Читать книгу The Girl Who Broke the Rules - Marnie Riches, Marnie Riches - Страница 9

‘Paul. Thanks for coming.’ The wholly unfamiliar man stood in the spot that Marianne usually graced, by the side of the steel mortuary slab.

Van den Bergen refused to shake his latex-clad hand. ‘It’s Chief Inspector van den Bergen. And I prefer to deal with Marianne,’ he said.

He looked this interloper up and down, though it was difficult to get the full measure of him in his scrubs. He looked young. Fresh face and shiny eyes. Certainly in his early thirties. And small. Though at six feet five, van den Bergen could see the top of pretty much everyone’s heads as they scrabbled about beneath him. Maybe the guy wasn’t small. But he definitely had the upright posture of a cocky little arsehole, van den Bergen decided, and he wasn’t the lovely Marianne de Koninck.

Daan Strietman smiled at him. ‘I’m her number two. You knew that, right, Paul? She introduced us at the party. Ha! You’re such a funny guy. You’re pulling my leg, now, aren’t you?’

‘No.’ Van den Bergen scratched at his aching hip. Fingered his scabbed-up knuckles. Hadn’t he just told this idiot he was Chief Inspector van den Bergen? Was this guy deaf? And where did this notion of funny come from? ‘I want number one. If I want second best, I’ll—’

Daan put his clipboard and pen down. Slapped van den Bergen across the back in a chummy style. ‘Look, your Jane Doe’s in good hands, big feller.’

‘But Marianne… She was at the scene this morning.’

‘I told you. She’s ill. Throwing her guts up. Forget Marianne. Okay?’

Van den Bergen noticed a pause before the okay, which meant Daan Strietman had finally decided that being challenged by a policeman was not okay, even if it was by a senior one. He smiled again. What was with all the smiling? Was this guy simple? The smile disappeared once the idiot noticed his scabbed knuckles.

‘Just give me the lowdown on my victim, Strietman. Okay?’

Now that she was on the slab, van den Bergen was hoping the girl would look like any other cadaver – a spoiled mannequin, devoid of any remaining trace of vitality; deserted by her humanity, so that only an abstract husk was left; dissected like an oversized scientific experiment. He would find it easy to give a corpse like that the once-over and then listen to the pathologist’s report. But she didn’t, this Jane Doe. Her elfin face, framed by the wisps of black curly hair that still remained – after her cranium had been removed to allow examination of her brain – was outlandishly at odds with those unseeing eye sockets, staring out at him. Ghoulish. Vulnerable. Her dark skin, which must have been a warm hue when she had breath in her body, was flat grey. But so slight was her build with those spindly little arms and legs, so lost did she look in the aseptic white glare of the mortuary’s overhead lights, that van den Bergen had to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. He almost felt compelled to hug the girl, though she had been utterly disembowelled both by her murderer and by the process of the post mortem. George was slightly built like that. George’s skin was dark like that.

Feeling momentarily dizzy, he steadied himself on the steel sink at the dead girl’s feet.

Daan Strietman chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t have put an old hand like you down as squeamish! You want to sit?’

Van den Bergen glared at him. ‘I’m not squeamish.’ He pointed to his ear. ‘I have this balance thing. Sometimes it… Anyway. What did you find?’

‘You’re not going to believe this.’