Menck blanched, vomiting the explanation in panicked, rapid-fire babble. ‘The guy Floris had fucked came back up to the apartment in a state. He was crying and shouting. Said Floris was dead. That Floris had been stoned beyond reason and throwing up outside. There had been a struggle. Apparently, Floris kept trying to walk to the water’s edge and the guy grabbed him and tried to drag him to safety. But he reckoned Floris was determined. He’d just stumbled into the canal and sank without trace. A couple of us ran outside and jumped in to try to find him. I dived down as deep as I could where this guy said he’d gone in but we couldn’t for the life of us find him. And then, I guess I got cold feet because there were drugs involved and a chem-sex party and … Jesus. Can you see how bad it would be for a lecturer at the university? Can you imagine the headlines in the Volkskrant, if the police had come to the scene and got evidence of what we’d been doing?’
‘Homosexuality isn’t outlawed in Amsterdam,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘That’s a piss-poor excuse and I don’t buy it.’
‘It’s true!’ Menck said. ‘Shit sticks, even in a liberal city like ours. I lost my lover. I lost my nerve. I wasn’t about to lose my career and reputation too. I’m sorry.’
‘Save your apologies, you morally bankrupt piece of shit,’ Van den Bergen said, leaning forwards until Menck shrank visibly in his seat. ‘You’ve obstructed a police investigation by not coming forward and until I interview the men who were at this sex party, I still don’t believe a word out of your disingenuous mouth. But tell me, who did Floris buy his meth from?’
Amid wracking sobs, Menck said something. Inaudible. Indecipherable.
‘Stop simpering and speak clearly, damn it!’ Van den Bergen bellowed. ‘Who was Engels’ dealer?’
Menck blinked tears from his red, puffy eyes. ‘Nikolay.’
Van den Bergen nudged Elvis. ‘Nikolay who?’
‘Some Czech guy. I think his second name is Bebchuck. Yes, Nikolay Bebchuck.’
CHAPTER 17
35,000ft above Germany, 20 May
As they flew above the clouds, lulled into a wordless torpor by the thrum of the jet engines and subliminal hiss of the air-con, George thought about her father and the notification on Interpol.
‘Missing,’ she said, swallowing down raw, indigestible emotions. Guilt? Loss? Fear, definitely. She struggled to compartmentalise her feelings for her father in the way that she didn’t with Letitia. Letitia was easy. She was a bitch. ‘For years, I felt nothing for Letitia. Now, I suppose I feel a daughterly duty towards her, but sod-all else,’ she told Van den Bergen, laying her head on his jumper-clad upper arm, then thinking better of it when his shoulder jutted into her ear. ‘But my dad? Jesus.’
At her side, Van den Bergen was staring out of the widow at the rising sun. He turned to her. Sympathy and melancholy in those large grey eyes. He took her hand into his and kissed it, being careful to rub any excess saliva from her skin – the way she preferred. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Your dad was working in a really dangerous part of the world. Honduras has the highest murder rate … of anywhere. It makes Amsterdam seem like an idyllic village.’
Snatching her hand away, George glared at her lover. Suddenly irritated by his slipshod empathy and foot-in-mouth well-meaning. ‘Thanks a fucking bundle. You could at least reassure me and offer me hope. For Christ’s sake! My mother’s buggered off to who knows where and though I’ve ostensibly been receiving emails from him, now I find my long-lost dad has, in fact, vanished too. In the murder capital of the world! You can be such an insensitive bastard sometimes, you know.’
‘Keep your voice down!’ he said, glancing nervously over the tops of the seats at the other passengers. ‘It’s a long way to bloody Prague. This lot don’t need to hear—’
‘It’s all right for you,’ she said, folding her arms. Lowering her voice only slightly. ‘You know exactly where your nearest and dearest are.’
Van den Bergen nodded. Returned to staring out the window. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And when you disappear off on some ill-conceived adventure that almost gets you killed, that’s all right, is it? Because I know where you are, so I couldn’t possibly understand what it is to worry.’
‘Twat,’ George said, rummaging in her bag at her feet for the cheese sandwich she’d hastily thrown together from stale ingredients in Van den Bergen’s fridge before leaving for the airport.
‘Can I have some?’ he asked, his attention refocused on the side of her face.
‘Buy yourself some peanuts, old man. This is my sarnie. Not yours.’ Taking an aggressive bite from her disappointing breakfast, she contemplated the information that Marie had finally managed to unearth. Chewing defiantly to make sure Van den Bergen knew she was annoyed.
‘So, apparently my dad went out there as a contractor for a British engineering company in 2011. Aeronautical engineering, working on building a prototype for some passenger jet or other that’s better equipped for landing on short runways, surrounded by mountains, like the airport in Tegucigalpa. I don’t know. Some shit like that, anyway.’
Though she stared at the seat back of the passenger in front, she felt Van den Bergen watching her. Tutted and reached into her bag to bring out a second packet of sandwiches. ‘Go on, then.’
He grinned. ‘You made these for me?’ As he opened the tinfoil, he wore an expression of pure boyish delight on his lean, ageing face.
‘It’s only a fucking sandwich, Paul. Not a birthday present.’
Winking. ‘You made it,’ he said, biting hungrily. Speaking with his mouth full. ‘I should frame it, never mind eating it.’
Narrowing her eyes to convey her discontent, she was betrayed by the smile that curled up the corners of her mouth. Nudged him, playfully. ‘Anyway, I fired off this email to the place where he’d worked – Earhart Barton plc – and they said he caught a company bus to work every morning from the company’s HQ in Centro Contemporáneo in Tegucigalpa to the factory in the countryside.’ She tried to imagine the sort of life her father might have been living for years. Did he have a house or an apartment? Had he lived alone or had there been some woman – possibly a second family – waiting for his return at the end of the working day? Letitia had filleted him so cleanly from their lives at such an early juncture that her memory of the warm and loving Spanish man George remembered from being a small child had decayed like an old, old photograph, rendering him nothing more than hairy forearms, swinging her onto his shoulders; the smell of spicy aftershave and tobacco; an almost-faceless ghost of a family life lost.
She wiped the solitary tear that escaped the turmoil inside her head on her sleeve, turning to the aisle, lest Van den Bergen see her pain and heroically, irritatingly try to ease it with empty platitudes.
‘How did he go missing, then?’ he asked.
‘The bus was hijacked by members of a gang, according to the local rag. They only took him. Nobody else. So, I’m guessing they wanted him for a specific skill or his perceived worth in terms of ransom.’ She pictured the bus, filled with white-collar workers in their smart, short-sleeved shirts and Sta-Prest slacks, heading for a day’s work at some giant, clinical facility in the middle of nowhere. Gun-toting thugs boarding the bus at a stop light. Shots fired. Shouting. Her father staring down the barrel of an Uzi, perhaps, standing with his hands in the air as some muscled brute, wearing the terrifying, dehumanising tattoos of the maras on his face like an inked balaclava, barked instructions at him to get off the bus. No struggling or else. ‘Kidnapping specialists for money or services rendered is apparently a thing out there.’ She held her breath. Exhaled slowly, trying to dispel the mounting anxiety in her chest. Massaged her temples. ‘It’s not unusual for police to discover mass graves in the country, where poor snatched bastards have been used up by the cartels, spat out and buried. The missing report was from 2013, Paul. 2013! He’s not been seen since.’
Van den Bergen clasped her hand and pulled her head to his chest. She could hear the comforting loping beat of
his heart. Her breathing slowed.
‘Try not to think about it,’ he said. ‘When we get back, I’ll make contact with their Chief of Police, if I can. I’ll ask him to pull the missing persons file and get it translated. I’ll say it’s part of this tainted meth investigation. If Minks won’t cough up, I’ll pay for it myself.’
‘Aw, you’re a good man, Paul van den Bergen,’ George said, stroking his goatee. ‘But you wouldn’t need to translate it. I’ve got that covered. Hablo español. Remember?’
Van den Bergen raised an eyebrow. Treated her to a quizzical grin. ‘So that’s why you learned Spanish? Because of him? I thought your dad left when you were little.’
‘I guess I wanted to keep him alive in my mind,’ she said. ‘Get in touch with my roots, because they were mine to get in touch with. Letitia couldn’t strip his genes out of my body and she never gave enough of a shit to find out what subjects I took at high school or studied on the side. So, yes.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘I’ve got Spanish installed up here instead of having photo albums full of happy family snaps.’
‘How did a drop-out berk like me end up with you?’ Van den Bergen chuckled. ‘Any chance you’ve got Czech lurking in that cavernous brain of yours? Because we need to shelve your dad for now, if you don’t mind, and give some thought to the legend of Nikolay Bebchuck and his apparent network of Czech meth labs.’
‘I can’t believe Minks is forking out for this trip,’ George said, as the lights came on overhead, reminding them to fasten their seat belts. The plane jolted over a pocket of turbulence, beginning its descent in earnest. Her ears felt full. She yawned to unblock them, wincing with the pain. ‘What a difference compared to that bastard Kamphuis. He still has the hots for a gay serial killer but is happy to back your hunch. Have you got a bit of a bromance going on there?’
Van den Bergen turned to her and smiled. ‘Oh, I think it’s you he’s sweet on, Dr McKenzie!’
CHAPTER 18
Czech Republic, Prague, Žižkov district, later
‘Hurry! We’ve got to climb the stairs,’ Roman Teminova said in perfect English with an accent that was part Czech, part pure unadulterated Tottenham. He ushered Van den Bergen and George towards the entrance of the apartment block, as though he was directing traffic in the wake of a national emergency. Slightly breathless when he spoke, the Czech detective’s cheeks were flame-red, clashing with the green chequered shirt he wore beneath an ill-fitting navy suit jacket; his sandy-coloured hair dishevelled, giving him the flustered appearance of a farmer who had found himself a policeman in the city by accident, George mused. There was no doubting his sense of urgency though. ‘Now! Come!’
‘Hurry? Why the hell do we have to hurry?’ Van den Bergen mumbled, peering up at the uppermost room in the pistachio-coloured building – six storeys above his street-level vantage point, where three silver Policie Skodas with their blue and yellow go-faster stripes were parked askew near the kerb. ‘Don’t you have bloody lifts in Prague?’ He patted his slightly distended stomach and grimaced at George. ‘I’ve not even digested breakfast yet.’ Shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Jesus. I’m getting too old for this bullshit.’
But the younger Teminova had already disappeared inside, flanked by two uniforms in riot gear, carrying guns.
Above them, burly men wearing the bulky black garb of the Policie sprinted up a vertiginous stairwell that rose to the solitary door at the top. An Escher painting come to life. Van den Bergen gripped the banister and sighed. ‘I thought we were going to compare notes. Take a look around the drug hotspots in the city. I didn’t expect to go on a sodding raid,’ he said, belching. ‘And he drives like a nutcase. I feel sick.’
‘Oh, stop moaning, for God’s sake!’ George said, prodding him in the back. ‘We’ve not come here to eat schnitzel and drink beer with the stag parties from Croydon.’
Shouting from above made George’s pulse quicken. The rhythmic bang of a battering ram against a door drowned out Van den Bergen’s complaints. Footfalls, as the police piled into the Žižkov penthouse apartment.
By the time George reached the summit of the staircase, she felt like somebody had punched her in the chest. Made a mental note to smoke less and cycle more. Van den Bergen took her by the hand and pulled her inside.
‘Jesus,’ she said in English, holding her nose against the sulphurous stink. ‘It reeks, man!’ The walls of the apartment were scuffed and filthy, covered in some dated floral wallpaper that might have been there since Communism fell. Rubbish was strewn along the skirting boards – discarded beer cans, cigarette butts and food wrappers on the uncarpeted floor.
In the living room, it was worse. A stained sofa, where a young man, whom the police had apprehended, lay face down while a uniform cuffed him. Shouting aggressively in Czech over his shoulder at his captor. Wide-eyed and clearly wired. Euro house music pounded at deafening volume from what appeared to be a high-end stereo system; jaunty pink and blue lights dancing up and down on the graphic equaliser’s display. Bass, almost visibly thumping out into the foetid room from the woofers of the oversized floor-standing speakers, making the sticky wooden floor reverberate beneath George’s feet and her molars ache in their dental sockets. Empty beer bottles strewn on their sides next to them, rocking gently to and fro thanks to the sound waves that issued forth. Hedonistic mayhem, juxtaposed against neat piles of cash that had been stacked carefully in a money-counter next to the arm of the sofa. ‘Somebody’s been using this place as party central.’
The stereo was silenced by a giant of a cop who eyed George suspiciously. She felt compelled to give him the finger, but settled instead for sucking her teeth long and low, to convey her displeasure.
‘Thank God he’s turned that off,’ Van den Bergen said, covering his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his raincoat. ‘Maybe they wouldn’t screw their lives up so badly if they didn’t listen to such appalling music.’
From the kitchen, Roman Teminova emerged, wearing a triumphant grin. ‘Methamphetamine production,’ he said, holding up a large, clear plastic bag bulging with crystals of varying sizes. He waved it towards Van den Bergen, as though showing the Dutch Chief Inspector some excellent souvenir that Prague boasted to rival anything Amsterdam could offer. ‘This is only a tiny outfit, but we did a bigger bust in a nearby town yesterday and found a link to this place. Come! See for yourselves.’ He handed them both gas masks and indicated that they should put them on. Pulled his own over his head, sounding suddenly tinny and muffled, as though he had been trapped inside a transistor radio. Reminiscent now of a character in a disaster movie. ‘Be careful not to touch anything, of course.’
Beckoning them into the kitchen, George trod gingerly over the debris on the floor, wishing she had worn something more robust on her feet than trainers. Wellies weren’t enough for this level of filth and contamination, she reflected. Bet Van den Bergen thinks being in here is going to give him cancer. I’ll not hear the end of this until he’s demanded an MRI scan of his lungs and a full-throttle, five-star mole check. And for once, I can’t blame the old fart.
First, she tried to make sense of a tangle of flasks, canisters and pipes that, at a glance, looked like some kind of old-fashioned moonshine still. A burnt-out oven that might have only ever cooked up nightmares and food poisoning. The walls were dark brown with the residue of years of chemical abuse clinging to the splashbacks. Chairs, shoved beneath the small blistered kitchen table, whose upholstered backs and seat pads had almost disintegrated entirely, looking as though they had been burned in a fire.
Then, her gaze wandered downwards, past the grimy cupboards.
She gasped. Held her hand to the mouthpiece of her mask. ‘Oh, Christ. You’re kidding.’ In the corner of the small kitchen, two kittens lay stiffly sprawled by a bowl of mould-green detritus that had once been food. Clearly dead, judging by the flies that circulated around them. ‘Poor little bastards.’ She needed to get out of there. Needed to get back to street level, where she could bre
athe the fresh air and be calmed by the sight of the stuccoed old apartment blocks in their crisp, ice-cream colours, overlooking the infamous 1960s TV tower that resembled a failed Communist experiment in building a rocket ship from concrete. Those were sights she wanted to gaze upon at 8 a.m. after a sleepless night of worrying about her parents. Touristy shit. Not this hellish scene of filth and cruelty and dead cats.
‘We’d had complaints from neighbours,’ Teminova said, waving his arm towards the worktop that was barely visible beneath an array of test tubes in blackened holders and boiling flasks containing unsavoury-looking amber-coloured concoctions.
On the floor, with their lids off, stood canisters, barrels and oversized bottles that had been labelled on the outside with foreboding skulls and crossbones. Large serving spoons had been shoved into the chemical contents. Most perplexingly of all, however, was the food processor sitting next to the cooker, filled with some unsightly brown goo. Unbidden and at odds with the scene before her, George was beset by a memory of Aunty Sharon’s homely kitchen, with its baking equipment and spotless oven. Remembered the sweet, intoxicating smell of that place, as her aunt whipped up a rum-laced fruitcake to cheer them both on the weekends when she wasn’t working a shift at Skin Licks, and Van den Bergen, Tinesha and Patrice seemed so very far away.
‘It looks like this lab – if you can call it that – has been up and running for a long while,’ Van den Bergen said, standing stiffly beside George, clasping his raincoat closed. ‘How come you’ve only shut it down now?’
Uniforms, now clad in white jumpsuits, entered the claustrophobic scene, taking photographs of the makeshift equipment. Pushing them back into the living room, where Teminova removed his mask and bid that they do likewise. He ruffled his hair. Barked something at a younger-looking colleague, who nodded deferentially, then marched the complaining, cuffed dealer down the hall towards the front door.
The Girl Who Had No Fear Page 11
