The Girl Who Had No Fear

by Marnie Riches

Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno.

  Four words that conjured in her mind’s eye vivid memories of a childhood fraught with parental drama. A handsome, clever Spanish man she could now barely remember. Daddy’s hairy, olive-skinned arms, swinging her high onto his shoulders. The smell of toasted tobacco and aftershave coming from his black hair and tanned neck. She had clung onto his head for dear life, thinking him so impossibly tall, though next to Van den Bergen he would in all likelihood have seemed diminutive. Speaking the Catalan Spanish to her of his native Tarragona.

  Swallowing down a lump in her throat, she felt suddenly alone and vulnerable on that shabby street in Catford. Hastening past the grey-and-cream Victorian terraces towards the warmth and welcoming smells of Aunty Sharon’s, paranoia started to set in. The place started to feel like an artfully constructed movie set, concealing something far more sinister behind the brick façades than the mundane workings of people’s family lives. Uniform rows of houses closing in on her; stretching her route to safety indefinitely. Paranoia had been a familiar visitor in the course of the last year. She was sick of feeling that she was being watched by somebody, perhaps hiding behind some wheelie bins or overgrown hedging.

  Glancing around, George sought out that long-haired old biker once again. A craggy face, partially hidden behind mirror shades, that had cropped up in her peripheral vision once too often when she had been food-shopping in Amsterdam or walking from Van den Bergen’s apartment to the tram stop. Hadn’t she seen him over here in the UK, too? Skulking on a platform in Lewisham when she had been waiting to catch the DLR. The sense that she was being followed now was overwhelming.

  She stopped abruptly. Took her handbag-sized deodorant from her coat pocket, poised to spray any lurkers in the eyes. Gasping for air.

  ‘Come out, you bastard!’ she yelled.

  CHAPTER 4

  Mexico, Chiapas, 29 May

  Swigging from the bottle of Dos Equis, he peered through the dusty window of the four-wheel-drive at the brothel. Bullet holes pitted the plastered outer walls, punctuating the painted sign that marked this place out as offering the average Mexican man a good time, at a price. A Corona logo had been amateurishly daubed onto a florid yellow background with black paint. The opening hours and maximum capacity had rubbed off some time ago. But he knew it was open 24/7 for a man who had the cash. This was a Chiapas town, after all. And this club was his.

  Beyond the threshold, he spied a tired-looking jukebox and several cheap white plastic chairs. A young girl sat on one of them. Overweight, like most of them were. Wearing a barely-there skirt and vertiginous platform stilettos. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Her face shone with sweat and her long black hair hung lank and greasy on her bare shoulders.

  ‘What’s the deal with her?’ he asked Miguel.

  At his side, Miguel leaned forwards and squinted to get a better look at the girl. ‘Oh, her? She wouldn’t run,’ he said in English, spoken with an accent flavoured heavily with his native Spanish, with a dash of Texan twang. ‘She was the only one. She was too frightened, she said. Ratted the others out, though, when we threatened to kill her mother and sisters.’

  ‘Good. And do we know where the dumb bitches have gone?’

  ‘Apparently they’re headed towards the landing strip hidden in the mountains. Some customer with a conscience told them about it. Said they could hire a light aircraft if they clubbed together, or maybe offer the pilot their services if they couldn’t.’ Miguel dabbed at his forehead with a clean white handkerchief. His black hair, thick like carpet, stood to attention in sweaty spikes.

  ‘I want you to find the chump that gave them big ideas and feed him to the crocodiles. Comprende?’

  Miguel waggled his head in agreement. ‘Naturalmente, jefe. I’ll check the CCTV. If he’s local, we will find him.’

  ‘If he’s from out of town, you’ll still find him.’

  ‘Si. Claro.’ Miguel closed his eyes. Nodding effusively.

  ‘And put it on YouTube. Then, make sure the whole town sees what’s left. Leave it in the square or something.’

  ‘No problemo, el cocodrilo.’

  He smiled at Miguel. Studied his pock-marked, acne-scarred face; the spare tyre that drooped over his belt and slacks. Too many cheese-laden tostadas and sugar-coated churros, no doubt. The Mexican diet was so damned greasy. He longed for the simpler fare of home but kept that thought to himself. ‘Those silly whores don’t realise they’re running straight into the lion’s den.’

  The car drove on out of town and along the pitted, dusty trails that led into the mountains to the border between the Chiapas and Guatemala. Past shrines cut into the rock, containing miniature skeletons, adorned with flowers. Despite the vivid green forest that blanketed the mountains, this was a hellish, godforsaken land. Even with the air-con blowing at full pelt in the Mercedes, the inferno-like heat was still stifling. And though they had left the smell of putrefaction from the ramshackle streets far behind, el cocodrilo nevertheless pulled the lime from the neck of his beer bottle with a determined finger and held it to his nose, enjoying the sharp, clean tang. Remembering what it was like to be permanently cool, enjoying consistently fresh air. The smell of the sea.

  ‘We’re here,’ Miguel announced, as the car bounced inside a gated complex, down a rutted drive.

  To one side, maize – stalks that were taller than men – grew in obedient rows on a plateau. Women, wearing colourful embroidered peasant smocks and black skirts, hacked at the ripe crop with machetes, some with babies swaddled and strapped to their backs. They froze, staring at the Mercedes with its blacked-out windows. Realising who was contained within. Deftly, they turned back to their work, keeping their heads bowed respectfully low.

  ‘Do they work for me?’ he asked.

  Miguel nodded. ‘Si. They’re all trafficked Nicaraguans and Hondurans. Farming in the week. Brothels at the weekend. Every man and woman you see on the farm is yours, jefe.’ He started to laugh. ‘The farmer wasn’t too pleased, but he stopped moaning once we cut his head off.’

  El cocodrilo turned away from his sniggering minion. It didn’t pay to be too familiar with men on the payroll. Even the ones only a rung beneath him. Rubbing his lime so that the zest left a stinging, oily slick on his fingers, he peered up at the mountains that rose in undulating green peaks on the other side of the road. Smothered in lush coffee crops. Fertile soil. Productive land. His was a diverse and lucrative business.

  The white stucco hacienda appeared just ahead like a tired angel perched on a Christmas tree that had been left over from the days of colonialism – a double-storey affair with ornate arches fringing a balconied quad, topped off with a ridged terracotta roof. Small wonder the farmer had been reluctant to relinquish it. Two tattooed young men stood on the tiled veranda by the front door, holding AK-47s. Not so elegant.

  The car ground to a halt in a cloud of dust.

  ‘Where are the girls?’ he asked. ‘Are they inside?’

  ‘No, jefe. They’re lined up on the airstrip,’ Miguel said. ‘Awaiting your judgement.’

  Ignoring the bowing sycophants and scurrying workers, he followed Miguel through the claustrophobic stalks of the maize crop for some two hundred metres. Feeling the heat strike the parched ground beneath his feet, bouncing back up into the soles of his shoes and onto his skin. Three in the afternoon. The place was an oven. And already he could hear the cicadas starting their lilting evensong. Chapulines, three times the size of the crickets in Europe, click-clicked their chirruping long legs together. He stood on one and committed to memory the sound of it crunching beneath his shoe. Shithole.

  When the stalky growth ended in a perfect line, giving way to the giant clearing, he could breathe again. Peered out beneath the brim of his straw trilby, squinting in the sunshine to see heat rising in mesmerising waves above a perfect white airstrip cut into the scrub. At the far end of the secret runway, a light aircraft had been casually parked. His light aircraft. Purchased to carry his co
ke, guns and supplies. His landing strip. Silly bitches. There they were, kneeling in the flattened dirt with coffee sacking on their heads. Naked. Hands tied behind them.

  Pondering how best to deal with this insurgence, he turned to Miguel. ‘Bring all of the farm workers and the men here. Now.’

  Walking towards the gaggle of hooded girls, he eyed the transportistas who guarded them warily. As arms-smuggling mercenaries, revered for their professionalism and impartiality by all the cartels, these transportistas were not women under his jurisdiction, despite being on his payroll. Dressed in dark utility clothing and carrying semi-automatic rifles. He recognised AK-47s, American issue AR-15s and German HK G36s. His storerooms would be replete with firepower if they had driven all the way north from Honduras with their ballistic payload.

  ‘Ladies,’ he said, tipping his hat. Making eye contact with a big bruiser of a transportista, wearing the skeletal figure of Santa Muerte emblazoned in white on her black T-shirt. ‘Nice guns.’ He winked.

  The woman scowled at him. ‘Hola, el cocodrilo,’ she said, readjusting her rifle across her hips. ‘Too bad you couldn’t make it to the rendezvous in Palenque in person. That little shit behind the bar needed teaching some respect. I taught him good. Okay?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, you’ve got ten cases of our finest arms in the hacienda and in Palenque. Mainly AK-47s.’ She reached out to shake his hand. Her grip was like a vice, far stronger than most of the men who worked for him. He noted the tattoos, more commonly seen on the men of the mara gangs, scrolling up her inner arm, under her T-shirt sleeve, emerging at the base of her thick neck, where the ink travelled northwards over her scarred face in a demonic tapestry of blue-black. Faux-religious images of weeping women and children. Flowers and skulls of the Maya, with numbers and letters scrawled intricately across her throat in some kind of magical code that clearly meant something to the right people. ‘Pleasure doing business with you. As always.’

  ‘And you’ll also take care of this problem for me?’ he asked.

  The farm workers and his own men had gathered along the edge of the airstrip now. Milling around awkwardly, suspecting what was about to happen, perhaps. Visibly squirming, lest the mayhem spill over from the group of absconded prostitutes, somehow tainting them.

  The transportista nodded. ‘Claro,’ she said, gabbling something to her compatriots in rapid-fire Salvadoran Spanish.

  The women slung their rifles across their backs and simultaneously drew machetes in some gruesome choreographed dance. Pulled the sacks from the heads of the bewildered trafficked girls who peered around to see where they were. Wide-eyed and mouthing, ‘No! No!’ when they caught sight of el cocodrilo. Begging for forgiveness, their pleas falling on his unsympathetic ears. Weak, corruptible bitches. Why would he ever spare them? Particularly when they were so easily replaced with the next truckload coming out of Guatemala.

  There was something about the high drama of the Central Americans that appealed to him. It was amusing, all this pandemonium and Latin angst: screaming, now drowning out the high-pitched sound of the cicadas, as the girls understood the fate about to be visited upon them. Weeping from the farm workers, who grasped that this too might be their method of undoing, should they cross the mighty el cocodrilo and dare to take back their freedoms.

  ‘Now,’ he said.

  The transportistas pushed the kneeling girls to the ground until they kissed the dirt with their tear-streaked faces. All bar one raised machetes in unison and, with one forceful blow, beheaded each runaway in almost perfect synchronicity. Amid the wailing of the onlookers, the girls’ heads rolled away from broken bodies that pumped out their life’s blood. Staring but unseeing. For them, at least, it was the end.

  But as el cocodrilo turned to walk away from the scene of execution, he felt he was being watched.

  CHAPTER 5

  Amsterdam, police headquarters, then, Bouwdewijn de Groot Lyceum, Apollolaan, then, Floris Engels’ apartment in Amstelveen, 28 April

  ‘What do we know about our man in the canal?’ Maarten Minks asked. Neatly folded into his chair, he sat with his pen in hand and his pad open, as though he were poised to take notes. Van den Bergen could deduce from the shine on his overenthusiastic, wrinkle-free face that he was on the cusp of getting a stiffy over the discovery of this fourth body. Waiting for his old Chief Inspector’s words of wisdom, no doubt. Bloody fanboy.

  ‘Well,’ Van den Bergen began. Paused. Rearranged his long frame in his seat, grimacing as his hip clicked in protest when he tried to cross his legs. ‘It’s interesting, actually. His wallet and ID were still on him. No money stolen, so he couldn’t have been pushed into the water after a mugging.’ He took the smudged glasses from the end of the chain around his neck and perched them on his nose. Wishing now that he’d had the scratched lens replaced when George had told him to. Trying to focus on the handwriting in his notebook. Hell, maybe it wasn’t the scuffing. Maybe his sight had deteriorated since the last eye test. Was it entirely unfeasible that he had glaucoma? ‘Ah, his name was Floris Engels – a maths teacher at Bouwdewijn de Groot Lyceum in the Old South part of town.’

  Minks nodded. Pursed his lips. ‘A teacher, eh?’

  ‘Yes. I checked his tax records. Head of department at a posh school on the expensive side of town.’ Removing his glasses, Van den Bergen stifled a belch. ‘IT Marie’s done some background research and revealed nothing but a photograph of him on the school’s website and a Facebook account that we’re waiting for permission to access. It’s unlikely he was some kind of petty crook on the quiet, as far as I can make out, but I got the feeling he might have been dead before he hit the water.’

  ‘And the number of canal deaths are stacking up,’ Minks said, lacing his hands together. That fervour was still shining in his eyes.

  Van den Bergen could guess exactly what he was hoping for but refused to pander to his boss’ aspirations. ‘I’m going out there with Elvis now to interview the Principal and some of his colleagues. We’re going to check out his apartment too. Marianne’s doing the postmortem this afternoon. She says, at first glance, she thinks maybe there’s been some foul play.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Minks said, scribbling down a note that Van den Bergen could not read. ‘Lots going on. I really do admire your old school methodical techniques, Paul.’ The new Commissioner beamed at him. His cheeks flushed red and he leaned his elbow onto the desk. ‘Will you be disappearing into your shed for a think?’

  Is he taking the piss, Van den Bergen wondered? But then he remembered that Maarten Minks was neither Kamphuis nor Hasselblad. This smooth-skinned foetus had been fast-tracked straight out of grad school. At least Van den Bergen’s long-range vision was good enough to corroborate that there was a raft of diplomas hanging above Minks on the wall behind his desk. A framed photo of him posing with the Minister for Security and Justice, the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and the bloody Prime Minister. No sign of a naked lady statue or stupid executive toys. This youthful pretender to the policing throne was all business. But he could think again if he thought Van den Bergen was going to discuss the shed. ‘Do you have any suggestions regarding the shape the investigation should take? Any priorities I should know about?’

  ‘See how the autopsy pans out. But if there are any similarities with the other floaters, I think we need to consider …’

  Here it was. Van den Bergen could feel it coming. He shook his head involuntarily and popped an antacid from its blister pack onto his tongue.

  ‘… that a serial killer is on the loose.’

  When he strode out to the car park, Elvis was already waiting for him, leaning up against the BMW 7 Series he had got the new Chief of Police to cough up for when they had broken the news to him that he was going to be overlooked for the role of Commissioner, yet again. Even the top man didn’t have a vehicle like Van den Bergen’s. But then, nobody else had legs quite as long as his, so they could all suck it up.

  ‘
Get off the car, for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had it valeted. I don’t need your arse print on my passenger door. And don’t smoke near it. The ash sticks to the paintwork.’

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ Elvis said, exhaling and stubbing his half-spent cigarette out on the ground with the heel of his cowboy boot.

  Van den Bergen scrutinised his pale, blotchy face. The signs of his psoriasis flaring up again, the poor bastard. ‘Are you up to this?’ he asked, unlocking the car with his fob. ‘You look peaky.’

  ‘I was up all night with Mum,’ Elvis said. Digging a nicotine-stained index finger into his auburn sideburns – totally at odds with the ridiculous dyed-black quiff that earned him his moniker. Even that was starting to thin a little, these days, now that he was very comfortably on the wrong side of thirty.

  His detective opened his mouth, presumably to say more. Van den Bergen plunged into the driver’s seat as quickly as his stiff hip would allow. Slammed the door shut, trapping Elvis and his earnest confessions outside. Programmed Floris Engels’ address into his sat nav.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly through recalcitrant, tight lips, when Elvis buckled in. ‘I just can’t—’

  ‘It’s okay, boss. I get it.’

  ‘Just book leave when you need it.’ He waved his hand dismissively, switched on the stereo and enjoyed the rather less awkward silence of Depeche Mode at a volume loud enough to drown out Elvis’ attempts at conversation about his mother’s condition.

  ‘Floris Engels,’ Elvis said, poking at a photograph of the dead man that he’d laid on the head teacher’s desk. A flattering shot of him taken from the sideboard in his flat. Average-looking but tanned, well dressed, smiling. A shot of him dead on the canal side, his ghoulish face swollen to almost twice its normal size. He knew Van den Bergen was scrutinising his every move for signs of exhaustion. One false move and he’d be put on compassionate leave. It was the last thing he wanted. ‘Tell me and the Chief Inspector here everything you know about your Head of Maths.’ He crossed his right leg over his left knee, as he’d seen the boss do. Assumed the position of a relaxed and confident man with nothing to prove.