‘Are you OK?’ Nick glanced back at me.
‘Yeah,’ I said, still puffing. ‘Have they gone?’
‘I think so. But we should get out of here anyway, just in case.’
‘My dictaphone,’ I gasped. ‘I dropped it… we have to go back.’
‘Are you mental?’ Nick’s eyes blazed. ‘We’re not going back there! We have to go to the police.’
‘I can’t just leave it! We need to show it to the police. You heard what Grady said—I think they’re planning to kill Ford. And me. And probably you.’
Nick grasped my shoulders and gave me a little shake. ‘It’s over, Burrowes. It’s up to the police to catch the criminals. Now let’s go.’
I gave in and followed him as he continued up the lane. But there was something niggling at me. Something Grady had said. I fished my phone out of my pocket to see who the call had been from and stopped abruptly.
Nick turned to look at me. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Adelita is the big boss,’ I said.
‘What?’ Nick burst into laughter.
‘Grady just said the boss had spoken to me and tried to throw me off the trail of the warehouse. The only person I can think of who knew about the warehouse—other than you—is Adelita. It was her idea to go on ahead of us to Amsterdam to “research”. And the first thing she did when we met up with her last night was warn us off going there. And that call I got before… guess who?’
Nick was silent as he thought through what I’d said. ‘I think you’re jumping to conclusions, beauty girl.’
‘Why, because you don’t think a woman is capable of running an international drug ring?’ I retorted.
‘No, because it makes zero sense that she’d be so keen to work with you, knowing you want to expose the cartel.’
‘Maybe she wants to make sure I can’t make any progress without her. Or maybe she’s going to kill me. She paid someone to mug me in Rome. What kind of journalist has contacts like that?’
‘You’ve got a point,’ he said. ‘But I still can’t see it. Either way, we have to go to the police. We’ll tell them everything and they can deal with it.’
We continued through the dark network of alleys and laneways until finally we emerged into the open. The crowd of tourists carried us along the street until we saw a tourist information centre. We found out how to get to the police headquarters and headed straight there.
The station was a long, rectangular brown building with three rows of windows across the front. One end of the building was emblazoned with the Dutch coat of arms, with three stone figures standing below. A diamond-shaped blue sign that said Politie told us we’d found the right place.
When we told the constable behind the counter that we had information about a warehouse full of drugs, we were ushered straight into Chief Superintendent Peter Hoogeveen’s office. But after we’d told him the full story, including my suspicions about Adelita, he laughed and stood up from his desk.
‘I am sorry,’ he said with a condescending smile. ‘But I have better things to do with my time than listen to such ridiculous stories. You cannot expect me to believe an entire European drug cartel is being run by a TV journalist from Barcelona. In fact, this woman came in and spoke to me a few days ago. Why on earth would she be asking the police questions about the drug trade if she was running the whole thing?’
When said like that, it sounded idiotic even to my ears. ‘You could at least get her in for questioning. I’ve got her number.’
‘I will not act on this without evidence.’
‘But I recorded everything!’ I insisted. ‘I’ve got evidence—well, except for the thing about Adelita Sanchez—but I dropped my voice recorder and had to leave it when they started shooting at us.’
‘You dropped it? That is very convenient.’
‘What about the photos?’ Nick said. ‘There’s gotta be millions of euros worth of coke there.’
‘The photos are too dark,’ Hoogeveen said. ‘It could be anything.’
‘Give me a computer and five minutes with Photoshop and I’ll show you a mound of drugs.’
Hoogeveen shook his head. ‘I do not have time for this.’
‘I thought Amsterdam was getting tough on drugs,’ I said desperately. ‘Surely you can’t ignore something like this?’
‘We have never been able to find the cartel’s headquarters,’ Hoogeveen said. ‘I am sure you will agree it is difficult to believe that a couple of journalists have managed to find what we could not. Now, if you do not mind, I have work to do.’
He gestured towards the door, but I wasn’t moving.
‘I know where it is!’ I pulled out the piece of paper with the address of the warehouse. ‘How long would it take you to send a few officers to check it out?’
‘My resources are stretched as it is,’ Hoogeveen said. ‘I cannot spare any more officers.’
Nick stepped forward. ‘A man is going to be killed if you don’t do something!’
Hoogeveen smiled, his lips thin over his teeth. ‘You are not in a position to tell me what to do. It is time for you to leave.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please go to this address.’ I pressed the paper into his hand. ‘It’s not far from here. If we’re not telling the truth, it won’t have cost you much time. But if we’re right, you might save a life. And you might be able to shut down this operation for good.’
Hoogeveen looked down at the address. ‘I know this street. There are many storage warehouses there. There is no way they would operate from such a conspicuous place.’
‘Maybe it’s because it’s so conspicuous that they get away with it. I bet you hadn’t considered looking in that area before now?’
He hesitated. ‘No, we have never looked there.’
‘Then please go and check it out.’
‘Very well,’
