Reckoning Point, стр. 16
For a moment she thinks about going down to the internet cafe on Strandweg and sending an email to Sissy, her aunt still living in the exclusion zone. But she’s not ready to talk to her yet, there’s still anger inside and too many other things to think about and to plan. She lets her mind settle on Alex and a very real pain claws in her chest at the thought of him. Could she call him? It’s a bad idea, she tells herself. He would implore her to come home and eventually she would relent. But it’s such an appealing option. Knowing him the little she does, he would probably come here, wrap her up in his arms and she would let him, for there really is no other place that she wants to be. But then later he would start on at her, asking her about the clinic and the tests and has she been yet and has she had the results yet? She glances over at the table where she put the doctor’s card that Brigitta gave her and she retrieves it, props it next to her coffee cup and makes a promise to herself that she will make an appointment with him. Maybe it would be a good thing, for once she has got all that mess cleared up she can concentrate solely on Russian Lev. And then once that business is over with, maybe, just maybe, she can go home to London. To Alex.
To stop herself caving in and contacting him she locks her door from the inside and throws the key along the floor, allowing herself a small ping of satisfaction as it lands against the far wall under her bed. She heaps her new clothes on the chair, on top of the dirty ones and then, with nothing else to do, she climbs on the bed, pulls the curtains and weeps quietly and uncontrollably under the covers.
15
LEV
1058 GEVERS DEYNOOTWEG
5.7.15 Afternoon
Lev spots the police tape on his third visit to the new apartment on foot. He pauses, remembers that the alleyway where the tape flaps forgotten in the breeze is familiar, and he stands at the top of the road, looking down, wondering what happened.
“One of the local working girls died.”
Lev starts, he hadn’t heard anyone come up behind him and he turns to the stranger.
“Damn shame,” says the man says and shakes his head. “It’s a damn, sorrowful shame, when something like this happens it spoils it for the punters who can behave themselves.” The man who, by appearances, seems to be soon leaving middle-age behind him straightens up. “Not that I’m one, you understand. No, I’m happily married; those girls are not a patch on my wife.”
Lev makes soothing noise and says a vague goodbye as the gentleman tips his hat to Lev and moves on.
He picks up the box containing the beer glasses that he picked up in an open air market in Paleis and trudges on his way. He needs to get a bicycle, he thinks as yet another cyclist whizzes past. He’d move up and down these streets a lot quicker, and he’d blend in with the locals too.
Almost upon the seafront he stops again and sets the box down to buy a Metro newspaper from the seller on the strand. It’s on the front page, the death of the girl, and he feels his mouth set in a grim line.
Gabi. Her name was Gabi.
He rolls the newspaper up and sticks it under his arm. Picking up the box he moves on, quickening his pace to get back to the apartment as fast as he can.
When he is ensconced in the safety of 1058 he spreads the paper out on his new table and reads it carefully. It’s in Dutch which although he has trouble speaking, he can read if he concentrates. Gabi Rossi, a Brazilian national who moved to Europe only months ago. The Metro reports that although her cause of death is as yet unknown, she was stabbed, and anyone who had any dealings with Gabi two nights ago should come forward to the police in the Hoofdbureau, purely as a witness and to help them piece together Gabi’s last movements.
Lev shakes his head and pushes the paper away.
His thoughts are interrupted by a tentative knock at his door and Lev leaps up and over to the window. Pulling the curtain aside slightly he peeps out. There’s man at the door, not the police, Lev notes gratefully, but someone he doesn’t recognise. He opens the door cautiously, takes in the big, bullish bald-headed man and steps back in surprise as the man breaks out a smile and a greeting in English.
“My name’s Roland Van Brom, I came to introduce myself. I live in this block.”
Lev presses his lips together and regards Roland. There’s something a little familiar about him, and also something a little off. Roland is a big man, but his almost comical under bite and the childlike way he puts his hands behind his back and bounces up and down gives Lev the notion that this man is on the lower end of the IQ scale. But that name … that rings a bell too. And before the thought is even fully processed Lev remembers. Roland Van Brom was one of the men charged as an accomplice in