Several rhythmic thumps from the cab on the other side of the partition shook her out of her complacent torpor.
‘Kill the lights!’ Maritza said.
All but one nightlight was extinguished instantly, plunging them into near-darkness. Everybody sat bolt upright, waiting for Maritza’s pronouncement; prepared for some kind of confrontation, judging by the way they checked the ammo clips on their rifles.
Maritza held her index finger to her lips. ‘Guatemalan Polícia Nacional,’ she whispered.
In the absolute silence, gripped by abject fear of what might come to pass in the next few moments, George listened hard to the conversation that was taking place outside. Men’s voices.
‘What are you doing in the mountains at this time of night?’ one of the officers asked.
‘Going to visit relatives in Palenque,’ the driver said. ‘My cousin is getting married.’
‘And you need a big truck like this to go to a wedding?’
‘It’s all I’ve got, Officer. I take produce to the market for a farmer. This truck is my livelihood. Me and my sister here. We’re delivery drivers.’
‘You’re not from Guatemala or Mexico. I’m not stupid. What are two girls like you from across the border really doing this far north? Take off your jackets and show me your arms.’
‘You want to see our arms? Not our papers?’
‘It’s too hot for jackets. We’re polícia. We’re not fucking imbeciles. Take them off.’
‘No.’
At that moment, George’s only thought was that she desperately needed to tell Van den Bergen that she loved him and to give him her exact co-ordinates, so that he could eventually send a search party to retrieve her body. She wanted to tell Aunty Sharon that she baked the best fruitcake in the whole world and gave the very best hugs. And she wished she could thank Sally Wright for taking a chance on her. Without her, the future for Ella Williams-May would have been a dismal life behind bars or stacking supermarket shelves in perpetuity. But to convey those final messages, she would have to fish her phone out of her bag and switch it on. There was no time. It was too risky. Her breath came short. She felt like she might vomit at any moment. But all the while, she tried to visualise her missing father. The man with strong arms who smelled of tobacco and aftershave. I’ve got to see this through. Got to get to you. Grow a pair of balls, George, you fucking wimp.
‘Get out of the truck and open the back,’ the officer said. His breezy, friendly tone had gone now. All business. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’
‘Suit yourself, Officer.’
Footsteps, as the driver, her passenger and the two officers marched around to the shutters of the truck. Fiddling with the lock.
‘Get on with it,’ one of the officers said.
‘Well I would if you’d shine the torch on the lock instead of in my face.’
‘I don’t like your attitude. One more word out of you, and I’m throwing you and your friend here in a cell for the night.’
The women inside the cargo area were all poised like jaguars, ready to pounce on their prey. It was clear that Paola’s idea of a charm offensive did not involve the fluttering of eyelashes or honeyed words of flattery.
Maritza held her arm out, signalling they should wait for her sign. George clutched at her rifle. Copying Paola’s stance and carefully observing how she held her weapon. Oh my days, she thought. I held Danny’s gun every now and then, dicking around for laughs, but I never fired one in my life. And now, I’m supposed to shoot some innocent coppers or be arrested or shot myself? Jesus. What the hell am I doing? I must be mental. I’m going to shoot myself in the fucking face by accident and it will be the least I deserve.
Rattling at the lock, the shutters flicked quickly upwards, allowing the starry moonlit night and the riot of chirruping cicadas to flood into the metal box. The police officers were standing before them, night-blind and unwitting, shining their torches into the truck.
Maritza dropped her arm. The cops’ eyes widened with surprise at the sight of the transportistas, illuminated by the blisteringly bright flashes of the bullets as they fired their weapons. But the men’s visible surprise was as fleeting as a solitary breath. Their black uniforms were punctured with a deadly spray of bullets, sending them flying through the air backwards, crashing to the ground in a cloud of their own blood.
George had aimed her rifle towards the scrub and had pulled the trigger, girding herself to sit tight and not fall over from the recoil. Beset by a horrifying mix of euphoria at having used such a powerful weapon, adrenalin at the potential for her own death and disgust at the broken bodies of the policemen, she swallowed down a lump of rising bile. Willing her hands to stop shaking. Had the driver and her passenger noticed that her bullets had deliberately gone astray? Surely not in the dark.
‘Good girls,’ Maritza said, as though she were a teacher, pleased that her pupils had completed a maths test satisfactorily. She glanced at her watch as the nightlights were all reignited, attracting opportunistic fluttering moths from outside into their hiding place. ‘Let’s get this show back on the road, or we’ll be late for Nikolay.’
The truck’s engine shuddered back to life. The shutters were closed. And all George was left with was a lingering memory of the surprise on the policemen’s faces as they had been pumped full of lead, together with the stomach-churning thought that she was heading straight for the lion’s den.
CHAPTER 33
Amsterdam, Red-Light District, 30 May
‘Come on,’ the long-haired man with the bandana said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Pay up.’
He held a trembling hand out to Elvis. A potato peeler in the other. His amber-stained fingers were just the hors d’oeuvres for a main course of filth. His informant had clearly been sleeping rough, of late. A blackened, flaking thumbnail was just visible, suggesting that his kidneys were failing. He had almost certainly been hitting the bottle.
‘What’s wrong, Sepp? You look like a man who’s feeling the heat.’
Sepp pulled his mirror shades off to reveal blurry, bloodshot eyes that were almost hidden behind red swollen flesh, as though some child had been tasked with creating a man from Plasticine and crayons. ‘Look, Dirk. I told you what you needed to know. The Rotterdam Silencer is running this place again, now that The Duke is under lock and key.’
‘You told me something I already knew, but I still gave you some cash, as a gesture of goodwill. Why should I pay you again if you’ve got nothing?’
‘The information I gave you has landed me in a pile of steaming shit and I need to get out of town. Okay?’ As if to corroborate what he was saying, he glanced over his shoulder again. Put the glasses back on with an enigmatic air, his hands shaking like a man who needed money for supermarket-brand vodka far more than a train ticket out of town. ‘Seriously. These guys don’t fuck around.’
Elvis shrugged. ‘I don’t have any more than the fifty euros I already gave you. Sorry. I can’t give you money from my own pocket because I haven’t got any.’ Eyeing his surrounds, Elvis suddenly realised that meeting his informant down a seedy, grimy back alley where there were no overlooking windows was not the smartest idea he had ever had. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘It’s Saturday. I’ve got personal stuff. I’ve got to be somewhere.’
Sepp grabbed his arm with a dirt-ingrained claw. His grip was surprisingly strong. ‘I’ve seen you with your fag boyfriend,’ he said. ‘I’ve been watching you.’
Elvis felt the blood drain from his face. The prickle of panic in his lips. ‘What do you mean, my fag boyfriend? That’s not a very nice thing to say. And what the hell do you know about me? Maybe I was working a case. Now, get your hand off me, because you’re assaulting a police officer and I can arrest you for that.’ He tried to shake the informant off. Started to reach inside his jacket for his service weapon, grappling with anxiety that this might turn nasty and indignation that this washed up old ex-con had been stalking him.
; Too late.
‘Get your hands in the air, pig!’ Aman’s voice. Shouting. Standing directly behind him. Elvis felt something cold and sharp dig into his back. ‘Or I’ll cut your spinal cord.’
The slack-faced terror on Sepp’s face told him half of what he needed to know. The reflection of the three man-mountains, standing directly behind Elvis, in his mirror shades told him the rest.
Sepp turned and started to sprint down the alley, leaving Elvis with his hands uselessly in the air, wondering how the hell he could fend off an assailant he couldn’t even see.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ his attacker said, as the other two men pelted past him, scrambling to turn left at the end of the alley in pursuit of the surprisingly agile old ex-con.
‘Who are you?’ Elvis asked, wondering what the nursing staff would think if he didn’t show for his evening visit. ‘I’m a police officer, you know. If you harm me, it’s an arrestable offence.’
‘Oh, I fucking know that,’ the man said.
There was a scuffling sound as the man shifted position behind him. Without warning, the blade in his back was gone, replaced by a garrotte around his neck.
Elvis gasped for breath, feeling the wire eat into his flesh. He tried to speak but could only struggle, his feet jerking to and fro uselessly as the giant behind him lifted him from the ground. The dank walls of the alleyway seemed to be encroaching, folding inwards in an effort to smother him. He closed his eyes, thinking of nothing but survival and the irony that his mother may yet outlast him. Lights flashing behind his eyelids. Dimly aware of Sepp being dragged under the arms back down the alley by one of the men, his head hanging low; greasy hair sweeping the floor. Clearly out cold.
CHAPTER 34
Mexico, Hotel Bahia Maya, Cancun, 1 June
When he woke at 5 a.m., his head thumped as though he had spent the night drinking on an empty stomach. Van den Bergen wondered briefly if he was about to suffer a fatal embolism brought on by the stress of George being gone. Reaching out, he felt her side of the bed. Nothing but cool white sheets and a pillow that hadn’t been slept on. She was supposed to be here by his side. But though the bed was dishevelled, it was merely as a result of him tossing and turning, spending hour after sleepless hour worrying about the woman he loved being lost in the murder capital of the world. The thought that he might never see her again caused tears to well.
‘Get a grip of yourself, you old fool,’ he said, blinking the tears away. But merely willing the sorrow away was ineffectual against the wracking sobs that assailed him with determination, taking his hard-won stoic poise prisoner and supplanting it with crippling pangs of grief and a distillation of pure fear. For twenty minutes, he hugged the pillow George was meant to be sleeping on and stifled his noise with it, lest the Canadian tourists in the neighbouring room overhear him.
As he hiccupped and the sobbing started to abate, leaving only exhaustion in its wake, the image that lingered in his mind’s eye was not one of George slipping through the crowds of Cancun airport but of the shack in the cartel’s jungle compound where prisoners were being kept. Might George have been kidnapped by now and cuffed to the wall in some stinking hovel to be used for sex?
‘Enough!’ he said.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, staring blankly at the brightly coloured décor. Tiled floor. Bright yellow walls, orange and blue curtains. If his headache didn’t kill him, the clashing colours might. Filling his glass on the nightstand with water from the minibar, he pressed several tablets out of their blister packs, swallowed them one by one and then picked up his phone. He switched it on to no avail.
‘Shit. No juice in your bloody phone, Van den Bergen. You irresponsible old fart.’
He removed the plug-in mosquito repellent and plugged in his charger.
The phone sprang to life, buzzing with a sudden influx of new messages. The first was a text from Marie.
I’m really worried about Elvis.
Nothing more. They had had an email exchange about InterChem GmbH and Chembedrijf before he had gone to sleep. She had mentioned Elvis then, too. And now, this …
The second text was from Tamara.
Hope you’re safe and well in Mexico. Eva started to walk today! Love you and miss you. Xxx
A video clip had been attached, showing his granddaughter in her sleepsuit taking wobbly steps with bowed unpractised legs, arms outstretched, from his son-in-law, Numb Nuts, to Tamara, who had clearly been holding the camera. Van den Bergen watched the delight and triumph in the little girl’s dribbly face. He felt bittersweet longing curdle with his early-morning tablets.
Next, he opened a text from Maarten Minks, demanding an update. Van den Bergen considered telling his boss about the sophisticated meth lab they had discovered in the jungle but decided to hold the information back until Gonzales’ technicians had analysed the samples of crystal meth found there.
Finally, an email he had not been anticipating but had long hoped for.
Hello you. It’s me. Don’t worry. I’m safe. Can only check phone intermittently. Have been travelling north to Palenque with some women, so won’t be far from you soon. It’s possible Dad was kidnapped and brought to Chiapas in Mexico to work for a cartel. Nikolay Bebchuck is apparently there! Will text more when I can. If I die, know that I loved you with all of my heart and soul, old man. You are The One. I knew it from the moment we met. George. xxx PS: I’ll try not to die.
Van den Bergen read and reread the message, noticing that it had been sent three days earlier but had only just reached him. Clasping the phone over his battered, scarred sternum beneath which his heart now beat strong and steadily, he looked up at the rotating fan, thanking whatever god might be watching over his lover for her at least having made it thus far on her father’s trail in one piece.
Shaking his head, he allowed himself a smile, though tears started to fall anew. Started to thumb out a reply.
If you die, I refuse to speak to you ever again. This message has taken days to get here. Do not face Nikolay alone! Send me your position so I can get you out of there safely and get him arrested. Your father wouldn’t want you to risk your life like this. You’re an idiot but you’re my idiot. Love always. Paul. X
Ten minutes later, the cop in Van den Bergen had started to win out over the lover.
If you get close to Nikolay, see if you can get something with his prints on or an object we can profile for DNA. And still don’t die. Px
They had less than twelve hours before their flight home departed, whether they were on it or not. He was alive. George was probably, possibly, hopefully alive. Their quarry was potentially just within reach. He had to devise some way of tightening the net around this bastard without jeopardising the case, involving possibly corrupt Mexican officials and getting them all killed.
After an exceedingly early breakfast, where he had deliberately asked to be seated on the opposite side of the dining room to the overly energetic and garrulous Baldini, Van den Bergen was ferried to the sticky office in the Cancun police station for a debriefing. There was a lightness to his step now that he had finally heard from George, but he kept his buoyant mood to himself.
Mexican police officers queued in the overstuffed room to pour themselves coffee from the percolator machine at the back. Large floor-mounted fans uselessly blew warm air around. Still no sign of the air-con engineer. Grappling with handouts, the men gathered around Gonzales, who had wedged his fleshy bottom on the corner of a desk like a small king presiding over his fiefdom. Van den Bergen was the last in line for the coffee pot. He grimaced at the strong brew that sat treacle-like in the bottom of the jug, remembering coffee was supposed to be acidic and therefore bad for his reflux. Turned around to find Gonzales waiting for him to pay attention like a disapproving teacher. Not quite so friendly and amiable after all.
The debrief was delivered first in Spanish.
Yawning, Van den Bergen squatted against the wall at the back and reread the email that had r
eached him in the small hours from the workaholic, Marie – only two hours after the discovery of the clandestine cartel jungle complex and before he had hit the sack.
Hello boss.
InterChem GmbH seems to be a shell holding-company with Nikolay Bebchuck listed as the director! There are no company accounts on file but there’s an address registered to Stuttgart. When I looked it up on Google maps, it’s just a barber’s shop. I’ve done some digging into Chembedrijf. They’re a huge multinational with the head office in Groningen’s Energy Valley. There is a smaller office in Amsterdam. Company accounts show that they have a turnover of over €1 billion per year, with a fat corporate finger in all sorts of pies, from pharmaceutical research and development to drugs manufacture to cornering the market in household name toiletries and cleaning products. They trade frequently with China, buying chemicals cheaply, sometimes selling them on to dodgy regimes, from what I can tell. I had a scan through the list of employees. Only one name flagged up as being of interest among the thousands on the payroll: Adrianus Karelse. He’s working as a junior project manager.
Elvis is missing.
Regards
Marie
Van den Bergen chewed over the two pieces of news that glowed from his phone’s screen. Elvis was ‘missing’. This was clearly really bothering Marie. Could he not simply be at the hospital because his mother had taken a turn for the worse and he hadn’t managed to call in? Yes. That seemed most likely. But Adrianus Karelse. Ad. George’s first serious boyfriend and Van den Bergen’s love rival for some three long years or more.
‘Jesus,’ he said aloud, sighing.
Two of the Mexican uniforms turned to look at him, perplexed.
The Girl Who Had No Fear Page 22
