The Girl who got Revenge
MARNIE RICHES

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HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published in Great Britain in ebook format by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Marnie Riches 2018

Cover design © Debbie Clements 2018

Cover image © Shutterstock.com

Marnie Riches asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780008204006

Version: 2018-02-12

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of my cousin, Beverley Thorpe, whose light shone brightly but faded far too soon.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: Amsterdam, the House of Brechtus Bruin, 2 October

Chapter 1: Amsterdam, Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, 3 October

Chapter 2: Port of Amsterdam, Later

Chapter 3: Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, a Short While Later

Chapter 4: North Holland Farmland Near Nieuw-Vennep, Den Bosch Farm, Later Still

Chapter 5: Amsterdam, Van Den Bergen’s Doctor’s Surgery, 4 October

Chapter 6: Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, Later

Chapter 7: Amsterdam, Mortuary, Later Still

Chapter 8: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, 9 October

Chapter 9: Amsterdam, the Home of Kaars Verhagen, 10 October

Chapter 10: Amsterdam, Den Bosch’s House in de Pijp, Later

Chapter 11: Amsterdam, Oud Zuid, Kaars Verhagen’s House, 12 October

Chapter 12: Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, Later

Chapter 13: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, 17 October

Chapter 14: Den Bosch’s House in de Pijp, Then a Mosque Near Bijlmer, Later

Chapter 15: Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, 18 October

Chapter 16: Amstelveen, Tamara’s House, Later

Chapter 17: The Practice of dr André Baumgartner, Oud Zuid, Later

Chapter 18: Amstelveen, Tamara’s House, Then the Mosque Near Bijlmer, Later

Chapter 19: Amstelveen, Tamara’s House, Later

Chapter 20: Police Headquarters, Later Still

Chapter 21: Hoek Van Holland, Stena Line Ferry, That Evening

Chapter 22: Harwich International Port, Then Cambridge, 19 October

Chapter 23: Amsterdam, Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, Then the Sloterdijkermeer Allotments, Then the Drie Goudene Honden Pub, Later

Chapter 24: London, a Sandwich Shop in New Cross, Then Aunty Sharon’s House in Catford, 20 October

Chapter 25: The Den Bosch Farm Near Nieuw-Vennep, Then Houses in de Pijp, Later

Chapter 26: The House of Kaars Verhagen, Oud Zuid, Much Later

Chapter 27: South East London, Aunty Sharon’s House, 21 October

Chapter 28: Amsterdam, the House of Kaars Verhagen, 23 October

Chapter 29: En Route to Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, Later

Chapter 30: Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, Minutes Later

Chapter 31: Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, Then an Uber Taxi, Later

Chapter 32: En Route to the Den Bosch Farm, Later

Chapter 33: Den Bosch’s House, de Pijp, Then the Den Bosch Farm Near Nieuw-Vennep, at the Same Time

Chapter 34: The Den Bosch Farm, at the Same Time

Chapter 35: The Den Bosch Farm, at the Same Time

Chapter 36: The Den Bosch Farm, at the Same Time

Chapter 37: The Den Bosch Farm, at the Same Time

Chapter 38: The Den Bosch Farm, Several Minutes Earlier

Chapter 39: Amsterdam, the Onze Lieve Vrouwehospitaal, 24 October

Chapter 40: Amsterdam, Police Headquarters, 31 October

Chapter 41: Amsterdam, Schiphol Airport, Then Police Headquarters, 8 November

Chapter 42: Van Den Bergen’s Apartment, 30 November

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE
Amsterdam, the house of Brechtus Bruin, 2 October

Brechtus Bruin was not aware that the kitchen clock ticking away on the wall was counting down the last few minutes of his ninety-five years. His movements had slowed of late, and now his complexion was noticeably wan and waxy. Perhaps he was finally feeling the poison in his bones that rainy morning. He must surely have been wondering that his shaking, liver-spotted hands wouldn’t obey his still-sharp brain, telling him to pour the coffee.

‘Here, Brechtus. Let me help you. Please.’

His guest had been sitting at a worn Formica table in that homely place, waiting. He had been drinking in the familiar scene of the cramped kitchen with its sticky, terracotta-painted walls. Savouring the stale scent of cakes that had been baked decades ago by Brechtus’s long-dead wife. Now, he stood to take the kettle from the old man.

‘You sit down. I’ve got this. Honestly.’

‘I don’t like people fussing,’ Brechtus said, wiping the sweat from his poorly shaven upper lip. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve not been feeling myself. You know?’ His breath came short. His Adam’s apple lurched up and down inside his haggard old neck. ‘Not just my bad back. More than that. I feel…’ He pursed his deeply pruned lips together and frowned. ‘Wrong. Horrible, in fact.’

Brechtus Bruin fixed his guest with the dulled irises of a dead man walking. There was fear and confusion in those bloodshot eyes; eyes that had seen almost a century of life. Even at his grand age, it was clear that he didn’t want to go. But any minute now, one of the greatest heroes of Amsterdam’s WWII resistance would be nothing more than an obituary in de Volkskrant.

Slipping a little extra Demerol and OxyContin into the old man’s coffee cup, he hoped that the taste wouldn’t be bitter enough to put him off one final swig.

‘There you go, Brechtus,’ he said, setting the mug down on the table. ‘Drink it while it’s hot. Maybe you’re just coming down with something. There’s an awful lot of bugs going round at the moment.’

The coffee sloshed around as the old man raised the mug to his mouth with an unsteady hand. His thin arms barely looked capable of holding even this meagre weight.

Go on, drink it, the guest thought. Let’s finish this.

He savoured the sight as Brechtus Bruin gulped down the hot contents, grimacing and belching as he set the cup back down.

‘I think maybe the milk was off,’ he said.

Still, the clock ticked. Even closer to the end, now. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Brechtus’s pallor was the first indication that the medication had started to do its work. Then, the sheen of sweat on the old man’s face grew suddenly slicker, giving him a waxy look, as though he were preserved in formaldehyde. One side of his face started to sag in a strange palsy. The old man’s eyes widened.

‘I feel…’

He tried to speak, but it was as if the poisonous cocktail was paralysing his vocal chords.

‘Help. Oh.’

Brechtus Bruin’s guest watched with amusement as the elderly war hero clutched at his chest and inhaled deeply, raggedly.

‘I don’t—’

‘What is it, Brechtus?’

With his other grey, gnarled hand – already blue at the fingertips – the old man grasped at the tablecloth, tugging at it as though the fabric were his mortal coil and he was holding on for dear life. Everything that had been placed on the table fell with him and the cloth, clattering to the floor. Broken china everywhere; coffee spattered across the varnished cork tiles like the victim’s blood from a well-aimed headshot in a shoot-’em-up movie. Finally, still gasping pointlessly for air like a determined goldfish flipped out of its tank, Brechtus lay on the floor, limbs splayed in improbable directions. Pleading in the old man’s eyes said he didn’t want to leave this life.

Did he suspect? Did he realise that this friend of old, a guest in his home, had committed the ultimate act of betrayal?

It was too late. When his eyes had glazed over, the guest knew that his latest victim was dead. To be certain, he squatted low, pulling the fabric of his shirt aside to reveal the small tattoo of a lion on the aged, freckled skin of his shoulder. The lion wore a crown and carried a sword. It was flanked by the letter S and the number 5.

He checked for a pulse.

Nothing.

Whistling to himself, he started to wipe the place down of fingerprints, careful to pick up from the floor the shattered remains of the coffee cup that he had drunk from, disposing of them in a small plastic freezer bag that he had brought in case of exactly this kind of accident. What a shame that the silly old bastard had made such a mess on his way out of that overlong, sanctimonious life. He pinched his nose against the smell of death, already rising from the body. Tiptoed over the spilled coffee to ensure he left no footprints.

Turning back to survey the scene, he decided that this termination had been well executed. On to the next one. By the time Brechtus Bruin’s body would be found, he would be sufficiently far away to evade suspicion. The method of killing was flawless. And most important of all, he thought, as he pulled the door to the house closed, he was certain that Brechtus Bruin had suffered in the last few weeks of his life.

What a cheering thought. He smiled and was gone.

CHAPTER 1
Amsterdam, Van den Bergen’s apartment, 3 October

The sound of someone closing a cupboard door in the kitchen was the reason for George’s wakefulness. Her body taut beneath the duvet, she listened carefully. Held her breath until the only sounds she could hear were the rushing of blood through her ears and the intruder. The cutlery drawer was being opened. The rattle of metal told her something was being removed. Heavy footsteps of a man.

Throwing the duvet aside, she leaped out of bed. In an instinctual choice between fight or flight, George opted for the former, grabbing a tin of Elnett hairspray from the dressing table as she exited the bedroom.

‘Bastard!’ she yelled, sprinting towards the kitchen and the source of the noise. She held the can of hairspray aloft, ready to press the button and blind this cheeky burgling wanker.

The tall, prematurely white-haired man who had been stooped over the worktop spun around with his hands above his head. His gaunt, wan face contorted into a look of pure surprise. ‘It’s me, for Christ’s sake!’

With her heart thundering inside her chest, George froze in the middle of the living room, staring at her opponent through the large hatch to the kitchen. She glanced at the clock on the wall.

‘It’s four in the morning. What the hell are you doing out of bed?’ She set the hairspray down on the battered old coffee table, her hand shaking with adrenalin. Her voice wavered with slowly subsiding fear. ‘I thought you were a burglar.’

Van den Bergen shook his head and smiled grimly. He clutched at his stomach. ‘In my own apartment?’ Belching quietly, his brow furrowed. ‘It’s my stomach. I just couldn’t sleep. I could taste the acid spurting onto my goddamned tongue.’

George padded into the kitchen and put her arms around her lover. His grey, baggy T-shirt smelled of washing powder, but as she stood on tiptoe and nestled her face into his neck, she drank in the scent of his warm skin beneath. ‘Poor you,’ she said. ‘Honestly, Paul. You’ve got to demand that your doc sends you to a specialist. You’re at the surgery every five bloody minutes, but the shit she’s prescribing isn’t working.’

Van den Bergen kissed the top of her head and moved away from her. ‘I don’t want a gastroscopy. I’ve heard it’s grim, like having drains rodded. I wish they’d give me a PET scan, and then I’d know, once and for all.’ The low rumble of his voice had taken on a hoarse edge over the past few months. He closed his eyes and curved his six foot five frame into a stoop, as though his long spine had been replaced by nothing more than a pipe cleaner.

Picking up the large brown bottle from the worktop, George read the blurb and raised an eyebrow. She sucked her teeth. Scratched at her scalp and shook out the wild curls of her afro. Irritated by this anxious man who overthought everything. But genuinely fearful for him, this time. ‘I’m sick of your bullshit. Every five minutes, you’re moaning at me that you’re coming down with a spot of terminal this and deadly that.’

‘I think I might have throat cancer, George. I mean it. Have some sympathy for an old fart. The longer I live, the more likely it is that something’s going to get me.’ This tormented, difficult bastard of a chief inspector, whom she loved so much, rubbed his stomach. ‘Maybe it’s stomach cancer. Can you get stomach cancer?’

George slammed the bottle of antacid down. She switched from his native Dutch to her native English. ‘For God’s sake, man. Get it fucking sorted. You demand Dyno-Rod or a scan or some shit, or me and you are going to tangle! I can’t keep getting woken up in the middle of the night. If it’s not your stomach, it’s the job. It’s bad enough back at Aunty Sharon’s with Letitia up ’til all hours and then stinking in bed ’til midday, Aunty Sharon not getting home from work until three in the morning, and then Dad getting up when she comes in because his body clock’s buggered.’

‘I can’t help it! This is what you get when you fall for a man twenty years your senior.’

George waved her hand dismissively at his mention of their age gap. It hadn’t mattered when they’d met almost a decade ago and she’d been a twenty-year-old Erasmus student, and it didn’t matter now. ‘When I come to Amsterdam, I need to get my kip. I’m a criminologist, Paul. I spend my days with murderous mental cases in draughty prisons – when I’m not scrapping for funding or teaching snot-nosed first-year students. My life’s stressful as hell. This is where I decompress, yeah?’ She switched back to Dutch. ‘I’ve got nowhere else I can relax – until you commit to getting a mortgage with me, so I’ve got a home I can call my own… And I don’t care if it’s here or London or in Cambridge. Whatever. But don’t think you can keep wriggling out of that conversation, mister.’ She wagged her finger at him. Still sour that Van den Bergen had refused to be drawn on the subject of the bricks-and-mortar commitment George so desperately sought since her brush with death in Central America. ‘It’s time we put down roots together! Anyway, until you get your shit together so I can stop this nomadic, long-distance romance crap, your place is my happy place. I need some peace and quiet. Not you, wandering round like a spectre, swigging from a family-sized bottle of Gaviscon in the early hours.’ She poked him in the stomach, careful to avoid the long line of scar tissue that bulged beneath the fabric of his top – a permanent aide-memoire of the mortal danger a job like his put him in – put both of them in. ‘And for a hypochondriac, you’re a total failure. You need to man up, get to the doc’s and insist that she doesn’t fob you off. I can’t have you dying on me, Paul. Sort it out!’

Her lover belched and grimaced. He rolled his eyes up to the bank of spotlights that she had recently scrubbed free of cooking grease, accumulated from those occasions when Van den Bergen had been bothered to cook – badly. ‘You’ve got the cheek to talk to me about peace and quiet, with your family? There’s no escaping their noise, even from the other side of the North Sea, thanks to them Skyping you every five minutes!’ He grabbed her around the middle and pulled her close. ‘Anyway, you’re exaggerating. This is the first time in ages that I’ve woken you up.’ He ran his long fingers gently along the sides of her unfettered breasts. ‘And there was once a time when you were happy to be disturbed in the middle of the night.’

He was smiling now, though the mirth didn’t quite reach his eyes. George could see that he was suffering. Nevertheless, Van den Bergen lifted her off the ground as though she were a doll, amidst her shrieked protests, and carried her into the bedroom. They had just begun to enjoy a passionate kiss, only slightly marred by the aniseed taste of his antacid medicine and the knowledge that Van den Bergen’s heart wasn’t entirely in it, when the mobile phone on his nightstand started to buzz.

‘Oh, you’re joking,’ George said, rolling his long frame off her. ‘See?’

‘Who the hell is it at this time in the morning?’ Van den Bergen asked, rummaging for his glasses among the pile of pill packets and gardening manuals. He held the folded spectacles up to his eyes and scowled at the phone’s screen. ‘Bloody Maarten Minks.’ He pressed the answer button and lifted the phone to his ear. ‘Morning, Maarten. Isn’t it a little early—?’

Gathering the duvet around her like a cocoon, George could hear Van den Bergen’s boss, the commissioner, on the other end. His voice sounded squeaky and overexcited. Demanding dickhead. She guessed he liked nothing more than to lord it over his ageing subordinate at an unsociable hour.

‘Yes. Okay. Straightaway. I’ll call you with an update.’ Van den Bergen nodded and hung up, exhaling heavily.

‘What is it?’ George asked, stifling a yawn.

‘Port of Amsterdam,’ he said. ‘Customs have found a truck full of suffocating Syrians, and guess who’s been tasked with investigating!’

‘Trafficked?’

‘What do you think?’

‘How many?’ George wiped the sleep from her eyes.

Van den Bergen was already on his feet, pulling on the weekend’s jeans, which were only slightly muddy from a trip to his Sloterdijkermeer allotment. ‘Fifty-odd. Minks has got his knickers in a twist. He’s under pressure to stem the tide of refugees coming into the city. The burghers of Amsterdam are happy to throw money at Syrian charities but they’re not overly pleased at the thought of hundreds of them arriving in cargo trucks to shit on their highly polished Oud Zuid doorsteps.’

‘Hypocrites,’ George said. ‘It’s the same in the UK. Most of the people you speak to are sympathetic about what’s being done to those poor bastards. Bombed by the Russians. Bent over by Daesh. Shat on by Assad. But nearly half the nation voted for Brexit, mainly to keep immigrants out, so somebody’s telling fibs.’ She padded back to the kitchen and switched on the kettle. As she prepared a flask of coffee for Van den Bergen, she thought about her own father, currently holed up in South East London with her mother, from whom he was estranged, and her long-suffering Aunty Sharon. With his Spanish passport, would he be sent packing back to his country of origin, unable to rebuild the relationship with his long-lost daughter properly?

Screwing the lid closed on the flask, she eyed the printout of the ticket to Torremolinos that she’d propped behind Van den Bergen’s peppermint teabags. Ten days, descending en masse on the three-star Sol hotel of Letitia’s choice, at Letitia’s insistence, with the sea-facing rooms that Letitia had stipulated. George in with her cousin, Tinesha. Her Dad in with cousin Patrice. Mommie Dearest, bunking up with poor old Aunty Sharon, where she’d undoubtedly hog all the wardrobe space – ‘’Cos I gotta look my best if I’m not well with my pulmonaries. I gotta make that rarseclart know what he’s been missing all these years, innit?’ Not long now. George could almost smell the rum and Coke by the pool and the melange of coconut sun cream scents from Thomson’s least intrepid travellers.

When Van den Bergen took his flask and kissed her goodbye, his phone was welded to his ear yet again. A grim expression on his handsome face and his thick shock of prematurely white hair seeming cold blue in the dawn light.

‘And one of them’s died?’ he asked. Presumably it was Minks on the other end. ‘Oxygen deprivation?’ A pause. He snatched a bag of crisps and the key to his Mercedes from the console table in the hall. ‘Dysentery?! Ugh. What a way to go in a confined space. How old?’

His brow furrowed. He pulled the door closed.

George could still hear him speaking in low, rumbling tones on the landing. ‘Twelve? Jesus. Poor little sod. Okay. I’m on it.’

CHAPTER 2
Port of Amsterdam, later

‘How come the truck was intercepted here?’ Van den Bergen asked Elvis, his voice almost whipped away entirely by the stiff dockside wind and swallowed by the sobs of those Syrian refugees who were yet to be assessed by paramedics and ferried to hospital. He blinked hard at the sight of this desperate diaspora, sitting on the pavement, wrapped in tinfoil blankets, with blood-pressure cuffs strapped to their arms and oxygen monitors clamped on their fingers. ‘Seems a weird place for the driver to have come. It’s all logistics and exporter headquarters in this bit of the port.’

He studied the heavy goods vehicle, which had been cordoned off with police tape by the uniforms. On the side of the truck’s battered burgundy container, the livery of a produce company, Groenten Den Bosch B.V., had been emblazoned in yellow. It looked no different from any other cargo vehicle carrying greenhouse-grown unseasonable fruit and vegetables to the UK and beyond.

‘Apparently the port authority cops were heading this way after they’d been to investigate a break-in over there…’ Elvis gesticulated towards some grey industrial sheds in the distance that bruised the watery landscape with their utilitarian bulk. It looked exactly like the place the junior detective had almost met an untimely end at the hands of the Rotterdam Silencer’s men. Small wonder that he was shivering, his shoulders hunched inside his leather jacket, a pinched look to his face. ‘It was a chance discovery,’ he said, his eyes darting furtively over to the wharf-side warehouse behind them. The scar around his neck was still livid, though he’d covered it up today with a scarf. The quiff and mutton-chop sideburns that had earned him his nickname may have been replaced by a stylish cut and better clothes, but Van den Bergen’s protégé looked positively vulnerable these days.

‘Are you eating right?’ Van den Bergen asked, scratching his nose with the edge of his notebook.

‘What? What’s that got to do with a truckload of trafficked Syrians?’

Van den Bergen coughed awkwardly, wondering how to dress his fatherly concern up as idle curiosity. It wouldn’t do to let Elvis know that he cared… Would it? ‘Nothing. You just look…’

‘I’ve been going to the gym.’ He patted his newly flat stomach.

‘Oh. It’s just…what with you being garrotted and left for dead and—’

‘Can we just not, boss?’ Elvis smiled weakly and pulled his jacket closed against the wind. ‘Anyway, the driver was trying to turn around, can you believe it? Who the hell tries to do a three-point turn with a heavy goods vehicle on a road like this?! When they pulled over to ask him what the hell he was doing, the guy freaked, jumped out of his cab and tried to run away. That’s when they opened up the back and found all these poor bastards inside.’

Van den Bergen belched stomach acid into his mouth and swallowed it back down with a grimace. Wondered how Elvis felt about the black body bag that lay on a gurney by the roadside, having been found inside one himself on the brink of death. He walked over to the gurney.

‘Give me some space,’ he told the uniform – a young lad who looked like he was barely out of cadet school. ‘Let me see her.’

Breathing in deeply, he slowly unzipped the bag to reveal the pale face of the girl inside. Were it not for the blue tinge to her lips and the general grey hue to skin that had certainly been olive in life, she could almost be sleeping. One of the sobbing women who sat on the pavement leaped up and made for him. Tears streamed down her red face. She shrieked something at Van den Bergen – words that he didn’t comprehend, though he understood her anguish perfectly. Bitter, biting grief needed no interpreter. One of the other women pulled the girl’s mother back before two uniformed officers could restrain her.

Thinking of his granddaughter, Van den Bergen’s viscera tightened. He ground his molars together. Turned to the uniform. ‘How many of the refugees are critical?’

The lad touched the brim of his hat respectfully. Visibly gulped. ‘Twenty have gone off with the first lot of ambulances,’ he said. ‘They were in the worst shape. The rest…’

He inclined his head to the remaining ragtag band of chancers sitting on the pavement: about two-dozen men in dusty, cheap suits or hoodies and jeans, yellowed at the knees. They looked like they had stepped straight from a war zone into the truck. The half dozen or so women wore jeans and tunics for the most part – full-length, loose-fitting dark dresses on the older ones. All had their heads covered, though they had oxygen masks fitted to their faces. The remainder were children, ranging from about five years old to young teens, dressed in bright colours. Van den Bergen was struck by how ordinary they all looked. He berated himself for having expected them all to appear like Middle Eastern stereotypes instead of electricians, nurses, teachers, lecturers: people who had simply had enough of certain death in their homeland and had decided to take their chances on possible death in the back of a heavy goods vehicle.

‘Make sure they get whatever they need while they’re waiting,’ Van den Bergen said, swallowing hard and clenching his fist around his pen. ‘If the paramedics say they can eat and drink, arrange it. Good policing is about more than just arresting bad guys. Speaking of which, where’s the driver?’

The uniform pointed to a squad car that had been parked at an unlikely angle across the street, forming part of the roadblock. ‘He refuses to speak. My sergeant’s about to take him in for questioning. You’ll want to sit in on the interview, right?’

The squad car’s engine started up. The reverse lights came on, and the vehicle started to roll back slowly. In Van den Bergen’s peripheral vision, he caught sight again of the body bag that contained the little girl. Her keening mother was now being tended to by a paramedic. A corrosive force stronger than stomach acid welled up inside him. Pushing the uniformed lad aside, Van den Bergen took long strides towards the brightly liveried politie squad car. He wrenched open the passenger door and held up his large hand. Flashed his ID. Fixed the female sergeant with a stern and unflinching gaze. ‘Stop the car,’ he said. Pushing the central locking button on the console, he unlocked the car’s doors. Then he leaped over the bonnet to the driver’s side and opened the rear door. Without pausing to take a look at the greasy-haired trucker, he grabbed the handcuffed man by the scruff of his neck and pulled him out of the car.

‘Who are you working for?’ he yelled at him.

The trucker was a middle-aged man with a bloated, red face and veined nose that spoke to high blood pressure and too much whisky. Puffy beneath the eyes. He stank of stale cigarettes and fried food. A dark band of grease described the collar of his blue sweatshirt, ending in a V above his sternum. This didn’t strike Van den Bergen as a scrupulous or discerning man who might be bothered where the money for his alcohol might come from.

‘No comment. I want a solicitor,’ the man said, holding Van den Bergen’s gaze. ‘You just manhandled me out of that car. That’s police brutality.’

‘You ran, didn’t you? When the port cops pulled you over, you ran, you piece of shit. A kid’s dead on the back of your actions.’ He pushed the trucker hard in the shoulder – a family man’s rage taking over his professional sensibilities.

By the time the trucker had stretched his cuffed hands down towards his baggy jeans, Van den Bergen was too late to realise he was aiming for his pocket. With determined fingers, the man pulled out a white object.

‘Boss! Watch out!’ Elvis yelled, sprinting towards them.

What was it? A note? An envelope? Van den Bergen didn’t have time to put on the glasses that hung on the end of a chain around his neck to work out what the trucker had armed himself with.

‘Stay back!’ the man shouted, wide-eyed. Spittle had gathered at the corners of his mouth, putting Van den Bergen in mind of a crazed bull. ‘I’ll open it. I will. And you’ll all be fucked.’

‘Take it easy!’ Elvis said, holding his hands high.

Trying to make sense of the situation, Van den Bergen’s fingers crept slowly towards the gun in its holster, strapped to his body. ‘Whoa!’ he said. ‘What have you got there?’

‘Let me go, or I’ll throw this shit everywhere!’

‘What shit?’

Van den Bergen took a step closer, poised to draw his service weapon.

‘Anthrax.’

CHAPTER 3
Van den Bergen’s apartment, a short while later

Peering dolefully at the side of Van den Bergen’s wardrobe that she commandeered whenever she stayed, George saw only a phalanx of drab: nothing but washed-out jeans, black long-sleeved tops and her old purple cardigan, which was still going, despite the holes in the elbows.

‘How you going to wear any of that shit to the pool?’ Letitia screeched through the laptop’s monitor.

George closed her eyes and bit her lip. The joys of Skype, bringing her over-opinionated mother, who was currently sprawled on Aunty Sharon’s sofa in South East London, straight into her lover’s bedroom in Amsterdam. There was Letitia’s round face – no make-up yet today, and the recently sewn-in ombré hair extensions made her look more like a spooked lion than Beyoncé – grimacing at the collection of casual wear.

‘I ain’t going to no fancy tapas bars with you dressed like a builder, lady.’ Pointing with her talons, which were green today. Head rolling indignantly from shoulder to shoulder. ‘Them tops is a fucking embarrassment. Sort it out! Get down the shops. Or don’t they have shops in Holland?’

‘I’m skint,’ George said, angling the laptop’s camera away from the contents of the wardrobe. ‘I’m saving for a deposit, remember?’

‘Skint, my arse. All that fancy shit you do for the university and that old lanky Dutch bastard you call a boyfriend has got you on the payroll over there?’ Her mother sucked her teeth, snatched up a packet of cigarettes from the coffee table and lit up with a dramatic flourish. She blew her first lungful of smoke towards her screen, clearly aiming for George’s image. ‘Your Aunty Shaz’s gaff not good enough for you?’

‘Maybe I want to get away from you.’

The words had burst their way out before George had had chance to filter them. Damn it! She’d made a pact with herself not to rub her ailing mother up the wrong way, especially as Letitia had nearly lost her life prematurely at the hands of the Rotterdam Silencer himself.

And there was her father, edging his way into the frame and waving timidly. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was planning to get away from him when they had only just been reunited after decades apart.

‘Not you, Dad!’ she said – in Spanish, for his ears only. ‘When I get my own place, you’ll always be welcome. There will be a bed for you, anytime. I meant Madam Gobshite. I need to put some distance between me and her when I’m in the UK.’

Her father looked at the monitor with warm brown eyes. A wry smile softening a face that was still somewhat haggard after his ordeal, though his cheeks had begun to plump up, presumably thanks to Aunty Shaz’s incredible cooking. George’s stomach rumbled at the thought. Jerk chicken. Rice and peas. Goat curry. Bun. Jesus, I’ve got to learn to cook.

‘Don’t worry, my love. I’d worked that out,’ he said.

But suddenly, Letitia’s grimace blocked up the picture. ‘Hey! Don’t you be thinking I don’t know you’re having a pop at me, you cheeky lickle rarseclart.’

Her mother snapped her fingers at the camera, and even with the breadth of the North Sea between them, George winced inwardly at the castigatory gesture. She knew she was in the wrong for bitching so blatantly in front of her, and felt instantly guilty for it. Wouldn’t let on to that horrible old cow, though.

‘My internet’s down,’ she said, slamming the lid of her laptop shut. Ending a conversation that had quickly soured – though she had been trying her hardest to keep it sweet.

Glancing at the clock, she just registered the fact that it was gone 11 a.m. and she still hadn’t heard from Van den Bergen when her phone rang. It was Marie on the other end.

‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘Has he forgotten his reading glasses again?’

But Marie’s voice was thin and stringy, stretched to its limit with angst. ‘The boss has been rushed to hospital. You’d better come quick.’

The taxi seemed to drive too slowly down the s100, though George could see from the driver’s speedometer that he was flooring it.

‘Please hurry!’ she said, reaching forward to grab the man’s shoulder. She withdrew her hand when she spied the navy jumper full of dandruff.

They took a sharp right off the motorway and left the canal, speeding down Rhijnspoorplein. The clusters of high-rise office blocks blurred into the less densely built-up dual carriageway of Wibautstraat. A tram approached from the left and the lights were changing.

‘Put your foot down!’ she shouted.

‘No way, missy. Sit tight. I’m not going to kill us both to save thirty seconds.’

The driver eyeballed her through the rear-view mirror. She could see from the stern promontory of his brow that he wasn’t going to yield. In sullen silence, she sat with folded arms, imagining Van den Bergen breathing his last in the high-dependency unit. Marie, being Marie, hadn’t gone into any great detail and had hung up all too quickly. George ruminated on what gut-wrenching drama might greet her when the taxi finally swung into Eerste Oosterparkstraat.

The brutalist mid-century-modern block of the hospital sprawled on their left.

‘Drop me here.’ George thrust money at the taxi driver and sprinted into the Onze Lieve Vrouw Gasthuis, arriving at the information desk with a tight chest. ‘I’m looking for Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen,’ she wheezed, determining to quit the clandestine cigarettes she was still snatching when nobody was watching.

The receptionist looked her up and down. The smile didn’t quite reach her eyes as she gave George the ward location and reminded her that it wasn’t currently visiting time.

When George arrived on the specialist heart ward, she found Van den Bergen’s bed empty. Grabbing a passing male nurse by the arm, she was dimly aware of tears pricking the backs of her eyes. She shivered with icy dread. ‘Where’s the patient? Where’s Paul van den Bergen?’ she asked. ‘I’m his partner. Please tell me he hasn’t—’

The male nurse looked down at her hand with a disapproving expression. He gently withdrew his arm from her grip and patted her knuckles sympathetically.

‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse said. ‘He’s not dead. He’s too busy grumbling about the “service”, like we’re some kind of hotel and not a hospital. He wouldn’t believe the doctor when he was told he hadn’t had a heart attack.’

George shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘He’s on the guts ward. Stomach, bowels and liver.’

With a thundering heartbeat and unsure what to expect, George finally found her lover, looking pale and ruffled in a bed, surrounded by patients who looked far worse than he did, wired up to rather more than a simple blood-pressure cuff and oxygen monitor. She glimpsed the stickers from an earlier ECG on his chest.

‘Jesus, Paul! Marie called and told me you’d been rushed in here. She put the fear of God into me. What the hell’s going on? You look like shit.’

Van den Bergen sighed heavily and bypassed her lips to give her a cheek that was rough with iron-filings stubble.

‘Not on the lips. My tongue’s like a fur coat. You wouldn’t believe what they did to me, George. It was inhumane.’ He reached out to caress her face but pulled his finger free of the oxygen cuff, sending the machine’s alarm into overdrive. ‘I thought I’d had a heart attack.’

George pulled up a chair to his bedside. ‘Why are you on the guts ward if you’re not dying? Have you been poisoned?’

Van den Bergen’s sharp grey eyes seemed to focus on something far away that George couldn’t see. ‘There was this truck full of trafficked refugees. A little girl had died.’ His hooded lids closed, the lines around his eyes tightening. ‘One minute, I’m trying to get some information out of the bastard of a driver, next minute, he’s pulling an envelope out of his pocket. I don’t know how the hell he did it, the sneaky, agile bastard. He was cuffed!’

‘What was in the envelope?’ George took his hand and gently put the oxygen monitor back on the end of his finger.

‘It was full of powder.’ His eyes opened and locked with George’s, the ghost of fear still evident in pupils that had shrunk to pinpricks. ‘Anthrax, he said. He threw the stuff all over me.’ Van den Bergen swallowed hard. The digital beep of his pulse sped up. ‘I thought I was a goner, George.’

Backing away slightly at the thought of contamination, George inhaled sharply. ‘And was it? Anthrax, I mean?’

He shook his head. ‘Talcum powder, apparently. But I didn’t know that at the time. I felt this unbelievable griping pain in my chest and I just hit the deck. I have a vague memory of medics in biohazard suits and breathing apparatus crawling all over the place. Maybe they tested the powder on site. I have no idea.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘Obviously, it was a hoax.’ He ran a shaking shovel of a hand through the white thatch of his hair. ‘Maybe the arsehole had been using it to blackmail the refugees. How else, as a lone operator, could you get a large group of poorly treated people to be compliant on a long journey?’

‘Easier to conceal than a gun,’ George said, suddenly flushing hot as anger engulfed her on behalf of the dead little girl. She imagined the child, sick, terrified and whimpering for help as some moron of a driver threatened her with poison. She pushed the thought aside. For now. ‘But never mind all that. Why did you collapse?’ She stood and poured Van den Bergen a glass of water. Proffered it to him.

He sipped and winced. Belched audibly. ‘Panic. I thought I’d had a heart attack, but it wasn’t. It was bloody stomach acid, would you believe it? They gave me a gastroscopy.’

George threw her head back and laughed. ‘At last! About bloody time! And?’

Van den Bergen growled, pushed the glass back towards her and threw the flimsy hospital covers off the bed.

‘Where you going, old man?’ George asked in English, standing quickly so that the blood rushed to her head.

As he began to rummage in the cabinet beside his bed, George could see that the invalid had been replaced once again by a chief inspector. He pulled out the clothes he had been wearing that morning and plonked them onto the bed. Dark trousers and a plain blue shirt. He stripped off the ugly fawn-coloured support stockings that covered his long, long legs. ‘Gastroscopies are no laughing matter,’ he said, taking out his size thirteens – gleaming from George’s ministrations with shoe polish. He made a spitting noise like a cat with a fur ball stuck in its throat. ‘They shoved a hosepipe down me. A damned hosepipe! With a camera on the end. And I was awake.’

Taking his arm, George tried to usher him back into bed. ‘Look. Give it up, will you? They clearly think you need observation, so why the hell are you trying to escape?’

‘I want to question the owner of Groenten Den Bosch. That’s the livery on the side of the truck. There’s a girl dead and maybe more on their last legs because of some profiteering bastard who thinks human beings are interchangeable with exported goods. Maybe it’s this Den Bosch guy. Maybe he gets twelve-year-old girls mixed up with capsicums and courgettes.’

‘Paul!’

‘Well, I’m not going to find out why the Port of Amsterdam’s latest cargo is the dead and dying from the war-torn Middle East unless I get out of here.’

George snatched up his clothes and held them to her chest. ‘You’re my priority. You’re the one I love. The girl’s dead and we’ll catch whoever did this to her. But she can wait until tomorrow.’

Van den Bergen grabbed the garments back and hastily started to pull his trousers on. Yanked the ECG stickers off his chest, grimacing only slightly when they tugged at the scar tissue that ran from his sternum to his abdomen. ‘I’ve got a granddaughter, George. This can’t wait. And I’ve not had a heart attack.’ He dropped the hospital gown to the floor and pulled his shirt on over the wiry musculature of his torso. ‘I’ve got a hiatus hernia. A bad one. But—’

‘So you’re not about to die on me?’ George asked as she appraised him. He was still in decent shape for a man of fifty, thanks to all that gardening. She licked her lips and winked. ‘Good. The banks won’t turn you down for a mortgage then.’

Her pointed remark was met with a disdainful harrumph. Van den Bergen pulled a blister pack of painkillers from his jacket pocket and swallowed two with some water. ‘You can sit here feeling concerned for me, like a mother I don’t need, banging on about getting a place together yet again, or you can come and help me. I’m about to do what I always do, Georgina.’

‘Which is?’ George raised an eyebrow and folded her arms. Irritated by his inferring that she had morphed from red-hot lover into some suffocating, clucky guardian. That she was nagging him.

‘Fight for the wronged. Get justice for the innocent dead.’ He fastened the metal links of his chunky watch and hooked his reading glasses on their chain around his neck. ‘Well? Are you coming?’

CHAPTER 4
North Holland farmland near Nieuw-Vennep, Den Bosch farm, later still

‘It’s pretty deserted for a big enterprise,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘I don’t like it.’ His voice was even hoarser than usual, George noted. Though his right hand was hidden inside his coat, poised to draw his service weapon, he had wrapped his left hand around the base of his neck.

‘You look knackered, old man,’ George said, wishing the difficult sod had sent Elvis or Marie to check the provenance of the truck.

The slight stoop in Van den Bergen’s shoulders said everything, but he merely pursed his lips and stalked off towards the red steel door of the Den Bosch reception.

Casting an eye over the utilitarian grouping of brick buildings with their corrugated-iron roofs, George could see that there was not a single light at any of the windows. Nothing to see beyond them apart from acres and acres of the Dutch flatland. To the left, the polders had been neatly planted with crops or were festooned with row upon row of grey polytunnels that shone like fat silk worms in the dim sunlight. They snaked away into the distance, their uniformity punctuated only by the inky stripes of dykes. To the right, the horizon was broken by a veritable crystal palace of greenhouses. The place gave her the creeps.

‘Wait for me!’ Crunching the gravel of the courtyard beneath her new Doc Marten boots, she watched Van den Bergen try the handle.

‘It’s locked,’ he said, taking a few steps backwards. Still rubbing his neck. He approached one of the windows and peered inside. ‘Elvis said he couldn’t get the owner on the phone, either.’

‘Look, Paul. I think you should go home and leave this to the others. You’ve just been in hospital, for Christ’s sake! I’m worried about you.’

Waving her away, he took long strides around the side of the reception building. Jogging after him, George wanted to drag him by the sleeve of his raincoat back to his Mercedes. But this was Van den Bergen, and she knew he took stubborn to a whole new level.

‘There is someone here!’ he said, gesticulating at a pimped-up Jeep, an old Renault and two Luton vans bearing the company’s insignia, all parked up by the bins.

‘Maybe they’re in the fields,’ George said.

The wind had started to blow across the expanse of green, flattening the leaves that sprouted in neat rows. She clutched her duffel coat closed against the chill, wistfully thinking that a rum-fuelled family bust-up by the pool in Torremolinos would be infinitely preferable to a bleak afternoon in the agricultural dead centre of the Netherlands. She was just about to suggest they call for backup when a man exited one of the giant greenhouses, carrying a tray of seedlings. He caught sight of them and frowned. Started walking towards them. He moved at a brisk pace and wore jeans and a sweatshirt that were covered in mud at the knees and on the belly.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked. There was a bright glint when he spoke. Braces?

George couldn’t place the man’s accent. He wasn’t an Amsterdamer. But she could tell from his confident stance that he was at least the manager, if not the boss. There was something about the confrontational tone of his voice; this wasn’t someone who took orders. He was big, too. A wall of a man with a thick bush of greying hair that looked like an overgrown buzz cut.

‘I’m looking for Frederik den Bosch,’ Van den Bergen said, blocking the path.

‘Who wants him?’

‘I do.’ Van den Bergen withdrew a battered business card but was careful to give the sapling-carrying man-mountain a flash of his service weapon, strapped to the side of his body. He stuck the card between two swaying plants. ‘Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen. Where might I find Den Bosch?’

‘You’re looking at him.’ He grinned widely, displaying a perfect set of gold teeth.

Following the proprietor into the main office building, George took in her surroundings, trying to get the measure of Den Bosch. The place was cold and dark, despite the whitewashed brick of the wall. It was cluttered with vintage furniture – more charity shop than antique-dealer cool. It felt damp and smelled of moss and mildew. An earthy, utilitarian place. Den Bosch set the tray of saplings down on the draining board of a sink in a kitchenette area at the far end.

‘Coffee?’ he shouted. ‘Biscuits?’

George’s stomach rumbled.

‘Milk, no sugar,’ she said.

‘Not for me.’ Van den Bergen glowered at her and started to flick through his notepad, perching his glasses on the end of his nose. ‘Let’s get to the point, Mr Den Bosch. One of your trucks was pulled over this morning at the Port of Amsterdam.’ He read out the number plate, watching as Den Bosch’s eyes narrowed. ‘It was found to contain just over fifty trafficked Syrians, all suffering from dysentery and on the brink of suffocation. Several are now critically ill in hospital from oxygen deprivation and dehydration. One – a girl of twelve – died. The driver tried to escape by pretending to throw anthrax in my face. What do you have to say about that?’

As Van den Bergen sat back in a saggy old armchair that was positioned by the beat-up horseshoe of a reception desk – almost certainly a relic from the 1980s – George walked over to the sink. Den Bosch was stirring the instant coffees too quickly, sloshing dark brown liquid onto the yellow Formica worktop. He plopped in thick evaporated milk from a bottle that looked like it had seen fresher days.

Turning to face Van den Bergen, Den Bosch shrugged. ‘I reported that truck as stolen the other day. Didn’t you know?’ He treated them yet again to that bullion smile, eyebrows framing an expression of apparent confusion. ‘Jesus. I can’t believe some scumbag was using it to smuggle Arabs. But at least they were smuggling them out of the country, eh?’

‘Come again?’ George said, snatching up her coffee and eyeing the chip in the mug with distaste. She threw the coffee down the sink. Stood too close to Den Bosch. ‘Sorry. Just remembered I’m allergic to coffee.’

Her gaze travelled down his tracksuit top to his forearms. She caught a glimpse of colour on his skin, though he yanked the fabric over his wrists so quickly that she wondered if she had imagined it.

‘Arabs,’ he said. ‘ISIS and all that. They come over here but all they want to do is blow innocent Dutch citizens up and contaminate our fair northern land with their Muslim bullshit. Knocking up our women to make brown babies.’ Pointedly looking George up and down, he thrust a packet of biscuits towards her. ‘Chocky bicky?’

Taking several steps backwards, she sucked her teeth at him. Decided to spare him the insults in her mother’s patois. An ignorant shitehawk like that wouldn’t understand it anyway.

‘Dr McKenzie,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘Why don’t you go and wait for me in the car?’

George nodded. But as she left the down-at-heel offices, she heard Den Bosch reiterate that the truck had been stolen.

‘The Netherlands is a world gone mad,’ Den Bosch said. ‘There’s so many foreigners running round, making tons of cash from criminal activities and not paying taxes… They come over here and bleed us dry. You want to think twice before you come and interrogate a legitimate businessman like me over my truck and a bunch of illegals, Mr Van den Bergen. Why don’t you save your police harassment for those terrorist bastards?’

In the luxurious cocoon of Van den Bergen’s car, George got the special cloth and the antibacterial spray from the glove compartment and started to wipe down the dashboard and polish the dial display and gearstick with a fervour bordering on frenzy. Cheeky chocky bicky bastard.

‘What do you think of him?’ Van den Bergen asked some ten minutes later as he lowered himself into the driver’s seat and slammed the door with a thunk.

‘Scumbag, of course,’ she said.

‘Do you think he’s a people trafficker? God knows you’ve met enough of them in your line of work.’

She eyed the deepening creases on either side of Van den Bergen’s mouth and traced the lines gently with her little finger. ‘You tell me, Paul. What do people traffickers look like? The Duke? The Rotterdam Silencer? Or a sprout-growing lout?’

As they pulled out of the courtyard, she glanced back to the reception building. Den Bosch was standing in the doorway, staring straight at her. He pulled up his sleeves, and George was certain she glimpsed a swastika among the complicated designs that covered his forearms in sleeves of ink.

CHAPTER 5
Amsterdam, Van den Bergen’s doctor’s surgery, 4 October

The display beeped, flashing up the name of the next patient in red digital letters. But it wasn’t ‘Paul v. d. Bergen’. Instead, an Indonesian woman snatched up her bag with a harried look on her face and marched briskly from the waiting room to the doctors’ surgeries beyond. She certainly didn’t look that bloody ill.

Van den Bergen clutched at his throat as a hot jet of acid spurted upwards into his gullet. He exhaled heavily, all thoughts of the Syrian refugees and the racist produce farmer pushed to the back of his mind while the prospect of throat cancer took precedence. Yet again. Rising from his uncomfortable chair, he approached the reception desk.

‘Am I next?’ he asked the bouffant-haired woman behind the counter. He spoke mainly to the wart on her chin – though he tried not to.

She checked her computer screen. ‘Sorry. Doctor’s running late this morning. There’s two in first and then you.’

Leaning forward, he tried to invoke an air of secrecy between them. ‘I might have…throat cancer.’

He expected her to rearrange her disappointing features into a look of sympathy or horror, but the receptionist’s impassive expression didn’t alter.

‘Two more and then you’re in.’ She smiled, revealing teeth like a horse. ‘There’s a new magazine about cars knocking around on one of the tables.’ As if that was any compensation for being made to wait when he was almost certain that his slow, painful demise had already begun inside his burning throat. Just because the gastroscopy hadn’t found cancer yesterday didn’t mean it hadn’t conquered his healthy cells today.

Sitting back down, Van den Bergen folded his long right leg over his left. Thought about deep-vein thrombosis and uncrossed them swiftly. Sitting opposite him was a beautiful blonde young mother, wrestling with a yowling and stout-looking toddler, whose chubby little fists, when he wasn’t clutching his ear, pounded her repeatedly on the shoulder. The fraught scene put him in mind of his own daughter, Tamara, and his granddaughter, Eva. Ah, parenthood. All the joys of making another human being with your own DNA, but the crippling burden of worrying if they’ll make it to adulthood and fearing what kind of person they might become. He was silently thankful that Tamara hadn’t turned out a nagging, self-obsessed harridan like her mother, Andrea. His daughter had inherited his quiet stoicism, but had he passed on his weak genes? Would she too possibly be prone to the Big C that had taken his father; definitely destined for digestive rebellion and constant anxiety?

Batting the thought away, he turned his attention to an old, old man two seats along, who was gazing blankly ahead. Though the man was smartly dressed in a tailored dark jacket that didn’t quite match his navy gabardine trousers, the ring of unkempt white hair around his bald head lent him an air of institutional neglect. Given the rash of freckles on his hairless pate and the translucence of his deeply furrowed skin that revealed the blue web of veins beneath, he couldn’t have been far off a century. The old guy didn’t look too good. He lolled in his chair, his pale face sweaty under the unforgiving strip light of the waiting room. Van den Bergen watched with growing concern as saliva started to spool out of his mouth onto his smart trousers. The angry toddler had fallen silent and suddenly all that was audible above the thrum of electricity from the lights was the man’s rapid, shallow breathing. His colour changed to a sickly grey.

‘Sir! Are you okay?’ Van den Bergen asked.

The elderly patient didn’t respond. His eyes had taken on a vacant glaze. Water began to drip from the seat. Van den Bergen realised the man was urinating.

‘Help!’ he shouted, lurching from his chair and propping up the old man just as he started to tumble forward. His own hands were shaking; a prickling sensation as the blood drained from his own face. ‘Come quickly! This man is very ill.’ Craning his neck to locate the receptionist, he saw nothing but the blonde mother, edging away with her child in her arms, covering the toddler’s eyes. His heart thudded violently against his ribcage.

Alone with the dying man, unable to decide in his panic if he should try to administer mouth-to-mouth or not, Van den Bergen was relieved when his own doctor ran from the consulting rooms to the scene of the emergency. She knelt by the old man’s side, feeling for a pulse.

‘Inneke!’ she called towards reception, with the calm tone of a medical professional. Smoothed her hijab at her temples as though this were nothing more than a routine examination. ‘Bring the defibrillator, please.’

Finally, the receptionist emerged from behind her desk, carrying the life-saving equipment. Van den Bergen was ushered aside as they manoeuvred the old man gently to the floor and the doctor started to work on him.

The panic rose further inside Van den Bergen along with his stomach acid, encasing his chest in an iron grip. The old guy’s colour was all but gone now. He knew that those eyes, now bloodshot and deadened like cod in a fisherman’s catch, were no longer seeing. It was too late. The doctor administered CPR for a little while longer while the receptionist used a pump to simulate mouth-to-mouth. But after a minute they both stood and stepped away from the lifeless figure on the floor, who had only hours earlier clearly made the decision to wear a smart jacket today. The old man, and all his memories and stories and loves from a long, long lifetime, had gone.

In the men’s toilets, Van den Bergen leaned against the mirror above the sink and wept quietly. Drying his eyes, he surveyed his reflection and saw an ageing man. Having a lover twenty years his junior was not going to save him from the rapid physical decline and the premature death that was almost certainly lying in wait for him just around the corner.

Dialling George’s number, he just wanted to hear her reassuring voice.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. The sounds of a tannoy announcement and the beep of the supermarket checkout were audible in the background.

‘I’ve just seen a man die. Right in front of me in the surgery.’ He wrapped his free hand around the base of his neck, feeling for the place where the stomach acid was almost certainly eroding the healthy tissue of his gullet. Cellular changes. That’s what Google had suggested. The feeling of constantly being strangled and a worsening hoarseness of the sufferer’s voice. None of it boded well.

‘Oh shit,’ George said absently. ‘Sorry about that. But you’re a cop! You see dead people all the time. How come you’re so cut up? Have you been crying, Paul?’

‘No.’ He looked at his bleary eyes in the mirror, still shining with tears. ‘It’s just…he died right in front of me. It’s different from work. They’re already dead and part of a crime scene. This was so sad and unexpected.’

She didn’t understand. And why would she? George had her foibles, but a constant nagging fear of the end wasn’t one of them. And she was young, with both parents still living. She’d never known what it was to create life, or to accompany one to the very bitter end.

Finishing the call and splashing his face with water, he returned to the waiting room to find the dead man covered by a blanket, being wheeled away on a gurney by paramedics who had arrived on the scene too late. A janitor was already mopping up the old man’s urine, as if he had never been there. With several of the other witnesses dabbing at their eyes with tissues, the funereal mood was normalised only by the shrill noise of the blonde woman’s squalling child.

‘Well, he wasn’t registered with this surgery,’ the receptionist told the others, who had gathered around her as though she were Jesus’s own earthly mouthpiece, disseminating the Word of God to the mortal believers. She patted her hair grandly and folded her arms. ‘Obviously I can’t tell you more because of patient confidentiality.’

‘Oh, go on,’ the blonde woman said. ‘We need to know.’

The receptionist glanced over her shoulder and then leaned in with an air of secrecy. As she started to speak in hushed tones, Van den Bergen’s phone buzzed. A text from Minks.

‘What’s the latest on Den Bosch?’

He was torn. Answer Minks’s query about an investigation that was currently the last thing on his mind, or find out more about the old man? But his decision was made for him when the digital display beeped at him, showing his name in bright red letters.

Taking his seat at the side of the doctor’s desk, he placed a hand over his spasming stomach.

‘Who was he?’ he asked. ‘How come he was left in such a bad way in the waiting room?’

His doctor shook her head. She buttoned the jacket of her smart trouser suit and closed her eyes like an indulgent parent. ‘Now, Paul. You know I can’t share those details with you.’

‘But I’m a cop.’

‘I’ll know more when he’s been looked over by Marianne de Koninck, but given his age and the fact that he popped in here as an emergency patient, he was just a very elderly, poorly gentleman who took a turn for the worse in our waiting room. Death comes to us all.’ She adjusted the clip in her hijab and smiled. ‘Now. I’ve had the results of your gastroscopy.’ With narrowed eyes, she scrutinised her computer screen. ‘Hiatus hernia.’

‘I already know that. Will I need an operation? You know, before it gives me throat cancer.’ Van den Bergen put his right leg over his left knee and started to bounce his foot up and down, up and down.

The doctor smiled. ‘Thirty per cent of over-fifties have this condition. It’s very common. I’m going to up your antacids. Give you a stronger proton-pump inhibitor. We need to keep that acid under control. But you must stop worrying about throat cancer, Paul. Nothing untoward was found in the investigative procedure.’

‘Can’t you fix it?’

‘Do you really want your ribcage sawn open and your stomach taken out? Because that’s what the operation entails. Haven’t you had enough trauma to that area?’ She pointed to the place where he had been carved from sternum to abdomen by the Butcher in a previous case.

He shook his head.

‘Well then.’ She handed him a prescription. ‘Take these twice a day. Have you cut out spice, alcohol and anything acidic from your diet?’

‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘Do these antacids have any nasty long-term side effects?’

‘Stop waiting to die, Paul.’

In the persistent drizzle outside the doctor’s surgery, Van den Bergen tried to force the memory of the old man’s unseeing eyes from his mind. Tried to stop worrying if he’d been frightened at the end. Had he had children who wouldn’t know where their father was? Had he been frustrated that he was breathing his last among uncaring strangers? Perhaps he’d felt relieved that his long life was finally over.

Enough!

He dialled Marie’s number. She picked up straightaway.

‘What have you got on Den Bosch?’ he asked.

On the other end, he could hear Marie crunching. Crisps, in all likelihood. ‘The guy’s got a clean record. I checked out his story. Apparently the heavy goods vehicle had been reported as stolen the day before port police intercepted it.’

‘And Den Bosch’s whereabouts over the last few days?’

Marie cleared her throat and started to speak, sounding like she was picking food from her molars. ‘Get this, boss. He was at some right-wing political rally at the time the heavy goods vehicle was stolen.’

Van den Bergen nodded, remembering what George had said about the swastika tattoos on the guy’s forearms. ‘Go on.’

‘I’ve had a look through his social media accounts. There’s not much, to be fair, but he’s connected on Facebook to some known neo-Nazi bullies who align themselves with the far right. They’re always showing up in press photos where the anti-racist lefties clash with supporters of Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom.’

‘And his business records?’

‘Clean as a whistle. Den Bosch produce exports, mainly to British supermarkets. Courgettes. Peppers. The usual greenhouse produce. It’s a thriving concern. He’s worth a few million, from what I can see from his accounts. I haven’t met him, boss, but on paper it looks like he’s legit. An unpleasant type, maybe, but pays his taxes, bought the local church a new roof and funds a youth group in the village where his farm is located. You said he keeps those tattoos covered with long sleeves?’

‘A man who keeps his fascism as a weekend hobby!’ Van den Bergen said, chuckling.

‘Why would a neo-Nazi, who’s well off on paper, at least, traffick Syrians into European countries?’ Marie asked. ‘Surely that’s the last thing he wants. And he certainly doesn’t need the money.’

‘Anything more on the driver?’

He started to walk towards the car, fingering the folded prescription in his coat pocket. More poison in his system. Hadn’t he read somewhere that prolonged use of proton-pump inhibitors made you more susceptible to osteoporosis? What did that mean for a man who was six foot five? Would a degenerative disease affect the tall worse than the short? There was so much more of him to crumble, after all.

‘Elvis has questioned the driver again, boss. He’s still refusing to talk. He won’t even give us his name. Won’t have legal representation. Nothing. It’s as though the guy doesn’t exist and nobody has come forward to his rescue. It’s a no-hoper of a case.’

‘With a dead twelve-year-old? There’s no way I’m letting this go. Not on my damned watch.’ Unlocking the car, he folded his long frame into the driver’s seat. ‘Where does Den Bosch live?’

‘In De Pijp. I’ll text over his address.’

‘A multimillionaire living in a shithole like that? I don’t buy it.’

‘It’s an up-and-coming area,’ Marie said.

‘Up and coming means ethnically mixed and full of lefty trendies,’ Van den Bergen said, gunning the car towards the nearest pharmacy. ‘Why the hell would someone like Frederik Den Bosch live in anything other than a white, conservative enclave?’

He rang off, sensing there was considerably more to the owner of Groenten Den Bosch than was immediately apparent. Calling George, he cut through her concerned chatter with a simple instruction: ‘Get ready. I’ll pick you up in an hour. We’re going to De Pijp.’

But first, he planned to take a little detour to the morgue.

CHAPTER 6
Van den Bergen’s apartment, later

‘Fucking arseholes.’

George read the email yet again. The first time, she had digested its contents, open-mouthed and with a thudding heartbeat. She’d had that horrible feeling of dread she’d known on many an occasion, where all the blood drained from her skin, leaving her numb. The second time, she’d read it with a degree of disbelief, thinking there must have been a mistake. She had even called the entitled limp-dick who had signed off on the decision. Perhaps he’d accidentally emailed her instead of some other poor sod, who had put their heart and soul into a piece of work for an entire year or more and who had been looking forward to their travails coming to fruition in print. But no. There had been no error. Now, she reread the curt missive and felt only white-hot fury.

From: Timothy.Fitzmaurice@potestasbooks.co.uk

To: Georgina.McKenzie@cam.ac.uk

Subject: Forthcoming publication of ‘Heavy Traffick’

Dear Dr McKenzie,

I regret to inform you that, owing to a change in publishing priorities at Potestas Books, we have had to look again at our list for the forthcoming year and have come to the conclusion that your detailed study of ‘The traffick of women through Europe, and modern sexual slavery’ is no longer a good fit with our other titles. I am afraid your excellent criminological tome will have to find another home.

With all best wishes,

Timothy L Fitzmaurice MA Oxon

Grinding her molars together, George shook her head violently, tempted to pick up the laptop and hurl it through Van den Bergen’s French doors, onto the balcony. But what good would it do? This was the precarious life of a criminologist, she knew: reliant on her university teaching post to maintain her status and publication prospects as an academic; reliant on publication to secure funding; reliant on funding to continue her research work in prisons. She was just another arse-kissing PhD, trying to make a name for herself in a world where you had to stick your fingers in as many pies as possible to make ends meet, always preparing for them to get burned when you were inevitably kicked from grace into the fires of unemployable hell by some senior academic.

‘Bastards! I know exactly what’s going on here,’ she shouted at the glowing screen. ‘Same shit, different day. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, twisting the knife.’

Making herself a foul-tasting coffee, using some granules from the bottom of a jar that had seen better days, she logged onto her UK online bank account. Checked the balance: £367.92. And no payday pending, thanks to her own personal academic puppet-master, Sally Wright, who had cut George’s strings after she’d flouted her demands once too often. Controlling bitch.

Feeling disgusted with herself, she logged out, imagining all the things she would say to that duplicitous cow when she next saw her. Do you get off on abusing your position of power, you hatchet-faced old bag? Is this what you had in mind when you signed up to being my mentor and protector? Fucking blackballing the black girl? Rescinding her tenure, leaving her potless, shamed and out in the cold?

In her mind’s eye, she was standing in Sally Wright’s office in St John’s College in Cambridge, shoving the cup of tea back onto her desk, leaving behind a spatter pattern that psychologists might interpret as pure disgust in liquid form. Except Professor Shitbag All-Wrong was now the vice chancellor of the university and was invincible before all but God and her close cousin, Satan.

She clicked the iPlayer link to the breakfast show on which her saviour-turned-nemesis had recently appeared. There she was, with her ridiculous blunt-cut fringe and short bob and those daft red cat’s-eye glasses that only someone thirty years younger with infinitely better bone structure could really carry off.

‘Of course, writing this Sunday Times bestseller about the legendary, enigmatic Duke was a dream piece of research. I’m so glad the layman has embraced the story of this seemingly respectable peer of the realm, who was in actual fact a people and drug trafficker at the head of an international web of deceit.’ Professor Plagiarism had toyed with her big red beads with those nicotine-stained fingers that looked like lumps of amber, grinning inanely with newly whitened teeth at the show’s blonde host, whom George knew Sally hated for nothing more than cultural snobbery reasons.

‘Bitch!’ George yelled at the buffering screen. ‘Ruinous, treacherous bag!’ Unwelcome tears started to well in the corners of her eyes. She definitely needed this holiday.

Just as George was contemplating a sneaky cigarette, remembering she had hidden an emergency pack of Silk Cut behind the cleaning products under Van den Bergen’s sink, a Skype alert popped up on her monitor, informing her that Letitia the Dragon demanded an audience.

‘What the bloody hell do you want?’ George asked, wiping the first rogue tear away hastily.

‘You crying? What you crying for?’ A lo-res Letitia the Dragon exhaled a plume of blue and yellow cigarette smoke towards the webcam on Aunty Sharon’s PC. ‘That miserable old bastard you call a boyfriend dumped you again so’s he can spend time with his precious “girls”?’ A raised eyebrow. Her head at a sassy angle that spelled cynicism.

Steeling herself to show no reaction, George stared down at the coasters on the battered coffee table, lining them up in a perfectly parallel row along the edge of the tabletop.

‘Or is it some case that’s got him all fired up and now he’s pissing in your chips? Or some ailment? Eh?’ Letitia stared into the webcam, making George feel as though her innermost thoughts were being excavated at the determined and brutal hand of a tomb raider. Letitia the Dragon was examining her talons, now painted with stars and stripes; studded with tiny diamanté.

‘It’s nothing to do with Paul. Paul and me are fine,’ George lied, conjuring the memory that played on repeat in her mind’s eye: Van den Bergen jettisoning their date night, only hours after her touchdown at Schiphol airport, in favour of driving down to Tamara’s because Numb-Nuts was playing a gig and Tamara fancied a little help with baby bath time from Opa. George swallowed hard. Distract the Dragon. Tell her about Sally Wright. But she was reluctant to betray the betrayer, since she knew Letitia would love nothing more than hearing George malign the very woman who had enabled her to escape the clutches of a toxic narcissist of a mother and her dead-end life on the dead-end streets of a South East London shithole. ‘I’ve got PMT. That’s it. And I’m skint.’

Letitia threw her fat head back and started to laugh. All heaving bosom in some gruesome draped polyester number – from Primark, by the looks. Fashion that loved the thin, young and long-limbed, but was rather less forgiving of the chubby possessor of a G cup. ‘Do us a favour, girl. The rum and Coke’s all on you once we hit Torremolinos.’ She cast a glance to someone just out of the frame. ‘Ain’t that right, Shaz? Drinks on her, innit? With her fancy book ting and that.’

There was giggling in the background as Aunty Sharon appeared in front of the camera, the flesh of her sturdy arm wobbling as she stirred something in a mixing bowl. ‘Take no notice of her, darling. What’s the matter? Tell your Aunty Shaz.’

George tutted dolefully. Wondering if her family knowing the truth – at least in part – would be quite that bad. ‘Things have gone a bit tits up on the work front, if I’m honest.’

‘You paying your fair share of the holidays, though!’ her mother said, pointing at her with one of those Uncle Sam talons.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ George said, contemplating the modest balance in her account and the £500 she owed Aunty Sharon. Van den Bergen would surely lend her the rest. Wouldn’t he? ‘But my publisher has pulled out of the next book. And if I don’t publish every year, my funders won’t look kindly on me…’ She chewed her bottom lip, knowing she’d already said too much, but feeling the words pushing for release. ‘And if I can’t get funding, I won’t get my tenure renewed at St John’s.’

‘What the fuck does that mean? What hoity-toity bullshit you coming out with now?’ Letitia asked, flicking her ash into the palm of her left hand.

Aunty Sharon approached the camera and budged her sister out of the way on the well-worn old sofa. A look of alarm on her kind, unadorned face. She clutched at her mixing bowl as though it were a baby. ‘You gonna get the push, love?’

Though she tried desperately to hold them back, the rogue tears burst forth, and George could only submit to a bout of racking sobs. ‘I’ve already been given the push, Aunty Shaz. The Peterhulme Trust rejected my proposal for a new study.’

As Aunty Sharon reached out to stroke George’s image on her screen, Letitia elbowed her sister out of the way. ‘You need to come home is what you need to do, girl. Get your shit together. Get a proper bloody job. Not this arty-farty bollocks that white witch got you doing. Sally fucking Wright. Where’s Professor Fucking Do-Gooder when your shit’s hitting the fan, eh?’ She narrowed those eyes, the curling holiday false eyelashes obscuring the true intent behind them. ‘Or maybe she’s stirring the shit because you wouldn’t toe the line. Is that it? Am I right?’ She sucked her teeth loud and long, having nailed the truth of the situation. ‘Oh yeah. I see this now. And there’s you, flying across the North Sea every five minutes to service the Jolly Green Giant’s needs so you’ve not got a nicker to your name.’ She snapped her fingers and folded her arms triumphantly. ‘Bending over for Sally Wright. Blowing off Van der Twat and still no sign of commitment.’ She broke into patois. ‘Yu caan tun duck off a nest. Know what I mean? You ain’t going nowhere. You need to change your shit up, Ella.’

‘Don’t call me Ella. You know I hate it.’

‘She’s right, George,’ Aunty Sharon said, muscling her way back into the frame. ‘You letting people walk all over you, darling. But never mind.’ She started to beat her cake mixture anew, a look of grim determination on her face. Her towering confection of silk scarf and hair extensions shook with the effort. ‘This break will do you good. Tinesha’s coming home this afternoon. Patrice has even put his Nikes through the wash, can you believe it? And your dad…’ She glanced at Letitia. Her concerned frown was almost imperceptible. ‘Well, let’s just say some of that paella and sangria will fatten him up. You’ll be with your own, love. Give you time to mull things over, like. I can always get you a job with me behind the bar at Skin Licks, if you like.’

George swallowed hard at the thought of doling out vodka tonics to dirty old men at the Soho titty bar where she had once cleaned. Sticky glasses, stale booze and sodden beermats. Sod that. ‘Nah. You’re all right, Aunty Shaz. I’ll work it out.’

‘You need to be with your family for a bit,’ Letitia said. ‘Blood’s thicker than water, innit?’

Nodding, George glanced down at her phone. Noticed a text from Van den Bergen and absently started to read it. Felt the tears evaporate away as the fire lit within her again.

‘Home late. Nipping to Tamara’s first, then got a few people to interview. Don’t wait up.’

Was this it? Life with a policeman? A life sentence, trapped in a situation where Van den Bergen’s ‘girls’ always came first. And plans for their future together always came last. Perhaps Letitia, Queen of Shit-Stirrers, was right. Maybe it was time to change her shit up.

‘Listen,’ she said, studying the unlikely twosome of her homely, long-suffering aunt and her slowly dying glamour puss of a mother, with her sickle-cell anaemia and pulmonary hypertension and her Lambert & Butlers. ‘I’m gonna finish packing. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at Gatwick.’

Faking a smile, she severed the connection to her family and flopped back into the sagging second-hand sofa, like a deflating blow-up doll who serviced everybody’s needs but her own. With work-worn hands, she fingered the cashmere throw that she’d bought for Van den Bergen to cover the well-worn chintzy upholstery. Swallowing a sob, she savoured the memories of both her mother and her father having slept there, eschewing the uncomfortable guest bed. Her mother had been lured away and abducted by a psychopath. Her father, recovering after years of slave labour, had been unwittingly working for the same psychopath in the Coba Cartel. Happy families happened to other people, she mused, picking off the bobbles where the cashmere had started to pill.

And then there was the spectre of her own recent memory, having spent the night on the sofa only the previous Saturday after an argument with her ill-tempered lover. She allowed the loneliness to engulf her. Wept. Imagined the warmth of the Spanish sun on her skin and the barbed tongue of her mother as she sipped rum and passed harsh judgement on the pasty Thomson travellers that weren’t part of their noisy extended clan.

But then, her phone rang. Van den Bergen was on the other end, sounding flustered.

‘You won’t believe what happened to me today,’ he said. ‘And I’ve just come from the mortuary. Honestly, George. I’ve stumbled across something crazy.’

‘Yeah?’ she said, chewing the inside of her cheek. ‘Well you can tell it to Tamara, can’t you? I’m going on holiday.’

‘No! You can’t. That’s why I’m calling. I need your help. I’m not going to Tamara’s now. I’ll tell you when I get back. I’m on my way—’

‘Paul! No!’ she said. But it was too late. He’d hung up, pronouncing the death of her holiday plans whether she liked it or not.

CHAPTER 7
Amsterdam, mortuary, later still

White walls. Stainless steel slab. Greying corpse. George hated the mortuary. And yet, here she was, with Marianne de Koninck staring at the side of her head, waiting for signs of weakness, no doubt.

‘I wanted you to see this,’ Van den Bergen said, beckoning her close.

‘Not the sort of date night I had in mind.’ George clutched her inadequate cardigan closed against the cold. It was always chilly down there.

He turned to the head of forensic pathology and nodded. ‘Tell her, Marianne!’

The tall pathologist took her place at the side of the old man’s body, spreading ribs that had already been sawn down the middle. George grimaced at the sight of the dark cavity where his heart had been, feeling deep-seated sadness that all the old man had done, thought and felt during his lifetime, had been reduced to composite body parts, like a puzzle made from spoiling flesh. There was his heart on the scales. There was his brain on a dissecting table. Here was his stomach, being carefully lifted out of the abdominal cavity like a bad caesarean birth. De Koninck reopened the foul-smelling stomach and pointed with a latex-gloved finger to the clearly visible remnants of a small white tablet.

‘Arnold van Blanken. Ninety-five,’ she began. ‘Amsterdamer, born and bred, who was apparently visiting a friend in a different neighbourhood when he felt ill. I understand he registered at the surgery as a temporary emergency patient. When he came in here, as I told Paul last night, I took one look at him and presumed it was natural causes. A worn-out heart giving up.’

‘He just died in front of me,’ Van den Bergen said to nobody in particular, staring at the florid post-mortem colours in the old man’s face. ‘I had to get closure, I suppose. My doc wouldn’t tell me anything. That’s why I came. And I’m glad I did.’

‘Well, he looks ancient,’ George said. ‘Is that medication inside his stomach?’ She shrugged. ‘Surely there’s nothing weird about old guys taking tablets for this, that and the other.’

De Koninck stood straight, towering above George, looking austere and unforgiving in her white coat beneath the bright mortuary lights. The prominent veins in her masculine hands gave her away as the athletic type. Her punishing regime of tennis or hockey or whatever the fuck she did outside work had stripped away any softness to the woman’s face. She was all long Patrician limbs and skinny, shapely legs beneath those scrubs and the lab coat, unlike George’s bone-crushing tree-trunks. The pathologist had no arse to her name, though. Those blonde, northern European types never had any booty to speak of.

‘It’s cisapride,’ De Koninck said, ‘twenty-milligram tablets, which is normally prescribed four times per day for those with gastro-oesophageal reflux disease. I sent it off to the toxicologist overnight to get it analysed. There were four tablets, half-digested just like this one. Too high a dose in one go.’ She rummaged inside the upper end of the stomach and showed George a scene of coagulated gore, muscle and connective tissue that made little visual sense. ‘Van Blanken had a hiatus hernia. See where the stomach is protruding into the gullet?’

‘Like me, George!’ Van den Bergen said, his voice a shade higher than his usual low rumble. ‘Listen to this!’

Barely able to believe she was passing up a trip to Torremolinos to look at the dead body of a man who’d had more than his fair share of life, George folded her arms and put her weight on one foot. Tapping the tiled morgue floor with her steel-toe-capped Doc Martens. She rolled her eyes. ‘You’ve got staff for this, Paul. Put me on the payroll, or I’m off to catch a late flight to Malaga.’ She checked her watch. ‘My family needs me.’

‘Listen!’ Van den Bergen placed a hand on her shoulder.

Marianne de Koninck raised an eyebrow and snapped off her gloves, throwing them into a biohazard bin. She sat down in front of her computer. ‘When I found the hiatus hernia, I wasn’t surprised that Mr Van Blanken should be taking cisapride, which is an antacid medication. But four twenty-milligram tablets at once? That’s dangerously high.’

‘Senility?’ George asked. ‘If you’re meant to take one four times per day, is it not feasible he got mixed up and took four instead? It’s easy to be forgetful, even at my age.’

‘No.’ De Koninck scrolled through a report. ‘I’ve had his medical records sent over, and it seems his GP, a Dr Saif Abadi, had prescribed abnormally high doses of the medication, which is weird. You could say it’s professionally negligent at the very least. The Americans have taken their version of cisapride – Propulsid – off the market entirely. One of the dodgy side effects is that it’s widely known to put patients at risk of something called Long QT Syndrome.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a rare condition where a delayed repolarisation of the heart, following a heartbeat, increases the risk of something called Torsades des Pointes.’ She shook her head disapprovingly at George’s blank expression.

‘Do you want to tell me all about the foibles of drug mules or poor mental health among the female prison population?’ Now it was George’s turn to shake her head. ‘No? So, why the hell should I understand about bloody Marquis de Sade or whatever it is you just mentioned?’

‘Georgina!’ Van den Bergen said.

But George had had enough. ‘Look. Why am I here? What’s so fascinating about poor Arnold damned van Blanken and his dicky ticker?’

De Koninck pursed her lips, the nostrils of her narrow Dutch nose flaring. ‘Torsades des Pointes is an irregular heartbeat originating from the ventricles. It can lead to fainting and sudden death due to ventricular fibrillation. It basically brings on heart failure.’

‘And his GP intentionally put him on an unnecessarily high dose,’ Van den Bergen said, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a pack of tablets that said ‘Omeprazole’ on the side. ‘I was worried that my own doc had prescribed the same killer meds.’

Well, thought George, that explains the previous night’s tossing and turning in bed.

‘Potentially killer,’ De Koninck said, smoothing her expensively streaked urchin cut behind her ears. ‘Normally, it’s a very safe drug.’

‘So, the old man was wantonly poisoned,’ George said.

‘And that’s the least of it,’ Van den Bergen said, approaching the corpse and pointing to his neck. He beckoned her over with a nod of his head. ‘See this tattoo?’

Not wishing to get too close, George craned her neck to see a tiny inking of a lion that had faded presumably from black to navy blue over time. The lion wore a crown and carried a sword. ‘I wonder what the S and the 5 stand for?’ She sniffed and took a step back. ‘Looks like a prison tattoo. Ink and a needle. Something really old school.’

Van den Bergen raised an eyebrow and treated her to a wry smile. Was he being patronising about her turn of phrase? Or was she overreacting because she was already so mad at him?

‘Well,’ he said, grabbing surreptitiously at his throat, ‘Marianne has had more than one old guy in here lately who’s died of a meds-induced heart attack and sported one of these tattoos.’

Breathing in sharply, all the cynicism and defensive, studied boredom fell away from George like a layer of dead skin, revealing the questioning machine of her intellect and curiosity beneath. ‘Really?’ She unfolded her arms and looked again at the tattoo. ‘You got photos?’

‘What do you think?’ De Koninck said, taking a file from her desk and opening it to reveal post-mortem shots of another old man. ‘Brechtus Bruin. Another ninety-five-year-old. I did his autopsy a couple of weeks ago. He’d been taking Demerol and OxyContin as prescription painkillers. And guess what he died from?’

‘Heart attack,’ George said.

De Koninck nodded, raising both finely plucked eyebrows with a wry smile. ‘You guessed it.’

George studied the shots of Brechtus Bruin’s neck, feeling the hairs rise on the back of her own. ‘The same tattoo! Marie’s going to have a field day searching for the background to this on the internet.’ She was undeterred by the sight of the lifeless nonagenarian in the pictures. It was far easier than cosying up to the discoloured, slowly decomposing neck of the actual corpse before her.

‘Both Bruin and Van Blanken had the same superficial cause of death and the same tattoo,’ Van den Bergen said, peering over her shoulder at the regal lion. ‘There’s a definite link.’

The pathologist switched tabs on her computer screen to another report. She scanned the notes, tapping the screen. ‘Though Brechtus Bruin took ill at home, so there were no witnesses. As I understand it from the ambulance team who brought him in to me, he’d been lying dead in his house, undiscovered, for several days before his neighbour realised he wasn’t picking up his grocery deliveries. But the painkillers he was taking are also notorious for causing heart attacks in the frail in high doses.’

George ran through the implications in silence. ‘Are you sure it’s not all just conjecture and coincidence? The tattoos and heart attacks, I mean. Or do you think you’ve got a Harold Shipman-style serial killer of oldies running riot in the city?’ She bit her lip in horrified anticipation.

Van den Bergen turned to her with a grim smile. ‘Worse than that. I think we’ve got someone who’s clearly targeting just one specific group of old men. We need to find out why and we need to find out who else is on the hit list. And you’re closer than you know with that Shipman analogy, Georgina. Both of these men were prescribed these meds by the same GP, and I don’t like it one bit.’

George let out a long, low whistle. Suddenly, she didn’t give a hoot about abandoning a bickering Letitia, her father and Aunty Sharon and her brood to a three-star poolside with only a partial view of the freezing cold Med. She thought about her ailing bank balance, and grinned. ‘Think you can use a freelance criminologist on the usual day rate?’

CHAPTER 8
Amsterdam, police headquarters, 9 October

‘Where are you with the illegal immigrant situation?’ Maarten Minks asked, sitting bolt upright, as though the chief of police had personally rammed a pointy-ended paperweight up his young commissioner’s rectum. Minks was flushed. He was only ever red in the face when he was wetting his big boy pants with excitement over a development in a case or if he had been given a dressing-down.

Suspecting the latter, Van den Bergen folded his arms over the maelstrom of griping wind and acid indigestion that raged in his beleaguered stomach. He sighed. ‘Frederik den Bosch is an unpleasant character with some really disgusting views, but you can’t arrest a man for that unless he acts on them. And his record is squeaky clean. His claim that the lorry containing the Syrians was stolen checks out. He called in a theft in a couple of days before the find. Uniforms went and took a statement from his office manager, and Den Bosch contacted his insurers soon afterwards.’

‘Was it stolen from the yard?’ Minks asked, smoothing the leather padded arms on his captain’s chair. ‘Surely an international exporter with acreage like that has got decent security. A guard? Dogs? Cameras?’

Van den Bergen nodded, wondering if he should mention the two old men and their suspicious deaths. But with a little girl dead, the Syrian refugee case was a murder investigation that warranted his full attention. If Minks got wind of the two nonagenarians with their mysterious tattoos, the overzealous stickler for rules would cry conflict of interest and immediately pass the case on to one of the other senior detectives. No way was Van den Bergen willing to let that happen. Especially since Arnold van Blanken had breathed his last only a few feet from where he had been uselessly sitting in the doctor’s surgery.

‘Marie has the CCTV footage from Den Bosch’s premises and has yet to find anything.’ He rubbed his stomach and belched quietly, trying to picture the inside of his ulcerated gullet.

‘You seem distracted, Paul. Is there anything you’d like to share with me? Are you…’ He leaned forward. ‘Well?’ Minks cocked his head in the semi-concerned fashion of a careerist who often practised being human in front of a mirror.

‘What kind of a question is that?’ Van den Bergen asked, straightening in his seat until, thanks to his long torso, he could see the top of Minks’s head. Thinning hair, since he’d whipped Kamphuis’s old job from under Van den Bergen’s nose.

‘A suspected heart attack and collapse at the scene of an arrest?’ Minks examined his perfectly clean fingernails. Clearly, the man was not a gardener. He failed to make eye contact with Van den Bergen. ‘Seems your little adventure in Mexico has knocked the stuffing out of you.’

‘I brought down the Rotterdam Silencer, and not for the first time!’ Van den Bergen could feel irritation itching its way up his neck. He regarded his superior officer with some cynicism. The smug arsehole was showing signs of turning into his predecessor. ‘I think you might find it physically testing to have anthrax thrown in your face.’

Minks’s eyes narrowed. He touched the stiff Eton collar on his shirt. ‘It wasn’t anthrax.’

‘I didn’t know that at the time, did I?’

The silence between them made the air feel too thick to breathe. Finally, Van den Bergen relented and spoke.

‘I’ve put Dr McKenzie on the payroll. She’s an expert in trafficking of all sorts.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Paul! I’m trying to keep departmental costs down. Not let them spiral out of control, and all because you want to play the generous sugar daddy with your girlfriend. Why the hell can’t you co-opt some junior detective from another station? McKenzie’s expensive.’

Van den Bergen closed his eyes momentarily and swallowed down the scorching poker of bile that lanced its way up his oesophagus. ‘Dr McKenzie is a specialist consultant. Even if I didn’t have a relationship with her outside of the workplace, I’d still hire her. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.’

‘I’ve studied your expenditure. It’s gone through the roof in the last few years.’ There it was. Spreadsheet King had been getting his rocks off after hours with a five-knuckle shuffle over some ancient Excel files.

‘The world’s a bad place, Maarten, and every year it gets worse. Ten years ago, we didn’t have half the violent trafficking-related crime that we have now in the city. Or at least we weren’t aware of it. You want me to keep solving cases? Then I need the right people. Georgina has come in on our most complex and dangerous cases – multiple murders and organised criminal networks that have had international reach. Can you think of a single one that my team didn’t solve?’ He folded his arms triumphantly. ‘She’s got a criminologist’s insight – something that we lack. Dirk and Marie are the best officers I’ve ever had working for me, but there’s a limit to what—’

Minks balled his fist, clearly ready to thump the table. His wrinkle-free face seemed even tauter than usual. ‘My priority is to crack down on crime committed by immigrants, Paul. Many influential Amsterdamers are not happy with the city being over-run by ISIS bastards, masquerading as refugees from these far-flung, bombed-out shitholes. The great and the good of Amsterdam are taxpayers, Chief Inspector! They’re our bloody bosses!’

Listening to the alt-right bilge that Minks was spouting from between those too-tight lips of his, Van den Bergen was suddenly tempted to take the bottle of Gaviscon from his raincoat pocket and neutralise the commissioner’s acidic mouth with it. But he knew this edict had come from on high. It was in the papers daily: panic, prejudice and paranoia.

‘I’m not getting into a political point-scoring contest, Maarten,’ he said, standing abruptly. ‘That’s why I’m not sitting on your side of the desk. I’m a policeman. I put the bad guys behind bars. Let me find the bastard who landed a bunch of vulnerable people in hospital and killed a twelve-year-old. If I say I need Dr McKenzie’s help, just pay the invoices, will you? There’s a good lad.’

Minks scowled at him. Van den Bergen could practically hear the potential responses that were being tried for size in his mind. But he merely gripped the desk, his fingernails turning bright pink; white at the tips.

‘You got a mandate to keep illegal immigrants out of the city? Let me find the trafficker that’s bringing them here.’ And whoever’s bumping off those poor old sods with the tattooed necks, he thought, already walking through the door.

Flinging himself into his desk chair, Van den Bergen growled when the lever mechanism that allowed him to adjust the height of the seat gave way, dropping him to only inches above the floor.

‘Damn thing!’

On the other side of the cubicle, he could hear Elvis sniggering.

‘Have you been pissing about with my chair?’

‘No, boss. Do you want me to show you how you adjust it…again?’

‘Get your jacket on, smart-arse.’

Elvis appeared, red-faced, from behind the partition, which was covered with photos of the Den Bosch truck, its beleaguered occupants, the driver and their prime suspect – Frederik den Bosch himself.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’

Van den Bergen merely pulled on his raincoat. ‘De Pijp.’

‘Den Bosch’s home turf? Nothing came of the door to doors,’ Elvis said, buttoning his leather jacket. ‘Me and Marie knocked every single neighbour up within a quarter of a mile radius. Most weren’t even keen to open the door to us, let alone say anything about the man down the street.’

Tossing the key to his Mercedes into Elvis’s hands, Van den Bergen took a final slurp of his now-cold coffee. ‘Wait for me in the car. Anyone who seemed overly reluctant to talk about their charming tattooed neighbour…they’re the ones who will have the most interesting tales to tell. You mark my words.’

Striding with apparent purpose down the corridor, though everything was still tender from the gastroscopy, he entered the fug of Marie’s dedicated IT suite. She was sitting with her back to him, sucking on the ends of her fingers, an empty packet of paprika-flavoured Bugles on the desk by her keyboard.

‘I’m going to tell George to stop bringing you those from England,’ he said. ‘She’s enabling you and it’s wrong. Too much salt in the diet can lead—’

‘I’m a big girl, boss.’ Marie gave him a watery smile, watching as the gust of wind that Van den Bergen had brought in with him wafted the crisp packet into the air. It drifted to the floor like a misshapen parachute, landing softly amid the flotsam and jetsam of Marie’s previous snack attacks. She regarded it impassively, scratching at the new spot that had appeared on her cheekbone – the same size and milky hue as the cultured pearls in her ears. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’

‘Did you find anything at all from Den Bosch’s CCTV footage?’

‘No. I’ve gone through backups from the last three weeks and there’s nothing that could disprove what he’s said. The heavy goods vehicle in question shows up several times per week, gets loaded up, heads off with the produce. Then, after the theft is reported, you don’t see it again.’

‘And the driver?’

‘Definitely not the same man the port police arrested. The usual driver is a young guy in his early thirties, blond and overweight.’

Van den Bergen scratched at his stubble. ‘The bastard with the anthrax was in his fifties and dark-haired. If Den Bosch is somehow in the frame, maybe he’s not mixing his legitimate staff with his dodgy hired help.’ He closed the door to her room quietly. Approached her desk. ‘Listen, there’s something else I want you to look into.’

Marie hooked her red hair behind her ear and smiled knowingly. ‘Oh, here we go. Are you trying to get something below Minks’s radar?’

Grimacing, Van den Bergen reached into his trouser pocket and took out a USB stick. ‘Check out the photos on here.’ He cleared his throat, desperately trying to shake off the sensation that something was blocking his airway. ‘Two old guys, dead, with identical tattoos on their necks.’

Plugging the USB stick into her PC, Marie uploaded the files. Morgue photos of Arnold van Blanken and Brechtus Bruin filled the monitor screen. With a flurry of mouse clicks in rapid succession, she zoomed in to reveal the crowned lions, flanked by the S and 5. ‘Never seen that design before.’

‘Neither have I,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘That’s why I want you to look into it. We’ve got two guys – both ninety-five and both registered to the same doctors’ surgery – who have died within days of one another.’

‘Coincidence? Serendipity?’ she asked. Opening her desk drawer, she pulled out a bar of chocolate. ‘At ninety-five, I bet they were feeling bloody smug that they’d made it to such old bones or else just waiting for God.’ She peered thoughtfully at the photo of the smiling baby boy by her keyboard. ‘Not everyone’s lucky enough to make it to such old bones.’

Had a glassy film suddenly appeared on her eyes? Van den Bergen couldn’t be sure. He lifted his hand, ready to pat her supportively on the shoulder, but realised that perhaps she didn’t want to dredge up the subject of cot death and loss over a bar of Verkade creamy milk.

‘Both had been prescribed wrong doses of medication by their doctor, leading to death from heart failure. Same GP. Do me a favour, will you? Can you also do a little digging into Dr Saif Abadi’s patient list and see who’s died recently – elderly people and those suffering cardiac arrest or sudden death. In fact, pull the register of deaths and make a list of everyone who’s keeled over in similar circumstances. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s decided to start bumping off the old and vulnerable.’

‘If that’s what’s happened,’ Marie added.

‘Yes. If. Oh, and don’t breathe a word about this to anyone until I know more. Okay? Minks is giving me heat about the refugee case.’

‘Has anyone even reported suspected foul play with these old men?’

He shook his head. ‘George is going to help me make discreet enquiries. I have a hunch…and I can’t let it go.’

Snapping her chocolate in two, Marie treated him to a yellow-toothed smile. ‘Leave it with me, boss.’

CHAPTER 9
Amsterdam, the home of Kaars Verhagen, 10 October

‘You know…’ The old bastard wheezed fitfully, collapsing back into his wheelchair by the kitchen window. The timorous morning sun shone on his face, making the papery crumple of skin look almost translucent.

He imagined he could see through the network of blue veins to the bones beneath. Not long now till the blood would slow to a standstill, thickening and turning black.

‘The problem with life is you’ve got to die sometime.’ There was a volley of barking coughs. He sat in silence while the filthy old liar coughed up gobs of blood-streaked phlegm into a handkerchief. ‘Even at my age, you’re never ready for death.’ More wheezing, as if the speech had sucked all the air out of those decayed lungs, leaving nothing but the vacuum of thwarted instinct behind.

‘That’s why it’s important you take your medication, Kaars. Come on.’ He moved over towards the wheelchair and took the prongs from the oxygen tubing out of the old man’s nose. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll hook you back up in a second. Take the pills.’ The hiss and grind of the oxygen machine droned on in the background: the monotonous soundtrack to the quiet drama that was about to unfold. He dropped the tablets into that shaking, liver-spotted hand – the hairs on the back of it the only indication that this ancient man had ever enjoyed a prime.

Kaars Verhagen struggled to swallow down the medicine with the tepid water. Perhaps he’d choke to death! That wouldn’t do.

‘Come on now, Kaars,’ he said, banging the old man on the back. ‘Don’t choke. That defeats the object!’ He grabbed the glass of water impatiently from Kaars’s trembling hand and forced the pathetic old fart to sip again. ‘That’s right!’ he said, keeping his voice concerned and calm. ‘Just swallow.’

Finally, with the pills safely in his stomach, Kaars turned to him. Rail-thin now, even his appreciative smile looked like an effort. ‘I know I’m a goner,’ he said. ‘But I appreciate the treatment on the side. They’d written me off at the hospital. Too frail for experimental trials or extra chemo, they said.’ His words were swallowed by another big choking bout of coughing. His milky eyes looked fit to burst from his skull. ‘When you get to my grand age, they think you’ve had more than your three score and ten. Way more. They won’t fight for you. But you’ve fought for me.’ Tears came, then. He held his scrawny arms out, expecting a hug. It was only fair to reciprocate.

‘There, there. It’s the least I could do. A man like you could have another ten years of life. More! You’ve always had the constitution of a horse. You all did. Amazing, when you think how many never even made it to adulthood.’

Patting his back and breaking free of the hug, Kaars waved him away. His colour had started to wane. The sheen of sweat indicated that the final super-high dose of anthracycline was taking effect. Surprised that the duplicitous bastard had struggled on thus far, he said a silent prayer that sheer exhaustion or kidney failure wouldn’t take him first. It had to be his heart. Had to. It was the only way.

The old man started to cough violently again, dry-heaving when the cough finally subsided. ‘I must get Cornelia round. This damn building work needs finishing before I die,’ he said. ‘I’m worried she’ll be left with a mess.’ Their eyes locked. The old man’s were pleading. ‘If she needs some moral support, or help with the builders, you’ll pitch in, won’t you? Promise me you won’t leave her to tackle all that alone. I need to know there’s a man around I can trust. You’ve become that man.’

‘I’m just at the end of a phone.’

It was a non-committal response, and that was all the old fart would get from him. Why should he let the fucker die with a mind free from care?

Kaars Verhagen grimaced. He was pointing at some half-built stud wall, the skeleton timbers describing a new doorway wide enough to accommodate his wheelchair. Though he opened his mouth to speak, the words did not come. Now, he was gasping for air. Clutching at his arm and frowning, as though something had occurred to him that was just beyond his comprehension.

‘I feel…’

Falling from his wheelchair to the floor, Kaars curled up into a ball. With that bald head – hair only just growing back after months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment – he looked like a foetal bird inside an egg. Gasping. Moaning.

Good. Causing pain was a definite bonus. But he was certain it was happening. This was it.

‘Are you okay, Kaars?’ he asked, amused by the hollow intent of his words.

The old man stretched out a thin arm towards him, clearly begging for help. The mucus in the back of his throat rattled. His breath was shallow, almost imperceptible. His eyes clouded over.

Pushing the old man’s pyjama collar aside, revealing the lion tattoo as he did so, he checked that his work here had been successful. Sure enough, no blood flowed beneath his fingertips as he felt for a pulse. Kaars Verhagen was gone.

Wiping the place down for prints was easy, though he had to be extra vigilant that he left no footprints in the dust. The unfinished building work coated everything in a persistent layer of grime. A quick scatter of the debris that had been left behind in a dustpan would soon sort that. Leaving was a consideration, though. This was a busy area. Not like the others. Would he be seen?

No. He was the grey man.

Pulling his average and unremarkable raincoat closed against the wind and drizzle, he unfurled his average and unremarkable black umbrella and walked away at an unremarkable speed into the dank morning.

CHAPTER 10
Amsterdam, Den Bosch’s house in De Pijp, later

‘No answer,’ Van den Bergen said, peering through the letterbox. ‘He’s not at his business premises. Not at home. Shit. Where the hell is he?’ For good measure, he thumped on the front door a fourth time. The paintwork was surprisingly shoddy for a man with company finances as robust as Den Bosch’s.

Elvis placed a placatory hand on his arm. ‘We can come back, boss.’ His nose was red and his eyes were watering against the stiff wind. ‘In fact, without a warrant, we’ve got no option.’

Van den Bergen batted him away. ‘Are you patronising your superior officer?’

Smiling. Elvis was bloody smiling. He was all Zen since he’d discovered the joys of love and a second chance at living.

‘No. But there’s no point sweating it. He could be anywhere. We know next to nothing about him. He puts hardly anything on Facebook and he’s not on any of the other social media sites. There’s no way of proving he’s got anything to do with the trafficked Syrians.’ He dug his hands deeper inside his leather jacket and scanned the street. ‘We’re grasping at straws.’

‘We’re being thorough. In a case without leads, we have nowhere else to go.’

Two flamboyantly dressed students ambled by, chatting too animatedly about someone called Kenny who’d drunk so much that he’d puked in some girl’s mouth. Van den Bergen thought about his baby granddaughter and shuddered at the thought that, one day, some chump might vomit into her mouth in some student fleapit of a bar in De Pijp. Across the way, two women clad in burkas scurried into a run-down house, glancing over their shoulders. One was carrying a large tartan shopper – the kind Van den Bergen had seen people fill with washing. The other clutched at bulging bags. Neither were old.

‘Excuse me, ladies!’ he shouted to them, trying to keep the friendliness in his voice and the weariness out of it.

But they had already slammed the door.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Like that, eh?’

Approaching, he rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. It was as if he had merely imagined them.

‘I told you,’ Elvis said, peering up at the dirt-streaked windows. The pointing between the bricks was crumbling and the gutter near the roof on the three-storey building was cracked and coming away from the facade. ‘Me and Marie had the same thing. Nobody wants to talk round here.’

‘But it’s supposed to be trendy and vibrant, these days.’ Van den Bergen cast an appraising eye over the café that was several doors down from Den Bosch’s house. The windows were steamy. The lights were on. The sound of chatter and laughter spilled onto the busy street as three young men bundled out, wrapping themselves with scarves against the biting autumnal air. Business was booming in De Pijp. ‘Bohemian, and all that crap. I expected the people here to be more talkative. Let’s keep going.’

Together, they worked their way down the street, knocking on doors only to be met by twitching net curtains or vehement denials – from the neighbours who did deign to open their doors – that they knew Den Bosch at all. Helpfully unhelpful, often in pidgin Dutch and in several different accents. The air was heady with the smells of cooking from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Van den Bergen could also smell bullshit very strongly indeed.

‘Are you telling me that not a single soul knows a successful businessman like Den Bosch on a busy street like this?’ he asked Elvis as they entered the welcoming warmth of the Wakker/Lekker café – its name a claim that its fare could both wake you up and be delicious. Van den Bergen yawned and his stomach growled. The smell of coffee and cake wafted around him like a timely greeting. ‘Den Bosch’s name is emblazoned on the side of those giant bloody trucks.’

‘Yeah. But you’d only see those on the motorways and at the docks, boss. Not locally. I’d never notice one in a million years unless I was looking for it specifically.’

Donning his reading glasses, Van den Bergen looked longingly at the lemon cake, remembered that anything acidic was a no-no for hiatus hernia sufferers. And there was the small matter of being on duty.

‘Just a koffie verkeerd please,’ he said to the woman behind the counter.

She looked at him blankly, forcing him to reappraise the menu, which only had the café’s offerings in Italian.

‘Latte. I mean a latte.’ Then he remembered that anything high in fat was discouraged too. Damn it. ‘With skimmed milk.’ He swallowed. Patted his stomach. ‘I’ve got a hiatus hernia.’

He removed his glasses and treated the woman to a half-smile that was more of a grimace. Why the hell had he just shared that detail with her? Perhaps because the doc had said that thirty per cent of all over-fifties were afflicted, and she looked well over fifty. Maybe he was just looking for a connection with someone who understood.

She laughed, hooking her no-nonsense grey bob behind her ears. ‘Me too, lovey. Me too. Haven’t we all? I’m a martyr to mine!’

Hope surged inside him for the first time in days. But in his pocket, the blister pack of super-strength antacids he was forced to pop twice per day reminded him that there was little to be happy about. His body was crumbling. And then, the memory of Arnold van Blanken, expiring on the waiting room floor, returned, snuffing out every emotion except frustration. Here he was, saddled with the murder of a trafficked girl that he couldn’t solve; unable officially to investigate the murders of several old men that perhaps he could.

‘Do you know anything about Frederik Den Bosch?’ he asked, pointing to the lemon cake and indicating that she should serve him up a slice of it after all.

Her friendly smile soured into mean, thin lips. ‘The farmer? Mr High and Mighty?’

Van den Bergen placed his coins carefully on the counter. ‘Not keen?’

She kept her voice low. Leaned in so that the rest of her clientele couldn’t eavesdrop. ‘He’s selfish. He always takes my parking space with that ridiculous Jeep of his and he obviously doesn’t give a hoot that I’m much older than him. It’s not like he doesn’t know I’ve got arthritis in my knees. We had a conversation about it years ago. Big turd.’

Sensing that the café owner was rather enjoying offloading about her neighbour, Van den Bergen showed her his ID. Winked conspiratorially. ‘Go on. My colleague and I are both very interested in Mr Den Bosch. Anything you say may be of help to our investigation.’

The woman glanced at the group of young people who were enjoying croissants and hot drinks by the window. She turned back to Van den Bergen and beckoned him and Elvis into the back room.

In a space that was otherwise stacked high with boxes and cluttered with shabby, broken seating that had reached the end of its useful life, she gestured that they should sit on beat-up armchairs, arranged in a sociable group. Wakker/Lekker’s proprietor was a woman who liked to hold court on a regular basis, Van den Bergen assessed.

She wiped her hands on her flowery apron, her face flushed. ‘Why are you investigating him? Can you tell me?’

Clearing his throat, Van den Bergen considered his words carefully, sensing that this might be a woman prone to hyperbole and conjecture. ‘One of Mr Den Bosch’s trucks was stolen and I’m afraid the port police found cargo on board that shouldn’t have been there. We’re trying to find out more about Den Bosch, and why his truck might have been used to commit some very serious crimes.’

‘Drugs!’ Her eyes brightened. ‘Was it drugs?’

‘No. Please, Mevrouw. Tell me if there’s anything else you know about Frederik Den Bosch. His other neighbours seem reluctant to speak to us, but I can tell you’re a fine, upstanding Dutch citizen.’

She nodded vociferously. ‘I am. You bet. But he’s not, that overgrown ferret. Everyone thinks he’s a pillar of the community, but what he’s doing with those houses is wrong.’

‘What houses?’ Van den Bergen had already opened his notebook and was poised to write. At his side, Elvis sat silently observing the woman’s body language.

‘Didn’t you know? He owns three houses on this street alone, and about five on the next. Stuffs them to the rafters with immigrants. It’s a disgrace.’

‘Oh?’

She closed her eyes. ‘Rammed in there like shrink-wrapped sausages. That’s why they won’t talk to you. They’re all afraid. And he lets his properties go to rack and ruin. Have you seen the state of them? All bust guttering and filthy windows. Slum landlord – that’s what Den Bosch is. And they’re all illegals, I reckon.’

‘Why? What makes you say that?’

Shrugging, she splayed her fingers and examined her spotless short nails. ‘They’re shifty. They don’t speak Dutch. I live above my café, see. I can see them when they arrive in the middle of the night. They don’t bring anything more than a small case or a rucksack. And I may have dodgy knees and a hiatus hernia, but I’ve got an excellent memory for people’s faces. So I can tell the new ones, even by the light of the street lamp.’

Van den Bergen wrote furiously in his notepad, sensing that here was something to go on. ‘How frequently do new people arrive?’

She cocked her head thoughtfully. Glanced through the open doorway to check no other customers were standing at the counter. ‘Every few weeks. You get men. Women with children. All sorts. They all come from those Muslim countries. I know that because of the way the women dress. They’re always wearing those burka things, or have got their heads covered, at least.’ Rubbing her knees, she tried to glimpse what he was writing. ‘All I know is that he must have thirty living in each house. It’s not on, you know. It’s unsanitary. And they leave rubbish strewn on the street. The bins are overflowing every week with stinking nappies.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘You want to talk to environmental health about that, you know. He wants locking up, he does. Expecting the rest of us respectable residents to put up with that mess. And the people in there! Imagine kiddies having to live in that filth and with all those strange men! It’s not right.’

With the addresses of the houses safely recorded in his notepad, Van den Bergen made a second attempt at encouraging the reluctant residents to speak out about their enigmatic neighbour.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he said, as yet another hijab-clad woman refused to come to the door. He looked up at her as she shouted something in Arabic through the cracked glass of her first-floor window. ‘This is sending my acid into overdrive.’ He swallowed down the foul taste in his mouth.

Elvis stepped away from the front door, where he had been peering through the letterbox. ‘Let’s give it up, boss. Try one of the houses on another street and maybe come back later. See if Den Bosch shows. He won’t dare refuse to talk to us.’

Driving only one street away, so that he could keep his car within sight, Van den Bergen sighed heavily. Tried to get into a tight space and failed. Ended up at the wrong end of a long road.

‘Ever wish you’d just stayed in bed? Or at least did another job?’ he said, pointing his fob at the Mercedes and arming the alarm. He thought fleetingly and fondly of retirement, then remembered that he wanted to be the opposite of old Arnold van Blanken. He needed to be a working man, in his prime for as long as possible.

Elvis chuckled softly. ‘My mother’s dead. I nearly checked out in the spring, thanks to one trafficking bastard. I often think about doing something boring and safe, but this job is all I know.’

‘I guess it’s just me, then,’ Van den Bergen said, eyeing a group of youths who were hanging around too close to his car for comfort. He could see that they were scoping him out. Debating whether to pre-empt a clash and tell them to move along, he jumped when he felt a hand on his back.

‘Watch your car, mister?’ a shrill voice said.

Turning, he saw a small boy of about ten, dressed in a tunic and trousers that gave him away as Syrian, maybe, or Afghan. Van den Bergen stooped low so that they were face to face. The boy’s breakfast was still visible at the corners of his mouth.

‘Why aren’t you in school, young man?’

‘Ten euros to watch it. I’ll keep it safe, I promise.’ His Dutch was fluent but his Amsterdam accent was laced heavily with Middle Eastern flat vowels and clipped intonation.

Van den Bergen’s knees cracked as he crouched. He could see childish mischief in those shining dark eyes. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Not telling you, am I?’ The boy grinned, revealing adult teeth awkwardly pushing the milk teeth aside. One incisor was growing outwards, almost horizontally, poking through the boy’s full-lipped smile. ‘Go on, then. Ten euros. It’s a good price.’

Reaching for his wallet, Van den Bergen wondered how much a boy who never went to school, but who had been around long enough to pick up the regional accent, might know about a local landlord. ‘Here’s five for now. I’ll give you the other five later.’

The boy made to snatch the money, but Van den Bergen drew himself to his full height and held the cash at a height impossible for the kid to reach. ‘First, though, tell me if you’ve ever heard of a man called Frederik den Bosch.’ He waved the five-euro note close. Withdrew it. Felt bad for teasing.

‘That’ll cost you more.’ The boy glanced over at the group of youths. One of them shouted to him in their native tongue. Definitely an Arabic dialect. There was a clear connection between them.

‘Tell you what, I’ll give you twenty if you tell me what you know about Mr Den Bosch. And you won’t have to share the extra ten with those bigger boys. It’ll be our secret.’

The boy stole a surreptitious glance over at the older boys and nodded. ‘Give me the extra ten now. Behind the car, where they can’t see.’

‘Information first.’

Sighing, the boy began. ‘Den Bosch is nasty. He owns the house where I live.’ As they progressed slowly down the street, it was clear he walked with a pronounced limp.

‘Can we go there?’

‘Not while my brothers are watching.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Syria. Lots of us are from there.’

‘How did you get to Amsterdam?’

‘Are you a cop?’

Should he tell this astute child? He didn’t want to risk the kid clamming up. ‘Tell me more about Den Bosch. It’s him I’m interested in. Why is he nasty?’

‘He charges everyone in our house too much money, and my mother says it’s dangerous. Also, I don’t like his tattoos.’

The mention of tattoos piqued Van den Bergen’s curiosity. He exchanged a glance with Elvis. ‘What kind are they?’

The boy wrinkled his nose. ‘They’re scary. He’s covered in them, all up his arms. Skulls and symbols and demons. My uncle heard that Den Bosch goes to big gatherings where other men say horrible things about Muslims and immigrants like us. Marches that are on TV. That kind of thing. Uncle Jabril says that’s why he treats us so badly. He wants our money but he doesn’t like us. Den Bosch is nothing but a racist Kufar.’

Clearing his throat, Van den Bergen wondered how he could get the boy to say more about his arrival on Dutch shores without spooking him. Wary of offering him more money lest it be construed as coercion, he relied simply on a little boy’s innate need to brag. ‘I bet you were really brave when you came over from Syria, weren’t you?’

The grin told him everything. ‘Yes. My uncle says I’m brave enough to have fought with the rebels.’

‘I’ve seen boys like you on TV. Sailing the high seas on rickety ships and nearly drowning. Is that what you did? Did you sail across the Mediterranean?’

The boy chuckled. ‘Oh no. I can’t swim.’ He pulled up the left leg of his baggy trousers to reveal a deep, florid dent in his calf muscle. ‘I was hit by a big chunk of brick when I was little. A bomb went off at our school. It means I can’t do much sport.’

‘What about flying, then? Did you come on a plane?’

Shaking his head, the boy said, ‘No. I might have a bad leg but I’m as good as any grown man. I looked after my mum and my big brother when they got sick in the truck.’

‘You came in a truck? Maybe like the ones Den Bosch has.’

The boy clasped a hand over his mouth and glared at Van den Bergen as though his indiscretion were his fault. Snatching the money from his hand, the boy fled between the cars and disappeared down an alleyway with an uneven gait but impressive speed.

‘Shall we go after him, boss?’

Van den Bergen felt the corner of his mouth twitch upwards involuntarily. ‘Yes. We could give it a go. Let’s see where he—’

Poised to sprint after the boy, he stopped short when his phone rang shrilly in his pocket. It was the ringtone for Marianne de Koninck, who only ever called when something dire had landed on her mortuary slab.

‘Van den Bergen. Speak!’

‘There’s been another,’ she said. ‘Another old man. Heart attack. Tattoo. The lot.’

CHAPTER 11
Amsterdam, Oud Zuid, Kaars Verhagen’s house, 12 October

Staring up at the brass plate on the door of the elegant townhouse in Oud Zuid, watching her breath steam on the air, George thought wistfully about her family, who were undoubtedly now all sprawled by the pool in Torremolinos.

‘I could be swigging rum and Coke in the sun, you know,’ she said, glancing up at Van den Bergen. But he wasn’t listening. He was burping quietly and rehearsing his opening gambit. ‘And bouncing some young Spanish waiter off the walls of my hotel room,’ she added. No reaction.

Footsteps, behind the door, click-clacking on wooden flooring, by the sounds. Van den Bergen cleared his throat, fixing what approximated to a friendly, open smile on his face. All the anxiety surrounding his health and the candle perpetually burned at both ends, thanks to his job and his new grandfatherly responsibilities, seemed to have etched their way into his skin as permanent souvenirs of a life hard-led. In spite of her frustrations, George found she felt some sympathy for the contrary old fart. As the multiple locks on the other side of the door were undone, she squeezed his hand fleetingly. Planted a kiss on his knuckles, then faced forward, releasing him and shoving her hands in her pockets.

‘Can I help you?’ the woman said. She had only opened the door a fraction. Her voice was hoarse and timorous, her eyes red-rimmed. Her hair was dishevelled and greasy. George had her pegged as the grieving daughter.

Van den Bergen showed his ID. ‘Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen. This is my colleague, Dr Georgina McKenzie. We’re here about Mr Kaars Verhagen. And you are?’

‘Cornelia. Cornelia Verhagen. This is my father’s house. Was.’ Tears welled in her eyes and her lower lip began to tremble. ‘You’d better come in.’

Inside, the double-fronted house smelled of plaster dust and new timber. But George caught a whiff of a medicinal top note and stale urine coming from the downstairs toilet as they passed from the hallway to a study that faced onto the quiet street. Packing boxes were strewn about, half-filled with books. Here, the air was mustier, heavy with decades of memories. Cornelia Verhagen gestured for them to sit on the old leather sofa, which squeaked beneath their weight.

‘Sorry for your loss,’ George said.

Cornelia blew her nose loudly, nodding as if quiet acceptance was all that was left. ‘Thank you. My father was very old and very ill. I knew he had to go someday, but it still came as a shock.’ Her voice started to break. She tapped her chest as if trying to encourage a breaking heart to keep beating. ‘Silly, really. Sorry.’

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