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

‘And Den Bosch’s whereabouts over the last few days?’

Marie cleared her throat and started to speak, sounding like she was picking food from her molars. ‘Get this, boss. He was at some right-wing political rally at the time the heavy goods vehicle was stolen.’

Van den Bergen nodded, remembering what George had said about the swastika tattoos on the guy’s forearms. ‘Go on.’

‘I’ve had a look through his social media accounts. There’s not much, to be fair, but he’s connected on Facebook to some known neo-Nazi bullies who align themselves with the far right. They’re always showing up in press photos where the anti-racist lefties clash with supporters of Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom.’

‘And his business records?’

‘Clean as a whistle. Den Bosch produce exports, mainly to British supermarkets. Courgettes. Peppers. The usual greenhouse produce. It’s a thriving concern. He’s worth a few million, from what I can see from his accounts. I haven’t met him, boss, but on paper it looks like he’s legit. An unpleasant type, maybe, but pays his taxes, bought the local church a new roof and funds a youth group in the village where his farm is located. You said he keeps those tattoos covered with long sleeves?’

‘A man who keeps his fascism as a weekend hobby!’ Van den Bergen said, chuckling.

‘Why would a neo-Nazi, who’s well off on paper, at least, traffick Syrians into European countries?’ Marie asked. ‘Surely that’s the last thing he wants. And he certainly doesn’t need the money.’

‘Anything more on the driver?’

He started to walk towards the car, fingering the folded prescription in his coat pocket. More poison in his system. Hadn’t he read somewhere that prolonged use of proton-pump inhibitors made you more susceptible to osteoporosis? What did that mean for a man who was six foot five? Would a degenerative disease affect the tall worse than the short? There was so much more of him to crumble, after all.

‘Elvis has questioned the driver again, boss. He’s still refusing to talk. He won’t even give us his name. Won’t have legal representation. Nothing. It’s as though the guy doesn’t exist and nobody has come forward to his rescue. It’s a no-hoper of a case.’

‘With a dead twelve-year-old? There’s no way I’m letting this go. Not on my damned watch.’ Unlocking the car, he folded his long frame into the driver’s seat. ‘Where does Den Bosch live?’

‘In De Pijp. I’ll text over his address.’

‘A multimillionaire living in a shithole like that? I don’t buy it.’

‘It’s an up-and-coming area,’ Marie said.

‘Up and coming means ethnically mixed and full of lefty trendies,’ Van den Bergen said, gunning the car towards the nearest pharmacy. ‘Why the hell would someone like Frederik Den Bosch live in anything other than a white, conservative enclave?’

He rang off, sensing there was considerably more to the owner of Groenten Den Bosch than was immediately apparent. Calling George, he cut through her concerned chatter with a simple instruction: ‘Get ready. I’ll pick you up in an hour. We’re going to De Pijp.’

But first, he planned to take a little detour to the morgue.

‘Fucking arseholes.’

George read the email yet again. The first time, she had digested its contents, open-mouthed and with a thudding heartbeat. She’d had that horrible feeling of dread she’d known on many an occasion, where all the blood drained from her skin, leaving her numb. The second time, she’d read it with a degree of disbelief, thinking there must have been a mistake. She had even called the entitled limp-dick who had signed off on the decision. Perhaps he’d accidentally emailed her instead of some other poor sod, who had put their heart and soul into a piece of work for an entire year or more and who had been looking forward to their travails coming to fruition in print. But no. There had been no error. Now, she reread the curt missive and felt only white-hot fury.

From: Timothy.Fitzmaurice@potestasbooks.co.uk

To: Georgina.McKenzie@cam.ac.uk

Subject: Forthcoming publication of ‘Heavy Traffick’

Dear Dr McKenzie,

I regret to inform you that, owing to a change in publishing priorities at Potestas Books, we have had to look again at our list for the forthcoming year and have come to the conclusion that your detailed study of ‘The traffick of women through Europe, and modern sexual slavery’ is no longer a good fit with our other titles. I am afraid your excellent criminological tome will have to find another home.

With all best wishes,

Timothy L Fitzmaurice MA Oxon

Grinding her molars together, George shook her head violently, tempted to pick up the laptop and hurl it through Van den Bergen’s French doors, onto the balcony. But what good would it do? This was the precarious life of a criminologist, she knew: reliant on her university teaching post to maintain her status and publication prospects as an academic; reliant on publication to secure funding; reliant on funding to continue her research work in prisons. She was just another arse-kissing PhD, trying to make a name for herself in a world where you had to stick your fingers in as many pies as possible to make ends meet, always preparing for them to get burned when you were inevitably kicked from grace into the fires of unemployable hell by some senior academic.

‘Bastards! I know exactly what’s going on here,’ she shouted at the glowing screen. ‘Same shit, different day. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, twisting the knife.’

Making herself a foul-tasting coffee, using some granules from the bottom of a jar that had seen better days, she logged onto her UK online bank account. Checked the balance: £367.92. And no payday pending, thanks to her own personal academic puppet-master, Sally Wright, who had cut George’s strings after she’d flouted her demands once too often. Controlling bitch.

Feeling disgusted with herself, she logged out, imagining all the things she would say to that duplicitous cow when she next saw her. Do you get off on abusing your position of power, you hatchet-faced old bag? Is this what you had in mind when you signed up to being my mentor and protector? Fucking blackballing the black girl? Rescinding her tenure, leaving her potless, shamed and out in the cold?

In her mind’s eye, she was standing in Sally Wright’s office in St John’s College in Cambridge, shoving the cup of tea back onto her desk, leaving behind a spatter pattern that psychologists might interpret as pure disgust in liquid form. Except Professor Shitbag All-Wrong was now the vice chancellor of the university and was invincible before all but God and her close cousin, Satan.

She clicked the iPlayer link to the breakfast show on which her saviour-turned-nemesis had recently appeared. There she was, with her ridiculous blunt-cut fringe and short bob and those daft red cat’s-eye glasses that only someone thirty years younger with infinitely better bone structure could really carry off.

‘Of course, writing this Sunday Times bestseller about the legendary, enigmatic Duke was a dream piece of research. I’m so glad the layman has embraced the story of this seemingly respectable peer of the realm, who was in actual fact a people and drug trafficker at the head of an international web of deceit.’ Professor Plagiarism had toyed with her big red beads with those nicotine-stained fingers that looked like lumps of amber, grinning inanely with newly whitened teeth at the show’s blonde host, whom George knew Sally hated for nothing more than cultural snobbery reasons.

‘Bitch!’ George yelled at the buffering screen. ‘Ruinous, treacherous bag!’ Unwelcome tears started to well in the corners of her eyes. She definitely needed this holiday.