the team at Maze/HarperCollins for their energy and professionalism in publishing and marketing the series, enabling me to push George and van den Bergen out into the big, wide world, where they belong.
Two people whose help was invaluable during the research phase for this novel are Sebastian Tredinnick and my bez, Louise Owen. What they don’t know about Heidelberg ain’t worth knowing. Cheers, guys!
Huge thanks are due to these fine people:
To fellow writers, Steph Williams and Wendy Storer for listening to my almost constant fretting, griping and melodramatic nonsense. They kept telling me I could do this, so I did. To Ann Giles, aka Bookwitch, who persuaded me I have something to offer the crime genre. And to poet, Martin de Mello for his sage-like pronouncements on the other bits of my life.
The idea for The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die took shape during a dinner I had with author, Melvin Burgess, where I realised I could draw inspiration from my own youthful experiences and turn them into the sort of thriller I’d always aspired to write. Ta, Melvin!
Author, Anthony McGowan persuaded me to keep going with the manuscript, even in the face of a difficult birth, so thanks, Tony. The literary stretch marks and knackered pelvic floor have been worth it.
Font of publishing wisdom and excellent mate, Shannon Cullen has spurred me on every step of the way. She told me that I had a voice that people would want to read and steered me in the direction of the Abner Stein Literary Agency, which led me to the esteemed Mr. Dennis. Her encouragement has been vital in my getting to this point. Thanks, Shannon.
Finally, thanks to the charismatic and strong women I met through Commonword/ Cultureword in Manchester. George is for you, ladies! I hope I’ve done her justice.
Amsterdam, 20 December
Ratan Patil became aware of the noise before he had even opened his eyes. The drumming of shoes on hard ground. Was he in the middle of the flea-market on Waterlooplein? No, not a marketplace. He could hear sporadic traffic as well as people scurrying past him with purpose; not browsing. Young voices. Laughter. Assailing him in a dizzying typhoon of sound.
Then sensation crept back into his body. He was stiff, cramped up like a foetus, freezing cold. His right hand throbbed as though it had been crushed under the weight of a mountain. Pain diced up the inside of his head in a violent frenzy. The intensity of it forced his eyes open.
It was dark, save for some light that found its way to him in thin perpendicular seams. He tried to stretch out his fingers to feel the space that contained him, but his hands were pinioned to his sides. He could make out his knees. He was kneeling and yet he could feel nothing below his aching hips. His mouth was held firmly shut, lips pushed together by something unforgiving on the outside, swollen tongue wedged up against his teeth by the dryness of the inside. But he was too tired to speak anyway.
Breathing in slowly through his nose, he could smell something musty, like old paper. He stretched his neck, hoping his nose would hit something solid within the strange prison. If he could just touch it, maybe he’d understand.
Cardboard? Yes, a large cardboard box.
Ratan’s heartbeat sped adrenalin around his body until he was suddenly drowning in fear and confusion. The scream was trapped inside, unable to escape the duct tape across his mouth. Frustrated, realising his limitations, he forced himself to breathe deeply and let calm in.
He started to remember.
The party had been the best ever. He had finally spoken to Rani. And boy, was she beautiful up close. More beautiful than she had ever looked across the lecture theatre. They had shared a joint that the English girl had rolled with Californian grass. It had made him feel brave, and he had shared a kiss with Rani that had been languorous and full of promise.
That one evening felt like the start of everything he had longed for.
The biting pain inside his skull had come from the walk home. Weaving his rebellious body, heavy with hash, hope and Grolsch, along the inky waters of the Herengracht towards home was heavy work. His canalside slalom was punctuated only by vomiting once and taking a pee against the wall on a bridge.
When he was coshed over the head, Ratan had been completely taken by surprise. The shadow of his attacker was all that he had seen; a silhouette sprawled across the cobbled pavement, stretched and distorted with an arm raised in readiness for a second blow. The attacker held something long in his hand. A stick? A baseball bat? A hammer? Who knew? Ratan felt the weight of the weapon push his head forward at an awkward angle. His vision had pixelated to nothing, like a screensaver switching off.
Now, Ratan found himself kneeling and bound inside a cardboard box. He blinked in the semi-darkness, trying to fathom his fate. Then he felt buzzing against his belly, and a dim, phosphorescent light came on inside the box. A phone on vibrate? But not his phone. His phone didn’t make that noise. Then, in the fraction of his last bittersweet second, he remembered the rest:
Waking after the blow to his head, he’d known he’d been drugged. He’d expected the room to spin after so much beer and dope but here, everything had looked wrong. Blurred around the edges. He was lying on something hard and flat in a room with a strip light glaring at him from behind his attacker’s head. The shadowy stranger bent over him, working carefully at arranging something on Ratan’s chest. Furrows of concentration in the man’s brow. Fastidious fingers working quickly but not poking or probing his flesh. Then the grinding sound of duct tape being unfurled and pressing down on his ribcage until Ratan moaned.
The assailant realised his victim was awake. A syringe full of liquid soon pumped sleep and forgetfulness back around Ratan’s body.
And now, inside the cardboard box, a phone had vibrated once, vibrated twice. Its phosphorescent light was not the shimmer of hope at the end of a tunnel. It was a dim torch lighting the way to death; guiding his Jiva towards the path of his ancestors. Ratan had seen enough films to make an educated guess at what might have been strapped to his chest. It was too late for fear. He regretted not having taken Rani up on her offer of going back to hers for coffee. Now he would never—
Ratan’s exploding body ripped a hole in the front of the Bushuis library on Kloveniersburgwal that was twenty feet high and seventeen feet and three inches across.
‘George! Wake up! It’s me,’ came a man’s voice in the hallway.
Georgina McKenzie, called George by the select few she chose to count as friends, slept deeply on the lumpy old mattress on her bed. The insistent rapping on her door took more than a minute to register with her still drunk ears.
‘George! Are you in there?’
She felt the morning trying to claim her from her stupor. She recognised the Groningen accent that wrapped itself thickly around her English name. Adrianus Karelse. Ad.
More knocking. ‘Come to the door! I know you’re in there. Come on. It’s urgent!’ Ad shouted.
Weak
