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Nothing.
Whistling to himself, he started to wipe the place down of fingerprints, careful to pick up from the floor the shattered remains of the coffee cup that he had drunk from, disposing of them in a small plastic freezer bag that he had brought in case of exactly this kind of accident. What a shame that the silly old bastard had made such a mess on his way out of that overlong, sanctimonious life. He pinched his nose against the smell of death, already rising from the body. Tiptoed over the spilled coffee to ensure he left no footprints.
Turning back to survey the scene, he decided that this termination had been well executed. On to the next one. By the time Brechtus Bruin’s body would be found, he would be sufficiently far away to evade suspicion. The method of killing was flawless. And most important of all, he thought, as he pulled the door to the house closed, he was certain that Brechtus Bruin had suffered in the last few weeks of his life.
What a cheering thought. He smiled and was gone.
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_41737977-9049-5134-91f3-77b8920a8c47)
Amsterdam, Van den Bergen’s apartment, 3 October (#ulink_41737977-9049-5134-91f3-77b8920a8c47)
The sound of someone closing a cupboard door in the kitchen was the reason for George’s wakefulness. Her body taut beneath the duvet, she listened carefully. Held her breath until the only sounds she could hear were the rushing of blood through her ears and the intruder. The cutlery drawer was being opened. The rattle of metal told her something was being removed. Heavy footsteps of a man.
Throwing the duvet aside, she leaped out of bed. In an instinctual choice between fight or flight, George opted for the former, grabbing a tin of Elnett hairspray from the dressing table as she exited the bedroom.
‘Bastard!’ she yelled, sprinting towards the kitchen and the source of the noise. She held the can of hairspray aloft, ready to press the button and blind this cheeky burgling wanker.
The tall, prematurely white-haired man who had been stooped over the worktop spun around with his hands above his head. His gaunt, wan face contorted into a look of pure surprise. ‘It’s me, for Christ’s sake!’
With her heart thundering inside her chest, George froze in the middle of the living room, staring at her opponent through the large hatch to the kitchen. She glanced at the clock on the wall.
‘It’s four in the morning. What the hell are you doing out of bed?’ She set the hairspray down on the battered old coffee table, her hand shaking with adrenalin. Her voice wavered with slowly subsiding fear. ‘I thought you were a burglar.’
Van den Bergen shook his head and smiled grimly. He clutched at his stomach. ‘In my own apartment?’ Belching quietly, his brow furrowed. ‘It’s my stomach. I just couldn’t sleep. I could taste the acid spurting onto my goddamned tongue.’
George padded into the kitchen and put her arms around her lover. His grey, baggy T-shirt smelled of washing powder, but as she stood on tiptoe and nestled her face into his neck, she drank in the scent of his warm skin beneath. ‘Poor you,’ she said. ‘Honestly, Paul. You’ve got to demand that your doc sends you to a specialist. You’re at the surgery every five bloody minutes, but the shit she’s prescribing isn’t working.’
Van den Bergen kissed the top of her head and moved away from her. ‘I don’t want a gastroscopy. I’ve heard it’s grim, like having drains rodded. I wish they’d give me a PET scan, and then I’d know, once and for all.’ The low rumble of his voice had taken on a hoarse edge over the past few months. He closed his eyes and curved his six foot five frame into a stoop, as though his long spine had been replaced by nothing more than a pipe cleaner.
Picking up the large brown bottle from the worktop, George read the blurb and raised an eyebrow. She sucked her teeth. Scratched at her scalp and shook out the wild curls of her afro. Irritated by this anxious man who overthought everything. But genuinely fearful for him, this time. ‘I’m sick of your bullshit. Every five minutes, you’re moaning at me that you’re coming down with a spot of terminal this and deadly that.’
‘I think I might have throat cancer, George. I mean it. Have some sympathy for an old fart. The longer I live, the more likely it is that something’s going to get me.’ This tormented, difficult bastard of a chief inspector, whom she loved so much, rubbed his stomach. ‘Maybe it’s stomach cancer. Can you get stomach cancer?’
George slammed the bottle of antacid down. She switched from his native Dutch to her native English. ‘For God’s sake, man. Get it fucking sorted. You demand Dyno-Rod or a scan or some shit, or me and you are going to tangle! I can’t keep getting woken up in the middle of the night. If it’s not your stomach, it’s the job. It’s bad enough back at Aunty Sharon’s with Letitia up ’til all hours and then stinking in bed ’til midday, Aunty Sharon not getting home from work until three in the morning, and then Dad getting up when she comes in because his body clock’s buggered.’
‘I can’t help it! This is what you get when you fall for a man twenty years your senior.’
George waved her hand dismissively at his mention of their age gap. It hadn’t mattered when they’d met almost a decade ago and she’d been a twenty-year-old Erasmus student, and it didn’t matter now. ‘When I come to Amsterdam, I need to get my kip. I’m a criminologist, Paul. I spend my days with murderous mental cases in draughty prisons – when I’m not scrapping for funding or teaching snot-nosed first-year students. My life’s stressful as hell. This is where I decompress, yeah?’ She switched back to Dutch. ‘I’ve got nowhere else I can relax – until you commit to getting a mortgage with me, so I’ve got a home I can call my own… And I don’t care if it’s here or London or in Cambridge. Whatever. But don’t think you can keep wriggling out of that conversation, mister.’ She wagged her finger at him. Still sour that Van den Bergen had refused to be drawn on the subject of the bricks-and-mortar commitment George so desperately sought since her brush with death in Central America. ‘It’s time we put down roots together! Anyway, until you get your shit together so I can stop this nomadic, long-distance romance crap, your place is my happy place. I need some peace and quiet. Not you, wandering round like a spectre, swigging from a family-sized bottle of Gaviscon in the early hours.’ She poked him in the stomach, careful to avoid the long line of scar tissue that bulged beneath the fabric of his top – a permanent aide-memoire of the mortal danger a job like his put him in – put both of them in. ‘And for a hypochondriac, you’re a total failure. You need to man up, get to the doc’s and insist that she doesn’t fob you off. I can’t have you dying on me, Paul. Sort it out!’
Her lover belched and grimaced. He rolled his eyes up to the bank of spotlights that she had recently scrubbed free of cooking grease, accumulated from those occasions when Van den Bergen had been bothered to cook – badly. ‘You’ve got the cheek to talk to me about peace and quiet, with your family? There’s no escaping their noise, even from the other side of the North Sea, thanks to them Skyping you every five minutes!’ He grabbed her around the middle and pulled her close. ‘Anyway, you’re exaggerating. This is the first time in ages that I’ve woken you up.’ He ran his long fingers gently along the sides of her unfettered breasts. ‘And there was once a time when you were happy to be disturbed in the middle of the night.’
He was smiling now, though the mirth didn’t quite reach his eyes. George could see that he was suffering. Nevertheless, Van den Bergen lifted her off the ground as though she were a doll, amidst her shrieked protests, and carried her into the bedroom. They had just begun to enjoy a passionate kiss, only slightly marred by the aniseed taste of his antacid medicine and the knowledge that Van den Bergen’s heart wasn’t entirely in it, when the mobile phone on his nightstand started to buzz.
‘Oh, you’re joking,’ George said, rolling his long frame off her. ‘See?’
‘Who the hell is it at this time in the morning?’ Van den Bergen asked, rummaging for his glasses among the pile of pill packets and gardening manuals. He held the folded spectacles up to his eyes and scowled at the phone’s screen. ‘Bloody Maarten Minks.’ He pressed the answer button and lifted the phone to his ear. ‘Morning, Maarten. Isn’t it a little early—?’
Gathering the duvet around her like a cocoon, George could hear Van den Bergen’s boss, the commissioner, on the other end. His voice sounded squeaky and overexcited. Demanding dickhead. She guessed he liked nothing more than to lord it over his ageing subordinate at an unsociable hour.
‘Yes. Okay. Straightaway. I’ll call you with an update.’ Van den Bergen nodded and hung up, exhaling heavily.
‘What is it?’ George asked, stifling a yawn.
‘Port of Amsterdam,’ he said. ‘Customs have found a truck full of suffocating Syrians, and guess who’s been tasked with investigating!’
‘Trafficked?’
‘What do you think?’
‘How many?’ George wiped the sleep from her eyes.
Van den Bergen was already on his feet, pulling on the weekend’s jeans, which were only slightly muddy from a trip to his Sloterdijkermeer allotment. ‘Fifty-odd. Minks has got his knickers in a twist. He’s under pressure to stem the tide of refugees coming into the city. The burghers of Amsterdam are happy to throw money at Syrian charities but they’re not overly pleased at the thought of hundreds of them arriving in cargo trucks to shit on their highly polished Oud Zuid doorsteps.’
‘Hypocrites,’ George said. ‘It’s the same in the UK. Most of the people you speak to are sympathetic about what’s being done to those poor bastards. Bombed by the Russians. Bent over by Daesh. Shat on by Assad. But nearly half the nation voted for Brexit, mainly to keep immigrants out, so somebody’s telling fibs.’ She padded back to the kitchen and switched on the kettle. As she prepared a flask of coffee for Van den Bergen, she thought about her own father, currently holed up in South East London with her mother, from whom he was estranged, and her long-suffering Aunty Sharon. With his Spanish passport, would he be sent packing back to his country of origin, unable to rebuild the relationship with his long-lost daughter properly?
Screwing the lid closed on the flask, she eyed the printout of the ticket to Torremolinos that she’d propped behind Van den Bergen’s peppermint teabags. Ten days, descending en masse on the three-star Sol hotel of Letitia’s choice, at Letitia’s insistence, with the sea-facing rooms that Letitia had stipulated. George in with her cousin, Tinesha. Her Dad in with cousin Patrice. Mommie Dearest, bunking up with poor old Aunty Sharon, where she’d undoubtedly hog all the wardrobe space – ‘’Cos I gotta look my best if I’m not well with my pulmonaries. I gotta make that rarseclart know what he’s been missing all these years, innit?’ Not long now. George could almost smell the rum and Coke by the pool and the melange of coconut sun cream scents from Thomson’s least intrepid travellers.
When Van den Bergen took his flask and kissed her goodbye, his phone was welded to his ear yet again. A grim expression on his handsome face and his thick shock of prematurely white hair seeming cold blue in the dawn light.
‘And one of them’s died?’ he asked. Presumably it was Minks on the other end. ‘Oxygen deprivation?’ A pause. He snatched a bag of crisps and the key to his Mercedes from the console table in the hall. ‘Dysentery?! Ugh. What a way to go in a confined space. How old?’
His brow furrowed. He pulled the door closed.
George could still hear him speaking in low, rumbling tones on the landing. ‘Twelve? Jesus. Poor little sod. Okay. I’m on it.’
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_5c3b2234-abc3-542f-99a8-e061251818f1)
Port of Amsterdam, later (#ulink_5c3b2234-abc3-542f-99a8-e061251818f1)
‘How come the truck was intercepted here?’ Van den Bergen asked Elvis, his voice almost whipped away entirely by the stiff dockside wind and swallowed by the sobs of those Syrian refugees who were yet to be assessed by paramedics and ferried to hospital. He blinked hard at the sight of this desperate diaspora, sitting on the pavement, wrapped in tinfoil blankets, with blood-pressure cuffs strapped to their arms and oxygen monitors clamped on their fingers. ‘Seems a weird place for the driver to have come. It’s all logistics and exporter headquarters in this bit of the port.’
He studied the heavy goods vehicle, which had been cordoned off with police tape by the uniforms. On the side of the truck’s battered burgundy container, the livery of a produce company, Groenten Den Bosch B.V., had been emblazoned in yellow. It looked no different from any other cargo vehicle carrying greenhouse-grown unseasonable fruit and vegetables to the UK and beyond.
‘Apparently the port authority cops were heading this way after they’d been to investigate a break-in over there…’ Elvis gesticulated towards some grey industrial sheds in the distance that bruised the watery landscape with their utilitarian bulk. It looked exactly like the place the junior detective had almost met an untimely end at the hands of the Rotterdam Silencer’s men. Small wonder that he was shivering, his shoulders hunched inside his leather jacket, a pinched look to his face. ‘It was a chance discovery,’ he said, his eyes darting furtively over to the wharf-side warehouse behind them. The scar around his neck was still livid, though he’d covered it up today with a scarf. The quiff and mutton-chop sideburns that had earned him his nickname may have been replaced by a stylish cut and better clothes, but Van den Bergen’s protégé looked positively vulnerable these days.
‘Are you eating right?’ Van den Bergen asked, scratching his nose with the edge of his notebook.
‘What? What’s that got to do with a truckload of trafficked Syrians?’
Van den Bergen coughed awkwardly, wondering how to dress his fatherly concern up as idle curiosity. It wouldn’t do to let Elvis know that he cared… Would it? ‘Nothing. You just look…’
‘I’ve been going to the gym.’ He patted his newly flat stomach.
‘Oh. It’s just…what with you being garrotted and left for dead and—’
‘Can we just not, boss?’ Elvis smiled weakly and pulled his jacket closed against the wind. ‘Anyway, the driver was trying to turn around, can you believe it? Who the hell tries to do a three-point turn with a heavy goods vehicle on a road like this?! When they pulled over to ask him what the hell he was doing, the guy freaked, jumped out of his cab and tried to run away. That’s when they opened up the back and found all these poor bastards inside.’
Van den Bergen belched stomach acid into his mouth and swallowed it back down with a grimace. Wondered how Elvis felt about the black body bag that lay on a gurney by the roadside, having been found inside one himself on the brink of death. He walked over to the gurney.
‘Give me some space,’ he told the uniform – a young lad who looked like he was barely out of cadet school. ‘Let me see her.’
Breathing in deeply, he slowly unzipped the bag to reveal the pale face of the girl inside. Were it not for the blue tinge to her lips and the general grey hue to skin that had certainly been olive in life, she could almost be sleeping. One of the sobbing women who sat on the pavement leaped up and made for him. Tears streamed down her red face. She shrieked something at Van den Bergen – words that he didn’t comprehend, though he understood her anguish perfectly. Bitter, biting grief needed no interpreter. One of the other women pulled the girl’s mother back before two uniformed officers could restrain her.
Thinking of his granddaughter, Van den Bergen’s viscera tightened. He ground his molars together. Turned to the uniform. ‘How many of the refugees are critical?’
The lad touched the brim of his hat respectfully. Visibly gulped. ‘Twenty have gone off with the first lot of ambulances,’ he said. ‘They were in the worst shape. The rest…’
He inclined his head to the remaining ragtag band of chancers sitting on the pavement: about two-dozen men in dusty, cheap suits or hoodies and jeans, yellowed at the knees. They looked like they had stepped straight from a war zone into the truck. The half dozen or so women wore jeans and tunics for the most part – full-length, loose-fitting dark dresses on the older ones. All had their heads covered, though they had oxygen masks fitted to their faces. The remainder were children, ranging from about five years old to young teens, dressed in bright colours. Van den Bergen was struck by how ordinary they all looked. He berated himself for having expected them all to appear like Middle Eastern stereotypes instead of electricians, nurses, teachers, lecturers: people who had simply had enough of certain death in their homeland and had decided to take their chances on possible death in the back of a heavy goods vehicle.
‘Make sure they get whatever they need while they’re waiting,’ Van den Bergen said, swallowing hard and clenching his fist around his pen. ‘If the paramedics say they can eat and drink, arrange it. Good policing is about more than just arresting bad guys. Speaking of which, where’s the driver?’
The uniform pointed to a squad car that had been parked at an unlikely angle across the street, forming part of the roadblock. ‘He refuses to speak. My sergeant’s about to take him in for questioning. You’ll want to sit in on the interview, right?’
The squad car’s engine started up. The reverse lights came on, and the vehicle started to roll back slowly. In Van den Bergen’s peripheral vision, he caught sight again of the body bag that contained the little girl. Her keening mother was now being tended to by a paramedic. A corrosive force stronger than stomach acid welled up inside him. Pushing the uniformed lad aside, Van den Bergen took long strides towards the brightly liveried politie squad car. He wrenched open the passenger door and held up his large hand. Flashed his ID. Fixed the female sergeant with a stern and unflinching gaze. ‘Stop the car,’ he said. Pushing the central locking button on the console, he unlocked the car’s doors. Then he leaped over the bonnet to the driver’s side and opened the rear door. Without pausing to take a look at the greasy-haired trucker, he grabbed the handcuffed man by the scruff of his neck and pulled him out of the car.
‘Who are you working for?’ he yelled at him.
The trucker was a middle-aged man with a bloated, red face and veined nose that spoke to high blood pressure and too much whisky. Puffy beneath the eyes. He stank of stale cigarettes and fried food. A dark band of grease described the collar of his blue sweatshirt, ending in a V above his sternum. This didn’t strike Van den Bergen as a scrupulous or discerning man who might be bothered where the money for his alcohol might come from.
‘No comment. I want a solicitor,’ the man said, holding Van den Bergen’s gaze. ‘You just manhandled me out of that car. That’s police brutality.’
‘You ran, didn’t you? When the port cops pulled you over, you ran, you piece of shit. A kid’s dead on the back of your actions.’ He pushed the trucker hard in the shoulder – a family man’s rage taking over his professional sensibilities.
By the time the trucker had stretched his cuffed hands down towards his baggy jeans, Van den Bergen was too late to realise he was aiming for his pocket. With determined fingers, the man pulled out a white object.
‘Boss! Watch out!’ Elvis yelled, sprinting towards them.
What was it? A note? An envelope? Van den Bergen didn’t have time to put on the glasses that hung on the end of a chain around his neck to work out what the trucker had armed himself with.
‘Stay back!’ the man shouted, wide-eyed. Spittle had gathered at the corners of his mouth, putting Van den Bergen in mind of a crazed bull. ‘I’ll open it. I will. And you’ll all be fucked.’
‘Take it easy!’ Elvis said, holding his hands high.
Trying to make sense of the situation, Van den Bergen’s fingers crept slowly towards the gun in its holster, strapped to his body. ‘Whoa!’ he said. ‘What have you got there?’
‘Let me go, or I’ll throw this shit everywhere!’
‘What shit?’
Van den Bergen took a step closer, poised to draw his service weapon.
‘Anthrax.’
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_131eff0e-6d9e-525c-b4ce-c3d18cc0e443)
Van den Bergen’s apartment, a short while later (#ulink_131eff0e-6d9e-525c-b4ce-c3d18cc0e443)
Peering dolefully at the side of Van den Bergen’s wardrobe that she commandeered whenever she stayed, George saw only a phalanx of drab: nothing but washed-out jeans, black long-sleeved tops and her old purple cardigan, which was still going, despite the holes in the elbows.
‘How you going to wear any of that shit to the pool?’ Letitia screeched through the laptop’s monitor.
George closed her eyes and bit her lip. The joys of Skype, bringing her over-opinionated mother, who was currently sprawled on Aunty Sharon’s sofa in South East London, straight into her lover’s bedroom in Amsterdam. There was Letitia’s round face – no make-up yet today, and the recently sewn-in ombré hair extensions made her look more like a spooked lion than Beyoncé – grimacing at the collection of casual wear.
‘I ain’t going to no fancy tapas bars with you dressed like a builder, lady.’ Pointing with her talons, which were green today. Head rolling indignantly from shoulder to shoulder. ‘Them tops is a fucking embarrassment. Sort it out! Get down the shops. Or don’t they have shops in Holland?’
‘I’m skint,’ George said, angling the laptop’s camera away from the contents of the wardrobe. ‘I’m saving for a deposit, remember?’
‘Skint, my arse. All that fancy shit you do for the university and that old lanky Dutch bastard you call a boyfriend has got you on the payroll over there?’ Her mother sucked her teeth, snatched up a packet of cigarettes from the coffee table and lit up with a dramatic flourish. She blew her first lungful of smoke towards her screen, clearly aiming for George’s image. ‘Your Aunty Shaz’s gaff not good enough for you?’
‘Maybe I want to get away from you.’
The words had burst their way out before George had had chance to filter them. Damn it! She’d made a pact with herself not to rub her ailing mother up the wrong way, especially as Letitia had nearly lost her life prematurely at the hands of the Rotterdam Silencer himself.
And there was her father, edging his way into the frame and waving timidly. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was planning to get away from him when they had only just been reunited after decades apart.
‘Not you, Dad!’ she said – in Spanish, for his ears only. ‘When I get my own place, you’ll always be welcome. There will be a bed for you, anytime. I meant Madam Gobshite. I need to put some distance between me and her when I’m in the UK.’
Her father looked at the monitor with warm brown eyes. A wry smile softening a face that was still somewhat haggard after his ordeal, though his cheeks had begun to plump up, presumably thanks to Aunty Shaz’s incredible cooking. George’s stomach rumbled at the thought. Jerk chicken. Rice and peas. Goat curry. Bun. Jesus, I’ve got to learn to cook.
‘Don’t worry, my love. I’d worked that out,’ he said.
But suddenly, Letitia’s grimace blocked up the picture. ‘Hey! Don’t you be thinking I don’t know you’re having a pop at me, you cheeky lickle rarseclart.’
Her mother snapped her fingers at the camera, and even with the breadth of the North Sea between them, George winced inwardly at the castigatory gesture. She knew she was in the wrong for bitching so blatantly in front of her, and felt instantly guilty for it. Wouldn’t let on to that horrible old cow, though.
‘My internet’s down,’ she said, slamming the lid of her laptop shut. Ending a conversation that had quickly soured – though she had been trying her hardest to keep it sweet.
Glancing at the clock, she just registered the fact that it was gone 11 a.m. and she still hadn’t heard from Van den Bergen when her phone rang. It was Marie on the other end.
‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘Has he forgotten his reading glasses again?’
But Marie’s voice was thin and stringy, stretched to its limit with angst. ‘The boss has been rushed to hospital. You’d better come quick.’
The taxi seemed to drive too slowly down the s100, though George could see from the driver’s speedometer that he was flooring it.
‘Please hurry!’ she said, reaching forward to grab the man’s shoulder. She withdrew her hand when she spied the navy jumper full of dandruff.
They took a sharp right off the motorway and left the canal, speeding down Rhijnspoorplein. The clusters of high-rise office blocks blurred into the less densely built-up dual carriageway of Wibautstraat. A tram approached from the left and the lights were changing.
‘Put your foot down!’ she shouted.
‘No way, missy. Sit tight. I’m not going to kill us both to save thirty seconds.’
The driver eyeballed her through the rear-view mirror. She could see from the stern promontory of his brow that he wasn’t going to yield. In sullen silence, she sat with folded arms, imagining Van den Bergen breathing his last in the high-dependency unit. Marie, being Marie, hadn’t gone into any great detail and had hung up all too quickly. George ruminated on what gut-wrenching drama might greet her when the taxi finally swung into Eerste Oosterparkstraat.
The brutalist mid-century-modern block of the hospital sprawled on their left.
‘Drop me here.’ George thrust money at the taxi driver and sprinted into the Onze Lieve Vrouw Gasthuis, arriving at the information desk with a tight chest. ‘I’m looking for Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen,’ she wheezed, determining to quit the clandestine cigarettes she was still snatching when nobody was watching.
