The Girl Who Got Revenge

by Marnie Riches

  The trafficked gravediggers fell upon the remaining three men with their spades. Baumgartner’s arm was the first casualty. The syringe flew through the air, though the needle remained sticking out of George’s flesh like a hellish splinter. The spade followed through to Baumgartner’s face, heaved with all the resentful vitriol that dwelled inside that modern-day slave. There was a sickening crack as the psychiatrist’s nose and cheekbone fractured simultaneously. Blood spattered onto his mouth and chin. His eyes rolled back in his head as he dropped to the ground.

  The remaining two henchmen were younger and stronger. One grabbed the second trafficked man’s spade out of the air and sent him flying sideways into a copse of lily trees, leaping after him with the spade raised high, clearly with the intention of pulverising him with his own gardening implement. But the fighting and the noise provided distraction enough for George to scramble for the shotgun that Baumgartner had dropped.

  ‘No, you don’t!’ Baumgartner snatched at the barrel of his weapon, only inches from his reach as he sprawled on the ground.

  But George had the upper hand. She stamped on his wrist, pinning him to the floor. ‘Yes, I fucking well do.’ She snatched up the shotgun, aiming it at his head. It was heavy enough to make the muscles in her hand scream with the effort of holding it steady, but she made every effort not to let her discomfort show. With her free left hand, she plucked the needle from her shoulder as though it were a mere inconvenience. Tossed it aside. ‘Hands on your head. It’s over.’

  With the gun in her hands, George was optimistic that she could bring the situation under control, at least temporarily. Except, she hadn’t accounted for Den Bosch climbing out of the grave when she had been looking the other way. And she hadn’t reckoned with the farm workers easily overpowering the half-starved gravediggers. Suddenly, George found the weapon wrenched out of her hands. She felt herself falling. The air was knocked out of her as she fell into the grave. Earth began to fall on her in gritty clods.

  ‘No!’ she cried.

  The soil filled her mouth as a manic, grinning Den Bosch dropped spade after spade of crumbly earth onto her head. She shook herself free of it. Got onto her knees and tried to claw her way up the sheer sides of the grave. When the two consecutive gunshots rang through the air, George wondered if she’d been wounded. As the two trafficked workers plummeted into the hole, lifeless and with dark red bloodstains blossoming across their chests, she was forced to acknowledge that she’d been outsmarted and outnumbered. Now, she was trapped beneath their weight.

  ‘Let me out! Marie! Elvis!’ She screamed, using every ounce of strength that she could muster. Praying that this wouldn’t be the end.

  ‘Lie down and accept what’s happening to you,’ Baumgartner said. ‘Being buried alive is very stressful and you’re making it worse.’ He grinned, as his beast of a son and his two men shovelled earth into the grave at an alarming rate.

  The smell of death threatened to overpower George as the trafficked men’s bodies bled out onto her. Her muscles burned with the effort of trying to push them off, but in that deep, claustrophobic space, the more she struggled, the more she found herself trapped. Within moments, her body was pinned in place by the soil. It rose like water, until her chin was submerged, then her mouth. Only her nose remained uncovered. She kept shaking her head to loosen the grip of the earth, but still, they shovelled, as though she was a rose bush they intended to plant.

  She shook her head free like a weak swimmer bobbing above water one last time, before the undertow of a freezing lake claimed them for good. ‘Help! Help me!’

  George used all that remained of her energy to scream before her mouth and nose were inundated again. They were working too hard and too fast. The soil was blocking her airways. Too heavy to shrug off.

  She was covered.

  She was hidden.

  It was over.

  CHAPTER 38

  The Den Bosch farm, several minutes earlier

  ‘They’ve definitely gone that way,’ Marie said, pointing towards the greenhouses. ‘That’s where the noise is coming from. That’s where the damn light is coming from.’

  ‘I think we should check this outbuilding first.’ Elvis stared up at the brightly lit window above them. His voice was a mere whisper. ‘I don’t want to go haring down a pitch-black dirt track and find some neo-Nazi thug creeping up behind me.’

  Frustrated by her colleague, Marie set off at a brisk pace into the fields. Glancing behind her. ‘Do what you like. I’m not wasting precious time.’

  Elvis was standing by the heavy door, which was ajar, a crestfallen look on his face. She knew he was fighting the demons that still possessed him; understood that every time he was faced with a chase, he would only ever be able to see the inside of a body bag. Ploughing on through the field, she made a mental note to recommend her therapist to him.

  Van den Bergen would bollock you for steaming off into a hostage situation without backup, she thought. But then she remembered Van den Bergen had put them in this position in the first place, and that nobody realised quite how much Marie was capable of. They think I’m just an IT house cat. Let them think that. They don’t know a thing.

  She stepped lightly over the dead boar, relishing the excitement of the danger she faced and the weight of the gun in her hand. Savouring the potential to avenge the Syrian girl – to get revenge on behalf of another mother who had lost her child needlessly.

  ‘Wait! Wait for me!’

  She heard footsteps behind her as Elvis jogged down the rutted path.

  ‘Look, if you’re not ready for this, go back.’

  He stared down at the dead boar. Shook his head. ‘I’m a cop. Of course I’m ready.’

  They crept amid the sprouts and cabbages until they came to the first cathedral of glass and light.

  ‘Jesus. This place is enormous. It’s like an aircraft hangar.’ Elvis gazed up at the greenhouse in wonder.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Her senses were sharp as she led them inside. Tomato plants towered above her. The smell reminded her of her childhood, when her mother had grown tomatoes in the garden, tasking a ten-year-old Marie with pollinating them with a feather. She was just musing on the industrial-scale beauty of the place when a grey-faced body tumbled out of the tall foliage and fell onto them.

  They both let out a shriek.

  ‘Tamara!’ Elvis caught her, manoeuvring her carefully to the ground.

  ‘Is she alive?’ Marie asked, transfixed by the sight of the limp form of Van den Bergen’s only child, her eyes rolled back in her head, mouth open, covered in soil.

  Elvis felt for a pulse in her neck, cradling her head on his knees. ‘Weak pulse, but yes.’ He patted her face. ‘Tamara.’

  She moaned, blinked. Licked her lips. There was recognition in her eyes as she registered Elvis’s face. ‘Thank God. Get Dad.’

  ‘What should we do?’ Elvis asked, looking to Marie for guidance.

  ‘Take her to the pool car. Call an ambulance.’

  ‘What about De Vries? We need backup, Marie. This is too much for two of us to take on.’

  Marie looked to the far side of the greenhouse. Spied another giant structure beyond. ‘George is in here somewhere. And Van den Bergen. We’re not alone.’ Elvis was right, of course. They were in over their heads. But if that grubby, duplicitous little tit, Roel de Vries, descended on the place with his team of bumbling homicide wannabes, she knew the boss and their little unit would end up being beaten with the shitty end of the stick. ‘Leave that to me. You sort out Tamara with an ambulance. I’ll deal with backup.’

  She feigned dialling HQ on her phone. No signal, of course. Elvis said nothing. Either he was complicit or too overwhelmed to realise that she was stringing him a line.

  ‘Oh, and give me your gun. I might need a second gun.’

  ‘No way. What if we’re ambushed on the way out?’

  ‘Just give me the flipping gun, Dirk. The party’s in the greenhouses.
Not back there.’

  As he passed the weapon to her, Marie sensed her colleague had symbolically handed his badge in. She could see it in his eyes. Burnout. Elvis’s days as a cop on active duty were over. He looked relieved. Even mustered a weak smile.

  Now she was alone but for two Sig Sauers and the delicious feeling that anything was possible. Jogging forward through the tall plants, clutching a gun in each hand, she felt like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. No longer stinky Marie that everyone took the piss out of – a woman who spent her days in the IT suite, trawling through snuff videos and paedo porn sites and the dregs of the darknet in the hope of catching the bad guys, and who spent her nights gaming in the dark at home to block out the pain of being alone. Now, she was a heroine. She could be more like George.

  At the end of the greenhouse, she came across the partially excavated shallow grave of Cornelia Verhagen. Felt warmed by her fury and the sense that she was so very alive next to this cold, dead woman.

  She passed through to the second greenhouse, almost tripping headlong over the horticultural trolley that was scudding across her path at pace, seemingly driven by Van den Bergen.

  She dropped to a crouch.

  ‘Boss. What the hell is going on? What are you doing?’

  He lay on the trolley, belly down, but was walking his hands forward on the ground to propel himself along. Blood still dripped from a head wound that had clearly been pouring not long ago. Red beads seeped from a claret-coloured crust the size of a fist onto black soil that had been flattened by many feet. His wrists were bloodied too. Telltale streaks of vermillion along the metal edge of the trolley showed where he had probably cut himself free of his bonds.

  ‘You see that boar back there? Well, my legs are bust thanks to him, and these fuckers bashed my head in with a hoe. Then left me for dead.’ He grimaced. ‘But I put a bullet right between the pig’s eyes and now I’m going to sneak up on these bastards. They killed my Tamara.’ He let out a dry, racking sob that abated suddenly. ‘And I’m going to kill them. There’s about five of them. Marie…they’ve got George.’ His speech was laboured; his eyes unfocused.

  ‘Stay there, boss. You’re a danger to yourself.’

  ‘And send you in to fight five murderers on your own? No way. Where the fuck is Elvis?’

  ‘Tamara’s alive, boss. Elvis has taken her to the car. He’s getting an ambulance.’

  Van den Bergen vomited explosively on the base of a tall pink lily tree.

  ‘Stay here, for Christ’s sake,’ Marie said.

  She was the only one who had nothing whatsoever to lose. Her son was gone. She had no love in her life. She only had the festering disappointment and simmering wrath of the wrongfully bereaved.

  The sound of men’s laughter some way off punctured the silence of the dense, humid air. With a gun in both hands, Marie marched forward, adoring the heady feeling of invincibility, no matter how fleeting her moment of triumph may be. For now, she was the mousy IT girl gone rogue – an unknown quantity.

  Den Bosch, Baumgartner and their men were so preoccupied by a large hip flask and raucous high-fiving that they didn’t notice her step through the lily trees into the clearing.

  ‘Drop your weapons. On the floor. Hands above your heads.’

  But it was as though she hadn’t spoken at all. They were bellowing with laughter as they turned towards her.

  Baumgartner said something in German to Den Bosch that Marie didn’t quite catch. Before she had time to work out what had been said, before she had time to let a single shot off, Baumgartner had blown holes in her both of her kneecaps with his shotgun. Her downfall came to pass as if in slow motion. She fell to the ground, screaming, arms flailing dramatically in the air as she couldn’t help but let go of her guns. Hitting the deck hard.

  ‘No!’ She gasped.

  The pain was excruciating. At that moment, she wished more than anything that she was unconscious. This case had been the undoing of them all. Amid the crippling agony, Marie looked just beyond where she had fallen and spied a deep pit. A grave. Jesus. Would they roll her in? Would this be the end of IT Marie? Was this some karmic payback for what she had done to Kamphuis?

  ‘Is that all of them?’ Den Bosch asked. ‘Have we managed to take out half of the Dutch police force?’ He wheezed with mirth, as though he’d cracked the funniest joke in the world. Swaying above Marie, he lunged to kick her in the upper thigh. ‘This one looks like she never washes her hair. Lads? Anyone want a go?’

  Marie felt a still-smouldering cigarette butt fizz against her skin. She rolled away from it, desperately trying to spot the discarded guns. One, she’d somehow tossed behind her. The other must have fallen into the grave.

  ‘Nah. She stinks of onions. And it’s late. Let’s go. She’ll have bled out by the morning.’

  Another man: ‘We can dig another deep one tomorrow and shove them all in. It’ll be like nothing ever happened.’

  ‘The plants will be amazing,’ said Den Bosch. ‘Nothing like a dead body for excellent fertiliser.’ It was as though they were on a simple shopping trip to a garden centre.

  The men were collecting up their tools. Clanking. Chatting. Drunk, but otherwise seeming as though they’d merely reached the end of a hard day’s work, whilst Marie writhed in agony, too weak to speak. She felt her consciousness slipping away, leaving only bottomless pain in place of humanity. Had Baumgartner punctured a major blood vessel? Was this it? If so, she’d failed. Damn it.

  Marie’s thoughts became befuddled. She started to dream of her baby son, as though he were still alive and she were cradling him in her arms. How beautiful he was, staring up at her with shining blue eyes and the perfect rose blush of a baby’s cheeks. Strawberry-blond fluff for hair. He was perfect. The end was nigh and it was everything she wanted. She had come home to her son. Even the pain was abating. Death wasn’t so bad, after all.

  ‘Fucking wankers.’ It was George McKenzie.

  How did this fit with her final dream?

  The sound of gunshot. Marie was wrenched from her glorious exit from this world back into the here and now. She opened her eyes to see George emerge from the deep, deep grave. The pistol in her hand – Marie’s service weapon – was smoking. Three shots had been fired. Inclining her head with the energy she had left, Marie spied Den Bosch and his men on the ground. Bloodied. Writhing. Clutching the places where they’d been wounded. One was out cold – perhaps dead. Only Baumgartner was still standing, loading the shotgun.

  ‘Keep still, you old Nazi bastard, I’m trying to kill you.’ George let off three further rounds. One found its home in the shoulder of an already prone Den Bosch. The other two kicked up dust by Baumgartner’s feet. The gun clicked uselessly as George tried to fire anew. Either an empty magazine or jammed. She tossed the weapon aside. Started to climb out, scowling and grunting at the gargantuan effort of scaling the wall of such a deep pit.

  ‘Silly English bitch. You’ve shot my boy!’

  Baumgartner hastened towards her, standing on her hand. He aimed the shotgun point-blank at the top of George’s head. If he pulled the trigger, it would be an instant and messy death.

  But more deafening shots rang out from somewhere close to Marie. She turned to the side to see Van den Bergen lying on the ground next to her, his legs at an awkward angle, his arms stretched out before him, holding Elvis’s gun, poised to shoot again.

  The target – Baumgartner – sank to his knees. His back was peppered with holes that bloomed dark red. He dropped his shotgun. Fell forward into the hole.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Van den Bergen asked.

  George looked down into the pit beneath her.

  ‘With five holes in his back? He looks a bit rough at best, I’d say.’

  CHAPTER 39

  Amsterdam, the Onze Lieve Vrouwehospitaal, 24 October

  ‘Aw, get something to eat down you, darling. You look thin,’ Aunty Sharon said, pulling a package wrapped in tinfoil from her shopping bag. ‘I baked some bun
yesterday. We only had a couple of slices out of it. Get a bit down you. That’ll put hairs on your chest.’

  George waved the offering away. ‘I’m all right, Aunty Shaz. I’m not hungry. They gave me toast.’ She took a gulp of the oxygen-enriched air from the mask that she was supposed to be wearing. Though she was glad to see her family by her hospital bedside, she was exhausted from her ordeal. All she really wanted to do was sit quietly and try to make sense of what had come to pass. She needed to figure out what she could have done better. Fathom how she was feeling about Van den Bergen.

  ‘My daughter saved old lanky twat’s girl,’ Letitia pronounced from the bedside chair that she sat on as though it were a throne. ‘She gets her hero genes from me, innit? Remember how I survived being captivated by that Rotterdam Silencer for ages?’ She folded her arms, looking like a novelty Christmas decoration in some shining chenille number with an appliqué dog on the front. Even at 9.30 a.m., it apparently was not too early for eyelash extensions and the flowing ombré Beyoncé hairdo. ‘Bravery. That’s what we got in spades in the Williams-May family.’ Letitia cast a disparaging look towards George’s father, who stood on the other side of the bed, opening his mouth to get a word in edgeways and failing. ‘Give us that bun, Shaz. If she ain’t gonna eat it, it’s a shame to let it go to waste.’

  But Aunty Sharon had already put the foil-wrapped Jamaican fruitcake in the bedside locker. ‘Nah, man. You ain’t the one laid up with breathing difficulties and dehydration. This is for my niece, ’cos she been fighting off trafficking Nazi rarseclarts. Not for you.’

  ‘Hey! Cheeky cow.’ Letitia was up and out of her vinyl throne, clicking her fingers and sucking her teeth. ‘I was the one who got us all sat together on fucking Ryanair.’ She poked herself in the chest with a chubby finger topped with a blue nail extension. ‘Never mind Nazis. Them fucking seating regulations is like something out of the Nazis. And I managed to nick free peanuts off the snack trolley without getting copped. More than you did, eh?’