‘Come on, Papa,’ George said, plumping the cushions on Van den Bergen’s sofa. Arranging them so that they were perfect diamond shapes. She tweaked the corners until they stood stiffly to attention. ‘Come and get comfy on here. It’s nicer than the guest bed. I’ll make you some coffee and see what’s in Paul’s fridge. Sod all, probably, knowing him.’
Her father took her by the forearm and kissed her knuckles. Patted the back of her hand affectionately. Things she remembered him doing all those years ago when she had been a small girl in dungarees, covered in paint, with Plasticine under her fingernails.
‘I still can’t believe I’m out of there,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe it’s you!’
George considered his stooped frame. He seemed so much smaller than she had remembered. She smiled and yawned. ‘Believe it. Come on. Sit down. I’m knackered, so you must be dropping. We’ll have a bite to eat and then let’s both have a good kip.’
Helping her father to the old vintage sofa, George went into Van den Bergen’s bedroom, pulled a heavy sweater from his wardrobe and took the just-in-case blanket from the end of the bed. Insisted that her father wrap up warm, given the abrupt change in temperature from the balmy tropical climate of Mexico to the chill of an Amsterdam attempt at summer.
Squatting beside him, she stroked his untidy, wispy hair. Examined that almost unfamiliar face that was so reminiscent of hers and yet so different. Was Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno a good man or a bad man? He had seemed like a king to her when she had been but a child. ‘It seems strange to be tucking in a grown adult. Not to mention my long-lost papa,’ she said, hoping he couldn’t sense the emotions that curdled inside her.
‘I’m so sorry about Letitia,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘I wish I could have seen her.’
‘Don’t you be sorry for her,’ George said, rising and making for the kitchen. Camouflaging with the brisk efficiency of a hostess her deep-seated fears that her mother might be dead. ‘Whatever she’s doing right now, she won’t be feeling a shred of remorse about how she’s treated you or me over the years. She won’t be worrying her selfish arse about me scouring half of Europe to find her. She’ll be shacked up somewhere, reinventing herself and having the time of her life.’ She opened the food cupboard doors and found some baked beans she had brought from London. Half a sliced loaf in the freezer. Food of the gods.
‘Do you really think she just upped and left?’ her father shouted from the living room.
Had she been wrong to string him a line on the plane about Letitia having taken herself off in some rebellious exercise, designed to give the two-fingered salute both to her diagnosed illness and her family? Was keeping the gift-wrapped eyeball and the bogus, threatening emails secret respectful of her father as a grown adult? She had merely wanted to spare him any further anxiety after his horrendous ordeal.
‘Yeah,’ George said, pleased she wasn’t able to make eye contact from the kitchen. ‘Knowing her? I’d put money on it!’
Taking out the cream cleanser, George filled the sink with a kettle full of boiling water and started to scrub away at Van den Bergen’s already clean worktops. She noted the image of herself reflected in the glazed tiles of the splashback. A portrait of an El Salvadoran transportista whose mind was forever sullied by murder and whose skin would be forever blighted by ink. She removed her long-sleeved T-shirt so that she wore only a bra. Took the scrubbing sponge, emptied a large blob of cleaner onto it and started to rub at her skin where the tattoos still told the tale of her collusion in the deaths of those trafficked women on the airstrip. These painted arms had not wielded the machete but she had done nothing to stop the others. Sometimes doing nothing was sin enough.
Scouring while the kettle boiled and the beans simmered on the hob, scrubbing until the pain made her eyes water, George’s attempts at expunging her guilt were interrupted only by her phone ringing shrilly on the side.
The display said it was Jan, her former landlord from the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop in the red-light district. His photograph lit up her phone’s screen with a dopey hippy grin and frazzled marijuana eyes behind Trotsky glasses.
‘Jan,’ she said, stifling a jet-lagged yawn. Feeling the kitchen floor rise and fall beneath her. She hoped to fuck he was quick.
‘Hey, George. How’s tricks?’ His greeting was nothing out of the ordinary. His serious tone rang alarm bells.
Clutching the phone to her ear with her hunched shoulder, she wrestled the frozen bread into the toaster. Stirred the beans. Ignored the smarting skin on her arm where the cream cleanser was already drying into a white film. ‘Well, actually, Jan, I’ve just got off a long-haul flight and I’m dying to—’
‘You know that guy Stijn Pietersen? The ugly one who was in all the papers when that cop of yours locked him up … Long time ago. I remembered you telling me you’d had a run-in with him once as a kid.’
George turned the hob off and glowered at her reflection in the tiles. ‘Yes. Go on.’
‘Well, you know how I am about never forgetting a face.’ Jan started to wheeze inexplicably with laughter, as was his wont. Always one irrelevant comment away from weed-giggles.
‘Come on, Jan. What is it?’ George took a cloth, wet it under the tap and started to wipe at her raw skin. ‘I’m on tenterhooks here.’
‘He looks completely different at a glance, you see. He’s got some dumb bleached hair and a face like a keg of Duvel. But it’s him. I swear it.’
‘Stijn Pietersen? Are you telling me the Rotterdam Silencer is—’
‘Yeah, man. On a houseboat in Prinsengracht. I was taking a walk near the Anne Frank museum, watching all the tourists queue around the block. And there he was, on the deck. It’s not the first time I’ve seen him either. But this time, I crossed the road and walked over to him, just to make sure.’
George swapped the phone over from her right to her left ear, her heart beating wildly, speeding cortisol around her body. She was suddenly freezing cold. ‘You silly bastard, Jan. What did you say?’
‘I wished him a good morning, because it was a very nice morning before the rain set in. He was sitting on a deck chair, reading a paper. I told him I recognised him.’
‘Oh you didn’t!’
She could almost visualise Jan shrugging on the other end of the phone, taking a contemplative toke on his spliff. Could hear him inhaling. A rattling cough as he exhaled. ‘He said he had that kind of face. I offered him a smoke. He thanked me and said no. That was it.’
‘Are you sure?’ George asked, standing on her tiptoes to peer out of the kitchen window to the little copse of trees below. Opening the cutlery drawer slowly and withdrawing the carving knife.
‘Well, actually … now you come to mention it, that’s not completely all.’
She slammed the drawer shut. ‘Jesus, Jan. Out with it!’
‘He said I must have that kind of face too, because he was totally sure I was the ex-landlord of a girl he used to know.’ He chuckled unconvincingly. ‘It was a bit creepy really.’
‘Oh shit,’ George said, as the toast popped up in the toaster. ‘Close the shop and lock all your doors. Now!’
‘What?’ She could hear voices in the coffee shop. The tinkle of the door as someone opened it. It’s your overactive imagination, she told herself. Calm down. Jan’s always stoned. He talks a load of verbal diarrhoea at the best of times.
‘Just do as I ask, Jan. Please. For your old pal. Until Van den Bergen has had a chance to speak to you.’
But Jan wasn’t listening. Her words hung uselessly in the stale air of the kitchen. Her ex-landlord had already hung up.