‘Not you,’ Van den Bergen said, treating them to a judgemental glare.
Would Karelse work for Van den Bergen as an informant, doing a little below-the-radar snooping into whatever shenanigans were going on in Chembedrijf? He knew the spineless little prick wouldn’t piss on the man who had stolen his girl if he was on fire. But George … George, he would almost certainly still move heaven and earth for. ‘For old times’ sake’ would be a cynical card to play, but he was prepared to play it – and he knew George would be too – if it meant the hedonistic, drug-taking little idiots on Amsterdam’s club scene stopped being poisoned with this Mexican shit.
As Gonzales rattled on to his men in indecipherable Spanish, Van den Bergen Googled Ad. The prick’s Facebook account had maximum privacy settings. All that was visible was a generic man’s silhouette in white and blue. Did he want to add Karelse as a friend? No he certainly did not! Casting his mind back to conversations with George about her failed long-distance romance with the turd, he remembered Karelse had previously been in a serious relationship with a girl called Astrid. Just a hunch. Van den Bergen searched for Astrid Karelse and there she was – a pink-faced milkmaid of a woman with a completely open profile. He clicked on her ‘about’ section. Allowed himself a satisfied smile. Astrid Karelse was, of course, married to Ad Karelse. The well-scrubbed, loved-up Mr and Mrs Karelse were parents to blond-haired toddlers of about four and two years old. Well, well, well. How likely then did that make it that Karelse might help George if asked? Would he be missing his little walk on the wild side? Van den Bergen studied Astrid’s neat blonde hair, cut into an unsightly short style that was every new mother’s dream of easy-to-maintain and every man’s sexual anti-fantasy. Yes, Ad would be missing George McKenzie all right. Probably. Then, there was a company profile, showing that Karelse was, in fact, an IT project manager, which might be perfect for gaining access to computerised records of the firm’s business transactions. He noted with a derisory snort that Mr Pretty Boy’s previously lustrous dark hair was starting to recede in earnest. Ran his hand through his own luxuriant white thatch, just to check it was still present and correct. Instantly felt like a vain arsehole when he noticed the absence of a finger on Karelse’s hand and remembered how the boy had come to lose it.
‘Chief Inspector Van den Bergen!’ Gonzales shouted across the packed office.
Clearly his host had been calling his name for some time. ‘Sorry. I was following up …’
Gonzales folded his arms and raised an eyebrow, expectantly. ‘What do you think of that, then?’
‘Oh.’ He was meant to say something in response to some remark that everybody but him had clearly heard. How long had Gonzales been talking to him exactly, while he had been mentally bitching about some poor fingerless kid in Groningen? ‘Yes.’ Gonzales was grinning, so there was obviously something to be happy about. ‘Absolutely … the thing.’ He nodded, trying to arrange his features into something resembling earnestness.
‘Good,’ Gonzales said, beaming at his captive audience. ‘So, now we know we’ve got a match between the traces of meth we found in the jungle lab last night and the chemical composition of the meth that killed the victims in Amsterdam and NYC. We know we’re looking for the right guys. The plan is, we stake out the lab – and it’s not going to be easy to keep an eye on this camp without them spotting us. But I’m stationing a team of men nearby who can pile in as backup if things turn nasty.’
Baldini made a fist and thumped the palm of his left hand. ‘I say we take them out right now! Get them in for questioning and hammer the information out of those sons of bitches before they’ve even finished their churros and coffee.’
Sitting only a metre or so away from Baldini, Van den Bergen could almost smell the testosterone coming out of the American’s pores. His enthusiasm was exhausting to watch.
‘We can’t afford to let them slip through our fingers,’ Baldini continued, abruptly rising from his chair as if to prove his point further. Shifting from foot to foot. ‘That camp was fresh and they were planning on coming back. If they get wind they’re being watched, it’ll be adios amigos!’
Van den Bergen shook his head. Cleared his throat so that he had everybody’s attention. ‘No, come on, Baldini!’ he said, tempted to stand but realising only a dick would use his height to his advantage in an argument such as this. ‘I’ve worked big drugs cases before. We all have, right? If you let the bottom-feeders know you’re onto them now, the big fish will swim away. These sorts never buckle easily. They’ve got too much to lose. Their lives are worth nothing. Their families’ lives are worth even less.’
He locked eyes with Gonzales and saw appreciation there. Nikolay or whatever moniker he might use in Mexico was the prize. They both knew it.
‘Maybe we wait,’ Gonzales said. ‘We stake out the camp as best we can. Track their movements. See what we can find out. If there’s no sign of a boss after forty-eight hours, we pull them all in.’
‘My flight leaves tonight,’ Van den Bergen said.
Gonzales shrugged. ‘Compromise, then, I guess. We’ll watch their movements today and raid the place at sundown. Maybe you’ll go home a hero.’ He smiled.
‘Or maybe you’ll go home in a wooden casket,’ Baldini said.
CHAPTER 35
Mexico, Palenque town in Chiapas, 28 May
‘Okay, girls,’ Maritza said. ‘We’re here.’
George jolted awake, horrified by the realisation that she had nodded off. The other transportistas were all yawning and stretching. Some had been sprawled on top of the crates that contained the guns and were now just sitting up. Heart thudding uncontrollably, George looked between her feet and was relieved to see her bag still there – still zipped with its contents apparently still undiscovered.
Scratching at her matted black hair, Maritza dialled a number on her mobile phone. Spoke in rapid-fire Spanish to somebody, nodding. Gouging at her scar with a filthy fingernail.
‘Jesus. I’ve got to pee,’ Paola said, swigging from an almost empty water bottle.
‘That can wait!’ Maritza said, ending her call and shoving her phone into one of the pockets of her cargo trousers. ‘El jefe wants the guns safely stored immediately before sunrise drags the cops out of their beds.’
The shutters were up and George drank in the fresh air, almost cool while the tropical sun was a mere yellow-grey streak on the horizon. With her rucksack safely on her back, she grabbed one handle on a crate of AK-47s as Paola grabbed the other. They clambered gingerly out of the truck. It was the first real glimpse George had had of Mexico apart from the view of the flat green blanket that was the Yucatan jungle from the air on the flight over. That felt like a lifetime ago. Now, in the half-light of dawn, she saw that they had parked on what might normally be a busy street of shops and bars, some built in a faux-colonial style and painted in pale colours. Bunting hung outside one or two places, suggesting a hearty Mexican welcome for whatever tourists might throng the place during wakeful hours. But that early in the morning, the town seemed deserted like an abandoned film set, given authenticity by the tangle of overhead electrical cables that snaked their way towards the green mounds of the mountains in the distance. Under normal circumstances, George would have loved to have visited this place and the nearby ruins she had heard tell of as a tourist. But for now, she was anything but.
‘This weighs a tonne,’ she said to Paola, lugging the crate through double wooden doors into a courtyard.
‘If I don’t get to a toilet, I’m going to piss my pants,’ Paola said.
They followed their colleagues to a store, the entrance to which was concealed behind a heavy, leafy curtain of cornflower-blue morning glories, which were just opening as the sunlight intensified. A stocky, grubby-looking man held back the climber with one hand to let them through; held a cigarette in the other.
‘Hurry up,’ he said. ‘Get this lot stacked and locked inside fifteen or the boss won’t pay your ugly asses. Half in my sto
reroom. Half to stay on the truck for the hacienda. Those are the orders.’
As she passed him, George could smell a rancid tang of body odour and stale booze and cigarettes on the man. His attention was focused steadfastly on her breasts. He breathed out a plume of smoke contemplatively towards her bosom. If it were possible to see in somebody’s eyes a disregard for women as anything other than an easy fuck, she could see it in this man’s. Reflexively, she sucked her teeth at him. Remembered she wasn’t in Southeast London. Would this guy even realise that she had slighted him? Would he care? No. Bollocks to him, anyway. She waved her pinkie at him. He was oblivious to that, too.
Together, she and Paola heaved the crate onto a pile.
‘El jefe wants you to gather in the bar,’ the man said, gesturing at the glazed doors on the opposite side of the courtyard with his cigarette. ‘You’ll get paid half what you’re owed in there. Half when you get to the hacienda. And when you get there, he’s got another job for you.’
Maritza led the way and her transportistas followed in an orderly line. George contemplated the prospect of meeting Nikolay – an international trafficker that she was supposed to be on good terms with. Jesus. I’m going to die. He’ll take one look at me, realise I’m full of shit and that will be the end of that. I’ll be plugged with bullets like those Guatemalan cops and dumped in the hills. Christ, Letitia. If you’re dead and watching over me, now’s your chance to make up for being a shitty mother.
With the rising sun brighter by the minute and her body more charged with adrenalin by the second, George could feel the temperature rising to furnace-like levels. She trooped inside, scanning the surprisingly well-furnished bar for a man who resembled a drug lord. The place seemed empty. The ceiling-to-floor poles in the middle of a dancefloor told George everything she needed to know.
‘Well. Where is he?’ Maritza asked the grubby man, grabbing him brusquely by his shirt collar and hoisting him with apparent ease off the ground. ‘I was told he’d be here to pay me in person. I deal with el jefe. Right? Where is he?’
‘El cocodrilo?’
‘Yes, fucking el cocodrilo. Or Nikolay. Whatever you want to call him.’
‘He was here yesterday, inspecting the new Russian girls that have just come in. But he’s had to go on ahead to deal with some other business. He’ll meet you at the hacienda. He wants you to go to the landing strip in the mountains.’
Maritza’s glare burned with naked aggression. The musculature of her tattooed arms was a match for any man. ‘Where’s our money? I show up with the guns, as arranged and I get you? You sack of shit!’ She threw the man onto the floor, sending a bar stool flying. ‘I don’t do business with some underling who hasn’t seen a bar of soap in years.’
Sudden movement and a sharp inhalation of breath in the corner caught George’s attention. She squinted through the murk and spotted two Caucasian women, seated in a red leather booth. One blonde. One brunette. Though it was no later than 5.30 a.m., they were already scantily clad in sparkling bikini tops and hot pants. Their platform shoes were visible beneath the table.
‘Give us our money!’ Maritza yelled at the man, who was back on his feet now, clutching at his head.
‘Okay, okay, you crazy bitch,’ the man said. ‘I was going to pay you anyway. El cocodrilo said you should hang out here today, get something to eat and drink and get some rest. Meet him at the airstrip tomorrow for your next job.’
As he reached into a cash tin behind the bar, Maritza pulled a pistol from her waistband. Deftly clicked the safety off. ‘That had better be money you’re pulling out there, pal, or it will be the last thing you ever do.’
The man treated the transportista to a withering glance. ‘Jesus. You’re not cool, do you know that? Not cool at all.’ He withdrew a tight, fat roll of cash and flung it to her.
She grabbed it cleanly from the air. Turned to the other women. ‘Use the restroom. Freshen up. Help yourselves to whatever you want from the bar, girls.’ Turned back to the grubby barkeeper. ‘Bring us some food. We want breakfast. Big. Hot. Fresh. Got it?’
While her fellow transportistas barked their orders at the man, George grabbed a Coke and approached the booth where the two women were seated. Close up, she could see that they were no more than eighteen or nineteen, though their heavy make-up suggested they were older.
‘Hello,’ she said in English, wedging her bottom onto the booth’s table. ‘Where are you girls from?’
The blonde raised an eyebrow and glanced at the brunette, as though she was seeking guidance.
‘You speak English?’ the brunette asked. She spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent. Pointed to George’s tattoos with a barely concealed grimace. ‘But you look like them.’
‘I am one of them,’ George said. ‘But I’m half English and used to work for Nikolay in Europe. What are you doing in a Palenque brothel at the crack of dawn, dressed like you’re ready to party?’
The blonde girl spoke quickly to her compatriot in a tongue George was certain was either Russian or Polish. Her bloodshot eyes implied either sleeplessness or tearfulness or both. She was shaking her head, shooting George with a mistrustful glance.
The brunette lit a cigarette, dragged deeply on it, exhaling the smoke over George. She grabbed George’s Coke bottle from her, taking a hearty gulp. ‘My friend Rozalina here doesn’t think we should speak to you.’
‘I’m just being friendly,’ George said, holding the palms of her hands high. ‘You both seem a long way from home. Like me. What’s your story?’
Chattering away in the unfamiliar tongue, the blonde mentioned the name Nikolay and followed it seemingly with a stream of abuse, judging by her tone. She pulled the cup of her bikini to the side to reveal a florid bite-mark on her surgically enhanced breast.
The brunette sighed. ‘We are from Russia. I am Yana.’ Flicked her ash mournfully into the ashtray. ‘And we are sitting here because our last customers of the night went only a half-hour ago.’
‘You’re working girls?’ George asked, staring at the cigarette and wondering if it would be morally wrong to cadge a smoke when she was supposed to be giving up.
‘No!’ Yana said, dolefully staring at the poles in the middle of the dancefloor. ‘We met Nikolay’s man in Moscow. He told us Nikolay lived in Amsterdam but had enterprises everywhere. We paid him thousands to come to the US in search of a new life. It started out well enough. We ended up on a cargo ship for a month, travelling to the Dominican Republic. At least we had crossed the Atlantic.’ She scratched at her crotch area. Sighed again. ‘But when we got to Mexico, thinking we would just travel north over the border into the US and get jobs as hairdressers, Nikolay’s men took our passports.’ She turned to Rozalina and spoke in Russian. There was a brief exchange between the girls. Rozalina started to tremble, then weep silently. Her narrow shoulders heaved with grief.
‘They made us start to work in brothels as dancers and hookers. When we said no, they beat us.’ She pointed to the ghost of a black eye beneath the heavy foundation and eye make-up. ‘They charge the men five hundred dollars a time with all of us Eastern European girls.’
‘All of us?’
The girl inclined her head towards the ceiling. ‘There are about ten more girls upstairs, sleeping it off. Every day, we start at about 11 a.m. The men come from all over. Tourists. Officials. Men who can afford to pay large sums like that in cash. I listen to the conversations if they speak in English because I studied English back home, thinking I would need it when I got to the US! What a joke.’
‘What sort of things do they talk about?’ George asked, pushing her Coke bottle towards the girl in a show of solidarity.
‘Drugs, mostly. They think we don’t understand. But I understand fine. Nikolay himself has occasionally come in here to do business with big shot American drug dealers from New York and Chicago. Places like that. He has a lab in the jungle that makes meth, apparently. But if you’re in one of the groups of transportistas that he
likes to employ, you must know about that.’
‘Sure.’ George nodded disingenuously. Committed every word to memory, wondering how she could relay this information to Van den Bergen without alerting potentially corrupt local cops to her whereabouts. ‘Do you know where the meth lab is?’ she asked breezily.
Rozalina shook her head. Lit another cigarette. She smelled of smoke and too much cloying perfume with the underlying but pungent scent of sex evident as she crossed and uncrossed her legs. ‘Of course not. We’re stuck here in Palenque. We have been for months, now. Our money’s gone. Our passports have gone. Our hope of a fresh starts in the States is just a dream. And we have nothing to do with drugs, though I know they sell them behind the bar if you know who to ask and how to ask. The guys smoke weed and meth in the rooms when they’re with us girls. It makes them aggressive. It’s horrible.’
Again, Yana snapped at her and slapped her own mouth, as if admonishing her friend for speaking out. Rozalina patted the girl’s leg reassuringly.
‘Anyway, when the drug dealers from the US come, they have a good time with us girls at Nikolay’s expense,’ she said. ‘We are like hospitality. If he says we must go with a man, we go. And the time one of the girls refused, she got thrown to Nikolay’s pet crocodiles, apparently.’
‘That’s why they also call him el cocodrilo,’ George offered, joining the dots.
‘Yes.’
She shuddered visibly, as did Rozalina, who mouthed the words ‘el cocodrilo’ in near silence.
‘Have you thought about going to the police?’ George asked.
The Russian girl shook her head. Tugged fretfully at her long dark locks. ‘There are police who come in here as customers. You don’t know the straight guys from the crooked.’ She frowned. Her mouth seemed to harden. She folded her long, bruised arms. ‘You’re one of them,’ she said. ‘How come you’re asking me if we’re been to the authorities? Are you trying to catch me out? Are you one of Nikolay’s spies?’
The Girl Who Had No Fear Page 23
