The Wrong Girl Read Online Free PDF

beneath the theatre balcony, at the edge of the mayhem, staying clear.
    She’d never heard the world this loud. Had no idea where her mother was any more. All she’d done was wander forward, trying to catch sight of Sinterklaas on the balcony. Just managing a glimpse of a man in a red suit with a long white beard before the earth shook beneath her feet.
    ‘Your daddy wants to see you, Saskia. Your mummy too. I’ll take you there.’
    He had a brittle, foreign voice and spoke in English. The tone of it clashed with the black face, the ruby lips, the bright white teeth.
    She didn’t move. So he reached into his bag and held out a couple of sweets.
    ‘Come on,’ he said and she stared at the glittering objects in his white gloved hands.
    Daddy hated sweets. He said they were bad for your teeth. They’d rot your guts. Make you smell like the other kids.
    Saskia moved to take one. His fingers closed on hers. Not so tight she wanted to scream. Just enough so that she couldn’t let go.
    ‘I’ll show you where they are,’ he said and pointed towards the bridge over the canal.
    Prinsengracht. Her father sometimes went to an office there. She’d gone with him once. Sat in a small room on her own for hours while he did business.
    Perhaps . . .
    ‘Come on,’ he said again and tugged her hand.
    She didn’t move an inch. Dug the heels of her black patent-leather shoes hard into the pavement, leaned back to stop him. Then she stole into the jacket pocket of his green costume and snatched back the phone they’d given her for her eighth birthday. A cheap Samsung. Not the iPhone she’d asked for.
    Don’t spoil her.
    Mummy said that a lot.
    ‘I can call if I want,’ she told him and put her finger on the screen, held it there again. Just heard the engaged tone before he snatched the handset from her, took hold of her shoulder, dragged her through a baying crowd lost in itself.
    So much that no one noticed an eight-year-old girl shrieking and fighting as a figure in green pulled Saskia Kuyper out of the chaos of Leidseplein into the empty streets beyond.
    Just across the square, frantic in the milling crowd, her mother was still looking at the screen of her phone. Reluctant to answer the familiar ring she’d set up for him.
    But really she had no choice.
    ‘Henk,’ she said before he could speak. ‘We’re in Leidseplein. I need you here.’
    A pause then. He’d blame her for this. She could see the sour judgemental stare already.
    She had to say it anyway.
    ‘Saskia’s gone. I don’t know where.’
    Two minutes after the first explosion Frank de Groot, commissaris in Marnixstraat, called Vos and asked if he and his team were OK.
    ‘As far I can see,’ Vos told him. ‘What about casualties?’
    ‘Looks like they were fireworks,’ De Groot said. ‘From the monitors anyway. All the same . . .’
    ‘You’ve been watching?’
    There was a pause on the line then, ‘What do you think?’
    ‘Can you see who threw them?’
    ‘Someone in a Black Pete outfit. He was wearing green. Near the tram stop.’
    Exactly where Van der Berg had said.
    ‘Dirk’s on it,’ Vos said. ‘We’ll catch up with him. We had a woman saying she was followed by someone like that from the Herenmarkt. You might want to check the cameras. And send me a few more people—’
    ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ De Groot cut in. ‘This looks beyond us. Terrorism—’
    ‘Do terrorists throw fireworks?’ Vos wondered.
    The Kuyper woman was still arguing on the phone. There were tears in her eyes. Bakker was with her. This wasn’t the bomb outrage he first thought. No blood. Just lots of shocked and frightened people.
    Before De Groot could answer Vos added, ‘I’ve got parents here who can’t find their kids. You need to fix an assembly point.’
    ‘Yes, yes. But I don’t want you chasing anyone. AIVD are on it.’
    Vos wondered for a moment if he’d heard that correctly. AIVD were national intelligence and security. Not police. And the