CHAPTER 34
The Den Bosch farm, at the same time
Already riled, thanks to the taxi journey from hell, George didn’t so much feel the red mist descending. She was already surrounded by her own personal fog of the stuff, still annoyed with Numb-Nuts and Tamara for putting Van den Bergen in this position at all, the selfish, entitled kidults.
Traversing the courtyard, disoriented by the long shadows cast from the one solitary security light, not really knowing where the hell she was going, she heard men’s voices a way off, carried to her on the wind. Shouting. She glanced around at the outbuildings. A light burned in the second storey of one of them.
She flinched at the sound of a gunshot, though it wasn’t sharp and immediate. There was a slight delay as the sound rippled in waves over some distance, she assessed. She froze so that she might judge where the shots had come from. The fields. A shaft of light in the distance punctured the black night sky. Greenhouses. George could make out their boxy shapes as the source of the glow. No time to waste.
She was unarmed, however. So frantic had she been to leave Van den Bergen’s apartment that she had turned up to a gunfight with a satchel containing nothing more sinister than Rivka Zemel’s diary, her cigarettes, lighter and vaping stick, two sanitary towels, a fresh pack of industrial-strength Compeed blister plasters, roll-on deodorant, flight socks, one steroidal anal suppository in case Van den Bergen had a haemorrhoid emergency and, finally, a telescopic umbrella. By the time she had come across the dead boar in the middle of the muddy path that led to the greenhouse complex, she had devised several uses for the contents of her bag in a combat situation.
She tripped on the boar’s snout, falling headlong into the spires of sprouts to her left.
‘Jesus. What the fuck is that?’
Getting to her feet, she stood over the dead creature. It was the size of a small elephant. Its mouth lolled open, exposing those ferocious tusks. The bullet holes in its head told her the likely sequence of events.
‘He killed you, didn’t he? They set a boar on him. Christ. These people are mental. And now my new Docs are muddy and covered in blood because of you, you big hairy bastard.’ She was tempted to kick the boar but heard the squealing of what was unmistakeably a second some way off among the militarily precise rows of vegetables. Realised a sanitary towel probably wouldn’t do much against an angry boar.
George started to run. Sprinting towards the light, praying she wouldn’t turn her ankle in that treacherous soft ground that was rutted with trolley tracks, hoof prints and perhaps drag marks from Van den Bergen’s shoes. The tightness in her chest where her heart was breaking and the flaming ball of anger in her stomach almost sucked all the air out of her. But she ran through the pain.
‘Come on, you bastards!’ she shouted in English. If she drew them away from Van den Bergen, perhaps he’d have a chance to break free. If he were still alive. ‘I know you’re there. Come and fucking try it with me, if you’re hard enough.’
Fumbling in her satchel, she put the brand-new roll-on deodorant – mercifully a weighty little glass bottle – inside one of the flight socks. She swung it at her side, ready to challenge whoever was first to step forwards. David stepping up to Goliath.
But nobody came.
The dazzling brightness of the first greenhouse made her squint. It was enormous – the size of a warehouse. The interior was lush and green, full of unseasonal tomato plants growing tall and strong, with clusters of young fruit hanging like magical balls of jade near the bases, a canopy of leaves on high. As she stepped inside, she was hit by the warm, damp air. Further in were red, yellow and green capsicums growing fat and shiny – jewels hidden in among giant plants with large, almond-shaped leaves that drooped as if they were tired out by merely growing. Their water was supplied by a complicated rig-up of tubing that snaked along the ground and sprinklers that had been planted in perfect rows like soldiers on parade. Above were more nozzles – for additional watering or perhaps to spray the crops against pests. They hung from a criss-cross web of large steel girders, suspended from the glazed roof of that industrial hangar-sized space.
It was so silent in there, all George could hear beyond her thudding heart was the air con system, or whatever it was that Den Bosch used to keep the heat and humidity high. She unbuttoned her duffel coat, keeping a watchful eye out for some useful discarded tool or one of Den Bosch’s men, hiding in plain sight amongst the greenery.
‘Where are you, Paul?’ she whispered under her breath. The ache in her chest was still there. The deodorant-in-sock weapon in her hand felt ridiculously makeshift and inadequate. Would there ever be a time when she didn’t have to be brave? Silly question.
It was an eerie space. The pungent, metallic stink of the tomato plants made her want to sneeze. The lights were so bright, the green of the plants so unbroken and the black night sky above her so dense that she knew she was a walking target for any chump who could point a gun. Black girls in tartan duffels didn’t exactly blend in.
‘This is a fucking nightmare.’
Gingerly, reluctantly, she entered the next greenhouse. In here was a sea of purple-pink chrysanthemums. Ironic that Van den Bergen would have bloody loved a guided tour of the gardening mecca, under very different circumstances. But she wasn’t loving this at all. She glanced down at her muddy boots.
‘Aw, thems is fuckeroonied, man.’ She sucked her teeth.
A sound, suddenly, on the far side of this greenhouse. Low voices, talking. George strained her eyes to see who was there. She clutched her flight-sock tightly. Stooped a little, wishing the chrysanths were as tall as the tomatoes and peppers. Dropping to the ground, she started to crawl, commando style, towards the voices. Men. She could hear the sound of shovels scraping at the earth. Or was she imagining it? The voices were suddenly more alert. She craned her neck to see what had changed. Eyes were staring straight at her.
Den Bosch.
His tattooed arms and glinting gold teeth were unmistakable.
It happened so quickly. The four men in the corner of the greenhouse sprinted towards the far exit. The overhead sprinklers started to hiss, emitting something unseen. Not water. Was it crop spray?
George was suddenly tired. Sluggish. Barely able to shuffle forward on her elbows and knees.
‘I’m coming, old man.’
She thought she’d said the words, but had she? Her thoughts were cloudy. That red mist had been replaced by a mental pea-souper. The idea that sedative – perhaps something akin to ether – was being pumped through the overhead irrigation system inveigled its way into what remained of her salient thought. ‘Fucksticks. Come on, George.’
Getting to her knees was no mean feat; standing up, even more of a challenge. She started to totter towards the exit, yawning, stumbling into the plants, like a drunk in a nightclub trying to weave their way to the bar for a glass of water that would come six pints too late.
‘What are you lot up to in that corner?’
Hearing her own speech, slurring and clumsy, George shook her head in a bid to clear it. Felt sleep wrapping its tentacles around her, pulling her down to the ground. She had covered the distance to the corner where Den Bosch and his henchmen had been busy. A shovel was standing proud where it had been wedged vertically into the earth.
‘What am I doing?’ Drifting in and out of sleep as the gas pumped from the overhead jets, George willed herself to move. But she could no longer tell the difference between wakefulness and dreams.
She was lying sprawled on her side, staring into the face of a deathly pale Tamara, half submerged in the soil. Only her head, one shoulder and arm poked above ground, as though quicksand had tried to swallow her but had stalled halfway through its carnivorous meal. The ground around her was disturbed. Dirt beneath her fingernails. Blood dried on her temple.
In this dreamlike state, George saw Tamara blink. A bead of blood tracked down from her temple onto her cheek and into the corner of her mouth. Her lips par
ted.
‘Help.’
The slightest of sounds. What a strange dream George was having.
‘Help me.’
Except it wasn’t a dream.
Forcing herself to take everything she saw as reality, rather than a drugged fantasy, George reached out to touch Tamara’s face. She felt strangely distanced from her. Knew she had to get them both into the fresh air.
‘Where’s Paul? Your dad. Where is he?’
Tamara stared at her blankly. ‘Gone. They’re going to kill us all.’
Her speech was laboured and barely audible.
Come on, George. Snap out of it. Find the switch to shut off the sprinklers.
Crawling past Tamara, George was dimly aware of a mound of earth, roughly six feet long, beside her. No time for that though. She had to find the switch.
Beyond the shovel, she saw a control panel festooned with switches and a flashing light. She guessed there would be a canister of gas nearby, connected up to the pipework. George realised she had to disconnect the canister or switch the delivery system off. Hitting the panel clumsily, water started to come through the sprinklers. But she couldn’t be sure the gas wasn’t still being piped through. Tripping, she realised she’d walked into a barrel. On the side, there was a hazard label.
‘Fluothane – halothane vapour. Warning. Causes drowsiness. Do not operate machinery.’
A pipe had been rigged up, feeding from the gas barrel to the sprinkler system. Searching for a cap or a bung to seal the barrel once she’d wrenched the pipe free, George drew a blank. But then she remembered the sanitary towel in her bag. A giant pad for night-time. Taking it out and unfurling it, she held it under the nearest sprinkler until it was puffy and sodden. She rolled it up, pulled out the pipe and plugged the Fluothane barrel with the soggy towel. It would buy them time. Stumbling to the door, she flung it open to let the fresh air in. The biting wind blasted inside, immediately blowing away some of the narcotic cobwebs that the gas had spun around her.
‘Help!’ Tamara shouted weakly.
‘I’m coming.’
Clawing at the loose earth around her, George worked as much of Tamara free as she could. There was soil in her hair, her ears. Even her eyelashes.
‘Were they burying you?’
Tugging at Tamara’s arm almost dislocated her own. She was a dead weight.
‘You’ve got to help me, here, for Christ’s sake! Try to push any way you can. Hurry up. I’ve got to go after your dad.’
George yanked the shovel from its anchorage and started to dig around her to loosen the compacted earth. She took a step back onto the low mound beside Tamara’s burial ground but felt something give beneath her feet.
‘Oh, you’re joking. This can’t be happening.’
Feeling the contents of her stomach rising in her throat, George backed off hastily, flinging the shovel to the ground. She started to claw at the mound, shunting the topsoil away to see what lay beneath.
‘Jesus. No.’
Her careful fingers exposed the unmistakable tip of a nose. Excavating further, she traced the line of a forehead, chin, cheekbones. She swept the earth aside, revealing the grey death mask of someone she had last seen mere hours ago.
‘Cornelia Verhagen. Oh my God. You poor sod.’
‘Is she dead?’
George felt for a pulse, but the alabaster cold of the dead woman’s skin said it all. ‘Very.’ She choked back an angry sob, and started to claw again at the earth that still had Tamara in its grip, wanting to free her from this macabre burial ground.
With a little more effort, Tamara was free. She scrambled to her feet, her clothes dishevelled and covered in soil. Shaking from head to toe, teeth chattering. Her colour was bad; a blue tinge to her lips.
Hastily taking off her duffel, George felt the sedative fog lifting in earnest. She wrapped her coat around Tamara’s shoulders, led her to the path and pointed to the door through which she had entered. ‘Go back to the first greenhouse. Hide in the tomato plants until I come for you.’
‘But Dad’s that way.’ She pointed to the door that led on to the unknown.
‘You’re not coming with me. You’ll slow me down. With a bit of luck, more police should arrive at any minute.’
‘And if they don’t?’ Tamara’s eyes were filled with tears. ‘And if you don’t come back for me?’
‘I’ve got Compeed, cigs and Nivea forty-eight-hour deodorant,’ George said. ‘I’m fucking unstoppable.’
CHAPTER 35
The Den Bosch farm, at the same time
‘How could you?’ Van den Bergen asked, unashamedly weeping. ‘Why? Just tell me why!’
The pain in his legs was intense. He couldn’t move them without excruciating bolts shooting up to his groin. Despite his best efforts to move them, they lay on the flatbed trolley as though they were no longer part of him. Broken from the weight of the hog. Already swelling. But it was nothing compared to the agony of having seen Tamara on the cusp of death and all but buried in the ground.
‘She’ll be dead by now,’ Den Bosch said, checking his watch as though the killing of a young woman required precision timing, of which he was a master. ‘That gas we’ve just pumped in there should finish off your daughter and that cunt, your girlfriend, within minutes. If it hasn’t…’ He slapped the nose of his pistol in his hand. Grinned at Baumgartner, who merely sat imperiously on a camping stool, framed by a forest of giant oriental tree lilies. ‘One bullet each should do it.’ Winking, he licked his lips lasciviously, flashing that intimidating grille of gold teeth. ‘Mind you, I’ll wait until I’ve had a little fun with that girlfriend of yours first. I don’t mind a bit of dark meat on the side, as long as we’re purely talking recreation.’
Though the misery threatened to engulf him, Van den Bergen clung to the raft of his wrath. ‘If it’s me you want to punish, why the hell did you pick on the women in my life? Aren’t you man enough to square up to me in person? You’ve got to have your bully boys do it for you, you Nazi limp-dick?’
He could see the sneer forming on Den Bosch’s weather-beaten face, though beneath it, the punctured pride was obvious. Good. He had nothing left to lose. He’d been anticipating death for many, many years, and now, surrounded by five armed men, stripped of his Sig Sauer and unable to move his legs, he felt finally that the end was upon him.
Den Bosch approached and squatted beside him. He pushed Van den Bergen’s chin up roughly, using the nose of his handgun. A Smith & Wesson semi-automatic.
‘You stuck your big hooter into my business and you didn’t heed my warning. I don’t make idle threats, Chief Inspector. You take a swing at me, I’ll hit you where it hurts the most.’ His breath reeked of Jack Daniel’s and cigarettes, pronounced even above the pungent aroma of the giant fragrant lilies. Those normally hard eyes were somewhat unfocused. ‘Cornelia Verhagen made the mistake of tangling with me and my father.’ He looked over his shoulder at Baumgartner. ‘Bet she’s fucking regretting it now she’s in a shallow grave. I’m not sure if I should let her rot or feed her and your daughter to my surviving boar. Punishment for killing my stud.’ He forced the gun harder beneath Van den Bergen’s chin so that his neck was bent painfully backwards. ‘I make a lot of money from breeding those babies. We have some good fights. You know how much I can make in a night with a big boar and a dog in the ring? A hundred thousand. More. And you shot my best boy. Wanker.’
His face was twisted with hatred; those wind-burned cheeks beetroot red with anger and alcohol. But Van den Bergen pushed the pain of two broken shin bones aside to focus on what was before him. First, it was clear Baumgartner was indeed Den Bosch’s father. Secondly, if Den Bosch loosed a bullet at that angle into Van den Bergen’s head, it would guarantee a frontal lobotomy but, in all probability, not death. The arsehole didn’t know one end of a gun from another. At least ten shots had been fired from the greenhouses into the field, but not one had definitively found its mark. The graze to the head had almost certai
nly been a lucky accident. Perhaps, even from this vantage point, there was a way he could disarm the bastard and take out Baumgartner and the three other men before they could even let a round off. Finally, Van den Bergen reminded himself that all was not lost. Far from it. While Tamara and George might well be dying in the adjacent greenhouse, they were not yet dead. He had everything to fight for. And he was damned if he would leave little Eva to Numb-Nuts with nobody competent to oversee that shitbird’s parenting attempts.
Scanning his immediate surroundings, he could see that the three farm hands were big brutes. They didn’t look overly bright though, and he suspected they were half cut on spirits too. Baumgartner was the one to watch. Even at seventy-five, Van den Bergen spied a dangerously sharp intellect behind those calculating eyes. The elderly psychiatrist held a shotgun across his lap. Something in the way he held it spelled ex-military. And this was a man who knew how to manipulate and render a victim emotionally defenceless with just a few words.
‘If you’re going to kill me and feed me to the lilies, then you might as well tell me…’ He focused on Baumgartner. ‘Why did you murder the members of the Force of Five?’
Baumgartner stood, eyebrow raised, and took a few steps towards Van den Bergen. He poked at his leg with the barrel of his shotgun. ‘All that length of leg. Not much use to you now, is it?’
Van den Bergen bit hard on his tongue. It was all he could do to stifle a scream. He wasn’t about to given Baumgartner that satisfaction. He gasped. ‘You prescribed those old men the wrong medication, didn’t you? You killed them.’
The psychiatrist took a seat on the end of the horticultural trolley on which Van den Bergen lay. ‘Ah, dear Chief Inspector Van den Bergen. I’ve been watching you these past few weeks. And your daughter, of course.’ He smiled benignly, but a monster in a fine suit with a convincing smile was still a monster. ‘And your granddaughter. How lovely she is.’
Don’t react. Don’t react.
‘I’ll fucking kill you if you lay a hand on her,’ Van den Bergen said, mustering all the strength he had in those shot-to-bits stomach muscles of his and propelling himself upwards to sitting position. Trying to take a swing at Baumgartner. Except his hands were tied behind him with gardening twine that bit into his wrists.
The Girl Who Got Revenge Page 25