The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die
Marnie Riches

Copyright

AVON

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © Marnie Riches 2015

Cover design © Lizzie Gardner

Cover images © NAS CRETIVES and r.martens/ Shutterstock

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

A catalogue record 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 2015 ISBN: 9780008138332

Version: 2018-01-24

Dedication

To Mum, who teaches me strength and perseverance.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1: Amsterdam, 20 December

Chapter 2: 21 December

Chapter 3: South East London

Chapter 4: Amsterdam, 23 December

Chapter 5: Amsterdam, 24 December

Chapter 6: 25 December

Chapter 7: 2 January

Chapter 8: 3 January

Chapter 9: Later

Chapter 10: 4 January

Chapter 11: South East London

Chapter 12: Amsterdam, 10 January

Chapter 13: Later

Chapter 14: 12 January

Chapter 15: Later

Chapter 16: Later still

Chapter 17: South East London

Chapter 18: Amsterdam, 16 January

Chapter 19: 17 January

Chapter 20: Heidelberg, later

Chapter 21: Stena Hollandica ferry, North Sea

Chapter 22: Amsterdam, 18 January

Chapter 23: Remand Wing, Women’s Prison, UK

Chapter 24: Amsterdam, 25 January

Chapter 25: Later

Chapter 26: Cambridge, 26 January

Chapter 27: Later

Chapter 28: Amsterdam, 27 January

Chapter 29: 28 January

Chapter 30: Somewhere in the Netherlands

Chapter 31: Later

Chapter 32: 30,000ft above the North Sea, 29 January

Chapter 33: Amsterdam, 2 February

Chapter 34: Dominican Republic, 27 February

Chapter 35: Groningen, 13 March

Postscript

Keep Reading …

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Acknowledgements

Novels are not developed in a petri-dish, and I’m glad they’re not. Writing is perhaps the most fun I could ever have with my clothes on. But it’s arduous graft too. In fact, the path to publication can be so fraught with travails and disappointment, at times, that this author would not have travelled far down it without the help of the following people:

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my family for their love, unflagging moral support and encouragement, so thanks to Christian, Natalie and Adam, always.

For his loyalty, patience and friendship, I would like to thank my partner-in-crime – special agent, Caspian Dennis. Had he not championed my writing so valiantly, The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die would still be just another file on my laptop.

Thanks are due, of course, to my editor, Katy Loftus and the team at Maze/HarperCollins for their energy and professionalism in publishing and marketing the series, enabling me to push George and van den Bergen out into the big, wide world, where they belong.

Two people whose help was invaluable during the research phase for this novel are Sebastian Tredinnick and my bez, Louise Owen. What they don’t know about Heidelberg ain’t worth knowing. Cheers, guys!

Huge thanks are due to these fine people:

To fellow writers, Steph Williams and Wendy Storer for listening to my almost constant fretting, griping and melodramatic nonsense. They kept telling me I could do this, so I did. To Ann Giles, aka Bookwitch, who persuaded me I have something to offer the crime genre. And to poet, Martin de Mello for his sage-like pronouncements on the other bits of my life.

The idea for The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die took shape during a dinner I had with author, Melvin Burgess, where I realised I could draw inspiration from my own youthful experiences and turn them into the sort of thriller I’d always aspired to write. Ta, Melvin!

Author, Anthony McGowan persuaded me to keep going with the manuscript, even in the face of a difficult birth, so thanks, Tony. The literary stretch marks and knackered pelvic floor have been worth it.

Font of publishing wisdom and excellent mate, Shannon Cullen has spurred me on every step of the way. She told me that I had a voice that people would want to read and steered me in the direction of the Abner Stein Literary Agency, which led me to the esteemed Mr. Dennis. Her encouragement has been vital in my getting to this point. Thanks, Shannon.

Finally, thanks to the charismatic and strong women I met through Commonword/ Cultureword in Manchester. George is for you, ladies! I hope I’ve done her justice.

Prologue
Amsterdam, 20 December

Ratan Patil became aware of the noise before he had even opened his eyes. The drumming of shoes on hard ground. Was he in the middle of the flea-market on Waterlooplein? No, not a marketplace. He could hear sporadic traffic as well as people scurrying past him with purpose; not browsing. Young voices. Laughter. Assailing him in a dizzying typhoon of sound.

Then sensation crept back into his body. He was stiff, cramped up like a foetus, freezing cold. His right hand throbbed as though it had been crushed under the weight of a mountain. Pain diced up the inside of his head in a violent frenzy. The intensity of it forced his eyes open.

It was dark, save for some light that found its way to him in thin perpendicular seams. He tried to stretch out his fingers to feel the space that contained him, but his hands were pinioned to his sides. He could make out his knees. He was kneeling and yet he could feel nothing below his aching hips. His mouth was held firmly shut, lips pushed together by something unforgiving on the outside, swollen tongue wedged up against his teeth by the dryness of the inside. But he was too tired to speak anyway.

Breathing in slowly through his nose, he could smell something musty, like old paper. He stretched his neck, hoping his nose would hit something solid within the strange prison. If he could just touch it, maybe he’d understand.

Cardboard? Yes, a large cardboard box.

Ratan’s heartbeat sped adrenalin around his body until he was suddenly drowning in fear and confusion. The scream was trapped inside, unable to escape the duct tape across his mouth. Frustrated, realising his limitations, he forced himself to breathe deeply and let calm in.

He started to remember.

The party had been the best ever. He had finally spoken to Rani. And boy, was she beautiful up close. More beautiful than she had ever looked across the lecture theatre. They had shared a joint that the English girl had rolled with Californian grass. It had made him feel brave, and he had shared a kiss with Rani that had been languorous and full of promise.

That one evening felt like the start of everything he had longed for.

The biting pain inside his skull had come from the walk home. Weaving his rebellious body, heavy with hash, hope and Grolsch, along the inky waters of the Herengracht towards home was heavy work. His canalside slalom was punctuated only by vomiting once and taking a pee against the wall on a bridge.

When he was coshed over the head, Ratan had been completely taken by surprise. The shadow of his attacker was all that he had seen; a silhouette sprawled across the cobbled pavement, stretched and distorted with an arm raised in readiness for a second blow. The attacker held something long in his hand. A stick? A baseball bat? A hammer? Who knew? Ratan felt the weight of the weapon push his head forward at an awkward angle. His vision had pixelated to nothing, like a screensaver switching off.

Now, Ratan found himself kneeling and bound inside a cardboard box. He blinked in the semi-darkness, trying to fathom his fate. Then he felt buzzing against his belly, and a dim, phosphorescent light came on inside the box. A phone on vibrate? But not his phone. His phone didn’t make that noise. Then, in the fraction of his last bittersweet second, he remembered the rest:

Waking after the blow to his head, he’d known he’d been drugged. He’d expected the room to spin after so much beer and dope but here, everything had looked wrong. Blurred around the edges. He was lying on something hard and flat in a room with a strip light glaring at him from behind his attacker’s head. The shadowy stranger bent over him, working carefully at arranging something on Ratan’s chest. Furrows of concentration in the man’s brow. Fastidious fingers working quickly but not poking or probing his flesh. Then the grinding sound of duct tape being unfurled and pressing down on his ribcage until Ratan moaned.

The assailant realised his victim was awake. A syringe full of liquid soon pumped sleep and forgetfulness back around Ratan’s body.

And now, inside the cardboard box, a phone had vibrated once, vibrated twice. Its phosphorescent light was not the shimmer of hope at the end of a tunnel. It was a dim torch lighting the way to death; guiding his Jiva towards the path of his ancestors. Ratan had seen enough films to make an educated guess at what might have been strapped to his chest. It was too late for fear. He regretted not having taken Rani up on her offer of going back to hers for coffee. Now he would never—

Ratan’s exploding body ripped a hole in the front of the Bushuis library on Kloveniersburgwal that was twenty feet high and seventeen feet and three inches across.

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