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

‘What’s the latest on Den Bosch?’

He was torn. Answer Minks’s query about an investigation that was currently the last thing on his mind, or find out more about the old man? But his decision was made for him when the digital display beeped at him, showing his name in bright red letters.

Taking his seat at the side of the doctor’s desk, he placed a hand over his spasming stomach.

‘Who was he?’ he asked. ‘How come he was left in such a bad way in the waiting room?’

His doctor shook her head. She buttoned the jacket of her smart trouser suit and closed her eyes like an indulgent parent. ‘Now, Paul. You know I can’t share those details with you.’

‘But I’m a cop.’

‘I’ll know more when he’s been looked over by Marianne de Koninck, but given his age and the fact that he popped in here as an emergency patient, he was just a very elderly, poorly gentleman who took a turn for the worse in our waiting room. Death comes to us all.’ She adjusted the clip in her hijab and smiled. ‘Now. I’ve had the results of your gastroscopy.’ With narrowed eyes, she scrutinised her computer screen. ‘Hiatus hernia.’

‘I already know that. Will I need an operation? You know, before it gives me throat cancer.’ Van den Bergen put his right leg over his left knee and started to bounce his foot up and down, up and down.

The doctor smiled. ‘Thirty per cent of over-fifties have this condition. It’s very common. I’m going to up your antacids. Give you a stronger proton-pump inhibitor. We need to keep that acid under control. But you must stop worrying about throat cancer, Paul. Nothing untoward was found in the investigative procedure.’

‘Can’t you fix it?’

‘Do you really want your ribcage sawn open and your stomach taken out? Because that’s what the operation entails. Haven’t you had enough trauma to that area?’ She pointed to the place where he had been carved from sternum to abdomen by the Butcher in a previous case.

He shook his head.

‘Well then.’ She handed him a prescription. ‘Take these twice a day. Have you cut out spice, alcohol and anything acidic from your diet?’

‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘Do these antacids have any nasty long-term side effects?’

‘Stop waiting to die, Paul.’

In the persistent drizzle outside the doctor’s surgery, Van den Bergen tried to force the memory of the old man’s unseeing eyes from his mind. Tried to stop worrying if he’d been frightened at the end. Had he had children who wouldn’t know where their father was? Had he been frustrated that he was breathing his last among uncaring strangers? Perhaps he’d felt relieved that his long life was finally over.

Enough!

He dialled Marie’s number. She picked up straightaway.

‘What have you got on Den Bosch?’ he asked.

On the other end, he could hear Marie crunching. Crisps, in all likelihood. ‘The guy’s got a clean record. I checked out his story. Apparently the heavy goods vehicle had been reported as stolen the day before port police intercepted it.’

‘And Den Bosch’s whereabouts over the last few days?’

Marie cleared her throat and started to speak, sounding like she was picking food from her molars. ‘Get this, boss. He was at some right-wing political rally at the time the heavy goods vehicle was stolen.’

Van den Bergen nodded, remembering what George had said about the swastika tattoos on the guy’s forearms. ‘Go on.’

‘I’ve had a look through his social media accounts. There’s not much, to be fair, but he’s connected on Facebook to some known neo-Nazi bullies who align themselves with the far right. They’re always showing up in press photos where the anti-racist lefties clash with supporters of Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom.’

‘And his business records?’

‘Clean as a whistle. Den Bosch produce exports, mainly to British supermarkets. Courgettes. Peppers. The usual greenhouse produce. It’s a thriving concern. He’s worth a few million, from what I can see from his accounts. I haven’t met him, boss, but on paper it looks like he’s legit. An unpleasant type, maybe, but pays his taxes, bought the local church a new roof and funds a youth group in the village where his farm is located. You said he keeps those tattoos covered with long sleeves?’

‘A man who keeps his fascism as a weekend hobby!’ Van den Bergen said, chuckling.

‘Why would a neo-Nazi, who’s well off on paper, at least, traffick Syrians into European countries?’ Marie asked. ‘Surely that’s the last thing he wants. And he certainly doesn’t need the money.’

‘Anything more on the driver?’

He started to walk towards the car, fingering the folded prescription in his coat pocket. More poison in his system. Hadn’t he read somewhere that prolonged use of proton-pump inhibitors made you more susceptible to osteoporosis? What did that mean for a man who was six foot five? Would a degenerative disease affect the tall worse than the short? There was so much more of him to crumble, after all.

‘Elvis has questioned the driver again, boss. He’s still refusing to talk. He won’t even give us his name. Won’t have legal representation. Nothing. It’s as though the guy doesn’t exist and nobody has come forward to his rescue. It’s a no-hoper of a case.’

‘With a dead twelve-year-old? There’s no way I’m letting this go. Not on my damned watch.’ Unlocking the car, he folded his long frame into the driver’s seat. ‘Where does Den Bosch live?’

‘In De Pijp. I’ll text over his address.’

‘A multimillionaire living in a shithole like that? I don’t buy it.’

‘It’s an up-and-coming area,’ Marie said.

‘Up and coming means ethnically mixed and full of lefty trendies,’ Van den Bergen said, gunning the car towards the nearest pharmacy. ‘Why the hell would someone like Frederik Den Bosch live in anything other than a white, conservative enclave?’

He rang off, sensing there was considerably more to the owner of Groenten Den Bosch than was immediately apparent. Calling George, he cut through her concerned chatter with a simple instruction: ‘Get ready. I’ll pick you up in an hour. We’re going to De Pijp.’

But first, he planned to take a little detour to the morgue.

CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_6bce478f-1c0d-5dd5-bcad-bd08c3aa17eb)

Van den Bergen’s apartment, later (#ulink_6bce478f-1c0d-5dd5-bcad-bd08c3aa17eb)

‘Fucking arseholes.’

George read the email yet again. The first time, she had digested its contents, open-mouthed and with a thudding heartbeat. She’d had that horrible feeling of dread she’d known on many an occasion, where all the blood drained from her skin, leaving her numb. The second time, she’d read it with a degree of disbelief, thinking there must have been a mistake. She had even called the entitled limp-dick who had signed off on the decision. Perhaps he’d accidentally emailed her instead of some other poor sod, who had put their heart and soul into a piece of work for an entire year or more and who had been looking forward to their travails coming to fruition in print. But no. There had been no error. Now, she reread the curt missive and felt only white-hot fury.

From: Timothy.Fitzmaurice@potestasbooks.co.uk (mailto:Timothy.Fitzmaurice@potestasbooks.co.uk)

To: Georgina.McKenzie@cam.ac.uk (mailto:Georgina.McKenzie@cam.ac.uk)

Subject: Forthcoming publication of ‘Heavy Traffick’

Dear Dr McKenzie,

I regret to inform you that, owing to a change in publishing priorities at Potestas Books, we have had to look again at our list for the forthcoming year and have come to the conclusion that your detailed study of ‘The traffick of women through Europe, and modern sexual slavery’ is no longer a good fit with our other titles. I am afraid your excellent criminological tome will have to find another home.

With all best wishes,

Timothy L Fitzmaurice MA Oxon

Grinding her molars together, George shook her head violently, tempted to pick up the laptop and hurl it through Van den Bergen’s French doors, onto the balcony. But what good would it do? This was the precarious life of a criminologist, she knew: reliant on her university teaching post to maintain her status and publication prospects as an academic; reliant on publication to secure funding; reliant on funding to continue her research work in prisons. She was just another arse-kissing PhD, trying to make a name for herself in a world where you had to stick your fingers in as many pies as possible to make ends meet, always preparing for them to get burned when you were inevitably kicked from grace into the fires of unemployable hell by some senior academic.