Marnie Riches - The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows - A gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat

Her focus returned to the Google list that went on for page after page after page. Jack Frost was not the only damaged soul using snow and ice to kill. Mother Nature had previous. She was the Queen of the psychopaths. Avalanches. Ice falling from a great height that could take out an entire car. Frozen corpses scattered along the base of K2’s North Face; marble-white near-perfection in perpetuity, only broken in the parts that had trifled with the mountain on the way to the bottom.

Marie skimmed over Marianne de Koninck’s forensic report again. Conical wound. Water permeating the surrounding cells. No trace of a blade.

‘Got to be an icicle. What else could it be?’ she muttered.

Her practised, analytical gaze scanned the contents of story after story. Page after page. Deftly click-clicking her mouse, until she happened upon what she had half hoped the search would throw up. She allowed herself a broad grin.

‘Ha! Hello, Jack Frost. Looks like you have very itchy feet.’

Her private celebration was interrupted by Van den Bergen bursting in. Grim-faced.

‘I need you to be my wingman. I’ve got to question a minor. Now, please!’

In the quiet of the meeting room – the only relatively relaxed space they could source at short notice where a child might be questioned – Marie sat next to Van den Bergen. She studied the little boys, who, in return, seemed to be getting the measure of her. Two sets of clear brown eyes fixed on her red hair. Two furrowed brows. Cynical expressions that, by rights, belonged to far older children. The smaller boy couldn’t have been more than six.

‘Imran,’ Marie began, turning to the older boy. A flicker of a smile playing on her lips. She scratched an angry patch of dry skin on her chin. ‘You told the Chief Inspector, here, that the woman in the apartment isn’t your mummy.’

The boy shook his head. ‘No. She’s not my mother.’

‘Where is your mother, then?’

No answer. She turned to the younger boy, who started to suck his thumb, stroking his nose with his index finger.

‘What does she do, that woman? What do those men in the apartment do? Do you know them?’

Imran shrugged. ‘She looks after us. The man says she’s our aunt, but she’s not our aunt. She’s mean.’

Van den Bergen leaned forwards. Kept his voice deliberately quiet. ‘Mean in what way?’

‘She beats us, sometimes.’

‘Why?’

‘When we don’t do our job. I hate her. She stinks.’

Running her fingers along the edge of the table, Marie breathed in sharply, as though she had considered something and then decided against saying it. ‘What’s your job, Imran? I bet a clever boy like you can do lots of things?’

‘If I tell you, she’ll beat me.’

‘The woman?’

Nodding. The smaller of the two boys said something in his native tongue to Imran. Startled eyes. A look of fear. Wiped his thumb on his trousers and started to hug himself. Imran spat harsh, unfamiliar words at the side of his head in response.

‘What about the dead man?’ Van den Bergen asked. ‘What’s his name?’

The boy’s reluctance to respond made the air in the meeting room feel heavy, loaded with stifled possibility. In a sudden eruption of emotion, the smaller child started to sob. Van den Bergen’s fatherly instincts screamed at him to hug the little boy. His professionalism held him in his seat. Rigid. Unflinching on the outside. Anguish manifesting itself as chest pain on the inside.

‘Let’s turn them over to social services, boss,’ Marie said. ‘Get them a safe bed for the night and hot meal. We’ll try again tomorrow.’

Angered by the haunting phenomenon of the crying boy, Van den Bergen marched into the interview room that held the woman, her interpreter and Elvis. At his behest, Elvis switched on the recording equipment.

Carefully, deliberately, Van den Bergen shoved a photo of the dead Bijlmer man under the woman’s nose. Tapping on the table next to the photo, he said, ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’ He scowled at her impassive face. ‘I’ve got a man in A&E, found in that apartment … looks like he’s going to die from septicaemia. A drug mule. I’ve worked enough drugs cases in my time to know that much. Carrying bags in his stomach and shitting them out once he’s been safely trafficked from some far-flung shithole to Amsterdam. Bringing poison and death into my town. Are you a drug mule, too? Are you a dealer? Did the dead man use those boys as dealers? Scouts? What? Tell me!’

‘No comment,’ the interpreter told him. ‘She has no comment. She wants to speak to someone at her embassy.’

He turned to the diminutive woman who was acting as linguistic go-between and steeled himself to remember she was just the messenger, that he should not shoot her. ‘There are two little boys who are going to spend the night in an emergency foster placement. Frightened out of their wits, saying she’ll beat them if they speak. Tell the hatchet-faced cow that if she doesn’t give me the info I require now I’ll have her on the next flight to whatever warzone she’s crawled out of.’ He was shouting. He knew he was shouting. He didn’t care. Let this bitch come at him with whatever she could muster. Let her try to level an accusation of intimidation or sexism or racism at him.

‘Syria.’

‘Right. Well, Syria can fucking have her back before the weekend, unless she talks.’

‘She wants a Dutch passport.’

‘Talk!’

There was a heated exchange in the woman’s native tongue. She treated Van den Bergen and Elvis to looks of utter disdain, as though she were a Red Cross nurse, rather than a woman somehow embroiled in drug-dealing and human trafficking.

Finally, the interpreter turned to Van den Bergen, alarmed and disconcerted, judging by her look of disgust. ‘The dead man is called Tomas Vlinders. He paid her to take the boys to rich men’s houses. They were delivering drugs for parties. Parties held by powerful men.’

Van den Bergen sat back down. Pushed his knees beneath the low table. Leaned forward in a measured manner. ‘What powerful men?’

‘Phone, door keys, bag,’ Gabriella Deenen said, staring blankly at her possessions on the passenger seat. ‘Car keys. Where’s the—?’

The police officer leaned in through the driver’s open window. His hat and the bulk of his navy and yellow Politie jacket filling the space. ‘Are you sure you want to drive yourself?’ He sounded incredulous. His furrowed brow said he didn’t believe her. ‘You can come in the squad car and get someone to pick your vehicle up later.’

Gabi started the engine. The key had been in the ignition all the time! Which made sense, since she was sitting in the damned car and had to have had the key to unlock it in the first place. Pay attention, for god’s sake. Breathe in. Breathe out.

‘I’m fine. I’ll meet you at the house.’

She was surprised by how strong her voice sounded. She didn’t feel fine. She felt like she was going to be sick. Pull yourself together, you weak woman, she counselled herself. You’ll get home. This will all be a big mistake. With a click of a switch, the window closed, shutting the irritating, well-meaning and concern of the policeman outside.

Pulling out of the parking space, she almost crashed into the police car. Almost. Not quite. She was fine. This was okay. It was going to be a mistake. Except she had that horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. Not butterflies. More like flapping, desperate moths, blind to the direction in which the light lay.

Breathe in. Breathe out.