‘It’s got to be one of these,’ Van den Bergen said, squinting through the lenses of his glasses at the address Karelse had scribbled on the piece of paper. ‘But they all look the same. Damn it! And I can’t read the number he’s written here. Is it a one or a seven? Useless prick.’
He scratched at his neck with the muzzle of his service pistol, removing his glasses to regard the dock full of identical grey warehousing that stretched into the distance. The chill sea wind ruffled its briny fingers through his hair and slapped him about his jet-lagged, dehydrated face. At his side, Marie tugged on the piece of paper, trying to decode the scrawl. Behind them, an armed response unit was sitting in an unmarked van. An ambulance had parked just around the corner, awaiting instructions.
‘It’s a seven, boss. Unit twenty-seven. I’m sure of it.’ Marie was shivering, clutching her inadequate fleece closed against the harsh dockland micro-climate. Seagulls wheeling overhead almost drowned out her voice. They splattered the asphalt with guano, as if adding their own exclamation points to her confident assertion.
Beckoning the van to follow discreetly, Van den Bergen stalked along the row of warehouses, bypassing fork-lift trucks and men in overalls who were busy about loading palletised freight into heavy goods vehicles. It was a noisy place. He shoved his gun into his coat pocket, remembering he was no longer in Mexico, where the Gendarmería Nacional toted their weapons as a visual deterrent at all times.
‘Do you think we’ll find him, boss?’ Marie asked. ‘After so much time has passed. Is it likely he’ll be alive?’
Van den Bergen didn’t answer. He merely visualised Elvis, strapped to a chair behind any one of these Identikit industrial frontages. ‘How’s his mother?’
‘She died.’
‘Dead?’ Van den Bergen came to a standstill. Turned to her. ‘Shit. Oh no. That’s terrible.’
Marie nodded. ‘I know. She passed away the evening after he went missing. I got a call from the hospital. If the Silencer’s men haven’t killed him, this definitely will. If you know what I mean.’
‘Poor bastard.’
‘Oh, and he’s got a boyfriend.’
Gazing momentarily out to the busy shipping channel of Nieuwe Maas, he saw the overcast sky and the unfathomable grey-brown water. It dawned on him that he knew absolutely nothing about his own place in the universe or the world around him. ‘Jesus. How could I have worked with him all these years and not sussed that he was gay?’
Marie patted his arm. ‘Don’t worry, boss. I spoke to his boyfriend. Dirk didn’t know himself until a couple of weeks ago. I think your gaydar’s still fully functioning.’
Elvis’ mother was dead. Christ. That was a shitty turn of events for both of them – that Elvis, if he was still alive, had been denied the chance to say goodbye after all of his dutiful travails. And for her. To have undertaken the hard, hard work of departing this life on her own in a hospital bed. Nobody to usher her to the end, as Van den Bergen had walked his father to the threshold of death.
But Elvis’ mother was gone now, and her possibly still-breathing son was Van den Bergen’s only concern at that moment.
‘Unit twenty-seven,’ he said, drawing his gun at the sight of the giant numbers mounted high on the side of the warehouse. He turned back to the van. Beckoned the driver to draw closer.
‘Can I help you, mate?’ a man said, appearing in the doorway of the warehouse, carrying a box that looked heavy.
Van den Bergen sized him up as he showed his ID. ‘Police.’ The man was wearing jeans and a fleece. No overalls, though there was a company logo in red displayed on the hoarding above the entrance that said, 1,2,3 Logistiek. No steel-toecap safety boots on his feet, which the men working in these logistics places tended to wear. Something was off.
The man dropped the box. Retreated back inside at speed.
With a nod from Van den Bergen, the uniformed armed response unit were out of their van, guns drawn.
Sprinting through the warehouse after the man, Van den Bergen had a moment in which to take in his surroundings. Boxes stacked to the ceiling. It was no different than any other dockside warehouse, rammed with produce from Southeast Asia, India and China to be delivered to shops all over Europe. This was Rotterdam, after all. Had his jet lag skewed his reasoning? Had the man simply lost his nerve and run?
Feeling suddenly overwhelmed by dizziness, he shouted out. ‘Police! Stop where you are or I’ll shoot!’
The man glanced back but did not slow his pace – surprisingly swift for a short, overweight man.
Ignoring the peculiar floating sensation that was turning his long limbs to jelly, Van den Bergen fired a warning shot by the man’s head and kept going. But darting around a corner, the warehouse worker disappeared from view.
‘Bastard!’ Van den Bergen said, bending over and clutching at his knees. That giant unfamiliar space seeming to spin around him. The ground beneath him rose and fell as though he was still standing on the deck of the semi-submersible in the middle of a rough Caribbean Sea.
Some way behind him, he caught sight of Marie, advancing slowly. Gun drawn. Checking behind towers of boxes for ambush potential. ‘Check for rear exit point!’ she whispered into a walkie-talkie to their backup.
Forcing himself to go on, Van den Bergen stalked towards a secondary storage area off to the left, following black tracks that had presumably been made by fork-lifts coming and going. It was darker in there. The giant fluorescent lights that hung from overhead were switched off. Had the warehouse worker absconded into this vast, shadowy hangar of a place?
Advancing into the murk, it was as though Van den Bergen’s jet lag had been switched off, just as the light had failed. He was running on pure adrenalin, now. Breathing faster. Feeling more himself.
‘Come on, you piece of shit,’ he said softly, holding his pistol in front of him with steady hands. ‘Where are you?’ He could hear the armed uniforms scampering forwards stealthily. They had clearly gained entry from elsewhere and were now advancing towards him. Surely, they would flush this slippery gatekeeper out.
The blood rushed in his ears. He sensed he was being watched. Marie was several metres behind him. His back was covered. Or was it?
Glancing behind for a fraction of a second, he realised his IT expert was no longer in view. Damn it!
The plank of wood swinging towards him was all he glimpsed before he registered a sharp, stinging blow to his forehead.
Van den Bergen reeled backwards, emitting a muffled cry. But was somehow still on his feet. The warehouse worker had dropped the plank with a clatter and was sprinting towards the back of the space.
‘Stop!’ Van den Bergen’s vision was blurred but he aimed his weapon at the man’s legs. Pulled the trigger. The crack of his shot ricocheted around the warehouse, pulsating painfully in his ears.
The warehouse worker screamed. His legs buckled at the knees. He went down hard, with arms flailing uselessly in the air. There was shouting from all around, then, as the armed response unit poured into the place – rifles raised and poised to fire – abandoning stealth in favour of a show of strength and slickly co-ordinated manoeuvres.
‘Find Marie!’ Van den Bergen bellowed, advancing towards the wounded would-be fugitive.
Shaking his head, poking at his ears. He holstered his weapon. Pounced on the warehouse worker, pinioning his arms together behind his back and cuffing him. ‘Who are you, you shifty little shit? Who do you work for?’ He grabbed a handful of the man’s hair, yanking his head around to make eye contact. ‘Where are my detectives? A man called Dirk and the redhead that entered the building with me.’
The man’s face was contorted in pain. But behind the grimace, there lurked a dull-eyed insolence. ‘Fuck you!’ he yelled. ‘Get me an ambulance. I’m bleeding to death.’
‘We’ve found Marie, Chief Inspector!’ one of the armed response uniforms shouted, appearing from behind a stack of boxes. ‘She’s out cold. Blow to the head.’
‘Christ. Get the paramedics round here, immediately. Make sure they see to Marie before this arsehole.’ He kneeled heavily on the buttocks of his captive. ‘Now, where’s my other detective? Do you know what terrible things can happen in prison to pricks like you who assault police officers?’
The man craned his neck to face Van den Bergen. ‘Shove it up your arse, pig.’ A glob of sputum hit the Chief Inspector squarely in the belly.
As Van den Bergen stood, he was careful to put all of his weight onto the man’s kidney with his knee. The man screamed in agony. ‘That’s for knocking my detective out and hitting me in the head with a plank.’
‘I’m going to sue you for police brutality!’
‘Go right ahead, you lump of shit.’
Already, Van den Bergen could feel the endorphin rush of the chase abating, leaving unbearable, crashing fatigue in its stead. ‘Get that cadaver dog in here!’ he ordered the uniforms. ‘Make sure the exits are sealed, then I want you to search every nook and cranny of these premises.’
Striding over to the now ashen-faced Marie, Van den Bergen knelt by her side. Moved a strand of her hair off her forehead. There was a livid bump where she had been struck on the temple. ‘Jesus, Marie,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The paramedic jogged over, carrying a large bag, followed by two ambulance drivers. She ushered him out of the way, setting her bag down and removing a blood pressure cuff, a stethoscope and a myriad of other bits of kit. ‘We’ve got this. Okay?’ she said, offering a reassuring smile. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Marie. Be careful with her, won’t you?’
‘Don’t worry, Chief Inspector. Marie’s in good hands.’
Feeling suddenly lost, Van den Bergen stood in the middle of the warehouse, watching the claustrophobic towers of cardboard boxes and metal shelving spin around him in a tornado of hopelessness and dead ends.
In Cancun, Gonzales had arrested at least twenty low-level cartel members and El Salvadoran transportistas, had rescued a chemist from San Diego plus two trafficked Guatemalan girls being used as sex slaves and had closed down the killer meth lab.
But back beneath the overcast skies of the Netherlands, Van den Bergen had nothing. He had worse than nothing, which amounted to one missing detective, one seriously injured detective, and no big prize in the Silencer. Having the evidence to convict Stijn Pietersen felt like an empty victory for those dead kids in the canals without him knowing the whereabouts of the murderous, trafficking bastard. You couldn’t arrest a myth and put it behind bars.
‘Chief Inspector,’ one of the uniforms said, pulling Van den Bergen out of his downwards trajectory. At the end of a thick leash that he gripped with both hands, a giant of a German shepherd was barking in a near-frenzy and rearing on its hind legs. ‘We’ve found something.’
‘Oh no. Don’t tell me,’ Van den Bergen felt an inferno rising in his throat. His fingertips turned to ice.
‘There are two body bags back here, stashed on the prongs of a fork-lift. You’d better come quickly.’