who had only hours earlier clearly made the decision to wear a smart jacket today. The old man, and all his memories and stories and loves from a long, long lifetime, had gone.
In the men’s toilets, Van den Bergen leaned against the mirror above the sink and wept quietly. Drying his eyes, he surveyed his reflection and saw an ageing man. Having a lover twenty years his junior was not going to save him from the rapid physical decline and the premature death that was almost certainly lying in wait for him just around the corner.
Dialling George’s number, he just wanted to hear her reassuring voice.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. The sounds of a tannoy announcement and the beep of the supermarket checkout were audible in the background.
‘I’ve just seen a man die. Right in front of me in the surgery.’ He wrapped his free hand around the base of his neck, feeling for the place where the stomach acid was almost certainly eroding the healthy tissue of his gullet. Cellular changes. That’s what Google had suggested. The feeling of constantly being strangled and a worsening hoarseness of the sufferer’s voice. None of it boded well.
‘Oh shit,’ George said absently. ‘Sorry about that. But you’re a cop! You see dead people all the time. How come you’re so cut up? Have you been crying, Paul?’
‘No.’ He looked at his bleary eyes in the mirror, still shining with tears. ‘It’s just…he died right in front of me. It’s different from work. They’re already dead and part of a crime scene. This was so sad and unexpected.’
She didn’t understand. And why would she? George had her foibles, but a constant nagging fear of the end wasn’t one of them. And she was young, with both parents still living. She’d never known what it was to create life, or to accompany one to the very bitter end.
Finishing the call and splashing his face with water, he returned to the waiting room to find the dead man covered by a blanket, being wheeled away on a gurney by paramedics who had arrived on the scene too late. A janitor was already mopping up the old man’s urine, as if he had never been there. With several of the other witnesses dabbing at their eyes with tissues, the funereal mood was normalised only by the shrill noise of the blonde woman’s squalling child.
‘Well, he wasn’t registered with this surgery,’ the receptionist told the others, who had gathered around her as though she were Jesus’s own earthly mouthpiece, disseminating the Word of God to the mortal believers. She patted her hair grandly and folded her arms. ‘Obviously I can’t tell you more because of patient confidentiality.’
‘Oh, go on,’ the blonde woman said. ‘We need to know.’
The receptionist glanced over her shoulder and then leaned in with an air of secrecy. As she started to speak in hushed tones, Van den Bergen’s phone buzzed. A text from Minks.
‘What’s the latest on Den Bosch?’
He was torn. Answer Minks’s query about an investigation that was currently the last thing on his mind, or find out more about the old man? But his decision was made for him when the digital display beeped at him, showing his name in bright red letters.
Taking his seat at the side of the doctor’s desk, he placed a hand over his spasming stomach.
‘Who was he?’ he asked. ‘How come he was left in such a bad way in the waiting room?’
His doctor shook her head. She buttoned the jacket of her smart trouser suit and closed her eyes like an indulgent parent. ‘Now, Paul. You know I can’t share those details with you.’
‘But I’m a cop.’
‘I’ll know more when he’s been looked over by Marianne de Koninck, but given his age and the fact that he popped in here as an emergency patient, he was just a very elderly, poorly gentleman who took a turn for the worse in our waiting room. Death comes to us all.’ She adjusted the clip in her hijab and smiled. ‘Now. I’ve had the results of your gastroscopy.’ With narrowed eyes, she scrutinised her computer screen. ‘Hiatus hernia.’
‘I already know that. Will I need an operation? You know, before it gives me throat cancer.’ Van den Bergen put his right leg over his left knee and started to bounce his foot up and down, up and down.
The doctor smiled. ‘Thirty per cent of over-fifties have this condition. It’s very common. I’m going to up your antacids. Give you a stronger proton-pump inhibitor. We need to keep that acid under control. But you must stop worrying about throat cancer, Paul. Nothing untoward was found in the investigative procedure.’
‘Can’t you fix it?’
‘Do you really want your ribcage sawn open and your stomach taken out? Because that’s what the operation entails. Haven’t you had enough trauma to that area?’ She pointed to the place where he had been carved from sternum to abdomen by the Butcher in a previous case.
He shook his head.
‘Well then.’ She handed him a prescription. ‘Take these twice a day. Have you cut out spice, alcohol and anything acidic from your diet?’
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘Do these antacids have any nasty long-term side effects?’
‘Stop waiting to die, Paul.’
In the persistent drizzle outside the doctor’s surgery, Van den Bergen tried to force the memory of the old man’s unseeing eyes from his mind. Tried to stop worrying if he’d been frightened at the end. Had he had children who wouldn’t know where their father was? Had he been frustrated that he was breathing his last among uncaring strangers? Perhaps he’d felt relieved that his long life was finally over.
Enough!
He dialled Marie’s number. She picked up straightaway.
‘What have you got on Den Bosch?’ he asked.
On the other end, he could hear Marie crunching. Crisps, in all likelihood. ‘The guy’s got a clean record. I checked out his story. Apparently the heavy goods vehicle had been reported as stolen the day before port police intercepted it.’
‘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?