Her father smiled, pocketed the photo, slipping it deftly back inside his watch, as though he were still a prisoner at the mercy of men who had denied him any link with his former life as a free man, lest it gave him rebellious ideas. ‘Well, I’m here now. And you’re here. And I’m not letting you out of my sight until I’m sure this is all real.’
Standing in the middle of Van den Bergen’s eclectic thrift-shop jumble of a living room for some thirty seconds with her hand on her hip, George drank in the sight of her broken father. Mulling over whether to indulge him or draw the boundaries she so desperately needed to demarcate with everyone now – thanks to years and years spent apologising to and appeasing Letitia.
‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘I’m only nipping to check on a mate in the red-light district. It’s a couple of tram stops away. If you think you’re up to it. If you feel rough, just let me know and we’ll turn back. Right? Is that a deal?’ She grinned broadly and fluffed her hair out.
Her father nodded. Seemed to stand a little straighter, then.
As they pulled on raincoats by the front door, her phone rang. Lank hair, a dopey smile and Trotsky glasses appeared on her display. ‘Oh, Jan. What do you want, now? For God’s sake. I’m on my way.’ She pressed accept. ‘Hey, what’s up, you old hippy? I’m just coming over—’
‘Georgina McKenzie?’ the voice was familiar but George did not immediately place it. A heavy Rotterdam accent. The gnawing dread in the pit of her stomach told her something her brain was clearly missing. ‘Just the girl I’m looking for.’
CHAPTER 53
Amsterdam, a houseboat on Prinsengracht, at the same time
‘When I give the signal, knock,’ Maarten Minks said into his walkie-talkie, enjoying every terrifying, exquisite moment of this unanticipated foray into hands-on policing. This is how Van den Bergen must feel, he thought. I feel invincible. This beats the hell out of strategy meetings and press conferences. No wonder these hard-boiled old-school guys keep at it long after their marriages fail and their livers start to pack up.
He breathed in deeply, suddenly aware that his senses were sharper. Even the impressive brick-built Westerkerk opposite seemed statelier and somehow more solid. He imagined that he could hear the conversations between the tourists queuing round the block to gain entry to the Anne Frank museum. He could smell rain in the air.
The crackling message came back to him that the response unit was ready to go at his word, over and out.
At his word. As though he was some kind of demi-god, moving mortals around on the board in some heavenly game. And the mortal he was about to capture and punish was none other than Stijn Pietersen. The Rotterdam Silencer who had managed to beat a life sentence on appeal, thanks to some five-star legal shenanigans and perhaps even the odd greased palm higher up the food chain. The man who had merely assumed the new name of Nikolay Bebchuk and had continued to expand his criminal empire, killing Dutch kids from a safe distance with his shitty crystal meth; lurking several fathoms below the radar.
Until now.
Van den Bergen wasn’t going to get the Rotterdam Silencer this time around. He was. Maarten Minks. Excellent.
Minks felt certain that had he been wearing his heart-rate monitor, he would almost certainly be at his maximum 180 beats, now. Had he known that stakeouts would put his body through the paces as effectively as an hour on the treadmill in the gym, he might have opted to spend more time pounding the streets when he had joined the force straight out of university and less time preparing strategies and analysing policing trends for efficacy.
‘Hey, young man! What’s going on?’ an old woman asked, wheeling her bicycle along the Prinsengracht towpath.
Minks eyed her with suspicion. Could she be an accomplice? ‘Who let you beyond the cordon?’
‘There’s a cordon?’ She frowned. Her turkey neck wobbled with indignation. ‘But I live here.’
He pointed to the houseboat that was barely visible behind the display of pots and hanging baskets that dripped with petunias and geraniums. ‘You live here?’ Felt his gun surreptitiously. Just in case.
‘No, not this one,’ she said. ‘Next one along.’
Eyeing her sandalled feet and walking shorts, Minks reasoned that perhaps she wasn’t involved with an international trafficker, except by accident of geography. In her bicycle’s basket, she had a loaf of bread, a carton of caramel vla and a bunch of roses from the market. Definitely not the tools of the trafficking trade.
Turning to his men, Minks scowled. Spoke softly into the walkie-talkie. ‘I thought I told you to clear the damned area! Get her out of here!’
He focused on the chin of the disconcerted-looking woman, who was now all raised eyebrows and open mouth. Flashed his police ID. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait further back on Bloemgracht until one of my officers gives you the all clear.’
With frustration mounting inside him, threatening to neutralise the insane, heady buzz, he shooed the old woman away. Took four deep breaths. Gave the word.
‘Knock!’
There was a sudden flurry of activity as two teams of five officers swooped down from the adjacent Bloemgracht and the Westermarkt bridge respectively onto Prinsengracht itself. As one co-ordinated organism, the first team approached the entrance to the houseboat on the canal’s edge. Swung a giant battering ram against the door, once, twice. Blasting the door almost off its hinges. The other men had the place surrounded; guns trained on the canal in case Pietersen opted to jump or had some other means of escape at the ready.
Minks could hear the search play out on his walkie-talkie. He took confident strides towards the houseboat, imagining what it would be like inside. The defeated expression on Pietersen’s face when he read him his rights.
‘It’s clear, sir,’ came the update, crackling along the airwaves.
Hardly bothering to keep his voice down as he spoke into the device, Minks felt suddenly as though his bright, bright morning had been enshrouded in dankest grey, snuffing out all the light and possibility and hope that the phone call from the lovely Georgina McKenzie had offered.
‘What the hell do you mean, it’s clear?’ he shouted. Marching along the gangway and into the houseboat.
It was small inside. Just one bedroom, a living room with a kitchenette at one end and a cramped bathroom. The whole place reeked of cheap floral perfume and cigarettes. On the sofa, there was a pillow with an indentation where a head had rested. A dishevelled blanket. An empty whisky glass. But in the bedroom, there were women’s things. Two sets of clothes. An overflowing ashtray. A long, broken nail next to a solitary photo – the only personal thing in the entire houseboat.
‘Come and take a look at the windows, sir. If you ask me, they’ve been glazed with bullet-proof glass,’ one of Minks’ men said, beckoning him back into the living room. ‘And there’s a really sophisticated alarm system rigged up. In fact, the bedroom is a zone in itself.’ He thumbed deadbolts that had been recessed into the architrave of the bedroom’s threshold. ‘It looks like whoever sleeps in here gets locked in. Bloody weird.’
But Minks was hardly listening to his uniformed officer’s observations. He was too busy staring at the single framed photo on the bedside cabinet. Two women. Both Black. One younger and lighter-skinned. The other, darker-skinned, overweight and clearly older. Both looking miserable as hell in each other’s company. Picking up the frame, he ran his thumb over the image of the familiar younger woman.
‘George McKenzie.’
CHAPTER 54
Amsterdam, Van den Bergen’s apartment, then, the red-light district, at the same time
It was hard to determine to whom the terrified screams in the background belonged, but George was certain they were coming from Jan. The call was from his phone, after all. She was glad that her father couldn’t possibly have known the dreadful sound of despair that was filtering into her left ear.
‘Come to the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop and come alone,’ her caller said. ‘If I
spot any police, you’ll pay in blood.’ He hung up.
At that point, it was clear that this was no prank on Jan’s part. And it was clear whom she had just received this sinister demand from.
The Rotterdam Silencer. Stijn Pietersen had her friend.
George grabbed her father’s arm. ‘You’ve got to stay here, Papa.’
Ignoring his protests, she ran through to the kitchen area and hurriedly grabbed whatever she could fit in her anorak pockets in a kitchen where the homeowner was certainly no avid cook: a vegetable knife, cheese wire and a meat tenderiser. She grabbed an old can of wasp killer for good measure.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ her father asked, leaning limply against the architrave of the kitchen door.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, kissing him fleetingly on his stubbly cheek. ‘A friend’s in trouble. Big trouble.’ She glanced at her phone. Low battery. ‘Do me a favour. If I’m not back in two hours, call the police and ask them to go to the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop in the red-light district. Tell them it’s a matter of life and death.’
Her father’s brow wrinkled with lack of comprehension. ‘Call them now, then!’
Shaking her head, George pushed past him and hastened to the front door. ‘No. It’s too dangerous. Seriously, Dad. Don’t call them now.’ With a wave, she slammed the door behind her and headed to the tram. No swift way of getting into town.
‘Come on, for fuck’s sake,’ she said, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited. Repeatedly, she dialled Van den Bergen’s number. Straight to voicemail every time. After five attempts, she left a message. ‘If anything happens, Paul … oh, about fucking time. It’s here! I’ve got to go. Love you.’
As she entered the busy front carriage of the tram, she was so preoccupied by thoughts of Jan’s safety, she had not caught sight of the man who had surreptitiously slid into the rear carriage, just before the doors had shut.
Willing the driver to go faster, she checked her watch repeatedly. Jan needed her. Jan was at the mercy of the Rotterdam Silencer, who had a hard-on for hurting her, clearly. The strange turns of events since her mother’s disappearance all made sense now. The eyeball at Vinkeles and her mother’s phone. The threatening yet cryptic emails. Her father’s abduction. The sight of the long-haired old biker who had kept appearing in her peripheral vision. And now, Jan. Stijn Pietersen, whom she had testified against all those years ago, hated her. He was hell-bent on revenge. He had in all likelihood killed her poor, annoying mother. He had stolen the liberty of her father. Today was the day. He was finally coming for her.
She wrapped her hand around the handle of the knife in her anorak pocket and acknowledged the mounting fury that mushroomed inside her. Those elderly passengers and mothers with babies in strollers who were giving her the evils as they reacted to her still-visible faux tattoos, shrinking away from her, were within her blast zone, now.
‘What are you looking at, you nosey bastards?’ she said.
They became suddenly interested in the world outside the tram’s windows.
Finally, she alighted on Damrak, walking briskly across the chewing-gum-spattered paving of Dam Square through the hordes of tourists who prevented her from sprinting. Hurried past De Bijenkorf on her left, the white stone spire of the national monument on her right, down to the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky and left onto Warmoesstraat, where she started to run. Running, though her sullied lungs screamed that they could not keep up with her noble intentions.
‘I’m on my way, Jan. Hang tight, you daft old hippy,’ she said aloud, gasping for breath; forcing herself to break into a run once more, holding her makeshift weapons close to her body in case they came tumbling out of her pockets.
Feeling like she had been kicked in the chest with a stitch that snatched the breath away from her, George emerged from the warren of backstreets to the canal on which the Cracked Pot was situated. Here, the lights in the shop windows had turned from white to neon red and pink. Flashing displays told her that live sex shows would accept her euros in return for a smorgasbord of erotic delights – some of them, participatory. Fag Butts’ Gay Porn offered her a fisting from a rubber forearm or a half-hour in a cubicle where she could watch an extreme hard-core mini-movie and engage in whatever the hell she liked with whomever she desired in relative privacy. But George was interested in none of those things.
As she sprinted the final 100 metres towards the Cracked Pot, she imagined the red light, reflected in the canal’s flat, unfathomable waters was Jan’s blood. She took out her knife and hid it up her sleeve, praying she didn’t slash her own wrist by accident.
The glazed door to the coffee shop above which she had once lived showed the CLOSED sign. No red lights shone in the rooms above, which had once belonged to her neighbours, Inneke and Katja, but which were now normally occupied by a couple of girls from the Ukraine. The windows in her old attic room showed no signs of life within.
With a trembling hand, breathing fast and shallow enough to make her light-headed, George tried the handle. It gave. The bell tinkled. She walked into the dark shop.
‘Welcome, Ella. Or should I say, Georgina? Or should I say, Jacinta?’ the Rotterdam Silencer said in that sing-song accent of his.
Scanning the space – so eerily unfamiliar without any lights on – George could not see him. Only the wonky-eyed figures of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley on the glow-in-the-dark murals seemed to glower at her now. She held her hand behind her back, allowing the handle of the knife to slide down into her palm. Except she had inserted it the wrong way up and could not now turn the blade around inside her sleeve to face downwards. Shit! Where was the Silencer? And why could she no longer hear Jan?
Then, a glint of something shiny. Metallic.
Gun first, Stijn Pietersen emerged from the booth where he had been sitting, patiently waiting for her to appear; watching her enter the shop and looking around. She shuddered at the thought.
As he advanced towards her, he grinned nastily – his teeth appearing overly white and sharp in that mahogany-tanned face. Crocodile’s teeth set into brown leather. George realised she was his next meal.
‘Come in, dear,’ he said, breathing whisky fumes that she could smell from the door. ‘I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Do you have any final words?’
CHAPTER 55
Rotterdam, a dockside warehouse, Port of Rotterdam, a short while later
Kneeling down, Van den Bergen took a deep breath and started to unzip the first body bag. The only noise in the warehouse was coming from the barking cadaver dog.
‘Get that thing out of here!’ he shouted, never taking his eyes from the zip.
The smell that emerged was that of sweet putrefaction, where the bacteria had already got to work on the mouldering flesh. Intestinal gases, all escaping the body bag in a noxious, invisible cloud that made him gag.
He expected to see Elvis’ face staring blankly out at him but saw instead an unfamiliar long tangle of grey hair that framed a wizened face. No eye in the right socket. Only a blackened mess remained. There was extensive scabbing around the man’s mouth.
‘A junkie,’ he said, holding his nose. A nagging feeling of déjà vu whispered to his subconscious that there was something familiar about this dead man’s ruined features, though. Scrolling through the records in his memory of past arrests, he happened upon a match. ‘This guy was one of my detective’s informants,’ he told the uniforms. ‘Sepp something or other. An ex-con. I remember, because I’d arrested this chump years ago. He was running with the Rotterdam Silencer in the Nineties. Did a couple of years for dealing coke to tourists looking for a little extra sparkle dust to jazz up their long weekend.’ As the zip moved downwards, it revealed holes the size of a man’s fist in the body’s abdomen. ‘Jesus! What the hell caused this?’
At his side, one of the uniforms cleared his throat. ‘There a fork-lift back there, Chief Inspector, sir. Its blades or prongs or whatever you want to call them are covered in almost-dried-in
blood.’
Nodding, Van den Bergen exhaled slowly and turned to the second bag. Knew exactly whom it contained. Or rather, what it would contain, since his young detective had clearly departed this life. The cadaver dog was never wrong.
He sighed. Tugged at the zip and drew it in one smooth movement to the bottom. Best to get it over with. Tears were queueing in their ducts for release. If it were possible for a heart to sink literally, he was sure his just had. He could feel it in his bladder. Or maybe that was just prostate trouble or a urinary tract infection. ‘Here we go.’
Pushing the bag’s aperture wide, he drank in the grim sight of Elvis’ battered body. His mouth had been gaffer-taped. His nostrils were encrusted with what appeared to be stale vomit. Dried blood on his forehead had turned his otherwise ashen face to purple-red. But there was a bulge behind the gaffer tape.
Van den Bergen reached inside his pocket. It was empty. ‘Damn it! I forgot my gloves.’ He turned around to face the sombre audience. ‘Anybody got any latex gloves?’
The paramedic, who had been standing some way behind the investigative gathering, stepped forwards. ‘Here,’ she said, proffering a pair.
In vain, he tried to snap them onto his hands. ‘Too small.’ They stretched and split immediately.
‘I’ll get more from the ambulance,’ she said, smiling apologetically.
‘No. Don’t bother. Sod it,’ Van den Bergen said, taking hold of the edge of the gaffer tape between his fingertips. Gently, he peeled the tape away from Elvis’ mouth, taking some of his skin with it. He winced. Wondered briefly that Elvis’ raw lips started to bleed immediately.
‘Er, Chief Inspector,’ the paramedic said.
But Van den Bergen wondered what was inside Elvis’ mouth. He parted his detective’s lips with careful fingers to reveal a bloodshot, dull eyeball that stared blankly at him. ‘Christ,’ he said, calculating that since Elvis’ eyelids were closed tight over eyeballs that were clearly present and correct, this must be the orb that the grey-haired informant was missing. ‘Sick bastards.’
The Girl Who Had No Fear Page 33
