The Girl Who Had No Fear

by Marnie Riches

  The Silencer stalked past Ad. He was a tall man, though not powerfully built. But he exuded arrogance, and his tan served only to emphasise the white curve of a scar on his cheek, giving him a disconcerting, loutish appearance that was at odds with his immaculate suiting. Even if Ad hadn’t heard tell of the Rotterdam Silencer’s legendary criminal exploits from George and Van den Bergen, he would have intuited that this was not a man to get on the wrong side of.

  ‘Sit the fuck down, Borrink,’ he said. ‘I’m not shaking your hand.’

  The maître d’ backed away rapidly, the smile sliding quickly from his face. ‘I’ll leave you to it, gentlemen …’

  But his politesse went unnoticed. The Silencer threw himself into his seat and barked, ‘Bring me a good single malt!’ at their waiter. Words that rang with hauteur and a thick Rotterdam accent. ‘Lagavulin, if you’ve got it. No ice.’

  Furtively, Ad watched from behind his menu as his own waiter set an ice bucket next to him. Produced a frosty-looking bottle of white wine, removing the cork with some ceremony.

  ‘Would sir like to taste?’ the waiter asked.

  Ad waved dismissively. ‘Just pour,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’s fine.’ Somewhere at the back of his mind, the thought that he had only ordered a small glass of Chardonnay registered with him. Now was not the time to quibble, however. And he was ready for a drink.

  Taking a large gulp that might cost him an hour’s pay after tax, he pointed absently to a dish on the menu that didn’t cost upwards of €30.

  ‘Would sir like some potatoes with that?’

  ‘What? Yes. Yes. Bring me whatever you think.’ Ad strained to hear the conversation at the next table and was pleased when his waiter finally left him in peace. He clicked the sound recording app on his phone to ‘on’.

  ‘So, my secretary said you sounded agitated on the phone,’ Borrink said, studying his menu. Not making eye contact with his lunch companion. If he was intimidated by the Silencer, he certainly didn’t show it.

  ‘And why the fuck do you think that is?’ The Silencer was glaring straight at Borrink, drumming his fingers impatiently on the table.

  Finally, Borrink set the menu down. Took his glasses off and placed them in their case. Steepled his fingers together, clearly wanting to make the other man wait. ‘Mr Bebchuck, you are one of several thousand clients that Chembedrijf deals with on a regular basis. We are one of the biggest companies in Europe. I’m sorry that you seem so upset, but there is really no reason why I—’

  ‘You sold me a dud batch,’ the Silencer said, spitting with indignation as he spoke.

  Their conversation paused while the waiter set a whisky down before him. Ad was momentarily distracted by yet another warm bun being set on his side plate with silver tongs. Then, when the attentive waiters departed, round two began in earnest.

  Borrink surveyed the other diners in the restaurant, leaned in and dropped his voice. ‘We acted as an intermediary for you,’ he said. ‘If your product was faulty, that’s down to the Chinese. Not us.’

  Smacking his lips as he swigged at the whisky, the Silencer leaned back in his chair, as if chewing over Borrink’s words which had been neither an apology nor an admission of culpability. Clearly a response he had not been gunning for. ‘I pay you through the nose,’ he said so quietly, that Ad was certain his voice would not be picked up on the sound recording. ‘I pay you to get me precursor chemicals from those Chinese cunts, shipped to Mexico and Prague, using my shell company as the intermediary. I use you, because you’re a giant sprawling blue chip that deals in petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. When you order precursor chemicals, nobody gives a shit. It’s your stock in trade. Your job is to get them for me in giant quantities and at a knockdown rate and to ask no nosey questions.’

  ‘And we have never failed you, Mr Bebchuck.’ Borrink’s smile was a mere show of expensively whitened teeth. ‘I value your custom as one of Chembedrijf’s … special clients.’

  ‘Then why are the barrels you got for me last time giving my clients fatal lead poisoning?’ The Silencer’s scar seemed to glow as he flushed with obvious anger.

  Ad’s eavesdropping was interrupted by his waiter setting down a large plate containing a small sliver of some sort of meat, stacked high with a lattice of who the hell knew what and drizzled in a pretty pattern with several different colours of sauce. He didn’t know whether to weep that it wasn’t a nice sandwich or applaud it for its artistic merits. The plate was followed by an inadequate-looking side order of potatoes. At least, he presumed they were potatoes.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, looking wistfully at his buttered bun.

  The captain of industry and the international trafficker at the next table were also served their food during a farcical hiatus, where neither spoke except to thank their waiter.

  The Silencer shovelled an overloaded forkful of meat into his mouth and poked his knife towards Borrink. ‘Get me another supplier,’ he said, chewing noisily as he spoke. ‘You want to do business with the likes of me so you can bolster your pension fund? You make sure I’m not fobbed off with substandard goods! I’m a businessman, no different from you. Right? I need to put out premium product, or I’m going to end up with a ruined reputation.’

  Borrink threw down his napkin. Stood abruptly, almost knocking his chair over. ‘I don’t have to put up with this from you,’ he said. ‘You don’t get to speak to me like this. I’m not some two-bit hoodlum.’

  The other diners had started to turn around to see where the commotion was coming from.

  ‘Sit the fuck down and stop shooting your mouth off, Borrink, or I’ll silence you myself,’ the Silencer said, clenching his fist so tightly that his tanned knuckles were white. ‘You really want to mess with me? You want to try me and see if I’m bluffing? You think I won’t get one of my guys to go and pay Mrs Borrink a friendly visit or turn up in the middle of the night to give you a free haircut with an open razor?’ His voice remained low and deadly. His blue eyes were ice-cold; the set of his jaw, unyielding.

  Gripping the edge of the table, Borrink took his seat again. His mounting colour had blanched suddenly.

  ‘Now, now, Nikolay. There’s no need to be like that. I resent—’

  ‘Watch what you say!’

  Borrink pursed his lips and examined his nails. Clearly considering his response carefully, lest he provoke the Silencer further. Though Ad realised this man was wittingly colluding with a gangster, causing the deaths of innocent kids by importing chemicals that were only ever intended to be used in the manufacture of crystal meth, part of him felt sorry for the big boss. Even he, the head honcho of Chembedrijf, was susceptible to bullying in the workplace. No different from when Ad had his stapler stolen and hidden by the wankers on his team who thought it was so very bloody funny to goad the stuck-up university boy. Henpecked as hell by his wife. Cockpecked to within an inch of his life by his colleagues.

  ‘I’ll have words with our Chinese supplier, Nikolay,’ he said, finally meeting the Silencer’s questioning gaze. ‘I’ll get you some compensation and source a new supplier for you. But don’t ever threaten me or my wife again.’ Not such a grey character after all. ‘Do you understand? Because you won’t find many legitimate businessmen who will deal with you as loyally and discreetly as I always have. And I don’t deserve it. This is not my fault. It’s just one of those things.’

  The Silencer set down his cutlery and stood. ‘I’m going. I want solutions, not bullshit.’ He started to peel notes off from the wad in his wallet. ‘This isn’t a pissing competition or a test. This is business. Sort this out or you’re dead. Period.’

  Borrink held his hand up. His eye twitched as he spoke. ‘This is my treat. Please allow me to made amends and start by getting lunch.’

  ‘Fuck your treat.’

  Nikolay Bebchuck, a.k.a. the Rotterdam Silencer, threw a shower of €50 notes onto the table, turned his back and stalked towards the exit of Paradijs restaurant.

  Dra
ining his glass of wine. Ad forked some food into his mouth and glanced surreptitiously at his big boss.

  For a moment, Borrink sat at the table in stunned silence, his face flushed with embarrassment, perhaps, or indignation. Then, he simply rose and headed off to the restrooms.

  Clicking his sound recording app off, Ad sipped again from his refilled wine glass. Feeling all at once thoroughly tipsy and adventurous. Remembering the time he had last put himself in a precarious situation to gather intel for the police. He puffed out his chest, suddenly feeling more like a spy than a father of two.

  What should I do? I’ve got the voices but he didn’t say much about drugs. Come on, Ad. Don’t make this a wasted trip. How long does it take for a rich man to have a piss?

  Eyeing the other diners, Ad calculated that he had no more than three minutes before Borrink returned. But the waiters were glancing in his general direction. Would they come over and retrieve the money?

  ‘The money,’ he said under his breath. ‘That’s it.’

  He needed something with fingerprints on for the forensic pathologist. What was she called again? Yes. Marianne de Koninck. Ad remembered vomiting in her office wastepaper basket all those years ago when he had been faced with the photos of a decapitated head. She could turn a €50 note with a good fingerprint or the DNA left on the Silencer’s whisky glass into cold, hard evidence, proving that Nikolay Bebchuck and the Rotterdam Silencer were one and the same.

  Turn away, you bloody fussing idiots, he thought, willing the waiters to stop gawping over at him to see if he needed topping up. But fortunately the Chardonnay was working. Two-thirds of a bottle down, though he had no idea how that had happened, Ad was now a telepathic ninja or a Jedi master or something of that ilk. As if they had heard his thoughts, the waiters moved to the other side of the restaurant. Swiftly, Ad snatched up two of the euro notes and swiped the Silencer’s glass, wrapping it in a napkin and placing it in his worn, canvas man-bag. He shoved what was left of his main course into a buttered bun and wedged the impromptu sandwich into his mouth. Pulled the money from his wallet that he had reluctantly withdrawn from the cashpoint, realising Paradijs would cost rather more than a cheese boterham and a cornet of patats met knoflook. Momentarily nonplussed as he tried to work out exactly how much his meal might cost. Shit. They had brought him an entire bottle of wine instead of a small glass.

  Ad was torn. Technically, he had stolen €100 from the big boss’ table and was also probably underpaying for his meal. Feeling the sweat beading on his forehead, he balked when Borrink emerged from the restrooms, staring straight at him. Peering down into his wallet, now empty but for the money he had trousered from the Silencer, he realised his only options would be to run and hope the waiter discovered his accounting error once he was far away enough to be beyond reach, or ask for the bill and use his credit card. But then, they would have a record of Adrianus Karelse having been in the restaurant, rather than the work-worn-looking man who had booked the table in the name of George van den Broek.

  ‘You!’ Borrink was approaching. Staring unequivocally at Ad. ‘Don’t I know you?’

  Wide-eyed and fumbling like a bat trapped in a bright conservatory, Ad gathered his belongings. Decided he was drunk and feeling courageous enough just to leg it.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, I do!’ Borrink’s baffled expression started to morph into a noncommittal smile. Deciding if this was some business contact he ought to know better. Clearly struggling to place Ad with his shabby clothes and crappy old bag. The smile started to wane. ‘Where do I know you from?’

  Ad cast his mind back to a presentation he had given six months earlier to the board of directors on the implementation of some new accounting software. There had been ten grey men sitting around a grey ash table looking grey-faced and terminally bored as he had mumbled and stumbled his way through a PowerPoint presentation. Bram Borrink had been seated at the head of the table and had spent almost the entire hour thumbing through something apparently riveting on his mobile phone – perhaps a series of texts from an international drugs trafficker. Perhaps porn or spreadsheets or a shopping list from his wife. Either way, Ad had been reasonably confident that Bram Borrink would never, ever remember Ad’s face.

  Borrink glanced down at the centre of his table to the place where the Silencer’s notes had landed. Only two notes now, rather than the four that had been left behind. And now Ad was leaving in a hurry with a bulging bag containing an object the approximate size and shape of a whisky tumbler.

  ‘Ad Karelse,’ the big boss said, pointing. It was an accusatory index finger, wagging at him. It would have been no less excruciating if Borrink had been shouting through a loudhailer to the other diners that here was a scruffy interloper who had wrongfully encroached on their exclusivity and had stolen from them.

  ‘No. I’m George van den Broek,’ Ad said, trying to suppress the squeak in his voice.

  But Borrink had already snapped his fingers to alert the maître d’ …

  CHAPTER 48

  Mexico, Hospital Galenia, Cancun, 2 June

  ‘That was some stunt you pulled, old man,’ George said, squeezing Van den Bergen’s hand. She shifted her position on the hospital bed, tugging the saline drip that had been plugged into her arm with her. Glad to be lying on a relatively comfortable mattress in Cancun’s Hospital Galenia instead of sleeping rough as a transportista, wondering when a bullet or the blade of a machete would find her. ‘You’re like some kind of dyspeptic James Bond.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about stunts,’ Van den Bergen said, withdrawing his hand and folding his arms. ‘You …’ He glared at her. Clearly choosing his words carefully. ‘Are incorrigible and irresponsible.’

  Rubbing at her skin in an attempt to erase some of the fake tattoos that covered her, George shrugged. She met the cynical expression on her lover’s face with a grin. ‘Yep. And? Didn’t I save my dad? Didn’t Gonzales arrest half of Coba cartel’s foot soldiers and close down the meth camp that’s been churning out poison and killing kids?’ She poked herself in the chest. Felt the dried-in salt beneath her finger. Made a mental note to ask for a shower. ‘All thanks to me!’

  Van den Bergen ran his hands through his hair and rubbed his face, as though trying to wash away his frustrations. He shook his head and took her hand into his again. Stroking her palm. ‘You’re fearless and headstrong and stubborn as hell, Georgina McKenzie. It’s a terrible combination. I worry that one day, this gung-ho crap will get you killed.’

  ‘Stop whingeing and pour me a glass of water, will you? I’m still pissing soy sauce, even with the drip.’ Shunting herself up the bed, George started to consider what an enormous gamble she had taken in stealing the motorboat. The alternative turn of events that could have come to pass made her shudder to think of them. ‘Good job that dick who owned the boat called the cops.’

  ‘Good job his description of you was reasonably accurate,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘“A lunatic with an afro who says she’s an English cop and has a smart mouth on her. Great tits, though.”’

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ George said. ‘I can’t help being blessed with an impressive set of swears.’

  Van den Bergen’s stern expression finally softened with a broad grin and a silent chuckle. ‘Anyway, the timing was perfect. Gonzales’ men were just about to head off into the jungle to make the rendezvous time you’d suggested. The decision was made that I’d go out to sea with the helicopter to find you, you terrible woman.’

  ‘You were green!’

  ‘I felt sick as a pig. Those things are instruments of torture for people with middle-ear complaints.’ He dug a finger into his ear emphatically.

  ‘Nice jump onto the deck, though. You’re a bona fide hero, pulling me out of that sub! I’m telling you. That’s some proper 007 shit right there. You’ve still got it, old man,’ she said, sticking her foot out from beneath the sheet and scrunching the groin area of his jeans with her naked toes. ‘Ugh. You’re sweaty. Didn
’t you bring any shorts or T-shirts?’

  Van den Bergen emitted a low growl. Didn’t try to remove her foot. ‘Damn weather. It’s not healthy.’ It was hard to see if he was blushing beneath his tan but George preferred to think that he was. He blinked repeatedly. A twinkle in those melancholy eyes.

  ‘I want to see my dad,’ she said, poking at the bulge beneath the denim.

  ‘They’re keeping him in another day for observation.’ He pushed her foot away, gently. ‘But both me and Gonzales have managed to take his initial statement. He’s fine. Just needs fattening up, a course of antibiotics, some jabs and a decade of therapy.’

  ‘Right. Well I still want to see him.’ George swung her legs over the side of her bed and stood, pulling her hospital gown over her exposed bottom. She grabbed her drip stand. ‘This is like déjà vu.’

  ‘More like Groundhog Day,’ Van den Bergen said. He clutched at his stomach. ‘There’s not a diet in the world that’s alkaline enough to calm the heartburn you give me.’

  George linked him, kissing him on his upper arm, since that was as high as she could reach in flip-flop-clad feet. ‘Shove your guilt trip. Take me to my long-lost papa.’

  When she entered her father’s hospital room, she swallowed hard. Gone was the man she had carried a mental image of for decades. He had been replaced by a shadow of the once vibrant Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno. Emaciated. Hollow cheeks. Sunken eyes. Tatty greying hair that needed a good cut. But his arms. His olive-skinned arms, covered in black hair, were only thinner, more sinewy versions of the arms that had lifted her as a tiny girl, swinging her onto his shoulders.

  ‘Papa,’ she said, letting go of Van den Bergen’s hand and wheeling her drip stand to the bedside. Just saying the word aloud unlocked the maelstrom of emotions she had bottled inside her for her entire adult life: Longing for love and approval that he hadn’t been there to provide as she was growing up. Nostalgia for her childhood when he had still been a daily presence in her young life. Guilt that this reunion was some kind of a betrayal of Letitia, who had always cried wolf that she had been abandoned, when George knew she had pushed him away.