Marnie Riches - The Girl Who Got Revenge - The addictive new crime thriller of 2018

George threw her head back and laughed. ‘At last! About bloody time! And?’

Van den Bergen growled, pushed the glass back towards her and threw the flimsy hospital covers off the bed.

‘Where you going, old man?’ George asked in English, standing quickly so that the blood rushed to her head.

As he began to rummage in the cabinet beside his bed, George could see that the invalid had been replaced once again by a chief inspector. He pulled out the clothes he had been wearing that morning and plonked them onto the bed. Dark trousers and a plain blue shirt. He stripped off the ugly fawn-coloured support stockings that covered his long, long legs. ‘Gastroscopies are no laughing matter,’ he said, taking out his size thirteens – gleaming from George’s ministrations with shoe polish. He made a spitting noise like a cat with a fur ball stuck in its throat. ‘They shoved a hosepipe down me. A damned hosepipe! With a camera on the end. And I was awake.’

Taking his arm, George tried to usher him back into bed. ‘Look. Give it up, will you? They clearly think you need observation, so why the hell are you trying to escape?’

‘I want to question the owner of Groenten Den Bosch. That’s the livery on the side of the truck. There’s a girl dead and maybe more on their last legs because of some profiteering bastard who thinks human beings are interchangeable with exported goods. Maybe it’s this Den Bosch guy. Maybe he gets twelve-year-old girls mixed up with capsicums and courgettes.’

‘Paul!’

‘Well, I’m not going to find out why the Port of Amsterdam’s latest cargo is the dead and dying from the war-torn Middle East unless I get out of here.’

George snatched up his clothes and held them to her chest. ‘You’re my priority. You’re the one I love. The girl’s dead and we’ll catch whoever did this to her. But she can wait until tomorrow.’

Van den Bergen grabbed the garments back and hastily started to pull his trousers on. Yanked the ECG stickers off his chest, grimacing only slightly when they tugged at the scar tissue that ran from his sternum to his abdomen. ‘I’ve got a granddaughter, George. This can’t wait. And I’ve not had a heart attack.’ He dropped the hospital gown to the floor and pulled his shirt on over the wiry musculature of his torso. ‘I’ve got a hiatus hernia. A bad one. But—’

‘So you’re not about to die on me?’ George asked as she appraised him. He was still in decent shape for a man of fifty, thanks to all that gardening. She licked her lips and winked. ‘Good. The banks won’t turn you down for a mortgage then.’

Her pointed remark was met with a disdainful harrumph. Van den Bergen pulled a blister pack of painkillers from his jacket pocket and swallowed two with some water. ‘You can sit here feeling concerned for me, like a mother I don’t need, banging on about getting a place together yet again , or you can come and help me. I’m about to do what I always do, Georgina.’

‘Which is?’ George raised an eyebrow and folded her arms. Irritated by his inferring that she had morphed from red-hot lover into some suffocating, clucky guardian. That she was nagging him.

‘Fight for the wronged. Get justice for the innocent dead.’ He fastened the metal links of his chunky watch and hooked his reading glasses on their chain around his neck. ‘Well? Are you coming?’

‘It’s pretty deserted for a big enterprise,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘I don’t like it.’ His voice was even hoarser than usual, George noted. Though his right hand was hidden inside his coat, poised to draw his service weapon, he had wrapped his left hand around the base of his neck.

‘You look knackered, old man,’ George said, wishing the difficult sod had sent Elvis or Marie to check the provenance of the truck.

The slight stoop in Van den Bergen’s shoulders said everything, but he merely pursed his lips and stalked off towards the red steel door of the Den Bosch reception.

Casting an eye over the utilitarian grouping of brick buildings with their corrugated-iron roofs, George could see that there was not a single light at any of the windows. Nothing to see beyond them apart from acres and acres of the Dutch flatland. To the left, the polders had been neatly planted with crops or were festooned with row upon row of grey polytunnels that shone like fat silk worms in the dim sunlight. They snaked away into the distance, their uniformity punctuated only by the inky stripes of dykes. To the right, the horizon was broken by a veritable crystal palace of greenhouses. The place gave her the creeps.

‘Wait for me!’ Crunching the gravel of the courtyard beneath her new Doc Marten boots, she watched Van den Bergen try the handle.

‘It’s locked,’ he said, taking a few steps backwards. Still rubbing his neck. He approached one of the windows and peered inside. ‘Elvis said he couldn’t get the owner on the phone, either.’

‘Look, Paul. I think you should go home and leave this to the others. You’ve just been in hospital, for Christ’s sake! I’m worried about you.’

Waving her away, he took long strides around the side of the reception building. Jogging after him, George wanted to drag him by the sleeve of his raincoat back to his Mercedes. But this was Van den Bergen, and she knew he took stubborn to a whole new level.

‘There is someone here!’ he said, gesticulating at a pimped-up Jeep, an old Renault and two Luton vans bearing the company’s insignia, all parked up by the bins.

‘Maybe they’re in the fields,’ George said.

The wind had started to blow across the expanse of green, flattening the leaves that sprouted in neat rows. She clutched her duffel coat closed against the chill, wistfully thinking that a rum-fuelled family bust-up by the pool in Torremolinos would be infinitely preferable to a bleak afternoon in the agricultural dead centre of the Netherlands. She was just about to suggest they call for backup when a man exited one of the giant greenhouses, carrying a tray of seedlings. He caught sight of them and frowned. Started walking towards them. He moved at a brisk pace and wore jeans and a sweatshirt that were covered in mud at the knees and on the belly.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked. There was a bright glint when he spoke. Braces?

George couldn’t place the man’s accent. He wasn’t an Amsterdamer. But she could tell from his confident stance that he was at least the manager, if not the boss. There was something about the confrontational tone of his voice; this wasn’t someone who took orders. He was big, too. A wall of a man with a thick bush of greying hair that looked like an overgrown buzz cut.

‘I’m looking for Frederik den Bosch,’ Van den Bergen said, blocking the path.

‘Who wants him?’

‘I do.’ Van den Bergen withdrew a battered business card but was careful to give the sapling-carrying man-mountain a flash of his service weapon, strapped to the side of his body. He stuck the card between two swaying plants. ‘Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen. Where might I find Den Bosch?’

‘You’re looking at him.’ He grinned widely, displaying a perfect set of gold teeth.

Following the proprietor into the main office building, George took in her surroundings, trying to get the measure of Den Bosch. The place was cold and dark, despite the whitewashed brick of the wall. It was cluttered with vintage furniture – more charity shop than antique-dealer cool. It felt damp and smelled of moss and mildew. An earthy, utilitarian place. Den Bosch set the tray of saplings down on the draining board of a sink in a kitchenette area at the far end.