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

‘The thin man’s got the same puncture marks as our Bijlmer victim,’ Van den Bergen said, studying the pathologist’s face in profile. Pointed chin. Sharp nose. No-nonsense features on a no-nonsense woman. ‘And so does the murdered entrepreneur in London.’

‘Hm.’ Marianne steepled her fingers together and pursed her lips. Her gaze shifted back and forth in a contemplative relay race from the start of the row of photographs to the finish.

She was ageing well, Van den Bergen mused. Bright-eyed. Clear-skinned. Obviously slept at night. Clearly untroubled by the fact that she was responsible for introducing him to the Butcher, who had almost sliced and diced him into the next life.

‘You okay?’ she asked, peering over the top of her glasses. ‘You seem a little tense.’

‘Fine,’ he said, turning away from her. Fingering the ever-deepening grooves either side of his own mouth, which bore testament to the fact that he was now not ageing so well. He crossed his legs uncomfortably beneath the low desktop, the uncharacteristic beginnings of a paunch in the way; it has begun to appear when he had stopped gardening quite so regularly.

Presently, Marianne cleared her throat. She nodded slowly, as if processing the facts weighed heavily on her sinuous runner’s neck. ‘I see what you mean. The murders certainly share similarities. Same waterlogged conical wounds in the thin man. Presumably inflicted by an icicle used as a shiv. Snow in the air passages of both victims, though they differ in that the fat man has been bludgeoned to death and his penis has been severed … and not by a sharp blade, by all accounts.’

Van den Bergen breathed in sharply and grimaced. Felt a sympathetic twinge in his groin and thought briefly about getting his testicles looked over and his prostate checked during his next check-up at the doctor’s.

‘Anyway.’ Marianne stacked the reports in a neat pile. ‘Let’s get a translation of these pronto, just to make sure I’ve got the right end of the stick. Maybe I need to see the bodies, if they haven’t been claimed.’

‘They haven’t,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘My guy in Berlin says neither the police nor their forensics service has had a breakthrough in ID’ing them yet.’

‘Well, I think a little jaunt to Berlin is on the cards for us,’ Marianne said, unexpectedly reaching forwards and rubbing Van den Bergen’s forearm. Smiling.

He snatched his arm away and touched the skin there, gingerly, as though he had been burned. Flustered. Felt unwanted heat creeping into his cheeks. Hadn’t he and Marianne been down this road two years before, when she had broken up with that dick, Jasper? Before George. Before the Butcher. Hadn’t they mutually decided there was no chemistry there, though neither had needed to say a single word? Sharing an embrace in her kitchen that had, on paper, supposed to be electrifying but which had been devoid of any spark whatsoever.

He pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘If we’re looking for a killer who’s operating in at least three countries and we’ve only got two of the victims ID’d, we’ll need to look at the modus operandi and try to come up with some kind of a profile. Could be a serial killer, though I think I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime.’ How desperately he wanted to fix her with an accusatory stare. The resentment effervesced inside him. But it wasn’t her fault. Stop being a bastard, Van den Bergen. She didn’t have a crystal ball, for god’s sake. She’s got past the whole unpleasant episode, and so should you. She’s grinning at you! ‘Could be a hit man, if there’s drugs involved. Christ only knows what we’re dealing with. I’m going to get George involved.’

He had hoped the mention of George’s name would dim Marianne’s hopeful smile. It hadn’t.

‘She’ll need to come to Berlin too, of course,’ he said.

Then, the smile faded from Marianne’s face.

‘What do you mean, how do I fancy a trip to Berlin?’ George shouted down the phone. Sitting on the toilet at Aunty Sharon’s, hoping to snatch five minutes of privacy in a packed house. Patrice and Tinesha were downstairs, fighting over the TV remote control whilst their respective girl- and boyfriends sat primly at the kitchen table, making conversation with Aunty Sharon as she prepared a chocolate-orange soufflé. The recently appeared and self-installed Letitia was lying on the couch, awaiting the working class woman’s last rights of barbecue Pringles, a double rum ’n’ Ting and Jeremy Kyle. ‘Fucking hell, Paul. Haven’t you worked it out yet? I’m ignoring you! You’re in the dog house, man!’

The line went silent. ‘Dog house?’

She tried to explain the turn of phrase that had been lost in translation. She spoke quickly in Dutch, laying it on the line that he couldn’t toy with her feelings like this, two years in.

‘You know it’s nothing to do with how I feel about you,’ he said. ‘I just think you deserve better. I’m old, for god’s sake! I’m broken, George. I can’t offer you anything. Not on a personal level. It’s not fair on you if we …’ He sighed heavily, filling the phoneline with melancholy.

Scratching at a patch of mildewed grout that she had missed during her big clean with the end of Patrice’s blue toothbrush, she visualised Van den Bergen lying in the intensive care unit of the Amsterdam hospital. She saw herself weeping over what she had presumed was his dying body, machines no longer beeping. Disconnected. Then being told by the consultant who had eavesdropped on her mournful prayers to an indifferent god that his oxygen had been switched off because he had no longer needed it. He had finally come out of the coma that morning and was just sleeping. The peritonitis had been defeated. The Butcher’s best efforts at killing him had failed.

‘Listen, you miserable, self-indulgent man,’ she said, barely able to conceal the irritation in her voice, ‘I’m sick of this.’ She wiped her cousin’s toothbrush on her dressing gown, poised to return it to the beaker, then noticed the beaker had a layer of toothpaste spatter in the bottom and started to wash it out with one hand. She clutched the phone in the other hand as though it were her lover’s cheek. ‘I love you. You love me. We’re right for each other. We always have been. I nearly lost you once, and I’m not losing you again. So, stop dicking me around. You can’t switch me on and off like a tap. It’s not like I’m not asking you for marriage and babies.’

‘Good, because you’re not getting them.’

She wanted to flush her phone down the toilet with exasperation at that moment. ‘Fuck you, Paul! You know I’m not interested in all that!’

‘Maybe might not be right now, but once your clock starts ticking—’

‘Don’t you dare!’ She flung the beaker and five toothbrushes into the sink in anger. She noticed that the bristles of her own toothbrush had touched those of her mother’s and immediately washed it under scalding water from the hot tap. ‘Don’t you patronise me. Telling me what to do with my ovaries! And much as you’d like to be consigned to the trash heap, you bloody masochist, there’s nothing wrong with your spunk, old man. If I wanted a child – which I don’t – you’re perfectly capable of giving me one. All you need is a change of scenery, a more patient therapist and a hot fortnight between my thighs.’

On the other end of the line, she could hear her lover growling with dissatisfaction. Stubborn old bastard missed her, she was sure. She tried to keep the smile out of her voice. ‘Don’t play games with me. They’re a waste of my time. We’re on. Right? That’s it. George and Paul. I don’t own you. You don’t own me. But we fuck like Olympic champions and we fit. I can’t have you acting like we’re some failed formula you’d like to expunge from a bloody whiteboard. Now, what the hell do you want?’