The Wrong Girl (45 page)

She dropped the gun. Forgot about the glove. If they wanted her they’d find her anyway. She lacked the talent for this.

Not a speck of his blood on the green holdall she’d lugged on the train and left beneath the seat. Hanna tucked the stray notes back inside. From what she saw it was all still there. A hundred and sixty thousand euros.

Then she went to the drawer she’d seen before. The one where he’d kept the weapon among the money and jewellery.

It was closed now but still unlocked. With trembling fingers she pulled it open. Looked at the piles of notes. Euros. Dollars. Currencies she couldn’t name.

In all the years of struggle, on the long journey from Georgia to the Netherlands, she’d never stolen, not until she met this man. And even those few notes she took two days before with the weapon that killed him still left her with a sense of shame and hurt.

No more.

She grabbed the money, placed it on top of the stacks in the holdall.

Looked at the rest of the things. The jewellery. The watches.

Picked up the necklace her husband had given her a lifetime ago in the little cottage on the edge of Gori they called home. Back when the world was whole and Natalya a little baby, their precious child, dependent on them, looking to a future full of love and hope.

No tears now. No time for them.

Hanna Bublik lifted the silver chain and stared into the amber pendant.

It was real, he’d said the night he surprised her with the gift. A piece of history. Resin from a prehistoric tree turned into a precious gem by all the long centuries. Sometimes there were insects trapped beneath its shining surface. But those pieces were expensive. Hers was plain. Yet beautiful all the same.

No more
, she thought and placed the thing back in the drawer.

That life was gone.

Hanna went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Washed the blood off her hands. Dabbed at the few spots on her brown coat.

Then, green plastic and canvas holdall tight beneath her arm, she left the weapon, the bloody glove, the corpse of the Turk behind. Went into the lift. Out into the street. Found the Prinsengracht. Marched steadily back to the Jordaan.

‘The thing is . . .’ Laura Bakker began, finger still jabbing away at Vos’s jacket.

A tall familiar shape appeared at the door. She fell silent.

Frank de Groot walked in beaming. Hung his big overcoat on the stand. Grabbed the beer Vos offered with glee.

Then he looked around and asked, ‘Where’s Mrs Bublik?’

‘I want my mum,’ Natalya said, breaking into the conversation.

‘Of course you do,’ Laura told her. ‘She’s—’

‘She’s there!’ the girl cried.

A shape across the road, visible through the long window, threading through the light traffic by Vos’s boat.

Brown coat. The spectacles were gone. She looked worn out and pensive.

Vos watched her dodge a passing taxi. Thought to himself.

De Groot was at his most charming. He opened the door, beckoned her in.

‘A drink,’ he said. ‘I know you must want to rest. You and . . .’ He beamed at Natalya. ‘Your little girl. All the same . . .’

Just a quick smile for Natalya who slid to her side, held her hand, and then Hanna Bublik asked, ‘Have you arrested anyone?’

De Groot’s cheerful demeanour stayed fixed.

‘That Russian crook. Those two Belgian creatures.’ He nodded, looked important. ‘Those three won’t see the light of day for a while.’

‘And the others?’

‘I told you, Hanna,’ Vos cut in gently. ‘It takes time. Tomorrow . . .’

‘Tomorrow,’ she repeated. ‘Natalya?’

Hand in hand they went outside. Then the girl stopped on the pavement. Sam had come to the door, whining pitifully, wagging his tail, disappointed the games had come to an end.

It was an embarrassing moment and De Groot never enjoyed those. He told Vos to deal with it then went back to chatting with Bakker and Van der Berg at the bar.

Outside Hanna Bublik caught how entranced her daughter was by the little terrier.

‘One day,’ she said as Vos came near. ‘We’ll get one.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

She looked at him. Puzzled. Perhaps worried.

‘I’m sorry, Vos. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m tired. We both are.’

‘I’m sure.’ He nodded at the holdall. ‘That looks like the bag you left on the train.’

Natalya, sensing an awkward moment, went back to the door and knelt down to talk to the dog.

‘What?’ Hanna asked too quickly.

‘It can’t be,’ Vos added quickly. ‘I know—’

‘Do you suspect everyone? Every minute of the day?’

He couldn’t take his eyes off the bag.

‘Sorry. Stupid of me.’

She sighed, closed her eyes for an instant.

‘Renata Kuyper gave me some things for Natalya. Toys and clothes her daughter didn’t need.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s her bag.’

A pause.

‘Ever the policeman. Would you like to check?’

Her eyes were on him. Begging.

‘Should I?’ he asked.

‘I just . . .’ The words were a struggle. She gripped the green holdall more tightly. ‘For God’s sake let us go, Vos. I never asked you for anything except my girl back. Now one thing more.’

She looked away and called to Natalya. The girl came straight away, held her hand, and the two of them gazed at him. They were a pair. What was left of their family.

‘Goodnight,’ Hanna said in a voice so soft he scarcely recognized it. ‘I know what’s best for us. Honestly.’

Silence. He didn’t move and nor did they.

Then she reached out and for a moment touched the lapel of his crumpled jacket.

‘Please . . .’

‘Goodnight,’ he said, as brightly as he could manage. Then tugged at his long dark locks. ‘When you learn to cut hair . . .’

Tears in her eyes. He felt guilty he’d put them there.

‘You’re my first victim. For free,’ she murmured and turned to go.

He watched the two of them cross the Berenstraat bridge then went back into the Drie Vaten and joined the others.

‘What was that about?’ Bakker asked. ‘Or am I being nosy?’

‘You’re always nosy. It was about tomorrow. She’s going to talk to the social people about getting somewhere new to live. Training for a job. Hairdressing.’

‘Good on her,’ Van der Berg said, raising his glass. ‘Too bright and decent a woman for that kind of life. Especially with that bastard Yilmaz on her back.’

De Groot was staring directly at Vos.

‘Is there anything I should know?’ the commissaris asked.

‘Such as what, Frank?’

Sam was seated at De Groot’s feet holding up the rope bone and whining for attention.

‘If I understood that I wouldn’t be asking, would I?’ the commissaris replied, still pulling at the toy.

‘It’s your round,’ Van der Berg told him. ‘I know that. Can’t remember the last time . . .’

De Groot grunted something and pulled out some cash. Vos took a small one. Bakker said no. Van der Berg was running through the bottles behind the counter, finally picking out something expensive from a Belgium monastery.

‘We should focus on that Russian and those two Belgians for now,’ Vos insisted as De Groot paid up. ‘Let’s charge them. Get them in court. See if they’ll implicate Yilmaz. Kuyper and Mirjam Fransen can wait a while. So can Hanna Bublik and her girl. They need some peace and quiet.’

‘No argument there,’ De Groot agreed.

Then he patted each of them on the shoulder and raised his glass.

‘Here’s to Sinterklaas. We got there in the end.
Proost.
’

On the other side of the canal a taxi had slowed. Two figures. One tall, one small had climbed in carrying a single big bag.

‘
Proost
,’ Vos answered and watched the car move slowly off, almost tracing the outstretched arm of the silver ballerina on his boat.

In the back of the cab, out of earshot of the driver, Natalya clutched her mother’s hand and asked, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere nice,’ Hanna said.

She called one of the all-night travel agencies and checked what flights they had still free.

Then she booked two tickets to be paid for at the airport, one under the name of Natalya Bublik, the other on Hanna’s second passport, the old one with her maiden name, carried with her all the way from Gori. It was Georgian: Tsiklauri. And felt as if it belonged to someone else.

‘Somewhere warm,’ she added when the call was finished.

Cyprus. A country she couldn’t even find on the map. But one that wasn’t picky about visas. The other East European women working the street had told her that.

She’d had to read out some details from the old passport to make the booking. Ever inquisitive, Natalya bent over to look. They both stared at the woman there. Short brown hair, like it was now. A face much younger. Fuller. Less careworn.

‘You were pretty,’ Natalya said.

‘Were?’ Hanna said with a sob.

She rubbed her cheeks with the backs of her hands and pretended to cry.

A joke between them. The way it was before.

‘You
are
pretty, Mummy,’ the girl insisted and hugged her.

Hard. Both arms around her waist, head against the brown coat. The two of them close and warm.

At Schiphol, clutching the precious holdall, they picked up the tickets then got through passport control. Close to panic, Hanna took Natalya into the toilets and padded out their pockets with money. It seemed a futile, desperate gesture. If the bag was spotted at security they’d surely be stopped and searched anyway.

But all this was new. She did what came into her head. Had to think it all through later.

When she did she changed her mind. Back into the toilets. All the money came out of their clothes.

They went into the fancy airport stores. Bought clothes and toiletries. Then a large suitcase. Too big to be hand baggage.

The store opened up the case and let her store the new clothes there. The woman assistant was friendly and offered to arrange for it all to go in the hold.

Hanna took the bag with all the money off her shoulder and said they might as well save some trouble and place that in the case too.

Then the three of them went off to see the airline desk. The case was quickly despatched to wait for them at the other end.

Thirty minutes to departure. A quick meal. Through security. Onto the half-empty plane.

Two seats by the window. No one in the aisle.

As they taxied down the runway Natalya’s head fell on her arm. Hanna held her, forced herself not to cry.

Amsterdam had been an illusion. She’d fooled herself into believing she could cope with that life. But it was all a lie. Perhaps that was why the monster came for them. As a reminder of the eternal truth: you burned the world or the world burned you.

She might have burned Pieter Vos as well. That would have been so easy. But cruel. He burned himself. And cruelty wasn’t in her nature any more than his.

They had the money. Maybe she could be a hairdresser. Or a teacher. Something . . . anything but the dead, drab nightmare they’d suffered before.

The plane charged down the runway, rose into the black sky, turned over Amsterdam.

Somewhere below lay the bloody corpse of a Turkish crook, a grim discovery that would wait two days to be found by an unsuspecting cleaner.

In another part of the city, unknown to Hanna Bublik, the bodies of Henk and Renata Kuyper stiffened in the cold of their first-floor dining room as the winter breeze stole past twinkling Christmas lights through a shattered window. Unseen until a curious Lucas Kuyper comes round the following morning, puzzled that his calls go unanswered.

The fugitive the security services knew as Khaled slumbered in a car driving at a sedate pace on the motorway into Belgium.

In his dilapidated houseboat Pieter Vos lay wide awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, Sam snoring at his feet.

Curious as ever, Natalya peered out of the window at the lights beneath them. The Canal Ring, Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, stood out like an illuminated girdle round the city.

Hanna thought of the man with his little dog and a solitary life on the water.

Vos knew she was fleeing. And still he let her go.

There was a kindness to be had in the city. But you had to discover it before the monster found you. And there she’d failed.

‘Where are we going?’ asked a sleepy young voice next to her.

‘South,’ she said.

The girl gave up on the window and snuggled beneath her arm.

South
.

Anywhere but here.

The Killing

by
DAVID HEWSON

Based on the original screenplay by Søren Sveistrup

Through the dark wood where the dead trees give no shelter Nanna Birk Larsen runs . . . There is a bright monocular eye that follows, like a hunter after a wounded deer. It moves in a slow approaching zigzag, marching through the Pineseskoven wasteland, through the Pentecost Forest.

The chill water, the fear, his presence not so far away . . .

There is one torchlight on her now, the single blazing eye. And it is here . . .

Sarah Lund is looking forward to her last day as a detective with the Copenhagen police department before moving to Sweden. But everything changes when a nineteen-year-old student, Nanna Birk Larsen, is found raped and brutally murdered in the woods outside the city. Lund’s plans to relocate are put on hold as she leads the investigation along with fellow detective Jan Meyer.

While Nanna’s family struggles to cope with their loss, local politician, Troels Hartmann, is in the middle of an election campaign to become the new mayor of Copenhagen. When links between City Hall and the murder suddenly come to light, the case takes an entirely different turn.

Over the course of twenty days, suspect upon suspect emerges as violence and political intrigue cast their shadows over the hunt for the killer.

Praise for
The Killing