The Girl Who Had No Fear. Marnie Riches

draped itself along the edge of the Lijnbaansgracht, like an elegant old burgher with bragging rights to its slumberous, low-rise canal-side position. Dwarfed by the outsized glazed boxes of the modern theatre that it sat next to, the five-storey townhouses behind it and the ugly apartment block in front. In the daytime, George had walked past this place and barely glanced up at it. At night, with the neon lights that shouted this was where the hip-hop, R&B and deep house happened reflected in the almost still canal water, the whole scene was transformed into something Van Gogh might have painted on acid, had he lived in modern times.

      Needing to feel the bass throbbing through the soles of her feet and reminding herself that there was no shame in going clubbing alone, George pushed to the front of the queue and marched up to the door.

      ‘Not so fast, girly!’ a bouncer said, putting his beefy arm out in front of her as a barrier to entry.

      George was aware of the complaints of the scantily clad teens standing behind her that she had jumped the queue. Speaking English and clearly on some sort of parent-funded mini-break, judging by the cut-crystal public school accents. Ridiculing her attire of ripped jeans, studded high-tops and the size and shape of her arse.

      Turning around, George quipped, ‘Have you fucking finished, children?’ She sucked her teeth at them, taking in every detail of the taut white skin on their waxy faces and the glazed look in their stoned eyes. ‘Or do you want me to tip off the bouncer here that yous are all underage and off your tits already?’

      The group of dissenters fell silent, glancing nervously at one another. George flashed her membership card at the bouncer. Perhaps he saw some of the thunder in her expression.

      ‘Sorry, miss. Go ahead.’ Respectfully ushering her inside.

      ‘That’s more fucking like it,’ George said under her breath. ‘Dick.’

      Inside the giant laser-lit space, the crowd heaved as one writhing organism. The smell of dry ice and alcohol was thick on the stifling, sweaty air. Music throbbing rhythmically like a beating heart. George imagined she could see sound travelling in waves from one side of the venue to the other. Losing herself in the middle of the dancefloor, she closed her eyes. Started to dance. Tried desperately to shake the feeling that she was being watched. In here, of all places, she could hide in plain sight. Wearing an invisibility cloak of young clubbers, she could free herself from surveillance. Because surely, whoever had sent that email from her father and stolen her mother had set out with the nefarious intention of getting to her. Whether her parents were lying dead somewhere or not, she was the target. She had received the eye. The metaphor that said her every move was being scrutinised. And what she hadn’t told Van den Bergen, for fear of pissing in his new-grandfather’s chips, was that she had had another email, purporting to be from Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno. Daddy Dearest. The image of the email started to take shape in her mind’s eye. Along with it, a memory of her stalker. She’d omitted to tell Van den Bergen about him, too.

      Stop fucking obsessing, George told herself. You came here to drown all that shit out and hide from the eye for a couple of hours. Listen to the music. Let the bass heal you. Nobody’s watching in here.

      Trying to dispel the mounting tension, she forced herself to dance to the compulsive, lazy beat of a hip-hop track. Shaking her thang. Arms in the air. Except she couldn’t relax. Her movements were out of sync with the rhythm, embarrassing the ghosts of her ancestry who almost certainly, as stereotype demanded, had had all the moves. Adrift in a sea of gyrating kids, all at least seven years younger than she was, she realised she had become stiff-arsed, like some middle-aged housewife from Staines. The music started to irritate her. Then, she got annoyed at the misogynistic lyrics.

       And skanky Nasser Malik is in a fridge in a Maastricht morgue. Am I going to end up in a fridge in a morgue, with Van den Bergen grimacing at my cadaver?

      Forcing her way to the bar, she decided she would get a cheap beer and just people-watch for a while. Wait for her mojo to return. But the queue for drinks was five deep and George lacked the height of the Dutch. Perching at the end of the bar, she realised a peacock of a boy in a tight T-shirt, who clearly had cash to splash, had ordered a large round of bottled Belgian beer. Waving his €50 note, he was too preoccupied with barking orders at the harried barman to notice George swipe a single bottle of Hoegaarden.

      ‘Thanks, arsehole,’ she said under her breath, grinning.

      Perching upstairs on the balcony, George watched the revellers below, debating whether she should just go back to Van den Bergen’s flat and admit that she was getting too old for this. Maybe Van den Bergen was making her feel prematurely too old. Fifty wasn’t far away for him, after all, and then there was his granddaughter, little Eva, on the scene now.

      Eyeing the younger men that buzzed nearby, all sweaty from the dancefloor with their going-out-best clobber clinging to their firm bodies, George’s attention was pulled in the direction of a dealer, stealthily palming a baggie of white powder onto a boy of about eighteen. The dealer could have been a clubber. Nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the tattoo just visible in the stubble of his hair. Like Nasser Malik’s tattoo. Suddenly George had become distanced enough from her own woes to really notice what was going down.

      ‘It’s snowing in Amsterdam,’ she muttered.

      Pushing the clubbers aside, she walked up to the dealer. He smiled down at her. A greedy, rotten-toothed smile of a seasoned junkie, earning to fund his own addiction, no doubt. Either that, or he had really shocking dental hygiene, George mused. She suppressed a full-blown grimace. Ensured there was space between them in this packed temple to hedonism.

      ‘What you got?’ she shouted above the music, careful not to come too close to his ears. They were greasy-looking with hardly any lobes, punctured by an oversized stud. She shuddered. ‘You got any good coke or E?’

      ‘Coke? No, love.’ His eyes darted everywhere. Checking for the long arm of the law, no doubt. ‘Crystal meth, miaow miaow, G. Might be able to get you some E by the end of the night.’

      ‘I’ll leave it thanks,’ George said, backing away. Annoyed with herself, she realised she had started to lose touch. The inevitability of being closer to thirty than twenty. Too much clean living.

      As George hastened out of Melkweg to wake the sleeping Van den Bergen and tell him her theory about the canal deaths, she failed to notice that she was followed home.

       CHAPTER 10

       Amsterdam, Melkweg nightclub, then, Leidsegracht, 30 April

      It had been a long walk from the gay sauna in Nieuwezijds Armsteed to Melkweg, but Greg Patterson had agreed to hook back up with his friends for a drink and a dance before the night was out. A shame not to, since this was supposed to be Sophie’s twenty-first celebration.

      ‘I’ll not be long,’ he’d promised her, squeezing her hands as they all stood in the busy, cobbled square – a crossroads between the respectable Amsterdam and the red-light district. His mind had been elsewhere, contemplating the sauna and the sensual overload that awaited him in the steam of the cubicles. ‘I said I’d nip to this place to get something for my mum.’

      James and Poppy had exchanged a fleeting but meaningful glance with one another. Making morality judgements about him, no doubt.

      ‘What? At nine o’clock at night?’ James had asked. Nudging Poppy. Jesus. The wanker was so obvious and rude.

      ‘You guys go!’ Greg had said, ignoring the rank prejudice that had flown just beneath Sophie’s radar. Typical hetties. ‘I’ll meet you later.’ He waved dismissively. Smiling benignly. He had pulled the sleeves of his best jacket down against the chill in the evening air. D&G. It had cost him all of his Christmas money off his mum and dad. ‘Melkweg, right? I’ll be there by midnight. I’ll text