The Wrong Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

there more explosions? She didn’t know. This wasn’t Gori. There were no bodies on the ground. No blood. Just fear and dread. That was enough.
    How long it took she’d no idea. Then the press of bodies around them eased. She found space to reach down and lift her daughter onto her chest, the way she did in Gori. A different child now. Natalya’s strong arms gripped her neck. Hanna struggled with her weight, battering their way through the diminishing crowd.
    Behind them sirens shrieked. People screamed. There were announcements over the PA system Sinterklaas himself had been using. Messages pleading for people to stay calm. To avoid trampling others. To wait for help to arrive.
    No one said that back in Georgia. For the simple reason that it never came.
    One last push and they were through. Breathless, head hurting, arms aching from the weight of her daughter, she got them free of the hubbub, carried Natalya to the little lane then stumbled into a blind, dark alley next to a kebab shop. Put her on the ground, touched her fair hair, wondered what to say.
    There was a look in her daughter’s eyes Hanna Bublik knew only too well. It wasn’t just fear. It was an angry, uncomprehending bafflement too, one that carried with it a question that would never be answered . . . why?
    ‘Mummy,’ she said in a small, frightened voice as they waited in the shadows.
    ‘We’re fine, sweetheart,’ Hanna said. ‘It’s over now. We stay here. Everything will be . . .’
    For some reason she couldn’t stop thinking of what Chantal Santos had said. They needed easy money. A better life than this. If it meant getting the name of a Turkish thug tattooed on her shoulder as a start maybe it was a small price to pay.
    The sirens were diminishing behind her. Perhaps it was all a nasty, cruel prank. No one was hurt. Amsterdam was the safe if fallen city she’d come to know.
    ‘Everything will be fine.’
    ‘Mummy,’ Natalya said again and the fear was still in her voice.
    Her mother looked. The girl wasn’t watching her. The arm of her strange pink jacket was extended behind, to somewhere Hanna couldn’t see.
    As she turned to look something green came into her vision. The pain followed. Then the blackness as the world revolved and she tumbled down to the hard, cold ground.
    There was a procedure for events like this. A set of responses patiently planned and rehearsed over the years. The emergency services were already moving into place, uniformed officers trying to shepherd people away from the vicinity of the blasts.
    Vos and Bakker had checked for injuries as best they could while Van der Berg, without a word, had taken off in the direction of the tram stop, the point from which the grenades seemed to originate.
    The Kuyper woman was growing ever more frantic. Between yelling for her daughter she shrieked down the phone trying to get hold of her husband.
    Bakker tried to console her. Vos said to leave it. Leidseplein was full of people who’d become separated from their family at that moment. They had other priorities: try to keep everyone safe.
    Renata Kuyper yelled a flurry of curses and started to march off into the mass ahead, head turning frantically side to side, calling her daughter’s name.
    Vos took hold of her arm and stopped her.
    ‘We’ll find your daughter. It’s best you stay here . . .’
    Then her phone rang and she looked at the screen. Hope and fear and puzzlement on her face.
    ‘You don’t need that,’ the Black Pete said and took the phone from Saskia Kuyper’s fingers just as she pressed the shortcut for her mother.
    She blinked and said nothing. This man was a grown-up. He was supposed to know things. All the same he seemed nervous. More than she was maybe.
    ‘That’s what sets bombs off,’ he added. ‘Phone calls.’
    He put the handset in his pocket. His shiny green costume shone in the winter sun.
    Shivering in her pink My Little Pony jacket she looked at him and didn’t move. He’d found her