The Girl Who Had No Fear

by Marnie Riches

Amid the thrum of the semi-sub’s engine, he read the letter, digesting every word as thoroughly but as quickly as possible, before Jorge spotted his subterfuge.

  Dear Michael,

  I don’t know even how to start this letter. I can’t believe I’ve found you, more than twenty years after you left. There’s so much I want to say to you, but now is not the time. Time is the thing we have the least of. We are both in danger, but for now, I know you’re alive and that’s the main thing.

  When I saw you in the jungle encampment, handcuffed to the wall of the shack you share with their chemist, it was all I could do not to cry with relief. I’ve travelled halfway across the world to find you, Papa, and don’t worry. While there’s breath in my body, I won’t let you go. Not without a fight. Like Letitia, the one thing I excel at is fighting. I’ve inherited her stubborn streak, you’ll be glad to hear.

  So many things to tell you …

  Know first, that I have never forgotten you. I realise that Letitia stripped you out of my life and that your departure was not your fault. I remembered all this time the way your voice sounds and the way you smelled when you put me on your shoulders and I hugged your head or when you cuddled me if I had fallen over. I learned Spanish at school to keep the memory of you alive, always quietly hoping that we would be reunited one day but, sadly, never finding time to look you up in those years when I had the chance and you were still safe and living in Spain. I’m so sorry for that. We should never delay the important stuff, like telling the people we love so dearly that they are loved. You never know when that opportunity might be gone forever. Well, I do love you, Papa. I always did. I never stopped.

  I will see you on the beach tonight when I load the drugs into the semi-sub that you are supposed to pilot to the Dominican Republic. Travelling undercover with this band of violent transportistas, I am writing this letter from the relative safety of a locked toilet, praying that my true identity is not discovered. I don’t know how things will play. But I have a plan to rescue you.

  The man you are working for is extremely dangerous. He knows exactly who you are and I have a feeling he kidnapped you specifically to get back at me. That’s possibly why he named the sub after me (though my name is now something entirely different). It’s a long story that I don’t yet fully understand all the twists and turns to. But I’m not afraid, Papa. I’m coming to get you.

  All my love always and forever.

  Ella xxx

  Realising that he had already been staring at the clipboard’s contents for too long, George’s father wiped away the tears with the back of his hand. Set the clipboard down and thought about the fragment of an old photo concealed inside the back of his watch, showing his beautiful daughter as a tiny 3-year-old. A photo he had kept in his wallet since it was taken almost twenty-five years earlier; a photo he had secreted inside the watch shortly after being snatched from his company’s shuttle bus by those Honduran gangsters. Years ago, now. He silently chastised himself for not taking note of the transportista who had bumped into him on the beach. He had no notion of the woman his little girl had turned into. His internet search efforts had revealed nothing under the name Ella Williams-May. It was as though she too had disappeared.

  ‘Hey! What’s this you’re so damned interested in?’ Jorge asked. Unexpectedly on his feet, stooping at his side beneath the low ceiling. His guard picked up the clipboard and leafed through the paperwork.

  ‘Nothing!’ Michael said, trying to snatch it back. Suddenly ice-cold in the knowledge that his only chance of rescue was about to be discovered and that his daughter’s safety – already more than precarious – was now in jeopardy. ‘Give it to me!’

  The blow to the head from Jorge’s practised fist stung. But it was clear that the guard had happened upon the letter.

  ‘What’s this shit, mecánico? Eh?’ Another stinging punch sent him flying from the chair onto the floor of the sub. ‘A letter in English? What the fuck is this, man? Tell me what it says.’ Jorge leaped on top of him and started to rain down merciless blows on him.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t read English,’ Michael lied.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ There was meth-fuelled bloodlust in Jorge’s eyes.

  ‘The chemist! The guy I share the shack with. He must have put it in my pocket. I haven’t got a clue what it says either. I swear.’

  Jorge pinned him on the floor painfully, digging his knees into Michael’s arms so that they felt like they might snap in two. He took his pistol out of the waistband of his sweat-soaked jeans. ‘You’re lying. I can see it in your lying Spanish face.’

  Clicking a bullet into the chamber of the gun, Jorge bared his teeth like a feral dog, his nostrils flaring. Ears ringing. The end of Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno’s life decelerating almost to single stills right down now, as though someone had slowed the footage on old film to capture his final moments in slo-mo. Michael’s only thought as Jorge pulled the trigger was not of the deafening gunpowder blast or that he was going to die. He thought of his daughter, being discovered and beheaded because of his own stupidity.

  And then the bullet found its mark.

  CHAPTER 39

  Mexico, Hotel Bahia Maya, Cancun, a little later

  ‘When are you coming home, Dad?’ Tamara said.

  Swallowing hard, Van den Bergen drank in the sight of his daughter on screen, committing her maturing face to memory. Then, his focus turned to his granddaughter, Eva, who was sitting on her mother’s knee, pulling chunks out of Tamara’s hair. Half of Numb-Nuts’ DNA but still the most adorable child in the world. His muscles still held the memory of what the chubby, tiny girl felt like in his arms and the baby smell of her skin. ‘I’m just about to start packing,’ he said, altering his laptop’s screen when he realised the camera was only filming the top of his head. ‘My flight leaves tonight. I’ll be back before you know it.’

  ‘I hope George has been looking after you,’ she said.

  Eva made a gurgling noise, lunging forwards and covering the screen in dribbly handprints.

  Van den Bergen reached out and touched the screen, thankful for the miracle of Skype and his girls, if nothing else in this godforsaken world was worth an iota of gratitude. ‘I’m fine. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll call when I land at Schiphol, tomorrow. Give my little princess a kiss from her gramps.’

  He killed the connection before the pain became too acute. Wondered if he’d ever make it back in one piece to his little family. Prayed that the woman he loved would make it back in one piece to him.

  ‘Where the hell are you, Georgina McKenzie?’ he said, staring at the string of texts from her on his phone, dating back months and months. Van den Bergen liked to keep every single exchange between them as a memento of what he still couldn’t believe he had, though he had been loath to agree to it for years.

  His finger hovered over the call button, but he realised that dialling George’s number was out of the question. If her phone rang and whoever she was with discovered she was speaking to a Dutch cop who was in cahoots with the local Federales, he could get her killed. If she wasn’t dead already. Without knowing if his words would ever reach her, he had texted her with that prick Ad Karelse’s details, including an explanatory note that Nikolay Bebchuck’s holding company, InterChem GmbH, was a client of Karelse’s employer. He had been careful to point out that Karelse was working in IT at Chembedrijf, potentially with access to the company’s intranet, accounting systems and employees’ email accounts. If George had received the text, she would have known immediately what the subtext of his message was: Van den Bergen wanted her to shelve whatever life-threatening activity she was currently preoccupied by in order to contact her ex-boyfriend and engage him in acts of industrial espionage. It was a simple ask, wasn’t it?

  He sipped his cranberry juice and water, gazing sullenly at the turquoise Caribbean Sea and the cobalt-blue sky that hung above it like a doting lover. His fingers trailed absently in the fine white sand, already warmed by the
mid-morning sun. A tropical idyll, trimmed by well-tended royal palms, and here he was, sitting on a sunbed by the sea, on an almost-week-long trip that had been paid for by Maarten Minks, who was practically ejaculating with excitement about the developments. But without George safe and sound at his side, Van den Bergen may as well have been trudging through the torrential rain on the Hoek van Holland dockside, being shat upon by giant seagulls who didn’t like the look of lanky, misanthropic, ageing detectives.

  Checking his watch, he realised it was time to get on with it. His suitcase wouldn’t pack itself.

  He was just about to close his laptop and put it into its bag when he noticed that a new email had appeared in his inbox. Sent from an email address he didn’t recognise – info@silentcrocodile.com. It was marked as urgent.

  ‘Let me guess. A phishing scam or some middle-class mummypreneur trying to sell me overpriced toys for Eva made from organic Himalayan yak shit.’

  Growling with derision, loud enough that the hotel employee who was raking the beach paused in his task to check him out, Van den Bergen moved to redirect the email straight to junk. Thought better of it and clicked it open.

  There was a message, written in English.

  I spy with my little eye, something beginning with S …

  The cryptic message was accompanied by a photo of Elvis, strapped to a chair in what appeared to be a loading bay in some sort of warehouse. Elvis’ mouth had been gaffer-taped. His battered, bloodied head lolled forwards onto his blood-stained chest. It was impossible to tell if he was dead or alive. But the Sig Sauer handgun that was pressed to his temple by a man who was just out of shot told Van den Bergen that if death hadn’t already paid Elvis a visit, it would take very little to entice him over to that loading bay.

  ‘S,’ Van den Bergen said, feeling his fingertips start to prickle cold. Light-headed now, his pulse had gone into overdrive. The beach was beginning to spin and fragment, as though his life was nothing more than somebody else’s view through a kaleidoscope.

  ‘Pull it together, Paul,’ he said, trying to regulate his breathing. Focusing his attention away from the gruesome photograph and back onto the details of the message.

  He reread the email address of the sender. Silent crocodile. I spy … S for Silencer. With a shaky click on his mouse, he revisited the bookmarked Wikipedia page that Gonzales had sent him, giving the unofficial history of the infamous Coba cartel that operated in the Yucatan peninsula and Chiapas regions – almost certainly the originators of the bad meth. Almost certainly the guys they were hunting. And there in amongst the sensationalist reportage was a detail that caused a ball of burning stomach acid to explode back up Van den Bergen’s throat like a plume of magma.

  A notorious Coba cartel boss is reputed to be the enigmatic el cocodrilo, named after his pet crocodiles, whom he allegedly feeds his enemies to. The Mexican Federal Police has no record of el cocodrilo or idea of his true identity or the whereabouts of the ranch where the crocodiles are kept. It could be that he is nothing more than an urban myth.

  But Van den Bergen could guess exactly who the ‘silent crocodile’ was. His men had either killed or taken Elvis as a hostage on one continent. But there was a strong possibility that if she hadn’t already, if she was still alive, George was heading right into his jaws on another.

  CHAPTER 40

  Mexico, Chiapas Mountains, 29 May

  ‘So, it’s a simple execution job,’ Maritza said, as the truck bounced ever upwards into the Chiapas slopes. ‘Nikolay … el cocodrilo wants us to behead some girls that ran away from the brothel. Make sure your machetes are sharp. Come to me if you need a whetstone.’

  The other women nodded as though their leader had just told a gang of shelf-stackers in the supermarket that they were to load up a new variety of baked beans.

  This is ridiculous, George thought, observing her travel companions. What the hell am I doing? I can’t get involved in this shit anymore. These women have lost their moral compasses entirely. I’m going to have to come up with another way of finding out what happened to my dad. I’ve got to get the fuck back to Van den Bergen somehow.

  But George’s musings were interrupted by Paola, who nudged her in the ribs and smiled. ‘Hey, Jacinta. We get well paid for executions. This is going to be a good trip.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘My family are going to be partying in the streets when I get home with a fat roll of cash.’

  Forcing herself to return the enthusiastic smile, George realised there was no way that this adventure was going to end well. She had been lucky thus far, but she was certain her luck was going to run out right about now.

  The truck came to a standstill. Rummaging in her bag to check that the secret contents were all still properly concealed, George jumped when she realised Maritza was standing over her, holding a blade that was designed to hack down a mature palm tree with only a few good swings. The woman reached out, tilting George’s chin upwards with shining, razor-sharp metal that was only an inch away from her carotid artery.

  Steeling herself to show no fear, George treated Maritza to a cocksure glare that she had employed to good effect as a teen on the hardest streets of Southeast London.

  ‘Here. You can borrow my spare,’ Maritza said, removing the machete and offering George the handle.

  ‘Thanks.’ George ran her finger along the blade lightly and drew blood. Stifled a gasp at the unexpected sting by sucking her finger. The metallic taste was sickening. How she wished she could wash her hands with antibacterial soap and hot water. Despite her revulsion, she never took her eyes from the transportista’s. ‘Nice and sharp,’ she said. ‘Good tools do a good job.’

  ‘I’m expecting you to do a good job,’ Maritza said.

  George felt the weight of the weapon in her hand. ‘You can count on me.’ Forced a flash of teeth and hung the weapon carefully from her waistband.

  After the remainder of the guns was unloaded into an elegant old farmhouse that harked back to the area’s heyday of colonial pomp and splendour, George found herself stalking through the boiling-hot plantation. She was surrounded on all sides by tall crops of coffee, cotton and maize. Through the web of stalks, she spotted a woman, picking ripe coffee beans and putting them into a wicker basket. The woman was dressed in a colourful skirt and top; the top, heavily embroidered with flowers, and the skirt, elaborately woven into a rainbow of horizontal stripes, as was the traditional style of the indigenous Zapatistas. A baby was tied to her back in a papoose made from a blanket. When she saw George and her company of gun-running mercenaries, she took her basket and shrank further into the phalanx of coffee plants. The Zapatista insurgents held no sway on this plantation. Neither did the Mexican armed forces. This was a far-flung outpost in the Rotterdam Silencer’s empire. Only his word was law. And George was heading to meet him.

  She checked her tattoos. She had carefully gone over patches that were prominent and subject to wear during her too-few clandestine trips to the toilet. Still intact, thank God. George said a silent prayer of thanks to the staying power of WHSmith’s smudge- and waterproof felt-tipped pens and the elaborate, temporary tattoos that eBay had yielded. She followed that with a prayer to the gods of staying power that the tattoos wouldn’t curl, that the remaining ink in her pen would suffice and that the battery in her phone, which was already low, would last long enough for her to maintain contact with Van den Bergen, even if it was only via one brief text each day.

  Not that any of that mattered now. For George was about to come face to face with Stijn Pietersen – a man whom she had thought to be behind bars; a man who had stood in a warehouse on the outskirts of Amsterdam some ten or so years earlier, telling her to strap bags full of ecstasy beneath her breasts and to cover the contraband with a nun’s habit. A man whom her ex-squeeze, Danny, had worshipped as though he had been a demi-god. If he recognised Jacinta, the inexperienced transportista, if he realised who she had once been and who she now was, Stijn Pietersen, the Rotterdam Silencer, would
have everything to hate George for. Not only was she the lover of his nemesis, Van den Bergen – a man he had put a bullet in – but she had testified against him in a closed court, producing a faithful and damning sound recording of his criminal activities from the kit that had been concealed on her person by a man she fondly remembered as the Gargoyle. Oh, the bitter irony that fate had led her back to him. Testifying against Stijn Pietersen had been the start of her new life, but facing him now, she knew, would bring that life to an abrupt and brutal end.

  Goodbye, Van den Bergen, my love, she thought. Goodbye, Letitia. Goodbye, Papa. Goodbye shitty world with all your unanswered questions and unfulfilled dreams. If I’m going out, I’m going out showing not a shred of fucking fear. And I’m taking that murderous bastard, the Silencer, with me.

  She ran her hand over the handle of the machete and smiled grimly at what was to come.

  With a pounding heart that made her feel never more alive, though she had reached the end, she emerged into a clearing. The sun beat down on the dusty glare of the landing strip, glinting off the windows and shining fuselage of a light aircraft that was positioned at the far end. George pulled a pair of sunglasses from her cargo trousers and pushed them up her nose. Balked at the sight of about ten women who were arranged in a line in the middle of the strip, kneeling with their hands tied behind them and bags on their heads. The workers from the fields were being roughly shepherded towards them, forming a macabre and silent audience of shuffling, cowed women in clothes that seemed too jaunty for what was about to happen.

  ‘Line up behind the prisoners!’ Maritza said to them. ‘There are more of us than them, someone will have to duck out and take a hit in pay. Paola. Sit this one out.’

  Feeling that she might at any moment bring her breakfast up, George marched over to her allocated victim. A screaming woman on her knees. Jesus. A woman she was supposed to behead. How the hell was she going to wriggle out of this?