The Girl Who Had No Fear

by Marnie Riches

  ‘The problem is that we have so many of these meth labs springing up all over the country,’ Teminova said, toying with the strap on the gas mask. ‘Last year, the Czech police found over four hundred and sixty labs, nationally. Those are just the ones we know about. It’s the tip of the iceberg, in all probability. Most are in small towns and the country, where the dealers can operate without fear of discovery. But we do get some in the city too. Žižkov has cleaned up its act over the years. But you can still get mugged after dark, coming back from having an artisan beer in a smart, hip bar. And you can always find a dealer, selling whatever your heart desires.’

  ‘How much does a gram of meth cost?’ George asked, wrinkling her nose at the coffee table that was heavily laden with overflowing ashtrays, dirty syringes, meth pipes and other drugs paraphernalia.

  ‘Pervitin – that’s what we call it. And it’s relatively cheap here. About fifty dollars for a gram. Two euros for a hit. Cheaper than coke and almost acceptable in a city where smoking weed and drinking heavily is nothing out of the ordinary. We just don’t have a problem with personal use, as long as people aren’t flaunting it under our noses.’

  ‘Is it not a Class A substance over here?’ Van den Bergen asked, rubbing his stomach and frowning, as though everything about that place was indigestible. He glanced over to the dirty window. Glimpsing the TV tower in the near distance.

  Roman Teminova shook his head. ‘It’s a drug that has become embedded in our culture,’ he said. ‘The government used to give methamphetamine to our troops after World War II to keep them alert. During the Communist era, manufacturing the chemicals used in meth was big state business. Hydrochloric acid, lithium, acetone, toluene, used in paint thinners and brake fluid! Pseudoephedrine – that’s—’

  ‘Yes, I know what that is,’ George said. ‘It’s cold and flu meds, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Teminova said, smiling benignly, as though he was a teacher and George had said something clever in class. ‘Red phosphorous – the stuff you get on match heads. Sodium hydroxide that we use to dissolve road kill.’

  ‘My God!’ Van den Bergen said, taking out his blister pack of antacids. Appraising the filthy apartment. Seemingly thinking better of swallowing anything in that foul place and shoving the pack back in his pocket. He ran his hand over his neck. ‘No wonder people are getting ill and dying from this shit.’

  ‘Anhydrous ammonia,’ the Czech said, pointing to an empty canister on a windowsill behind the soiled sofa. ‘Know what that’s used for?’ He rocked back and forth on the heels of his dated loafers. Raised an eyebrow. His florid cheeks flushed an even deeper shade of red. ‘Fertiliser and strong cleaner. All, well, most of this stuff you can get hold of in DIY shops and builders’ merchants. It’s cheap to make and the profit margins are impressively high. Higher than coke, that’s for sure. And you can control the purity and output if you cook it yourself in a dump like this, or the much bigger lab we found in the basement of a farmhouse yesterday. Now you can see why it’s the drug of choice for our dealers.’

  ‘But why so many labs, here in the Czech Republic in particular?’ George asked. ‘Not Germany. Not the Netherlands or the UK. Users on the dance and gay scene are going crazy for the stuff there, but the gear is all imported from here. I don’t understand. You’re talking about mass-produced chemicals under Soviet rule. It’s over a decade since Communism fell.’

  Teminova held his arm out to move her aside as an officer emerged from the bedroom, carrying several stacking boxes full of crystallised product. There was a gleam in the detective’s sharp blue eyes that spelled out precisely how delighted he was that this raid should have taken place with his Dutch counterpart present as a witness. Perhaps he had deliberately waited to conduct the search until that morning, when they had been scheduled to arrive in Prague.

  ‘Like I said,’ he continued. ‘We’ve lived with the drug for a long, long time. It used to be prescribed by our doctors for depression, ADHD, alcoholism, obesity … you name it. Meth was a cure-all. The only time it gets bad press is when some little turd blows their kitchen up or poisons the entire family with phosphine gas.’

  ‘Don’t you at least have some kind of regulation on the sale of pseudoephedrine?’ Van den Bergen asked. ‘Most countries do. We can’t buy Sudafed in the Netherlands at all anymore. I wish!’ He stuck the tip of his little finger inside his nostril and chuckled. ‘I haven’t been able to unblock my nose since a trip to the States in 1990. If I asked my pharmacist for it, she’d think I was trying to get high. You certainly can’t get it in industrial quantities in most of Europe.’

  ‘Poland,’ Teminova said, walking to the window and studying the view. ‘Dealers can just nip over the border and buy in bulk to their heart’s content. They bring it back here and le voilà! It’s no different from when I spent some time in the Met in the Nineties. The posh kids in Essex would drive to Hackney or Dalston to get what they wanted if they couldn’t get it in their village or tinpot town. No such thing as borders or barriers where drugs are concerned.’

  George spied the cats being removed from the kitchen in evidence boxes. Perhaps she had drunk too much coffee at breakfast or was simply sleep-deprived; suddenly, she felt that the air was being sucked from her lungs with a strong vacuum. ‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ she told Van den Bergen, thrusting the gas mask into the Czech detective’s hands. ‘And we need to talk about Nikolay Bebchuck. But somewhere nicer. With artisan coffee or some home-brewed hipster shit.’

  Cradling her cold Gambrinus beer, George sat on the bench in the Letna Park beer garden, drinking in the sight of an almost sunny downtown Prague, laid out beneath them like a colourful quilted throw – terracotta rooftops, elegant spires and pastel façades of a city that had been carefully moulded and fired in the clarifying heat and passion of the Renaissance; cooled and partially buried by the ideological stodge and concrete of the Soviet era; excavated in the last twenty-five years since the Velvet Revolution by a generation that had dared to reclaim their cultural heritage and vibrant birthplace from Moscow, as an adoptive child might rediscover exotic, bohemian roots, freeing herself from a suffocating and bland guardian. It was the first time George had been to Eastern Europe. Toying with Van den Bergen’s enormous foot underneath the picnic table, she was sure she could smell romance in the air.

  ‘What do you think of Prague?’ Teminova asked George.

  ‘Your beer’s shit and your sausage is too salty,’ she said, clinking glasses with the detective. Grinning when he met her declaration with a confused half-smile. ‘Nikolay Bebchuck. We didn’t fly five hundred miles to chat about the scenery.’

  At her side, Van den Bergen took out his notebook. Started to sketch the canopy of trees above them.

  The smile slid from Teminova’s face. ‘When we’ve closed down meth labs, many of the dealers mention his name during questioning. Bebchuck seems to be behind much of the illegal drugs trade in the Czech Republic – at least the bigger enterprises that are well co-ordinated. You’ll hear his name spoken in some of the whorehouses in Prague. Nikolay is quite the man about town when you want to shift women or product out of the country. I think he runs drugs and whores under a franchise model.’

  George folded her beermat down the middle into two perfect portions. Ripped them apart with precision. ‘Please don’t use the word “whores” in front of me, Roman,’ she said. ‘It makes me a bit … stabby on account of my having a vagina.’

  Van den Bergen trod heavily on her foot. Coughed uncomfortably.

  ‘You got a frog in your throat, Chief Inspector?’ she asked, turning with studied nonchalance towards her lover. ‘You wanna do something about that. Maybe drink your beer.’ Turned back to the Czech detective. ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. Working girl or just prostitute will do fine.’ She treated him to a perfect show of teeth. ‘So, Bebchuck supplies chem-drugs throughout Europe? And he’s into people trafficking. What do you know about him?’

  Teminova said nothing
. Toyed with the cuffs on his green tartan shirt. Blushing ferociously. George wondered if his flame-red cheeks might actually erupt.

  ‘Do you even know what he looks like?’ Van den Bergen asked.

  ‘No. There’s no way of knowing if he’s even real. We’ve never found anyone in our state records who could be him. Nobody seems to know a single thing about him, apart from the dealers and brothel-keepers. And even when threatened with prison sentences, they won’t talk. There’s an unbreakable code of silence.’

  ‘Europol and Interpol have no real details on the guy,’ Van den Bergen said. He turned to George. ‘I had Marie check. If he’s travelling around the Continent or further afield, he’s doing it under a completely different name with legit passport and papers.’

  Sipping his beer, Teminova fell silent. George was certain he was avoiding making eye contact with her. Part of her was pleased. Part of her wished she could just make nice with strangers. It would be so much easier.

  ‘You think one of Bebchuck’s labs made the meth that’s killing your kids?’ he said, finally.

  From his pocket, Van den Bergen pulled two specimen bags, each containing small white crystals. ‘George here got this while she was undercover at an Amsterdam nightclub,’ he said, poking at the first baggie with his long index finger. ‘My detective, Dirk, got the other in a gay sauna.’

  Teminova raised his eyebrow. ‘And?’

  ‘I was told Nikolay was the dealer’s wholesale supplier,’ George said, draining her glass and wondering if it would be considered unprofessional to demand a second. She bit hungrily into the sausage, almost cold now. Spoke with her mouth still partially full. Realised her manners weren’t up to scratch and that Aunty Sharon would lay into her for being an uncouth pig. Covered her mouth with her hand, too desperate to get her words out to swallow. ‘And Elvis – I mean, Dirk was told the same thing. Nikolay Bebchuck’s name is all over town. Now, we can’t work out if he’s some homophobic lunatic, just out to poison and kill Dutch men who like a bit of hot cock on a Saturday night.’ She studied her half-eaten sausage and set it down onto the picnic table, suddenly losing her appetite. ‘Or if there’s a problem with supply.’

  Shaking his head, Teminova said, ‘Funnily enough, we’ve had no reported deaths whatsoever from lead poisoning for at least five years. There haven’t even been any other crystal-meth-related incidents apart from the usual petty theft by users, looking for money for their next fix. Not even the odd OD. The nearest we’ve got to that, like I said, is cooks poisoning themselves with phosphine gas or blowing their kitchens up. And that’s not a regular occurrence. These people aren’t that stupid.’

  Van den Bergen dropped his biro onto the table and groaned. ‘Then we’ve hit another dead end. Can we not arrange for an analysis of your local product and compare it to ours? Maybe this Bebchuck is deliberately shipping low-grade product outside the Czech Republic.’

  Teminova took the baggies into his hands, holding them up against the sunlight, where the dull crystals started to shine like melting ice. ‘I’ll get our best chemists on it straight away.’

  They sat on the bed in their hotel room, sipping gin from the minibar, drinking in the view of the historic rooftops and listening to the infernal bong of some irritating church or other not far away. George jumped when Van den Bergen’s phone rang.

  ‘Speak,’ he said, pulling his T-shirt over his naked crotch, as though the caller could see down the phone.

  ‘Oh. Really? I see. Yes. I’ll tell her.’

  Ending the call, Van den Bergen turned to George, his dark eyebrows almost arched into question marks above eyes that now sparkled with intrigue.

  ‘Well?’ George asked, setting her drink on her belly.

  ‘Our meth does have a faulty composition, containing fatal doses of lead, but it’s not from here,’ he said. ‘It isn’t Czech at all!’

  ‘Where the hell is it from, then?’

  ‘Mexico.’

  CHAPTER 19

  Amsterdam, Keizersgracht, 21 May

  Coming out of the club, arm in arm with the tall black guy he had met on the dancefloor, Jeroen Meulenbelt was feeling lucky. He. Could. Not. Wait to tell Bouvien on confectionery and nuts all about it on Monday morning. She would want details, of course. She always did. And in the relative quiet of the stockroom, disturbed only by the odd fork-lift driver, he was only too happy to fill her in and watch her jaw drop in disbelief.

  ‘Really, Jeroen? Wow. You’re so cool. That’s sooooo awesome. You did what to whom? You took what? It felt like that? That sounds amazing. You know everyone. I wish I was like you.’

  Poor Bouvien, with her giant arse and acne and bad pink hair. Such a nice girl otherwise. There was someone out there for everyone, even for her, he was sure. And tonight, he was strolling hand in hand along the Keizersgracht with his someone. He wondered fleetingly how big the guy’s cock would be. He had never been fucked by a black dude before. Bouvien would demand to know the details, which would run as follows:

  He had danced his ass off until the early hours with his friends, celebrating his twenty-first birthday in style. They had done drugs. A fuck-tonne of drugs, which was always super-fun and blocked out all the anxiety about Mum and Dad-wanker and the prats at work in the supermarket, who took the piss out of him for being camp and sweating too much. All this, after a really gorgeous Indonesian rijsttafel at Tempo Doeloe, which was, like, his favourite. About seven squillion different dishes, all delish, with his absolute fave being the beef rendang. He had taken all the photos and loaded them up onto Instagram, making sure he pouted and did that smouldering eye thing at the side of the table. Everybody had loved them and commented on how cool he was looking on his big day, wearing the vintage Alexander McQueen top and trousers that he’d bought with his grandmother’s money, especially with his hair like that. He was, like, totally killing social media. Then, just at a point where he had thought he’d have to settle for going home and pulling himself off while thinking about Filip on cheese and sliced meats, he had spotted this guy. What was his name again? Wouter or Willem or something beginning with a W. Or was it Viktor? He couldn’t be sure.

  ‘What’s your name again?’ he asked, clasping his new lover’s hand tightly.

  ‘Roeland.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Lovely name. You’ve got such incredible eyes.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Roeland said. ‘I get them from my dad’s side of the family, who were originally from …’

  Yeah, whatever. So, then, he had captured the attention of this gorgeous creature who was definitely a nine, when he was only about a seven and a half, even though he went to the gym regularly. What more could he have hoped for? Tonight, he was going to get laid by a stunning black guy called Wouter with a giant cock and super-unusual, almost Oriental eyes from wherever the fuck he had just said. (He hadn’t been listening.) Brilliant! And the guy had said he was HIV positive but undetectable and was taking PrEP. He was on Truvada, the HIV preventative drug too. They could do bareback fucking without a care in the world. Even more brilliant! Bouvien would love every last detail, apart from the sex bits.

  Except the guy’s phone was ringing. He was answering it. Looking all serious, like something was amiss.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jeroen. I’m going to have to take a rain check. My mother’s ill and needs me to stop by.’

  There was genuine concern in his handsome face as he glanced down at the phone’s screen. Or maybe he’d had some sort of auto-call rigged up to get out of the encounter because he’d had second thoughts about boning a slightly dumpy boy from Amstelveen with a sweat problem. Maybe there was someone hotter on Grindr. Who knew? Jeroen couldn’t tell.

  As he disappeared into the distance beneath the streetlights, taking the hope of erotic adventure along with him, Jeroen took out his crystal meth and pipe. Sat by the canal in the relatively secluded spot by a moored motorboat and some parked cars. At gone 3 a.m., nobody would notice a young man, smoking a little more than was advisable on t
he occasion of his twenty-first birthday.

  Forcing a grin, he took a selfie and posted it on Instagram and Twitter. Annoyed that his hair wouldn’t do the right thing, flopping as it was because of the sweat and humidity from the club. And the light was terrible. Not flattering at all. He scrolled through Grindr, realising he couldn’t be bothered to travel the length of the canal to find somebody to fuck. At this hour, they would almost certainly be either totally un-hot or utterly off their faces and only semi-coherent or absolutely more interested in sleep than sex. His erection had waned now, in any case, since the Viagra had worn off. He lit the crystals inside the pipe, inhaling. Feeling mellow. Wishing he was chilling with his friends. Maybe he would go to the sauna. That place was always open for business.

  When the grogginess and nausea hit him, he was convinced it would pass with just a little more time in the fresh air. Perhaps he shouldn’t have had alcohol with so many drugs. He had been careful not to overdo the Gina. Had the Indonesian rijsttafel been dodgy? Tainted chicken, perhaps. Maybe it was an idea to move away from the edge of the canal. Except, he couldn’t move. Not even to grab his phone and call his mum to tell her he was feeling odd. He tried to pinpoint what had made him so abruptly unwell.

  ‘This is the best gear you can get,’ the dealer had said, as he had palmed the baggie full of crystals onto him. An older man with long grey hair, dressed like a biker, wearing mirror shades indoors. Scabs around his mouth and the worst teeth imaginable. ‘You heard of Nikolay? Well, this is his gear. And it’s sweet, man. Not your usual cheap Czech crap. This has come all the way from Mexico. This is some pure-as-the-driven-snow Walter White shit.’

  As he took his last laboured breath on the canal’s edge, Jeroen wondered how he would communicate all of this to Bouvien on Monday in the stockroom.

  CHAPTER 20

  Mexico, Yucatan jungle, 30 May