The Girl Who Got Revenge: The addictive new crime thriller of 2018

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.