It was all George could do to sit helplessly on her bed, revisiting the horrific memory of discovering Cornelia Verhagen’s death mask of a face, just beneath the soil, the feeling of the two trafficked slave-workers tumbling into that grave on top of her. Dead weight.
She turned to her father, holding out her hand. Amid this chaos, George needed an anchor. They exchanged a knowing look. His eyes were smiling as he squeezed her hand. She could tell that Michael Carlos Isquierdo Moreno knew what she was going through, at least.
With great tenderness, he placed the oxygen mask over her face. ‘Pretend to be asleep,’ he said to her in Spanish. ‘I’ll get them out of here. We can come back later, when you’ve had a chance to rest.’
She closed her eyes, complicit. Thankful to have the calming influence of her father in her life to mitigate the petulance and unpredictability of her mother. With the love of her Aunty Sharon, George felt at that moment, despite the bickering sisters, that she was the luckiest woman alive.
Later, the doctor allowed her to wander along the corridor to the room where Tamara lay. She found her hooked up to an array of medical kit: drips fed fluid into her dehydrated body; monitoring apparatus binged and bonged, singing a song of recovery and hope. At her side, Numb-Nuts was snoring, his head bent at an awkward angle. He was wearing a papoose, and baby Eva slept, snuggled into his chest. The only wakeful, watchful person in the room was Tamara herself.
‘I owe you,’ she said, breaking into a violent coughing fit. Whatever she had inhaled in that greenhouse rumbled ominously in her chest.
Numb-Nuts and the baby slept on.
‘No you don’t. I did what any normal person would do.’
‘Normal people don’t barge into the midst of a hostage situation armed with plasters and deodorant. You’re in a different league, George. I can see what Dad loves so much about you.’
George pressed her lips together. Saw Van den Bergen in the sharp angles of Tamara’s face. ‘I’m not sure how much your dad loves me at all, actually. But anyway.’ She felt sadness wrapping itself around her chest, heavy and suffocating like phlegm. She tightened the knot of her dressing gown and clenched her toes together inside her slippers. ‘I’m going to see him in a minute. I want to be the first to sign the casts on his legs.’ George patted Tamara’s hand. ‘You’d better get back on your feet quickly. Your dad is going to be a nightmare to look after if he’s on crutches for weeks and weeks.’
She felt resentment lodge in her throat. A ball of acidic words that she couldn’t allow to escape. Not under these circumstances. If you had stayed put like your dad asked. If you and your dick of a husband weren’t such fucking liabilities. If…
‘I can’t believe you did all this for me,’ Tamara said. ‘I never thought—’
‘I didn’t do it for you,’ George said, sighing. ‘I did it for your father, because doting, easily manipulated fools rush in where more selfish, sensible bastards fear to tread. I did it for the twelve-year-old girl who ended up in the morgue because of Den Bosch and Baumgartner. Nobody’s around to avenge her death. But I was. And I did. I got revenge for that girl, and all the others like her, whose parents can’t or whose parents won’t. Me and Marie and Elvis and Van den Bergen. We closed that trafficking ring down because that’s how we roll. So, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Tamara, dear.’ She switched to English. ‘But sometimes shit just ain’t all about you.’
Her next stop was Marie’s room.
The unassuming redhead lay in bed with both knees raised above her, encased in plaster. At her side, a fully stocked drip stand stood guard: a bag of blood running dark red into the fat cannula in her arm; a clear bag of saline drip-dripping moisture back into her system; and yet another bag, containing who knew what. When George shuffled towards the bedside in her fluffy slippers, they shared a satisfied grin. She raised a hand to high five Marie, only remembering Marie’s propensity for soap dodging once she had committed to the gesture. Don’t be a cow, for Christ’s sake. They’re bound to have given her a good bed bath. You can always alcohol-rub your hands afterwards.
‘That was quite some double act we pulled there.’
Marie slapped her palm in answer, grimacing as her legs moved along with her body. ‘The morphine’s wearing off.’ She gestured up at the unidentified bag and raised an oversized syringe as an explanation. ‘They’ve told me I can self-administer, but I don’t want to overdo it. I want to stay alert.’
George shook her head and sat gingerly on the guest chair. ‘I’d take all the drugs I could get if it was me. What have they said? Will you walk again?’
Shrugging, Marie said, ‘Do you know how long they had me in surgery last night? Four hours. Four bloody hours. Baumgartner nicked an artery in the left one. I’m lucky I didn’t bleed to death.’
Staring up at the bag of blood, George realised that she had got off lucky being buried alive. ‘Do you feel better for the transfusion?’
Marie managed a smile. ‘Lots. They’ve replaced both knees but I’m going to have to have quite a few operations over the next year. I need new ligaments. All sorts.’
‘If they give you a wheelchair, can I call you Ironside?’
‘Wrong profession.’
‘Works for me.’
Though Marie’s face was pale from loss of blood, her eyes shone. The blue irises were sharp, as though the experience had somehow polished up Marie’s spirit where previously it had been dulled by a burdensome, repetitive life. ‘I love it. Ironside it is. It’s not fair Dirk should get the only decent nickname on the team.’
‘If you’d not have dropped that gun onto my chest…’ George fluffed up hair that needed washing; remnants of soil still clung stubbornly to her curls. She craned her neck to see that it was a sunny day outside, in an Amsterdam that they had made safer. ‘This would all have ended very differently. But I’m sorry about your knees. I’m sorry I didn’t shoot sooner. The poor sods who fell on top of me and all that soil…’
Shaking her head and closing her eyes, Marie made a harrumphing sound. ‘No need to explain. I played it wrong. I should have worried less about getting a bollocking from Minks and called it in properly. I fancied myself as bloody Angelina Jolie, didn’t I? I wanted to save the day, instead of being stuck behind a desk with every pervy wank-fantasy known to humanity and a pile of boring data.’ She sipped from a glass of water, looking suddenly crestfallen. Pink in her cheeks and a florid rash on her neck. ‘I screwed up. I deserve these knees and whatever else fate has in store for me.’
‘No. You helped put a trafficking gang out of action. If De Vries had bumbled onto the scene, there would have been more needless deaths than Cornelia Verhagen.’ George looked over at the giant ‘Get Well Soon!’ card, wanting to change the subject. ‘Who’s that from?’
Marie grinned. ‘Minks. He’s utterly pissed off with Van den Bergen, apparently, but has decided me and Elvis are heroes of the day. Fancy that!’
‘What the hell can he say? It was Minks who insisted we ease off Den Bosch. He was the one who wheeled some toady in to take over the case. De Vries never had a clue. No way would he have solved a case this complex. And nobody apart from Van den Bergen acknowledged that the deaths of the four old men were pertinent.’ George dabbed at the site on her arm where she had pulled her own cannula out. It was no longer bleeding, but it was sore and itchy.
She grabbed the card and started to read it, deciphering signatures from everyone in HQ who had ever had dealings with Marie, and plenty who hadn’t. An overly long and gushing message from Minks took pride of place in the middle. ‘Minks could get done for obstruction of justice, the way he behaved. He hasn’t got a leg to stand on.’
Marie laughed. ‘Neither have I!’
George patted her on the shoulder. ‘You did good, Ironside. You’re what we English call “nails”. Listen, I’ve got somewhere to be. I’ll catch you later.’
She’d left him until last, unsure how to feel. Having already made enquiries as soon
as her paramedics had wheeled her from the ambulance into the hospital, she knew that Van den Bergen had suffered no more than a concussion and two fractured tibiae, thanks to the dead weight of what had appeared to be a half-ton pig landing on him awkwardly. She knew that the round he’d emptied into Baumgartner’s back had saved her life; that if he hadn’t dragged himself in agony that hundred metres or so from where Den Bosch and Baumgartner had left him for dead, crippled and with a head wound, there would be no triumph. They would all be turning to compost in the middle of an industrial greenhouse, situated in a complex of greenhouses that was too vast to properly excavate.
The real hero in this story was Van den Bergen.
But George had already determined to leave her inattentive, distracted man. She had resolved to commit that most selfish of crimes – to break a lover’s heart in a bid to free her own.
‘Ah, there you are. Thank God.’ Van den Bergen was awake. He held his hand out, beckoning her to draw close. Like Marie, both his legs were in plaster and raised high. On his head was taped a thick wad of dressing.
‘That’s going to hurt like hell when they take it off,’ George said, wincing at the thought of all the white hair that would come out with the adhesive. ‘How do you feel, old man? Got a headache?’
His expression was one of pained stoicism. ‘Like you wouldn’t believe. And weeks of public transport ahead of me.’ He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed the back. Held her palm to his stubbled face. ‘I thought I’d lost you both there.’ He choked on a sob. A solitary tear fell onto his cheek and tracked its way along the sunken furrow beneath his cheekbone. ‘My girls.’
My girls. She swallowed his words, but they sank, heavy and indigestible, to the pit of her stomach. When had she become lumped in with Tamara on every fucking occasion so that there was barely a distinction between his daughter and his partner anymore? Stop being churlish, she thought. You know he doesn’t mean it as a slight.
‘I love you, George. Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again.’
Studying that familiar face, George felt a surge of emotion threaten to overwhelm her. She still loved this stubborn idiot of a man, with all his health anxieties and quirks and his bad cooking. ‘I could say the same of you. You’re not a superhero, Paul. You’re breakable. I wish you’d accept that, or one of these days I’m going to lose you. And where you go, I always follow. It’s not fair on either of us.’ She was sorely tempted to bring up, yet again, the possibility of his taking retirement and moving to the UK, where he could easily get some consultancy job or other. They could make a life that revolved around them, for a change, instead of his work and the antics of Amsterdam’s underbelly. Don’t say it. Don’t nag. Not while his legs are in plaster. Bite your damned tongue, George.
‘If Baumgartner had killed you, I wouldn’t have wanted to live. I’m nothing without you, George.’ His voice cracked, his mouth turned down at the corners. Those melancholy grey eyes were awash with sorrow. ‘Don’t ever leave me.’
She made the decision there and then, examining the scabbed wounds on his palms, that ending this lunacy they called a relationship could wait. A non-committal roll of her eyes and shake of her head would suffice in answer to his demand…for now.
‘You’d better get yourself well, old man,’ she said. ‘We’ve got loose ends that need tying up and Minks is overdue a big slice of humble pie. I want to be there when you force-feed it to the slippery little shithouse.’
‘Sign my cast?’
He grabbed a felt-tip pen from his nightstand and held it out to her.
Though George knew he was probably expecting her to write some kind of ‘Roses are red, violets are blue’ love limerick, under the circumstances, she could think only of one thing.
‘A cock and balls?’ The disappointment in his voice was more than apparent.
‘It’s good enough for Banksy.’
‘Banksy never drew a cock and balls. Certainly not on my bloody plaster cast.’
She signed her tiny work of art: ‘Wanksy’.
‘Yeah he did. Look!’ She pointed at her handiwork.
‘That says, Wanksy, not Banksy.’
‘Speech impediment, innit?’
There was a smile. For now, they had a workable truce.
CHAPTER 40
Amsterdam, police headquarters, 31 October
‘Oh, here he is,’ Roel de Vries said. ‘Hopalong Cassidy’s back.’
The jumped-up little shit looked as though somebody had pricked him with a needle, and now all the hot air and bullshit was leaching out like a wet fart. Van den Bergen kept that thought to himself as he swung his crutches ahead of him, dragging his heavy casts along until he had reached his old desk. Everything De Vries owned was in a box. Van den Bergen pointedly started to hum the Beyoncé song he’d heard George singing whenever they’d had an argument.
‘I see your box is to the left…’
But the reference was completely lost on Mr Joke Tie.
‘Boss!’
He recognised that voice immediately, craning his neck to see Elvis pushing Marie’s wheelchair down the corridor towards him.
Roel de Vries started to clap slowly. Sarcastically. ‘The war heroes all return. Look at this. It looks like Christmas at the pensioner’s club.’
‘Shut your trap, de Vries,’ Van den Bergen said, his consonants snapping like slingshots against the man who had been brought in to usurp him. ‘Get your box, get your team of idle, grinning traffic humps and get the hell out of my department. We do proper police work in here.’
De Vries fingered today’s joke tie – South Park from the 1990s, shiny from over-ironing. ‘You may have solved the case, but your arrogance won’t stand you in any kind of stead with Minks. He wanted a man beneath him who knows what “team” means.’
Propping himself on one crutch, Van den Bergen yanked the typing chair from behind De Vries and lowered himself into it. ‘Minks retracted my suspension and issued an apology, willingly. At the end of the day, Roel, what matters to the commissioner is solve rates, not the quality of tonguing his arse gets in briefings. Now, if you don’t mind…’
The man who had tried and failed to step briefly into his size thirteens picked up his belongings, opening and closing his mouth, clearly searching for a witty response. He found none.
With his department back under his jurisdiction, Van den Bergen called a meeting in Marie’s IT suite, which smelled of lavender air freshener and new carpet.
‘I don’t know what the hell they think they’ve been doing in here,’ Marie said, wrinkling her nose. ‘It’s a disgrace.’ She gestured to Elvis that he should pass over her embroidered barrel bag. She took out a family-sized bag of cheese-and-onion crisps, grinned mischievously and opened the foul-smelling snack. ‘Better.’ She took out the photo of her son and set it next to the various oversized computer monitors. ‘That’s more like it.’
‘I paid the taxi driver.’ George’s voice made them all turn. She was standing in the doorway, waving a receipt. Smiling.
He was so relieved to see her fully recovered – physically, at least, though he sensed a blockage in their communication since the ordeal. Perhaps, like his tibia bones, any rift would heal with time.
With his legs resting on a chair, Van den Bergen closed his eyes and steepled his fingers together, savouring triumph for thirty seconds. ‘Now. We’ve still got work to do. We know that Cornelia Verhagen discovered the box of incriminating evidence on Hendrik’s collusion with the Nazis when her father died.’
‘And that resulted in her death,’ Elvis offered.
Van den Bergen nodded. ‘George heard Baumgartner say that Kaars Verhagen was the one to find the box most recently, and that set off the chain of events leading to the old men’s deaths. They’d threatened to expose Hendrik. He’d had a heart attack with the worry. Baumgartner took it upon himself to avenge his biological father. Fine. But I still want to know what happened to Ed Sijpesteijn and Rivka Zemel. If we can find out
…’
‘I sent an email to Hakan Güngör,’ George said. ‘I was hoping he’d be able to find some Nazi record of their deaths. He’s come up with sod all so far.’
Something nagged at the back of Van den Bergen’s mind. He had given little thought to the case during his time off. It had been a carousel of hospital appointments, pain wearing off thanks to codeine, pain flaring up without, visits from Tamara and Eva, now that Tamara was fully recovered and reunited with that infernal arse-pimple, Numb-Nuts. He’d spent hours worrying about George’s low mood and what she could possibly be saying during her long Skype sessions with her Aunty Sharon and her father. He had whiled away a few days painting an oil portrait of Tamara holding Eva, reminiscent of medieval Dutch masters’ depictions of the Virgin Mary with Jesus as an infant, complete with gold skies. Why not? He’d fancied experimenting, though George had sneered at it, pronouncing it as a ‘tacky pastiche that screams Oedipal issues’. But now, for the first time in a while, ideas took shape inside the policeman’s part of his brain.
‘Cracked concrete,’ he said, looking at George.
‘Where?’
‘Hendrik van Eden’s old pub. The new landlord clearly spends nothing whatsoever on maintenance and said the concrete in the yard had always been cracked. When did Van Eden buy that pub?’ He looked at Marie, who logged into her computer and brought the scans of the deeds up on the monitor.
‘1941,’ she said. ‘He’d bought it a couple of years before Ed went missing. In fact, his father had bought it for him as a going concern, but Hendrik had always been down as the landlord and inherited it when old man Van Eden died in the Sixties.’
Slapping the desk, marvelling at how restorative it felt to be back on the job, he pointed to Elvis. ‘We need to get that yard up. I’ll be damned if we don’t find something of interest under that concrete.’
‘Okay, boss. It’s worth a try.’
Two days later, Van den Bergen stood and watched as a mini digger started to rip up the uppermost slab of concrete from the back yard of the Drie Goudene Honden pub. At his side, George stood, dragging hard on her vaping stick.
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