‘That was some stunt you pulled, old man,’ George said, squeezing Van den Bergen’s hand. She shifted her position on the hospital bed, tugging the saline drip that had been plugged into her arm with her. Glad to be lying on a relatively comfortable mattress in Cancun’s Hospital Galenia instead of sleeping rough as a transportista, wondering when a bullet or the blade of a machete would find her. ‘You’re like some kind of dyspeptic James Bond.’
‘Don’t talk to me about stunts,’ Van den Bergen said, withdrawing his hand and folding his arms. ‘You …’ He glared at her. Clearly choosing his words carefully. ‘Are incorrigible and irresponsible.’
Rubbing at her skin in an attempt to erase some of the fake tattoos that covered her, George shrugged. She met the cynical expression on her lover’s face with a grin. ‘Yep. And? Didn’t I save my dad? Didn’t Gonzales arrest half of Coba cartel’s foot soldiers and close down the meth camp that’s been churning out poison and killing kids?’ She poked herself in the chest. Felt the dried-in salt beneath her finger. Made a mental note to ask for a shower. ‘All thanks to me!’
Van den Bergen ran his hands through his hair and rubbed his face, as though trying to wash away his frustrations. He shook his head and took her hand into his again. Stroking her palm. ‘You’re fearless and headstrong and stubborn as hell, Georgina McKenzie. It’s a terrible combination. I worry that one day, this gung-ho crap will get you killed.’
‘Stop whingeing and pour me a glass of water, will you? I’m still pissing soy sauce, even with the drip.’ Shunting herself up the bed, George started to consider what an enormous gamble she had taken in stealing the motorboat. The alternative turn of events that could have come to pass made her shudder to think of them. ‘Good job that dick who owned the boat called the cops.’
‘Good job his description of you was reasonably accurate,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘“A lunatic with an afro who says she’s an English cop and has a smart mouth on her. Great tits, though.”’
‘Guilty as charged,’ George said. ‘I can’t help being blessed with an impressive set of swears.’
Van den Bergen’s stern expression finally softened with a broad grin and a silent chuckle. ‘Anyway, the timing was perfect. Gonzales’ men were just about to head off into the jungle to make the rendezvous time you’d suggested. The decision was made that I’d go out to sea with the helicopter to find you, you terrible woman.’
‘You were green!’
‘I felt sick as a pig. Those things are instruments of torture for people with middle-ear complaints.’ He dug a finger into his ear emphatically.
‘Nice jump onto the deck, though. You’re a bona fide hero, pulling me out of that sub! I’m telling you. That’s some proper 007 shit right there. You’ve still got it, old man,’ she said, sticking her foot out from beneath the sheet and scrunching the groin area of his jeans with her naked toes. ‘Ugh. You’re sweaty. Didn’t you bring any shorts or T-shirts?’
Van den Bergen emitted a low growl. Didn’t try to remove her foot. ‘Damn weather. It’s not healthy.’ It was hard to see if he was blushing beneath his tan but George preferred to think that he was. He blinked repeatedly. A twinkle in those melancholy eyes.
‘I want to see my dad,’ she said, poking at the bulge beneath the denim.
‘They’re keeping him in another day for observation.’ He pushed her foot away, gently. ‘But both me and Gonzales have managed to take his initial statement. He’s fine. Just needs fattening up, a course of antibiotics, some jabs and a decade of therapy.’
‘Right. Well I still want to see him.’ George swung her legs over the side of her bed and stood, pulling her hospital gown over her exposed bottom. She grabbed her drip stand. ‘This is like déjà vu.’
‘More like Groundhog Day,’ Van den Bergen said. He clutched at his stomach. ‘There’s not a diet in the world that’s alkaline enough to calm the heartburn you give me.’
George linked him, kissing him on his upper arm, since that was as high as she could reach in flip-flop-clad feet. ‘Shove your guilt trip. Take me to my long-lost papa.’
When she entered her father’s hospital room, she swallowed hard. Gone was the man she had carried a mental image of for decades. He had been replaced by a shadow of the once vibrant Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno. Emaciated. Hollow cheeks. Sunken eyes. Tatty greying hair that needed a good cut. But his arms. His olive-skinned arms, covered in black hair, were only thinner, more sinewy versions of the arms that had lifted her as a tiny girl, swinging her onto his shoulders.
‘Papa,’ she said, letting go of Van den Bergen’s hand and wheeling her drip stand to the bedside. Just saying the word aloud unlocked the maelstrom of emotions she had bottled inside her for her entire adult life: Longing for love and approval that he hadn’t been there to provide as she was growing up. Nostalgia for her childhood when he had still been a daily presence in her young life. Guilt that this reunion was some kind of a betrayal of Letitia, who had always cried wolf that she had been abandoned, when George knew she had pushed him away.
Her father’s eyes opened. The first thing George saw in them was fear.
‘Help!’ he shouted in Spanish. Focusing on Van den Bergen. ‘Get her out of here!’ Then, repeated the demand in English.
Taking a step back, George swallowed hard and wiped away her tears in defiance with the back of her hand. Feeling the rejection bite like the venomous sting of a hornet. A flurry of aggressive words jostled their way to the tip of her tongue, but she realised her anger had no place here. He simply hadn’t recognised her. She clasped a hand over the fake tattoos. People believed what they had been conditioned to believe. Why should he see her ink as anything but the real deal? ‘It’s me, Papa,’ she said. ‘It’s Ella. I wrote you a letter. Did you get it?’
His face softened. His consternation in his face was replaced by a broad smile. He held his hand out to her. Spoke in English.
‘I did,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ‘It kept me going, right to what I thought was the very end.’
He squeezed George’s hand with a weak grip. His skin was too warm and clammy. George forced herself to maintain the contact, savouring the physical closeness after all these years yet itching to scrub her hands under a scalding hot tap. After all she had witnessed and endured over the past week, she was certain she might never feel clean again. That kind of dirt might be indelible, though the ink on her skin would surely wash off eventually.
Sitting beside her long-lost father, George drank in the detail of his face. Imagined him fatter. Younger. Not so different, after all, on closer inspection.
‘I tried to find you when you were a teen,’ he said, reaching out to touch her hair. ‘Even though your mother asked me not to. I did. I scoured the internet week after week. But I just couldn’t track you down.’
‘Ella Williams-May disappeared,’ she said, wishing he would leave her hair alone. It needed a good wash and some Moroccan oil on it, for a start. ‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you on the flight home.’
‘Home?’ He angled his face towards her, frowning inquisitively.
Van den Bergen approached the bed, filling the room with the smell of sport deodorant and oranges. He crouched by the bedside. ‘We need you to come to Amsterdam to testify, Mr Moreno.’
‘Call me Michael,’ her father said.
Nodding, Van den Bergen’s mouth remained a grim line. ‘The meth you were shipping to the Dominican … The meth being produced in that jungle lab has killed a number of young people in my city, giving them fatal lead poisoning. Kids in New York too. But my concern is the bodies that have been found floating in my canals. The Dutch police have just got hold of irrefutable forensic evidence …’ He glanced knowingly at George and winked. ‘That ties your el cocodrilo to Nikolay Bebchuck, otherwise known as the Rotterdam Silencer. These are all the pseudonyms of the man who had you kidnapped – Stijn Pietersen. He’s a Dutch national and we have reason to believe that’s he’s currently on Dutch soil. We know he’s been purchasing precursor chemicals from China through a Dutch multinational to service his labs in the Czech Republic and Mexico. Last night, when I’d finished taking your statement, George told me about all the violence. His gun-running and people trafficking.’
‘I’m living proof of that,’ her father said, patting George’s hand as a tear tracked along the contours of his thin face.
George wanted to envelop him in her arms but felt she couldn’t. Not yet. She was overwhelmed by a sense that their roles had been reversed, where her father was now the vulnerable one who needed looking after, and she was now his capable guardian. She was aware of tears pooling in her eyes for all that had been lost but willed them to be absorbed back into her body. Van den Bergen was talking about the case. The time to interrupt him with an outburst of mixed feelings about her childhood would come. But that time was not now.
‘Pietersen has the monopoly on the crystal meth market and he’s long overdue a prison sentence that will put him behind bars for good.’ Van den Bergen pulled up a chair from the corner of the room and folded his tall frame into it. Leaned forwards, placing his elbows on his knees. Speaking with the gravitas of the Chief Inspector that he was, rather than something approximating to a son-in-law who was inappropriately too old for a woman in her twenties. ‘We’re going to need you. If you don’t mind.’
Michael turned to George, studying her face. She realised she had no way of knowing what this man was thinking. Though he was her father, they had only just met for the first time in almost twenty-five years. He had no idea that Van den Bergen was her partner in more than just crime. He knew precisely nada about George. She knew absolute zero about him. But she sensed that he had a good soul.
‘How’s your mother?’ he asked, smiling weakly at her. The glimmer of fond reminiscence in his eyes.
‘Oh,’ George said. ‘About that …’