Having drifted off, George was jolted awake a while later by her phone buzzing with a text. It was from Marie.
‘Den Bosch owns Bosch, Boom & Tuin – a subsidiary of Groenten Den Bosch. André Baumgartner is listed as a company director.’
How had she missed it? Boom – tree, and tuin – garden were Baum and Garten in German. Baumgartner. Dr Baumgartner.
‘Oh, George. You thick, thick bastard,’ she told her reflection in Tinesha’s dressing-table mirror.
But as she tried to make sense of the connection between the respected old psychiatrist and a neo-Nazi farmer half his age, her reflection in the mirror wobbled at the same time as she heard a loud crash from below.
‘Papa!’
CHAPTER 25
The Den Bosch farm near Nieuw-Vennep, then houses in De Pijp, later
‘Why did you deliver a veg box to my daughter, you weirdo?’ Van den Bergen had Den Bosch by the collar and was pulling him up to eye level. No mean feat, given Den Bosch was built like a side of beef.
Investigating Hendrik van Eden’s bloodline on the side could wait. After a morning of dealing with urban congestion woes and dangerous drivers in his tedious new role as senior traffic hump, Van den Bergen had used his lunch break to speed out to Den Bosch’s farm and confront the tattooed, shifty, gold-toothed prick about Tamara’s gift. The irony of his committing a traffic offence or two en route was not lost on him. George would laugh. But George wasn’t there. Angry Opa was flying solo.
‘Answer me!’ He bent Den Bosch backwards over his desk, but Den Bosch was strong and quickly pushed him off.
‘Police brutality, eh? Over a veg box? Groenten Den Bosch is a wholesaler, you fucking idiot. I don’t give out sampler boxes to private households. I supply British supermarkets. Is your daughter Tesco? Is she?’ He brushed himself down with some drama and much obvious contempt. ‘You’re jumping to ridiculous conclusions because you can’t solve your case. It’s not my fault some little Arab cow died in the back of one of my stolen trucks.’
‘Show some respect for the dead, you pig!’ Van den Bergen noticed florid red scratches on his cheek. Pointed to them. ‘Where did you get those?’
‘I’m a farmer. I run a farm with mature hedging that’s just been cut back hard for the winter. Have you never got scratched to shit by hawthorn?’ Den Bosch touched his cheek absently and scowled. Dirt beneath his fingernails attested to a working life spent with his hands in the earth. ‘You’re a gardener, aren’t you?’
Observing Den Bosch through narrowed eyes, Van den Bergen advanced towards him again. But his quarry was too quick and had already repositioned himself with the bulk of the desk between them. ‘What the hell do you know about my hobbies? Was that you or one of your men at the allotment this morning? I know someone was following me. I’m not bloody stupid.’
Den Bosch’s secretary walked in at that moment, carrying a stack of lever-arch folders. She was a stout, well-scrubbed woman of advanced years. The most excitement she ever saw was probably a cake sale at church.
‘Oh, sorry, Frederik. I didn’t realise you had company.’
‘Chief Inspector Van den Bergen was just leaving, weren’t you?’
Van den Bergen tried and failed to stifle a low growl. ‘I haven’t finished with you,’ he said. ‘You’re up to something. I know you are. You and that imam.’ He squeezed his index finger and thumb together. ‘I’m this close to having enough evidence for it all to stand up in court.’
Den Bosch folded his arms, revealing those carefully executed Nazi tattoos as his shirtsleeves rode up. He flashed a smile that would have the owner of a cash-for-gold branch peeing with excitement. ‘If you’ve got a warrant, arrest me.’ He chuckled smugly. ‘Except you’re not on this case anymore, are you? A little birdy called Roel de Vries told me that you got your bony arse kicked off it.’ With his secretary bearing witness to this confrontation, Den Bosch moved back around the desk. Ushered Van den Bergen to the door as though he were a guest who had merely come to the end of a sanctioned visit. ‘Know what I’d do, Paul?’
‘Paul? Do you think this is some kind of joke?’ Van den Bergen straightened up, hoping to use his height to gain an advantage over this chump.
But this particular farmer was not easily intimidated, slapping the policeman on the back as if they were old pals. ‘Paul, with your cabin at Sloterdijkermeer, and your apartment with the nice French doors onto the balcony where McKenzie likes to have a sly smoke, and your daughter, Tamara, who may or may not enjoy organic courgettes in the safety of her nice Amstelveen starter-home… My dear Paul, I’d keep my nose out of respectable businessmen’s private lives, if I were you. You never know what terrible fate might befall you and yours. I believe the darkies call it karma. I’d call it common sense.’
With Den Bosch’s unsavoury words leaving a foul taste in his mouth, Van den Bergen hastened away from the flat expanses of the countryside, where he felt naked and exposed, back towards the relative normality of the city and the enclosed safety of police headquarters, swallowing down a veritable eruption of stomach acid.
‘Cheeky bastard,’ he told the roadworks, conjuring in his mind’s eye an image of Den Bosch, with his tattooed arms and that smug expression on his face. ‘I’m going to bring you down, you disrespectful, exploitative son of a bitch.’
He called his home number on his car phone. Tamara picked up.
‘What is it, Dad?’ The baby was crying in the background.
‘Do me a favour. Don’t open the door to anybody. Stay in. It’s wet anyway.’
‘But I’ve got to get some bits from the house. I’ve run out of—’
‘Text me a list. I’ll go to the shop. Stay away from the windows.’
‘Dad! That’s ridiculous.’
‘Just do it, will you?’
He hung up. Agitated, he parked badly in a space that was too tight for his E-Class. Jogged from the car park into the Elandsgracht building, acutely aware that he was late and that his tardiness wouldn’t go unnoticed. As he flung his coat onto his chair, Marie and Elvis looked at him quizzically, but he shook his head. He dialled George. Straight to voicemail.
‘George. It’s me. I know you’re in the UK but please, please be vigilant. I’ve just had a run-in with that prick Den Bosch and he knew too much about our lives for comfort. We’re being watched.’
Behind him, a man cleared his throat. ‘Being watched, are you?’
Van den Bergen turned to find Roel de Vries, standing with his hands behind his back, scowling.
‘You.’
‘Yes. Me. Are you harassing my witness during lunch, Paul? I hope not.’
Van den Bergen grabbed his lesser colleague by the forearms. ‘Get a warrant for his arrest. For Christ’s sake, Roel. He’s as dirty as they come.’
Slowly, de Vries shook his head and tutted. ‘I’m not about to engage in such slipshod police work. Especially when my interviews with the victims of the Port of Amsterdam debacle yielded not a single halal sausage. Den Bosch is clean. You’ve been looking in the wrong place. But there’s an ex-con from Utrecht who recently got out for drug smuggling and car theft that my team is looking into. Bobby de Wit. His father was a Manchester United supporter and called him after Bobby Charlton. That’s grounds for suspicion right there.’ His scowl evaporated as he bellowed with laughter at his own joke. ‘Oh, I think we have our man. He fits the bill. He was even spotted in Amsterdam the night the Den Bosch truck got stolen.’ He slapped Van den Bergen on the back. ‘Sometimes, all you need is a fresh outlook.’ His breath smelled of eggs and cigars. ‘Now, how are you getting on with our great city’s highways and byways?’
‘What do you want, Roel?’
‘Marie. I’ve come to claim your lovely IT girl as my own. Minks approved it.’
Van den Bergen studied his colleague’s wind-burnt face, with that absurd greasy comb-over he wore and the joke tie. Garfield, today. ‘No way. Tell Minks it’s over my dead body. You’ve got your own team.
Get your own IT expert to research Bobby bloody Charlton.’
Roel’s expression soured again. ‘It might well be over your dead body if you keep aggravating taxpayers without solid grounds.’
Marie stood up abruptly, her face flushed bright red. A blotchy rash crawled up her neck. ‘I’m not coming with you, Inspector de Vries. I’m sorry. My place is here with Chief Inspector Van den Bergen or at home in bed.’
Holding his hand out, Van den Bergen shook his head. ‘No, Marie. That’s really kind, but you mustn’t jeopardise your—’
‘I’m not coming. I have a very contagious skin complaint.’ She scratched at the two ripe spots on her chin that Van den Bergen had been careful not to look at until now. ‘Very contagious. In fact, I should be off sick at home. So, it’s your choice. I either go home right now, or I spread my skin disease among your team. Dirk, here and Van den Bergen have immunity, you see.’
Roel de Vries paled visibly. ‘What is your…er…complaint?’
‘Emblisticised hepititoid nodules. Very painful and can cause impotence in men.’ She smiled sincerely, ran her hand through the greasy folds of her red-brown hair and sat back down, as though she knew there would be no further challenge.
‘Oh. Is that the time?’ Roel said, glancing down at his watch. Wiping his upper lip and adjusting his tie at the neck. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ With a disconcerted half-smile plastered across his waxy face, he strode off down the corridor.
‘What’s happened to Abadi?’ Van den Bergen shouted after him.
‘I’m cutting him loose.’
‘Bobby Charlton, my arse,’ Van den Bergen said to Elvis and Marie. He trudged over to the coffee machine and made each of his junior detectives an almost drinkable cup of coffee. ‘I’ve got to nail Den Bosch,’ he said, returning with the mugs.
‘Boss. You love me. All these years, and you never said a word.’ Elvis looked into the beaker of grey frothy liquid with an eyebrow raised.
Van den Bergen cleared his throat of acid and belched in response. ‘That was a brave thing you did there, Marie. Thanks. You didn’t have to.’
The red blotches on Marie’s neck crawled northwards to meet the flushed skin of her face. She dropped her gaze to her keyboard, fingers tapping away as if he hadn’t just paid her a compliment. ‘Thanks for the coffee. Do you mind if I frame it, rather than drink it, boss?’
But Van den Bergen didn’t register the playful jibe. He was thinking about Saif Abadi, no doubt collecting his shoelaces and belt at that very moment, as Roel de Vries checked him out of his two-star, high-security accommodation and booted him back onto the street. If he was quick, he could corner the doctor, whom they didn’t have enough evidence against to detain, before he left the building.
‘Elvis. Fancy a little door to door?’
When Marie shouted after him – ‘Oh I meant to tell you. Den Bosch has a subsidiary company called Bosch, Boom & Tuin. He co-owns it with Baumgartner’ – Van den Bergen was too engrossed in explaining his plan to Elvis to hear her.
‘Ah, Dr Abadi,’ he said, relieved to see they’d caught him before he’d had the chance to hail a cab or be picked up.
The doctor was looking rather more dishevelled than he had at the time of his arrest. Days without a shave had given the dark-haired man a beaten-down air. The scruffy clothes didn’t help. Van den Bergen registered a twinge of guilt coming from a place deep within him. It never sat well with him to arrest the wrong man, and his policeman’s gut instinct told him this doctor was no criminal – merely caught up in somebody else’s chicanery. He offered his hand by way of apology.
Abadi merely looked down at his oversized palm and turned away, clutching his effects in a clear bag. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’
‘Please. I need your help. This is nothing to do with your patients’ deaths. It’s about another case – a dead twelve-year-old Syrian girl who was treated like a side of beef in the back of a heavy goods vehicle, along with fifty-three of her countrymen. Two sustained brain damage on a journey that should have been a fresh start, no matter how illegal. Please. First, do no harm, right?’
As the Syrian doctor scrutinised him, evident animosity in his weary-looking black eyes, Van den Bergen forced a conciliatory smile onto his face. Realised he must look such a fake to this wronged man. Where the hell was George when he needed her? She was so much better at connecting with anyone who wasn’t white. She’d find it so easy to explain to the Syrian doctor how his shared cultural heritage meant he had a far better chance than Van den Bergen at getting Den Bosch’s tenants to open up about their landlord and their journey to the Netherlands. And she wouldn’t make it sound like the doctor was being used.
‘What are the magic words?’ Abadi asked, pulling his jacket on, studying Van den Bergen’s face so intently that he started to squirm.
‘We were just following a line of enquiry.’
‘You jumped to conclusions. I understand the case had never even been officially opened and now any investigation has been dropped at the say-so of your superior. My solicitor has told me to sue. So, again, what are the magic words?’
‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’
At the addresses Elvis had noted as being Den Bosch-owned houses, rented to immigrants, Abadi was welcomed inside while Van den Bergen was told to wait in the hallway like an unwelcome door-to-door salesman. The interiors were as grim as the exteriors – run-down, dirty, smelling strongly of damp beneath the wholesome cooking smells. He exchanged glances with Elvis, sneezing repeatedly as mildew and black mould stung in his nostrils.
‘Jesus. This is such a waste of time. I don’t know why George thought Abadi could help.’
‘I know. These are the people who slammed doors in our faces already, boss. They’re not stupid. Even if they trust him, if they know he’s representing us, they’ll keep schtum.’
Van den Bergen nodded. Sat down on the bottom step of an uncarpeted staircase, wishing he could understand the conversation that was taking place over coffee in the kitchen – the only room in the house that wasn’t being used as a bedroom. Arabic, or something. It was the fourth house they’d been inside. Abadi reported that the others had revealed little other than a story of travel west in a variety of trucks and the odd train – a slick yarn that had been worn smooth in the retelling. But no names.
Finally, Abadi emerged from the kitchen.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Van den Bergen said, eyeing his pallor and blank stare with excitement, feeling certain there had been a revelation worth hearing inside that kitchen.
‘I’m going home,’ Abadi said, pushing past them. ‘I should never have got involved.’
Outside, the rain fell in slanting rods, blackening the already grimy facades of the houses, as though a demon had breathed on them, marking them out as the hellish places where the damned lived.
Abadi hastened down the street towards the tram, not looking back at Van den Bergen.
‘Wait!’ Elvis shouted, jogging to catch up.
But Abadi merely glanced up at the black squares of the overlooking windows, apprehension evident in his eyes even from this angle. Van den Bergen sped up. Pulled alongside.
‘What the hell went on in there?’
‘You never saw me today. I came out of the holding cells and went straight home to my family.’ His hands were stuffed deeply into the pockets of his suit jacket. His hair had flattened to his skull in the rain. It was hard to tell if the water on his cheeks was rain or fearful tears.
Van den Bergen grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘They gave you names, didn’t they? Who is it, Saif? Tell me and I can make sure nobody else dies needlessly.’
Still walking at a pace Van den Bergen wouldn’t have thought possible in a man much smaller than him, Abadi ploughed on, only slowing as he approached the tram tracks.
‘Names! For God’s sake. Give me names!’
The doctor stopped abruptly. His voice was low and his words staccato. ‘Look. There’s an imam i
nvolved.’
‘Yeah. We already know,’ Elvis said. ‘Abdullah al Haq. He’s the one who’s always mouthing off on the TV. Runs the big mosque in—’
‘You don’t understand. This guy is dangerous. He has clerics coming to the mosque to recruit for Daesh. People like me – moderate Muslims – are risking life and limb to leave Syria. But there are scores of young men and women from well-established, settled families, converts from privileged Calvinist backgrounds, who are queuing up to go there and fight for the Islamic State.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Kids who are vulnerable. Mentally ill. Easily influenced and violent as hell. That’s the sort of army of thugs this imam has at his disposal. He’s going to hear that I’ve been digging. Speaking to you. He’ll send some lunatic after me and my beheading will be on YouTube by Monday morning.’
‘So al Haq is a people trafficker? But he’s not got a ready supply of heavy goods vehicles. He’s in cahoots.’ Van den Bergen pushed his drenched hair from his forehead and wiped the freezing rainwater from his eyes. A tram was approaching, rattling towards them at speed. He had to get the other names from Abadi before he boarded the tram home. With a fast-beating heart, Van den Bergen sensed that this was his only chance.
‘Tell me who else. Den Bosch is running the show, isn’t he? Tell me.’
Abadi shook his head. ‘It’s far worse than that.’ There was a haunted look in his eyes.
The beleaguered Syrian doctor stepped in front of the tram before the driver had a chance to slam on his brakes. The collision was a violent end. Saif Abadi was carried by momentum within feet of the tram stop, but when his body fell to the ground, he was unequivocally dead.
CHAPTER 26
The house of Kaars Verhagen, Oud Zuid, much later
‘Please let me in,’ Van den Bergen asked Cornelia Verhagen. ‘I have some difficult questions that need answering.’
Kaars Verhagen’s daughter looked flustered. With one arm in the sleeve of her coat, it was clear he had caught her at a bad time.
The Girl Who Got Revenge Page 18