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She stopped abruptly. Took her handbag-sized deodorant from her coat pocket, poised to spray any lurkers in the eyes. Gasping for air.
‘Come out, you bastard!’ she yelled.
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_22d318c9-5769-551e-aab5-1eac9e3dc683)
Mexico, Chiapas, 29 May (#ulink_22d318c9-5769-551e-aab5-1eac9e3dc683)
Swigging from the bottle of Dos Equis, he peered through the dusty window of the four-wheel-drive at the brothel. Bullet holes pitted the plastered outer walls, punctuating the painted sign that marked this place out as offering the average Mexican man a good time, at a price. A Corona logo had been amateurishly daubed onto a florid yellow background with black paint. The opening hours and maximum capacity had rubbed off some time ago. But he knew it was open 24/7 for a man who had the cash. This was a Chiapas town, after all. And this club was his.
Beyond the threshold, he spied a tired-looking jukebox and several cheap white plastic chairs. A young girl sat on one of them. Overweight, like most of them were. Wearing a barely-there skirt and vertiginous platform stilettos. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Her face shone with sweat and her long black hair hung lank and greasy on her bare shoulders.
‘What’s the deal with her?’ he asked Miguel.
At his side, Miguel leaned forwards and squinted to get a better look at the girl. ‘Oh, her? She wouldn’t run,’ he said in English, spoken with an accent flavoured heavily with his native Spanish, with a dash of Texan twang. ‘She was the only one. She was too frightened, she said. Ratted the others out, though, when we threatened to kill her mother and sisters.’
‘Good. And do we know where the dumb bitches have gone?’
‘Apparently they’re headed towards the landing strip hidden in the mountains. Some customer with a conscience told them about it. Said they could hire a light aircraft if they clubbed together, or maybe offer the pilot their services if they couldn’t.’ Miguel dabbed at his forehead with a clean white handkerchief. His black hair, thick like carpet, stood to attention in sweaty spikes.
‘I want you to find the chump that gave them big ideas and feed him to the crocodiles. Comprende?’
Miguel waggled his head in agreement. ‘Naturalmente, jefe. I’ll check the CCTV. If he’s local, we will find him.’
‘If he’s from out of town, you’ll still find him.’
‘Si. Claro.’ Miguel closed his eyes. Nodding effusively.
‘And put it on YouTube. Then, make sure the whole town sees what’s left. Leave it in the square or something.’
‘No problemo, el cocodrilo.’
He smiled at Miguel. Studied his pock-marked, acne-scarred face; the spare tyre that drooped over his belt and slacks. Too many cheese-laden tostadas and sugar-coated churros, no doubt. The Mexican diet was so damned greasy. He longed for the simpler fare of home but kept that thought to himself. ‘Those silly whores don’t realise they’re running straight into the lion’s den.’
The car drove on out of town and along the pitted, dusty trails that led into the mountains to the border between the Chiapas and Guatemala. Past shrines cut into the rock, containing miniature skeletons, adorned with flowers. Despite the vivid green forest that blanketed the mountains, this was a hellish, godforsaken land. Even with the air-con blowing at full pelt in the Mercedes, the inferno-like heat was still stifling. And though they had left the smell of putrefaction from the ramshackle streets far behind, el cocodrilo nevertheless pulled the lime from the neck of his beer bottle with a determined finger and held it to his nose, enjoying the sharp, clean tang. Remembering what it was like to be permanently cool, enjoying consistently fresh air. The smell of the sea.
‘We’re here,’ Miguel announced, as the car bounced inside a gated complex, down a rutted drive.
To one side, maize – stalks that were taller than men – grew in obedient rows on a plateau. Women, wearing colourful embroidered peasant smocks and black skirts, hacked at the ripe crop with machetes, some with babies swaddled and strapped to their backs. They froze, staring at the Mercedes with its blacked-out windows. Realising who was contained within. Deftly, they turned back to their work, keeping their heads bowed respectfully low.
‘Do they work for me?’ he asked.
Miguel nodded. ‘Si. They’re all trafficked Nicaraguans and Hondurans. Farming in the week. Brothels at the weekend. Every man and woman you see on the farm is yours, jefe.’ He started to laugh. ‘The farmer wasn’t too pleased, but he stopped moaning once we cut his head off.’
El cocodrilo turned away from his sniggering minion. It didn’t pay to be too familiar with men on the payroll. Even the ones only a rung beneath him. Rubbing his lime so that the zest left a stinging, oily slick on his fingers, he peered up at the mountains that rose in undulating green peaks on the other side of the road. Smothered in lush coffee crops. Fertile soil. Productive land. His was a diverse and lucrative business.
The white stucco hacienda appeared just ahead like a tired angel perched on a Christmas tree that had been left over from the days of colonialism – a double-storey affair with ornate arches fringing a balconied quad, topped off with a ridged terracotta roof. Small wonder the farmer had been reluctant to relinquish it. Two tattooed young men stood on the tiled veranda by the front door, holding AK-47s. Not so elegant.
The car ground to a halt in a cloud of dust.
‘Where are the girls?’ he asked. ‘Are they inside?’
‘No, jefe. They’re lined up on the airstrip,’ Miguel said. ‘Awaiting your judgement.’
Ignoring the bowing sycophants and scurrying workers, he followed Miguel through the claustrophobic stalks of the maize crop for some two hundred metres. Feeling the heat strike the parched ground beneath his feet, bouncing back up into the soles of his shoes and onto his skin. Three in the afternoon. The place was an oven. And already he could hear the cicadas starting their lilting evensong. Chapulines, three times the size of the crickets in Europe, click-clicked their chirruping long legs together. He stood on one and committed to memory the sound of it crunching beneath his shoe. Shithole.
When the stalky growth ended in a perfect line, giving way to the giant clearing, he could breathe again. Peered out beneath the brim of his straw trilby, squinting in the sunshine to see heat rising in mesmerising waves above a perfect white airstrip cut into the scrub. At the far end of the secret runway, a light aircraft had been casually parked. His light aircraft. Purchased to carry his coke, guns and supplies. His landing strip. Silly bitches. There they were, kneeling in the flattened dirt with coffee sacking on their heads. Naked. Hands tied behind them.
Pondering how best to deal with this insurgence, he turned to Miguel. ‘Bring all of the farm workers and the men here. Now.’
Walking towards the gaggle of hooded girls, he eyed the transportistas who guarded them warily. As arms-smuggling mercenaries, revered for their professionalism and impartiality by all the cartels, these transportistas were not women under his jurisdiction, despite being on his payroll. Dressed in dark utility clothing and carrying semi-automatic rifles. He recognised AK-47s, American issue AR-15s and German HK G36s. His storerooms would be replete with firepower if they had driven all the way north from Honduras with their ballistic payload.
‘Ladies,’ he said, tipping his hat. Making eye contact with a big bruiser of a transportista, wearing the skeletal figure of Santa Muerte emblazoned in white on her black T-shirt. ‘Nice guns.’ He winked.
The woman scowled at him. ‘Hola, el cocodrilo,’ she said, readjusting her rifle across her hips. ‘Too bad you couldn’t make it to the rendezvous in Palenque in person. That little shit behind the bar needed teaching some respect. I taught him good. Okay?’
He nodded.
‘Well, you’ve got ten cases of our finest arms in the hacienda and in Palenque. Mainly AK-47s.’ She reached out to shake his hand. Her grip was like a vice, far stronger than most of the men who worked for him. He noted the tattoos, more commonly seen on the men of the mara gangs, scrolling up her inner arm, under her T-shirt sleeve, emerging at the base of her thick neck, where the ink travelled northwards over her scarred face in a demonic tapestry of blue-black. Faux-religious images of weeping women and children. Flowers and skulls of the Maya, with numbers and letters scrawled intricately across her throat in some kind of magical code that clearly meant something to the right people. ‘Pleasure doing business with you. As always.’
‘And you’ll also take care of this problem for me?’ he asked.
The farm workers and his own men had gathered along the edge of the airstrip now. Milling around awkwardly, suspecting what was about to happen, perhaps. Visibly squirming, lest the mayhem spill over from the group of absconded prostitutes, somehow tainting them.
The transportista nodded. ‘Claro,’ she said, gabbling something to her compatriots in rapid-fire Salvadoran Spanish.
The women slung their rifles across their backs and simultaneously drew machetes in some gruesome choreographed dance. Pulled the sacks from the heads of the bewildered trafficked girls who peered around to see where they were. Wide-eyed and mouthing, ‘No!No!’ when they caught sight of el cocodrilo. Begging for forgiveness, their pleas falling on his unsympathetic ears. Weak, corruptible bitches. Why would he ever spare them? Particularly when they were so easily replaced with the next truckload coming out of Guatemala.
There was something about the high drama of the Central Americans that appealed to him. It was amusing, all this pandemonium and Latin angst: screaming, now drowning out the high-pitched sound of the cicadas, as the girls understood the fate about to be visited upon them. Weeping from the farm workers, who grasped that this too might be their method of undoing, should they cross the mighty el cocodrilo and dare to take back their freedoms.
‘Now,’ he said.
The transportistas pushed the kneeling girls to the ground until they kissed the dirt with their tear-streaked faces. All bar one raised machetes in unison and, with one forceful blow, beheaded each runaway in almost perfect synchronicity. Amid the wailing of the onlookers, the girls’ heads rolled away from broken bodies that pumped out their life’s blood. Staring but unseeing. For them, at least, it was the end.
But as el cocodrilo turned to walk away from the scene of execution, he felt he was being watched.
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_df947a0d-383e-56c3-8117-7611ed2ad24d)
Amsterdam, police headquarters, then, Bouwdewijn de Groot Lyceum, Apollolaan, then, Floris Engels’ apartment in Amstelveen, 28 April (#ulink_df947a0d-383e-56c3-8117-7611ed2ad24d)
‘What do we know about our man in the canal?’ Maarten Minks asked. Neatly folded into his chair, he sat with his pen in hand and his pad open, as though he were poised to take notes. Van den Bergen could deduce from the shine on his overenthusiastic, wrinkle-free face that he was on the cusp of getting a stiffy over the discovery of this fourth body. Waiting for his old Chief Inspector’s words of wisdom, no doubt. Bloody fanboy.
‘Well,’ Van den Bergen began. Paused. Rearranged his long frame in his seat, grimacing as his hip clicked in protest when he tried to cross his legs. ‘It’s interesting, actually. His wallet and ID were still on him. No money stolen, so he couldn’t have been pushed into the water after a mugging.’ He took the smudged glasses from the end of the chain around his neck and perched them on his nose. Wishing now that he’d had the scratched lens replaced when George had told him to. Trying to focus on the handwriting in his notebook. Hell, maybe it wasn’t the scuffing. Maybe his sight had deteriorated since the last eye test. Was it entirely unfeasible that he had glaucoma? ‘Ah, his name was Floris Engels – a maths teacher at Bouwdewijn de Groot Lyceum in the Old South part of town.’
Minks nodded. Pursed his lips. ‘A teacher, eh?’
‘Yes. I checked his tax records. Head of department at a posh school on the expensive side of town.’ Removing his glasses, Van den Bergen stifled a belch. ‘IT Marie’s done some background research and revealed nothing but a photograph of him on the school’s website and a Facebook account that we’re waiting for permission to access. It’s unlikely he was some kind of petty crook on the quiet, as far as I can make out, but I got the feeling he might have been dead before he hit the water.’
‘And the number of canal deaths are stacking up,’ Minks said, lacing his hands together. That fervour was still shining in his eyes.
Van den Bergen could guess exactly what he was hoping for but refused to pander to his boss’ aspirations. ‘I’m going out there with Elvis now to interview the Principal and some of his colleagues. We’re going to check out his apartment too. Marianne’s doing the postmortem this afternoon. She says, at first glance, she thinks maybe there’s been some foul play.’
‘Excellent!’ Minks said, scribbling down a note that Van den Bergen could not read. ‘Lots going on. I really do admire your old school methodical techniques, Paul.’ The new Commissioner beamed at him. His cheeks flushed red and he leaned his elbow onto the desk. ‘Will you be disappearing into your shed for a think?’
Is he taking the piss, Van den Bergen wondered? But then he remembered that Maarten Minks was neither Kamphuis nor Hasselblad. This smooth-skinned foetus had been fast-tracked straight out of grad school. At least Van den Bergen’s long-range vision was good enough to corroborate that there was a raft of diplomas hanging above Minks on the wall behind his desk. A framed photo of him posing with the Minister for Security and Justice, the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and the bloody Prime Minister. No sign of a naked lady statue or stupid executive toys. This youthful pretender to the policing throne was all business. But he could think again if he thought Van den Bergen was going to discuss the shed. ‘Do you have any suggestions regarding the shape the investigation should take? Any priorities I should know about?’
‘See how the autopsy pans out. But if there are any similarities with the other floaters, I think we need to consider …’
Here it was. Van den Bergen could feel it coming. He shook his head involuntarily and popped an antacid from its blister pack onto his tongue.
‘… that a serial killer is on the loose.’
When he strode out to the car park, Elvis was already waiting for him, leaning up against the BMW 7 Series he had got the new Chief of Police to cough up for when they had broken the news to him that he was going to be overlooked for the role of Commissioner, yet again. Even the top man didn’t have a vehicle like Van den Bergen’s. But then, nobody else had legs quite as long as his, so they could all suck it up.
‘Get off the car, for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had it valeted. I don’t need your arse print on my passenger door. And don’t smoke near it. The ash sticks to the paintwork.’
‘Sorry, boss,’ Elvis said, exhaling and stubbing his half-spent cigarette out on the ground with the heel of his cowboy boot.
Van den Bergen scrutinised his pale, blotchy face. The signs of his psoriasis flaring up again, the poor bastard. ‘Are you up to this?’ he asked, unlocking the car with his fob. ‘You look peaky.’
‘I was up all night with Mum,’ Elvis said. Digging a nicotine-stained index finger into his auburn sideburns – totally at odds with the ridiculous dyed-black quiff that earned him his moniker. Even that was starting to thin a little, these days, now that he was very comfortably on the wrong side of thirty.
His detective opened his mouth, presumably to say more. Van den Bergen plunged into the driver’s seat as quickly as his stiff hip would allow. Slammed the door shut, trapping Elvis and his earnest confessions outside. Programmed Floris Engels’ address into his sat nav.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly through recalcitrant, tight lips, when Elvis buckled in. ‘I just can’t—’
‘It’s okay, boss. I get it.’
‘Just book leave when you need it.’ He waved his hand dismissively, switched on the stereo and enjoyed the rather less awkward silence of Depeche Mode at a volume loud enough to drown out Elvis’ attempts at conversation about his mother’s condition.
‘Floris Engels,’ Elvis said, poking at a photograph of the dead man that he’d laid on the head teacher’s desk. A flattering shot of him taken from the sideboard in his flat. Average-looking but tanned, well dressed, smiling. A shot of him dead on the canal side, his ghoulish face swollen to almost twice its normal size. He knew Van den Bergen was scrutinising his every move for signs of exhaustion. One false move and he’d be put on compassionate leave. It was the last thing he wanted. ‘Tell me and the Chief Inspector here everything you know about your Head of Maths.’ He crossed his right leg over his left knee, as he’d seen the boss do. Assumed the position of a relaxed and confident man with nothing to prove.
‘Well, Floris is—’ The head teacher was suddenly preoccupied by his hairy fingers. Frowned. ‘Was a very well-respected member of my staff.’ His voice shook with emotion.
Elvis tried to memorise everything about the man. Discreet gold jewellery. Expensive, pin-stitched suit befitting the head of a fee-paying school that catered for Amsterdam’s bekakte bourgeoisie – the chattering classes – where the darling Lodewijks and Reiniers and Petronellas of wealthy parents could receive their top-drawer educations in wood-panelled, exclusive splendour. Even the dust in the air smelled expensive at Boudewijn de Groot Lyceum. Elvis’ psoriasis itched beneath his leather jacket.
‘And?’
Closing his eyes, the Head pushed the photographs away. ‘Floris started working here three years ago. He is …’ His brow furrowed. ‘… was always impeccably polite, got great results from his pupils. Popular among parents. He was a model teacher.’
‘What kind of man was he?’ Elvis asked, wishing the Head would make eye contact with him. It irked him that he kept looking over at Van den Bergen even though it was he who was asking the questions.
The Head shrugged. ‘I told you. Polite. Hard-working. Bright.’
‘No,’ Van den Bergen said, doodling absently in his notebook. ‘That tells us what kind of employee he was.’ Scratching away with his biro at a miniature sketch of his granddaughter. Finally he looked up at the Head. Put his glasses on the end of his nose and peered at the brass-embossed name plate on the desk that marked him out as Prof. Roeland Hendrix. ‘Who was Floris the man, Roeland? Did you see him socially? What was his home life like? I can see from public records that he hasn’t been married and that his parents are both dead. Did he have a girlfriend? Kids somewhere?’
Elvis checked his watch. Wondered if the carer was making his mother the right sort of lunch. Carby snack with the meds. Carby snack with the meds, he intoned, wishing his thoughts would somehow travel across town to his mother’s dingy little house. He’d left all the ingredients out on the side in the kitchen. Mum kept gunning for the shitty cheap ham the carer had snuck into the fridge at her request. But he had prepared her a chickpea and bean pasta salad with rocket. Meds three-quarters of an hour before meal.
‘Come on, Professor Hendrix,’ Elvis said. ‘I bet an intelligent man like you has got the measure of all his employees.’
The Head shrugged. Toyed with the silk handkerchief in his top pocket. His nails had been varnished.
Elvis touched the stiff gel of his quiff and wondered if it made him hypocritical to think ill of the Head’s immaculate ponce-hands. Hid his own nicotine-stained fingers inside his pockets.
‘Honestly? I know nothing about Floris at all,’ the Head said. ‘He was a completely private man. Kept himself to himself. An enigma, you might say. I invited him, along with other teachers, to dinner parties and soirées, but he would never come and always managed to sidestep any digging into his life outside work. And I did try. To dig, I mean.’
Van den Bergen rearranged himself in the leather armchair. His bones cracked audibly as he did so. Jesus. Is that what a lifetime of supervising door-to-doors in the rain did for a man? Elvis shuddered.
‘Where did he work before here?’ he asked.
‘He came from the Couperus International Lyceum in Utrecht. Glowing references. He’d been there for ten years.’
The Head glanced at the grandfather clock that struck in the corner of the room. Stood abruptly. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, gentlemen.’
All the way to the unprepossessing apartment in Amstelveen’s Brandwijk, Van den Bergen imagined himself shaking and shuddering his way to a premature end with Parkinson’s like Elvis’ mother. The bullet hole in his hip had been causing him great pain, of late, with all the damp. Were there any signs of tremors in his movement? George would be able to tell him. By the end of the week, she would be back in Amsterdam. In the meantime, he made a mental note to visit the doctor’s to rule out some debilitating degenerative disease.
Curtains twitched as he parked up outside the three-storey block, with its garden view and balcony. This was perhaps the most suburban, nondescript place in the world, Van den Bergen mused. A place where nothing ever happened. Except something had happened to one of its residents.
‘What do you make of this, boss?’ Elvis said, running a latex-clad finger along the spines of the books on the bookshelves. Five boring-looking academic tomes about physics. Fall of Man in Wilmslow – a book Van den Bergen vaguely recognised as being about Alan Turing. The rest were interior design and architecture textbooks. Several British fiction titles among them that Van den Bergen had never heard of.
‘He was a maths teacher, so the physics stuff fits,’ he said. Casting an eye over the mid-century-style furniture in the apartment, he realised it was more Ikea repro than genuine Danish antiques. But there was a strong design element to it. That much he could see. Nothing like his thrift-shop dump, which was still reminiscent of a garage sale no matter how many times George scrubbed through. ‘Somebody here knows their décor onions. No photos of women anywhere apart from this.’ Using a latex-gloved hand, he picked up the portrait of a woman who was roughly in her sixties. Perhaps Engels’ mother. She had the same hazel eyes, judging by the school’s online profile picture of him.
Movement suddenly caught the Chief Inspector’s attention. Or was it a shadow? With his heartbeat picking up pace and his policeman’s instincts sharpening, he turned towards the doorway, beyond which lay the bedroom.
‘Is somebody in here with us?’ he whispered to Elvis. Mouthed, ‘In there.’ Pointed to the bedroom.
Elvis shook his head. Continued to look at the books.
Van den Bergen strode briskly into the bedroom, his plastic overshoes rustling as he crunched on the shag pile rug underfoot. Held his breath. Scanned the neat, masculine room for intruders. There was nobody there but a whiff of aftershave hung in the air. Or was he imagining things?
‘I need to drink less coffee,’ he muttered, running his fingers over the pistol in its holster, strapped to his torso.
He flung open the wardrobe doors to reveal immaculately presented suiting; ties, pants and socks stowed in colour co-ordinated compartments, perhaps specifically designed for ties, pants and socks. Jumpers and tops stacked in neat piles on shelving. One set of shelves containing sombre colours. The other, less conservative combinations of teal, pink, yellow …
‘Different sizes on the right side of the wardrobes to the left,’ he said. ‘Two men. Our victim and a lover.’
Elvis pulled open the drawer to the bedside cabinet. ‘This is always the most revealing place in anyone’s bedroom,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an asthma inhaler, hair putty and a men’s health magazine from 2002. What about you?’ He smirked.
‘Proton pump inhibitors, floss and Tiger Balm,’ Van den Bergen said, grimacing at the contents Elvis had revealed. ‘Jesus. It’s like the storeroom in a sex shop. Look of the size of those bloody dildos. And what the hell is that?’ He pointed to a black rubber string of balls, growing progressively larger in size.
‘Anal beads, boss.’ Elvis guffawed with laughter.
‘And that fucking thing?’ He pointed to what appeared to be a stainless-steel egg.
‘You jam it up your—’
Van den Bergen held his hand high. Thought of George’s middle finger inside him and blushed. A world away from this little haul in terms of adventurousness. ‘Stop. You’re making my prostate twitch.’ He considered his intermittent suffering with haemorrhoids and snorted with derision at the anal beads. Appraised the carefully made bed and the dust that was beginning to settle on the bedroom furniture. ‘Any sign of post addressed to somebody else? Check the kitchen. Everybody puts post in there.’
Elvis left the bedroom. Nobody had reported Floris Engels missing. There had been no evidence of a suicide note in the man’s clothing. Who and where was his partner?
