The Girl Who Got Revenge: The addictive new crime thriller of 2018

Falling from his wheelchair to the floor, Kaars curled up into a ball. With that bald head – hair only just growing back after months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment – he looked like a foetal bird inside an egg. Gasping. Moaning.

Good. Causing pain was a definite bonus. But he was certain it was happening. This was it.

‘Are you okay, Kaars?’ he asked, amused by the hollow intent of his words.

The old man stretched out a thin arm towards him, clearly begging for help. The mucus in the back of his throat rattled. His breath was shallow, almost imperceptible. His eyes clouded over.

Pushing the old man’s pyjama collar aside, revealing the lion tattoo as he did so, he checked that his work here had been successful. Sure enough, no blood flowed beneath his fingertips as he felt for a pulse. Kaars Verhagen was gone.

Wiping the place down for prints was easy, though he had to be extra vigilant that he left no footprints in the dust. The unfinished building work coated everything in a persistent layer of grime. A quick scatter of the debris that had been left behind in a dustpan would soon sort that. Leaving was a consideration, though. This was a busy area. Not like the others. Would he be seen?

No. He was the grey man.

Pulling his average and unremarkable raincoat closed against the wind and drizzle, he unfurled his average and unremarkable black umbrella and walked away at an unremarkable speed into the dank morning.

CHAPTER 10 (#ulink_7643b090-f542-568f-9aea-b1ebca3f3dbb)

Amsterdam, Den Bosch’s house in De Pijp, later (#ulink_7643b090-f542-568f-9aea-b1ebca3f3dbb)

‘No answer,’ Van den Bergen said, peering through the letterbox. ‘He’s not at his business premises. Not at home. Shit. Where the hell is he?’ For good measure, he thumped on the front door a fourth time. The paintwork was surprisingly shoddy for a man with company finances as robust as Den Bosch’s.

Elvis placed a placatory hand on his arm. ‘We can come back, boss.’ His nose was red and his eyes were watering against the stiff wind. ‘In fact, without a warrant, we’ve got no option.’

Van den Bergen batted him away. ‘Are you patronising your superior officer?’

Smiling. Elvis was bloody smiling. He was all Zen since he’d discovered the joys of love and a second chance at living.

‘No. But there’s no point sweating it. He could be anywhere. We know next to nothing about him. He puts hardly anything on Facebook and he’s not on any of the other social media sites. There’s no way of proving he’s got anything to do with the trafficked Syrians.’ He dug his hands deeper inside his leather jacket and scanned the street. ‘We’re grasping at straws.’

‘We’re being thorough. In a case without leads, we have nowhere else to go.’

Two flamboyantly dressed students ambled by, chatting too animatedly about someone called Kenny who’d drunk so much that he’d puked in some girl’s mouth. Van den Bergen thought about his baby granddaughter and shuddered at the thought that, one day, some chump might vomit into her mouth in some student fleapit of a bar in De Pijp. Across the way, two women clad in burkas scurried into a run-down house, glancing over their shoulders. One was carrying a large tartan shopper – the kind Van den Bergen had seen people fill with washing. The other clutched at bulging bags. Neither were old.

‘Excuse me, ladies!’ he shouted to them, trying to keep the friendliness in his voice and the weariness out of it.

But they had already slammed the door.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Like that, eh?’

Approaching, he rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. It was as if he had merely imagined them.

‘I told you,’ Elvis said, peering up at the dirt-streaked windows. The pointing between the bricks was crumbling and the gutter near the roof on the three-storey building was cracked and coming away from the facade. ‘Me and Marie had the same thing. Nobody wants to talk round here.’

‘But it’s supposed to be trendy and vibrant, these days.’ Van den Bergen cast an appraising eye over the café that was several doors down from Den Bosch’s house. The windows were steamy. The lights were on. The sound of chatter and laughter spilled onto the busy street as three young men bundled out, wrapping themselves with scarves against the biting autumnal air. Business was booming in De Pijp. ‘Bohemian, and all that crap. I expected the people here to be more talkative. Let’s keep going.’

Together, they worked their way down the street, knocking on doors only to be met by twitching net curtains or vehement denials – from the neighbours who did deign to open their doors – that they knew Den Bosch at all. Helpfully unhelpful, often in pidgin Dutch and in several different accents. The air was heady with the smells of cooking from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Van den Bergen could also smell bullshit very strongly indeed.

‘Are you telling me that not a single soul knows a successful businessman like Den Bosch on a busy street like this?’ he asked Elvis as they entered the welcoming warmth of the Wakker/Lekker café – its name a claim that its fare could both wake you up and be delicious. Van den Bergen yawned and his stomach growled. The smell of coffee and cake wafted around him like a timely greeting. ‘Den Bosch’s name is emblazoned on the side of those giant bloody trucks.’

‘Yeah. But you’d only see those on the motorways and at the docks, boss. Not locally. I’d never notice one in a million years unless I was looking for it specifically.’

Donning his reading glasses, Van den Bergen looked longingly at the lemon cake, remembered that anything acidic was a no-no for hiatus hernia sufferers. And there was the small matter of being on duty.

‘Just a koffie verkeerd please,’ he said to the woman behind the counter.

She looked at him blankly, forcing him to reappraise the menu, which only had the café’s offerings in Italian.

‘Latte. I mean a latte.’ Then he remembered that anything high in fat was discouraged too. Damn it. ‘With skimmed milk.’ He swallowed. Patted his stomach. ‘I’ve got a hiatus hernia.’

He removed his glasses and treated the woman to a half-smile that was more of a grimace. Why the hell had he just shared that detail with her? Perhaps because the doc had said that thirty per cent of all over-fifties were afflicted, and she looked well over fifty. Maybe he was just looking for a connection with someone who understood.

She laughed, hooking her no-nonsense grey bob behind her ears. ‘Me too, lovey. Me too. Haven’t we all? I’m a martyr to mine!’

Hope surged inside him for the first time in days. But in his pocket, the blister pack of super-strength antacids he was forced to pop twice per day reminded him that there was little to be happy about. His body was crumbling. And then, the memory of Arnold van Blanken, expiring on the waiting room floor, returned, snuffing out every emotion except frustration. Here he was, saddled with the murder of a trafficked girl that he couldn’t solve; unable officially to investigate the murders of several old men that perhaps he could.

‘Do you know anything about Frederik Den Bosch?’ he asked, pointing to the lemon cake and indicating that she should serve him up a slice of it after all.

Her friendly smile soured into mean, thin lips. ‘The farmer? Mr High and Mighty?’

Van den Bergen placed his coins carefully on the counter. ‘Not keen?’

She kept her voice low. Leaned in so that the rest of her clientele couldn’t eavesdrop. ‘He’s selfish. He always takes my parking space with that ridiculous Jeep of his and he obviously doesn’t give a hoot that I’m much older than him. It’s not like he doesn’t know I’ve got arthritis in my knees. We had a conversation about it years ago. Big turd.’

Sensing that the café owner was rather enjoying offloading about her neighbour, Van den Bergen showed her his ID. Winked conspiratorially. ‘Go on. My colleague and I are both very interested in Mr Den Bosch. Anything you say may be of help to our investigation.’

The woman glanced at the group of young people who were enjoying croissants and hot drinks by the window. She turned back to Van den Bergen and beckoned him and Elvis into the back room.

In a space that was otherwise stacked high with boxes and cluttered with shabby, broken seating that had reached the end of its useful life, she gestured that they should sit on beat-up armchairs, arranged in a sociable group. Wakker/Lekker’s proprietor was a woman who liked to hold court on a regular basis, Van den Bergen assessed.

She wiped her hands on her flowery apron, her face flushed. ‘Why are you investigating him? Can you tell me?’

Clearing his throat, Van den Bergen considered his words carefully, sensing that this might be a woman prone to hyperbole and conjecture. ‘One of Mr Den Bosch’s trucks was stolen and I’m afraid the port police found cargo on board that shouldn’t have been there. We’re trying to find out more about Den Bosch, and why his truck might have been used to commit some very serious crimes.’

‘Drugs!’ Her eyes brightened. ‘Was it drugs?’

‘No. Please, Mevrouw. Tell me if there’s anything else you know about Frederik Den Bosch. His other neighbours seem reluctant to speak to us, but I can tell you’re a fine, upstanding Dutch citizen.’

She nodded vociferously. ‘I am. You bet. But he’s not, that overgrown ferret. Everyone thinks he’s a pillar of the community, but what he’s doing with those houses is wrong.’

‘What houses?’ Van den Bergen had already opened his notebook and was poised to write. At his side, Elvis sat silently observing the woman’s body language.

‘Didn’t you know? He owns three houses on this street alone, and about five on the next. Stuffs them to the rafters with immigrants. It’s a disgrace.’

‘Oh?’

She closed her eyes. ‘Rammed in there like shrink-wrapped sausages. That’s why they won’t talk to you. They’re all afraid. And he lets his properties go to rack and ruin. Have you seen the state of them? All bust guttering and filthy windows. Slum landlord – that’s what Den Bosch is. And they’re all illegals, I reckon.’

‘Why? What makes you say that?’