The Girl Who Got Revenge

by Marnie Riches

  She typed Frederik den Bosch into the search engine but there were no results. ‘Nothing. According to the registry of births, deaths and marriages, Frederik den Bosch doesn’t exist.’ She frowned at her screen. ‘He’s using a false name. How the hell has he managed to set up businesses and pay taxes with a false name? Unless!’ She clicked her fingers. Pointed. ‘Unless he’s taken his mother’s name.’

  She searched for details of André Baumgartner’s marriage, not knowing if he’d been married at all. ‘Aha! Baumgartner junior did get hitched, in 1967, to a woman called Sofie Jansen.’ She read on through the entry, struggling to decipher the loops of the registrar’s fountain pen. ‘No. Wait a minute. I’ve got it! Maybe the wife came from ’s-Hertogenbosch. Nope. Shit. She was an Amsterdamer. I’m stumped. And the fucking signal’s gone.’ She thumped the dash.

  ‘Calm down, sweary!’ Elvis’s wavering voice sounded anything but composed. He was hyped up to the eyeballs on adrenalin, clearly. ‘We’re here.’

  He parked the pool car just outside the entrance to the Den Bosch farm, killing the headlights. The large wooden gate was standing open and the gravel courtyard looked empty, but for a small Den Bosch van parked beneath a solitary security light.

  ‘No sign of Van den Bergen’s Mercedes. That’s weird. There’s no way we could have beaten him to it.’

  ‘It’s a big site,’ Marie said. ‘Acres of fields and greenhouses. If there’s another entrance, it’s not on the map. I wouldn’t know, though. I’ve never been out this way. The boss came with George to do the first interview – I’ve texted him but the signal’s gone again.’

  ‘Which means we could be the first and only officers on the scene, investigating a kidnapping by a dangerous trafficker. Christ, I wish I’d had something nicer than stamppot with instant mash for dinner, seeing as it might be my last.’ He ran a shaking hand through stylish hair that no longer qualified him for the ‘Elvis’ moniker. No more mutton chops either. Nowadays, he was like a tree stripped of its bark and rendered vulnerable.

  Marie studied him, wondering if he was up to this night-time adventure. Realised she had no option but to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was hardly like they were rookies anymore. And they had to evade the scrutiny of both Roel de Vries and Minks.

  Slamming her laptop shut, she shook her head. ‘He must have changed his surname by law. It’s not difficult to do. You just need to file a request with the Dienst Justis and the Ministry for Justice. I wish I’d had time to find out the name of André Baumgartner’s child, or children, if he had them.’

  ‘Maybe they’re just business partners, Marie. Maybe they’re both right-wingers and met at some rally. We might get to ask him in person.’

  ‘And I still haven’t managed to get a copy of Hendrik van Eden’s will.’ She felt the truth niggling at her, taunting her, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. ‘He’s the only one out of the Force of Five that we can’t get good information on. His solicitor’s been playing arseholes all along. Damn it! This is so frustrating. My whole job revolves around detailed research and solving puzzles. I feel like I’ve found every piece of the bloody jigsaw apart from the one I need to see the picture.’

  ‘Forget it, Marie. Tamara’s life is at stake. Maybe the boss’s too. Let’s do this.’

  Checking her gun was in its holster and her shoelaces were tied tightly, Marie stashed her beloved laptop in the passenger footwell of the car. She stepped out just as a clapped-out Skoda swung into the courtyard. The huge sticker on the side showed it was an Uber taxi. The passenger, with her mane of wild black curls, could only be one person.

  ‘It’s George! Come on!’

  There was the slam of the Skoda’s door and an audible utterance of ‘Get a fucking map, dickhead!’ followed by the crunch of gravel underfoot as George hastened across the yard.

  Marie motioned that she and Elvis should follow, but they were stalled at the entrance as the reversing taxi driver slowed, looking left, right and totally flustered. She knocked on the window, flashing her badge, gesticulating that he should move on immediately.

  By the time she and Elvis stood by the marks indented into the gravel by the taxi, there was no sign of George whatsoever.

  CHAPTER 33

  Den Bosch’s house, De Pijp, then the Den Bosch farm near Nieuw-Vennep, at the same time

  Deciding where to begin his search had been fraught. As he had turned over the engine of his Mercedes in his parking space, he’d realised that time was the commodity he had in shortest supply. He had seen what had happened to Elvis at the hands of traffickers in a matter of hours – from being a captive dragged off the street to being garrotted and shoved into a body bag in three easy moves. Knowing how vast the farm was and how it might easily take hours to search it on his own, Van den Bergen had decided to first scope out the closest and smallest location where Tamara might be being held – the trafficker’s house.

  He had floored the car over to De Pijp, using his blues and twos when the traffic had bunched up. Kicking the back door in, flashing his chief inspector’s badge at the only neighbour who dared challenge him over the garden fence, it hadn’t taken long to search the house from attic to basement. Nothing. But then his phone had vibrated in his pocket. With a thundering heart, he’d checked the screen to see who was calling, daring to hope it was his daughter.

  Tamara calling.

  Accept. Decline with a message. Decline.

  Pawing frantically at the ‘accept’ button, he’d pressed the phone to his ear. Grinning and hopeful.

  ‘Where the hell—?’

  His words had been drowned out by a blood-curdling scream. Then, silence.

  ‘Tamara! Where are you?’

  ‘Help,’ she’d whimpered.

  The line had gone dead.

  Parental anguish had cut deeper than any blade. Van den Bergen had dropped to his knees in Den Bosch’s nightmarish basement, surrounded by macabre mannequins that stood to attention in rows – a private battalion primed and ready for some modern-day race war, dressed in the uniforms of various Nazi ranks. Wehrmacht infantry, SS officers, Luftwaffe. Clutching his phone to his belly, he’d let out a searing howl. But he’d realised instantly that falling to pieces on the wrong side of town would do Tamara no good.

  Replaying the call in his imagination, he had been certain he’d heard the rumble of a diesel engine and the crunch of loose stones.

  ‘The farm. He’s taking her to the farm in a truck. What the hell am I doing here? I’ve wasted precious time, goddammit!’

  With cracking knees, Van den Bergen had forced himself to stand. The bones in his legs had seemed to liquefy, corroded by the fear of what might be. He’d raced back to his car, becoming snarled up in traffic as Amsterdam’s workers hastened home to where their loved ones were waiting, safe from murderous monsters with intimidation and violence on their minds.

  ‘Get out of the way, you dickheads!’

  He’d beeped the horn, ready to switch on his sirens and lights, but the opposite lane had been blocked by a broken-down bus. Eventually, he’d manoeuvred his way to the front of the queue, speeding off into the path of an oncoming tram. It had rung its bell, the driver glaring at him through the windscreen, shouting something Van den Bergen hadn’t been able to hear. Closer. Closer. The perpendicular lines of the metal tram tracks had shone in the headlights of the tram like glow-in-the-dark barriers, warning Van den Bergen that he mustn’t play chicken with thirty-eight tons of steel travelling towards him at fifty kilometres per hour. Not its top speed, but fast enough to turn his E-Class into a concertina of leather upholstery, mangled steel and aluminium. He’d assessed that the likelihood of death on impact would have been around seventy or eighty per cent.

  But Van den Bergen had been in the mood for flouting probability. Though the tram’s horn had been blaring and the brakes had squealed like pigs at an abattoir, he’d merely treated the tram driver to the finger. Ten years with George hadn’t been lost on him.

>   ‘No you don’t, bastard!’

  Flooring the car, he’d shot over the slippery, damp tracks, missing the tram by only two or three feet. Still alive. I’m coming, Tamara.

  Having had no real plan of what he might do once he arrived, beyond finding his daughter and neutralising her captors by any means necessary, when he did pull in to the Den Bosch farm’s courtyard, he realised how precarious his situation was.

  ‘Gun. Where’s my…?’ For a fleeting moment, he had visions of having left his service weapon on top of the fridge-freezer, high up where Eva couldn’t get at it. But no. The Sig Sauer was strapped beneath his armpit. ‘Oh, thank God.’

  Bypassing the Den Bosch transit van parked beneath the security light, he drove the Mercedes slowly round to the back of the main reception building and parked in the long shadows, by the bins, next to the green Jaguar and Den Bosch’s Jeep. Knowing the farm was vast, he took a moment to consider what he might do with a hostage on such a site. No lights shone in the windows of the first building, but what about the other outbuildings? Yes. Perhaps he would take a person there. But what was Den Bosch hoping to achieve by taking his daughter? Spilling the blood of a chief inspector’s child would bring the weight of the entire Dutch police force crashing down on Den Bosch. For a criminal who presumably wanted to make dirty money in peace, killing Tamara, of all people, would be a poor choice.

  ‘Damn it,’ Van den Bergen said, unfastening his seatbelt and checking again that the gun was loaded. ‘Guys like Den Bosch don’t follow rules.’ He took a swig of some liquid antacid from the emergency bottle in his glove box and stepped out of the car.

  The outbuildings stood in darkness, like giant tombs. Van den Bergen shivered – as much from the prospect of what he might find as the cold. Every crunched step on the gravel sounded too loud. Was Den Bosch watching him, savouring the sight of him walking into a trap?

  Breathing too quickly, feeling light-headed, he tried the door to the first outbuilding. Locked. No lights on. The other three were identical, but it wouldn’t do any harm to check round the back. He crept along the miserly space between the buildings in total blackness until he felt the air freshen. Acres and acres of planted fields beyond. He could smell the good earth, calling to him in the dark. The plants would be stretching up towards the stars in the firmament. Out here, there was no rose-pink light pollution to snuff out Venus and her band of dedicated followers.

  When he spotted a light burning in the upper storey of the neighbouring building, his heart was a spooked horse setting off at a gallop. Holding his gun before him with the safety off, he found that the heavy iron door was open just a crack. He crept inside. Climbed a damp stone staircase. The place had a mouldy, organic smell to it. Unheated. Freezing cold. He imagined moss growing in corners that never dried out. As he approached the room upstairs from where the light emanated, he caught sight of his breath steaming on the air. He listened outside for a few moments but heard nothing. Not even the sound of a cigarette being inhaled, or of someone struggling against their bonds. He was certain his heart would give out at any moment; convinced he could feel it flipping dangerously against the left side of his ribcage. If he got out of this alive, he determined to get his cholesterol re-checked.

  I’m coming, darling, he thought, picturing his girl beyond the door. Aware that it was too silent and that maybe, just maybe, they were waiting for him with pistols cocked, ready to shoot.

  Nose of the Sig Sauer first, he pushed his way in quickly, checking forward, right, left, up, forward again. Clear. He advanced further into a room that had clearly been in use not so long ago. A half-drunk cup of coffee was warm to the touch. There was a clean patch in an otherwise dusty floor, where someone had been sitting. A roll of duct tape on an old wooden school chair. An ashtray with the embers of a spent cigarette, still glowing.

  Advancing forward, he wondered if they were hidden in the shadows beyond the next threshold. He took five long strides across the space, until he was on the edge of more darkness. He listened again, but could hear only his own tinnitus. Feeling for a switch on his right and flipping it, the room filled with glaring light. There was nothing there but a walk-in deep freeze.

  ‘Jesus. No.’

  The porthole window to the freezer was fogged up. Frost scattered in white lace flowers over the glass. The temperature gauge said minus thirty-seven. Could she be in there, pale blue-grey and frozen solid, still wearing her final expression?

  He steeled himself to look through the window. Empty but for rack upon rack of green beans and Brussels sprouts, waiting to be clothed in Tesco or Albert Heijn bags, perhaps.

  ‘Thank you, God.’

  Backtracking, facing the great outdoors, he realised that Tamara’s final moments could be far, far worse than enduring the excruciating pins and needles that came with freezing to death.

  Scanning the black fields, he realised he might be too late. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he made out a path that led out among the maze of polytunnels, rippling in the wind. Tried to remember what it had all looked like during the daytime, but couldn’t. On his own in that desolate place, with the wind turbines whining in the background as they churned the night sky, he imagined Den Bosch’s men watching his every move; sentries waiting in the shadows, guns cocked. Was it possible George would send help?

  Forging his way through the first field, he soon spotted a white glowing light in the distance, off to his right. It shone from crystalline structures on the horizon.

  ‘Greenhouses!’

  Sinking to the ground, unable to make out anything of note, he traced careful fingers over the makeshift path spread out before him. Felt parallel furrows in the flattened soil. ‘A trolley. They’ve taken her to the greenhouse on a trolley.’

  He started to run, panting and tiring more quickly than he would have hoped. He had once chased like a prize greyhound after serial killers, thieves and drug dealers. But he was older now. Bearing the scars of his difficult forties, he was no longer quite as fit. If Tamara died tonight and he was unlucky enough to live, he didn’t mind if Minks kicked him off the force. It was time, he decided. There, in the middle of a field of cabbages, he realised he was finished.

  Crack.

  The gunshot ripped through the cold air, bursting his heavy, choking bubble of self-doubt and nihilism. The wind whipped around his head, awakening his senses. There had been a flash of light from the direction of the greenhouses as the bullet had been discharged.

  Crack. Another. This time, it hit. He was sent flying backwards, the breath knocked out of him as he hit the deck.

  I’ve been shot in the fucking head! But I’m still alive. Get up, you shitty old bastard.

  Then, grunting and squealing. What the hell was this? He could feel the ground beneath him reverberate as at least two heavy creatures pounded their way towards him. Pigs? Or boars? Jesus. Now he was in real trouble. Above him, the moon emerged suddenly from behind thick cloud and he caught a glimpse of the bone-coloured scimitars that were the boars’ tusks. They were giants. What kind of screwed-up lunatic kept boars for security? What did that even make them? Guard pigs? It was absurd.

  Scrambling to his feet, he started running towards the creatures, keeping them in his line of sight. If he missed, he knew they would gore him to death within minutes and devour him like a sinewy canapé. The larger of the two was a fully grown male, the size of a small elephant. The bastard must be over three hundred kilos. Shit. I’m a goner.

  He knew he had to shoot straight. Yelling as he neared them, he let off bullet after bullet until the chamber of his gun was empty and his ears rang painfully. In that light, it was hard to see if his aim had been true. The squealing hit an even higher octave. One of the creatures seemed to have peeled off to the left and was now cantering away from him, between tall rows of sprouts. The large male was still coming for him, though, its snout bloodied and its gait drunken. Was a wounded boar more dangerous?

  Touching his head as he sprinted, he re
alised the graze from the bullet was bleeding heavily. No time to worry, for the boar was upon him. It thundered up on small, rapid legs, barrelling into him, sending him flying into the sprout plants.

  Crack.

  Another gunshot fired. But where was the damned boar? It had rounded on him and was coming back for more.

  Van den Bergen fumbled in his coat for a second magazine of bullets to slide into his gun. Fingertips slippery from the blood couldn’t get a grip. And here came the elephantine alpha, brandishing its tusks like a warrior, intent on finishing what it had started.

  ‘Not on my watch, you bastard. This is one pig you won’t dominate. I’ll see you in a sandwich first.’

  Finally, the magazine clip slid into the Sig Sauer. Lying on his back, lifting his shoulders up to see ahead, he had an excellent low vantage point. He squeezed the trigger four times in rapid succession. The boar howled. Skidded towards him in the mud on legs that were buckling. Collapsed onto Van den Bergen’s lower half, pinning him to the ground beneath its tremendous bulk.

  Its body still rose and fell. Alive, but only just. The creature’s hot blood seeped into his clothing.

  Van den Bergen struggled to move beneath the weight of the beast, feeling his circulation failing him as his feet became numb. Had it broken his shin bones? Shouldn’t he feel pain? Pushing with all his might, he tried to heave the thing off him.

  In the distance, towards the greenhouses, he heard men’s voices. They grew closer.

  ‘He’s on the path. Get him and bring him to me.’

  Den Bosch. He’d recognise that oaf anywhere.

  But further away, back towards the entrance to the farm, he heard another voice, carried to him on the wind. A familiar voice. Unexpected.

  ‘Get a fucking map, dickhead!’

  George. He’d never been so glad in his life to hear her voice. And he’d never been so terrified. George had come to save him, but if he were killed, who the hell would save her and Tamara?