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

his other grey, gnarled hand – already blue at the fingertips – the old man grasped at the tablecloth, tugging at it as though the fabric were his mortal coil and he was holding on for dear life. Everything that had been placed on the table fell with him and the cloth, clattering to the floor. Broken china everywhere; coffee spattered across the varnished cork tiles like the victim’s blood from a well-aimed headshot in a shoot-’em-up movie. Finally, still gasping pointlessly for air like a determined goldfish flipped out of its tank, Brechtus lay on the floor, limbs splayed in improbable directions. Pleading in the old man’s eyes said he didn’t want to leave this life.

      Did he suspect? Did he realise that this friend of old, a guest in his home, had committed the ultimate act of betrayal?

      It was too late. When his eyes had glazed over, the guest knew that his latest victim was dead. To be certain, he squatted low, pulling the fabric of his shirt aside to reveal the small tattoo of a lion on the aged, freckled skin of his shoulder. The lion wore a crown and carried a sword. It was flanked by the letter S and the number 5.

      He checked for a pulse.

      Nothing.

      Whistling to himself, he started to wipe the place down of fingerprints, careful to pick up from the floor the shattered remains of the coffee cup that he had drunk from, disposing of them in a small plastic freezer bag that he had brought in case of exactly this kind of accident. What a shame that the silly old bastard had made such a mess on his way out of that overlong, sanctimonious life. He pinched his nose against the smell of death, already rising from the body. Tiptoed over the spilled coffee to ensure he left no footprints.

      Turning back to survey the scene, he decided that this termination had been well executed. On to the next one. By the time Brechtus Bruin’s body would be found, he would be sufficiently far away to evade suspicion. The method of killing was flawless. And most important of all, he thought, as he pulled the door to the house closed, he was certain that Brechtus Bruin had suffered in the last few weeks of his life.

      What a cheering thought. He smiled and was gone.

       CHAPTER 1

       Amsterdam, Van den Bergen’s apartment, 3 October

      The sound of someone closing a cupboard door in the kitchen was the reason for George’s wakefulness. Her body taut beneath the duvet, she listened carefully. Held her breath until the only sounds she could hear were the rushing of blood through her ears and the intruder. The cutlery drawer was being opened. The rattle of metal told her something was being removed. Heavy footsteps of a man.

      Throwing the duvet aside, she leaped out of bed. In an instinctual choice between fight or flight, George opted for the former, grabbing a tin of Elnett hairspray from the dressing table as she exited the bedroom.

      ‘Bastard!’ she yelled, sprinting towards the kitchen and the source of the noise. She held the can of hairspray aloft, ready to press the button and blind this cheeky burgling wanker.

      The tall, prematurely white-haired man who had been stooped over the worktop spun around with his hands above his head. His gaunt, wan face contorted into a look of pure surprise. ‘It’s me, for Christ’s sake!’

      With her heart thundering inside her chest, George froze in the middle of the living room, staring at her opponent through the large hatch to the kitchen. She glanced at the clock on the wall.

      ‘It’s four in the morning. What the hell are you doing out of bed?’ She set the hairspray down on the battered old coffee table, her hand shaking with adrenalin. Her voice wavered with slowly subsiding fear. ‘I thought you were a burglar.’

      Van den Bergen shook his head and smiled grimly. He clutched at his stomach. ‘In my own apartment?’ Belching quietly, his brow furrowed. ‘It’s my stomach. I just couldn’t sleep. I could taste the acid spurting onto my goddamned tongue.’

      George padded into the kitchen and put her arms around her lover. His grey, baggy T-shirt smelled of washing powder, but as she stood on tiptoe and nestled her face into his neck, she drank in the scent of his warm skin beneath. ‘Poor you,’ she said. ‘Honestly, Paul. You’ve got to demand that your doc sends you to a specialist. You’re at the surgery every five bloody minutes, but the shit she’s prescribing isn’t working.’

      Van den Bergen kissed the top of her head and moved away from her. ‘I don’t want a gastroscopy. I’ve heard it’s grim, like having drains rodded. I wish they’d give me a PET scan, and then I’d know, once and for all.’ The low rumble of his voice had taken on a hoarse edge over the past few months. He closed his eyes and curved his six foot five frame into a stoop, as though his long spine had been replaced by nothing more than a pipe cleaner.

      Picking up the large brown bottle from the worktop, George read the blurb and raised an eyebrow. She sucked her teeth. Scratched at her scalp and shook out the wild curls of her afro. Irritated by this anxious man who overthought everything. But genuinely fearful for him, this time. ‘I’m sick of your bullshit. Every five minutes, you’re moaning at me that you’re coming down with a spot of terminal this and deadly that.’

      ‘I think I might have throat cancer, George. I mean it. Have some sympathy for an old fart. The longer I live, the more likely it is that something’s going to get me.’ This tormented, difficult bastard of a chief inspector, whom she loved so much, rubbed his stomach. ‘Maybe it’s stomach cancer. Can you get stomach cancer?’

      George slammed the bottle of antacid down. She switched from his native Dutch to her native English. ‘For God’s sake, man. Get it fucking sorted. You demand Dyno-Rod or a scan or some shit, or me and you are going to tangle! I can’t keep getting woken up in the middle of the night. If it’s not your stomach, it’s the job. It’s bad enough back at Aunty Sharon’s with Letitia up ’til all hours and then stinking in bed ’til midday, Aunty Sharon not getting home from work until three in the morning, and then Dad getting up when she comes in because his body clock’s buggered.’

      ‘I can’t help it! This is what you get when you fall for a man twenty years your senior.’

      George waved her hand dismissively at his mention of their age gap. It hadn’t mattered when they’d met almost a decade ago and she’d been a twenty-year-old Erasmus student, and it didn’t matter now. ‘When I come to Amsterdam, I need to get my kip. I’m a criminologist, Paul. I spend my days with murderous mental cases in draughty prisons – when I’m not scrapping for funding or teaching snot-nosed first-year students. My life’s stressful as hell. This is where I decompress, yeah?’ She switched back to Dutch. ‘I’ve got nowhere else I can relax – until you commit to getting a mortgage with me, so I’ve got a home I can call my own… And I don’t care if it’s here or London or in Cambridge. Whatever. But don’t think you can keep wriggling out of that conversation, mister.’ She wagged her finger at him. Still sour that Van den Bergen had refused to be drawn on the subject of the bricks-and-mortar commitment George so desperately sought since her brush with death in Central America. ‘It’s time we put down roots together! Anyway, until you get your shit together so I can stop this nomadic, long-distance romance crap, your place is my happy place. I need some peace and quiet. Not you, wandering round like a spectre, swigging from a family-sized bottle of Gaviscon in the early hours.’ She poked him in the stomach, careful to avoid the long line of scar tissue that bulged beneath the fabric of his top – a permanent aide-memoire of the mortal danger a job like his put him in – put both of them in. ‘And for a hypochondriac, you’re a total failure. You need to man up, get to the doc’s and insist that she doesn’t fob you off. I can’t have you dying on me, Paul. Sort it out!’

      Her lover belched and grimaced. He rolled his eyes up to the bank of spotlights that she had recently scrubbed free of cooking grease, accumulated from those occasions when Van den Bergen had been bothered to cook – badly. ‘You’ve got the cheek to talk