The Girl Who Had No Fear. Marnie Riches

at the photograph of what was left of the unrecognisable nineteen-year-old boy, George imagined Danny Spencer – bones she had once jumped, by now in a cemetery in Southeast London, thanks to the ruthless change in fortunes the dealer had been dealt. Letitia, possibly floating somewhere in some tributary of the North Sea, becoming food for aquatic life and passing seagulls. This was a depressing, shitty line of work to be in.

      ‘They were all very young, apart from Floris Engels,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘But the three kids all had drugs and alcohol in their systems. Beer. Hash. Meth. MDMA.’

      ‘Partying hard,’ George said, closing her eyes. Remembering what it felt like to roll out of a nightclub in the small hours, full of intoxicating substances and drunk on expectation of what might yet come to pass before sun-up.

      ‘Other than that,’ Van den Bergen said, ‘I can’t find a connection between them. The parents all claim their dead children are angels. Their friends have got nothing but good things to say about them. No obvious commonalities, though, apart from them dying in the canals, stoned off their tits. In fact …’ He stretched in his chair until his hip clicked. Grimacing, he pressed two ibuprofen out of a blister pack and swallowed them down dry. ‘Maybe there isn’t a bloody connection and it is just coincidence, after all. But I inherited this case off Louis Beekmans, after Minks did a reshuffle.’ He rubbed at his prematurely white sideburns with a long finger.

      ‘Who the fuck is Beekmans?’ George asked.

      ‘Sudden heart attack. He’s just had a triple bypass,’ Van den Bergen offered by way of explanation. Put a hand over his sternum and belched noiselessly. Clearly feeling for ventricular abnormalities. His fingers wandered southwards along his torso to his scar tissue. His hooded eyes seemed to darken. ‘Anyway, his record-keeping wasn’t up to much and I have a hunch there’s some chicanery going on – especially now I’ve seen the bruises on our mysterious teacher, Mr Engels. When I get toxicology and bloods back, I’ll know more. My young and shiny-faced new boss, Minks, is pushing for a serial killer, because that’s what makes him feel tingly in his big-boy pants.’

      ‘And what do you think?’ George asked, surreptitiously grabbing his large hand and kissing it, as Marie reached into her desk drawer and withdrew another packet of crisps.

      ‘I think I want a fresh pair of eyes on it,’ he said, winking. ‘Me, Marie, here and Elvis have run out of steam for now. Feeling up to applying your criminologist’s mind to this mess, Detective Cagney?’

      George thought about the tantalising opportunity to do a bit of digging on the side around the circumstances surrounding Nasser Malik’s death. Spending time with her argumentative ageing lover, instead of being wheeled out on the book-signing and lecture trail by Sally Wright and marking sub-standard essays written by lazy first-year undergraduates. Then, she thought about the pot she was saving for a deposit on a flat. ‘Will I get paid?’ she asked.

      ‘Maarten Minks has a fancy post-grad qualification from the London School of Economics,’ he said. ‘He’s the polar opposite of Kamphuis. Nothing he likes more than forking out for an expert opinion to check his expert’s opinion was expert enough. He can’t wait to receive your invoice, Georgina.’

       CHAPTER 9

       Amsterdam, Van den Bergen’s apartment, then, Melkweg nightclub, later

      ‘Oh, you’re not going to start going on about your bloody mother again, are you?’ Van den Bergen asked over dinner. ‘I thought we’d decided she’d done her usual disappearing act because the prospect of playing the second-fiddle mother figure in the drama of someone else’s life didn’t appeal. Isn’t that Letitia all over?’

      George eyed her burnt mushroom risotto. It put her in mind of cerebral matter served up in a vintage dish. She put her spoon and fork together and pushed the plate aside. ‘Nice,’ she said. ‘I don’t see you for weeks and you’re on my case the minute I set foot through the door. You asked me over, remember?’ Scraping her chair aggressively along the wooden floor, she walked into his kitchen and flung the dish on the side. ‘Not the other way round. And don’t give me that bullshit about you, Marie and Elvis running out of steam, because you’d only just inherited this bloody case. Face it. You’ve just been looking for an excuse to get me over here!’

      She was aware of him moving from the dining area towards her. Kept staring at the splashback tiles, waiting to see if he was coming in to offer some placatory gesture or merely gunning for an argument at closer range. When his arms slid around her waist, she smiled. Turned around and craned her neck to look up into that familiar, handsome face. Appraising his large, hooded grey eyes, topped with those dark eyebrows. The sunken furrows either side of his mouth were back now that he had started to return to fitness. His skin, so sallow over the winter months, was now lightly tanned and reflected time spent outdoors.

      ‘You look well. Being a grandfather agrees with you. Give us a snog, old man,’ she said, smiling as she ran a finger over his stubble. ‘And you’d better grow a goatee or something while I’m here, because I can’t do with scouring my lips off on your five o’clock shadow.’

      ‘Don’t you like my risotto?’ he asked, kissing her neck gently.

      ‘You’re a shit cook.’ Stroking the soft navel hair beneath his top, she ran her fingers delicately over the long lump of his scar. ‘But I missed your hot stodge so badly.’ Giggling, George unzipped the fly to Van den Bergen’s work trousers and dropped to her knees. Yanked down his disappointing grey jersey underpants to deal with the contents, which were wholly non-disappointing. Van den Bergen groaned as she took him into her mouth. Brought him almost to the point of no return with a tongue normally sharpened on the egos of Wormwood Scrubs wide boys, overinflated Cambridge Fellows or Peckham’s finest players in their low-rise G Star Raw.

      Van den Bergen buried his hands in her mass of curls, encouraging her steady rhythm. But George broke off, as he began to thrust too lustily, kissing her way up his abdomen. Teasing him with her abstemiousness so that he might afford her the same pleasure with that wry, acerbic mouth of his.

      They never made it to the bedroom but they did engage in a clumsy, desire-driven tango to the sofa, where George flung her clothes on the floor, climbed astride his long, lean frame and hungrily lowered herself onto him. First, she relished his tongue on her. Then, she slid her body sinuously down towards his groin, manoeuvring him inside her. With his hands caressing her breasts, the lovers locked onto a familiar fast track that shunted and rocked them all the way to the end of their urgent thrill ride.

      ‘Jesus. I needed that,’ George said, pulling her pants and jeans back on. She clambered back onto the prone Van den Bergen and kissed him passionately.

      ‘You’re balm for the soul,’ he said, wrapping his arms around her and cradling her head on his chest.

      His heartbeat loped steadily along. A comforting sound. She drank in his scent of warm skin, testosterone and sport deodorant. Committed it to memory.

      ‘I need a smoke and your hip bones are digging in me,’ she said, rising. ‘You’re a shit mattress.’

      Taking the box of tissues from the sideboard and throwing them into his lap, she stumbled to the balcony to spark her e-cigarette into life. Exhaled her smoke and what was left of her tension onto the Amsterdam night air. Listening to the animated chatter of the neighbours in adjacent apartments to the side and below. A slice of Dutch life. Those clean-living citizens knew nothing of the depravity and violence that George and Van den Bergen saw week in, week out. Good. There needed to be some innocence in the world still. And there had to be more to life than death.

      ‘Do you know what? I fancy going dancing,’ George told the full moon.

      When she returned to the living room, the steady buzz of snoring coming from