The Wrong Girl Read Online Free Page B

phone.
    ‘Saskia Kuyper. She’s only eight.’
    Very like her mother, Bakker remembered. The same strained, narrow, pale face.
    Vos nodded, introduced himself, was starting to explain how they had officers trained to deal with lost children throughout the square. Every year plenty went missing. They were always found.
    Then Sinterklaas was at the microphone. Gruff, hearty tones booming throughout Leidseplein.
    ‘Children of Amsterdam—’
    The first explosion boomed through the square, deep, loud, painful. Alongside the noise came a blinding light that left those close enough to witness it reeling, stumbling to their knees.
    A long, silent moment of shock followed. Then a frantic, high-pitched scream. The first of many.
    That evening, when Marnixstraat had time to catch breath, they would establish the outrage was nothing like as threatening as it had seemed at the time. The explosions came from flash grenades, frightening but largely harmless. A duty policeman suffered minor burns when he tried to remove one close to a party of children near the theatre. Seven spectators were treated in hospital for shock, concussion from the stampede that followed, and a couple of broken limbs.
    It could have been so much worse. But, like everyone else in Leidseplein that afternoon, Hanna Bublik and her young daughter Natalya knew none of this. All they saw was pandemonium. As Sinterklaas began to speak from the theatre balcony something streaked through the air, fell close to the front of the building, then exploded with a sudden flash and a roar of sound. Two more explosions followed and by then the square, packed with thousands of people, many of them young children, was beyond control.
    She’d seen warfare first hand in Gori. Knew what a grenade sounded like, recognized the bright blinding light and the deafening racket that followed straight after. When the third missile crashed into the crowded square there was only a grim determination beneath the familiar panic.
    Flee.
    Survive.
    Hide .
    Without a word she grabbed Natalya’s hand and dragged the girl close to her side, looked round. Saw a sea of terrified, puzzled faces. One moment Leidseplein was a placid mass of humanity. The next a howling mob. She barely knew this part of the city. Had no idea where to turn.
    Gori haunted her for a multitude of reasons. There she’d been young, innocent, afraid. While her husband prowled outside their cottage, gun in hand, swearing to protect his wife and baby, she’d cowered with Natalya in an attic, wondering how the world had come to this.
    All they wanted was security and a little money. The games the politicians played, setting cultures and languages against one another for their own private ends, meant nothing in the special, holy place called home. And here was the monster, tanks and soldiers, military vehicles, heavy weapons, circling the town, splitting it into two parties, victors and defeated joined by blood.
    When she escaped – barely – with her life and the tiny child in her arms, glimpsing only the mangled corpse of her husband near the lane that led to their modest home, she’d sworn she’d never cower again. Next time if the blackness fell she’d fight, make sure no one came near the ones she loved.
    In the mayhem of Leidseplein that meant one thing only: think of yourself and your child, no one else. Elbows jabbing, her left arm clutching Natalya’s pink jacket, she launched herself into the fray. There was a narrow lane behind them. Not so many people. The rest seemed to be racing towards the broader streets.
    Head down, cursing in a language none of them would understand, she made for the space away from the smoke and commotion in the square.
    You don’t apologize. You don’t make excuses.
    This was the world she knew, one that left her to survive on her own. And survive they would.
    Fighting, screaming, punching, kicking, Natalya clutched tight to her, she forced her way to the periphery of the square. Were