LITMIR.BIZ

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she could almost be sleeping. One of the sobbing women who sat on the pavement leaped up and made for him. Tears streamed down her red face. She shrieked something at Van den Bergen – words that he didn’t comprehend, though he understood her anguish perfectly. Bitter, biting grief needed no interpreter. One of the other women pulled the girl’s mother back before two uniformed officers could restrain her.

      Thinking of his granddaughter, Van den Bergen’s viscera tightened. He ground his molars together. Turned to the uniform. ‘How many of the refugees are critical?’

      The lad touched the brim of his hat respectfully. Visibly gulped. ‘Twenty have gone off with the first lot of ambulances,’ he said. ‘They were in the worst shape. The rest…’

      He inclined his head to the remaining ragtag band of chancers sitting on the pavement: about two-dozen men in dusty, cheap suits or hoodies and jeans, yellowed at the knees. They looked like they had stepped straight from a war zone into the truck. The half dozen or so women wore jeans and tunics for the most part – full-length, loose-fitting dark dresses on the older ones. All had their heads covered, though they had oxygen masks fitted to their faces. The remainder were children, ranging from about five years old to young teens, dressed in bright colours. Van den Bergen was struck by how ordinary they all looked. He berated himself for having expected them all to appear like Middle Eastern stereotypes instead of electricians, nurses, teachers, lecturers: people who had simply had enough of certain death in their homeland and had decided to take their chances on possible death in the back of a heavy goods vehicle.

      ‘Make sure they get whatever they need while they’re waiting,’ Van den Bergen said, swallowing hard and clenching his fist around his pen. ‘If the paramedics say they can eat and drink, arrange it. Good policing is about more than just arresting bad guys. Speaking of which, where’s the driver?’

      The uniform pointed to a squad car that had been parked at an unlikely angle across the street, forming part of the roadblock. ‘He refuses to speak. My sergeant’s about to take him in for questioning. You’ll want to sit in on the interview, right?’

      The squad car’s engine started up. The reverse lights came on, and the vehicle started to roll back slowly. In Van den Bergen’s peripheral vision, he caught sight again of the body bag that contained the little girl. Her keening mother was now being tended to by a paramedic. A corrosive force stronger than stomach acid welled up inside him. Pushing the uniformed lad aside, Van den Bergen took long strides towards the brightly liveried politie squad car. He wrenched open the passenger door and held up his large hand. Flashed his ID. Fixed the female sergeant with a stern and unflinching gaze. ‘Stop the car,’ he said. Pushing the central locking button on the console, he unlocked the car’s doors. Then he leaped over the bonnet to the driver’s side and opened the rear door. Without pausing to take a look at the greasy-haired trucker, he grabbed the handcuffed man by the scruff of his neck and pulled him out of the car.

      ‘Who are you working for?’ he yelled at him.

      The trucker was a middle-aged man with a bloated, red face and veined nose that spoke to high blood pressure and too much whisky. Puffy beneath the eyes. He stank of stale cigarettes and fried food. A dark band of grease described the collar of his blue sweatshirt, ending in a V above his sternum. This didn’t strike Van den Bergen as a scrupulous or discerning man who might be bothered where the money for his alcohol might come from.

      ‘No comment. I want a solicitor,’ the man said, holding Van den Bergen’s gaze. ‘You just manhandled me out of that car. That’s police brutality.’

      ‘You ran, didn’t you? When the port cops pulled you over, you ran, you piece of shit. A kid’s dead on the back of your actions.’ He pushed the trucker hard in the shoulder – a family man’s rage taking over his professional sensibilities.

      By the time the trucker had stretched his cuffed hands down towards his baggy jeans, Van den Bergen was too late to realise he was aiming for his pocket. With determined fingers, the man pulled out a white object.

      ‘Boss! Watch out!’ Elvis yelled, sprinting towards them.

      What was it? A note? An envelope? Van den Bergen didn’t have time to put on the glasses that hung on the end of a chain around his neck to work out what the trucker had armed himself with.

      ‘Stay back!’ the man shouted, wide-eyed. Spittle had gathered at the corners of his mouth, putting Van den Bergen in mind of a crazed bull. ‘I’ll open it. I will. And you’ll all be fucked.’

      ‘Take it easy!’ Elvis said, holding his hands high.

      Trying to make sense of the situation, Van den Bergen’s fingers crept slowly towards the gun in its holster, strapped to his body. ‘Whoa!’ he said. ‘What have you got there?’

      ‘Let me go, or I’ll throw this shit everywhere!’

      ‘What shit?’

      Van den Bergen took a step closer, poised to draw his service weapon.

      ‘Anthrax.’

       CHAPTER 3

       Van den Bergen’s apartment, a short while later

      Peering dolefully at the side of Van den Bergen’s wardrobe that she commandeered whenever she stayed, George saw only a phalanx of drab: nothing but washed-out jeans, black long-sleeved tops and her old purple cardigan, which was still going, despite the holes in the elbows.

      ‘How you going to wear any of that shit to the pool?’ Letitia screeched through the laptop’s monitor.

      George closed her eyes and bit her lip. The joys of Skype, bringing her over-opinionated mother, who was currently sprawled on Aunty Sharon’s sofa in South East London, straight into her lover’s bedroom in Amsterdam. There was Letitia’s round face – no make-up yet today, and the recently sewn-in ombré hair extensions made her look more like a spooked lion than Beyoncé – grimacing at the collection of casual wear.

      ‘I ain’t going to no fancy tapas bars with you dressed like a builder, lady.’ Pointing with her talons, which were green today. Head rolling indignantly from shoulder to shoulder. ‘Them tops is a fucking embarrassment. Sort it out! Get down the shops. Or don’t they have shops in Holland?’

      ‘I’m skint,’ George said, angling the laptop’s camera away from the contents of the wardrobe. ‘I’m saving for a deposit, remember?’

      ‘Skint, my arse. All that fancy shit you do for the university and that old lanky Dutch bastard you call a boyfriend has got you on the payroll over there?’ Her mother sucked her teeth, snatched up a packet of cigarettes from the coffee table and lit up with a dramatic flourish. She blew her first lungful of smoke towards her screen, clearly aiming for George’s image. ‘Your Aunty Shaz’s gaff not good enough for you?’

      ‘Maybe I want to get away from you.’

      The words had burst their way out before George had had chance to filter them. Damn it! She’d made a pact with herself not to rub her ailing mother up the wrong way, especially as Letitia had nearly lost her life prematurely at the hands of the Rotterdam Silencer himself.

      And there was her father, edging his way into the frame and waving timidly. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was planning to get away from him when they had only just been reunited after decades apart.

      ‘Not you, Dad!’ she said – in Spanish, for his ears only. ‘When I get my own place, you’ll always be welcome. There will be a bed for you, anytime. I meant Madam Gobshite. I need to put some distance between me and her when I’m in the UK.’

      Her father looked at the monitor with warm brown eyes. A wry smile softening a face that was still somewhat haggard after his ordeal, though his cheeks had begun to plump up, presumably

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