasses the cloudy lemonade, which, standing on a chair, she had helped to make and which she and her father would now drink together.
Except Daddy wasn’t home. And the thud, thud, thud of Blondie’s beating glass heart pushed sleep further and further away from the girl on unforgiving waves of sound, until she realised that this was neither their London house, nor their Berlin residence, nor the villa in Juan les Pins.
More laughter. Men’s this time. Deep and throaty. Glasses clinking.
Consciousness had taken a hold of her fully, now. The comforting dream had slipped beyond her recall. Soft Cell were complaining, instead, of having to endure ‘Tainted Love’. Staring at the high ceiling of that New York apartment, she considered that she might have liked that music, given half a chance. She was at an age, after all, where she had just started to take an interest in the charts.
Top of the Pops
on their television in London. American Billboard’s Hot 100. Full of new, exciting bands. Boys with lipstick, wearing black. Cheap-looking, stubby keyboards sporting mysterious names like Roland and Yamaha, that were a world away from the grand piano in the music room, at which she sat for hours every week, having Mozart drummed into her reluctant fingers by that stern old hag, Frau Bretschneider. Both instrument and teacher had been imported all the way from Berlin, like Mother’s favourite dinner service. But Mother and her friends were greedy. They had claimed the youthful synthesised beats as theirs. Though in truth, some of Mother’s younger friends
had
created those songs, thereby distorting even the soundtrack to her childhood with her mother’s notorious celebrity and her cronies’ sycophancy. How she’d like to run away, get away from the pain it drove into the heart of her.
Advancing in her pyjamas and dressing gown down the hall, the music thudded louder. The smells became ever sharper. Those tendrils beckoned her forwards; pulling her in towards the melee. On the other side of the door, beyond which she had been expressly told by Gretchen that she must not under any circumstances venture after lights-out, she beheld the writhing organism. A gathering, at least two-hundred strong, that stretched from one end of the vast, wood-floored drawing room to the other. Semi-naked men. Suited men. Men dressed as women. Women clad in outlandish, futuristic outfits. Some, barely dressed at all, breasts jiggling as they danced. Wearing incongruous hats. Dwarves carrying platters of food on their heads which some guests stuffed lasciviously into each other’s mouths. Pyramids of white powder, which most guests were snorting enthusiastically through small tubes. Dancing, smoking, kissing and more. The sort of thing the girl did not want to see and yet, driven by an eleven-year-old’s avid curiosity for all things grown-up, a scene she was compelled to gawp at and consign to memory. It was horrible. It was wonderful. She was not sure what it was.
To the left, beneath the apartment’s tall windows, with the towers of downtown Manhattan glittering in the background, the old guard
sat in their off-the-shoulder dresses, sipping champagne with their stuffy-looking husbands. At odds in this uptown Babylon. She recognised them from the photos of her mother that often appeared within the pages of
Vanity Fair.
Lunching at Le Cirque with other thin, bouffant women.
But her mother was not seated among them. Where was she?
The girl’s gaze wandered to a far corner of the room. And there she was! Sporting enormous shoulder pads and a tiny, cinched-in waist, chatting animatedly to a man dressed in black, whose heavy spectacles and bushy white hair marked him out as some famous artist or other.
‘Mama!’ the girl shouted, advancing past a sweaty, topless man. He almost knocked the teddy bear clean out of her hand, as he danced with abandon with a sequin-encrusted he/she/it guest.
When her mother caught sight of her, her fury was self-evident. Instead of responding in their native tongue, Mama chided her in English; her transatlantic drawl made sluggish and clumsy with alcohol, the girl knew.
‘Veronica! You were told to go to bed and stay in bed.’
‘But I got woken up.’
‘Get back to bed this instant, young lady! You are very disobedient.’
Her mother grabbed her with bony, iron fingers. Dug her red nails in. The champagne stink of her rancid breath bore down on her. ‘Naughty little girl. What were you told?’
‘I miss Papa.’ The girl looked up at her mother with imploring eyes. Part of her acknowledged that she would rather be tucked in bythe homely, loving Gretchen. But she had needed to see what lay beyond The Door. And this was Mama.
Her
mother. She could not stem an instinctive, primal craving for maternal reassurance after a disconcerting dream, though she realised it would not be forthcoming. Mama took her parties very seriously. Mama had to look glamorous. Mama had to dedicate herself to her friends. It was expected.
‘Papa’s at Harvard,’ her mother shouted over the music, digging her nails in deeper. ‘You know that. He’s back next week. Then, we fly home.’ Her affected smile turned into something sinister, making the sinews in her thin, dancer’s neck seem taut and stringy. Speaking to her daughter through gritted, white teeth that seemed somehow sharper, nastier, reptilian. ‘But right now, little miss,’ the glossy brown tresses of Mama’s hair coiled and squirmed like the snakes on Medusa’s head that Veronica had peered at through parted fingers during the premiere of
Clash of the Titans
, ‘I am having a very important conversation with Andy, here, about my fundraiser for the Museum of Modern Art.’ Mama turned around and beamed warmly at the white-haired man. Gorgon’s head gone.
Back to bed, annoying little cunt
. Veronica found herself being dragged by the belt of her dressing gown. The long walk of shame across the makeshift dance floor, past the great and the good and the downright rotten of New York high society, was punctuated by several photo opportunities. Red light. Hold the front page. And pose! Whenever a flashbulb popped in their faces, Veronica registered that her mother had instantly rearranged herself into a photogenic shape. Hand on hip. One foot forward. One to the side. Knee slightly bent. Easy smile. Arm draped around Veronica’s shoulder, as though she were a novelty prop. It had been the same on the red carpet at the premiere. The blinding glare of flashing bulbs, illuminating bleach-white grins of her mama and papa. Gretchen had shown her the photos in the gossip columns the following day, above a caption that identified their family trio as ‘mining heiress and former Broadway star, Heidi Schwartz, with plastic surgeon husband and daughter’. Veronica had recognised herself in one of the photos, trudging behind Perseus, looking downright glum. Too shell-shocked by the press attention to feel excited about being close to the star of the film.