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

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.