The Girl Who Had No Fear

by Marnie Riches

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ George had asked, hoisting her bag high on her shoulder so that her convincing temporary tattoos had been clearly on show. ‘I was told by Nikolay that I’d find you here.’

  All eyes had been trained on her. All rifles had been pointed at her head, poised to end her relatively short life in as long as it took to pull a trigger.

  ‘Nikolay?’ the woman had asked, her thick black eyebrows drawing together to make her one of the hardest-looking individuals George had ever met.

  Her heart had beat so fast and so loudly, George had been certain the woman would be able to hear it or, at least, sense her mortal fear. ‘Nikolay Bebchuck. I got into trouble back home with the police, so I went over to work in Europe,’ she had said. ‘First for The Duke in London, doing a bit of dealing and minding his girls who work in his clubs, until he got sent down. Then, for Nikolay in Amsterdam. He said you’d be able to fix me up with work.’

  ‘Where are you from? You’re not one of us but you look like one of us and sound familiar but not quite right. Are you a cop?’ There had been fury in the woman’s eyes at the mere possibility. She had widened her aggressor’s stance and had moved the barrel of the rifle up to George’s throat.

  Unrest had erupted suddenly in that foetid-smelling claustrophobic metal box, with the younger women registering their mistrust of George at the tops of their voices. What had followed had been a fast and brutal-sounding exchange of words between the women. Then, silence as the rest of the group had clearly deferred to the frightening woman in the Santa Muerte T-shirt.

  At that moment, George had been sure that she was about to be killed. There had not even been space in her head for thoughts of Van den Bergen. Only the basic survival instinct that she should keep her breathing even and maintain eye contact with her inquisitor at all costs.

  ‘You’re a cop,’ the woman had repeated.

  ‘I’m not a cop. Do I look like a fucking cop?’ George had laughed, whilst rifling through her mental files of all the things she had researched before embarking on this trip that, at that moment, felt tantamount to a suicide mission. Finally, a useful detail had presented itself and she had made a hand sign of a Salvadoran mara. Another long shot. But the body language of the women in the room had seemed to soften slightly and George had noticed the odd nod and wry smile. ‘I’m originally from San Salvador,’ she had said, manufacturing an air of confidence by carefully controlling her breathing and projecting her speech. ‘Salvadoran father and a black British mother. That’s why I sound a bit different. That’s how I came to spend time in Europe for a few years. But now I’m back and I’m here, hoping you can use my experience and another pair of big cojones – the kind only a woman has!’

  The rifle’s position had not moved. The other women had clearly been put at their ease by the gang hand sign but their leader had been no such pushover.

  ‘How come you’re in Honduras, looking for work with the transportistas?’ she had asked. ‘We’ve got all the girls we need. And we don’t need drug dealers. We’re gun smugglers and hired muscle.’

  ‘I’m on the trail of someone who owes me money,’ she had said. ‘A Spaniard named Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno. You heard of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Someone told me he was taken off a bus in Tegus a while ago and shipped north by the maras to work for a Mexican cartel. An engineer. But this bastard owes me three thousand dollars and when I find him …’ In a move that had been so deft that the other women in the room had gasped audibly, George had reached into the waistband at the back of her jeans and whipped out the hunting knife that the taxi driver had given her. She had brandished it beneath the lightbulb so that it glinted menacingly; pointing it towards her opponent as though she feared nothing and was as loco in the coco as her alleged gang member status had suggested. ‘If he’s not got my money, I’m going to cut him from here …’ She had almost touched the carotid artery of the transportista with the tip of the blade. ‘To here.’ Moving the blade down towards the woman’s groin. ‘But Nikolay sent me to Tegus with a message for one of his business associates. He said, once I’d delivered it, if I wanted to earn some money and to track down this Moreno son of a bitch, you would be the women to go to. You could help me get to Chiapas.’

  Engaged in a stand-off of sorts, the woman had held George’s gaze for at least a full minute without speaking, as though she had been calculating whether this interloper constituted a risk worth taking.

  Had they even heard of the mysterious Nikolay, the Eastern European drugs baron? It had been a long shot that his name might have travelled across the Atlantic, despite it being ubiquitous in Europe and there being a clear link through the drugs to Mexico.

  ‘You’ll sleep with Paola,’ the woman had said, finally, lowering her rifle.

  George had nodded solemnly, sliding her hunting knife back into its sheath. Inside she had been grinning like a demented hyena and mentally twerking her way around the shack but she had resolved it would be deadly to let her hard-woman mask slip for even a second. She had remembered how the toughest women had behaved and held themselves in prison. They had never revealed the slightest weakness and neither would she.

  ‘My name’s Maritza,’ the woman had said.

  ‘My name’s Jacinta.’ George had held out her hand, and Maritza had pre-empted her handshake with the gang sign.

  ‘You answer to me,’ she had said. ‘Tomorrow, we set off for Nikolay’s brothel in Palenque. I’ve got a truck full of AKs that I need to get to the boys up there. Maybe you’ll get to see Nikolay himself. You can ask him about your guy, Izquierdo Moreno.’ Maritza had pulled out a cigarette and lit it, blowing smoke into George’s face. She had held out the packet as some gesture of solidarity, perhaps. ‘And by the way …’ She had curled her lip, making her scar deepen. ‘Did you get your tattoos done by a blind man? They’re terrible!’

  Amid gales of laughter, George hadn’t been able to move her hands momentarily. She had felt the blood freezing into ice crystals inside her veins. ‘Hang on. Are you saying Nikolay’s here? In Central America?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Maritza had said, foisting the cigarette on her. ‘He has several names. Over here, we call him el cocodrilo.’

  And so it was, the following morning, George put the freshening touches to her tattoos under the light of the bare bulb, knowing that by sundown, she might meet Nikolay Bebchuck face to face: the man whom she was supposed to work for and be on good terms with.

  ‘Come on, Jacinta,’ Paola said, standing at the doorway as George slid her felt-tip pen into her bag.

  ‘How long have you been there?’ George asked. Had she witnessed George drawing on her arm and chest?

  But Paola didn’t answer. ‘The truck’s ready,’ she said, staring at the ink on George’s collarbone. ‘Get your things. We’re leaving.’

  CHAPTER 28

  Amsterdam, Onze Lieve Vrouw Hospital, 28 May

  ‘You might be leaving today,’ Elvis said, keeping his disingenuous voice as bright as possible. ‘Once we get you home, I’ll get you nice and comfortable in front of the television. Would you like that? I’ve ordered you a box set of an American TV series called Atlantic Boardwalk. It should be delivered tomorrow, with any luck, so there’s plenty to watch. And I think you’ll like it, Mum. It’s all about the Prohibition era. You love that historical stuff, don’t you?’ Elvis stroked his mother’s hand, making a conscious effort not to look directly into her eyes, lest he see the end in hers and she see his secret in his.

  The medical equipment that was sustaining her life hissed and bleeped industriously. But those reassuring sounds were all but drowned out by the rattling noise coming from her chest and the laboured sound of her breathing into the monstrosity of a mask that the doctors had put on her to get oxygen into her bloodstream. Glancing at it, he shuddered. It was more of a cage than a mask, with its metal head-straps and tubing, reminding him vaguely of a tie-fighter pilot from Star Wars. His mother had alw
ays hated Star Wars.

  ‘I’ve got to go in a minute, Mum,’ he said, finally steeling himself to look at her properly.

  It was a terrible sight. His once robustly built, pink-cheeked mother was unrecognisable; wasting and wan in a hospital bed with just one skeletally thin arm visible above the bedding, plugged with cannulas, the skin wrinkled with malnutrition.

  The dragging sensation that seemed to stretch his heart was a mixture of sorrow and guilt, he realised. He was certain that the end was near and yet, hadn’t they both been here several times before, only to have been duped by antibiotics and fate? In truth, he wanted it over with, so that she would stop suffering and he could move on with his life instead of being trapped in this exhausting cycle of juggling work with caring and hospital visits. Part of him just wanted to be happy and experience the lighter side to life, like other men in their thirties did. Look forward with optimism. Enjoy the moment. Make plans.

  But Elvis felt like the antithesis of a man in his prime at that moment. His epiphany with Arne, which promised much and gave him a tantalising glimpse of what could be, only served to make him feel distinctly sub-prime.

  The dying are the most selfish people in the world, he thought. Let go, Mum. Let’s get this over with.

  While his mother was still alive, she was involuntarily sucking from him every ounce of energy and every minute of non-work time that he had. His mother would never ever sanction a relationship between two men, either. She was stealing his future and he was sick of it. Worse still, Elvis was wracked with crippling guilt for acknowledging such deep-seated resentment.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her forehead. She smelled of decaying skin and medicinal alcohol. He took the clean, small sponge the nurse had given him and moistened it in iced water. Lifted the mask momentarily so that the oxygen machine’s reading plummeted abruptly, reducing the apparatus to a riot of alarm bells and flashing warning lights. He wiped his mother’s mouth gently. Responding to his touch, she smacked her lips and stuck her tongue out to receive the moisture. ‘I’m a shit son,’ he said. Replacing the mask, waiting until the oxygen levels had risen again. Leaving.

  Outside, his phone pinged with a text from Van den Bergen.

  Can’t get hold of Marie. Get her to text me with George’s location. I know she knows. Tell her she’s fired if she doesn’t tell me everything. And what’s new on that bastard Stijn Pietersen? The food here is crap. It’s too hot. I’ve got the shits. VdB.

  He was about to respond when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  ‘Hello, Detective,’ a man said. ‘I heard you’re looking for information on the Rotterdam Silencer.’

  With his fist drawn back, anticipating attack, Elvis spun around to see a grubby-looking man in his fifties, who wore yellowing jeans and a beat-up biker’s jacket. His long grey hair hung about his shoulders in greasy tracts and was topped off with a bandana, giving him the air of an old Guns N’ Roses roadie whom the years hadn’t been kind to. Elvis knew exactly what sort of raddled eyes were behind the mirror shades.

  ‘You?’ he said, lowering his fist and laying his palm over his chest. He realised that the man must have been following him on a regular basis to have worked out that he would be visiting the hospital on his own at this time of day. ‘I called you last week and you gave me an earful of bullshit about how you’d gone straight and didn’t want to speak to the cops anymore. What the hell have you got to say that I’d want to hear?’

  The man’s scabbed lips peeled back to reveal a cartoon villain’s grin of florid, receding gums and blackened stumps. ‘For the right price, I’ll tell you.’

  CHAPTER 29

  Mexico, Yucatan jungle, 30 May

  ‘I want you to pilot the sub eastwards across the Caribbean Sea until you reach the Cayman Islands,’ el cocodrilo said with a feverish excitement clearly audible in his voice. ‘Then, you’ll head past Cuba and Jamaica and skirt around to the Dominican Republic, where you’ll be met at a secluded rendezvous point just off the coast, near Santo Domingo. Jorge will be given the co-ordinates for the sat nav, but you will be in charge of the vessel.’

  Kneeling on the jungle floor by entrance to the cenote, the man held his hands behind his head, cowed by the sight of the pistol in el cocodrilo’s hand. Satisfied that the vessel was watertight and functioning, his captor had decided that the semi-submersible should be brought up from its hiding place, at last, loaded with contraband and launched on its maiden voyage with him in it.

  ‘You’re making a mistake, jefe,’ he said, squeezing his eyes shut to block out the sight of the weapon. ‘I’m no sailor. I might have built the thing, but I’m the last man you should have piloting it on the high seas. Honestly.’

  The impact of the pistol against his temple stung, whipping his head off to the side at an awkward angle; the vertebrae in his neck responding with a nauseating crack. Knocking his glasses to the dusty ground. Suddenly, el cocodrilo was kneeling beside him. He could smell his breath – stale beer, cigars and the sweet, fatty smell of cured meat.

  ‘Listen, mecánico,’ he said. ‘It’s my fucking millions of dollars have gone into building this tub …’

  In his peripheral vision, he could just about make out his captor’s mouth – a cruel, mean mouth with no discernible lips. His mahogany-tanned European skin, deeply etched with crow’s-feet, was blotched with deeper brown melanin spots on his cheekbones and forehead, testifying to too many years spent living in a climate to which he was genetically not well suited. El cocodrilo was an interloper, he reflected, and yet he had successfully embroidered himself in the fabric of the infamous Coba cartel. A successful schemer. A masterful manipulator. His realm was not just a few meth labs in the dense, sweaty tangle of the Yucatan jungle. This son of a bitch had the four corners of the world as his playground. So why was a cold-blooded monster with the international pretensions of a modern-day conquistador so hell-bent on prolonging his agony, when he could find much bigger, more entertaining sport elsewhere, he wondered?

  ‘So, if I say my mecánico will captain my sub’s maiden voyage, you’ll do it, or I’ll put a bullet in you – or worse.’

  ‘You couldn’t do worse. I’m your slave. And this is lunacy!’ he said. ‘You’re planning to overload it, so it’s going to sink anyway and kill everyone on board. That’s physics, jefe. And I don’t know how to chart the high seas.’ He shook his head vigorously, imagining being shut into the belly of the vessel he had designed and built by hand over a period of years. Already gripped by claustrophobia, he found he was gasping for breath in the searing heat like a drowning fish. ‘I know nothing about currents and tides or weather reports. Haven’t I done everything you asked?’ he asked, dimly aware of blood dripping from his temple to the jungle floor. ‘I built you a semi-submersible that works. But I wanted you to let me test it at depth. It’s still an unknown quantity beyond a few metres.’

  El cocodrilo grabbed his chin and yanked his face upwards so that he was forced to look into those piercing blue eyes. Without the aid of the varifocal lenses in his spectacles, they were slightly fuzzy but no less terrifying. Eyes that delighted in the sight of human beings being eaten by the crocodiles he kept as pets.

  ‘You’ve done everything I’ve told you to,’ el cocodrilo said, ‘because if you hadn’t, I’d have killed you. And now, I’m telling you to pilot that fucking sub to the Dominican, so my meth can be loaded onto the cargo ship bound for Rotterdam in four days’ time.’

  A thick forearm reached forwards and plucked his glasses from the ground, handing them back to him.

  ‘You’ll need these,’ Miguel said. Standing with his feet together, almost to attention, like a tubby, poorly trained soldier, el cocodrilo’s sidekick pointed to the crane that was perched by the entrance to the cenote. ‘Here she comes, jefe.’

  El cocodrilo was on his feet, watching, as the twelve-metre-long semi-submersible was winched clear of the cenote entrance and hoisted into the air. The surrounding
jungle swallowed the sound of the men shouting instructions to one another. This way. Take it higher. Left a bit.

  Silently, he sent a prayer skywards beyond the green canopy to the perfect cobalt-blue of the cloudless Mexican sky that he be forgiven for the part he had been forced to play in the inevitable demise and even deaths of those innocents who succumbed to the lure of whatever poison el cocodrilo’s men brewed in the jungle. It had never been his intention to collaborate with murderous traffickers, but he was just one of hundreds of scientists who were eking out miserable half-lives in the jungles, deserts and mountains of Central America, having been kidnapped by gangs and forced into professional servitude in aid of the cartels’ drugs trade. There had only ever been one thought that had kept him going. Just the one precious thought of the one precious being, whose photo was concealed behind the back of his watch. He meditated on that photo now as the sub was lowered onto a trailer and towed into a road of sorts that had been hacked into the thicket.

  A rifle in his back compelled him to stand.

  ‘Move it,’ Jorge said, kicking him in the ankles with heavy, dusty boots.

  The musky smell of Jorge’s sweat was overpowering. He was a stocky barrel of a man with bulging upper arms covered in the obligatory tattoos and cropped black hair that was thick and perfectly straight like carpet. Quintessentially gang material. They all dressed the same in low-slung jeans and vests. They all acted the same, like cloned Rottweilers on steroids. The thought of being trapped below the sea for three days in a vessel that was effectively a floating sarcophagus with this stinking, hostile brute was unbearable. He said nothing, however.