 
The Amsterdam Chronicles  
DEF-CON CITY  
Part 1

Second Edition Copyright 2019

Published on Smashwords by Brian Christopher  
First published in 2013

Acknowledgements

About the author

Other books by Brian Christopher

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Chapter One

The mid-July temperature had dropped to one more associated with February or March. Summer had skipped Amsterdam this year; it rained almost every other day. Travel companies were doing brisk business for those looking for a sun tan and an ozone layer that still held up. They would be the lucky ones. Some who remained in the city would regret it for the rest of their lives, or at least the short amount of time they had left to live.

Monday 2:15 AM.  
Frank Brandsma lay asleep when suddenly he grabbed his chest. Rosie, his wife, who lay next to him, awoke instantly. She turned to see him gasping for breath and recognized the problem immediately; his heart. This was not the first time, although the doctor had assured her after the latest check-up, his health had improved tremendously. Since his last birthday, when he turned sixty-eight, Frank had cut down on fats and had been exercising. There was panic in his eyes as he lay staring up at the ceiling. Rosie tried to help him into a sitting position, but it was impossible. Even though he had lost weight, he was still far too heavy.

Frank clutched his left arm.

"Are you all right dear? Do you want me to call a doctor?"

He gasped for breath - a second surge of pain cut across his chest. He grimaced through clenched teeth. "Doctor? Call a goddamn ambulance, and quick."

"I'll call right away." She turned towards the telephone on the nightstand, and punched in the emergency number. Frank jerked from a terrific jolt of pain, which shifted him close to the edge of the bed.

"Oh my God." Rosie screamed. "Please answer quickly. Hello? Yes, ambulance service please. It's my husband. He's not feeling very well. I think he's having another heart attack.... Five minutes? Yes I'm sure he can wait that long. Thank you very much."

Another jolt of pain caught Frank so hard it flipped him out of the bed and onto the floor with a heavy thump. The ancient bedside lamps rocked from side to side. Rosie shrieked. From the other side of the bed, she could just see his hand clutch the edge of the sheet.

His eyes were wide open. Frank was dead.

Two hundred meters away Carola Munk turned restlessly in her bed. A bead of sweat on her forehead rolled gently across her light blond eyebrow, and dropped on to the yellow cotton cover of her feathered pillow. For the umpteenth time, she reached out with long red painted fingernails to push the nightmare away. Pain and terror filled her face. Her arms swung wild, powerless in her effort to catch the horrifying images that taunted her. She stiffened, clutched the sheets with a firm grasp; two nails snapped in the process.

Carola immediately awoke in a panic, and gasped for breath. The unrestrained aggression she had for the beast that terrorized her sleep, had abruptly ended. Not daring to move, she lay in her sweat-soaked white cotton sheets, and hoped the pounding in her head would cease.

There were hangovers and hangovers, but never as bad as this. Her stomach felt sick and her chest hurt like hell. Four hours ago the Spanish wine had tasted like someone had left a rusty nail in the bottom of the bottle. Why her friends had turned it into a trend was beyond her. They even brought their own Rioja to nearly every party. Too acidic, she told them time after time. The bitter metallic tang did not agree with her, and unlike most bad wines that became palatable after the first sip or second or third glass, that one never improved. Carola turned to the left towards the clock, her head throbbed. Her heartbeat seemed to magnify the pain at every pulse. Squinting her eyes to focus, she could just make out it was three thirty-four in the morning; it was going to be a long night.

Ten minutes later the pounding in her head had increased to a near unbearable measure, and the bellyache refused to die down. Carola quickly came to the conclusion that it was time to stick two fingers down her throat to flush out the remnants of wine and gut acid that made her so nauseous. Paracetamol immediately after should dampen the headache, and with any luck she would feel better within the hour. Then, back to sleep; her brain and body needed it badly before her alarm went off at 7 AM for work.

With more effort than usual Carola pulled the covers back, sat up on the edge, and moaned. Never was she so devastated after a night out with the girls - she had to get to the bathroom. Carefully, with one hand on the bed, the other held out for stability, she staggered towards the door. Every motion heightened the agony, drained her strength, and left her gasping for breath.

Finally, she made it, and flicked the light switch. The brilliance of the new LED light pierced her retina, and hit the back of her head where the thumping pain originated. Hangovers were an accepted part of a night out with the girls, but nothing was ever like this. She wondered if she had developed migraine, no, it was definitely that fucking wine. Never again, she thought.

Grasping the cold tap, the effort of trying to turn it on surprised her, her head spun, her legs nearly buckled. Quickly, Carola stepped back, and sat back on the edge of the bath. The moment of dizziness caught her off guard. In desperation, she grabbed the sink directly in front to prevent herself from collapsing. Her head dipped from exhaustion. Trying to correct her balance, she finally managed to pull herself high enough to see her reflection in the mirror. The image staring back made her gasp.

A week ago she turned twenty-five. Compliments didn't go higher than eighteen or nineteen. The lines under her bloodshot eyes were deeper, darker, her face was haggard and pale; she now looked like a deathly sixty year old.
Chapter Two

The squad room buzzed with detectives. Not that it had always been like that, but since the renovation and removal of a few walls it gave the impression of a very busy station. However, that was where the deception ended. During the last twelve months, most police stations in Amsterdam had been renovated, but when they started on the Marnixstraat station the money had run out. In order to save face, the contractor tore down a few dividing walls, opened up some small and confined rooms, painted over what was left, then moved on to another project. The effect was astounding. They could now watch each other work, and it gave them room for eight extra desks. The grumpy air-conditioning, the bad lighting, and the creaking floorboards all remained.

Rain still trickled in through cracked windows and ran down and onto stacks of unimportant files placed on the windowsill. The idea was to move these old files to a filing cupboard, but nobody bothered.

Next to the files Detective Frank Bakker sat eating breakfast - a dried out two-day old pizza slice - while reading the local city newspaper, the Parool. He scratched his long unwashed shaggy hair. Frank was a born-again hippie in his early thirties whose greatest pleasure in life was catching criminals. He grew up in a poor neighbourhood where most gangs terrorized anyone over sixty, or younger or different to themselves; Frank fell into the latter category. His long hair, and flared multi-colored patched jeans, was their excuse to pick fights with him every chance they got. Strangely enough, either through silence or pity, he usually got out of it, but that never stopped them from trying. Even the day he left home on his nineteenth birthday to study criminal science at the University they tormented and bullied him as he headed for the bus stop. After graduation, he joined the police while their delinquent form of terror branched out from the local neighbourhood to heavier strong-arm tactics and serious criminality in the rest of the city.

Bakker swore revenge for the torment and grief they brought to people. In his eight years on the force, he convicted many of them for various offenses ranging from burglary to assault. His personal knowledge of their friends, family, and general hangouts had helped enormously. Daily, he scanned the newspapers to see if they made the headlines or better still, the deaths column. Names found there would ensure a celebration down at the local coffee shop, the only excuse he had left for such a pit stop.

Bakker ran his finger down the deaths column, and stopped when something caught his eye. If he had not concentrated with any intensity, he would have missed it. He placed the near mummified slice of pizza between his teeth, took his newspaper in one hand and coffee in the other, then carefully weaved his way through the bustling squad room.

Sally, a young dark haired admin officer, stopped him along the way.

"On your way to the Chief?" She asked. Her smile was so rare it took him by surprise.

"Yeah," Bakker mumbled. She slipped a sheet of paper between his fingers.

"He's in a bit of a mood. If we both rush in he'll freak. Do you mind?"

"Not at all," he muffled through the sagging pizza slice. "Maybe we can have coffee together sometime."

She looked at him with a certain amount of repugnance. "No chance," she said, just loud enough for him to hear, then took off in the opposite direction.

Partitioned by glass, the Chief Detective's sparse office was situated at the back left-hand corner of the large squad room. Unlike others of his rank, Chief Harry Ribb was liked by everyone on the force, mainly because he ran a well-oiled station, had an uncanny gift for keeping track of everything, and was good-humoured in nature; a characteristic few men in his position managed to achieve.

Ribb sat on the edge of his desk with the telephone in one hand and ran the other through his hair in frustration.

"Why are you asking me?" he shouted. "You've got the photo. He is tall, black, and comes from New York. What more do you want? Hold the board up higher. If he can read, he'll see it. You are detectives for god sake, find the man." Ribb slammed the phone down.

Bakker, handicapped with the pizza, coffee, newspaper and Sally's note, carefully nudged open the door and went to the front of Ribb's desk. Carefully he maneuvered himself to the first of the two chairs in front of the desk, leaned over and bit through the pizza which landed next to a small stack of files marked classified, then carefully lowered himself into a chair trying not to spill his coffee.

"Do you know," Bakker said, his mouth full, "how many people die of natural causes in Amsterdam each night."

Chief Ribb ran his hands over his face, and took a deep breath. "Can't imagine."

Bakker swallowed the rest of the pizza, and washed it down with a slurp of coffee. "On average between thirteen and sixteen and spread evenly throughout the city." He wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve. "Now let's say if two people died in one area, wouldn't it be a little more than coincidence?"

"Is there a hospital in the area? I'm not underestimating you Bakker, but sometimes people do miss the obvious."

"No, that's not it." He laid the newspaper and the e-mail on the desk. "Take a look at the deaths column."

Chief Ribb knew all about Bakker's fascination with the deaths column. To an outsider, it seemed harmless enough, although he knew better. He quickly scanned the newspaper and noticed that the two deaths on the different streets in the same neighbourhood.

"So?"

"That's what I thought first, but if you look at it another way..." Bakker went over to the large map of Amsterdam on the wall. "Two deaths. One in the Eerste Constantijn Huygensstraat here, and the other in the Bilderdijkstraat here. It's the same street but changes name after a couple of hundred meters." He marked out the two spots with little red flags on the map.

Chief Ribb looked at it with curiosity, then sighed. "Interesting," he whispered, bordering on tedium, then scratched his dark curly hair, which had turned grey at the sideburns. He took a step back to get a better view. "Coincidence, I'd say."

"Like I said, on average, sixteen people die in Amsterdam every day. But these two live so close to each other..."

"Not next to one another, just close." Chief Ribb reminded him. "A couple of hundred yards. This has never happened before?"

"Well, at least not for a while. I've checked out deaths in Amsterdam during the last five years."

"Five years?"

"Exactly." Bakker carried on, not realising his chiefs' surprise of the admission. "I made up a little filter script and that did most of the work." Bakker went back to his seat and took another bite of pizza.

"Right," Chief Ribb said, knowing that combing the data in the computers was one of Detective Bakker's better qualities. He would have been just at home working in the IT department of any large corporation. But instead, he chose the police. "So no one has ever died this close to one another of natural causes. Is that what you are saying?"

"That's it. You've got it."

"Who's to say it could never happen? The probability of people dying of natural causes within half a kilometre is not high, I agree. This may not have happened before, but statistics do not guarantee it could never happen."

"That's my point. It hasn't happened before, so that makes it an unusual occurrence and, therefore, suspect."

"Suspect in your eyes Detective Bakker, not mine. Forget it, it's a coincidence, so move on to something that is actually relevant and can deliver results."

Ribb's blank stare indicated their little talk was over. Time for the young Detective to get out of the office. Bakker remained seated, his stare still fixed on the map of Amsterdam.

Trying to persevere, Chief Ribb took a deep breath. "If they were right next to one another," he continued. "I'd say we had a problem. But that's not the case so I wouldn't worry about it if I was you."

Finally, Bakker got the hint. He got up out of the chair, and was about to head for the door when he turned. "Oh, I nearly forgot." He handed Ribb the sheet of paper he got from the admin officer.

It was an email from Detective Wall's commanding officer in New York.

Without warning the door burst open and Ruby, Ribb's most recent girlfriend, entered the room. Long legged, with short jet black hair, she wore a tight fitting black leather outfit, which bordered on the edge of punk. A multitude of bangles dangled and tinkled in different tones on each wrist. Ruby looked very much younger than 29 years, 15 years younger than Ribb. Bakker couldn't take his eyes off her.

"You devil," she said, sounding vexed.

Ribb looked up at her with surprise. "Why? What's up?"

Eyes fixed on Ribb, she strolled slowly towards him, and joined him behind his desk.

Ribb looked bewildered. Ruby was the wildest, most evocative and erotic woman he had ever met. Never in his life had he come across anyone with such a thirst for life, and him. Why and how they started a relationship was still a mystery. His only concern was how long the fun was going to last.

Infused, shook his head. "What did I do?"

"You left this morning without saying goodbye." She leaned over, pulled him by the collar towards her, and kissed him deeply.

Bakker, embarrassed, looked away. He scratched his shaggy hair, and was about to leave when she broke away and headed for the door.

"That should help you through the day." Her devilish smile was exaggerated by the dimple on her left cheek. "See you tonight."

The door closed, and she was gone. The only evidence left of her presence was Ribb's bewildered look, and the sweet fragrance of perfume that hung in the air. He sucked in the breath of much-needed oxygen. "New girlfriend," he said, as a matter of fact.

Bakker's eyes were still fixed on the door. "Christ," he muttered, "any sisters?"

The telephone rang. Chief Ribb grabbed it quickly, thankful for the distraction. "What's the problem now...?"

He rolled his eyes. 'What do you mean he wasn't on the flight. I just got an email from his captain saying he personally put him on the plane..."

He listened to their argument, then said. "No, his file didn't come in yet. I don't care how you find him. Just don't come back here without him." Ribb slammed down the phone. Those two...' Harry Ribb looked up - the room was empty.

Bakker sat down opposite Rikkie Corso, a tall uniformed patrol officer who spent most of his time cruising the streets of Amsterdam. Bakker got to know him during the first couple of months as part of his training. Sometimes Corso seemed like a real friend, but the next day it was like he never knew him at all. His lack of empathy was surprising. Bakker felt he was only at his desk whenever he needed something done or probing for information. Now it was information.

"What do you want to know?" Bakker asked, playing to the expectant look on Corso's face.

"Name, number, address?" Corso smirked.

"Oh, that."

"Yes, that." Bakker tried to concentrate on the flat screen, checking the information he had just presented to the Chief. "Bosses new playmate," he muttered, then began to try a new search algorithm.

"Damn." Corso growled. "Lizzie is not going to like her."

Bakker turned away from the screen. "Are you kidding? Don't you remember his ex- and what she was like?

"Yeah maybe, you could be right."

"Lizzie is at the learning stage of adolescent girls." Bakker said. "She'll want to break away from all that sweet little girl stuff and become a fully-fledged woman as soon as humanly possible. Believe me, she'll be wanting to learn everything the new girlfriend has to teach her."

"How do you know?" Corso sneered. "You have no kids,"

"Adolescent psychology, part of my university study."

"Which is all bullshit. Out there on the streets, that's the real University."

Corso reclined lazily back in the chair, his jacket opened up to reveal his gun and handcuffs. "I could handle that little fox for sure, but I don't think the Chief is going to last the full fifteen rounds."

"Give the man a break. He hasn't had it easy since the divorce. It's about time he enjoyed himself."

Corso laughed. "You don't enjoy yourself with a woman like that. You make her enjoy you."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Didn't you get a good look at her? She's the type who wants to dominate. You've got to turn that around, and teach her to enjoy you. I would....." Corso suddenly stopped talking. Officer Charles Boddin the administrative controller stood next to him in front of Bakker's desk. "Waxing that dome of yours?" Corso remarked. He stared at how the light shone off Boddin's head.

He ignored Corso and looked sternly at Bakker. Boddin always had a way of looking solemn, and grim. The administration officer placed two forms down in front of the shaggy haired Detective. "The deductions you made for meals last week are not acceptable."

Bakker, suddenly alert, sat up straight. "I was on duty and working undercover."

Boddin peered down at him. "I need a receipt. Otherwise no deductions."

"I gave you the receipts, all of them."

Boddin held up a number of crumpled pieces of stained papers. "I do not call these receipts."

"They were when I got them."

"It looks as if you were chewing on them."

"I was," Bakker confirmed.

Boddin immediately dropped the pieces of paper onto the desk.

"It was the situation. I was told to eat everything I had in my pockets or die. So I ate them. I know it sounds like something you'd hear in a film, but it's true. I had no choice."

"Either have I. No receipts, no refunds." Boddin turned, and walked away.

Bakker jumped up and shouted. "I'm entitled to those deductions."

"With legible receipts," Boddin said over his shoulder as he headed back to his desk.

"You can't do this," he screamed, then turned to Corso. "The man is a pen pushing senseless son of a bitch," he said bitterly. "People like that should be put on an island with thousands of other pen pushing idiots. God I hate that man. What do you do with someone like that?"

"I can think of a few things, but you really don't want to know," Corso muttered, "they're all illegal."
Chapter Three

At Schiphol airport, fifteen kilometres south of Amsterdam, crowds gathered around arrival gate number 3 waiting to greet family and friends. Among them company representatives held up signs with the name of their company, or contact. Out of the arrivals door appeared a small group of freshly tanned passengers sporting sombreros, T-shirts, and loose fitting shorts. They were greeted by an equally enthusiastic crowd waving Dutch flags and wearing winter coats, a mark of the depressing weather that held Europe in its grip for the last two weeks.

Detectives Klaas Dop and Frans Kaps, who looked tired and frustrated, stood next to the reps while Kaps held up a large board with the name Harvey Wall scribbled on it; the same board they took turns in holding up for the last hour and a half.

"We're wasting our time here." Dop moaned. "His flight arrived ages ago from New York. I don't think he was on it."

"The Chief told us to wait, so we wait." Kaps replied, steadfast and decisive.

Dop shook his head in disagreement. "Everybody on that flight passed through customs more than a half hour ago. There is no way he could have passed us. He was definitely not on the flight."

"We wait." Kaps commanded.

Although they both held the same rank, Kaps always took the leading hand. Dop never rejected. His only interest was to let the day pass with as little trouble or exertion possible. The burger and fries he had while waiting eased the monotony, now he just wanted to get home and relax on the sofa with a beer and watch a movie on his new high definition TV.

"We're wasting our time. There is no point in hanging around any longer."

"You just want to go home to a beer and watch TV right?"

"Well there is nothing happening here, so I can't see the point."

"You've got to be the laziest guy on the force." Kaps shook his head, and moaned.

In a cafe a short distance behind the waiting crowds, directly across from the arrivals gate, people relaxed waiting for friends and family. Leaning against one of the pillars at the edge of the bar was a tall black American, Detective Harvey Wall.

He popped chewing gum into his mouth and smiled as he watched Dop and Kaps bitch at each other. A half hour ago he spotted them holding their trivial makeshift notice as he came through the arrivals door. They never noticed him, even though he towered over most of the other passengers. His welcoming party were busy eyeing up a group of scantily clad women who just arrived from Mexico. It was then he decided to play his little game.

He walked right past them and headed for a currency exchange counter where he exchanged dollars for Euro's, and browsed the large variety of airport shops before he returned to watch them bickering. If these two clowns were typical Dutch detectives, then he definitely was going to have fun in Amsterdam. In fact, the fun could begin right now. Harvey Wall picked up his large sports bag and headed for the terminal exit.

Outside the main building, a long row of taxis stood ready and waiting. First in line was a brand-new deep blue Mercedes. The driver quickly jumped out and placed his one piece of luggage in the trunk, then held the door open and closed it when he got in; a service cab drivers in New York would never dream of doing.

The driver was young, middle twenties, had a quick smile, and judging by his enthusiasm not long on the job. Harvey knew Europeans had a love-hate relationship with Americans. They hated their bragging and loudness, but loved their tips. From the back seat, he glanced at the driver's identity card stuck to the dashboard. It was all Dutch but looked legitimate enough.

"City Centre, Dam Square," Wall ordered. As the taxi raced away, Wall took his iPhone out of his inside jacket pocket and photographed the ID.

Clearing the maze of roads around the airport took a few minutes before they got onto the motorway. Traffic seemed like rush-hour, bumper to bumper, but at a much higher speed than he was used to back home. The biggest difference was the smoothness of the ride. No bumps or potholes to cripple the suspension, or your back, in fact, the road was smooth and silky. If only they didn't drive up everyone's ass, then it would be the perfect ride.

Half an hour later Harvey Wall stepped out of the taxi on Dam Square, right in front of the same palace Napoleon Bonaparte visited in 1811; a fact he read about in the guide book on the flight over. The word Dam seemed to conjure up something hellish, but it looked different than it sounded. He didn't know what to expect, but impressive it was not. No parading guards in fancy uniform or ornamented railings like Buckingham Palace in London, one of the cities he visited on his whirlwind honeymoon tour of Europe ten years ago, a year later they divorced.

The sandstone walls were dark and stained from years of air pollution. A cleaning job might do the trick, or a serious makeover with a coat of white paint, shrubbery or a barrier along the front, maybe a tower on each corner, soldiers in full military regalia, stuff like that. But then again he wondered if it really would make a difference - its grand depressiveness would probably defeat any enhancement.

Harvey Wall sucked in the air through his nostrils and shook his head disapprovingly.

Too clean, no big city smell.

The taxi driver placed his baggage next to him and looked expectantly up at the tall American.

"Definitely not New York," he grumbled, then handed the driver two 50 euro notes and a piece of paper.

"Take the luggage to my hotel. I wrote the address down there and keep the change." The driver was more than surprised at the amount he had just been handed. He read the address then put the baggage back into the taxi.

"Thank you very much, Sir, no problem," he said, stuffing the notes into his wallet.

Harvey had no time to check the exchange rate, but the driver did not complain. According to Google maps, the hotel was only a ten minute drive from Dam Square. Maybe he had tipped him a little too much.

When the taxi sped away, he took another photo of the registration plate, then turned to watch flocks of pigeons jostling for space on the large cobblestone square in front of the palace. He sought tourists feed them with bits of hamburgers, French fries, and other morsels, while friends and family took photos of them perching on hands, shoulders and heads. "Rats with wings" the Dutch called them in his travel book, mostly because of the diseases they carried. He wondered how much physical contact these people would make with others before they washed their hair, hands and clothes again.

He turned and looked at the large white marble monument on the opposite side of the square; again not exactly impressive. A white stone pillar to commemorate the Second World War, another snippet he remembered from the tourist book but he could not remember the details. What did stick in his mind was the information about the small street to the right; it led straight into the Red-Light district.

Hard to believe a royal palace was just around the corner from the most famous prostitution neighbourhood in the world. What would people say if the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue was situated within a couple of hundred meters from the largest prostitution area in the United States, and legal. That nugget of info really caught his attention.

So this is Amsterdam.

To each side of the palace, crowds streamed out of the busiest shopping street in the city, the Kalverstraat. In the six-hour flight, he had plenty of time to study the maps and guidebooks, and knew exactly where he was, and which direction to take. Harvey Wall checked his wallet in his breast pocket, turned his back to the monument and the red light district and headed towards the shopping street to the left of the palace. Inching his way past the queues at the Rabo Bank ATM's on the corner, he submerged into the masses of shoppers and tourists.
Chapter Four

Administration officer Boddin added up the receipts on this calculator, wrote down the total on the blue form, double checked it, gathered everything neatly into a folder, and headed for Chief Ribb's office. He was joined by a female clerk with a file in her hand as he entered the 'aquarium' as many of the detectives called it.

The Chief was on the telephone. "Listen and listen very carefully," he said, doing his best to control his temper. "Check airport security, they could have spotted him. It's possible they could have contacted him for some reason and took him through another door. Maybe he fell asleep on the toilet? Whatever! All I know he's a tall black American, he got on the plane and did not disappear on the flight halfway across the Atlantic. Just find the man," he shouted, and slammed down the phone.

Boddin, with the female clerk directly behind him, stood in front of the chiefs' desk.

"God, give me patience," he moaned, then turned to Boddin. "They're not the worst on the force, but they do their best to make my blood boil." With a deep sigh, he left his desk to study the markers on the map. Bakker was not an idiot, and in the past had come up with credible suggestions, but was he imagining things? Was he on drugs?

The clerk passed Boddin and held out the file to Chief Ribb. "The file on the American has just arrived Sir."

He took it, then she left. Ribb observed how Boddin totally failed to notice the clerk brush past him, her breast touching his elbow, and offering him a gentle smile. Opening the folder, he removed Detective Harvey Wall's photo and studied it while Boddin laid his paperwork on the desk, along with the blue form.

"Receipts for last month. You want to sign?" Boddin said, in a near whisper.

Ribb, who seemed more frustrated than ever, went back to his black leather swivel chair. "You mean I have a choice?" He snapped.

Boddin, expressionless and calm as ever, pulled up a seat and settled slowly into it. "I've known you since you joined the force and watched you work your way up the ranks." Boddin said, in his typical low relaxed tone, that bordered on tedium. "You know when you need a little coaching or personal advice regarding the station I'm always there, even those times when you don't realize you need it yourself. This is one of those moments. What's up?"

Chief Harry Ribb tried to focus his attention, and massaged his temples with his index fingers. "I'm used to getting frustrated at criminal cases that do not tie up, and there are times I want to explode because some judge has let the shit of the earth walk free. But days like this bring on total bewilderment - and unmerciful headaches."

"Okay, so what's the problem?"

"Bakker's got this idea about the deaths column. He is either turning neurotic or on drugs, all the signs are there. Apart from that I sent two baboons to the airport to pick up a guest cop coming to Amsterdam on an exchange program from New York. They lost him before he stepped off the plane." Ribb handed Boddin the photo. "Here, take a look at this."

Harvey Wall was an African American born to an Afro-Caribbean Jamaican father and Chinese mother. With high cheekbones and smiling eyes, he looked more like a model than a police officer. He stood 6 foot 4 in uniform, next to, and smiling down at his captain, who did not look amused.

"They also have got the same photo. Look at the guy. How could you miss someone built like that," he moaned, and slumped back into his chair.

"Is that all?"

"No. Last night my new girlfriend drained me of all my energy, and ten minutes ago she stormed in here to finish me off. And, if that's not enough, I got a call from Bakker, who claims you won't accept his receipts."

Boddin remained relaxed, and for what seemed like an eternity to Ribb, finally spoke. "Did you see them?" Boddin asked.

"I did."

"And?"

"Normally he would have to go back to the restaurant to pick up new receipts."

"That's what I thought, case closed. I'll process them when I get them." Boddin said with a feigned smile.

Chief Ribb shook his head. "He can't. The owner is in jail, and the restaurant has been boarded up, which means you have to accept them."

"But they are illegible."

"I don't care. He paid for food and whatever else and it should be refunded. Deal with it. Make out new receipts yourself if need be."

"That is neither normal procedure or legal." Boddin said, firmly.

Ribb was not in the mood for an argument. "I don't care. What do you want me to do? Arrest him for not following procedure because of soiled receipts?"

Boddin arose from the chair, and pointed at the blue form. "Just sign, please."

Ribb signed. Boddin left without saying another word.

Ribb could remember when he used to take on the biggest crimes in Amsterdam, spending months on surveillance, sifting through mountains of information and nothing phased him. But these stupid little incidents at the station drove him crazy. What was he turning into? Where had the action gone? It seemed like years since the adrenaline flowed through his veins.

Although he had control over all the major operations, there was no real fieldwork and no feeling of an active contribution to crime-fighting. He had become a coordinator, a regulator, with meetings on top of meetings, which had become mundane, and unbelievably boring. How long would this continue? How long could he go on nursing a bunch of overgrown boy scouts?

Time seemed to pass at a snail's pace as Dop and Kaps continued to wait for their lost passenger at Schiphol International Airport. At least one hundred and thirty planeloads of travel-weary passengers had passed through the arrivals gates in the last two hours, and Kaps had had enough.

"Come on," he moaned. "Let's try security."

"We could have done that an hour ago."

"Shut up. Just move it."

Dop had difficulty keeping up with Kaps as he hurried towards the airport security office. First they checked with airline staff to see if Wall had actually been on the flight. That was quickly confirmed, but there was no extra information as to where he went after he left the plane.

They checked customs to see if he had been held for any guns, drugs or whatever he might have been carrying, he was not. Finally, they were referred to the security department who monitored everything on camera that came and went throughout Schiphol airport.

The CCTV surveillance room was large and impressive, and consisted of a curved table two meters deep and at least twenty meters long. Five surveillance officers sat behind groups of three monitors directly at eye level, while on the wall in front, lines of flat screens spanned the width of the room. Above them, extra monitors showed the arrival and departure times of all flights. Directly behind the surveillance officers three supervisors in enclosed desks scrutinised flags put on movements of special interest by the first group.

Dop and Kaps were introduced to one of the supervisors, a tall, thin man in his early forties with dark deep rings under his eyes. He hit a button on his computer and an unmarked DVD popped out of the bay.

"I copied the CCTV recordings of passengers from that flight. They lead out into the arrivals building where you were waiting." He stood up and headed away from his desk, "follow me."

In the small darkened viewing room at the rear of the surveillance room, he settled down in front a couple of monitors and slipped the DVD into a player. Two monitors lit up automatically.

"This shows the entrance and exit points and the various arrival and departure halls in Schiphol. This is arrival hall number three," he said, pointing to the monitor on the left. "And I think that looks like your man."

The supervisor pointed to a tall black male coming out of the arrivals door while Dop and Kaps could clearly be seen concentrating on a number of scantily clad women in the other direction. They watched the tall black American walk directly up to them, stall for a moment within arm's length, shake his head, then carry on walking. Kaps and Dop now realised they had totally failed to notice him.

"Oh shit," Kaps moaned.

"It seems," the supervisor continued, "after this he went to exchange some money right, then browse the shops." He typed another couple of keys. "This is a shot about thirty minutes later."

The monitor showed Wall leaning up against a pillar at a coffee bar, only twenty meters behind Dop and Kaps, whose interest remained on a couple of beautiful women in the direct vicinity.

"He's not all that difficult to recognize," the supervisor casually remarked. "Don't know how you missed him."

They watched the American Detective pick up his bag and walk away in the opposite direction towards the exit and taxis.

"What the hell?" Dop said, astonished. "That this is criminal."

"I still don't know how you could have missed him." The supervisor muttered with a certain undertone.

"All right," Kaps moaned. "We heard you the first time."

The supervisor pressed some more keys and another monitor flickered into action. "This is a shot from outside the main building."

Kaps watched dumbstruck at the sight of Wall getting into a dark blue Mercedes taxi and driving away. Kaps slammed his fist on the table and jumped up.

"Why the hell did he do that? He saw us waiting for him. He could have just walked over and we'd have been back at the station hours ago."

Dop slumped in the chair. "And I could have been home, putting my feet up. Chief Ribb is going to kill us."

"But we know where he's going," Kaps said excitedly, then took out his mobile. "We'll find him, don't worry, I've got the number to his hotel." He dialled and a male desk clerk answered.

"The Alfred hotel, good afternoon, how may I help you?"

"This is Detective Kaps from the Amsterdam police. I am looking for a guest, a fellow police officer who has just arrived from New York, his name is Detective Harvey Wall."

"I'm afraid he is not in the hotel at the moment. However, his luggage arrived just a short while ago," the clerk said.

"What do you mean his luggage arrived?" Kaps shouted.

"Like I said, only his luggage arrived. No Detective, Detective." The clerk replied, trying patiently to explain. "I believe he got out somewhere along the way. He told the driver to drop his luggage off at the hotel. That's all I know."

"Listen you jerk. The driver..."

"Thank you for calling. Good day." The clerk abruptly replied, then immediately hung up.

Dop looked on, waiting for an answer.

"What did he say?"

Kaps left the chair and headed for the door. "He got out of the taxi somewhere in the city."

"We've got to find him before he gets lost." Dop said. "You know what Amsterdam is like for the average tourist. A maze of canals, bridges, and streets, that all look alike. If you don't know your way around you disappear into a black hole. Besides, if we arrive back at the station without him, Chief Ribb will skin us alive."

"Lost?" Kaps threw up both hands. "Are you kidding me? He's a Detective from New York for Christ's sake."

Boddin was as usual, at his desk, which unlike many of his colleagues, was meticulous. Next to the ruler, placed on the very edge, lay an elaborate holder for pens, pencils, scissors and paper clips in various sizes. Behind him, a purposely built cabinet appeared to contain an array of forms in every colour ever issued by the police during the last hundred years and stacked to the brim. Chief Ribb appeared in front of the desk and took a seat as Boddin was filling in a green form.

"I'm sorry, Charles. I shouldn't have taken it out on you like that."

Boddin glanced up for a second, then without acknowledgement to his Chief's presence, continued to fill in the form. "You let that sort of nonsense nitty-gritty get under your skin." Boddin said, in his usual tone; the same voice that drove many of his co-workers to despair. "You should learn to relax, keep your work under control, and at a distance. Never let it get too personal. The worst you can do is let the insignificant pile up on you. Concentrate on the things that matter. The rest is, believe me, irrelevant."

Ribb knew he was right. He could never handle the little stuff; that was Boddin's specialty. "There's something I always wanted to ask you," Ribb said.

Boddin, in his usual manner, stopped writing, put his pen to one side, and looked up.

"Do you like doing the administration, the paperwork, chasing after everyone, checking receipts?"

Boddin immediately took up his pen once again, and went back to filling in the forms. "I don't mind. It's a job. I put in a good day's work," he said, sounding totally uninterested.

"And the only thing you look forward to at the end of the day is your pension," Ribb replied.

Boddin stopped writing, put his pen to one side, and stared directly at Ribb.

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"No, but it's a fact, right?"

"Not the way I look at it."

"But it is true." Ribb said, pressing his point.

"I am looking forward to a pleasant retirement, yes."

"Charles, have you ever wondered why you never made promotion?"

Boddin packed the papers in front of him into a neat bundle, took a medium-sized paperclip out of its little compartment, attached it to the papers, then dropped them in the outbox. "It never really bothered me."

Ribb leaned towards him, and raised his index finger. "That's it. Nothing bothers you. Nothing gets you going. You couldn't care whether you had a job here or the tax office or social welfare. You've got no drive."

Boddin grabbed another bunch of neatly stacked envelopes, stood up, and was about to walk away, hesitated, then turned to Chief Ribb.

"Do I need it in my line of work?"

"No, but..." Suddenly, Ribb was out of words.

Boddin was gone.

Ribb realized he had once again gone too far. Talking to Boddin like that was a mistake. "Shit," he muttered under his breath. When would he learn to be more diplomatic. Once again, he felt he was the wrong man, in the wrong job.

At lunchtime, the station canteen was, as ever at this time, full. There was seating for roughly sixty men and women at a time, who usually gathered in their own groups. Uniform sat with uniform, detectives with their own.

After grabbing his usual afternoon snack, a hotdog covered with a layer of mustard and ketchup, and black coffee, Ribb looked around for a place to sit. Most senior officers never dined in the canteens. Meals were usually brought to their offices, or they lunched outside. The idea behind it was to create a distance of command, which many believed generated more respect. Lower ranks would not look up to a senior officer who lunched with the regulars. Ribb never cared for that type of protocol. For him, it was out-dated and an insult to the people you worked with.

Ignoring empty tables close by, he found what he was looking for at the back - away from others, in the quietest area of the canteen.

"Mind if I sit down?"

Boddin looked up with a slight tinge of surprise at Chief Ribb beckoning to a stool opposite him. Without waiting for an answer, he sat down. Boddin gently wiped his mouth with a paper napkin then continued to cut into the schnitzel on his plate.

"I apologize for what I said earlier." Ribb said. "I'm not in a position to tell you what you should or should not do with your life."

With the precision of a surgeon, Boddin cut the schnitzel into little squares, then put down his knife and fork.

"Listen Harry," he said, in his relaxed deep tone. "No need to apologize. You are just doing your job. But I enjoy my work. For most people, it would be boring, dull, but I like it. It suits my way of life. And when I look at the rest of the guys, even you, I'm a happy man."

Ribb shook his head. "I don't get it. You could have a lot more going for you. You could have had my job. You've got the intelligence, and more."

Boddin stared at him blankly, then leaned towards Ribb. "Let's weigh up the balance, okay? You've got a broken marriage, a fourteen-year-old daughter who needs your attention, a new girlfriend who seemingly needs even more attention, and a station demanding constant nursing that has you frustrated as hell. Compare all that to my life I don't think I've too much to worry about."

Ribb shook his head in disbelief. "You don't miss much, do you."

"It's part of my job. I like to keep my finger on the pulse."

"Yeah, while I'm getting heartburn and the blistering headaches trying to keep everything up and running."

"I remember you telling me, the only ambition you had after spending so many years in the field was to take charge of the station, and get everything running the way you wanted it, like a well-oiled machine."

Ribb was about to give Boddin a reply when his mobile rang, and saw it was the city pathologist. He pressed the answer button. Boddin went immediately back to eating his schnitzel.

"Jim, what's up?"

In the mortuary, Dr Jim Conver, the city pathologist for the last nine years, stood over a female body laid out on the stainless steel table. Her chest cavity was wide open, and on the small tray next to her lay her heart.

"I'm working on a young female that supposedly died of natural causes. But the more I look into this, it does not seem to be so natural. Could you come over?"

"I'm just in the middle of lunch. But okay, give me half an hour."
Chapter Five

Just around the corner from the Leidseplein in the heart of Amsterdam, Dop and Kaps got out of their unmarked police car .

"Where do we go from here?" Dop asked.

Kaps studied the bustle of tourists on the streets around him. "If you were a tourist who just arrived in Amsterdam where would you go?"

"The red light district I'd do later," Dop replied. "First I would get acquainted with the city, look around, take in the sites, probably keep to the shopping areas, Leidsestraat, Kalverstraat, something like that. Maybe look for a museum."

Kaps took the photo of Harvey Wall out of his jacket and held it up in front of Dop's face. "This does not look like the type of person who would go straight to a museum on his first day in Amsterdam." He stuffed the photo back into his pocket. "But you're right about the red light district. Tourists don't go there immediately when they arrive. They need a day or two to build up confidence. Let's get a quick bite and a beer, then work our way down to the Kalverstraat."

In a Mexican restaurant in the Korte Leidsedwarsstraat, not more than two hundred meters from where Kaps and Dop had just stepped out of their unmarked police car, a waiter brought Detective Harvey Wall a large plate of spare ribs.

"Here you are, Sir."

"Looks good. Tell me, where does a man go to have a good time around here?"

The waiter smiled and moved a little closer. Wall noticed more than he wanted to. The sight of stains on his threadbare waiter's jacket reminded Wall of a rat-infested restaurant he once raided in the Bronx years ago. His appetite for the ribs suddenly vanished.

"Depends on what you'd call a good time, Sir," he said smiling, showing his two front gold capped teeth.

His breath reeked. Harvey opened a map of Amsterdam and handed the waiter a pen. "Just mark the spots buddy, and let me worry about the rest."

Thirty minutes later Harvey Wall was out on the street. Around the corner from the restaurant, he eyed up a pair of Nikes in a store window, and tried to figure out the exchange rate in his head, then took out his iPhone. The conversion app calculated the Euros into dollars. To his surprise they were less expensive than in New York, but would they have a pair in his size? Fourteen? Probably not. Even in the US he had to order online or go to exclusive shops.

Just then, on the other side of the Leidsestraat three youths ran out of the pizza restaurant, and up the busy shopping Street and passed one of the trams coming down the middle in the opposite direction.

A waiter rushed out and shouted. "Stop... help me somebody, I've been robbed."

Wall turned and automatically reached for his gun. Gone. He forgot he had packed it with his luggage, which was now back at the hotel. Further up, he saw them split up. Keeping an eye on where they ran he quickly checked his other pockets and found all the equipment he needed. Without further hesitation, he took after the one who remained in view, the weakest. A small white kid, about seventeen, blond hair, black t-shirt, scruffy jeans hanging down his ass, strutting his Bjorn Borg underwear.

The man from the restaurant shouted as Wall rushed past. "They took all my money."

Unaware of Wall behind him, the thief ran towards the Leidseplein then turned to the right at a theatre and into a narrow street, the Lijnbaansgracht.

After passing the Melkweg music venue halfway down, the thief quickly slowed to a walking pace. Difficult to figure out why at first, Wall did exactly the same but kept his distance. He quickly realized why the sudden change in pace. The thief passed a police station on the right further down the street. The kid was either really stupid or had a ton of guts, Wall thought. He should have known about the station, just as all the kids in New York know exactly where their local precinct is. Stupid, he thought. At that moment, four uniformed police officers rushed out of the station and jumped into two police cars.

The thief hesitated for a second – they sped past, he cautiously carried on, extraordinary stupid, he concluded. Wall thought briefly about getting their attention as they drove past but decided against it. Trailing him was the better option; it could lead to the others, and probably quicker than waiting for him to rat on his friends if they arrest him now. Back home research had shown that groups committing similar robberies usually met up within an hour after the crime. The money would be shared out, then they would go their separate ways. He hoped the same statistics applied to Amsterdam.

Heading past the police station he followed him over a small bridge and continued to tail him through a maze of streets, in the background, careful not to be spotted. After twenty minutes of dodging in and out of the narrow streets - some not much bigger than the width of a car - he watched the three thieves meet up in the middle of the Jordaan district. He checked his position on his iPhone. The name of the Street he was on was called 'Vuileweespad'. They sure had the weirdest names here, he thought. He marked it. It was essential information when or if he had to write up a report about this.

In the shelter of a doorway, he watched them share out the money. Minutes later they split up once again. Making a mental note of the directions they took, he studied the surrounding buildings and noted the different types of doors, parked cars, and anything that made an impression. It would save him from getting lost. Long before the iPhone appeared, this was the way he worked to prevent getting totally lost - a habit he enjoyed and did not intend to give it up because of the wonders of electronics. If he moved quickly, he knew his plan would work. Thieves who felt secure had little reason to run. They would slow down, relax, and begin to take things easy: that was when he would make his move.

Suddenly the kid turned around and headed back towards him.

Wall was not ready for the encounter. He stopped, reached into his jacket pocket, took out a yellow post-it paper block and wrote on it. The thief drew close. Wall reached out and grabbed the youth from behind. The thief shouted something in Dutch, when the Americans huge hand pinned him up against the red brick front wall of a house.

He stared up at Wall with a look of fear on his face.

"Sorry pal, I don't understand a word. Where I come from I would have shot you between the eyes as soon as you came out that pizza joint. But I'm a guest here, so I've got another surprise for you."

From his inside jacket pocket, Wall took out a long plastic tie-wrap. He pulled the thief's hands behind his back and quickly locked his wrists, securing it with a second tie-wrap to a drainpipe.

"Well, how do you like that?" Wall laughed. "With all your newfound wealth you have just bought yourself a brand new pair of bracelets, all the way from the US of A."

The thief attempted to pull his hands out of the tie-wraps, but quickly realized it was impossible. Wall took out his pre-written post-it, peeled it off and slapped it on his back.

Wall flashed a bright smile. "Bye bye now," then ran back down the street.

The stunned thief looked on in disbelief. "What the fuck?" He screamed in English. "You can't just leave me here. Who do you think you are, Batman or something?"

Wall turned, while continuing to jog backwards he pointed to his face. "Do I look like Batman? You break the rules then you lose the right to walk the streets, boy." Wall shouted back, then turned and disappeared down the small street.

"Come back here. Where are you going?" The thief tried to break free. "You can't leave me here?" He slumped in shock, then began to cry for help.

Acting like a typical tourist Harvey Wall stared up at the century-old houses, as if studying the architecture, and at the same time kept his eye on the second thief fifty meters in front. He had followed him to the Rozengracht, a broad street with heavy traffic, bicycles, and trams going each way in the middle, and into the Akoleienstraat on the opposite side.

When the thief took a right turn at the Bloemstraat, Wall quickly doubled back towards the Rozengracht and turned left; then broke into a run. He turned left again at the next corner and ran up to the end of the Bloemstraat, where he thought the suspect should be. As if on cue the thief appeared, and while looking relaxed and unconcerned about the day's events, Wall took out the post-it block and wrote on it. As the youth grew near, he became aware of Wall, who seemed out of place in the alley. Within reaching distance, Wall slipped the block back into his inside pocket and took out the tie-wraps, but seconds too soon. The moment the thief saw them he darted at lightning speed back down the Bloemstraat.

Without hesitation, Wall shot after him with an acceleration that seemed to defy his exceptional build. At the end of the street, the thief, who was small, nimble and fast, turned left out onto the busy Rozengracht. Automobiles screeched to a halt. Tram drivers slowed down to watch the chase.

Wall held his pace - he was directly behind him - but not close enough.

After 30 metres, he gained enough distance to lash out. The smack across the back of the head with a fist as big as a boxing glove, caused the youth to flip over and crash to the pavement. As he climbed to his feet in a dazed state, Wall pulled his arms behind his back and secured him to a lamppost with the tie-wraps. He took out the post-it note and stuck it to the thief's back.

"Quick, but not quick enough," Wall said, out of breath.

The kid shouted something in Dutch.

Wall raised his finger at the youth. "Two down, one to go." He straightened his jacket, walked away, and passed a tram driver who had stopped in the middle of the Rozengracht to watch the incident. "I really love your city," Wall remarked, with a mischievous smile.
Chapter Six

Dr Jim Conver was looking at some slides through his microscope when Ribb entered the mortuary. A female corpse was laid out on the stainless steel table in the middle of the room. Ribb sometimes expected to see blood and guts lying on different trolleys, a battleground of bodies and horror, decomposed, cut up, burnt, without limbs, in fact, every possible nasty state imaginable, but it was never like that. This was a world within a world. The white tiled serene surroundings gave the impression of an organized, sober and sterile cutting factory. The only thing that broke the dead silence was the whirr of the ventilation in the background, which was suddenly interrupted by the sickening sound of cartilage and bone cracking as heavy duty shears sliced through rib and breastbone in the adjoining room.

Ribb winced. Nothing disturbed him more than that sound. "Problems?" He finally asked.

Dr Conver looked up. "I've just finished the heart of this young woman, but I need to carry out more tests." He turned away from the microscope and walked over to the body of the young woman. "You okay?"

"I'm okay."

"I thought you were looking a bit green." Conver said, with a grin. "It's that canteen of yours. You should try ours sometime." He held up her lung and studied it carefully. "We've got the freshest meat in town." He placed it next to her heart that had been sliced in two and motioned to Ribb. "Take a look at this. You know I'm not one to call you down here unless something unusual turns up Harry." Conver picked up one half of the heart. About the size of a fist, it was still moist with blood, and although it was only half, he could make out the typical outline that somehow didn't look right.

"This is from Carola Munk." He turned it in his hand and pointed with his scalpel to a ventricle. "She died of an unusual condition."

Ribb shook his head. "You dragged me all the way from lunch just to tell me that? Surely there is something else?"

"It's a heart defect you could only be born with."

Ribb shrugged his shoulders. "So what's the big deal? When you've something to say Jim it usually has some weight to it, but this sounds ridiculous. I think these white walls and the permanent sound of that ventilation is beginning to affect you."

"Like I said," Conver continued, "this is a defect you can only be born with. You don't pick it up along the way."

"Another medical wonder. Was she poisoned?"

"No."

"Did she die of a gunshot, stabbing, bang on the head, or anything else that might be related to a crime?"

"No."

"Since we don't seem to have a crime here, this is not the place I want to be right now. If you don't mind, I'll leave you to publish your findings in the medical journals, and I'll get back to the cup of coffee I normally have after lunch." Ribb turned and headed for the door.

"One other thing Harry, with this sort of defect she should have been dead a long time ago, or at best, extremely ill. I've examined her medical records and there's not a blemish. She was hardly a day sick, and certainly never had a heart complaint."

Ribb stopped at the door, then turned to look back at Conver who stood in the middle of the room with a wry smile on his face.

Chief Ribb sighed. "Okay, that's different. Not exactly a crime, but different. All right, give me the details."

Carola Munk's medical file was just as Conver told him - nothing interesting whatsoever, or out of the ordinary. When he closed the file, he noticed her address; the Bilderdijkstraat in the Da Costa neighbourhood. That struck a note, it was one of the streets Bakker had mentioned.

"Is this the only suspicious death from that area?"

"As far as I know. Why, were you expecting more?"

"I know there was another death in the same street."

"Well, if anything else turns up, I'll let you know."

In the café Rooie Nelis on the corner of the Laurierstraat, Dop and Kaps sat at a lone table drinking beer. Every Friday they came here on their lunch break from the station for the last seven years, to round off the week.

"I think we should try the other side of town." Dop grunted, with half a sandwich stuffed in his mouth. "We don't know what type of guy this is? Maybe we should call the station first."

"Don't you listen to anything I say?" Kaps moaned. "We already know what type of guy this is. And we already look like fools, we can't call in."

Dop forced a smile. "Maybe he already turned up?"

"They would have called us." Kaps replied, sounding more irritated. "I am not going to make that call first. Come on, let's get out of here."

Outside, they noticed a small crowd gathered further up the street. Among them, they could hear someone shouting.

"Something's going on," Kaps said. "Let's take a look." With visible effort from their culinary indulgence, they ran towards the crowd.

Dop and Kaps forced their way through. "Out of the way, police," They came face-to-face with the first thief fastened to the lamppost. A middle-aged woman handed Dop the post-it.

"This was stuck to his back. It is in English."

"Wanted for a pizza restaurant robbery," Dop read aloud. "Three-thirty, Monday afternoon. Signed, D. H. W." Dop scratched his head. "What does that mean?"

"Detective Harvey Wall." Kaps replied, looking dumbfounded.

"He can't do that," Dop shouted in disbelief, nearly choking. "He's not allowed to make arrests in Amsterdam, right?" He handed the note to Kaps.

"And that's not the only problem?" Kaps replied. "He's made a bigger fool of us." Kaps studied the note further. It was difficult to make out Walls handwriting. "Going after the other two," he said, looking dumbfounded. "Jesus Christ." He looked around in the hope he was still in the vicinity, but the tall black American Detective was nowhere to be seen.

Dop pulled a small penknife out of his pocket. "I'll cut him loose."

"Great?" The thief said, relieved. "Get these off, they hurt."

Kaps immediately blocked him from opening the penknife. "Forget him. We better find this Detective Harvey Wall, and quick. Put the knife away, we have to go." He turned and shouted into the crowd. "Anybody see the man who caught this thief or noticed which way he went?"

"I did, I saw everything." An old man replied, and pointed with his thin liver-spotted hand towards the Rozengracht. "He took off that way."

"You live around here?"

The old man, with grey, greasy hair, and a ragged well-aged but alert face, stood in the street in his house slippers.

"Number 45," he said, and pointed to the dark green door next to the lamppost.

"I'm sorry, but we have to go. Whatever you do, this man is not to be cut loose. He's a dangerous criminal. We'll be back shortly to pick him up."

The old man nodded in approval, then Dop and Kaps took off. A hundred meters further up Kaps looked back to see him doing his best to hold back the small crowd, and succeeding. He was pleased he made at least one correct decision that day.

"We'll have to move fast, are you ready for it?" Kaps asked.

After only a hundred metres, Dop was already out of breath and not looking too well. He suddenly stopped, totally exhausted. Apart from being a heavy cigarette smoker, he was grossly overweight.

"Why didn't you call a car to pick him up?" Dop asked, and wiped the sweat from his brow. "I don't get it."

"Because we already look like idiots. We need to do this ourselves."

Dop looked at Kaps in disbelief. "I knew I should have called in sick today. Nothing is going right. This morning the charts read: Financially you are in the money this week. Friends and colleagues look up to you and appreciate your suggestions. They never warned me of the day like this."

"I told you to stop reading that shit. Anyway, what difference does it make? I can hear the Chief screaming at us already." He grabbed Dop by his leather jacket and pulled him towards the Rozengracht. "Come on. We've got to move before the American ends up face down in one of our beautiful canals."

Dop moaned. "The asshole should have stayed in New York. I don't care if they take him home in a box tomorrow."

"You will when the Chief puts you on suspension."

Dop stalled. "Are you blaming me? What about you?"

"I'll be all right, because I'll tell him you were not pulling your weight."

"Great partner you are."

Dop and Kaps ran out onto the busy Rozengracht. To the left, they spotted another crowd in the distance gathered on the footpath.

"Come on," Kaps shouted. "That could be number two."

The gathering was larger. Trams and automobiles had slowed down to witness the scene while a curious crowd began to slow down and stop the venomous shouting spectacle. He immediately stopped screaming after they pushed their way through the crowd.

"Hey, any chance of getting me out of here? I'll make it worth your while."

Kaps flashed his police badge.

The thief slumped. "Just what I need."

On the verge of collapsing, DOP asked. "Which way did he go?"

Kaps removed the post-it from the thief's back.

Before he could answer, the thief gasped. "Hey, where did that come from?"

"From the same guy who cuffed you to the drainpipe." Kaps replied. "Which way did he go?"

"I didn't do anything. Just get me out of here."

"Just tell me which way he went, and we'll let you go."

He indicated in the direction of the Marnixstraat. "He went over the bridge and turned left." Kaps slapped the post-it back onto the back of the thief, and took off.

"We will be back shortly to pick you up," Dop shouted, as he tried to keep up with Kaps.

"Hey, you said you'd let me go."

Dop uttered a last gasp, "We will, when we get back."

"Thanks, assholes." The thief shouted. "What's on the goddamn note?"

They were gone.
Chapter Seven

Wall ran in the direction he knew the third thief had taken, and just caught sight of him going over a busy bridge at the top of the Rozengracht in the distance. Staying well behind, he followed him through the maze of streets in the Da Costa area, then watched him disappear into a bar on the corner of the Helmersstraat. Wall checked his wallet - he had enough cash to get some drinks and tip the waiter. He still felt he was missing a vital element of his job by not having a gun at hand. Five minutes after the thief went into the bar, the tall American stepped through the door.

At least three people sat at various tables at the rear and a couple next to the windows on the left. Two men sat at one end of the semi-circular bar to the right. The thief was at the opposite end of the bar, resting on a typical bar stool, drinking beer, well away from the other customers, alone. He was older than the other two, early thirties and obviously more experienced. Amsterdam was not New York. There he knew what to expect when he entered a bar like this, and never unarmed. Right now, he felt strangely naked and unprotected, like missing a third arm, and one that had the bigger punch. To add to the complications, they spoke a language he did not understand, and could be used to his disadvantage. He would have to be extra cautious.

Two men at the bar, late forties or early fifties, construction workers, judging by their soiled clothes, , glanced up as he entered. Their eyes trained on him longer than normal. It suddenly dawned on him he had noticed few black people on the streets of Amsterdam, in fact just a fraction of what he was used to back home. Here, he was a curiosity, he stood out from the rest. At home he was just another black cop. For once, it felt nice to be different than the rest.

Wall strolled casually past them, and made his way down to the end of the bar. He stopped next to the thief, who had already finished half a glass of beer.

Wall flashed a smile at the unsuspecting robber. "How are you doin' pal?"

The thief immediately stopped scrolling through his mobile.

No sudden movements, everything relaxed and friendly. Wall carefully pulled up a stool next to him, and gently sat down. He gestured to the bartender for a beer, then turned and smiled at the thief, who looked away. Definitely not in the mood for conversation, Harvey thought. He was going to enjoy playing the tourist.

"Just got into Amsterdam city from New York today. Amazing place you've got here. Everything is so old. I've seen buildings with dates like 1650, 1700 and all that shit. Ain't that just the coolest thing? And it's got the sort of atmosphere you can touch, don't you think?"

The thief reluctantly looked at Wall. "Sure," he said, then turned away.

"Say, you from around here? I was expecting some big cosmopolitan city like London or Paris or something like that, in fact, it's like a cute little town. Just goes to show I don't know nothin'. And that's how I came to be here, I've no idea where I am, and that's the fun of it all. Just drifting through the streets, getting to know the area, getting to know the locals, like you. Know what I mean?"

There was no reply from the thief.

"I have to admit, it's good to meet you pal."

The thief moved uncomfortably on the bar stool. "Yeah," he mumbled, without looking up.

"Let me get you another beer."

"I don't want another beer." The thief replied, in a near whisper. Wall reached out and slapped him gently on the back.

"Come on, Sure you do. Have a drink on me. I bet you've done a hard day's work and you're beat, right?"

Irritated by the intrusion, the thief stared coldly at Wall, searching him with his eyes. Harvey just gave him a big innocent smile, waiting for any sudden move. Then the thief sighed deeply, and relented to the situation.

"Yeah, busy day, maybe I'll just have one more."

"That's my boy." Harvey patted him once again on the back. "Bartender, another beer for my friend here."

The thief shifted once again on his stool and relaxed.

"Man, I really do love the buildings here."

"What are you? An architect or something?"

"No," Wall replied. "But you could say I'm into preservation and restoration."

The beers arrived, Wall handed the barman a five Euro note.

"Proost," the thief whispered, and took a mouthful - he eyed the large black American.

"Cheers," Harvey replied, and sipped the frothy beer.

"You work in a Museum?

Harvey nodded. "Some people would say that. Say, how about you showing me around town. I asked a waiter earlier today, but he didn't know shit" He leaned in close. "Maybe some of the places the regular tourists like me don't get to see, know what I mean?"

The thief took another couple of gulps of the beer, nearly emptying the glass.

"I bet you could show me places that would totally freak me out."

The thief stared at him blankly.

"I'll make it worth your while," Wall downed the beer in one shot.

"Sorry," the thief replied, agitated. "Just let me buy you a beer and call it quits, okay?"

"Seems fair to me." Wall held up the typical Dutch narrow glass. "Damn small beer you got here," he said. "My whiskey glass back home is bigger than this."

The thief ordered two beers in Dutch, then took a ten euro note out of his pocket. Wall leaned in close once again.

"That's some strange money you got here. Can I have a look?" He grabbed the note before the thief could utter a word, and held it up to the light.

"Funny money our kids would call it, and this one's red, not like our dollars. We've got no real colour like this shit. I bet you use these little babies in the red light district, right?" He jestingly nudged the thief, whose irritation had reached boiling point. Time to twist a few screws. He held the note in front of the thieves face then crumbled it in his massive fist. "Even feels kind of funny."

The bartender placed the two beers in front of them. The thief put out his hand to take the money, but Wall quickly pulled away. He held the money to his nose and inhaled deeply, then slammed the note down with a hard smack before the barman.

"There you go," he said aloud, accompanied with a broad smile. "And keep the change."

Surprised, the bartender grabbed the note. "Thank you very much," then turned and headed to the other end of the bar. The thief looked on in shock.

"That was my money," he gasped.

"You know it even smelled funny." Wall remarked, adjusting himself carefully on the bar stool. "As if it had been baked..." He put his fingers to his nose and sniffed. "Like...pizza or something."

The thief suddenly went quiet. He looked suspiciously at Wall. Without saying another word, he grabbed his beer, drank half of it, and got off his bar stool.

"You leaving already?" Wall asked.

The thief headed out the door and turned to the right. Wall slowly finished his beer, then followed. In the distance, he spotted him walking over a low bridge that straddled the busy street and cross to the other side.

Harvey Wall had not been counting the hours since the robbery, but it was quickly turning dark; he had to resolve this soon. Further up the thief turned left at the traffic lights and out of sight. Wall went into a sprint and reached the corner within seconds; he stopped outside a bright yellow painted lock and key shop.

He peered around the corner and saw the thief roughly forty meters away. He made a mental note of the street; the Kinkerstraat, Wall was surprised to see exclusive bicycle lanes that ran along the edge of the sidewalk, separated by a hand high concrete barrier from the rest of the busy traffic – something they could do with back in New York. He watched in amazement cyclists negotiate with uncanny ease the numerous tram tracks laid into the street coming together at the junction. One wrong move and the bicycle wheels could drop into the grooves of the steel tram lines embedded into the street, and down the rider would go. A little warning came up in his mind, stay off bicycles

Wall looked around to get his bearings. His orientation was generally good, and knew the hotel was quite a distance away. Taxis did not seem to cruise the streets as they did in New York, and he had no idea as to where the trams were going. What the hell, he thought, this is definitely one way of getting to know the city. His iPhone could guide him back to the hotel if he really needed it, but preferred to do it the old-fashioned way. This way he could get to know the city quicker - feel how everything looked and shifted, the vibes, the rhythm, the mood.

Right now, Amsterdam felt surprisingly relaxed and easy going, it was a good sensation.

He left the corner and followed the thief up the Kinkerstraat.

Chapter Eight

Karl Webber began close to the Rembrandt Park and worked his way over the rooftops, forever looking for a suitable opening. It was this time of the evening he preferred to leave his den and go to work. Never, had he imagined it would be so easy. In the beginning, the pressure was an incredible burden that continuously played on his mind, making him feel depressed, guilty and ashamed. But eventually, familiarity set in, and he accepted it. The end goal long outweighed the negativity.

He moved towards a part of the city that held few, but vivid memories, sometimes at a slow pace, sometimes fast, yet always silent. Agility and swiftness was the one thing he ever wanted in life, and now he had exactly that. The air rushed through his hair as he quickened his pace to leap the six meter gap between two blocks of houses. His foot hit the edge of the gable and he took off, in mid-air he let out a loud cry of joy, then landed with expertise and ease on the other side. None of his fellow patients back at the hospital or the rehabilitation centre could ever do this. He was not Superman, any fit person could do the same, he was just born never to achieve anything close - that was now the past.

Stepping towards the front of the building, Karl looked down to observe the relatively quiet street. Most of the regular shops were already shut, except the supermarkets that stayed open late.

The Kinker neighbourhood was an old established residential area of Amsterdam, dominated by working class families and a busy shopping street, the Kinkerstraat. A large influx of Turkish, Moroccan and people from the old Dutch colonies had changed the scope of the area from a monotone of typical white families, to a vibrant colour of mixes and races. Karl could remember being wheeled in a buggy by his parents as they walked to the tram depot in the Tollenstraat, where his father worked as a junior manager. They had only made that trip a couple of times before he walked out on the family, after his diagnosis.

Karl was born with an incurable muscular disease, which would devastate his body as he got older. It would kill him before he reached the age of twenty, the doctors predicted. His mother tried to cope, but he could see her struggling. At night, he would wake up to the sound of her crying.

A year after his father left, she brought him to a hospital for a three-day stay for tests to determine the progress of the disease, and plan physiotherapy and other treatment. It was the last time he saw her. The following day she committed suicide by gassing herself in the kitchen.

Karl never attended the funeral. Some people, family they told him, kept him at their home for a month or two before he was taken into care, which was followed by years in various institutions, hospitals, and research clinics.

Looking down from the roof, he remembered his mother saying goodbye to his father at the tram depot before they went shopping in the streets below. In the various clothes shops she tried on dresses and skirts, always asking whether he liked them or not. He remembered saying yes to all, the thank you was a kiss on the cheek each time, and catching a whiff of her sweet fragrant perfume. He loved that perfume. Other mothers had the sort that made his eyes sting and nose itch, which drove him to plunge his face into her soft woollen overcoat. Karl enjoyed returning to areas that brought back good and warm memories. Unfortunately, there were few like this.

At times he observed the world below with mixed emotions; women arguing with their husbands, children being pushed or dragged along by loving or weary mothers. Groups of teenage girls teasing boys, who in turn were on the lookout for intruders on their turf. He witnessed what seemed like a million stories from the rooftops for the past year and it never ceased to amaze him.

Suddenly, down below on the street, something caught his eye – a man being followed by a tall black male, who cautiously kept his distance. He watched him stop every now and then to observe the others. This he had never witnessed before, and decided to study it at close range. At the rear of the building, and out of plain sight, Karl climbed down to ground level, and followed them.

Wall watched the thief cross over the main street and turn into another to the right. He checked the name; Ten Katestraat. This area was more run down than he had seen elsewhere. Graffiti covered closed shop shutters, and the once bare walls in between. Obviously out of the tourist route, with little need to parade the niceties of the city. When the thief rounded another corner and disappeared from view, Harvey broke into a sprint and reached the corner within seconds. He peered around and observed the thief, no more than ten meters away, searching for the right key at a door . It only took three giant steps before Harvey Wall reached him and whacked him over the head with his massive hand. The thief hit the ground with a thud. After checking to see if he was still alive, Wall pulled him to a lamppost by the scruff of the neck and used two tie-wraps to secure him. When he regained consciousness 30 seconds later, the thief screamed and shouted in Dutch.

Harvey Wall raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders. "Sorry man, don't understand a word. I guess you'll have to wait for the authorities to tell them what you think of tourists like me."

Harvey took out a post-it, wrote on it, then pasted it to his back. About to walk away, he noticed a woman, late sixties, staring out of an open window on the first floor of an apartment just a few meters away.

"Do you speak English?"

"Yes, of course."

"Could you do me a favour and call the police? This man robbed a pizza restaurant this afternoon."

She stood up from her chair to get a better look at Harvey Wall. The old woman wore a dark dress with a flower print, covered with a blue cardigan that sagged at the pockets. "Oh, are you American?"

"Yes I am, ma'am."

"Really? And you caught him all by yourself?"

Caught off guard by the question, "Well... He's the last of three guys who robbed a pizza joint. I think he's better on the inside than out, don't you?"

"Oh yes, you are so right, and so brave. And you caught the other two as well?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"If I was 40 years younger, I would be having breakfast with you in the morning. But you are much too young for me. Instead, I will make you my hero of the day."

Harvey Wall glanced quickly around to see if anyone was listening, and possibly provide an exit.

"Ehm... Yes...thank you very much, ma'am, but I'm only doing my job."

"We have so many problems in the neighbourhood these days. You are better than the police, that's for sure. They are never around when you need them. In fact, I haven't seen them down these streets in years, but I'll call them anyway. Maybe this time they will come when they see someone else has already done all the dangerous work for them."

"Thank you, lady, I appreciate your help." He began to back away. "Take care now, and keep a close eye on that guy 'till they get here."

"I will, don't worry. By the way, are you married?"

"Yes ma'am, and I've got six mouths to feed back home. Thank you for your help."

"That's a pity. I have a beautiful daughter looking for a husband."

Harvey waved to the old lady and headed towards the Kinkerstraat. He lied, but it was the only thing he could think of to get the hell out of there.

From a distance, Karl could hear the black man talk to the old woman. From his accent he knew immediately he was American. He retreated into a darkened doorway when he saw him coming in his direction. Luckily, he never noticed him in the shadows of the portal as he passed.

Without hesitation, Karl followed him back down the Kinkerstraat, where he turned right at the traffic lights. He watched him check his iPhone. He seemed to be looking around, checking his bearings, and with the help of his mobile deciding which way he would go. Definitely not local. He followed him back to the Alfred hotel on the De Lairessestraat – a thirty-minute walk.

Now dark, he watched Wall enter the hotel from across the street. Shortly after, a light went on in a room on the third floor. Stepping into the shadows, he removed the small backpack, and took out what he needed. Minutes later he scaled the building opposite the hotel to get a better view.

From the roof of Christie's auction house, he observed the tall black American in his room through his binoculars. He watched him switch on the television and zap through the channels; and stop at CNN. He then lifted a large sports bag onto the bed, removed some clothes and placed them in the cupboards. To his surprise, he saw him take a handgun out of his bag and check the loading mechanism. He had seen him catch and restrain someone, and now he had a gun. Police? On holiday?

Other people's lives never really interested Karl since his work took up all of his waking moments. There was no girlfriend, family or friend, and he was content with that. With those distractions, he would never have survived.

He was totally alone, just like this imposing American.

He checked his watch. It was getting late, but not too late to carry out some work. He stepped carefully over the rooftop, careful not to disrupt the sensitive alarms in the building. He had experiments to do, check out possibilities along the way, and start planning his next move.

The streets were quiet, just as he liked them, although the air was cold for this time of year. As much as he tried, Karl felt uneasy about walking the streets like everyone else, however, sometimes he had no choice. In this part of Amsterdam, the gaps between the streets were broader, impossible to jump, unlike older neighbourhoods like the Jordaan, where they were narrower. There he felt most at home.

There was little traffic, children were in bed, then suddenly in the distance he heard a woman shout, a slap, followed by a scream. A memory emerged from deep within, his mother. Karl quickened his pace along the Rubenstraat. He stopped at a corner. The sound of a woman crying came from a small open window of the top apartment across the street.

"You're a waste of space," he heard a man shout. "How the hell I ever got mixed up with you makes me sick at the thought of it."

"You wanted a relationship," she screamed back. "You wanted to get away from your wife."

"And eventually I did, but I don't need this. You're a bigger mistake than she was."

"Please," she begged.

Karl heard the sharp crack, another slap. She let out a cry, then heard a door slam. A light went on in the stairway, which led down to the front door. Karl quietly slipped behind a tree, out of sight.

The man was tall, early thirties, with short neat dark brown hair, and wore an expensive shirt, tight fitting jeans and expensive sneakers. Karl could hear the woman in the apartment weep as the man left the building and got into a vintage Volkswagen Beetle parked outside. He knew he could also hear her, but didn't bother to look up. The sound of the Volkswagen engine started, and drowned her out. The moment he pulled away, Karl rushed to the back of the car as it began to pick up speed, and without too much difficulty jumped on the back bumper. Hunkering behind the rear window, he gripped the air intake grid and protruding registration plate light with his fingers, and held on. With any other vehicle that would have been impossible.

Relieved, the Volkswagen drove through the quiet streets of Amsterdam at a relaxed pace, and pulled up to a large red brick stone apartment building on the Stadionkade, just a couple of kilometres away.

Karl jumped off and hid behind a parked blue Toyota Prius. The man went into the apartment building, and thirty seconds later a light went on right on the top floor, Karl smiled. Now he knew where he lived, and it would not be long before he paid him a visit.
Chapter Nine

Geoffrey Downes twisted and turned on his squeaky bed. Spasms wrenched every nerve and muscle in his body. When he thought he had enough air in his lungs to shout for help another spasm shot through him; his cry for help turned into an agonizing moan.

Downstairs, his ever impossible neighbour had had enough. He could hear him thump on the ceiling with a broom.

"Hey Downes, will you quit it up there?" He bellowed. "Why don't you take her to a park or something and let the rest of us get some sleep."

Another spasm ripped through his body. His legs and torso stiffened; muscles seized and locked every joint in his body. For about eight seconds, he was paralyzed rigid. When it finally eased off he thought of his ex's labour pains. Her contractions lasted twelve hours, and she had Charlie, an eight pounder. His body must be contemplating an elephant. After ten minutes, the spasms were down to 30 seconds, and drawing closer. He tried to shout for help, but another contraction wrenched the air out of his lungs.

Ten minutes later the spasms in Geoffrey Downes' body were slower, heavier. His eyes were open, but unfocused. His breath was quick and short. The last spasm wrenched through all the muscles in his torso, and the springs in the bed creaked one more time. His body finally relaxed, dead. For the first time that evening the room was totally silent.

Downstairs his neighbour bellowed. "Well, it's about time, pervert. Next time go to her place instead of keeping me awake all night."

George de Graaf nervously paced the room of his apartment. For the first time in his life, he found it difficult to breathe. When his son was young, he had asthma. Now he wished he had one of his inhalers lying around the house. His chest felt tight and constrained, as if someone held him in a bear hug, trying to stop him breathing. George stopped to support himself on the cupboard and ran his hands over his head to the back of his neck. Something caught in his fingers. He quickly stopped to look – tufts of hair covered his palm.

"Jesus Christ," he moaned, and headed for the door, terrified. "Better call a doctor," he whispered to himself.

Gasping for breath George struggled down the stairs, and collapsed on the last step next to the small mahogany telephone table. He reached for his old-fashioned telephone and dialled the emergency number. They answered almost immediately.

"Emergency services," the female voice on the other end said.

"My name is de Graaf." He could feel his head beginning to spin. George clutched the balustrade, just in time to stop himself from falling. The telephone dropped to the floor.

"Which emergency service do you require Sir." The calm female voice asked on the other end of the line. George de Graaf lay next to the telephone, dead. The voice on the phone carried on.

"Hello Sir, I need to know which emergency service you require?"
Chapter Ten

The door to Chief Ribb's office was closed. Kaps and Dop sat nervously on the other side of his sparse desk.  
"So while you two were picking your noses at Schiphol airport yesterday afternoon, Detective Harvey Wall was busy rounding up three criminals who robbed a restaurant - and without any assistance whatsoever. What the hell were you doing out there?" Ribb said, angrily.

"Well we...' Dop began.

"We already told you," Kaps said, blocking Dop. "He gave us the slip. He obviously did not want to be collected at the airport. We couldn't help that. Besides, we tracked him down later."

"You did not," Ribb replied harshly. "You came across two thieves he managed to catch. An old woman called in the third, the ringleader, and you still haven't found him."  
"Well, at least we solved...' Dop began, but his words quickly faded when he noticed his partner's stern look. Ribb lifted a file from his desk, and opened it out in front of him.

"I suppose I could easily blame you for what happened, but last night I got an additional detailed report about our friend from New York, Detective Harvey Wall, directly from his superior."

Kaps suddenly sat up straight, while Dop, who remained laid back in the chair, shifted his oversize torso to one side.

"It seems he is a regular practical joker whose boss was very happy to get rid of him. Unfortunately, we've got him now, and you two have become the first victims of his kind of humour."

Dop let out a noticeable sigh of relief.

"He has to come into the office in about thirty minutes for an introduction, ' Ribb continued, "so I think we can hear what he has to say about yesterday."

Harvey Wall took a taxi from the hotel to the large imposing police station on the Marnixstraat. The police officer at the front desk was a blond female who looked very sexy in her uniform. She said something unintelligible in Dutch.

"Do you speak English?" Wall asked apologetically.

"Yes, I do," she replied, in near perfect English.

"I have an appointment with Chief Ribb."

"Your name?"

"Harvey Wall. _Detective_ Harvey Wall."

"One moment please, Detective," she said, and flashed a quick smile as she picked up the phone and began to speak in Dutch. She listened intently, then hung up. "Someone will come and show you up to his office."

"Thank you. I gotta say, your English is excellent."

"That's very kind of you. I get it all from TV."

"I had a look at some Dutch TV last night back at my hotel – but it was mostly talking and I didn't understand a word of it. I just got in from the States."

"I know. You fit the exact description of a man we got reports on yesterday."

"Oh, that couldn't be..." Harvey broke off when he saw Kaps and Dop coming through the door to collect him.

"It was nice meeting you," Harvey said, with a smile. "Maybe I'll see you around."

"Possibly," she replied, returning the smile."

Kaps held the door open for Wall, and guided him through the building without uttering a word. The station seemed less busy and not half as noisy than his precinct back in New York. The uniforms - light blue – looked casual and plain. He noted officers carried less equipment on their belts, or did everything just look smaller? As he glanced around at everyone going about their business, there was another surprise. The female officers were hot; not one fat ass in sight. Some, a little older than he generally cared for, all looked fit and surprisingly cheerful. A world away from what he was used to. Back in New York three-quarters of the female officers were generally overweight, and bitched about everyone and everything the whole day long, at least it felt that way. Maybe it was exactly the same here, he thought. When Kaps knocked on Chief Ribbs' door, he was surprised they entered without waiting for a reply.

Chief Harry Ribb looked up from his paperwork at the tall black American, and gestured to the three seats in front of his desk. The office seemed paperless and bare compared to his Captains, back in New York. His was adorned with diplomas he received from the first day he joined the force. They covered most of the wall space and were complemented by a line of trophies on every cabinet he had won at football, judo and wrestling over the years.

As if in another universe, there was only one filing cabinet, two or three thin paper files on the desk, a computer monitor, and a large map of Amsterdam on the wall.

The only strange thing was the single thick black line running through the centre the map. Not much happening in this town, that was certain. If the two baboons were incapable of picking him up from the airport, and the big boss was as boring as the rest of his office, than this whole trip was going to be one big happy holiday, with full pay and benefits.

"I was going to give you a few days to get adjusted and get over your jetlag, but I think you've adjusted pretty well."

"Yes, Sir. You really have a fabulous city. It's very interesting." Wall said, with a broad grin.

"You'll be pleased to know we picked up those three thieves yesterday."

"That's nice to hear Sir, I'm happy to be of service." Chief Ribb's stare was blank, just like his old boss, but different. Not intimidating, or threatening. It was one like he felt he knew too much about him. And then he knew what it was about. He recognised the letterhead on the thick file in front of the Chief. His boss had not only sent over his service file, but the _complete_ file. All the information about his tricks, jokes, problems, the trouble he got into, and no doubt the complete list of reprimands he had received over the years was there on the desk in front of him. His stomach turned. He felt embarrassed, and let his stare drop to the wooden floor.

"The only thing I don't understand is, what actually happened at the airport?" Chief Ribb said, casually.

Wall tried to hold in his laugh, he turned away from Kaps and Dop. Dop was about to say something when Kaps kicked him on the shin.

"Well I...' Wall hesitated.

Chief Ribb turned his monitor around so they could all watch. He hit a button on the coffee, then leaving.

Ribb pressed another button and the monitor went black "I can imagine that after a long flight you wanted to have some fun."

"Well I... " Wall began again, his voice faded into a whisper, then silence.

"I don't have a problem with that." Chief Ribb finally said. Dop and Kaps looked at each other.

"You come from a working environment that is stricter and probably more regimental. So now, you have finally escaped that way of working and mind-set, so you decide to have some fun. My men here, Detective Kaps and Detective Dop were not really worried about your disappearance."

Wall looked at Kaps and Dop, who stared at their Chief blank faced.

"After they realized you decided to continue your policing on the streets of Amsterdam, they were complimentary of your capabilities, and the work you carried out." Dop and Kaps stared at other in shock.

"Due to your intervention, three lowlife criminals have been detained in record time. Your ingenuity in using the tie-wraps was extremely effective."

Detective Harvey Wall looked at Chief Ribb in astonishment. He expected to be shouted and screamed that, just like his Chief back home would have done, and ordered to get the first flight back to New York, but this avalanche of praise took his breath away.

"Ehm... thank you, Sir," Wall finally muttered.

"Without you, it would have taken us a little longer to catch them," Chief Ribb continued. "We had them on CCTV of course, but before we figured out who they really were, and gathering the forensics linking them to the robbery...'

"Oh yeah, sure," his eyes still on the file.

"You have saved us a lot of running around. Thank you for helping us out. I'll get someone to assist you with the paperwork for this case, statements and so forth."

"Yes Sir," Wall said. "I can start on that right away if you wish."

"No, let's do that as soon as you officially start work here. One of my officers will show you your locker and help you get settled in. Officially you will start next Monday, time enough to help you get over any jet lag. In the meantime you have five days to enjoy your stay in Amsterdam Detective Wall."

"Thank you, Sir."

"You're welcome. And keep up the good work... from Monday that is."

"Ehm.. Of course. Yes, Sir."

"Hopefully we will also have a desk for you then. At the moment I'm still figuring out where to put you."

When Chief Ribb stood up, Harvey Wall stood quickly to attention and saluted. "Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir. You do have a beautiful city and it's a pleasure to be here, Sir."

"You're welcome Mr. Wall," Ribb replied, then turned to Dop and Kaps. "Gentleman, would you ask Detective Bakker to show Mr. Wall around the station."

"Yes Sir," Kaps replied.

"Oh, one more thing," Ribb said to Wall as they turned to leave. "Can I see your firearm?"

"Sure," Wall reached for his best friend, hidden under his jacket.

Ribb took it and studied it. "Smith & Wesson fifty-nine forty-six model. Beautiful piece." He opened a drawer, dropped it in, closed it, and locked it.

"But...' Wall said in a near dying whisper.

Ribb locked the drawer. "Since you are not familiar with our methods and rules of engagement, I've decided, for your own protection, to hold on to your weapon and give you time to integrate yourself into our way of working. After that we _might_ issue you with _our_ standard, a Walther P5."

If his own captain back in New York had done that he would be screaming and shouting for all to hear. He was stunned by the move, and for the first time in his life, was at a loss for words.

Chief Ribb then turned to Dop and Kaps. "Thank you very much, gentlemen, that will be all for now," he gestured to the door.

In an unfamiliar area of silence, they stood up and left the room, Dop closed the door behind them.

At that moment Chief Ribb's mobile lit up. His daughters face, from a picture taken when she was an innocent little girl aged five, appeared on the screen.

"Hi Lizzie, problems?" The moment he said that, he realised he was at fault. Of course Lizzie only called him when there was a problem, or when she wanted something. Adults call you to talk, not your teenage kids. They call you because you are the money tree, the fixer, the taxi, the permission they need to enjoy their life because they are under age. So _problems_ was not exactly the right reply – although it was undoubtedly ninety-nine per cent correct. He said it, felt guilty, and realized he could do nothing to change that opening line. He sipped his coffee, and listened to her question – or would it be a demand? He listened.

"Of course you can go to a disco,".... "Yes, Ruby can get you ready for it. I'm sure she'll like that. I'll be home about six. Maybe I can also give you some tips."

Lizzie did not seem pleased to hear that.

"What do you mean I'm not allowed?.....Oh, I see. I have to leave you two alone." He relaxed with another sip of coffee. "I'll expect you home at about ten-thirty, no later or I'll send around a police car and embarrass the hell out of you. Okay honey, see you tonight. Say hello to your mother if she calls. Bye, sweetheart."

Ribb swivelled his chair and looked up at the map of Amsterdam and the line cutting through the middle.

The telephone rang, he could see it was the pathologists' office. No more than once or twice a month did he get a call from the city pathologist. This was the second in two days. Harry sat up and put down the coffee.

"Hello Jim. New developments?" The city pathologist gave him a run down on what he had found. He listened intently as he took down notes. "Really? Okay, I'll be over in about twenty minutes." He hung up and left the office immediately. Harvey Wall was standing next to Bakker at his desk.

"Detective Wall, Detective Bakker has to come with me, would it be okay if he showed you around later? He should be back in less than an hour."

"Sure, no problem. I'll just hang out here and get an idea of how you guys work."

"Thank you, Detective Wall. We won't keep you long." Chief Ribb turned to Bakker. "Have you still got the names of those people from the obituaries?"

Bakker pulled out a small notebook from his back pocket. "Have it here."

"Okay, grab your stuff, we're going to see the pathologist. He's got them laid out in front of him and he doesn't sound too happy."

"Great. I mean, sure, no problem." Chief Ribb headed for the door. Bakker grabbed his scruffy leather jacket from the back of the chair.

Corso, who sat reading a newspaper across from him, looked up from his newspaper. "What's up?"

"The Chief wants me to go with him over to the pathologist."

"What for?"

"To check out some people who were on my list."

"What list?"

"From the obituaries."

"Schoolmates?"

"Not this time. Maybe you can give Detective Wall a tour of the office."

Corso got up from his desk. "No time, I have to go out on patrol. Coffee break is over. Have fun." Corso put on his jacket and checked his gun.

"Don't worry about me," Wall said. "I'll find someone to show me around."

Chief Ribb stuck his head in the door. "Let's go Bakker."

The city pathologist had two bodies laid out on the stainless steel tables. The sound of the ventilation fans in the background dominated the traditional stillness.

"This is Detective Jim Bakker," Ribb said. "He spotted your clients in the deaths column and alerted me."

"Very attentive of you Detective Bakker," then gestured to the bodies. "Harry, You've already met Carola Munk, next to her is Frank Brandsma, who had a history of heart trouble. Fortunately, when he died, he left his body to science. A few days ago my colleagues carried out a regular dissection of his heart. They expected to find the usual cause, strangely, they found something else, which matched the girl. A heart defect so serious he would have been incapacitated from the day he was born. Both should have had died within one or two hours after birth, but here they are now."

Bakker moved in closer to get a better look at the open chests and dissected organs on the stainless steel tray, next to the bodies. Chief Ribb remained where he was.

"So how they could end up living for years with a heart ailment, totally unnoticed, is a mystery you might want to look into. I don't know whether it's a crime, or a fluke, or whatever, but something is not right, that's for sure. I've already talked to a number of heart specialists about this, and they are as baffled as I am."

"Find anything else unusual?" Ribb asked, scratching his head.

"I thought I would," Conver said, firmly. "However, there are no needle marks or suspicious injuries of any kind. Stomachs show regular foodstuffs and nothing out of the ordinary. At the moment the only thing they have in common is that they both died in the middle of the night, probably between two and four in the morning."

Ribb pondered on the information, then said "let me know the results when you get them. I'm going to send over a team to seal off both apartments and get them checked out. Unfortunately, their deaths were not exactly suspicious at that time, so any evidence we could have bagged might have been dumped, removed, altered, or just wiped away with a cleaning cloth." Ribb turned and headed for the door. "We'll keep in touch," he said, and they were gone.

"Isn't that weird?" Bakker said when they reached the car park.

"Something different, that's for sure. I want you to look at the backgrounds of these people. See if you can find any connection other than the street they live on."

"Sure, no problem. Do I get any help on this?"

"Not yet. You found the connection, and I think you can look into it without any distraction. It's early days, but we are not looking at a crime. It's unusual, sure, but I can't as yet see any criminal intention."

Back at the station Bakker found Harvey Wall chatting up the female officer at the front desk.

"Come on," Bakker said. "I'll show you around."

"You're too late," the desk officer told Bakker. "I've already shown Detective Wall the station and introduced him to Boddin and a number of other officers.

"Great, thanks a lot Sylvie. You just spared me from officer Boddin. I owe you one."

"You're welcome."

"Let's go out for a coffee," Bakker said, while he guided Wall out the door and onto the street.

"You mean a coffee shop? I've read about them. You go in for a coffee and come out totally stoned."

"I did not mean one of those coffee shops."

"Oh. Okay, sure. I'm right behind you."

"Have you got the bike?"

Wall looked down at Bakker. "Are you kidding? Last time I rode a bike I was about twelve. I stole it from a fat Italian kid who lived down the block. Damn thing nearly got me killed, and I've never been on one since."

"Well, you will need one in Amsterdam. It's the best and only way to get around with ease."

Wall was hesitant. "I don't know. It looks pretty dangerous with all the narrow streets you have here. And those tram rails, man, they are _so_ dangerous."

"It's easy, you get used to it." Bakker said, laughing it off. "A friend of mine has a few extra bikes. I'm sure he'll lend you one."

Bakker pointed to an oncoming tram "Come on, we've got to get this," he darted towards the tram, then turned and shouted over his shoulder. "I know the best place for a coffee on the Leidseplein."

Bakker scanned his travel card on the grey scanner. The machine beeped – a green light lit up, then he bought an extra card for Wall from the conductor. Minutes later they stepped out onto the busy Leidseplein. In the middle of the large square, a crowd was gathered around a young man in his early twenties with bright red hair juggling a variety of fruit. Harvey Wall could make out a banana, a cucumber, an orange and a tomato. Bakker walked away from the crowd in the opposite direction towards a yellow stone building across the street.

"That is where we are going for coffee," Bakker said.

Suddenly, without warning, a loud bell rang out behind him. Bakker reached out and grabbed Wall and pulled him back to avoid an oncoming tram, it only missed him by a whisker.

"Goddamn, that was freakin' close," Wall said, feeling shaken. "Those are dangerous,"

"You get used to it, just remember to keep your eyes and ears open. Didn't you hear the bell?"

"I did, but I didn't think it was for me."

"Could have been your famous last words." Bakker told him, as they crossed the street. Wall did his best to keep his eye on the trams, bicycles and cars coming from different angles.

On the other side of the Street, Wall looked up at the impressive building they were heading towards. "What is that?"

"That's where we're going, Hotel Americain.

"You mean American hotel."

"No, it's actually called Hotel Americain, and they serve one of the best coffees around."

"Starbucks inside?"

"No," Bakker replied, "but it's excellent and not in a paper cup."

Up the front steps, and through the revolving door on the right, they entered an imposing large art deco dining area. Magnificent stained glass chandeliers, resembling upside down Chinese umbrellas, hung from the ceiling. Arched windows, decorated with stained-glass art deco designs, gave Wall the feeling he had just stepped back in time to the 1920s.

"Nice." Wall whispered as he took in the striking surroundings. Near the centre of the dining area was a long reading table, and at the far end next to the window a grand piano. "Classy. Can I get the latte?"

"Sure, anything you want, except they don't sell joints."

"No need, this is the coolest joint I've seen in years."

They were guided to a table by a waiter. Bakker ordered the coffees in Dutch.

"I'm going to have to learn some of that language of yours. But some of you speak as if you've got something caught in your throat."

"I know, that's the famous Dutch G." Bakker made a sound as if he was clearing his throat.

"G for guttural, right?"

"You could put it like that."

"Say, what's with that Chief of yours? I thought he was going to be really pissed at me for making a fool out of those two clowns who came to pick me up at the airport."

"Well, in a way I think he enjoyed himself. It's been all over the station, everyone had a good laugh about Kaps and Dop. You really made fools of them."

"But what about me nabbing those idiots who robbed the pizza place? He was like a pussy cat. He didn't ball me out or anything. Back home, my boss wouldn't take kindly to me having so much fun if I had just arrived in the city."

"That's the way he is. He's an easy-going cool guy who only gets annoyed if you really fuck up."

"My boss was an asshole who did everything to make my life miserable, just like my last wife. Are you married?"

"Yep, to my job."

"Okay, you're one of those. I get it. So that's why you look like shit. We got one or two guys like you on the force back home."

"Thanks for the compliment."

Two coffees arrived. Wall looked down at the small cup of coffee the waiter placed in front of him.

"Christ, you call that a cup of coffee? I thought your beer was small, but this is ridiculous."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's a quarter cup of coffee and not even that, an eighth, with a cup that's smaller than my pinkie, that's what's wrong with it."

"You could be right, but our coffee is a lot stronger than yours in the States."

Wall shook his head. "I'm not so sure." He sipped the coffee. "Hmm, not bad."

"How long are you staying?"

"Six months."

"I thought the exchanges were shorter than that."

"They usually are, but my boss was giving me a pretty hard time so I asked for the longest possible stay." He leaned over towards Bakker. "Tell me," he said, lowering his voice. "What's the deal in this city. How many murders do you have a week?"

"A week?" Bakker laughed. "You would be lucky to get one or two a month. Sometimes not even that."

"You're kidding?"

"This is not the wild west like you're used to in New York. People cannot easily buy or carry guns here, so the less guns you have on the streets, the fewer problems they create. Of course, we have other things..."

"Bicycles," Wall said, interrupting Bakker.

"You're not far off the mark there. Bikes can be really dangerous. More people die from bicycle accidents than shootings in this city, that's for sure."

"See, that's what I thought. Goddamn dangerous, and you want to get me one? What about knifings, drug crimes, prostitution. Hold on..." Wall leaned in close to Bakker once again. "Prostitution is legal here, right?"

"It is. For about fifty euros and fifteen minutes of your time, a woman can make a man very happy. Overrated if you ask me."

"Okay, I get it, so maybe you're into guys, right?"

"No, I have girlfriends now and then, but they keep getting in the way of my work."

"Maybe you should just hire them to do your laundry. Believe me pal, you need it?"

"That's an idea, thanks." Bakker, unphased by Walls comment, finished his coffee "Come on, let's get out of here. I'll show you around the area. It will be your district for the coming months."

"Do we also cover the red light district?"

"We do serious crime in Amsterdam, and that takes in just about everywhere in the city, including the red light district. You won't have to worry about crossing into anyone's territory."

"Okay, cool."

Bakker paid the bill, and within minutes they were crossing the Leidseplein, towards the Leidsestraat. Wall, feeling wary, kept his eye on the trams coming at him from the front and back. At the Prinsengracht they stopped on the bridge and stared at the majestic sixteenth-century buildings lining the canal waterfront. Nearly all the buildings had a protruding beam with a hook on the end, overhanging the front.

"What are they for?" Wall asked, pointing to the hooks.

"They use them to lift the furniture in and out of the houses. Many of the old buildings and apartments in Amsterdam have narrow stairways, making it nearly impossible to get furniture in and out. They pull the furniture up using the hooks with a pulley and rope, and into the house through a front window, which they can usually remove. They were especially designed for that back in the seventeenth century."

"Do they still use them?"

"Sure, all the time, but usually it's students who cannot afford a regular moving company or a mechanical lift."

"No shit. This is one crazy town. Say, how about taking me to one of those other coffee shops you mentioned."

"Sure, why not." Bakker replied.
Chapter Eleven

At eight-thirty that evening Raemon Dort poured himself a large glass of Bowmore nineteen fifty-five whiskey from the half empty bottle. It sat alongside various bottles of other expensive whiskeys, liquors, and two impressive Waterford cut glass decanters. Standing regally on a large antique silver footed tray on top of a nineteenth century drinks cabinet. Everything in the apartment was quality antique, and laid out with taste and elegance. The telephone rang. Dort glanced at the number, and let it go to voicemail.

"It's me." The female voice said, sounding fraught. "I'm sorry I made you angry the other night. Please let me talk to you, I really miss you. Call me when you can." She hung up.

Dort sniggered and shook his head. "Fuck off," he muttered under his breath, then settled into his luxurious, comfortable leather sofa. Pressing a button on the remote control, a giant flat screen TV lit up with a sea of colour and noise. He zapped through the channels, and finally settled on the BBC's "Antiques Roadshow', finished off his whiskey and ran a bath. The telephone rang a second time, and again he let it go to voicemail.

"Raemon , it's me." She sounded more desperate. "Please call me. I just wanted to talk, that's all. I know you are busy all the time but just for a few minutes okay?" She paused for about ten seconds in the hope he would pick up. He did not. Dort could hear her sobbing quietly on the other end of the line. Finally, she hung up.

"She'll never learn," he muttered. He topped up his glass and waited for the bath to fill while sipping the whiskey, and watched an eighteenth-century cabinet being valued at £20,000. In the bedroom he stripped naked and headed for the bathroom, stopping once again to top up his glass.

Placing the glass on the edge of the large cast-iron enamel slipper bathtub, he slid into the water, relaxed, and closed his eyes.

At ten o'clock the next morning a key was inserted into a shiny lock, and Dort's front door opened. His middle-aged cleaning lady quickly removed her coat and looked around the apartment. There was not a lot to do – just the usual dusting and light cleaning. Dort was unusually neat and clean for a man living on his own.

Peering into the bedroom she saw Dort's clothing lying on the bed, which apparently had not been slept in. Once a week she changed the sheets and pillow cases and made up the bed in classic hotel fashion. This was the first time he had not slept in his bed. She did not really like him, but he was always polite enough to let her know on time if he was out of the country or had other arrangements. This was also the first time she had encountered something unexpected.

In the small kitchen, she removed a bucket from under the sink, took out cleaning cloths, a squeegee and cleaning chemicals stuffed into it, then filled the bucket with hot water. Within ten minutes, the kitchen was clean, then she started on the living room.

The antique furniture she dusted down with an old-fashioned ostrich plume, something Dort had picked up on his travels, then wiped all the bottles and decanters clean with a damp cloth. After vacuuming the dark brown lacquered floor, she refilled the bucket with clean water and detergent, then went to the bathroom. The door was half open, but she suddenly stopped dead when she noticed Dort still lying in the high rimmed Victorian bath. She could just see the hair on the top of his head, and at the far end, his feet, although something did not look quite right.

"Mr. Dort?" She said, quietly, then hesitated, waiting for a reaction, there was none. "I'm sorry, I did not realize you were at home."

Still no reaction. She knocked gently on the door. "Mr. Dort, are you asleep?"

Silence. There was not a ripple on the water. She cautiously went into the bathroom. At first she thought was a joke, and giggled. But when she looked closer, she screamed.

Chief Harry Ribb rarely went out to a crime scene the moment it was discovered, but this one had caused such a buzz at the station he found it difficult not to see it for himself. In fact, everyone who was called to the scene turned up in record time.

He changed into the compulsory white protective overalls before he entered the building. Inside, the apartment was large and modern, with first-class antique cabinets and furniture throughout. The owner had exceptional and expensive taste.

The drinks cabinet was the centrepiece of the tastefully decorated living room. Behind the Bowmore whiskey was a large dark Brown wood casing that normally housed the bottle. Next to it, a very ordinary looking bottle of whiskey, with the label Royal Blakla 1924.

Bakker, looking unusually hygienic in his white overalls, and hair tucked under the white hood, came out of the kitchen and went straight to Ribb.

"The victim is Mr. Raemon Dort. He's in the bathroom. He did something in finance, we don't exactly know what right now, but we are on to it. The cleaner who found him was not in any state to tell us anything. She's suffering from severe shock. There is a girl on the answering machine who sounds like a girlfriend he fell out with. We know where she lives and have sent someone around to talk to her. Unfortunately, thanks to the cleaner, the apartment was spotless. She wiped down everything before she entered the bathroom, so I don't think we'll find any prints."

"Okay, let's see the body," Ribb said, sounding a little impatient.

"Well...' Bakker scratched his scraggy hair through the white hood. "That's the problem...." He paused, trying to think of the right word. "It's... not exactly... a body."

"What is it? A leg, torso? Head?"

Bakker had a puzzled look on his face. "Well, it's the whole body... but different." He turned to lead the way into the bathroom.

The police pathologist Dr Jim Conver was on his knees and in the process of dipping a large syringe into the liquid in the bathtub. When Harry Ribb entered, he could do nothing except stare at the figure of the body lying in the bath.

"What the hell?" He whispered, and bent down to get a closer look. Usually he would expect a body, even part of a body, but this was nothing like he had ever seen before. This was more of a substance than a body.

"Is it real?" Ribb asked Dr Conver, "or is this a joke. If this is a joke, it's one of the best I've ever seen."

"That's what I thought, a joke," Dr Conver replied, trying to concentrate on the syringe. "But the more I look at it the stranger it gets, and yes, I think it's real."

"It's creepy, that's what it is." Ribb replied.

Conver finally filled the syringe with a mixture of pink and red liquid, then held it up to the light to study the mixture. "The only thing that seems real is his hair."

Ribb leaned over the bath and hovered directly over Dort, then slowly reached out and touched the dark brown hair – it felt normal. He then picked up a back scrubber with a long wooden handle, and dipped it delicately into the image of Raemon Dort. The image was definitely fluid, as if a giant computer printer had sprayed the image onto the bath water – clear and perfect, with only the hair intact. "You're right. It looks and feels real – but the rest of it.... Ehm... him? What caused it?

"I have no idea whatsoever." Conver replied, and took a fresh syringe from his medical case. "But from what I can make out 98% of the body has liquefied. Luckily the water held it in suspension, nothing has been disturbed or distorted. It's the weirdest thing...." he said, then fell silent.

"It's like one of those pictures they put on birthday cakes these days." Ribb mused. "I suppose you're now going to tell me he was never sick before, and up to yesterday he was a three-dimensional character."

"Very funny," Conver replied, and drew in a new batch of body contents into the syringe. "My biggest problem is, how are we going to get the body back to the lab?"

"Suck it up?" Bakker said, once again scratching his head.

"Sure, and suck away the evidence," Conver replied.

"Well at least nobody pulled the plug on this one," Bakker remarked.

"Is that meant to be funny?" Conver said.

"No, I'm serious," Bakker replied, scratching the other side of his head through the white overalls.

"Have you really no idea on how something like this could happen?" Ribb asked Conver.

"I've never heard or seen anything like this before, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff during the last twenty years. If it was hydrofluoric acid, it would never have left this type of image, and I cannot think of any other chemical that could do this to a body. We need to run a mountain of tests on this. Something tells me it's not going to be easy. Anyway, I'll see what I can do. I'll keep you informed."

Ribb rubbed his brow. "Well," "We are stuck in a strange conundrum. Definitely a first. The question is, is it murder?"

Conver stood up. "I've taken enough samples." He stared down at the image. "You've got your problems Harry, and I've got mine. I only have to try and figure out a way to get the body out of here in one piece."
Chapter Twelve

Harvey Wall left his hotel on the Cornelis Schuytstraat, and took the number five tram in front of the Concertgebouw to the Leidseplein, his regular starting point in getting to know the city centre. The jetlag had eased off and his sleep pattern had readily adjusted from New York to Amsterdam time, six hours earlier.

For the last couple of days, he had tried different restaurants and drank in various pubs around the Leidseplein, but now it was time to check out a new neighbourhood.

His little trip with Bakker to the coffee shop taught him a lesson he wouldn't forget in a hurry. Bakker had bought two pre-rolled joints, which cost four euros each and decided they would sit on a stool at the end of the bar. The music was not to his taste, rap, he preferred blues or soul. Not only did he feel out of place with the music, but most of the people in the coffee shop were so much younger, late teens, early twenties. It was probably the first time he noticed an age gap, and the first time he felt old.

The joints were supposedly medium strength, but after ten minutes it hit Wall like a ton of bricks.

At first he didn't feel anything when he inhaled, but after three or four minutes he began to feel dizzy. Then the world around him began to change. His mouth dried up, so he asked Bakker to order a cola. After finishing the bottle, he felt abysmal and had difficulty sitting upright. After fifteen minutes, he found it difficult to keep his eyes open. When he tried to get up, his legs had turned to jelly, so he remained seated. His body felt incredibly heavy. Any attempt to speak was impossible – he grew more and more sleepy. Strangely, he was aware of everything around him, but was totally incapacitated. Bakker tried to talk to him, but he could not respond. Others, nearly half his age, smoking hash or marijuana seemed totally unscathed. What surprised him most was that he only smoked half a joint and was more stoned than anyone else. Bakker stayed next to him and drank another coffee.

It took at least three-quarters of an hour before he could finally stand up and head outside. Bakker seemed totally immune. He smoked his joint right down to the butt, and bought another just before they left.

Outside, he could breathe in something else other than the marijuana and second-hand hash smoke. He remembered saying goodbye to Bakker but could not remember how he got back to the hotel, or having anything to eat. The only clue he had of food turned up the following morning. An empty pizza box lay in the rubbish bin of his hotel room. So much for Dutch coffee shops. He didn't think he would be visiting one again soon.

Harvey unfolded the small basic map of Amsterdam he picked up at the tourist bureau - strangely called the VVV, which sounded more like a cult than anything that had to do with a tourist agency. He got around the city well enough with his iPhone, but the paper map gave him the bigger picture, a sort of birds eye view of the city.

He followed the tram lines down the Leidsestraat until he arrived at the back of Dam Palace, then turned right, went across Dam Square to the Damstraat on the opposite side, and into the famous red light district.

According to his map it was called the _Wallen_ in Dutch. He wondered if his surname had any connection to it. Everybody had heard of the red light district of Amsterdam and everybody wanted to walk down its streets. Now he was there, on the verge of exploring it himself, and it felt good.

As he strolled into the Damstraat, it seemed the thousands of tourists roaming the streets of Amsterdam had decided to join him. It was as busy as the busiest shopping street just a block away. The further he went into the Street, the more he felt a change in atmosphere on the street itself. The smiling and inquisitive faces of tourists were still there, but he could sense another darker mood. Junkies, psychos, people living on the edge were more in view. Nothing new to him, he had seen his fair share back in the less desirable districts of New York, but the one thing he expected, he did not see. There were no prostitutes walking the streets, or at least none obvious. As he approached a canal bridge, he turned left at the Ouderzijds Achterburgwal, and saw why.

Further down the canal, the prostitutes were there, but behind full-length windows, showing off what they had to offer. None were naked, or even topless, but nearly all wearing bikinis. Average age of most of the girls was about twenty-five. Most looked ordinary, nothing special, a few over the hill. Probably appealed to men over sixty, he thought.

Then he spotted one girl, unbelievably hot. She was tall and dark skinned, slender and beautifully curved, wore a black bikini. She smiled directly at him, and beckoned him to join her. Fifty euros and fifteen minutes of your time, that's what Bakker had said. It was tempting, but he had never paid for a woman in his life and was more than certain he was not going to start now. Besides, he didn't feel the urge. Somehow it seemed too business-like, which could have been down to the fact it was not illegal. There was no sensation of doing something you could not be arrested for, the thrill had vanished.

Walking on, he strolled through streets lined with sex shops, sex clubs, and a mixture of tourists and lowlife. At the following bridge, he turned left again, which finally took him onto the Warmoesstraat – a mass of crowds consisting of tourists, students, and bicycles, so many bicycles.

Back on the Leidsestraat, you had to watch out for the trams creeping up on you, and blast you with a bell before being crushed under the steel wheels. Here bicycles on the narrow street appeared more threatening. Many had no bells. They were like stealth fighters, coming at you in large numbers, front and back, and none wore protective bicycle helmets. Eyes in the back of his head would definitely ease the tension.

As darkness set in, few bikes had anything that could be defined as a light that could be seen from a reasonable distance. Most were futile LED gadgets attached to arms, shoulders, or fixed to a cap or strapped around a head. Of course, he had seen all this in New York, but here it was an entirely different ball game. Back home, there were a thousand automobiles to a couple of hundred bikes – and they did not ride or drive where you were walking.

The only likeable curiosity was a student peddling a wreck of a bike with his girlfriend riding side-saddle on the rear baggage carrier, again not something you would see in the Big Apple, or even in bike loving San Francisco, but it did make him smile.

Strolling down the Warmoesstraat he noticed a beer sign, hanging over the door of a bar curiously named Hill Street Blues. Was it connected to the famous TV series from the 80s? Memories of the programme and actors immediately came to mind. It was the only one he could remember where every series, every actor, and every scene, was crafted to perfection. It left a lasting impression on him as a boy who wanted action, fun, putting away bad people, and someone telling him to _'be careful out there'_. Maybe that was the reason why he joined the New York police force – he couldn't remember exactly, but it definitely had an influence.

Time to buy a beer, and rejuvenate old memories.

The moment he stepped through the door, the warm feeling that connected him to the television programme vanished into thin air. Nothing had prepared him for the uncomfortable, alien, dark and dingy world, and strong smell of marijuana that encapsulated everything. Stretching long and deep into the back of the building, the walls, the bar, the tables, in fact every exposed surface, was covered with the most horrifying graffiti; a vast, over consuming mess of tags, names, and madness. Halfway in, he hesitated and turned to look back at the front door, then noticed the sign he missed on the way in, _no alcohol sold here_. It was not a bar after all, just a marijuana smoke filled coffee shop.

Since he arrived in the city, he had walked past a number of coffee shops and was always hit by the extreme pungent smell of marijuana and hash seeping through the doors and open windows. But outside this one he had not detected a whiff, possibly because it was being masked and drowned out by the other coffee shops close by. Should he turn around and leave, or would he have coffee?

The urge to get the hell out of there was strong, but at the same time he definitely wanted a good strong coffee. He made a decision – he would order one, then leave.

The girl behind the bar was dark, Latin type, early twenties, and less than half his size. She looked up at him with beautiful, chocolate coloured, sleepy eyes.

"I'll have a cappuccino."

"One cappuccino," she replied, in perfect English.

The music in the coffee shop was Rap, Hip-Hop, House and Fusion all rolled into one, and reflected the graffiti chaos on the walls. A joint was necessary when you entered; an anaesthetic was what you needed to survive.

The girl reappeared with the cappuccino and he gave her a two euro coin. Delving into the money purse strapped to her waist, she took out some loose change, hesitated, and then a five euro note.

"Did you give me a five or ten?" She asked, looking slightly puzzled.

"I gave you a two euro coin, sweetheart."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she replied, flustered.

"I don't want to rip you off babe, but if you'll take a tip from me, I think you need some fresh air." He looked down at the cappuccino which was half the size of the cup he had with Bakker. If anyone served a coffee that size in New York, it would start a riot.

Not feeling any satisfaction, he looked around for a place to sit. The bar to the left was taken up by a long row of teenagers who looked as if they were on a student city trip. He found an empty seat at the table across from the bar. Sitting down to his minuscule cup of coffee, Hill Street Blues took on a new meaning, here you really got the blues, and probably needed medical help to recover.

Chapter Thirteen

Ribb was looking through a file when his mobile rang. The customized ring tone told him exactly who was calling. "Yes Lizzie," he answered by more or less saying, " _what do you need now_.

"Papaaaaaa," his daughter cried out, in a tone that indicated she needed something.

"What's up, Lizzie," he answered, still trying to concentrate on the file in front of him."

Ruby shouted in the background. "Hi honey."

"Ruby is here," Lizzie said. "She was here when I came home from school."

"Okay. Say hi from me."

Lizzie whispered, "I didn't know she had a key."

"I know, I forgot to tell you. We'll talk about it later."

"But Papaaaaaa," she repeated once again.

Ribb knew this was a sign she wanted a much bigger favour than usual. "What's up, sweetie?"

"Can I go to the disco tonight?"

Lizzie had been to a teenage disco before, and everything went okay, obviously that was not the big question.

"Sure, of course. Same place as last time?" He thought he'd ask, just in case she planned on pushing her luck by going to an adult disco in the city centre.

"... Yes." She sounded hesitant before following it up with the next question. "Can I get some new clothes for the disco?"

That was it, that was the bombshell.

"But you bought some stuff with your mother for the last disco just the other week."

"That was soooo long ago, I really need new clothes."

"Who's going to go with you?"

In the background he could hear whispering. Lizzie unsuccessfully tried to dampen the sound by placing her hand over the mobile. He heard muffled shouts of joy and laughter and the slap of a high five. Ribb realized he had indirectly said _yes_. His little daughter was razor-sharp and growing up faster than he could keep track.

"Just the usual friends. But Ruby and me want to go out and buy some new clothes right now. The shops will be closed in an hour."

"Okay," Ribb said, hesitantly. Flashes of his girlfriend's wardrobe crowded of his mind. He ran his hands through his hair and hoped his little fourteen-year-old never got to peek in there.

"Where are you going shopping?"

"Just here, the local shops."

"I see." He tried to think if there were any shops Ruby would fancy because of her specialist wardrobe.

"Ruby said I could also borrow some of her things as well."

"Oh." His mind screamed. "I don't know if that's a good idea Lizzie, just stick to your own stuff right now."

"But she's got some great gear."

True, and that was one of the things that attracted him to her. But that did not mean his little daughter had to go down the same road.

"I don't think your mother would approve."

"I won't tell mom about Ruby," Lizzie replied, in her innocent little girl voice.

"She already knows about Ruby, but that's not the point. You know your mother always likes to go shopping for clothes with you. I don't think she would be happy with Ruby taking over _that_ role, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah," Lizzie moaned, again in her little girly voice. "I suppose..."

Ribb could feel his heart sink, and submit. "That does not mean you cannot go shopping with Ruby, but just this once, okay? And don't tell your mother."

"YES." Lizzie screamed. Ribb could hear another high five clap in the background. He smiled.

"I'll be home later and I'll see you before you go to the disco."

"Okay, daddy. Kiss Kiss."

"Bye sweetheart."

Harry Ribb ran his hands through his hair once again and sucked in a deep breath. Running this department and keeping an eye on the most demanding city in the Netherlands seemed incredibly easy compared to raising a teenage girl.

Chapter Fourteen

The puzzle that confounded pathologist Dr Jim Conver had doubled in size. Two male bodies had come in late in the afternoon, and both now lay on his stainless steel tables. Conver was on the phone to Ribb.

"The specimens I took from the body in the bath are being examined as we speak, but so far we don't have a clue as to how it happened. By the way, I did eventually get the body in the bath back here." Conver looked over at the nineteenth-century bathtub sitting in the corner of the lab. "After I removed some more samples I used the solidifying agent, which turned all the fluid in the bathtub into a very thick jelly. It won't be too difficult to get more samples if we need them."

"Good idea." Ribb said.

"But we have another problem."

"What's that?"

"I've got two more suspect deaths in front of me. I've already opened one up, and it didn't look good. I need to run some more tests and open up the second, but if my suspicions are right we are looking at something similar to Carola Munk and Frank Brandsma."

"Are you serious? Have you got their addresses?"

"Jeffry Downes is from the van Baerlestraat, and George de Graaf a little further up."

"Oh shit," Ribb moaned. "Send me the exact addresses right away. I'll get a team over there to seal off their apartments, before someone decides to clean up like the last time."

Ribb went to the large map of Amsterdam on the wall, and with a black marker in hand, extended the previous thick line which had stopped near the Overtoom. It now doubled in length, through the van Baerlestraat to the Lairessestraat, a stretch of nearly one and a half kilometres. He stood back to get a better view and scratched his curly hair. A straight line cut across the city. He then put an X on the spot where they found Raemon Dort. His apartment was three kilometres south of the van Baerlestraat.

Could they be connected?

Within minutes of speaking to Conver, Ribb called Bakker and cancelled his leave. He dispatched a team to seal off the apartments and a forensics unit. There was no need for him to be present. His senior officers and forensics would do a thorough job.

He ordered another team to search all the mysterious deaths in the database, and look for anything similar to Bakker's previous findings. Maybe they could find something Bakker had missed, though he thought it unlikely. Bakker looked as scruffy as hell, but his search techniques in digging for information, was better than most. Tomorrow he would be briefed on Downes and de Graaf's apartments. Just when he was about to leave the office for the evening, the telephone rang.

Ribb looked down at the number that lit up the screen and knew the dam had burst.

Sietske van der Kalk was a journalist with the national newspaper, the Telegraaf, and one of the few media people who had his direct number. It was also a number Sietske rarely used. Protocol was that anyone from the media, including Sietske, would call the press officer, who would as usual give as little information as possible. The press officer would then call him or send an email to let him know who was on to the case – Sietske would normally never call him directly. Sietske probably wanted a direct one-to-one before publishing anything. Reluctantly, he picked up the telephone.

"Ribb," he answered sternly.

"Harry, it's me, Sietske."

They were roughly the same age, and started working in their respective jobs about the same time. Harry first encountered Sietske when he was nearly a year on the force.

Unlike Harry, Sietske was a Fries, and one of the reasons why Harry allowed him access to his direct line. There was never any pussyfooting with Sietske, he was sober in his way of working, straightforward, and direct to the point. To Harry, he resembled Boddin, but different. People from Friesland were known for their lack of humour, straight-faced logic, and grumpiness. Slightly more human than Star Trek's Mr. Spock, but not a lot. Harry could picture him, sitting at his desk in the editorial office, with his white blonde hair dangling over his eyes, and an unlit cigarette in his mouth while typing up the article. No doubt he would be rushing it so he could take a quick break to light up and get his nicotine shot; a habit Harry managed to drop when Lizzie was born.

"What can I do for you, Sietske?"

"It's about a death in the Stadionkade, a Mr. Raemon Dort."

"What about it."

"First of all I haven't heard anything about this from your press officers' daily briefings. The person we talked to said the body, which was found in the bathtub, was not quite right."

"Define not quite right?" Let's see how much Sietske knows about this, Harry thought.

"The only thing I can say is that it looked like a Disney cartoon."

"Are you saying we found a dead Mickey Mouse?"

"Ha ha, very funny," Sietske replied, sarcastically. "He was the owner of the apartment, but he looked, I don't know.... two-dimensional."

Harry wondered where he got his information, an officer or the cleaning lady?

"Where did you get this information?"

"You know I can't reveal my source."

Harry looked up at the map on the Wall and focused on where the deaths had occurred. "Well, I can confirm the death of Mr. Raemon Dort in the Stadionkade."

"Okay, thanks for that. What did he die off?"

"I'm afraid I can't give you any information on that right now."

"Come on Harry, help me out here."

"You know I can't give you that information.

"Why not? If he was shot I know you would tell me, and if he was poisoned you would also tell me."

"No, I wouldn't."

"All right, you probably wouldn't," Sietske sounded more frustrated at Ribb's stonewall answers. "But can't you confirm something our source has said? Of course I won't mention you."

Sietske had done this before and was true to his word. Besides, if he ever crossed that line, every force in the country would ignore him for the rest of his journalistic career.

"I can't say anything because we are a long way from getting results on the tests. The only thing I can say is that Mickey Mouse is alive and well and living in Hollywood."

"Is that all?"

"Good night Sietske."

"Thanks, Harry, bye."

Ribb looked up at the clock on the Wall. He had to get Lizzie to the disco – it was papa time. He arrived home later than planned, seven forty-five. At least Ruby would be there to put a meal together for Lizzie, and get her ready for the disco. The moment he pushed his key into the front door lock, a mad panic ensued from inside the apartment. In the hallway, he hung his leather coat on the hanger. When he entered the living room, Ruby and Lizzie were nowhere to be seen.

"Hello?"

"Daddy, don't come in. I'm not ready yet." Lizzie shouted, from her bedroom.

"Harry, wait a minute," Ruby said, with a teasing voice. "Grab yourself a drink. We will be out in a minute."

In the kitchen, Harry grabbed a cold bottle of Grolsch beer from the refrigerator, and placed it in the bottle opener bolted to the kitchen wall, directly above the rubbish bin. He pressed the pedal and the lid shot open. A soft hiss, and the bottle top dropped perfectly into the rest of the garbage. He took a swig of the refreshing beer straight from the bottle, one of the things his ex-continuously criticised him about.

"Drink it out of a glass," she would moan.

"It's already in a glass," he always replied. "Why would I want to put it into another glass when I can drink it just as easily out of this one?" It was at this stage of his marriage he concluded that women not only had their own logic, but were also wired differently.

He settled down on the living room sofa. "Are you going to be long?" From experience he knew that since she was a little girl, every new dress or outfit had to be paraded as if it was a fashion show. His only option was to sit and wait patiently.

"Nearly ready," Ruby replied. "Just adding the finishing touches."

He knew all about the finishing touches with Lizzie's mother; he was married to her for fifteen years. Picking the right outfit or matching blouse, pants, skirt, twenty to thirty minutes. Putting them on, ten minutes. Rearranging or exchanging garments or shoes in search of the correct colour combination that only she could see, at least another twenty minutes. Of course she would ask for help, or an opinion, but in the end all suggestions by anyone other than God were thrown out the window as being of no taste, disastrous, or just not good enough. Finally, hair and make-up, another thirty minutes.

He eyed the remaining beer in the bottle, now three-quarters empty, and wondered whether or not he would have to drive Lizzie to the disco, maybe Ruby could take her instead. The moment he was about to swallow the last mouthful, Lizzie appeared from her bedroom. The shock made him suck the beer into his lungs, which caused a fit of coughing.

"Oh sweetheart," Ruby cried. She rushed over to pat him on the back, then came a couple of hard whacks, right between the shoulder blades, which only made it worse.

Coughed up beer spattered over the glass top coffee table in front. Ruby immediately went out of the room and into the kitchen for a cloth. Apparently that was more important than him choking to death.

Lizzie was dressed in a dress so short he felt embarrassed by it. Her lips were covered in black lipstick, and her eyes were highlighted with black and grey red lines, that would not look out of place in an SM film. It took him a number of minutes to recover from the coughing fit, and mentally adjust himself to the makeover his daughter had undergone with the help of his girlfriend.

Why he didn't see it coming was a mistake he would never make again. Ruby was extreme. He should have realized her influence would rub off on his young and susceptible teenage daughter. After wiping down the table, Ruby sat next to him on the left, Lizzie on the right. His cough died down, he took in some deep breaths.

Ruby rubbed his back. "Are you okay, sweetheart?"

He turned and looked at her straight in the eye. "What have you done to my daughter," he said, his voice barely audible. He had known Ruby for about three months and had only just introduced her to Lizzie a couple of weeks previously. At first he was worried about how Lizzie would take to his new girlfriend. She was devastated about the breakup with her mother, and was constantly trying to get the two of them back together. He loved his daughter, and was mad about Ruby, but this assimilation and transformation was hard to swallow.

"What do you mean?" Ruby said, big smile as bright as ever. "She looks terrific."

"She can't go to a disco looking like that." He said, firmly.

"Come on," Ruby pleaded.

"Papaaaaaa," Lizzie whined.

Ribb tried to ignore his daughter and kept his eyes fixed on Ruby.

"She looks like a...' He managed to stop himself just in time. His daughter was going to a teenage disco, yet she looked as if she was about to set up business in the Wallen.

"She's only going to a disco." Ruby said.

"Exactly. She's not going to walk the streets, right?" He blurted out.

"So that's what you think about my clothes?" Ruby screamed.

Oh Christ, his mind roared, he had walked blindly into that. "I never said that. No, of course not. It's not personal. It's not about you. You always look incredible. But she's only fourteen."

Lizzie screamed, then rushed into her room, and slammed the door.

"Now look what you've done."

"What I've done?" he said, in total despair.

"She's growing up, and she's going to do that with or without you."

"Believe me, as a father I'm very aware of her growing up, but it looks as if she just turned from being a young teenager to full adulthood within the space of one day. To me, that is not the way it's meant to be. I might sound old-fashioned, but it's just not on."

"This is the way kids dress these days."

Ribb took a deep breath, then tried to speak in a calm voice. "Listen, I'm a cop, and we deal with all sorts of kids at the station, and believe me I have never seen a fourteen-year-old dressed like that."

The sound of Lizzie crying in her room suddenly rose to a higher pitch. He ran his hands through his hair. Ruby stared at him with her puppy eyes, and an over-expressive sad face.

A flash of memory surfaced in his mind; arguing with his father about a t-shirt with holes cut into them, and jeans that looked as if they had been trampled by a team of horses in a muddy field, then thrown to wild dogs to be ripped to pieces – his punk days. He took another deep breath and let it out slowly.

"All right, just this once." Suddenly there was a scream of joy from the bedroom. Ruby leaned over, grabbed his head in her hands and kissed him hard on the lips. Lizzie appeared from her room, with not a tear to be seen.

"I better go, otherwise I'm going to be late," Lizzie said, as she sauntered past, heading for the front door. "Hurry up daddy, you have to bring me, _now_."

He wearily got up from the sofa. "I should have known. The bloody daddy taxi again."

Ruby wrapped her arms around him.

"Hurry back," she whispered in his ear. His heart suddenly started thumping, and a thousand butterflies reared up in his stomach. He melted inside, smiled, and gave her a quick peck on the lips, and a hug.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Ruby in the living room mirror, giving Lizzie a thumbs up. Victory celebrated, and he knew at the back of his mind it would not be the last.
Chapter Fifteen

Karl Webber made his way through the corridors of the hospital feeling totally relaxed and secure. He knew exactly where he was going, although he had to try and avoid anyone he knew along the way, although the chances of meeting someone who could recognize him at three o'clock in the morning were slim. He would be just another male nurse in white pants and tunic.

Everything looked exactly as he remembered it. He thought he would feel a sense of nostalgia, there was none. He had overcome all his traumas, both physical and mental. Karl passed rooms where people he knew would be sleeping and wondered about their state of health; they would not be so lucky. Their lives hung in a balance between life and death, as did his at one time. He went down the stairs and into another corridor, a familiar white sign on the wall caught his eye. The arrow pointed to the right read; morgue – his destination. At the end of the corridor, he stopped in front of the double white doors and peered in through the small round window. The room, dimly lit, seemed sterile and unwelcoming. There were no bodies lying on the stainless steel tables, but he knew where to find what he was looking for. Gently he pushed the door and entered. It was cold, clinical, and an intense smell of hospital disinfectant hung in the air. The sound of a ventilation fan whirred in the background, exactly as he remembered. Karl turned left and at the end of a small passage came up against a large steel door. This closed off a separate section where the bodies were kept. He pulled on the large cold steel handle – locked. No problem, he knew exactly where to find the keys.

The first time he was down here was when Jeff, one of his friends on the same ward, ended his own life. Although he could still move with difficulty, his illness was terminal. He could have arranged euthanasia through his doctor if he wanted to, but Jeff wanted to battle it out, as long as possible. He had been a fighter all his life, and at one stage had aspirations to go into army life. But when his illness was diagnosed it seemed to mark him, making work, relationships and general getting about impossible. Of course, there were electric wheelchairs and modern gadgets and apparatus to help him, but he avoided them. The fighter in him would not give up so easy. After four years of fighting the system and what the system tried to do for him, he finally gave in. Jeff spent two months in the hospital before deciding to end it all himself. The only help he got was from Karl, who supplied extra sleeping pills to speed up the process. He also helped him work out the dosage and timing. When the night shift came on they both toasted with Dutch Jenever to life and life beyond, then Jeff swallowed the capsules. A half hour later he fell into a deep sleep. Karl tucked him in as best he could and arranged everything as if he was just sleeping. When the night nurse arrived, Karl was awake, pretending to read a book, she went directly over to Jeff.

"Don't wake him up," he said in near panic. "He hasn't slept for days." The nurse slowed to a stop and looked at him from a distance.

"Is he ok?"

He tried to sound relaxed. "He's just exhausted."

The controversy around Jeff's death quickly subsided, but within six months Karl found himself awaiting the same fate, only now he was alone.

The keys were, as usual, in the second drawer of the pathologist's desk in the adjoining office. The door to this was also shut, but Karl knew they kept an emergency key in a steel flask on the top shelf next to the office. When he unlocked the door to the cold mortuary, he pulled four bodies out of the individual refrigerator compartments.

Dr Conver had, as usual, done a very thorough job, although judging by the fact the bodies were not stitched up, he wasn't finished. Staring at the open chests and organs it was easy to take anything, small or large, and it would never show up on the radar. But, he had his instructions, and had to carry them out to the letter. Karl removed four small containers and placed them at the foot of the bodies. He reached behind his back, and took out a hunting knife hidden in a sheath, stuck down the inside of his white medical trousers.

He positioned a paper towel on top of Carola Munk's right leg, then lifted the leg up about ten centimetres. Carefully, he ran the blade horizontally down the lower calf. He wiped the edge of the knife with a swab, placed it in the container and sealed it.

After cleaning the edge of the blade with the paper towel, he repeated the procedure with the remaining three bodies. Something large in the corner of the room, covered with a sheet, caught his eye. Karl lifted it to reveal the bath containing Raemon Dort. "Wow, cool," he laughed.

He took out his knife and cut off a lock of Raemon Dort's hair, then scraped off some of the solidified face, and put the samples into two containers.

It all took no longer than twenty minutes. After replacing the keys in Conver's office, he stopped to survey the bare stainless steel tables, and the cold sterile surroundings. He should have ended up here, just like Jeff. He missed his company.

The only thing left to do was deliver the samples and get back to his little hideaway before daylight.

Chapter Sixteen

The covered corpses of Carola Munk, Frank Brandsma, Geoffrey Downes, and George de Graaf lay on separate tables next to each other. Harry Ribb stood next to Jim Conver.

"Like I mentioned on the phone, we've got two more bodies that at first glance died under normal circumstances, but looking deeper, that's not the case. Along with that, we had an unwelcome visitor here last night."

Conver pulled back the lower sheets on Carola Munk and Frank Brandsma to reveal their legs. Both of their calves had marks on the skin roughly ten centimetres long and four centimetres wide.

"Unusual and hardly noticeable, I'd say they were exfoliated."

"What?" Ribb gasped.

"It means...'

Ribb interrupted. "I know what it means. But why?"

"I think somebody broke in to take a sample."

"A sample?"

Dr Conver lifted up the sheet on Geoffrey Downes body to reveal his open chest cavity. "He could have taken something from just about any organ within the body and I would never have noticed a thing."

"Why would someone exfoliate the skin?"

"No idea. But I would have missed it if something else had not of caught my eye."

"What."

"The waste paper bin." Dr Conver went over to a stainless steel desk in the corner of the room, and lifted up a small sterile plastic bag with a towel paper in it. "At the end of the day all the bins are cleaned out. That was in there this morning when we arrived."

"Well spotted," Ribb glanced up at the ceiling. "Any CCTV cameras in here?"

"I'm afraid not."

"All right. We will check for fingerprints everywhere, and unknown DNA on the paper towel. We will also check cameras covering the entrance and exits of the building. Maybe we can pick up someone there."

"Could be an inside job," Dr Conver said. "Whoever it was knew exactly where the keys were to open the door. They knew their way around."

"What sort of tests are you running on the bodies?"

"Everything we can think off, right down to the molecular level."

"Still no idea on the actual cause?"

"You have to ask yourself how do you develop a congenital heart defect overnight. But that doesn't beat our friend we finally managed to bring in yesterday." Dr Conver removed the sheet covering a large rectangular bath to reveal Raemon Dort.

"That is so strange' Chief Ribb said, then bent down to get a closer look. He was about to touch the substance in the bath, when he suddenly froze, and turned to Dr Conver.

"Can I, is it safe?"

"Go ahead, it won't make much difference. We've got all the material we need, and yes it's safe." Ribb reached down and touched the thick jelly substance. Ribb felt a chill run down his spine.

An hour later Harry Ribb stared at the front page of the Telegraaf spread out on his desk. A pencil drawing of Raemon Dort lying in the bathtub covered the top quarter. The description of Dort's situation was not totally correct, so it must have been the cleaning lady. The woman was so traumatized by the incident, she was incapable of describing the scene precisely. If one of his officers had leaked the information, the detail would have been near to perfect. He scanned the article for his name, it didn't appear. It was Saturday morning and the Telegraaf had the scoop, the rest of the media had to follow suit. Radio and TV stations had been calling the press officer since the publication of the early edition at five o'clock this morning, it was going to be a long day. The story, as usual, would remain in the limelight for at least a week before something new came up. Only the death of a national leader would keep Dort off the front pages.

Detective Bakker, who looked more unkempt than ever, sat across the table.

"We worked all night with forensics going through all the apartments. At least thirty men were knocking on doors and asking questions. So far nothing suspicious. Any new info from the pathologist?"

"No," Ribb replied. He glanced at his email to see if anything had arrived from Conver in the meantime. "So we cannot say the deaths were malicious until more tests are complete. The point is, I don't want to start to panic in the city. Those questions have to be asked quietly.

"Of course." Bakker replied.

Harry noticed him slowly slumping into the chair.

"Try to keep details of these deaths from the press as long as possible. Let them ponder on Dort's death. It will give us more room to carry out our work without the publicity."

"It's difficult bringing in forensics and keeping it quiet," Bakker said. He rubbed his tired eyes.

"Do your best." Ribb turned his attention back to the files lying in front of him. Without another word, Bakker got up and left.

Corso sat at Bakker's desk, waiting on him.

"Where is your Yankee friend?"

"He's not my friend."

"Well, you were just about hand-in-hand going out the door last time."

"The Chief asked me to take him for a cup of coffee and explain the basics of our working procedures. He will be properly worked in on Monday when he finally starts duty."

"You realize you are going to be babysitting this guy."

"I have no idea what the Chief has planned. He could go to another station, like that Danish cop last year."

"He was specialized in working with prostitutes and human trafficking, they didn't put him in the Wallen for nothing. What did he do back in the States?"

"Homicide, I think."

"So that means he will be in your division."

"I suppose."

"I'm glad I'm just uniform and cruise the streets. As long as he stays out of my way I don't care where he works." Corso reached for his jacket, got up, and left.

When Harry Ribb's telephone rang, he was little surprised to see it was Sietske once again. Calling to gloat about his scoop, no doubt, although that would be out of character.

"Good morning, Sietske. Great article, but not exactly correct, as far as I can see."

"Want to fill me in on the rest?"

"You know I can't do that."

"All right, then maybe you can tell me something about the four deaths from the Bilderdijkstraat to the van Baerlestraat."

Another cat out of the bag, Harry thought. He knew it was going to be difficult to keep that one quiet. Sealing off apartments, forensic teams dressed in white bodysuits walking around inside, and Detectives knocking on everyone's doors, the secret was just wishful thinking.

"Sorry Sietske, I cannot give you any information about that either."

"Four deaths in what is basically one street is not something you can sweep under a carpet."

"How did you hear about this anyway?"

"You know I cannot give you any information on my sources, Harry."

Sietske sounded as if he really enjoyed saying that.

"But I'll give you this one. A cousin of my wife is a postman, and noticed a number of apartments on the streets he delivers to were sealed off. He also couldn't help notice the forensics people crawling around inside. I think four scenes like this in one street would get some attention, don't you?"

"Okay, fair enough, you're right. I can't say much because we don't know all the details ourselves. Yes, there are four deaths that have occurred on a two and a half kilometre stretch, but we are not sure as to how it happened. At first it seemed like a regular heart attack or at least a heart related ailment, but it turns out there is a lot more to it than that. Forensics are working round the clock and the pathologist is cracking his brain on this, believe me. Would you mind keeping this from the rest of the press till Monday?"

"Sorry Harry, I can't promise you anything. If the rest of the media hear about this than there is nothing I can do about it.

"Okay, I understand. Thanks anyway. What I can say is that you are the only journalist who has called me about it, so I think you've got a head start."

"True, we could put it on the website right now, or tomorrow, Sunday. But I'd prefer to run it on Monday in the regular press."

"That's where the money is, right?"

"Selling newspapers is always important, that's the way it is."

"Well I wish I could give you more information, but unfortunately that is not the case."

"Thanks anyway Harry," Sietske said, and hung up.

Harry Ribb looked up at the map of Amsterdam on the wall and the long black line he had drawn. There were no answers as to what was happening. Everything was a mystery. No sign of break-ins, no unusual prints, or suspect DNA. Crime as he knew it, guns, knives, fights, poisons or violence in general seemed like a piece of cake compared to this.

Never had he had so many suspect deaths on his hands and no clues as to how they happened.

Chapter Seventeen

It was early Sunday afternoon in the Alfred hotel when Harry Wall decided to go to the famous Anne Frank house after reading up on it in his Amsterdam guidebook. Her diary was obligatory reading in tenth grade. The thought of being the only one, not only in his department back in New York, but the whole precinct, ever to visit the actual house, was a chance he could not pass up on. Checking Google maps, he saw the location was not too far from where he had caught the second thief, close to the church called the Westerkerk, where Rembrandt's wife, Saskia, was buried – another snippet from his guide book. The Anne Frank house was just around the corner. He could walk from the hotel, but the weather was threatening to rain. Were all Dutch summers like this? A taxi was an option, however, the amazing tram system in the city was second to none. Studiously, he checked the Amsterdam public transport app and worked out which tram to take.

The number five to the Bloemgracht, via the Leidseplein was the best option. The Anne Frank house was then a ten-minute walk from the tram stop.

The lobby of the hotel was empty, except for the cheerful male receptionist, who apologized for the cold weather. He walked down the Lairessestraat to the front of the Concertgebouw and quickly boarded the number five tram. Since he arrived, he had built up a routine with this tram line, which usually had a mixture of tourists and locals heading for the city centre.

On Sunday he expected it to be nearly empty, but to his surprise there was standing room only. After buying a tram card, he scanned it on the small grey scanner next to the conductor, who sat in an enclosed cabin in the middle of the tram. The machine beeped, and a green light lit up. His card was now valid for one hour, which meant he could ride around in the city for an hour at no extra charge. He moved into the middle of the tram where there was more space. All around, he could hear Italian, Spanish, something that sounded like German and a few English accents, but so far, no Americans. He had thought about connecting up with the local American community through the Meetup app, but quickly decided against it. It was better to immerse himself in this new world and see how things progressed. Unlike France, there was no language barrier, which made communication a lot easier. He would stick to himself, and roll with the flow.

When the tram doors shut, it cruised up to the traffic lights a couple of hundred meters further up, then turned to the right and stopped outside the Stedelijk Museum. A fresh hoard of tourists boarded. Wall noticed three Oriental women, Korean he thought, late forties or early fifties, stepping onto the tram, they looked nervous and stressed. They clutched their handbags with both hands close to their chests. None of the other passengers looked as tense or worried as these three ladies. Wall had seen notices of pickpockets in the trams, and once or twice he heard the conductor warning people about them over the intercom in different languages, so maybe they were just overly cautious.

The three women came up next to him but could not move further since the next section after Wall was packed full. Seconds before the doors closed, four youths got on the tram. The three women, chatting in their own language, suddenly looked more nervous than ever. Wall immediately knew they were the source of their discomfort. All were aged about seventeen or eighteen and had slightly tinted skin. He watched them chat and glance over at the women. Bag snatchers, and the women knew it. He had to act, but how? Since Chief Ribb had deprived him of his gun, the only thing he still had were the tie-wraps in his inside jacket pocket. He could confront them all on at once, which would not be too difficult, but a tram this packed it would not be a smart move. They could be carrying weapons, possibly knives, and then the whole situation could very quickly get out of hand.

The youths wormed their way past a few passengers, and got closer to the women. If these guys were stupid enough to pull off a snatch in a packed tram, they were definitely amateurs. He decided to act. At that moment, Chief Ribb's words came to mind, " _you start work Monday'._

The tram rounded another corner to the left and glided past the front entrance of the Vondelpark. Only a hundred meters further up it would turn right, and then it was only a short distance to the next stop on the Leidseplein. When the doors opened, that was probably when they would make their move. If he did not act now, all hell would break loose within minutes. Carefully, he nudged past the three ladies, smiled and excused himself as he did, then stopped and planted himself between the women and the youths. If they were going to make a move then they had to go through him first.

The first potential bag snatch, closest to him, quickly realized their path to the handbags was blocked by the tall black man. Frustrated, he glanced up at Wall, who looked down at him and gave him the briefest smile, shook his head, then took hold of the safety bar each side.

The imposing bulwark caused the boy's jaw to drop. Wall subtly shook his head once again. The teenager's eyes were suddenly depleted of the confidence they had seconds earlier. He turned to his friends and whispered. They looked up and quickly understood the situation. When the tram came up to the stop on the Leidseplein, the doors opened. The four youths speedily moved towards the exit and got off. Wall watched them argue outside as a new group of tourists boarded. The doors finally closed, and the tram took off, leaving them looking puzzled and still arguing in the distance. Unaware of his intervention, the ladies relaxed, but continued to hold tightly onto their bags.

The Anne Frank house was a surprise of sorts when he arrived 20 minutes later. It was definitely not what he had expected. He had seen many buildings and styles of old houses in Amsterdam, but the entrance resembled an armoured office block. Was this the actual Anne Frank house? Or the houses next to it? He was confused.

Sombre grey vertical steel beams lined the front wall and entrance. Like an assault on his conscience, it was the first depressing building he had seen in Amsterdam – but then it was not exactly a cheerful story either. To the right, on the corner, was a restaurant built into the second floor, and on the ground floor, a gift shop. The biggest disappointment was outside – a queue at least one hundred and fifty meters in length, made up of mostly students. Okay, another time, he thought – maybe Monday, or mid-week, when it might be less crowded. He decided to skip the house and stroll along the canal.

Streets here were not covered in concrete or tarmac as he was used to back in the States, but paved with brick. Strangely enough, the type and colour that covered the colonial house he grew up in back in New York. Somehow, for some reason he couldn't understand, he felt right at home. It was warm and friendly, like a small village, but yet it was a major city. Areas in New York also had that hamlet feel to it, but the metropolis – steel, glass and high-rise skyscrapers was always in view. In Amsterdam he had yet to see a skyscraper. Wall had travelled to Mexico, Puerto Rico, London, and Paris, but nowhere had he felt more relaxed and at home as he did now. New York had its passions, but streets in an unfamiliar area were never so laid-back as this.

Passing a cafe he heard live jazz. The sound of a melodic saxophone, backed by a combo on a Sunday afternoon, did not get much better than that. He decided to go in.

The cafe, unlike most he had seen outside of the tourist areas, was painted dark grey. A four piece combo next to the front window created the mellow sounds. The audience, roughly thirty people of all ages, sat at various tables drinking beer, tea, eating nachos and other snacks. Amsterdam had surprising aspects to it, and this was one of them. Time to get a table, coffee and relax. Tomorrow he had to report to his new boss Chief Harry Ribb for duty, the official start of his six-month holiday; with full pay and benefits.

Chapter Eighteen

His door, a blocked up portal in the wooden partition, divided a small unused area of the attic, was no more than a square meter in size, and locked from the inside. Karl Webber sat absolutely still in the darkened space, and listened to the sound of movement of two people on the opposite side. Made of old thick wooden planks which dated from the opening of the building in 1888, some had tried to open it, but the sheet of steel he added on the inside when he found the hideout, made it impossible for anyone to enter, except him. He recognized the movements, and voices, and knew exactly what was going on. Their voices were not audible enough to understand what exactly was being said, although the sound of something being wound up, was familiar. They were rolling up microphone cables attached to reels, that held up to fifty meters of cable. The cables passed through small openings in the attic floor down to two or three meters above the stage directly below. There, microphones were attached to the ends of the cables for the recording of the concert. After rolling up the suspended cables and putting away the twenty plus reels, they would gather up loose microphone cables used to connect the reels to two small shoebox size stage boxes, with twenty XLR connections on each side for microphone inputs.

From there the sound travelled through a thick multi-core cable to the sound engineer in the mobile recording truck stationed outside the building on the right. Peering through the cracks in the old joints, Karl had observed them carrying out this work at least once or twice a week, usually on Sundays before the afternoon or Friday evening concert.

He leaned back and waited for them to finish tidying up and leave the attic of the Concertgebouw. When the lights in the loft finally went out, he heard them going down the spiral metal staircase, he was alone once again. Karl switched on the dim light and checked the four small plastic containers in his pouch; tonight's experiments.

The last of the trams raced down the Overtoom before they retreated to the depot in the Havenstraat for the night. Although it had stopped raining twenty minutes earlier, the air was warm and humid. Karl looked down from the rooftop at the wet covered streets, and car roofs that glistened from the streetlights. Feeling relaxed and confident he checked the pouch strapped to his waist, took a small ampoule out of his pouch, and held it up to the light. He had no idea what it would do. The only instruction she gave him was how to administer it. He replaced the container and treaded carefully over the dark wet roof. After receiving his weekly shot early that afternoon, he felt revived and fit enough to carry on deep into the night.

Not more than twenty minutes later Karl treaded the roofs of the buildings on the Overtoom. He stopped to lean over and scan for open windows, unfortunately, there was not much chance in gaining entry at the front. At the rear he saw possibilities. Some experiments were random, but others had been tagged for months. Stealthily, he dropped down onto a small balcony where a door was held slightly open on a latch.

The darkened bedroom was neat and clean, clothes were laid out on the bed. Upmarket jeans, a red rugby sweater, a woman's blouse, and an Apple PowerBook on the bedside table. Young professionals, Webber thought. He removed his crampons then carried on through to the back of the apartment. In the small but modern kitchen, he opened the cupboards and studied the contents. Expensive pastas, spaghetti, penne, ravioli etc., each in its own glass container. In another cupboard he found various coffees and teas in neatly labelled deep blue glazed ceramic jars. How people lived and what they spent their money on, always amused him. The compact refrigerator under the worktop contained drinks, fruits, vegetables, Dr. Atkins diet milkshakes, and a small carton of soy milk. No meat, probably vegetarian and worried about putting on weight.

Webber took a container from his pouch and emptied a few drops into the milk, then carefully replaced it. In the tiny bathroom, he twisted off the toothpaste cap and gently squeezed the sides, the toothpaste retracted into the tube. He removed another container, checked the instructions, and carefully squeezed droplets into the tube then screwed the cap back on.

Shortly after he was back on the roof, stepping carefully along the gable walls. Suddenly, he heard voices, then stopped. He peered over the roof edge, and watched a woman in her early seventies preparing coffee. She put two measured spoonful's of coffee granules into a paper filter, and shouted to her husband in the next room.

"I'm going to make some coffee Johnny, you want some?"

"It's much too late for coffee, you will never get any sleep. I'll stick to what I've got."

"All that alcohol is no good for you. Remember what the doctor said?"

"Doctor? He didn't look a day over twelve."

"He only looked young, because he was a lot healthier than you."

Karl watched her pour water into the coffee machine, switch it on and leave the kitchen. He reached down through the small window and lifted the latch on the larger window below. Once inside, he quickly took out an ampoule and emptied it into the coffee pot. Within seconds, he was back outside.

In a small, uncluttered kitchen, a couple of hundred meters further up the Overtoom from where he first started that evening, Karl Webber opened and closed some food cupboards. His eyes landed on the small table sized refrigerator tucked away in the corner. He opened it gently and removed a carton of milk. Carefully he took a little container out of the pouch fastened to his waist and emptied the contents into the milk. He replaced the pack and left the same way he came in.

Only one more to go and he was finished for the night. 
Chapter Nineteen

At six o'clock on Monday morning, Detective Harvey Wall opened his eyes when the alarm clock went off, and realized he had left the TV on. He briefly caught a mention of something about Amsterdam by the CNN anchor before it moved on to another bulletin. He performed some quick stretches, then took a shower. In the breakfast room on the ground floor, he eyed up everything the Hotel had on offer to help him get through his first official day at work.

For nearly a week he had been in the hotel and this was only the second time he made it to the breakfast buffet. Mostly, he was either too late, or decided to get something in the city centre. Scrambled eggs, two scones, a slice of brown bread, jam, cheese, and black coffee, was how he decided to start his first working day. He sought out a quiet table in the corner which provided him with a complete view of the other guests in the breakfast room; a force of habit. Always park yourself where you have an eye on who is coming in the door, and where you can see everyone in the room.

A German family at the breakfast buffet, father – middle thirties, wife, son and a daughter in their early teens, and the mother who instructed the children on what to take. They did not look too pleased with her advice.

Behind them, a Dutch family with two girls roughly the same age helped themselves to everything they could see; white bread, Nutella chocolate spread, chocolate flakes and chocolate milk. The German mother frowned at her kids they tried to copy them. Seated at another table was a middle-aged French couple and spread around the room a few businessmen. He looked at his watch, it was six thirty-five A.M. Wall left his table and went to the reception across the corridor from the dining room.

"Could you call me a cab?" He asked the young male receptionist.

"Of course Sir." Promptly, he walked out the front entrance and beckoned the taxi parked further up in the street. Wall checked his pockets – wallet, mobile, keys, but no gun. He still felt naked without it and hoped he would get it back soon. The Chief had said a Walther P5, but he wanted his own gun, his friend, his peacekeeper. The one thing that kept him alive in New York after three scumbags tried to drastically shorten his expected lifespan.

The taxi pulled up to the front of the hotel, another Mercedes, only this time it was black.

"Your taxi is here, Sir," the receptionist said.

"I'm onto it. I'll see you later." He handed the receptionist a five euro tip just before he got into the taxi.

"Have a nice day Sir."

"I'm sure I will."

With the address written down on a Post-it note, he gave it to the driver, who quickly drove away. He felt an excited nervousness – not knowing what to expect – although judging by what he had seen so far it was going to be a pushover.

At seven o'clock sharp, Harvey Wall arrived at the station and was greeted by a very different desk officer than last week. Another female, but had an entirely different demeanour from the blonde desk officer the last time. Instead of the smiling warm face, this officer looked like a prison guard, and one who had at least hundred and fifty years of experience under her belt.

"I'm here to report to Chief Harry Ribb," Wall said. She stared at him with cold deep grey eyes that resembled stones of marble.

"Naam?" She asked in Dutch.

He presumed that meant 'name'. "I'm Detective Harvey Wall."

"Humph," was the reply.

Wall thought he heard a sound resembling a grunt, but then again it could have been something in Dutch he was not familiar with. She made a call and pointed to the plastic chairs. The seats were cold, grey, and so uncomfortable he hoped it would not take too long. Wanted posters, all in Dutch, lined one Wall. The only thing he recognized was the amount of money offered as a reward. Five hundred euros and on another poster, one thousand euros. Not much, he thought. FBI and local police usually offered more. But then he remembered that this was a small country with a population only twice the size of New York City, roughly sixteen million people. He heard the desk officer mention his name on the phone. Within a couple of seconds, she hung up and stared blankly at him.

"Wait," she commanded.

After ten minutes of sitting on the uncomfortable chair, he began to feel a longing for his old precinct back in New York. He looked around the waiting area for the umpteenth time, took out his iPhone and checked for app updates, there were none. He then searched anything interesting that could be useful in Amsterdam.

"No photographing in here. Not allowed," she announced harshly.

"I wasn't planning to." He replied, without bothering to look up at the eyesore.

There were more than five hundred apps relating to Amsterdam. Mostly guides and maps, and discovered one called Anne's Amsterdam, about exploring places and events connected to Anne Frank, a walking guide of Amsterdam, and soccer apps related to the local club Ajax. He eventually downloaded a Wi-Fi map showing free hotspots in the city, and a world Explorer app. It was at least fifteen minutes before the door opened and another female officer arrived to collect him.

"Detective Wall?" The female officer said as she peered around the door.

"Finally," Wall whispered under his breath.

The sleepy Detectives' squad room he walked into last week was transformed into a hectic, panic ridden, situation room. Five large whiteboards were set up across the front of the room. Each had a photo, one woman and three men, their names printed above. The last board had a large map of the city pinned to it. Unlike the handful of Detectives last time, he estimated at least thirty men and women were busy at their assigned tasks. What seemed to be a sea of tranquillity last week had turned into a rush of chaos and madness. Harvey Wall was probably guided into Chief Ribb's office, who was behind his desk and on the telephone. She motioned him to wait, then left the room, Wall remained standing. When Chief Ribb finished his call, he looked up at him with exhausted eyes.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long, Mr. Wall, I would love to explain everything to you about what's happening at the moment, but I don't have the time. I've seen your file, I know what you can do, so I am posting you to work with Detective Bakker."

"Yes, Sir."

"Mr. Bakker has been working most of the weekend non-stop and is now catching up on some much-needed sleep. He should be here in about an hour or two. In the meantime, I'll get one of my other officers to brief you, and Mr. Bakker will fill you in on the finer details later."

"Yes, Sir, thank you Sir."

Ribb signalled to an older Detective sitting behind a desk on the other side of Ribb's glass partition. He immediately got up and entered Ribb's office.

"This is senior Detective Hendrik Pastoor, he will brief you."

"Thank you, Sir." Wall followed Hendrik Pastoor to the whiteboards. The older Detective, late fifties, maybe early sixties, was slightly smaller than Wall, but taller than most of the men at the station, and had a girth that was much too large for the shirt he was wearing. Those buttons would surely pop before the end of the day. Years ago he would have had an incredible build, like a weightlifter, but all that muscle had now turned to blubber. Harvey noticed the darkened pores under his eyes; nicotine addiction, the smell of tobacco was also a giveaway. Hendrik pointed to the whiteboards.

"We have four deaths in four streets but actually it is one street." Hendrik told Wall, in a very strong Dutch accent.

"What? I don't get it. Four streets one street? What does that mean?"

Hendrik pointed to the map of Amsterdam pinned to the last board. It was identical to the one he had seen in Chief Ribb's office, and also had a black line running across it; now twice as long. Red dots, each numbered, stuck at various points along the line, corresponded to the four victims on the boards. Hendrik showed Wall a copy of the Telegraaf newspaper, with a picture of the same section of the map of Amsterdam on the front page. The caption was in Dutch, '4 mysterieuze doden in A'dam'. He didn't need to speak Dutch to understand that.

"Can you translate that?" Hendrik asked.

"Four mysterious deaths in Amsterdam?"

"Very good, your Dutch is coming along great."

Hendrik pointed to the different markers on the map. "This is the Bilderdijkstraat." He then pointed to the far right. "The same street further changes to the Eerste Constantijn Huygensstraat."

Wall knew he could never ever pronounce that.

Senior Detective Hendrik Pastoor's finger continued along the one Street. "Then you have the van Baerlestraat which carries on up to here to the Roelof Hartplein. All one street, four different names."

"When did they die?"

"Last week, but first every person were thinking natural causes. Now they don't know."

"You mean _everyone was thinking natural causes_ ," Wall said, correcting him.

"I know. That is what I said."

"Okay," Harvey nodded. "What can I do?"

"How is your Dutch?" Hendrik asked.

"Shit." Wall replied.

"That's a great Dutch word," Hendrik chuckled. His shirt buttons bounced and bulged to near popping. "Don't forget it. You will be using it a lot here in Amsterdam."

Harvey stared at him, not knowing whether to laugh, or write this guy off as a total blockhead.

"Come," Hendrik ordered. He went to a near empty desk with a monitor, keyboard and some papers, directly across from where Bakker sat, and collapsed into the small swivel chair. Wall was certain it was going to explode in all directions, it didn't. He beckoned Wall to take the seat next to him.

"This is your desk and computer from now on."

Wall settled into the office chair next to him. "Okay."

He pushed a paper with two words printed on it towards Wall. "This is your username and password. When you login next time you can change them to anything you want."

"I got it."

Hendrik pointed to a number on the top left-hand corner of the flat screen. "This is a case file number. For now you will only have access to this file. If you are a good little boy then maybe the Chief will let you play around with the rest of the files."

"I understand. Thanks." Wall could feel senior Detective Hendrik Pastoor's mockery beginning to wear thin. Of course he had colleagues like him back in New York, some could be much more destructive and challenging – yet Detective Pastoor was different. Was he really making fun of him? Or was he like this all the time?

Hendrik opened the file. "As you see, everything is in Dutch but after hearing shit I know it will not take long before you have mastered the Dutch language. But, to help you we have built into the system a translator that will immediately translate the file to another language. You speak German?"

"No."

"French?"

"No."

"Spanish?"

"No, I only speak English."

"Ha, the American education system."

"Yeah, thanks."

"How many languages do you speak?" Wall asked.

"English, German, French, a little Russian, Romanian and Spanish, although it is better than my Russian."

"Of course you can speak those languages," Wall said. "Most of those countries are just around the corner from Amsterdam, right?"

"True. But Mexico is just down the road from you. Montréal, where they speak French, is nearly as far as Paris is from Amsterdam. Just up the road, correct?"

"Okay, right, thanks for the geography lesson." Wall pointed to the four boards. "So how are they murdered?"

"They are not yet murders, but, you know, the papers are making a circus of it."

This guy was a total nutcase, Harvey thought. How the hell do they manage with people like that. Bakker was another oddball, but this guy badly needed to be put out to pasture. Although lung cancer, a heart attack, or crashing through one of those swivel chairs would probably do the job.

"What do I do?" Wall asked.

Hendrik handed Wall a paper file. "These are interviews from people connected to those who died. Neighbours, friends, family, people like that. They are all in Dutch but the same files are in the computer, you can translate them with a little click. Okay?"

Wall took in a deep breath. "Great, thanks." A new job, multiple homicides, a new country and a new language – being thrown into the deep end seemed like an understatement.

Hendrik got up to leave, then turned to Wall. "I nearly forgot. The biggest help you will have work is out that door." He pointed to the exit in the middle of the large squad room. "To the left and at the end of the corridor."

"What the hell is there?"

"The coffee machine, and it's free." Hendrik went back to his desk.

The coffee machine was little different to what he was used to in the New York precinct, except this also had tea and soup. Wall opted for a cappuccino, which was surprisingly good.

Settling down to work in front of the daunting computer screen in front of him, he noticed the Chief Ribb on the phone then beckoning to a number of officers, including Hendrik Pastoor, to his office. Something was going on, but it was impossible to understand exactly what. When Ribb put down the phone, he addressed the men in the office in Dutch. Less than a minute later they all rushed out, grabbed coats and jackets, then hurried out of the squad room double time. From all the Detectives originally in the room, only two were left. Ribb remained on the telephone for another couple of minutes, then got up to leave. As he grabbed his leather jacket on the back of his chair, Bakker arrived, looking tired and haggard.

"I think some serious shit is going down." Wall told Bakker, who was about to remove his scruffy coat.

"Do you know what it is?"

"Sorry, I wasn't invited to the briefing."

When Ribb came out of his office, he pointed to Bakker and Wall, "with me." He rushed past them and out the door.

"Take your own car," Chief Ribb shouted from the corridor, "and just follow me. I've no time to explain."

Outside in the enclosed car park on the right-hand side of the building, Chief Ribb got into an unmarked Volkswagen Golf, and quickly sped away towards the exit barrier, which slowly opened.

"My car is this way," Bakker shouted, and ran towards a battered Citroen 2CV sitting in a corner parking slot. Wall looked on incredulously when Bakker jumped into the wreck of a car.

"You've got to be kidding."

"Come on, we have to hurry," Bakker yelled. The engine came to life, he shifted the gear into reverse.

"What the fuck is this for a police car," Wall shouted back at Bakker as he jumped in the car and they sped after Ribb, who was now out of the car park and heading over the bridge. "This isn't a regular squad car, I hope?"

"No, of course not. This is mine."

They raced after the chiefs Volkswagen with siren blaring and built-in strobe lights flashing. It had crossed the bridge, and turned left onto the busy Nassaukade. Bakker's jalopy, devoid of flashing lights and siren, drove out into the middle of the road and sped past other vehicles, narrowly missing oncoming traffic. To his surprise, it wasn't far, not more than a kilometre.

Within a minute they arrived at the corner of the Overtoom, and Wall got his first glimpse of the incident. Three police cars, an a number of ambulances, were parked outside an apartment near the corner. A large section of the footpath and street in front of the building was in the process of being cordoned off with tape by uniformed police. Two motorcycle cops were off their bikes and directing traffic to drive over the tram rails. Wall saw a forensics team put on white protective overalls and shoe coverings, and enter an apartment. Getting out of the Citroen, he saw a hundred and fifty meters further up the street, more police cars, ambulances, and traffic cops. It looked like a separate incident.

They changed into white overalls, then put on white plastic shoe coverings. After putting on latex gloves, they followed Ribb up the stairs to a recently renovated top floor apartment.

Inside, Wall recognized brand-new IKEA furniture throughout the living room. A white leather sofa and two matching armchairs were set tastefully in the middle of the room. Modern prints in white wooden frames decorated the walls, and large tropical plants tastefully positioned in each corner, making everything symmetrically perfect. The floor, covered in large black and white Marmoleum squares looked like a giant chessboard. Wall followed Bakker and Ribb into the equally modern tidy bedroom.

Next to the Apple laptop on the bedside table was a scene he had never come across before in his life. Wall stared in disbelief at two bodies lying on the bed. On the left, a young male in his early twenties lay with part of his upper jaw bone, teeth and lower jawbone melted onto the pillow. The girl next to him looked normal until a forensics assistant pulled back a sheet to reveal her stomach; half of her waist had melted onto the bed.

"Ever see anything like this back in the States, Mr. Wall?" Chief Ribb asked.

Flashes of crime scenes he had witnessed over the years raced through his mind. Stabbings, gunshot wounds to the belly, face, mutilation of bodies, even bits of body parts spread around apartments. The worst he had ever encountered was a head in a fruit bowl, partially covered with fruit. But never, ever, had he come across anything like this.

Wall shook his head slowly. "No Sir." The gruesome scene looked like something out of a horror movie.

"Okay, let's go." Chief Ribb left the apartment, and headed for the next crime scene, one hundred and fifty meters away.

"There are three different crime scenes along this stretch." Ribb said, as they quickly walked up the street, dressed in their white overalls. "There could be more, so we are going to have to knock on all the doors."

Cars and trams slowed to stare at the unusual sight as they headed up the Overtoom towards the traffic lights. At the second crime scene they put on fresh shoe coverings, and entered the apartment. The layout, roughly the same as the last, except the interior was old and grey, and had not seen any paint or fresh wallpaper for more than thirty years. A man in his seventies, sat in an armchair, dressed in faded blue striped pyjamas, was bent forward, with hands clasped around his head, weeping. Next to him stood a female medical assistant.

"I was meant to go first," he cried. "She was the strong one. Too much drink, she kept telling me, and now look at her. What happened?" the old man shouted. "What in God's name has happened?"

"Let's go outside," the medical assistant said, and took him by the arm and guided him out of the room." We'll get some fresh air."

The bedroom was like the rest of the apartment, old and dull. Some wallpaper was beginning to peel in one corner where fungus had taken root. A large plant had been placed in front of it to cover up the eyesore. An old woman lay on the bed. She looked as if she was just resting. There were two other Detectives, a male and female he recognised from the station, and two forensics officers. After exchanging a few words in Dutch, a forensics officer pulled back the cover to reveal part of her body. It looked similar to the girl in the last apartment. The woman's middle, from just below her chest to her pelvis had melted into the bed sheets.

Bakker muttered something guttural Wall found incomprehensible, although it probably was the same thing he said in his mind at the sight of the body. Chief Ribb gave instructions in Dutch to other Detectives in the room, then he left the apartment to go to the next crime scene, this time in a marked squad car.

Bakker and Wall sat in the back.

"All we know is that the deaths occurred sometime last night," Ribb told them as they manoeuvred through the ever-growing chaos on the road. "We know that because the first couple went to a concert, and the second couple were on the phone to their daughter. I hope nothing has been tampered with. Hopefully, we'll find some evidence this time."

Wall was puzzled. "Were other crime scenes tampered with?"

"They looked at first like natural deaths," Bakker said. "Heart ailments, that sort of thing. So family and friends cleaned up their apartments when they died, making it difficult to find evidence, if there was any at all."

"It seems to me these deaths have something in common," Wall said.

"And what's that Detective Wall?"

"None of them lived on the ground floor Sir, whoever did this came in from the roof."

"We are not that bad in Amsterdam, Detective. It's something we investigated in the other deaths but failed to find anything."

"But," Wall continued, "most rooftops remain untouched for years, so it's easy to leave footprints."

"We also checked that. There were no footprints."

"Okay, so it is also easy to hear somebody walking over a roof above you. What if the intruder just walked along the gable walls. Sure he has a bigger chance of getting spotted but if he was wearing dark clothes? These things happened at night. He could have easily walked along the edge of the front or the back of the building without being seen by anyone."

"That's a fair point. Welcome to Amsterdam Mr. Wall," Ribb said.

"Thank you Sir. I'm very happy to be here. I thought I'd seen everything there is to see in murders and general crime in New York, but your city has definitely come out tops on that."

"One more thing Mr. Wall."

"Yes, Sir?"

"Please don't call me Sir. My name is Harry or in the presence of my other officers Chief Ribb."

"Yes Sir, sorry, Harry, ehm... Chief." Wall blurted out. "You can just call me Harvey."

"Will do, Detective."

The apartment of the third victim, was the same as the last, on the top floor. When they entered the living room, they saw a male with his back to them sitting in his chair watching television. His fingers were still in the coffee cup handle resting on the armchair. From their angle, everything looked normal, but when Wall walked around to the front he was stunned to see part of his body had melted into the seat of the armchair. The only reason he was still upright was because he was stuck. In his late fifties, grossly overweight, and slightly larger than the armchair, the tight fit held him upright. It was then he noted the smell – which was far worse than the stench of the usual dead corpse he was familiar with. "Man, that's nasty."

"You don't see or smell something like that every day, that's for sure." Wall remarked.

"Not true," Bakker whispered. "We found a body of a man in the bathtub last week that resembles something like this. The only part of him that did not look like a cartoon figure was his hair, although I only could smell the bath salts."

"No shit," Wall replied. "Find any evidence?"

"The cleaning lady who found the body had wiped everything clean."

"Nasty," Wall turned and followed Chief Ribb to the kitchen where forensics were dusting down surfaces and taking samples of coffee left in the coffee pot.

"There is no sign of forced entry," a young female officer in uniform told Chief Ribb.

"Okay." Ribb turned to the photographer documenting the scene. "Could you get some shots on the roof? Also, check the front and back gables to see if anybody has walked them."

"I'll get onto it right away." After a number of extra shots, he packed up his equipment, and headed to the bedroom at the back of the apartment. Wall went back to look at the man in the armchair. He leaned in close to get a better look at the victim. The smell made his eyes water. He backed away. Liquid slowly oozed from the body, and ran slowly down the leather seat. Apparently the process had not finished working. Wall called over one of the forensics team.

"This stuff is still active. Is it an acid?"

"We don't know yet, Sir," the forensics guy replied. It suddenly hit Wall that _Sir_ was said a lot back in the States, but here, in a foreign country, it seemed to be out of place. Back home it was either used in authority or respect from a younger to an older man. Wall wondered if there was a Dutch equivalent that worked the same way.

Suddenly, there were shouts from outside the apartment. Wall went to the window and looked down to see Chief Ribb being mobbed by a group of reporters, photographers, and TV crews as he left the building. Wall smiled. At least that was a scene he could relate to. His captain back in New York loved the limelight, in fact he tried to be in the picture at every major crime scene as often as possible. Chief Ribb seemed totally the opposite. He avoided the hordes of journalists, and ignored questions they were shouting at him. At that moment, the sound of a woman screaming somewhere on the street caught everybody's attention.

A couple of hundred meters further up the Overtoom a middle-aged woman came screaming out of an apartment. The attention of the media crews on Chief Ribb died down – all the all cameras turned towards the woman. In a crazed panic state she ran out onto the road, and narrowly missed running under a bus. A traffic cop mounted his motorbike, and started his engine when Ribb waved him down. Like something he had done a thousand times, he jumped on the back and they took off with a roar of the engine. For some reason Wall could not see his boss pulling off that one.

The media people quickly picked up as much equipment as they could carry and dashed after the Chief, who had now reached the woman. Wall turned and rushed down the stairs, out the door and onto the street. When he reached the scene, Chief Ribb had already gone into the building.

The hysterical woman, still screaming and shouting in Dutch, was comforted by the traffic cop, who was doing his best to calm her down. Wall ran into the building. The entrance led immediately to a stairs which went all the way up to the top apartment.

He found Chief Ribb standing over a dead cat on the floor next to the kitchen. Something was not right – he thought it was a joke. The cat looked as if it had been flattened by a steamroller. Its fur, legs, and head all looked normal, except flat. A dark grey brown liquid had drained out of its mouth and anus and had spread over the floor. The smell was just as horrific as the man in the armchair.

"Take a look around Mr. Wall. See if you can find something of interest. But don't touch anything," he stressed.

"Yes Chief." Still not feeling comfortable enough to call him by his first name.

"I'll check the kitchen." Chief Ribb told him.

In the living room there was nothing apparent, only a mass of greenery covering the windows and everything else. Potted plants were placed on every available flat surface of the room. The Dutch really do like their plants, Wall concluded.

The bedroom had a single bed, the woman obviously lived alone. A large cross hung above the bed, Greek and Russian holy icons covered all the walls. A religious nut, Wall thought. When he went back into the kitchen, Ribb was gone.

Like the others he had seen in the previous apartments, this kitchen was also small and compact. He checked the windows, they were closed. Above it, a small separate square open window. It would have been easy to access the latch on the larger window below it. Wall looked down at the windowsill on the outside.

A mark, like the print of a large bird, with three toes at the front and one at the rear, was clear to see at one end of the windowsill, while the opposite end had sharp indentations cut into the stone. He took out his iPhone and photographed what he saw. The scratching looked as if it came from a sharp metal object; possibly a knife. But there were no shoe prints or any other type of identifiable mark. He took another close-up photo when Chief Ribb returned to the kitchen.

"Find anything interesting? Detective Wall?

"There are a number of marks on the very edge of the windowsill, as if whoever it was did not want to leave any regular shoe prints. I think they reached in through the window at the top and opened the larger window below it to get in."

"Very good Mr. Wall. That's what I suspected. Apparently the woman gave the cat coffee milk. I don't think you have that in the States, but it's very popular here, only the woman who lives here drinks her coffee black." Wall gave him a puzzled look.

"There are used coffee cups in the sink, not yet washed, and I think you'll see that the remains of coffee left in them is black," Ribb said. "No milk."

"Yeah right, I would have worked that one out."

"And we'll probably find a substance in the milk that was meant for her."

Wall nodded in agreement. "But don't cats get diarrhoea when you give them milk? I thought they were lactose intolerant," he said, looking down at the liquid mess that had come out of the cat.

"Yes, it does seem like it. Are you a cat lover Mr. Wall?"

"Not really, no."

"Neither am I, but I'll get forensics up here to check out this apartment anyway."

Wall looked at Ribb in the eye. Was that a joke? Chief Ribb stared back with a deadpan face.

Hours later, back at the station, the amount of Detectives in the squad room had doubled to about fifty. Four extra whiteboards lined up next to the others. Photographs taken at the new crime scenes were stuck on each, along with relevant information about the victims. It was all very familiar to Wall. The Monday morning newspapers had long arrived and were now running the news of the deaths from last week and Friday night.

"I don't get it." Wall said to Bakker who was now sitting across from him at his computer. "Deaths from last week and they are only publishing them now?"

"They were on the radio and TV, but discovered too late to be included in the Saturday editions," Bakker explained. "Unlike many other countries there are no Sunday papers in the Netherlands."

The street outside the police station was wide. Two tram lines ran each way, with a single lane for cars on the nearside. On the far side of the Marnixstraat, major national and international broadcasting companies had set up broadcast and satellite trucks. The incidence had become the hottest news around the globe. Among the satellite vans, Wall could see a truck with a CNN logo. A female reporter stood next to it, broadcasting her report in front of a camera. He went over to a television in the corner of the room, picked up the remote and handed it to Bakker.

"Could you switch that to CNN right now?"

"Sure." Bakker quickly found the station. The broadcast was live. The red info banner along the bottom of the picture gave her name; Kelly Westen. The dark blonde seemed to fit in well with the Dutch stereotypes. She looked Dutch, Wall thought, dressed in a light green body hugging dress. He took the remote from Bakker and turned up the sound so everyone in the room could hear.

"... so far, there are no clues as to how these people died." Kelly Westen said.

The buzz in the room quickly went quiet as everyone turned to listen. Wall recognised the typical North Midwestern accent. Not Chicago, that was more nasal. She was probably of Dutch descent, maybe West Michigan where many Dutch had settled in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

"It began with one bizarre incident last week," she reported.

The newspaper drawing of Raemon Dort lying in his bathtub flashed up on the screen. "Mr. Raemon Dort, died in the southern district of Amsterdam, and then there were four suspect deaths along what is basically one street."

A map of Amsterdam marking out the deaths, filled the screen. "Now it seems there are a string of new deaths along another street crossing the first. From friends and neighbours, they appear to be even stranger. We have reports of people who have melted into their beds or armchairs." A photo of the man in the armchair was shown. They showed most of the body but left his face blurred.

"That was probably taken by a neighbour or the person who discovered the body in the first place." Bakker told Wall. "You're not allowed to show that sort of material in the Netherlands."

"Back home, you see it all the time."

"Checking with international sources," Kelly continued. "No deaths have ever occurred like this anywhere before, and at the moment there are no answers to the many questions. Have these people been poisoned? Is it a virus? Could this be the start of an outbreak of something bigger? The Dutch government in The Hague say their best police officers and scientists are working on the big mystery. Unfortunately, the Dutch police are saying nothing at all, which seems to be the norm here in the Netherlands."

The camera zoomed in slowly towards the large "POLITIE' sign on the front of the building. In the shot Harvey Wall could be seen with a coffee cup in hand staring down at the reporter and camera crew.

"The information CNN have received is from neighbours and friends of the victims. What the Dutch police may be hiding only heightens the mystery. Could this be Def-Con City? The end of life as we know it? This is Kelly Westen, for CNN, signing off, live from Amsterdam."

Harvey Wall pressed the remote, and switched off the television. The room was silent. Everyone had watched the broadcast, including Chief Ribb, who stood at the door of his office.

"Def-Con City, Mr. Wall?" Chief Ribb asked. "Any idea what that means?"

He looked around the room. All eyes were on him – silent, nobody moved. He took a moment to recall what it meant. "I think she is referring to the military term for _Defence Condition_ or called Def-Con in short, used by the White House. I believe it was introduced in the late fifties or early sixties and was related to war. It was a count-down system that began at five. As far as I can remember Def-Con five would mean that everything was okay. Def-Con one meant the nuclear bombs were in the air and nothing would ever be the same again. Maybe that's what she meant. Def-Con City, the end of life as we know it."

Nobody in the room said a word. Wall went back to his desk and sat down.

"Great," Chief Ribb said. "If we didn't have panic in the city before, we do now."
Chapter Twenty

Chief Harry Ribb stood at the front of a packed squad room. No one moved, or whispered, it was the second time silence filled the room since the CNN reporter dropped the Def-Con City bomb, seven hours earlier. All eyes were fixed on him.

"The results of the tests carried out on the first deaths proved there was some sort of chemical in the coffee, or in Dort's case, the whiskey. Whatever the chemical is, it alters the DNA of the victims. Strangely, it only had an effect on the heart of the first victims, while the second altered a different section of the DNA to the stomach, teeth, bones or whatever. There is no obvious evidence of an intruder, either on the roof or in the apartments. However, it is possible the intruder was wearing some sort of covering on his shoes, Detective Wall and Detective Bakker will be looking into that. The rest of you will be knocking on doors; did anyone see or hear anything suspicious, not only last night but during the last few weeks. Leave no stone unturned here, whatever is happening I've got a feeling it's only the start, and we've got to stop it now. We've got a lot of work to do people. Let's get to it."

The silence broke immediately. The room suddenly erupted into action with detectives picking up telephones, while others turned to discuss the deaths or left the room to carry out their part of the investigation. Some went through information gathered from witnesses at the new crime scenes or studied the photographs on the whiteboards – which were quickly running out of space. New boards were ordered.

Wall turned to Bakker. "A lot quicker than the briefings my boss would give in New York. Direct, to the point, and no dramatics. What a difference. Is he always like that?

Bakker was studying a paper file. "Huh huh," he muttered.

Harvey Wall turned his attention back to his computer and began to go through translated statements from people who were already interviewed. He looked for anything at all – strange noises, creaking roofs, strangers hanging around, open windows that were previously closed. Unfortunately, there was nothing of interest. No one saw anyone they didn't recognize, or had heard anything on the roof or balcony. The only thing they had in common was that they were all asleep at the time of the deaths. Wall sunk deeper into his seat, then looked at Bakker. "I don't think we will be visiting many coffee shops in the near future."

"I think you're right."

"This guy must be local. He's working in a confined area of the city, and he's doing that because he knows the area well."

"Sounds logical," Bakker replied, then turned back to his files. Wall stared at the English translation of the reports. Some sentences seemed back to front, or just plain confusing.

Later that afternoon two special editions of the newspapers, the Parool and the Telegraaf, arrived.

The Parool had a number of photos of the crime scene covering the front page on the Overtoom. Bakker translated the block letter headlines of the Parool for Wall.

"Meerdere Moorden in Amsterdam. Which means _multiple murders in Amsterdam_ ," Bakker read aloud.

The Telegraaf had a large map of Amsterdam that took up half the front page, with a thick black line running from the van Baerlestraat to the Bilderdijkstraat. A second line cut through it on the Overtoom.

The only difference to the map on the chiefs wall was that it was turned upside down, and resembled a large cross-cutting into Amsterdam. "Het einde van het leven zoals we het kennen - DEF-CON CITY. Which means _the end of life as we know it_ ," Bakker translated.

"Seems they were also tuned to CNN," Harvey Wall said.

"And spreading panic Detective Wall," Chief Ribb said. Wall looked around to see him standing directly behind his chair.

"They are doing their job Sir, I mean Chief."

"I don't need a scared city, Detective."

"Maybe you need to look at it another way," Wall said, with somewhat reluctance, he wondered if Ribb would listen to his opinion. His Chief in New York never did. "Yes it does freak out the city and gets everybody scared, but at the same time they will be more alert, right? Like closing windows and locking doors at night, know what I mean? They will also be more aware of people attempting to get into their apartments, or walking on roofs. Everyone's senses are on high alert because of those headlines and they are going to call us when one of them goes off. I think it'll work to our advantage."

Sitting at his desk just a few meters away, Hendrik put down the telephone. "Talking about roofs, we have got reports of a roofing company doing some work in the same district. At one address some stuff has been reported stolen."

"What did he say?" Wall asked Bakker, who quickly translated.

"Get a team over there and check it out." Ribb told Hendrik. Bakker was about to get up and join them when Wall put his hand on his shoulder.

"Forget about that."

"But it could be a lead?"

"With all the deaths that have happened up to now, was anything stolen?"

Bakker hesitated, and scratched his shaggy hair. "I don't think so."

"Okay, so you let those guys catch some regular thieves while we stick to the case, right?"

"Are you really sure about this?"

"Do I look as if I'm cracking a joke or something?"

Bakker sat down as Hendrik Pastoor and five detectives, including Dop and Kaps, left the squad room. Wall went over to the whiteboards and studied the photos' on the fourth board up close. After a minute he went back to his desk and grabbed his jacket.

"Let's go," he told Bakker. "I want to check something out."

On the Overtoom, they went into the last apartment where the cat was found. Wall headed immediately to the kitchen. The stench of the dead cat, which had long been removed still dominated the apartment. He put on latex gloves, opened the kitchen window, and looked down at the marks on each end of the windowsill. The mark on the left was no more than a couple of centimetres square.

"That's the print of a bird." Bakker said, trying to look past Wall – who blocked most of the view.

"I know that. What's the biggest bird you've got in Amsterdam?"

"That would be a Blue Heron I think."

"What size are we talking about?"

"Quite big. Nearly a meter, probably weighing a couple of kilos."

"Is there any way to get up on the roof here? I want to take a look."

"We don't need to. The photographer took photographs of the roof. We can check everything out that way. Besides, the Chief does not want the roof disturbed."

"So that's how you do your work in this city? Look at photographs?"

"I didn't say that."

"What's the name of your job in Dutch?"

"Recherche."

"And what does that translate into English?"

"Detective." Bakker said, puzzled.

"And what do you do with that job?"

"Detect." Bakker said, realizing his stupidity.

"So it doesn't mean photograph Detective?"

Bakker looked frustrated. "Okay okay, I get the message. I'll look for a ladder." He disappeared out the door of the kitchen. Wall took a closer look at the markings, then turned his attention towards the floor.

When Bakker reappeared with a small fold-up ladder, Wall was on his hands and knees in the kitchen studying the floor.

"What are you doing?" Bakker asked.

"Looking for birds," he said, then got up off the floor and took the ladder out of Bakker's hands. "I think the forensic guys should get back here and take a closer look. There is something here, but they have the equipment to probably make out what it is."

Bakker took out his mobile. "I'll get them here right now."

"They've got the balcony here, right?"

"In the living room at the back."

The ladder was small, but when folded out it was high enough to reach the top of the roof from the balcony. The back of the kitchen was a few meters to the right.

Wall climbed the ladder, stopped half way, and peered along the gable edge.. Finally, he found what he was looking for; a slight indent of bird prints heading towards the kitchen. He climbed up onto the roof and followed the trail. Bakker joined him. They followed the tracks to the previous victim's apartment where they suddenly disappeared. "My guess is, the intruder left the roof on one side to get to the balcony, and when the job was finished he came up a drainpipe on the other side. Take a look." Wall dropped to his knees and with his left hand he grabbed hold of the gable wall and pointed out fresh marks next to the drainpipe.

"I don't get it." Bakker said. "They just look like bird prints."

"That's what he wants you to think. Those Heron birds wouldn't be able to stretch their legs from more than a meter apart, right?"

"I don't think so."

"Those two marks outside that kitchen window are a little too wide and a bit too heavy for a bird. I don't know what he had on his feet, but they were not shoes."

"You mean something like that Blade Runner guy?"

"Could be, or he had something attached to his feet. This guy needs to climb buildings. He needs to grip walls. I'm not saying he's goddamn Spiderman or anything like that, but you can do that with the right attachments. This guy had a helping hand.

"Okay, I get it." Bakker hesitantly agreed. "But there was only one footprint on the kitchen windowsill."

"That's why I was checking up there. Can we get down to the garden at the back? '

"Sure, I think so."

Ten minutes later they were on their hands and knees in the wild and unkempt garden, below the apartment, searching through the undergrowth.

An hour later they were back at the station briefing Chief Ribb on what they had found. When his telephone rang, he asked them to leave. When he got back to his desk, the only thing he felt was emptiness and confusion. The Chief had listened to them, but there were no comments or remarks, no pat on the back and telling them what a good job they had done. Working here was not only different because of the language barrier, the mentality also took a bit of getting used to. Luckily he had only six months to go.

One hour later, Chief Ribb came out of his office and addressed the room. "I got some word back from forensics. The cause of the deaths are still unknown, but they are working on that twenty-four seven. Everything points to DNA manipulation. Unfortunately at this moment in time there still is no solid proof."

The wave of unrest and mumbling travelled around the room.

"On the other hand we do have actual evidence of a break-in. Marks on the roof and window of at least two victims suggests a bird was involved." All the detectives looked at each other, puzzled, except Wall and Bakker, who smiled.

"The markings on one windowsill are that of a large bird, the size suggests a blauwe Reiger, or Silver Heron as Detective Wall would call it. They seem to change colour when they leave our borders."

All heads turned towards Wall, who sank back into his chair. His Chief in New York mocked him in front of other officers whenever he could, was he doing the same?

"But it turns out, this bird had rubber feet," Ribb continued.

The corner of Chief Ribb's mouth turned up, a sarcastic smile, not unlike his chiefs. Wall could not believe this was happening. He felt his heart sink, these Dutch are bastards. Half of the detectives in the room laughed aloud.

Chief Ribb began to pace the room. "Actually one rubber foot. The other foot had steel claws made of high tensile stainless steel. The lab found minute traces of that in the windowsill.

Isn't that right Mr. Wall? I believe you have some information for us?"

"Ehm, yes Sir." He was being set up – just like his Chief back home would do. He quickly gathered his thoughts, got up out of his chair, and went to the front of the room.

"I think this guy needs to climb, or at least he spends more time up on the roofs then on the ground. This guy sits high, looking at us like a bird on his perch, and laughing his ass off."

There was a suppressed rumble of laughter around the room. He glanced at Chief Ribb. The sarcastic grin had changed to a smile of recognition. Wall reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a small plastic bag, and held it up for all to see. "But the bird lost one foot on his travels, and I found it."

All the laughter and sniggers in the room quickly disappeared.

"With any luck it will have some prints or DNA on it which will help us find our killer."

Chief Ribb stepped forward. "Thank you, Detective Wall. So, what are we looking for? We are looking for someone who is agile, alone, probably male, spends most of his time on the roofs, and works within Amsterdam Old South, Old West, and West. Any questions?"

Ribb paused for a response, there were none. He rounded off the update and disappeared back into his office. All the detectives slowly went back to their duties.

Wall tugged on Bakker's arm. "Come on, let's take our bird foot down to forensics and go for a little break. '

Ten minutes later they were in cafe Rooie Nelis in the middle of the Jordaan district, only a short walk from the station. Harvey Wall picked up the small typical Dutch beer glass in front of him and shook his head in disapproval.

"I am not going to get used to these miniature beers," he told Bakker.

"You should ask for a vaasje."

"A vasje?"

"No, a vaasje, you need to stretch the _a."_

"All right – a vaaaaasje."

"That's nearly correct. It's bigger than the standard beer."

"There's more froth than beer in these glasses." Wall held up the glass and stared at the two centimetre thick white froth. The remaining three centimetres was beer. "Do you bunch of patsies get drunk on the froth? If someone served up something like this in my local they would be shot."

"Like I said, next time ask for a vaasje. So what are we going to do about our bird man?"

Wall took a mouthful of beer and the glass was empty. He stared at the photographs of Dutch music artists that lined all the walls.

Bakker nodded to the waitress behind the bar, and indicated to the larger glasses.

"Okay, this guy is a climber." I used to do some climbing when I was a kid, but we never used anything on our boots with spikes. What about glaciers, or mountains covered in snow."

"That's it," Bakker said, suddenly coming to life. "Cyborg or Sabretooth."

"You are not going to tell me that some prehistoric animal has got something to do with this?"

"Of course not. You think I'm nuts or something?"

"I never said that, but, you do have your moments, and maybe in a few years you might have your own padded cell."

"Ha ha, very funny. What I remember is that there are special clamps you can attach to boots for climbing an ice face, called a cyborg or sabretooth clampons."

Wall nodded. "Now we're getting somewhere."

"In fact you don't really need boots. They can clip onto most any type of shoe, and are usually made of the highest quality stainless steel."

Wall took out his iPhone and searched for the clampons. Within seconds he found some photos and was surprised at what he saw. They reminded him of the old-fashioned steel fix on roller-skates he had as a boy. It had a steel base, with two adjustable halves enabling it to fit on feet of various sizes. Using the leather straps attached to the base, you secured it to the underside of your shoe. But instead of four wheels, two at the front and two at the rear there were a couple of long jagged like blades extended from the toe, and each side of the sole and heel, at least two centimetres long, which gave its wearer the best grip possible for climbing a sheet of ice.

"That's some serious shit." Wall said, "only I see that we call them crampons in the States, and not clampons."

Bakker shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever. Sounds nearly the same. Maybe tomorrow we can check out sports shops in the area to see who is selling them. If we are lucky, we can track a buyer."

"Good idea," Wall lifted his beer. He studied the larger beer glass. "Now that's a lot better. Down the hatch."

Bakker hefted his glass to Wall. "Proost."

That morning he went to work thinking that this was the best and easiest job in the world. The two guys who had picked him up at the airport, Dop and Kaps were a regular Laurel and Hardy. Harry Ribb, the Chief who looked at first as if he had nothing to do all day in his bare office, gave the impression he was slowly wasting away from the tedium. And then there was Bakker, who looked and smelled like a goddamn hippie, but less of the idiot he tended to project. Appearances had fooled him again, just like his ex-wife. He relaxed on the hotel bed, opened up his laptop, and waited for the system to start up. He Googled the crampons. Studying the different models, he realized they could have been possibly modified for breaking into people's homes. According to the photographs, a standard crampon would have left more incisions.

Tomorrow they would hopefully have information from the forensics team, and the search would move into second gear and catch the asshole, then he could relax and enjoy the rest of his six-month holiday.

Chapter Twenty-One

In his hiding place, Karl Webber sat with his headphones on while he watched different news bulletins about the deaths. There was no concert tonight, so any noise he made in the attic would alert security. He had to keep as quiet as possible.

The artist's impressions and the photographs released by the media websites amused him. Names of victims, suspects, and detailed photographs would never be shown on Dutch television, so surfed the Belgian news sites, and websites outside the Netherlands not subject to the same restrictions. If they had names or other material, they would publish them. There were a couple of articles, but mostly copies of what he had just seen on the Dutch sites. He Googled to see how much news about the murders had spread, and was surprised to find they were reported as far away as Australia.

The BBC website had a more in-depth picture on Amsterdam, and published their own map with the deaths marked out on the various streets. He would have loved to have seen the actual aftermath, or better still get more samples. Unfortunately, his access to the pathologists' laboratory had been blocked. On Saturday night he tried to re-enter but the main lab door had been fitted with locks. Through the small round windows, he spotted a brand-new CCTV camera in the upper corner of the room. Precautions had been taken. He would have to be more careful. The only way around it was to try and get samples of the bodies before they were discovered.

Karl clicked on the Telegraafs' news site. A rush of delight came over him, something he had never experienced before. He stared at the large cross on the  map of Amsterdam and smiled. Finally, he had left his mark, his signature. He would always be remembered, unlike Jeff, who had died alone and forgotten; his mother no different. His father had not only forgot him and his mother, he walked out, and never heard anything from him again. Forgiveness for her death was impossible – he murdered the only human being he ever truly loved.

Life was a world away from how he believed everything would turn out. He was not after companionship or friends, his cocooned life satisfied him. The fact that no one was there to talk to, was not a problem. Words and pictures continuously filled his head, but to die unknown and forgotten gave no purpose to living at all. _We are all put on this earth for something_ , a doctor once told him. Purpose was always there, although not everybody saw it.

With the first experiments there were no visible effects, nothing was discovered, which made him wonder if everything was being done right to justify his role in planting the experiments. He had to remind himself that he was actual living proof, and it did make a difference, they made headline news all around the globe. It gave him a sense of achievement and wonderment, he was famous. Karl relaxed against a large beam supporting the roof of the Concertgebouw, smiled, and clicked on the CNN site. They showed a video connected to the article on Amsterdam. A female reporter with dark blonde hair, and wearing a light green dress, talked about Dort and showed the newspaper drawing published in the Telegraaf. Then they showed more scenes from the Overtoom and the van Baerlestraat where the deaths occurred. The CNN report went back to the attractive reporter outside a police station. As she started to round off her item the camera zoomed in on the police station, and the police sign on the front of the building.

At once, something caught his eye. To the right, a couple of floors above the sign, he saw a face he recognized. The same tall black man who shadowed and attacked another man, then bound him to a lamppost. The same one he followed back to the hotel and watched him in his hotel room unpack his bag. He had guessed he was a police officer, but now he knew for sure. What was he doing here? Was he working on the deaths? Was he looking for him? He let out a nervous laugh. He had a strange feeling he had made a connection with someone – a rare occurrence.
Chapter Twenty-Two

After a punishing day, unlike no other, Harry Ribb got home just after midnight. Worn, tired, he searched for the keys to his apartment. Ruby would not be there. She always left early Monday morning and stayed at her own place for the rest of the week. Lizzie would be fast asleep in her bed. Gently, he closed the door behind him, and gently hung up his leather jacket in the hall. The last thing he wanted to do was wake her up and be questioned for at least an hour on what happened at the station that day. That afternoon he sent her a text message and told her he would be home late. Lizzie stayed with him every couple of weeks from Friday until Wednesday. In the message he told her it might be a better idea if she went to stay with her mother. He quickly got a text back with only one word 'No'.

Unlike many of his friends and colleagues who were divorced, his was not a painful process. She was happy to be rid of him and police lifestyle, long unpredictable hours, and the danger.

He was happy to be free from her continuous stress and arguments.

There was always the chance Lizzie would take it badly, and rebel during or after the divorce, but she seemed to be handling the whole situation pretty well. In the fridge he grabbed a bottle of Grolsch beer, and was about to open it when he looked up at the small open window. The large window below it was closed but he noticed the latch was not in its usual locked position, pointing straight down, it was positioned at two o'clock. Another half a centimetre to the left and it was open. He turned the handle down and heard the familiar click – now it was locked. He then noticed remnants of coffee in the coffee pot, but when he made coffee early this morning he had rinsed the pot after Ruby left to go to work. The worst thing was to come home late in the day to the smell of stale coffee in the kitchen. Lizzie never made or drank coffee. On the sink a glass with remnants of milk in the bottom was something Lizzie would never leave without placing it immediately in the dishwasher. Controlling his urge to panic, he put the bottle of Grolsch down and quickly headed for Lizzie's bedroom. He opened the door to find Lizzie in her bed, with Ruby lying fully clothed on top of the blankets next to her; both fast asleep. Quietly, he snuck into the room and leaned over them. There was total stillness – no movement whatsoever. He leaned in closer, where they still breathing? At that moment Ruby turned and her arm fell over Lizzie, who then in turn cuddled up closer to Ruby. Ribb let out a sigh of relief, smiled and relaxed.

Back in the kitchen he picked up his unopened bottle of beer, pressed the pedal on the rubbish bin, and the lid shot open. The head of the bottle went into the opener screwed to the wall, then he pulled down. At the sound of the familiar hiss – he felt himself immediately relax. The bottle top dropped into the bin.

Suddenly, he felt an arm around his waist. His muscles tensed and was about to aggressively swing around, smash his elbow into the face of the person behind him, but caught the odour of her perfume. Ruby had a distinctive sweet exotic scent, with a hint of coconut – the same that left its mark in his office when she barged in the other day.

She came up close behind, and kissed him gently on the left ear. All the tension, the stress and the madness of everything he had seen that day faded away. His nerves, that felt like highly strung steel wires on the verge of snapping, relaxed and turned to soft velvet rubber.

"I saw you on the news this evening," she whispered. Her soft breath brushed over his earlobe – he came close to moaning in ecstasy. "Riding on the back of a police motorbike up the Overtoom. Very macho."

He smiled, and pushed his ear against her lips. "All in the line of duty, I can assure you."

She pulled him in closer. "Lizzie was scared." Her skin touched his ear. "Things are not all right."

Ribb turned in her arms. Hearing that from one of the most alternative women he had ever met in his life, was saying something.

She looked sleepily into his eyes. "What's going on," then planted a soft kiss on his lips.

His heart melted. No woman had ever been this warm or tender towards him. A unique experience and one he never felt at this level before. Was this love? Was this how it actually felt? Surely this was only for teenagers, right? How he could feel this way about a girl like Ruby, at his age, was as mysterious as the recent deaths.

Those they would eventually solve, but this?

No chance.

He poured Ruby a glass of red wine, then they relaxed on the sofa in the living room. It was the first time Ruby spent the night, while Lizzie was there.

"Things are definitely changing," he said, quietly, then took a mouthful of beer.

"Are we in danger?" Ruby asked.

"I don't think so. But keep all the windows shut at night, even small ones you don't think someone could use to get in."

"Okay."

The note of anxiousness in her voice surprised him. "Whoever it is, seems only to operate at night."

"So it's not a virus or something?"

"No. An intruder puts some chemical into drinks and that causes the body to fall apart. That's all we know the moment."

Ruby stared at the glass of wine in her hand. "Christ," she muttered, then put it down on the table in front of her.

At that moment, a very sleepy Lizzie, in her Donald Duck pyjama's, with hair half covering her face, came out of the bedroom and drifted over to them on the couch. She curled up next to Ruby, who wrapped her arms around her and pulled her in close. For the first time in a long time, Harry Ribb felt he had a family, and was loved. In the back of his mind he could not help think of the journalist from CNN, "Def-Con City, the end of life as we know it," she said.
Chapter Twenty-Three

Detective Harvey Wall thought he would get in long before the other detectives at 7 AM, an hour before the usual start, but he was wrong. Everyone connected to the case, including Bakker, were all at their desks. As soon as he got himself a cappuccino and had started up his computer, Chief Ribb came out of his office and went to the front of the whiteboards.

"Let's start with the good news. Detective Walls' bird foot had a partial thumbprint on it. Although it is only part of an impression it might yield some DNA. The bad news is that there was no match to the print in our database. When the DNA analysis comes in we might have something, then we will take it from there. What we definitely do have is a photo, taken just last night."

There was a deep rumble in the room. Ribb held up in the enlarged photo for all to see. It was a shot of a face, peering through the window in the door of the pathologists' laboratory. The photo was dark due to the backlight from the fluorescent tube lighting in the corridor, making it only possible to see the exact outline of the head, with no real detail to the face.

"We got this from hospital security. Although it is not very clear, it might be recognizable to someone. Detective Wall and Detective Bakker will go over to the hospital and collect the original security tape. With any luck our technical people will get a better image. Also, we did bag ourselves a couple of thieving roofers yesterday."

All eyes turned towards Hendrik Pastoor, Dop and Kaps, who smiled at their achievement.

"Unfortunately the roofers had nothing to do with the case."

A couple of detectives in the room moaned.

"So today we have a lot of legwork to do." Ribb pointed to Hendrik Pastoor, Dop, and Kaps. "We need to get more statements from people living on the Overtoom. Check to see if there are any webcams on the street or CCTV."

Ribb pointed to a second group of detectives. "We also need to check out medical ties between the victims. Look at all the medical procedures they have ever been involved in, however trivial, and I want a list of every medical expert they came into contact with."

He then turned to a third group of detectives. "All the roofs have to be re-examined along the first set of victims." Ribb pointed to the markers on the map from the Bilderdijkstraat to the Roelof Hartplein. "Comb every square centimetre of those roofs. We might pick up some evidence of a trail leading to where he was coming from, and take an extra forensics team with you.

Ribb cast his eye on Wall and Bakker. "Detective Wall and Detective Bakker, while you are at the hospital picking up the tape," Ribb pointed to the image of the face in the door. "Take this photo with you and ask around. Maybe someone will recognize it before we get it enhanced. That's it for now. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen."

A burst of activity took over the room as detectives got ready to leave. Harvey Wall sat at his desk and studied the photograph. The shot was taken from the security camera in the corner of the pathologist's room. Along with the vague outline of a face, he could make out part of a white medical tunic at the collar.

"Can we go to where this shot was taken?" Wall asked Bakker, who searched through computer files with a slice of pizza in his mouth.

Bakker muttered something unintelligible.

Wall stared repulsively at Bakker. "What are you eating man?"

"Breakfast." Bakker bit through the pizza which landed next to his keyboard.

"I have some left over." He pulled open a drawer in his desk to reveal two remaining slices and some crumbled pieces of paper. "You want some?"

"Jeez," Wall said in disgust. "No thanks." Wall looked down at the bits of paper.

"Why throw paper rubbish into your drawer. Don't you have a wastepaper basket?"

"That's not rubbish. Those are my declarations."

"What?"

"You know, receipts for coffee, food, that sort of thing, outside the office."

"Did you eat them as well?"

"How did you know?"

Wall rolled up as eyes to heaven. "Come on, let's get out of here, before I throw up."

The pathologist's lab was not unfamiliar to Wall. The tidy, sterile setting, with white tiled walls, stainless steel tables, microscopes and other lab equipment were all very similar to back home. The only thing that did seem out of place, was Bakker's scruffiness. In the far corner two men and a woman in white lab coats were busy looking through microscopes.

"That's Dr. Conver," Bakker said, pointing to the taller of the two men, "the chief pathologist."

About the same age as Chief Ribb, Wall thought, early forties, lean build and wore white clinical clogs.

Wall pulled the photograph out of a large envelope. "I see you got the photo," Conver said.

"Do you recognize him?" Wall asked.

"It's very dark." Conver said.

"Since he's wearing a medical coat, I thought maybe the shape of the face or head would look familiar?"

Conver took the picture out of Wall's hand and studied it intensely. "I've no idea. I've never seen this person before." He handed the photo back to Wall.

"Could we get a look at the bathtub victim?" Bakker asked.

In the large refrigerated room next to the lab, Wall pulled his jacket up around his neck.

"As you can imagine, We have to keep this area refrigerated," Conver said apologetically.

"Don't worry about it doc. I'm already acclimatized to your excellent Dutch weather. There's not much difference." Conver pulled back the white sheet that covered the bathtub to reveal Raemon Dort.

"What the fuck?" Wall gasped. "Holy mother...'

They stood and stared at the flat impression of Dort.

"What happened? What is it? How the hell...." Wall's voice faded. He stared dumbfounded at the bathtub. "If I didn't see those other guys at the other crime scenes, I would never have believed this."

He took a step closer, still trying to comprehend the image in front of him.

"How was it done?" He finally asked. "Acid?"

"No acid involved. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on which way you look at it, he was having a bath when the process occurred."

"You mean the stuff was in the water?"

"No, it was in the whiskey. He had a couple of glasses before he got into the bath."

"Never mix drink and drugs," Bakker remarked.

"Very funny," Conver replied, straight-faced. "We are still analysing the whiskey. So far it appears to be an incredible piece of genetic engineering that apparently alters the recipients DNA in some shape or form."

Wall had his eyes still fixed on Dort. "Okay, I get it."

"We have a couple of victims whose hearts were altered internally, what looked like a congenital heart defect. It killed them within a couple of hours of taking the substance."

"But it was not congenital." Wall said. "So they weren't born with it?"

"No record of anything like that throughout their medical history."

"So what you're trying to tell me is that it is not related to one abnormality like the stuff I saw. Whatever is happening can cause all sorts of deformities."

"No, that is not what I am saying. It seems that different substances are used to target different parts of the body. Some the heart, others the intestine's, or in the case of Mr. Dort, everything."

"Wow," Wall exclaimed. "That's some heavy shit."

Ten minutes later Wall and Bakker were headed for the hospital security office situated next to the front entrance. The hospital corridors were much the same back in New York, the only difference was that everyone spoke another language. The man in the bathtub had unnerved him. In some ways similar to the deaths in the Overtoom, but it was in the league of its own. The pathologist had no idea as to how the deformation was achieved. The question was, why would anyone want to do that to someone? It was one hell of a grudge, if that was the case.

Bakker came to a halt outside a door with the sign BEVEILIGING printed on it. "Security," Bakker told him. He gave a quick knock and walked in.

Two men, wearing typical black security uniforms, sat at the back drinking coffee, while another sat at the front before an impressive array of stacked monitors that ran the width of the office. Security in the hospital seemed to be pretty extensive, they had eyes everywhere. Bakker said something in Dutch and the man opened a drawer and handed him a DVD. They chatted some more in Dutch, then left.

"We could go to the HR Department' Bakker said. "Or maybe show it around the different wards but I don't think we will get anywhere. Let's try and get the photos enhanced first, and then come back."

"But your Chief told you to carry out interviews."

"I know, but there is no point. We've got some good technicians back at the station. Let's try and get a better print off the DVD, then come back. You know? – Get it pimped up. That's what you say on TV, right? "

Wall looked down at Bakker. "You should get yourself pimped up first. You look as if you're working undercover from the back of a rubbish tip."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

At the station Bakker handed the DVD to the technical operator who fed it into a player. Wall looked around the room. He was more than familiar with rooms like this back in New York, where they analysed tapes and discs from CCTV cameras or any other type of photographic or film medium. The equipment looked brand new, with no coffee cup rings decorating the metallic housing.

The operator was not old, middle or late twenties, with pale skin, and dark rings under his eyes. His hands moved at lightning speed over the machines that all sprung to life, then he hit a button and two large monitors lit up showing the darkened pathologists' room. He hit the play button. The only light in the video came from the two round windows in the main door on the far side of the room. The tape ran for about thirty seconds before one of the windows suddenly darkened.

"Right there, stop." Wall said.

The operator hit a button – the image froze. They could see no outline of the face, just a black patch covering half the glass on the door.

"Can you get a close-up on that?" Wall asked.

"Sure, no problem." The operator zoomed in on the door. The picture was identical to the one they already had.

"Could you brighten that up somewhat?"

"We could try," the operator pulled down a menu on the screen and clicked a command. A separate box popped up on the screen with three sliders in the middle. He moved one from left to right, and the picture lightened. The outlines of the face only slightly improved. Wall realised it would still be unrecognizable to many people.

"Can you improve any of the details on the face?"

"Just a bit, maybe. Because there is so little light to start with, it's hard to make something out of nothing."

The operator clicked on another menu and a box appeared on the screen, then typed a number into a field and pressed enter. The outline of the image and some of the contours of the face came into view.

"I'm afraid that's the best I can do," the operator said.

"Make a print," Bakker said. Within seconds a large print came out of the printer. They studied it and compared it to the original. It was better, but not by much.

"Okay, thanks a lot," Bakker said.

The operator was about to press the eject button when Wall put his hand on his arm.

"Hold on, we are not finished yet. I want to see the complete tape."

"We already know what we are going to see," Bakker said.

"First you're a photography Detective, and now you're making predictions?"

Bakker looked up at Wall and slumped back into his chair. "You're right. Sorry about that, but this shit is getting to me."

"That's okay. What we've seen these last couple of days is enough to freak anyone out. Let's roll it back to the beginning and double check the tape."

They watched the complete footage. At no time was it possible to see the face clearly through the window. At the end of the tape, the face turned away from the window and disappeared.

"Nothing." Bakker said.

The operator was about to press the eject button once again, when Wall objected.

"Wait, go back. I want to see that last piece again."

Bakker let out a deep sigh and scratched his shaggy hair. The operator replayed it. There was nothing new to be seen.

"Slow down the last couple of seconds." Wall asked. The operator went to a few seconds before the face disappeared from the door. They watched it again frame by frame.

The dark face dominated the window once again. The frames ticked slowly forward. The only movement they could see were tiny white dots of the eyes of the person in the window moving from left to right, scanning the room.

Suddenly the face turned away from the window and the light shone back in.

"Stop." Wall said, leaning in close to the monitor. "Go back a couple of frames."

The operator clicked back to frames. Once again, blackness.

"Go forward one frame," Wall told the operator. The frame advanced forward, and stopped. The face could now be seen pulling away from the window.

Although slightly blurred from the movement, there was more detail.

"Can you clean that up?" Wall asked.

The operator clicked on a few buttons on the keyboard and the image sharpened up a little. He then brought back the contrast which gave it more detail. When finished he printed the image. Although still blurred, it was an improvement.

Wall patted the operator on the shoulder. "That looks more like it. Thanks a lot pal,"

"You're welcome," he replied, looking relieved, and was about to shut everything down when Wall stopped him.

"Could you give me about twenty prints?"

The operator looked at Wall and shifted his gaze to Bakker, who just nodded.

Back in the squad room Wall sat down behind his computer. "How do you say in Dutch have you seen this man."

"What are you going to do?" Bakker asked.

"That hospital is really big and it will probably take us days to go around asking staff if they have ever seen this guy in the picture. I'm going to put one of these photos and each floor next to the lifts. Everybody will see it, then maybe we'll get a response."

"You can't do that."

"Why not?"

"You are not allowed to put up photos of a suspect just like that."

"Why not?"

"Privacy regulations."

"Fuck privacy regulations. This is a police investigation connected to multiple deaths."

"I'm serious. It's just not allowed."

"Why not?"

"Because..." Chief Ribb's voice said from behind.

He hadn't noticed him standing next to him – how long he had been there?

"Because we are not one hundred per cent certain this is the man we are looking for."

"You're kidding, right?"

"The man you see looking in through the window is at this moment only a man looking through a window. He could be a hospital employee or a patient, or someone from another company, so we are not allowed by law to put up photos of someone just looking in a window. It's a violation of his privacy."

"What the hell is the world coming to with all this privacy regulation shit. What about the privacy of those dead people and their families. What would they say if they knew a privacy regulation was holding the police back the police investigation and catching the person who killed them."

"Putting up a photo and asking have you seen this man is more or less, in the eyes of those who see the photo, accusing him of a crime. If he is innocent he will remain suspect in the eyes of the people who have seen the photo."

"Then how the hell do you find suspects around here. Voodoo? Black magic?" Wall said, angrily. He picked up a photo, "You mean I'm not allowed to show this, anywhere?" he shouted, then threw it down on the desk.

"That's not what I said. Of course you are allowed to go around with the photo asking staff at the hospital if they recognize the man, but you are not permitted to hang them up around the hospital, or anywhere else."

"Okay." Wall said, finally relenting, then stood up and grabbed the photo. "Come on Bakker. Shake the fleas out of your head and let's get moving. We've got to interview a hospital."

"I can give you extra men for that."

"No thanks," Wall replied, before Bakker could say anything.

When Chief Ribb turned and walked back to his office, Wall grabbed the rest of the photos and left the squad room with Bakker. Outside in the car park they got into Bakker's old Citroen. Wall rolled up the bunch of photographs.

"We still can't put them up in the hospital,"

"Did I say I was going to put up these photos up anywhere?"

"No, but...'

"Just get us to the hospital, okay?

"Sure, okay."

For the second time that day they walked towards the main entrance of the hospital. Outside a group of smokers were enjoying their shot of nicotine. Some obviously patients, with gowns covering their nightdresses and pyjamas. Others accompanied by visitors, probably friends or relatives, although the majority were staff, recognisable in their medical garments, white coats and white tunics.

Harvey Wall reached into his inside jacket pocket, and took out the police ID Ribb gave him. It was a credit card sized piece of plastic with his photo, name, and other details – a world away from his shiny gold coloured NYPD Detective badge, which felt more significant. Of course they also had a plastic credit card with the usual ID details and a photo, but nothing could beat the genuine metal NYPD shield that made him proud every time he showed it.

Inside the main doors they stopped at the yellow reception counter on the right where a man wearing a security badge on his white shirt looked up from a monitor and smiled. He was coloured, not African, Wall thought, probably Indonesian, one of the old Dutch colonies.

Bakker held up his ID, and set in Dutch. "We are from the police,"

Wall immediately cut in. "You probably know there was a break-in last week in the pathologists' lab." Wall said.

"Yes I heard about that," the guard replied, in perfect English.

Wall handed him one of the photos. "Do you recognize this person?"

The guard took the photo and studied it. "No, I'm sorry."

"Well, if you spot him or anybody like him could you give us a call?"

"Of course." The guard was about to give the photo back.

"Keep it," Wall said. "Show it to your buddies later. Maybe they might put a name to the face." Wall turned and headed immediately for the lifts. Bakker had trouble trying to keep up with him.

"Where are we going?" Bakker asked.

"We are going to play Detective," Wall replied. "Ever done that before? It's really cool. We're going to ask some questions. You will like it. You get to talk and meet wonderful people and asked them all types of questions."

"Very funny," Bakker moaned.

When the lift doors opened on the first floor, they stood facing corridors to the wards behind closed doors to the left and across the hall. They took off to the left and headed for the doors, which opened automatically. At a central post they came across two nurses. One was filling in a form while the other was drinking coffee.

"I wonder if you could help me," Wall said.

The nurse with the coffee was small, with dark wavy hair, and greeted him with a smile. "Of course. Are you lost?"

"Not now, Wall replied. "I'm a police officer working for the Dutch police here in Amsterdam, and we are trying to identify this man." Wall showed her the picture.

"Is he a criminal?"

"He could be," Wall said, glancing at Bakker, who obviously was not pleased with that answer. "That is something we still have to determine."

"I'm sorry, I don't recognize him."

The second nurse leaned over, glanced at the photo, and shook her head. "Sorry, I don't recognize him either."

"Could you keep this behind your little desk there," Wall asked. "Maybe one of your other colleagues will recognize him. And if they do they can contact us."

"How?"

"We are at the station on the...." Wall looked expectantly at Bakker.

"Marnixstraat," Bakker said, "but the official address is on the Elandsgracht."

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Have you got a name? Or a number I can call?" The nurse filling in the form turned the photograph over.

"My name is Detective Harvey Wall."

She wrote his name on the back.

"Number?"

"Ehhhh... I still just have a mobile number in the States. I've no idea what my desk number is here in Amsterdam. '

Bakker reached into his back pocket and pulled out a business card and handed it to the nurse. She took it and stared at it. " _Rechercheur_ Bakker?"

"That's me," Bakker replied in Dutch. "You can get in touch with him through me," he said.

"I'll do that," she looked once again at the card. "How long has this card been in that pocket?"

Bakker scratched his shaggy hair. She dropped the card onto the counter.

"If you don't mind, I'm going to have to sterilize that before I pick it up again," she told Bakker in Dutch.

"Thank you very much for your help," Wall told a nurse.

"You're welcome," she gave Wall the briefest, yet most tempting smile. Wall turned to find Bakker half way down the corridor.

"Sorry, got to go," he flashed her a smile in return.

They both reached the lift at the same time.

"What was all that about." Wall asked. "What did she say.

"Nothing interesting."

"She didn't seem impressed with your card, that's for sure."

"That was nothing, forget about it."

"All right, enough said." Wall turned towards the stairs to go to the next floor. "Let's take the stairs."

"You're worse than my mother," Bakker moaned.

"If I was your mother, I wouldn't let you out on the streets looking like you do."

They went to all the main wards before they ran out of photographs, not before Bakker claimed to have suddenly run out of cards.
Chapter Twenty-Four

Chief Harry Ribb's personal mobile rang. He looked at the number, then the map of Amsterdam on his wall, and pinpointed the spot where he knew the telephone call was coming from. He answered in the plain monotone voice "Ribb speaking." It was his ex-wife, but as usual pretended not to know who was calling.

"Harry, it's me."

She sounded stressed – she always sounded stressed – or annoyed, at everything. The only time she ever felt relaxed was early morning coming out of her sleep. Why was she calling? Then remembered it could only be about Lizzie. Conversations about everything else had ceased long ago.

"Is Lizzie okay?" Ribb asked.

"Yes, she's okay, but she didn't say much, only mentioned some disco or something."

"Yeah, she went to a disco, one of those kids discos, with friends."

"She's growing up."

"Well, did you go to a disco when you were fourteen?"

"Oh please, don't remind me. It's okay, I'm not too much worried about that. I've heard all those stories about strange deaths. I'm sure you're working on them."

"Yes, I am, and it's taking up all of my time. I think Lizzie better stay at your place until everything gets back to normal."

"That's why I rang. I'll tell her you've got your hands full."

"No need. I'll tell her myself."

And now, once again, the lines were drawn. If he had to say something to Lizzie he would do that himself. No more misunderstood messages because the context was not clear enough.

"I know she likes being at your place."

"Oh?"

"You don't nag at her as much as I do."

"I wouldn't know," he lied, and smiled.

"They seem like really terrible deaths. I hope you catch whoever's doing it."

"I'm doing my best."

"Okay. Speak to you again."

"Bye." He hung up and took a long deep breath. That was about longest call he had with her since the divorce. They had lived together for eight years before they got married and Lizzie came along, then the mood seemed to change. He could never understand it. His work, and hours, had not changed, but she chose to work part-time at the advertising agency where she was an account executive. It was something she wanted to do. There was no pressure. He would have done the same if she had asked. When he was free he put in more time around the house. He regularly took Lizzie to the kindergarten, and the local parks. As Lizzie got older their relationship became more stressful. He could not do anything right. Everything was a problem. Then, after six years of living like strangers and when Lizzie was about to become a teenager, she asked for a divorce.

He could not believe the change that came over him. An incredible weight was lifted from his shoulders, and for the first time in years he could relax. Within weeks he rented another apartment a few kilometres away, which made it easier for a Lizzie to visit him whenever she wanted. He remembered the first night he spent in the apartment, with a good bottle of wine to celebrate, and went to sleep on a mattress on the floor in a drunken stupor. As far as he could remember he had a smile on his face when he went to sleep, and the same smile was still there when he woke up.

Ribb looked outside his office window and saw that Bakker and Wall come back from their trip to the hospital. He was well aware Detective Wall took all the photos with him and now came back empty-handed. Hopefully, he did not break too many rules. The new detective needed to be worked in properly, and Bakker was obviously not up to the job. The New York detectives' personality was far too strong for Bakker to tell him what to do. It was time to arrange a crash course in Dutch policing, and quick, but the question was, when. He needed every man on the job right now, even if they were breaking petty rules.

As they settled down to their desks, Bakker took a look at his notes. "We still have to check out these clampons," he told Wall.

"You mean crampons,"

"Whatever." Bakker replied, looking sombre.

"What's up? Mice eat your pizza?"

"I'm not happy about handing out those photos. We could get into a lot of trouble for that."

"Listen, we did not hang them up in public view. The Chief told us not to do that and we didn't. We gave them to security and those beautiful nurses."

"I know, but it's not the way we do things around here."

"Then how the fuck do you catch criminals around here? Do they all line up at the police station the next morning after a night of crime to tell you they've been bad boys and want to hand themselves in? Does it work like that?"

"Well, not entirely, but it has been known to happen."

Wall got up from his chair. "Unbelievable," he gasped. "Come on, we've got some _investigating_ to do. I want to catch this guy before he hands himself in."

Bakker quickly grabbed the last slice of pizza out of his drawer and hurried after Wall who noticed him thrusting something into his mouth. "What the fuck is that?" Wall asked.

"Lunch."

"Jeez. You are so disgusting. Did anyone ever tell you that?"

Bakker ignored him and he took another bite out of his stale pizza.

There were two sports shops situated in the area of the crime scene. Both were opposite each other and less than two hundred meters from where the first deaths occurred on the Overtoom.

The first was modern and laid out like an up-market supermarket. As they came through the entrance, they passed checkouts to the left and grey coloured islands of shelves that covered the floor set deep into the building.

Halfway to the right was a separate room for backpacks and camping equipment. They split up and moved around. After ten minutes, they still had not found the clampons.

"They are normally for ice right?" Wall said. "And now it's summer, well at least it's supposed to be summer."

"You can still go glacial climbing in the summer. They must be around here somewhere. I'll ask."

Bakker approached a female assistant and said something in Dutch. She was small, early twenties, lean, and had jet black short cropped hair. Immediately she took off to the middle of the store, and stopped at one of the island shelves. Wall quickly followed and stared at the display she was standing next to. She pointed to the bottom shelf, and there they were.

"Oh," Bakker mumbled.

"Do you sell many of these?" Wall asked.

"Maybe one or two pairs a month.

"We are from the police," Wall said.

She looked incredulously at Bakker. "Really?"

Bakker took out his police ID and held it up. She took time to study it.

"May I?" She grabbed the card.

"Of course," Bakker replied.

"One moment please," she walked away with Bakker's ID.

"Where is she going," Wall asked.

"No idea."

From a store room at the rear of the shop she came back with a tall, athletic looking man, with a close-shaved beard and curly hair, he held Bakker's ID in his hand. He said something to Bakker in Dutch.

Wall recognized the word _manager_ then phased out from the rest of the unintelligible conversation. He picked up a pair of bright orange clampons. According to the label the model was called _Sabretooth clip_ , selling for €139.95, about US$155. Expensive, he thought. They did look like old-fashioned roller-skates without the wheels, except for the sharp penetrating spikes on the front and sides.

Cutting in to the undecipherable conversation Bakker was having with the manager, "Do you sell many of these?" The manager looked at him with utter contempt, as if the interruption was an attack on him personally. Bakker, as usual, look totally blank.

"Yes? No?" Wall asked.

"It's summer," the manager replied in near perfect English, "maybe once a month. In the winter we sell a lot more of course."

"What sort of people buy them," Bakker asked, in English.

The manager looked down at him. "Climbers," he replied.

Wall did his best to hold in his smile. "Do you keep a record on who buys these?"

"No."

"Do you have copies of receipts of people who bought them?"

"Yes."

"Is it possible for you to make a list of all these sold during the last year or two?"

"Yes, I think it's possible. But I will not be able to do that right now."

"When do you think it will be ready?" Bakker asked, trying to sound authoritative.

"I will have it in the morning."

"Great, thanks for your help," Wall said. "We'll see you in the morning, first thing."

The second sports shop was just across the street, and totally different from the first. Less upmarket, selling training suits, sneakers, table tennis bats, footballs, rugby balls, but no clampons. In the basement they sold outdoor gear for camping and hiking. Bakker asked a female assistant if they sold clampons. By the look on her face Wall could see she had no idea what he was talking about. A colleague was asked for advice. He had heard of them, but they did not sell them. Within a couple of minutes they were back out on the street.

"What are we going to do now," Bakker asked Wall.

"Do you want to go help those guys on the roofs?"

"We could go help Hendrik, Dop and Kaps with the interviews?"

"Those jokers?"

"They're okay."

"Are you nuts? They're the three Stooges. I'm amazed they can find their way to the goddamn coffee machine."

"They're not _that_ bad."

"Listen pal. If they were with the NYPD, your friend Hendrik would have been retired ten years ago. And the other two jokers? The only job they would be doing is collecting parking tickets. Interviews they do would have more holes than Swiss cheese. I don't want to be part of it, and either do you, pal. Let's go for a beer in that hotel Americain. I liked it there last time."

The large art deco style lounge was relaxed and not busy. Wall liked the atmosphere. Not a rich boys club but at the same time, not a regular bar. It had an air of civility about it, but not highbrow.

A waiter appeared at their table. "Can we have two large beers. A vaasje?" Wall asked the waiter. "I really don't want one of those little cupcake glasses."

"Yes Sir, of course." The waiter wrote down the order and headed for the bar.

"What do you think of it so far?" Bakker asked.

"What? The case? Amsterdam? This place?"

"The case."

"It's the weirdest shit," Wall said. "I've never seen anything like it. You'd think it's random, but at the same time maybe it's not. Maybe all those victims had some issue with someone."

"You mean like an argument or something?"

"Yeah right, and then he decides to kill them all. But why the fuck didn't he just shoot, or stab them. There doesn't seem to be anything stolen so why go to all the bother of spiking coffee, or milk or whatever. My guess is that there is a lot going on here and it's really big."

"Do you really think it's one person or more than one?"

"Oh, it's definitely one person carrying out this shit. I bet those forensics people checking the roofs are going to come back with the same bird prints and only one set. There must be a link with all those people, and once we find that we will solve the case, and then I can enjoy my holiday." Wall pointed his finger at Bakker. " But I need you to do something else first."

Bakker looked up at him, puzzled. "What?"

Wall reached into his inside jacket pocket, and pulled out his wallet. He took out a fifty Euro note, placed it on the table, and slid it towards Bakker.

"Here, take that."

"What's that for?"

"Get a haircut, clean yourself up."

Bakker looked down at the money. "But there is nothing wrong with my hair," he said, with a nervous laugh.

"You're right, there is nothing wrong with your hair."

Wall leaned over the table towards Bakker and lowered his voice. "It's the whole goddamn package. You were grossing those nurses out this morning _big time_ , and you are grossing me out as well. No one believes you're a cop because you look and smell like you just crawled out of a friggin' toilet."

Bakker stared at Wall, stunned.

"When are you going to retire?" Wall asked.

"I don't know, in about 25 years or so, I think."

"So for the next 25 years you are going to go around looking like that? Freaking people out wherever you go?

"Me?"

"Yeah, you. You look like shit, you smell like shit... and what does that all add up to?"

"It's not that bad?"

"It is, and it's gone beyond that. Why the hell your boss hasn't said anything to you up to now is another goddamn mystery worth looking into." Wall checked his watch. "It's four o'clock. Go find a barber before they shut and clean up all this," he waved his massive hand at Bakker's head. "Have you got a mother?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Take all your gear over to her and asked her to wash and iron everything. Wait a sec. Forget that. Forget your mother. Just throw everything you have in the trash, and start fresh. I can't believe you have anything at home that's better than what you have on right now." He reached into his wallet and took out another fifty along with a hundred Euro note and smacked them down on the table.

"That should cover it."

Bakker looked defeated. "No one has ever said anything about the way I look before."

"Well, they should have, because you have let yourself get totally out of control."

Bakker stared at the beer in front of him. "I was always bullied about that when I was a teenager, you know, being a sort of hippie and everything." He stopped to think, and scratched his shaggy hair. 'Maybe that's why I never wanted to change anything."

"I'm not telling you to change everything. I just want you to start looking like a real cop and stopped grossing everyone out. You can do that, right?"

Bakker nodded. "I think so."

"Okay, let's get out of here. You know what to do. I'm going back to my hotel, and I'll see you first thing in the morning."

They finished their beers and got up from the table. Bakker picked up the money and handed it back to Wall.

"I've got my own money, thanks anyway."

Wall looked at him with questioning eyes.

"Don't worry. I also saw the look on the nurse's face. I'll do it."

Wall took the money and smiled. "Apart from all that, you're all right, you know?"

"And you're a pretty good partner," Bakker held out his hand to shake Wall's hand.

Wall immediately took a step back. "No way," he said, looking frightened. "After you get cleaned up tomorrow, then I'll shake your hand. I might end up looking like that guy in the bath if I touch that."

They both laughed, and left the building.
Chapter Twenty-Five

Harvey Wall switched on his hotel TV and zapped to CNN. The 'Def-Con City' phenomenon had apparently taken on a life of its own. According to TV reports the entire city was now in panic and people were leaving in their masses. As far as he was concerned everybody was still there, and there were no obvious sign of panic, anywhere. A map of the Vondelpark, the beautiful city Park situated near where the killings occurred, filled the screen. Needle Park they called it. According to reports it was extremely dangerous, day and night, and all the junkies in Amsterdam would meet there to get high and deal drugs.

When he first arrived in the city, he had visited the park a couple of times but had never seen anyone drug dealing, and no more than a couple of older people, could be described as tramps, sitting on a park bench having a beer and a laugh, and definitely no one sleeping on the benches or begging for a dime. In fact, since he came to Amsterdam he realized he never saw one soul with a paper cup in their hands looking for a hand-out.

Back home, the homeless, the hobos, the losers and the junks would be hanging out in subways, supermarkets, or corners of the more affluent shopping areas with a paper cup. Since he arrived he had never witnessed one single incident.

Lying on the bed he zapped through the other channels, and felt his belly rumble. Since early morning, he had nothing to eat, which he put down to seeing Bakker and his pizza. The hotel restaurant was an option, but he enjoyed the city, the atmosphere and the adventure of finding new places to eat. He decided to go to the Chinese restaurant just up from the graffiti covered coffee shop on the Warmoesstraat. The street had a buzz not too many of the other streets had, the mix of tourists, students and locals, and the fact that few or no cars could drive there.

From the Concertgebouw he caught the tram towards central station. It had the usual mix of tourists and locals and felt relaxed. No would-be pickpockets, handbag snatchers, drunks or junkies were around, just the way he liked it.

Within fifteen minutes he arrived at Central Station. The large grand red brick building looked more like a Dutch museum then a train station, with grey stone carvings embedded into two towers each side of the front facade. The square tower on the right had a clock on the front while the tower on the left had a clock with only one hand. Wall realized it was a North, South, East and West dial face, and the hand moved to indicate the wind direction.

Using his iPhone, he knew which way to walk; over the bridge in front of the station then take a left. He crossed over at the traffic lights in front of the station then left again and over a second canal. It was only a short walk down a narrow street before he came to the Warmoesstraat on the right.

At the Chinese restaurant he was greeted by a beautiful woman, in her early twenties, wearing a typical black waitress uniform. She said something in Dutch, then quickly changed to English when he did not give a direct reply.

"Would you like to sit there?" She pointed to a table halfway down the restaurant. Wall immediately asked for a table at a window, in Cantonese. The surprised waitress bowed her head in acknowledgment, then indicated to the only table next to the window. His Chinese was not great, but he had learned enough from his Chinese mother to get by.

His parents met in high school and had been together for thirty-four years before his father died five years ago. He would not say he was fluent, but he could hold a conversation and understood it perfectly. He realized he should have told Detective Hendrik Pastoor, who probably then would have shut up gloating about how many languages he knew.

When he was young, his mother brought him regularly to see his Chinese relatives in and around New York. She was close to her family, unlike his father, who had no contact with his Caribbean roots. It was one of the reasons his captain put him to work as often as he could in Chinatown. There they got a kick out of the tall black American who could speak and understand Chinese. They called him " _he suto ka chumkoa_ ," which basically meant Big Black Chinese.

The waitress came back with the menu, in a large brown leather cover. Everything was printed in three languages. Dutch, English and German. Some of the dishes were familiar, but not all.

He chose prawns in sweet and sour sauce with lemongrass. Did he want fried rice or steamed? He chose fried, and a large beer to go with it. As he waited he checked his iPhone for messages. There were none. Not that he received many, but usually one or two a week. He used to have a Facebook account which was only visible to friends, but dropped it when a criminal gang hacked into it and began to follow his movements. Going out for meals, or to a film, or any event gave them far too much information about his private life. He wondered if Bakker had a Facebook account, but at the same time he didn't think he would like to see it. It would probably gross him out.

The moment he looked up from his iPhone and stared out of the window at the street in front.

He suddenly recognized the face of a man who walked by with a young woman but could not place him. He had got to know some of the hotel staff, but that was more of a hello and goodbye acquaintance, and not much more. Someone at the station? The only person he ever talked to for any length of time in the city was Bakker. He found it impossible to place the man's face. The woman was in her late teens, roughly half the man's age, and did not look too happy. He was talking, and pointing his finger at her, she was on the verge of tears. Within ten steps they disappeared out of view.

The waitress returned with his order. He had an urge to get up and follow them but she seemed so pleased to be serving him, it would have been the biggest insult if he left. Wall thanked her in Chinese and settled into the meal, still trying to remember where he first saw that face.

At seven a.m. the buzz in the three-quarter full squad room suddenly went to a near whisper when all eyes turned towards Bakker the moment he came through the door, and headed for his desk. Chief Ribb, who was in his office, about to take a mouthful of coffee, looked out into the squad room, stopped midway and stared at the spectacle.

Unbelievable. Bakker had had a transformation. His hair was shorter, not too short, but the shaggy mess had disappeared. He wore a brand new, nicely cut, dark brown leather jacket with neatly tailored zipped side pockets. Under his jacket he wore a dark blue upmarket polo shirt. The dark Wrangler blue jeans were also new, with no holes, stains or patches and he wore a brand-new pair of dark blue Adidas sneakers.

Bakker, seemingly totally unaware of the attention he was receiving went to his desk and took out his notes. He was about to start up his computer when Wall walked in through the door, came up beside him and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Are you ready buddy? We got to go."

"Yeah?" Bakker said, fumbling his notes.

"I want to get a head start on that hospital. See if our little fishing trip yesterday picked up anything."

"Oh yeah, right." He quickly replaced the notes into a drawer, locked it, then took after Wall.

All eyes followed them as they went out the door.

Outside Bakker let out a sigh of relief. "Thanks for that."

"What?"

"Saving me."

"I did nothing," Wall continued to walk towards the back entrance to the car park. "Nice gear, by the way. I dig the jacket."

"Thanks." Bakker unlocked his Citroen 2VC.

"This could do with a makeover as well," Wall said, as he got into the passenger seat.

"They call this type of car a _lelijk eend_ in Dutch, which means, ugly duckling."

"That would be about right. But as I recall, the ugly duckling turned into a beautiful swan, right?"

For the first time since they met, Bakker laughed. "That's true, and every morning I wake up hoping to find a beautiful swan parked outside my door."

"I believe in miracles too," Wall said, "but they only happen if you make them happen. What I mean is they never happen without a good kick in the ass, which will never happen if you just go on dreaming about it."

"I get the message." Bakker replied, smiling. He drove over the bridge, turned left, and headed in the direction of the hospital.

Their first stop was the security office just inside the main entrance. Five security guards were in the room, with only one watching the monitors. The picture of the suspect they had stuck to a concrete beam was still there. Bakker pointed to it and spoke Dutch – they all shook their heads. They quickly left and headed for the lifts.

"Let's take the stairs this time," Wall said.

"But they've got lifts," Bakker complained.

"Are you afraid of the stairs or something?"

"No, I just always take the lift."

"You are never going to get fit by taking the elevator all your life. Do you want to end up looking like that guy Hendrik or that other overweight blimp, Dop? In New York, it's the fat asses who take the elevator, but young and fit motherfucker's like you and me need to burn some energy and stay healthy. Come on."

Bakker looked at Wall. "All right, you got me into this," indicating to jacket and jeans, "I guess I need to work on the inside as well."

Wall lifted his arms high and wide, and shouted, "Now he gets it."

Five minutes later they stood in front of the nurse's post on the first floor. The nurse behind a desk stared blankly at them. It was a different nurse than yesterday, another shift.

She said something in Dutch. "Yes, we are," Bakker replied in English.

"Oh yes, my colleagues told me you would come by," the nurse said, then looked up at Wall. "I'm sorry. Are you also from the police?"

"I am, in fact I'm the best they've got."

Looking stern at first, a sweet smile appeared on her lips. "I bet you are," she replied.

"We left a photo yesterday and would like to know if anyone recognized the man in the picture."

"Everybody has seen it, but I'm afraid no one recognized him."

"Do me a favour." Wall said. "You hold onto the photo and if you can put a name to the face give me a call."

The nurse sat upright in her chair and smiled once again. "Yes, I will."

Wall reached into his inside breast pocket and pulled out a card from the hotel. "My cell phone number is on the back." He handed her the card. "Thank you for your help."

Wall placed his hand on Bakker's shoulder and led him away. "Let's go pal, we've got more work to do."

Halfway up the stairs to the next floor, Bakker said, "Are we working here or chasing the nurses."

"Okay. Maybe I need to explain something to you. Work and play go together, otherwise you are going to hate your job after a number of years. Our work is tough, and it's serious, and can be very negative. Those bodies we came across, that doesn't bring a smile to your face. And we get shot at, threatened, we have to break up arguments, fights and shit like that. Not to mention other cops trying to make a fool out of you. A person can only take so much. So, the only way to stretch it all the way up to your retirement is to have plenty of fun. Now, I have to admit my boss did not always appreciate my humour, but it was the only way I could do my work and take all the shit that was going on around me. I also have to admit, some of my friends were corrupt, filling their pockets whenever they could. That was their escape. They thought that was the way to make it to retirement, or even early retirement, but to me that sort of thing is a dead-end tunnel. Eventually, you end up in jail with the scum, murderers, and shit of the earth you put there in the first place. I decided right from the start that was not for me. So the only other option was to have fun."

Bakker stopped halfway up the stairs. "And that got you into trouble. I've seen your file."

"Fair enough. I got it into some shit with my boss, but I have never committed a crime, and I never hurt anyone else but myself. Is that clear?"

"Clear."

"All right, let's go interview more of those beautiful nurses and hope they can revive you from that zombie world you live in."

On the next floor, when they walked up to the reception desk, the nurse said something in Dutch. Bakker answered her in English.

"I am Detective Frank Bakker from the Amsterdam police and this is my colleague Detective Wall, who is on loan to us from the New York Police Department."

That was a better introduction, Wall thought. She sat through Bakker's introduction with a straight face, almost cold, but when he finished she looked up at Wall and smiled.

"New York?"

"That's right." Wall replied.

"I was there two years ago, for about six months."

"All right. And where were you hiding out."

"Greenwich Village."

"Nice area. Pretty cool."

"We used to go to the village Tavern."

"Bedford Street, right? On the corner."

"Wow, you know it."

"I worked mostly in Chinatown, but I used to go to the village to chill out. It's familiar territory."

"Isn't that a coincidence."

Bakker did not know where to look. Wall noticed his irritation. "But the reason why we are here is that we are trying to identify this man." Wall pointed to the picture they had left the day before, which was now stuck to a drawer next to where she was sitting.

"I honestly don't know who that is."

"That's a pity," Wall said.

"Yes it is," she replied, and stared at him with a Mona Lisa smile.

"We are going to the next floor but if a name pops up..." Wall pointed to the photo. "... you can call me on this number." Wall handed the nurse another card from the hotel.

"My name is on the back, and my cell number," he added.

"A hotel?"

"Yeah, I just got here last week. I'm waiting for my boss to get me a proper apartment."

"I'll let you know if something turns up," she replied, and tucked his card into her breast pocket.

He turned to Bakker. "Let's go."

On the stairs to the next level, Bakker tapped Wall on the shoulder.

"What just happened back there."

"Back where?"

"With that nurse."

"What about it."

"There was something going on between you and that nurse."

"Oh, you mean that. That's normal. I thought she was cute, and she thought I was cute, then we just decided to see each other, that's all."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

"That happened just like that." Bakker clicked his fingers.

"Yeah, why not. You are not going to tell me I broke some Dutch rule about meeting women? I mean, your country has legalized drugs, prostitution, and all sorts of weird shit, this is possible, right?"

"I don't know the rules on that."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?"

"I could look them up if you want."

"I don't think so. Maybe you just better forget about that area of the rulebook. What we don't know won't hurt us. As long as she's not a suspect. I do know that," Wall said with an air of authority. "That's in all the rulebooks."

The next floor was also a dead-end. The dark haired nurse told Bakker that everyone who had been on duty was asked about the photograph, but no one recognized the face.

Suddenly Bakker reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a business card. Oh my God, Wall thought, not again.

"If you hear of anyone who can put a name to the face let me know as soon as possible," Bakker handed her the card. Wall looked down and saw it was brand-new and not creased and stained like the one he handed to the nurse the day before.

"I will," she replied, and smiled.

"You can call me directly at the station, or reach me on my mobile number. That's on the bottom of the card."

"Okay, thanks."

There was a slightly longer silence between Bakker and the nurse than Wall could have imagined, but finally he turned and headed for the exit.

Halfway up the stairs to the next level, Wall turned to Bakker.

"You little fox," Wall said.

"What?"

"You were hitting on that nurse."

"No, I wasn't," Bakker replied. "I just asked her to call me if she got any more information. It was no different to what you did."

"That sounds about right." Wall said, and chuckled. "You're something else, you know that?"

They went through all the floors in the hospital they could freely enter, but nobody recognized the face in the window. When they left, they returned to the sports shop and picked up the buyers list of crampons for the last two years.

Sitting in Bakker's car in the Eerste Helmersstraat, just around the corner from the sports shop, they went through the list. Only twenty-eight pairs were sold, which quickly dropped to twenty-seven. One pair was sold after the murders began. Nearly all had been paid for by bank or credit card, only two were paid in cash.

"I bet it's one of those paid in cash," Wall said. "There is no way this guy would leave a paper trail by paying with plastic."

"You could be right, but until we check out each and every one of these purchases, we won't know for sure. I can run the bank numbers through our computers and get their addresses pretty quickly."

"Leave out tourists and people not living in Amsterdam," Wall said. "Like I said before. This guy is definitely local."

"Coffee?"

"Just the thing to recover from the shock of you hitting on that nurse."

"Your jokes are terrible," Bakker replied, stone faced. "I know a place just around the corner, we can go there."

They got out of Bakker's car and walked about fifty meters before turning right and towards a bar on the left-hand corner. Wall did not recognize it at first, since they approached it from a different angle, but suddenly he realized where he was. Looking through the window he spotted a familiar face at the end of the bar – the third thief he had caught last week, and in the same bar.

At that moment, the thief looked up and recognized Wall. He jumped off his bar stool so quick it fell over and he shot out the door and onto the busy street.

"Shit," Wall shouted, and darted after him.

The thief dodged a car coming from the left and ran across the tram rails in the middle of the street, then up a side street opposite on the far side.

Wall narrowly missed the same car and went after him. Bakker made an effort to ensue, but he couldn't match Wall's alarming speed. He stalled and got out his mobile and called for assistance.

Wall gained on the thief along the sidewalk, but missed Wall's grasp when he bolted to the right, behind a parked car and shot across the street. Wall raced on to an open parking gap twenty meters further up, then cut across the street and caught the thief by his shirt. A swift whack across on the back of the head, and he was down. Wall's momentum carried on, which caused him to trip over the thief – and landed on his knees just a meter away. As he climbed to his feet, Bakker stood over the thief, who lay motionless. He leaned down to check and see if he was still alive.

"Who is he," Bakker asked.

"He's one of the three thieves I caught last week."

"Oh, one of them." Bakker replied, surprised.

At that moment two police cars pulled up and four uniformed police jumped out. Wall was surprised to see they had not drawn their handguns, as they would have done back home. Instead, they casually walked over to the thief, who was slowly regaining consciousness. The officers spoke in Dutch to Bakker, and looked up at Wall, who didn't understand a word. He turned his attention to the thief in front of him, who was now sitting up straight.

"You got handcuffs?" Wall asked Bakker.

"Of course," he said, then removed a pair attached to his belt at the rear of his jacket. Wall went to grab them, then Bakker pulled away. "He's not going to need them."

"He's a criminal. He robbed the pizza restaurant last week and either he escaped or some idiot let them free."

"That would be our boss, Chief Ribb."

"What?" Wall shouted.

"It turned out you used excessive violence when caught those three thieves."

"What?" Wall screamed an octave higher. "Are you kidding me? If I used excessive violence he would have ended up in intensive care."

"They were released from jail the day after you caught them."

"You're fucking with me, right?"

"No."

Wall was totally astonished. "When was I going to be told about this,"

"I'm sure the Chief was going to tell you, but as you know he other things to do this week."

Wall shook his head. "Oh, right." He climbed to his feet, took a couple of steps towards the thief who looked nervous at the sight of the tall black American standing over him.

"Are you okay?" Wall asked, staring down at him.

"I'm okay."

"No bones broken?"

"I don't think so."

Wall reached down and grabbed the thief by the shoulders, pulled him to his feet, and looked him over from head to foot.

"Yeah, you look okay."

"I'm alright." The thief replied, with a shade of doubt.

"That's what I want to hear, now get lost."

The thief stared at him. Wall could see he did not trust him.

"You heard what I said. Get the fuck out of here. You're free to go."

The thief hesitated.

"Wait a minute." Bakker put his hand his hand on the thief's shoulder. "He has to go to hospital for a check-up."

"Are you feeling okay?" Wall asked the thief.

"Yes."

"Do you want to go to the hospital?"

"No."

He lifted Bakker's hand off the thief's shoulder with ease.

"Then go."

With a slight limp, the thief walked away.

"What did you do that for?" Bakker said, dumbfounded.

"Let's go and get that overdue coffee, and I'll explain some policing methods, and how not to let a thief sue your ass.

"Oh," Bakker said, deflated.

After the two police cars left, they went back into Helmers Café.

"I'll tell you something," Wall said. "I'll be happy when I get my piece back."

"What? Your gun?"

"Dead right my gun. Maybe your Chief will give me one of your models. A Walter P5, right?"

"I don't know." Bakker replied, sounding unsure of what to say. "You will have to take it up with him."

"Why didn't you draw your piece instead of letting me do all the hard work."

"I don't have a _piece_."

"What?"

"Well, I do have one, it's locked up back at the station."

"Why didn't you take it out with you?"

"We are not allowed."

"What? What the hell do you use, water pistols?"

"We are only allowed to take weapons out onto the street if we believe we really need them."

"You're kidding me, right? You really don't have a piece with you?"

Wall grabbed the front of his jacket and opened it wide. There was no gun to be seen.

"No, I don't have any weapons on me right now, but if I needed it then the Chief would let me have it."

"So that means I won't be allowed to carry a weapon either."

"I don't think so, no."

"You people are something else."

The moment Wall and Bakker entered the café everybody applauded, including the two women behind the bar.

"That's the best action we've had around here in years," the bar lady said.

"Thank you very much," Bakker replied in Dutch, then turned to Wall. "It seems you're the hero of the day."

Wall bowed briefly to the people in the bar. "Thank you ladies and gentlemen. I was only doing my duty."

"Much better than television," an older woman shouted. Everybody in the bar laughed.

"Where do you want to sit," Bakker asked.

"Let's sit there," he pointed to a small table across from the bar.

The bar lady was quick to serve them when they sat down. "What can I get you gentlemen?"

"What do you want?"

"I'll have a cappuccino," Bakker replied.

Harvey raised two fingers. "Two cappuccinos."

She disappeared down the back of the bar.

"So this is where you caught the thief," Bakker said.

"Yes, I met up with him here and we had a beer together."

"A beer? Together? Really?"

"Yeah, well that's what you would call it. It was one of those little glasses where the beer disappears in a blink of an eye."

"You arrested him here?"

"No. I followed him back to his house and pinned the fucker down right outside his front door. It's not nice to do that sort of thing in a bar like this. You upset the customers."

Wall looked over at the two old women sitting at the table next to the front window. They smiled and waved at him.

Wall waved back. "Hi there. How you doing."

"Very well thank you," the old woman giggled with her friend. The bar lady quickly returned with their order on two separate small trays.

"Thank you ma'am," Wall said, then reached into his inside jacket pocket for his wallet.

"It's on the house." she laid the tray down in front of Wall. It had a large cappuccino and something that resembled chocolate covered waffle and a biscuit. "I'm so happy you chased that worm out of the bar. With any luck he will never set foot in here again. I never liked the klootzak anyway."

"Sorry? Klote what?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Klootzak means _asshole_ in Dutch," she explained.

"All right. _Klootzak_ ," Wall nodded an approval. "I like that word."
Chapter Twenty-Six

Chief Harry Ribb went through statements his men had brought in from people living on the Overtoom. No one had seen or heard the _bird man,_ as most of the detectives were now calling him. It was as if he was invisible. How someone could move across roofs and break into so many apartments without being seen or heard, was baffling. He looked up to see Boddin standing in front of his desk, who had quietly slipped in through his open door.

"How is the investigation moving along?" Boddin asked.

"It's not."

Boddin placed the files in his hands on the edge of Ribb's desk and sat down across from him.

"We have every available man digging up tons of information, but there is absolutely nothing that gives us a clue as to who is doing this, or why."

"Hmmm," Boddin moaned.

"With a shooting or any other type of regular murder, we would already have suspects down in the interrogation rooms within the first twenty-four hours, or at least chasing up a lead, knowing roughly where to look. But this?" Ribb shook his head. He leaned back over in his leather chair and stared up at the ceiling. "Do you know how much of the world's press is onto this right now?"

Boddin remained silent.

"This morning I got a call from Ellen Klein, our press officer. You know Ellen, right?"

"Yes, I know her," Boddin mumbled.

She is home sick because she cannot take the pressure. She was getting at least two hundred and fifty calls a day from the press looking for information. TV stations, independent reporters, even the Chinese want to interview us. We even got calls from nutcase psychics reporting to know who is behind it, and three different people claiming they did it, and will stop if we pay a ransom.

"Could it be any of them?"

"No, we tracked them down. Two psychiatric nutcases and a Mr. van der Sloot who called us from a prison cell in Lima. He will tell us everything if we move him to a Dutch jail. It seems like the world has gone mad and we're sitting in the centre of it."

"How's the American coming along." Boddin asked.

Ribb laughed a little. "He's a clever man, no results yet, but he's already worked one miracle in the short time he's been here."

"Oh?"

"Didn't you see Bakker this morning?"

Boddin did not blink an eye.

"Bakker came in this morning with a new outfit, not a hole in sight, looking neat and tidy and had even got a haircut."

"Hmm."

"I nearly didn't recognize him. The American pulled off something spectacular. I thought no one could achieve that.

"You could have," Boddin said.

"I'm his boss, not his mother. If it was really a problem then I would have said something. It was close, but not entirely, and everyone is allowed to express themselves, right?"

"Maybe."

Boddin's blank face didn't betray an emotion, one way or the other. Harry wondered if he ever cared about anything at all? "Let's hope he can work some more miracles, preferably on the case, I could do with a couple right now."

"Hmm," Boddin murmured once again.

There was a slight awkward pause between them.

Ribb looked down at his paperwork, then back up at Boddin. "And how are you doing?"

"I'm okay." He opened the folder he had placed on the desk and turned it towards Ribb. "Sign here, please."

As Boddin left the office, Dop and Kaps came in carrying a number of photographs.

"We found a webcam on the Overtoom." Kaps handed the pictures to Ribb. "These are the sort of images we found, but all of the street below. Nothing on the roofs."

"So you didn't look through all the footage?"

"Dop's overweight frame slumped into the chair. "There are megabytes, gigabytes, giganticbytes of material there. It would take us a lifetime."

"And today will be your last day working as a Detective if you don't get cracking on that right away, Detective Dop. We have a date for when it happened, and we have a timeframe for when it happened. That is not a great deal of work."

"Oh," Dop moaned. Kaps remained silent.

"So I suggest you get out of that chair and get down to the monitor room and go through it frame by frame. Because if we find material you missed I'd only be too happy to let you stay home, sit on your sofa all day long, and watch TV for the rest of your life."

"Oh," Dop muttered once again.

Ribb looked at Kaps, whose eyes were now turned towards the map of Amsterdam on the wall.

"And you should know better Detective Kaps."

"Yes Sir," Kaps said. "I tried to tell him."

"Goodbye, gentleman."

Chapter Twenty-Seven

After Helmer's cafe, Bakker brought Harvey Wall back to his hotel to get a change of jeans, which were torn from tackling the thief. Bakker waited outside in his car. Passing the front desk into the hotel, the receptionist called him over. "Mr. Wall, there is a message for you."

Harvey took the note out of the small envelope. _Please call nurse van der Kalk_. A Dutch mobile number was written at the bottom of the note. Up in his hotel room he called the nurse while he rooted through his suitcase for a fresh or pair of jeans. He hoped it was the nurse who lived in Greenwich Village. She was cute. A date with her would be a great start to a social life in Amsterdam, and more fun than hanging out with Bakker.

Her voicemail came on, she spoke in Dutch, it was totally unrecognisable. He waited for the beep then left his cell phone number for her to call. He would try calling her again after his shift with Bakker. The bar downstairs on the ground floor was an ideal place to meet, then it would be just a couple of steps away from a night of love and fun in his hotel room.

Since he arrived in Amsterdam he had not been in the mood for female company, but after meeting all those nurses, the flame was reignited. Wall checked his watch. It was time to get back to the station and brief Chief Ribb, then attend a presentation about the murders in the large canteen. Bakker didn't have any more details, only they had to be there.

Back at the station he was pleased Bakker never mentioned the cafe incident to Chief Ribb. They were brought up to date on new information collected on the case, but it basically amounted to nothing. Wall tried to think how he would tackle this in New York, but Ribb was following all the rules, and could not be faulted. At least seventy detectives were working on all angles of the investigation, and he couldn't see anything they had missed. Chief Ribb had deserved more credit than he had given him, dealing with a phenomenon unheard of in any part of the Western world. It would have stumped his captain back in New York just as much as the Chief right now.

Nearly all the tables in the police canteen had been moved to one side for the presentation. Chief Ribb and Dr Conver stood next to a large screen at the rear, alongside a man and woman Wall did not recognise. In front of them the projector rested on a single square pedestal, on standby. The extra manpower, drafted in from The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht and other parts of the country, to handle the amount of interviews, and investigative leg work, filled the room to bursting point. Wall estimated about two hundred people, causing the room to become very humid, very quickly. Chief Ribb checked his watch. The presentation was planned for three o'clock; it was exactly that. The usual murmur of soft chatter filled the room.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the room immediately went silent. "Because we have international guests with us today, so we are going to do this in English. If at the end you have not understood everything, please drop by my office and I'll explain it in Dutch." He glanced over at Dr. Conver standing in the wings. "Some of you know Dr. Conver, the city pathologist," Ribb turned and gestured to the woman standing next to him. "We also have with us two microbiologists, Dr. Lynne Pruden, an American working with the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and Dr. Geoffrey Marsh from the VU medical centre in Amsterdam. First, we are going to hear from Dr Conver."

Chief Ribb moved to the side as Dr. Conver stepped up to the table. The lights dimmed and the projector lit up the screen.

"This little get-together is to try and explain what we are dealing with." Dr. Conver said. "For many of you it will be familiar if you took your biology lessons serious, and remembered the basics of chromosomes and genes and DNA."

About half the room said yes, others murmured, or nodded.

"The number of genes we have is roughly 23,000, right?"

Some nodded, but only one or two actually said yes.

Wall glanced around the room. If this was New York, the FBI, and possibly homeland security, would be doing the presentation. Here they did not seem to have specialist crime departments. It looked as if it was all down to a group of detectives with no real specialists among them, and experts who were possibly hired help. This was going to be a laugh.

"Okay, let's make this a little easier." Conver continued. "We have forty-six chromosomes, or twenty-three pairs." Nearly everyone agreed to that soundbite of scientific information once learned in high school.

"So that makes us human, right?" Again, most nodded.

"So all the _cells_ in our bodies are hundred per cent human, right?" There was a mutual murmur of agreement in the room.

"Wrong," Wall suddenly said, breaking clean through the yes vote. The room went silent. Wall stepped forward, leaving Bakker behind.

"Ah, Detective Wall," Conver said.

"What I remember is that we have lots of bugs and bacteria in our gut that live with us, but is not really part of us, so...' He paused for a couple of seconds, wondering how he was going to formulate and conclude his added piece of information. "... so I guess we are not all human." A number of the people in the room including Dop, Kaps and Hendrik laughed aloud, some sniggered, while others lowered their heads and stared down at the floor, or shook her head in disagreement.

"Detective Wall is absolutely correct," Dr Conver announced.

Detectives who were not laughing in the room at first were now laughing while the rest suddenly fell silent.

"Let me introduce Dr. Lynne Pruden, specialist field is the very subject Detective Wall just brought up."

Wall's eyes turned to Dr. Lynne Pruden, who was small, thin, probably Italian heritage. Maybe her name was originally Prudino or something like that. But her face was of a woman in her late thirties, early forties, thin, gaunt, fine delicate lines, and a dark Latin hue. Not too dark, not too light, but five minutes in the sun and would darken her complexion immediately. She had the face of a model, but the rest of her incredibly thin, small body, would have let her down. She stepped up to the table.

"Ladies and gentlemen, your colleague is right." She had a soft American tone to her voice. Dr Conver took a step back, and all eyes remained focused on her.

Wall tried to place her accent but could not exactly place it. It was neutral, not from New York or the West Coast, possibly the great Lakes.

"The amount of bacteria, or microbes as we prefer to call them, that are not human, outnumber our own cells at roughly 10 to 1."

There was a murmur in the room. Wall realized she was not American, but Canadian, probably Vancouver.

"Have any of you ever seen those wildlife programs on Animal Planet or National Geographic where you see a rhino or a wildebeest grazing, and they sometimes have small birds on their backs picking off fleas and ticks?"

There was no response from the detectives.

Pruden carried on. "They look after the animal, and want a meal as well, so, both benefit. That's on the outside. On the inside we have the microbes doing exactly the same thing."

"So that is what those butterflies do in my stomach every time I fall in love," someone said from the middle of the crowd. Everybody laughed.

The slightest smile came to Lynne Pruden's face, then she quickly moved on, unphased.

"The highest concentrations of microbes are in your gut, but you'll also find them in your nose, mouth, private parts and so forth. Normally they live in harmony with your body, helping to keep you alive. But we have found that the microbes in the recent victims had been genetically manipulated not to work with the body but against it, eating up the gut and tissue."

She nodded to a young assistant at the projector, who pressed a key on his laptop and the first slide showed two different microbes.

The first looked like a rounded oblong pill with an inverted ring in the centre. _Enterococcus faecalis_ was printed under it. The second microbe called _listeria monocytogenes_ , was elongated like a small worm, but with no distinct head or tail.

"As I said, these microbes have been genetically manipulated not to work with the body, as they have done from the very beginning of man's time on earth, but against it. Therefore eating up the gut and tissue."

A new slide appeared on the projector screen showed the man on the Overtoom melted into his armchair. One of the women working behind the counter of the canteen fainted.

"As you see, this caused a devastating effect on those who ingested the manipulated microbes. It is something we have never come up against before, meaning, we have no cure. But we are working on something to try and stop the microbes in their tracks should they be ingested. You could look at it as something like an anti-venom for snake bites. We will do our best to keep you informed as we make progress on the research."

Dr. Lynne Pruden turned to Conver.

"Thank you, Dr. Pruden. Unfortunately, that is not the only problem. You remember earlier we had those heart attack victims in the van Baerlestraat. That was something else altogether.

Dr. Marsh stepped up to the table as Dr Pruden went back to her spot at the side. The picture of two familiar strands of DNA appeared on the screen.

"I suppose many of you are familiar with this picture." Dr. Marsh said.

Wall could hear he was English, but could not place exactly where. To him most of the British sounded either like Hugh Grant or Stephen Fry. Other UK accents were usually incomprehensible.

"The victims in the van Baerlestraat did not die from the ingestion of microbes, this was more sophisticated, namely DNA manipulation."

Wall noticed Pruden's face twitch with the slightest of irritation when he said _more sophisticated_.

"Every day we hear the about genetic manipulation of food such as soya, maize, but also animals. All have caused controversy over the years but none more than the manipulation of genes in humans. Through genetic therapy we have been able to help blind people partially see again. We can replace a mutated gene that caused a disease with a healthy copy. Gene therapy is only used on people where there is no other available cure, and it is now mostly in test stage. What happened to those people with the heart defects is totally new to us."

Wall raised his left hand. "Meaning you guys hadn't tried this before or you didn't think it was possible."

"Both," Marsh replied. "And a very good question. Let me say that we try to fix defects in the human body, not mess them up. Splitting DNA and trying to target particular areas of the body is a very difficult and complex science, which is why we have not achieved a great deal up to now. But I think you already know how controversial it is. There are laws and rules and regulations that keep everyone involved on a very tight leash. The problem now is that all those laws have been broken and the person or persons carrying out these murders do not give a damn. How they managed to achieve this exact type of concentrated genetic manipulation is something we haven't figured out yet, but we are working day and night on the problem. Any more questions?"

Marsh looked around the canteen to see if there was anyone else in the room who had any questions. There were none.

"Thank you for listening," he finally said, then the lights went back on in the crowded canteen, and Ribb stepped forward.

"So now you know what we are dealing with, ladies and gentlemen. We already have a team working on the biomedical end of this, checking all the medical data and leads of specialists who might be involved. Most of you have a team leader, you report to them if you find anything and they report directly to me. Are there any more questions?" The room was silent.

Ribb turned towards him. "Detective Wall?"

"No Sir. No more questions."

"Let's get out there and get some results in. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen."

Wall headed straight for Dr. Pruden as the canteen began to empty.

"It must be a pain in the ass when people take you to be a Yankee when you're not."

Pruden looked up at Wall, who was nearly twice her size. "Thank you, Detective Wall, I'll take that as a compliment."

"Vancouver?"

"Right on the nose. But I was born in Toronto. So what's the Yankee doing on the dream team here."

"I needed a break from the NYPD, and wanted to see how things worked over here, so I signed up for six-month exchange program."

"Sounds plausible. I don't think it's the whole story, but it seems okay."

"Want to go for a coffee?"

"Here?"

"The coffee is not that bad, but I do know a great place with less police body odour just up the street."

She laughed. "I'll agree to that. Let me say my goodbyes and then we can head off."

"I've got to get my jacket down in the squad room, I'll meet you down at the front desk."

Bakker was back at his desk staring at the monitor when Wall came in and grabbed his jacket.

"Where are you going?"

"Coffee."

Bakker got up out of his chair. "Good idea."

"Sorry pal, you are not invited."

"Aha, you're going out with that cute little doctor."

"So, you really are a Detective."

"Very funny," Bakker sneered. "What are you going to talk about?"

"No idea, not about you, that's for sure. I'll tell you all about it when I get back."

"No you won't."

"Wow, you're on a roll today _Detective_ Bakker."

Bakker shook his head, and turned back to his monitor.

Wall disappeared out the door. In the corridor a uniformed officer passed him. He recognized the face – the same man he saw with the woman outside a Chinese restaurant a few days ago. Wall turned to see him go through the door and into the squad room. He quickly turned and went back, and peered through the glass window in the door. The officer had pulled up a chair next to Bakker. He had seen enough. Time for coffee.

Hotel Americain was half full of locals, business types and tourists. They took a table next to a window, away from other clientele.

The waiter quickly appeared at their table. "Sir, Madam. What can I get you."

Doctor Pruden did not bother to look at the menu in front of her. "I'll have an espresso."

"Of course Madame, and for you Sir?"

"Cappuccino my friend."

"A large one Sir?" The waiter asked.

Wall looked up and recognized him. "Yeah, that's exactly what I need." The waiter noted the order and left.

"They know you here?"

"I've been here a couple of times with my partner."

"Partner?" Pruden smiled, searching him with her eyes.

"Working partner, called Detective Frank Bakker. He's Dutch."

"I see. How long have you been in the Netherlands?"

"A little over a week ago and was looking forward to a nice relaxing fully paid holiday for six months. Unfortunately, that only lasted five days until this all blew up. A strange welcome to a beautiful city. What brings you here?"

"I'm at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I've been here for about a year and a half. It's nice, I like it."

"How did you get involved with the investigation?"

"Doctor Conver called my department when he realized what he was dealing with. I've been doing research on this for years, in any case longer than most other scientists in the Netherlands, so I think that's why he called me."

"Ever seen anything like this before?"

Doctor Pruden ran a petite finger through her jet black hair, pulling a number of strands out of her face to the back of her right ear. "There is a flesh eating bacteria called Streptococcus pyogenes which would probably be the closest to something like this. Once it gets into the skin through a wound, even with a small scratch it releases toxins that disintegrate the flesh."

"Sounds nasty."

"It is. Within a couple of days you can lose half a leg or an arm."

"Is that what this is?"

"No."

"How do you know?"

"It's my job. And if it was we would have found it on the first day."

"Any idea who might be doing this?" Wall asked.

"No, not at all."

"I suppose it's a relatively specialized field, and I don't think many people in Holland or any other country would be experimenting with this sort of stuff."

"You'd be surprised. There are plenty of research labs out there and quite a number doing similar research to this."

"I see. How many in the Netherlands."

"About four or five."

And no one is working on these types of experiments?"

"If they were they would be behind bars." She looked at him with questioning eyes. "I gather by what you're asking, you have no leads."

The waiter came back with their order. Wall's cappuccino was in the largest cup he had seen since he arrived in the Netherlands.

"Are you sure you can manage that?" She said, smiling.

He looked down at her espresso. It was even smaller than a regular coffee cup and filled halfway.

"In New York you could get arrested for serving something that size." Wall said.

"It's meant to be small. An espresso like this packs in twice as much punch as your cappuccino. So, getting back to my question, no leads?"

"Nothing. Hundreds of people interviewed, but nobody has seen anything, heard anything, absolutely nothing. And those bodies... it really freaked me out."

"I thought you would be used to dead bodies by now."

"Sure. In New York I've handled every kind of murder, mutilation, you name it, I've seen it. But I have never seen anything like this before."

"And not one suspect?"

Wall took a mouthful of his cappuccino. "Well, maybe one."

Pruden raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"Really?"

"A bird."

"Excuse me?"

"Blue Heron, or as it turns out...'

"...A silver Heron," she said, cutting in.

"Huh?" He looked at her with certain suspicion. "You seem to know your birds."

"My father was an ornithologist. That was going to be my field, then I had a change of heart and I switched to studying microbes."

"I noticed you weren't too pleased about Marsh when he said his field was more complicated."

"He's good at what he does, but outside of that the man is an idiot."

"I get the feeling you don't like him."

"I don't know, I think that British stiff upper lip makes me want to shake him or give him a good whack across the head."

Wall laughed. "Please, just shake. Otherwise I'd have to arrest you."

"We used to have people like that in Canada, left over from the _great_ British Empire, but we deported them all to the US."

"Okay, thanks for that. But you're an Italian, right? Pruden, maybe Prudino before that."

She smiled and glanced out the window at the trams rolling by. She did have a beautiful profile, Wall thought.

"Correct Detective. A couple of generations ago one half of our Italian family emigrated to the US and the other half to Canada. I could have been a Yankee like you if my great great grandfather didn't have a feud with the other half of the family."

Wall's mobile rang in his inside jacket pocket. The ringtone was a Chinese tune.

"Great ring tone," Pruden said, looking puzzled.

"I always used it when working in Chinatown in New York. It broke a lot of ice. The Chinese used to crack up when they heard it."

He quickly glanced at the number. It was his hotel. There was no reason in the world why his hotel would contact him unless something was wrong.

"Do you mind if I take this?"

"No, go ahead." She took a sip of her espresso.

Wall tapped the answer button. "Hello?"

"Mister Wall, this is the Alfred hotel."

He recognized the voice of the receptionist immediately.

"There is a woman here at reception asking for you."

"Excuse me." He got up and walked away from the table. "Put her on." It was probably one of the nurses he was hitting on. Whoever it was, had lousy timing.

"Hello, I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you?"

He didn't recognize voice, but then again he had only exchanged a few words with the nurses he met throughout the hospital.

"This is Detective Wall, are you looking for me?"

"Yes, I'm a nurse at the hospital, and I saw the poster of the man in the window. One of the other nurses gave me your card."

"Do you know him?"

"I think so. It looks like someone who used to be a patient at the hospital."

"Do you have any details about him?"

"He had been coming to the hospital off and on for years, in fact since he was a boy."

"Do you know where he is now?"

"Yes I do. He's dead."

Wall's mind began to race. "Okay, listen. Stay at the hotel, go to the bar and get a drink or something. Put it on my tab, I'll be there in within ten minutes."

"Okay, I'll wait, but I have to go to work in about an hour."

Wall went back to Doctor Pruden.

"I have to go."

"Emergency?"

"Could be a lead on our suspect."

"You found the bird?"

Wall laughed. "Something like that. I have to go see a possible witness. Where are you parked? Are you going back to Rotterdam?"

"Public transport. Don't worry about me. I can get a tram to the station easily enough from here."

"Great. I have to rush," Wall downed the remains of the cappuccino. Doctor Pruden went for her purse in the small neat dark brown handbag she wore diagonally across her shoulder. He quickly pulled his wallet out and grabbed a red coloured ten and a green five Euro note and dropped the fifteen euros down next to the cup.

"I got it."

"Thank you." She gave him the warmest smile.

They got up to leave together. Outside the hotel they stopped at the large oval water fountain.

"Are you going back to the station?" Pruden asked.

"No, I've got to go back to my hotel. There's a nurse waiting for me."

"Oh, I see." Pruden said, with a stern face. "You're running from the doctor to the nurse."

"No. It's not like that, I've never met her before. Like I said, she's a possible witness."

"At your hotel?"

"I've no calling cards of my own at the station, so I was passing out cards from the hotel when I was looking for witnesses at the hospital."

"I'm only joking. You go to your nurse. I really hope you catch the maniac who is causing all this."

"I'll do my best ma'am."

"God," she sighed. "I haven't heard ma'am in a long time." Pruden put out her hand. "It's been nice meeting you Detective." They shook hands.

"Likewise," Wall replied.

"Next time I'm in town I'll give you a call."

"That would be nice."

Dr. Lynn Pruden turned and headed for the tram on the Leidseplein going towards central station. Wall eyed up the taxis across the street. There were about ten cars in all different shapes and sizes waiting in line. He yearned for his New York yellow cabs. He walked over to the first taxi, a large black Mercedes and jumped in the back. The driver put down the iPad he was gaming on, and turned towards Wall.

"Alfred hotel, Lairessestraat, and no sightseeing tour on the way."

"Sorry?"

"Get me there as fast as you can, pal."

The driver hit the meter which started at nearly 3 euros. Less than ten minutes later Wall walked through the reception of the hotel and into the bar on the left, where a woman was sitting at a lounge table. Early thirties, with natural blonde shoulder length hair, slender, and wearing white medical slacks. She immediately stood up when she saw him.

"Hello, I'm Margot." There was a strong guttural rasp to the _G_. Something Bakker also did.

"Hi, I'm Detective Harvey Wall," he said, as he took a seat opposite her. The bartender immediately came over to Wall.

"What can I get you, Sir."

"I'll have a Coke, straight up," Wall said, then looked across at the nurse. Her coffee cup was still full.

"Can I get you something else?" he asked.

She smiled briefly. "No thanks, one coffee is enough."

"Maybe a sandwich or something?"

"No, I'm really okay, thanks."

"Put all this on my tab," he told the bartender.

"Of course Mr. Wall," he replied, and went back to the bar.

Wall pulled out a folded copy of the photo he had in his inside jacket pocket and showed it to her.

"So you recognize the man in the picture?"

She looked carefully at the photo and hesitated. "Well, it does look like a patient I used to look after but that's not possible."

"Why wouldn't it be possible."

She shook her head in disbelief. "He was sick, in fact he was dying."

"Maybe he got better."

"No, no way," she said, with utter conviction.

"Why not?"

"He had an incurable disease. He was diagnosed with DMD, which is Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, and had been in a wheelchair from his early teens." She reached into a small white leather handbag and took out the photo and handed it to Wall.

It was Margot in her nurses uniform sitting on the edge of a hospital bed next to a young man wearing an oxygen mask. He looked anorexic, with a gaunt face and spidery thin arms.

"All his muscles were wasted by the disease. At this stage, he had no more than a couple of months to live."

"When was this picture taken?" Wall asked.

"About a year and a half ago." She looked again at Wall's photo of the man peering in through the window of the pathologist lab. "When was your picture taken?"

"Last week."

They sat in silence as the waiter brought Wall's Coke. When he returned to the bar, she finally spoke.

"Then it's not the same person," she finally said.

"How can you be sure."

She laughed nervously. "Because it's just not possible. It must be someone who looks like him. Sure, both people in the pictures look alike but it can't be the same person.

"You saw him die?"

"No."

"So how do you know he's dead."

"Because he was terminally ill at this stage. A couple of weeks after this picture was taken he was moved to a hospice that had more comfortable surroundings and would give him a better death than a hospital."

"Do you know the name of the hospice?"

"Yes."

She wrote down the name and address of the hospice on a beer mat, and handed it to Wall.

"What was his name?"

"Karl Webber," she stared affectionately at the picture of the two of them together. "He was a nice sweet guy."
Chapter Twenty-Eight

When Wall got back to the station the squad room was buzzing more than ever. The extra manpower brought in from around the country had taken over every spot of free space in the building and half the canteen.

Wall came up behind Bakker, leaned over and put the beer mat with the address of the hospice the nurse had written down in front of him.

"You know where this is?"

Bakker looked at it. "Yeah, I think so. It's in the Pijp."

"It's in a pipe?"

"The Pijp is an area in Amsterdam."

"Okay I believe you, but you've got really weird names over here. Come on, let's get over there."

"Why, what's up?"

"I'll tell you on the way, grab your stuff."

Five minutes later they were sitting in Bakker's car and heading for the Pijp.

"Do you really believe the nurse?"

"Why should I not believe her. She didn't come to the hotel to get into my pants, and she was really shaken up about the guy in the photo."

"What was she like?"

"Okay – nothing special."

"Really?"

"Too old for you and not hot enough for me. Does that answer your question?"

The hospice was situated on a regular street with red brick town houses on each side. What struck Wall the most was its location, at the end of a dead-end street, which seemed ironic and appropriate at the same time.

Bakker parked about thirty meters away from the hospice. "That's the place." He pointed to the large three-story red brick building in front of them. "But it looks like any other building."

"Why shouldn't it?"

Bakker shook his head. "A place where people come to die. It gives me the creeps."

"I suppose you haven't seen too many dead people."

"I've seen enough, especially the last couple of weeks. This is different. To think there is a place for people to come especially to die just doesn't sound right."

"And that coming from a guy who lives in a country where euthanasia is legal."

Bakker shrugged his shoulders.

"Five years ago my dad died in a hospital in New York from cancer. Let me tell you pal, a hospital is not the nicest place in the world when the last thing you see on this earth are white walls and fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. Wouldn't you prefer to go out in the surroundings of a beautiful building like that?"

"You may be right, but I just can't get my head around it."

"Death and taxes pal, that's what they say."

"Huh?"

"The only two things certain in life, well at least death in any case, I know plenty of people who don't pay tax. But no matter how you look at it, there is no escape in the end. When your time has come, that's it, lights out. I've even helped a few people achieve it sooner than they thought."

"You've killed people?" Bakker said, shocked.

"Why, haven't you?"

"No, of course not. How many?"

"Only three."

" _Only_ three? Why?"

"Because the badass fuckers tried to kill me first. Not all at the same time. Three separate incidents, but all in the line of duty."

Wall had to laugh at the expression on Bakker's face. He genuinely looked surprised and appalled. "When I tell that to anyone back home, they usually pat me on the back, or buy a drink."

Bakker shook his head. "But still, three is a bit much."

"Put it this way. The last thing they saw on this Earth was my beautiful face, instead of the white walls of some lousy hospital. Isn't that nice? Doesn't that make you feel good?"

"I don't know. I don't think your face is the last thing I want to see before I die."

Wall opened the car door. "Come on, let's go find us a dead body, or a ghost at least."

The bell on the dark green painted door sounded comforting, like the Buddhist healing times his mother loved. A man in his middle forties, with light brown hair, a warm round face, and wearing small oval glasses, opened it with a smile. Bakker introduced them in Dutch and explained something Wall did not understand, but he guessed.

They were invited into a front room. Two rustic brown leather sofas faced each other, separated by a glass coffee table with an unusually large vase in the middle that contained a stunning arrangement of fresh yellow flowers. On the two windowsills more fresh flowers surrounded by walls painted in the lightest of yellows, and covered in amateur art in modern dark brown varnished wooden frames.

Somehow everything seemed to be balanced perfectly, in this welcoming room, Wall thought. Patients would come here during the last stages of their life, possibly with friends and loved ones. This was the entrance to the last months, weeks or days of their lives. Nothing sentimental about it, or ecclesiastical. Neither was it dry, or sterile, or cold like a funeral parlour.

His father would have loved this.

When Bakker finished explaining the reason why they were there, the man left the room.

They stood alone, in silence. Not one sound from the streets outside penetrated the walls.

"Want to sit down?" Bakker asked.

Wall walked over to the front window and looked outside. "No thanks."

"Me neither. This place gives me the creeps."

"It doesn't give me the creeps. It's okay here. Nice and peaceful."

"A bit too peaceful if you ask me."

They stood in silence for about five minutes before the door opened and a middle-aged woman in a three-piece suit and short grey hair entered with a ledger in her hand.

Wall stepped forward. "My name is Detective Harvey Wall, and I'm with the New York Police Department, at the moment stationed in Amsterdam working with the Dutch police."

"My name is Claris van Overhoven. I'm the director of the hospice."

"I'm pleased to meet you."

"My colleague told me you were looking for a Mr. Karl Webber."

"That's correct. I was told by a nurse that Mr. Webber, who was suffering from muscular dystrophy and near death, was taken out of the hospital, and brought here to spend the last weeks of his life."

"Well, I'm afraid I have no Karl Webber on our list. He must have been taken to another hospice."

"Are you sure?" Bakker asked.

"Not only have I gone through the records on the computer but also the written ledgers," she said, and held up the thick book in her hand. "It could be possible that one entry did not make it into the computer, human errors happen, but everything is always in the books. Unfortunately, I cannot find his name."

"Maybe we got the name of the wrong hospice. We'll go back and do some more checking. Thank you very much for your help."

Outside Bakker turned to Wall. "What do we do now?"

"The nurse wrote her number down for me. You call her."

Wall handed Bakker the number he wrote down back at the hotel. He dialled the number on his mobile and listened. His face changed from one of expectation to confusion.

"It's a wrong number," Bakker suddenly said.

"What do you mean wrong number?"

"I'm getting a sound that the number is not correct or disconnected."

"That can't be."

"Maybe she wrote it down wrong."

Wall looked Bakker dead in the eye, and raised his finger. "I don't think so. Try again."

Bakker checked the number, re-dialled, then pressed the speaker button on his mobile. They both heard the familiar two-tone sound of a disconnected number. "That's the number and it's still not right."

What went wrong? "Mirrors," Wall moaned. "I hate friggin mirrors. Let's get back to the hospital."

"What do you mean by mirrors?" Bakker asked, as they drove towards the hospital.

"Someone is making us go round in circles. Wall said angrily. "Tricks. You can play tricks with mirrors, sending people in the wrong direction. It's a pain in the butt."

"What was the name of the nurse?"

"Margot, or at least I think it was. She used that guttural sound like you as if you're trying to scrape your throat with your tongue, but I think that's what she said."

"So how are we going to find her? Do we have to go through the entire hospital again?"

"They've got a personnel department, right?"

"Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that."

"Minus ten points for you, my friend. Let's see if you can get those points back at the hospital."

The Human Resources Department was in a building across the road from the main hospital, on the fourth floor.

It was manned by four people, each at their own desk. A young female in her twenties nearest the door was the only one to greet them with a smile. Bakker pulled out his police ID, and explained what they needed to know. She said something in Dutch, then picked up the phone.

"She has to call the head of human resources, her boss." Bakker told Wall.

Wall could not understand a word of what she was saying, but she seemed to have a different accent to most of the Dutch he had met so far. He wondered if they had different accents like they had in the US. Back home? Some fellow cops told him that Dutch was very like German, but the Germans at the hotel sounded totally different. Sometimes he could recognize an English word or two but the rest was gibberish. Maybe Dutch was made up of different languages?

The young woman put down the phone and got up from her desk. She said something again in Dutch and headed towards an adjoining office.

"Let's go," Bakker said, and they followed the twenty-something.

The first and only thing Wall noticed when he walked into the unassuming office with green plants dotted around the room, was the head of human resources – she was beautiful. The moment she stood up, she arose like a queen welcoming her most favourite subjects – she was elegant, graceful, and tall; she met him squarely at eye level, and introduced herself as Evelien Ruiten. Her voice, mellow, soft, had immediate sex appeal, unlike most Dutch women he met at the station and hotel who all tended to be high-pitched. Hers was the exact opposite, and he felt himself melt. Her long straw-coloured wavy hair was tied neatly in a fancy curl at the back. She had full luscious lips, a slender body and large breasts. Although he always was interested in breasts, it was impossible to take his eyes off her lips. Stern, but expressive, meaty, and incredibly sexy. He quickly ruled out the silicon job, and no lipstick; a natural beauty few were born with. Her eyes, light blue, sharp, and in command. This lady was no pushover.

Bakker started off by explaining everything to her in Dutch. She listened intently, pinching her eyes, nearly closing them, concentrating on every detail he was telling her. Then he heard Bakker mention his name and she looked up at him.

Suddenly the seriousness of the director of human resources disappeared, and she smiled. All the features in her face lit up, as if a spell had been cast – she looked like an angel from heaven. His heart skipped a beat. His face began to glow. What the hell? He could feel himself blush, a rarity. He hoped she didn't notice, although few could see he was blushing through his dark skin.

"So you want to know about a nurse," she asked Wall, in near perfect English, which had a mixture of a Dutch and British accent.

Wall took a deep breath. "Yes. I had a meeting with a nurse this morning, she brought me evidence relating to the deaths that have been in the media recently. I want to ask her some more questions, but I only have a first name. She was called...M...' Wall hesitated, wondering if he was going to try and pronounce that guttural _G_.

Then Bakker cut in, "Margot," picking up the slack.

Evelien Ruiten didn't move a muscle; an expectant face, waiting on something that did not seem to appear. "Surname?" she finally asked.

"God, right... ehm... yeah. I apologize," Wall replied. "I did not get a surname."

"Oh, I see." She pulled a stern face which quickly rolled over into a warm smile. "Do you know how many people with that name work at this hospital?"

Bakker and Wall shook their heads.

"Well, you are lucky. It is not a name that comes up a lot, so I do not think it will be all that difficult to track her down. If it was a man called Jan, we would be in trouble."

She swivelled her chair towards her computer to the left and began to type. Within seconds the results appeared on the screen.

"There are eleven Margot's working at the hospital." She said, then hit another button and four photos appeared on the screen along with hospital details. She turned the monitor towards Wall.

"Do you recognize anyone?" she asked.

Wall leaned over her desk to get a better view. "No, she's not there."

He caught a whiff of her scent – sweet, honey, coconut, and very feminine.

She hit the keyboard and the next four appeared. Unable to block out the beautiful smell of her perfume, he tried to concentrate on the monitor.

"No." Wall said, once again.

Evelien Ruiten hit the keyboard one more time and more photographs came into view. Margot the nurse he had seen earlier that day was not one of them. He looked at Bakker, puzzled.

"Mirrors again?" Bakker said. "But that does not mean she still has to be working _here_ as a nurse. Maybe she moved to another hospital."

"That's an idea," Wall replied.

"I think we can find her through another angle." Bakker turned to Evelien Ruiten. "The patient's name was Karl Webber. Can you see when he was here?"

"Let's hope he really _was_ here," Wall said. "Otherwise I can take the next flight home."

Using her mouse she swiftly clicked to another database containing names of patients who had been in the hospital for the last ten years.

"Lucky for you he also has a very distinctive name," she said, then typed in the name and found Karl Webber.

"He was here two years ago."

"Can you see if there was a nurse called Margot working on that floor," Bakker asked.

She typed in some more data. "There were two. But I have to open another database and check for former employees."

After logging into a separate database, she once again typed in the details and a photo appeared on the screen. Wall shook his head. "No, that's not her either."

She entered the second name, and another face appeared.

"That's her," Wall immediately said, nearly shouting, pointing at the screen.

"Her name is Margot van der Kalk."

"Do you have her address?"

The head of PR looked directly at Wall and gave him a coy smile. "Now you don't have to take the next flight home after all. You can stay a little longer in our beautiful city."

Out in the corridor, Wall had difficulty in separating the smile and fragrance of Evelien Ruiten from the investigation. He tried to concentrate on Margot, the nurse, but the HR lady totally dominated his mind.

Heading back down the stairs, Bakker took out his mobile. "I'm going to call the Chief. Let them know we are on to something."

Wall suddenly snapped out of his dream world and grabbed the mobile out of Bakker's hand. "Are you nuts?"

"What? Why? We have to call in if we get any good leads. That's the way things work here."

"So you think we have good leads?"

"Margot van der Kalk and Karl Webber. Those are good leads. In fact, they are the best anyone has had until now. We've got names."

"So why don't you put in Indiana Jones or Thelma and Louise."

"Don't be ridiculous. They're fictional."

"And so are these. Margot van der Kalk and Karl Webber are only fictional characters. We have names, but we haven't been able to find them. At this moment in time, they are as real as movie characters."

Bakker stopped on the end of the stairway and looked at Wall. "I don't know about keeping this from the Chief. That's not a good idea. I think we have something."

"What we have is hot air, and nothing substantial. For Christ's sake, you can see right through it. If we don't get laughed at, he just might get us doing something else and send in Detective Pastoor and the baboon club back at the station who will mess it up so bad we'll lose every possible chance of solving this."

Bakker shook his head. "I don't know," he said hesitantly.

"Look, I'll make a deal with you. When we actually find either Margot van der Kalk or Harry Houdini otherwise known as Karl Webber, then we will go straight to the Chief. How does that sound?"

"Like a bad plan."

Wall winced.

"But a good idea," Bakker followed up.

Slowly, a smile came to Wall's face. He handed Bakker back his mobile. "Come on, let's get to work. The first thing we do is go to the nurse's address, and see if _that's_ real."

Unlike New York, the streets of Amsterdam were like one big maze of small roads and bridges and canals to Wall. New York was easy to navigate since most streets were laid out in a grid fashion, with many numbered. If you could count you could find the street you were looking for, that was the general theory. Here the streets in the city centre went around in a half circle, which confused him, and the way Bakker drove multiplied that effect. He took shortcuts down side streets at every opportunity possible and went over speed bumps as if they didn't exist. Luckily, the spongy suspension of the old Citroen soaked most of it up, but that did not stop Wall from feeling nauseous.

Within fifteen minutes, they arrived at Margot's address the Veembroederhof, on the other side of Amsterdam, right next to the large waterfront, called the Ij. The ten story apartment block was next to the docks, together with a mixture of recently built offices and apartments and converted warehouses. It struck him that this was probably the highest building he had seen in Amsterdam since his arrival. Towering masses of glass and concrete, as he was used to in New York, were non-existent – ten stories seemed to be as high as it got.

Each side of the front entrance had letterboxes. Bakker checked the address once again on the piece of paper and found Margot van der Kalk's letterbox. He opened the flap and peered inside. "Empty."

Wall smiled. "At least someone is picking up the post. Ring the bell, let's see if she's home, although I suspect she'll be at work. She was going on her shift when I met her this morning."

Bakker rang the bell.

"If she went on an eight hour shift," Wall continued, "then she won't be home until eight or nine tonight."

They waited for about twenty seconds, there was no answer.

"Let's come back tonight. We will catch her when she gets off work."

Suddenly, a nervous sounding female voice came out of the intercom. "Hello?"

Wall was about to say something when Bakker held up the palm of his hand to block him, then with an authoritative voice introduced himself in Dutch as Detective Frank Bakker. That was all Wall could understand as he rattled on in the language he was slowly getting accustomed to hearing. Suddenly the glass door in front of them opened automatically. They walked over to the lift, Bakker pressed the button.

"I liked the way you did that," Wall patted Bakker on the shoulder.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. A bit forceful, letting her know who you are and where you're coming from. You actually sounded like a real Detective."

Bakker looked up at Wall like a little kid who had just received the biggest compliment of his life. The lift doors opened. Bakker pressed the button for the eighth floor.

"Amazing what a new set of clothes and a haircut does to a man," Wall said.

The smile on Bakker's face turned to one of defeat.

"But," Wall continued, "you've definitely earned your points back."

"Thanks," Bakker replied, with a smirk. "But why didn't you insist on taking the stairs this time instead of the lift."

Wall turned to Bakker and raised his finger. "And that is how you lost all your points again."

"What? Why?" Bakker asked, puzzled.

"Because you should have taken the initiative. You should have said _let's take the stairs_."

"But it's eight floors up."

"That's not the point."

"Great partner you are."

"I do my best," Wall replied.

The lift doors opened, and they entered the hallway. Just a few steps away Margot van der Kalk's apartment door was slightly open.

Bakker went in first. "Hello?" He called out.

"Come in," she replied, from somewhere inside. Three female coats and medical tunic hung on the left of the hallway. No male partner, Wall thought.

Margot van der Kalk sat in a dark brown armchair in a darkened living room. The curtains were pulled shut. The only light was from a low hanging lamp next to her. She looked a mess. Her eyes were puffed up and bloodshot, she had obviously been crying. Suddenly she saw Wall enter the room. Her face changed from anguish to shock.

"It's you," she said.

"Hello again."

"I wasn't lying to you." She said in panic, and quickly wiped the tears from her face. Wall raised his hands to calm her.

"I know, you don't have to worry about a thing. We are just here to clarify a few points."

She gestured to the large sofa. "Please sit down," "Can I get you some coffee or tea?"

Bakker was about to answer when Wall cut in. "No thanks, we're okay," and gave Bakker such a glance that more or less ordered him to shut up. "So why are you so upset?" Wall asked.

Margot took a few seconds to compose herself, and wiped some fresh tears from her eyes.

"Seeing that photo," she finally said, "and talking about him brought everything back. He was a nice sweet, gentle guy who did not deserve to die like that."

"You had a crush on him?"

"I really liked him and tried to make his time at the hospital as comfortable as possible, but I didn't start a relationship if that's what you are saying."

"I don't get it." Wall said. "You didn't have a relationship. You work in a part of the hospital where I think three quarters of the patients don't leave with a heartbeat. So why the tears?" He waited for a reaction. There was none.

"How long have you been a nurse? '

"About ten years."

"So, you're an experienced nurse. You must be used to pain and suffering and death by now, right?"

"You would think so, but that's not how it works. Every patient is unique, and every patient deserves my attention, and I help them in any way I can."

"So tell us about Karl Webber." Bakker said. "When did you first meet him."

She was about to answer when Wall raised his hand. "Forget that. I want to know when you _last_ met him, and what happened exactly."

Tears swelled up in her eyes. "Oh my God," she said. Her face was full of pain and anguish. "What have I done," she cried, and once again broke down.

"Why didn't you go to work today?" Wall asked.

She took a deep breath, and tried to compose herself. "I was too upset. After talking to you it all came back. When Karl left the hospital I never thought I'd hear, see, or think of him again."

"So what happened?"

Margot took a deep breath, then buried head in her hands. "Oh my God," she whispered, then looked up at Wall and Bakker.

"There was another nurse called Ans, a temp, who was also working the same ward as me. She only arrived a few weeks before and quickly became friends with Karl. When she was working the night shift she would disappear, then I'd find her sitting with Karl at two or three in the morning. With all the other staff she was.... _Afstandelijk_ , I don't know the English word."

"Detached?" Bakker said. "She kept her distance from people."

"Yes, that's it. She did not make friends. Just kept to herself. Did her work okay, and that was it. It seemed the only friend she had was Karl.

"So what happened?" Wall asked.

"The day Karl was to go to the hospice she made sure she was on duty. The ambulance was planned at about twelve to pick him up, but that had been changed to four in the afternoon, the time her shift ended. I was planning on going to the hospice with Karl in the ambulance but because of the time change that made it impossible. She insisted she would do it, and that was that."

"Were you there when the ambulance arrived?"

"Yes. With a couple of porters we brought Karl down to the ambulance. I said goodbye, then she got in the ambulance and they drove off."

"What did you mean by _what have I done_?"

"I knew something was not right. She was a temp, one of the strangest we ever had."

"Why?"

"She kept mostly to herself, not having coffee with the rest of us when we had a break, stuff like that. Although she did the work okay, and had some contact with the other patients, but she was mostly focused on Karl. It was a bit strange."

"Is she still working at the hospital?"

"No. After Karl was taken away I never saw her again."

"Are temps regular?"

"Yes, we work with a lot of nurses who work through different agencies. I don't know which one she was with. I just felt something was not right, but I didn't ask any questions. Even the ambulance that took Karl away...' Tears welled up in Margot's sad eyes, and this time she did not hold them back. She burst out crying.

Bakker was about to get up off the sofa and go to her, when Wall grabbed him by the tail of his jacket, and pulled him back down.

"What was the problem with the ambulance?" Wall asked, now in a much more gentle tone.

She tried to compose herself, wiped her tears, and took a couple of deep breaths.

"It was private."

"What do you mean private? Can you explain?"

"We normally use ambulances from the hospital. Private ones would be used of course, but not for a patient like Karl."

"Why not?"

"You need very good insurance to cover it or a lot of your own money. Also, the private ambulance that picked him up was not one of the usual services from Amsterdam. I think they came from outside the city."

"We can check with the hospital records to see which service it was," Bakker said. "And we can check which agency sent the nurse."

"All right," Wall said, looking at Margot. "I don't think you have done anything wrong. We are going to go and try and track down this nurse, and Karl." He reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. "You've been a great help, believe me."

"Is this connected to all those recent deaths?"

"Maybe," Wall replied. "We don't know that for sure. The other nurse... Ans... What was her surname?"

"I've no idea of the rest of her name."

A couple of minutes later they were in the hallway waiting for the lift.

"Now Detective Bakker, we can go and see Ribb."

"It's about time."
Chapter Twenty-Nine

A half hour before dawn, Karl Webber left his hideout. It was easy to get out onto the roof and climb down the steel ladders at the back of the building. Scarcely visible in his black clothes, he preferred to leave at the beginning or the end of the concert. Using the stairs which came out of the back of the auditorium directly onto the corridor crowded with concertgoers, his black clothes resembled those of the staff or sound engineers. It was a convenient, flexible disguise, that proved its worth time and time again.

The first thing on the list was to pick up a new set of experiments and at the same time get his shot. Karl walked through the streets at the rear of the Concertgebouw, and headed towards Slotervaart. His pickup time was always before dawn, with a window of no more than two hours. After that, everything was removed. If he did not make it that day, then it would be there the next. After the pickup he would have to wait a week before the next shot was available.

The streets along the van Breestraat and into the Koninginneweg, which ran parallel to the Vondelpark, brought back many memories. His mother brought him there as a small boy. She would wheel him into the park at the entrance next to the old film Museum to visit the small children's playground further up on the left. There he would play for about an hour, then they would go on to the second children's playground in the Groot Melkhuis were his mother would have coffee while he played on the swings, one of the few activities that required little or no energy. He could never remember playing with other children; he was always alone. Some kids noticed his illness and did not want to be near him, but it never bothered him. He enjoyed his own solitude, and having his mother all to himself.

Karl passed under the busy A10 motorway which ringed Amsterdam. Cars and trucks overhead created a low rumbling noise which caused minute vibrations in the concrete under his feet. He would have loved to have driven on the motorway, but his sickness always held him back. His electric wheelchair gave him plenty of freedom in his early teens, but also got him into trouble. Maybe it was better he never got to drive a car, he thought.

The apartments on the Plesmanlaan across from the canal were old, inconspicuous, and mostly occupied by pensioners. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a key that opened the main door. Once inside he headed down the stairs to the basement. As usual, there was no one around at that time in the morning, it was as it always was, totally silent.

The basement contained small storage areas used by the residents, big enough for a couple of bicycles and a few boxes, but no more. There were twenty-four in this section of the building, the rest in the adjoining block. He walked down the badly lit narrow hallway and stopped at the last storage space on the left. Unlike the others, this had no number above it. He presumed it was once used by a long gone caretaker to store cleaning products or tools – now it was his. There was a keyhole, but unlike all the others in the basement, no key could ever turn the lock. This was totally different, and fortified.

Opening this door required an instruction manual. He hoped he could remember everything. His energy was nearly drained. The muscles in his legs and arms were tightening up, he had to concentrate. It was an effective method of knowing what to do was the trick, otherwise the booby-trap would go off. Suddenly there was a noise from somewhere in the building, like someone pulling a handle. Karl stopped to listen. He cocked his head to trace the sound. A rumble of water ran through the pipes, someone had flushed a toilet on the first or second floor above. He turned his attention back to the storage box. The bottom of the door was a couple of centimetres from the floor, which left a gap. All the doors in the basement where exactly the same. Maybe it was a way to prevent people sleeping in the storage areas, or for airing purposes, he did not know, but for him it had another purpose. Karl grabbed the door handle and reached down under the door. From below, he pushed up a small unobtrusive rod, which ran up to the handle inside the door. A soft click broke the silence. Karl lifted the handle upwards, and turned it a quarter anticlockwise. After a second click he moved his hand along the underside of the door to the middle and located another rod. Again he pushed upwards, and heard a third click. He now turned the handle clockwise, the way you would normally open a door, this time it opened.

Karl stepped into the small storage room and quickly shut the door behind him. He stopped to listen once again, silence. In the corner was a small dark grey filing cabinet with three drawers. Karl opened the top drawer just a few centimetres, then a second drawer halfway – lining up a small unobtrusive mark with another scratched into the metal frame of the cabinet - click.

He repeated the action with the third drawer, another click echoed quietly in the small storage space. Karl opened the top drawer halfway and slid his hand into the opening, and pulled on a small flat metal lever on the top of the inside of the cabinet. The whole top cover released. He lifted the top of the cabinet revealing four ampoules with instructions on each, and a small piece of paper with four typed numbers and letters printed on it. Next to the ampoules lay a sterile plastic bag containing a syringe with the needle capped.

Karl carefully took the syringe out of the plastic bag and removed the protective cap of the needle. After dropping his pants he sat down on the cold concrete floor, his back to the wall. As he did many hundreds of times before, he injected the syringe into his right thigh. Pressing down on the plunger, the coldness of the liquid penetrating his massive thigh muscle was familiar and soothing. After removing the needle, he put it to one side, then relaxed.

He thought about the experiments he had carried out during the last couple of weeks. The cardiac experiments were random but he realized he should have carried them out further apart. All the victims of the last set of experiments were specified, with postcodes and house numbers. That hadn't been well planned, although he had no say in those.

He removed a package from the hidden compartment in the cabinet, and opened it to reveal the next set of experiments, which were also fully detailed. His job was just to get in and plant them. Once again, he had a week to carry them out, and wanted to get it over with as quick as possible, preferably all in one night, like he did on the Overtoom.

It would be at least ten minutes before he could stand up to do some exercises, and feel the medicine take effect. After three to four hours his strength would be fully restored. Karl put all the ampoules into a small travellers pouch around his waist then replaced the top of the cabinet. When in place, he pushed back the lever underneath and closed all the drawers.

Shortly after he was outside the apartment complex, and felt groggy from the shot. Relaxing to get his strength back in the basement of the apartment complex was not exactly where he wanted to be at that moment. He needed to get out, into the open air, and headed for the Vondelpark. His aim was to find a nice spot in the grass, and sleep. After that he would eat the sandwiches he stole from the staff canteen of the Concertgebouw the night before, and go to work.

Karl sat on the grass verge touching the small lake, in a corner where few would notice him. Further away, he watched early morning joggers enter the Vondelpark, along with bikers, many in their office best, who took a shortcut through the park. If he had a normal life he could have been one of those people, although he would have preferred to have a job where he used his hands. Sitting behind a computer screen all day long didn't appeal to him. Maybe conductor work on the trams, the same ones he could hear racing over the bridge that straddled the top end of the park, just a few hundred meters away.

But not now.

When his father walked out and disappeared from his life the notion of wanting to work on the trams disappeared with it.

The sun came out. He could feel the warmth on his skin. He lay back, and stretched out on the grass, it felt good and soft and surprisingly relaxing. The temperature had lifted considerably since the day before, and the sky was blue. Finally, summer had arrived – he closed his eyes and listened to the sound of people in the distance, and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

Chapter Thirty

Ribb sat in his office and listened to Bakker's update about their visit to the nurse and, most importantly, two names of a possible suspects. Wall, sitting next to him, was more than pleased he was doing it in English.

"How can you be sure the nurse was telling the truth?" Ribb asked, after letting Bakker brief him without any interruption, something his captain back home would never do. He would stop him at the end of every sentence, questioning, probing, and in the end he would lose track of the events timeline, whereby the story was all over the place. The captain could take a few tips from Chief Ribb, that's for sure.

"Because she came to me first," Wall replied. "And when we found her again this afternoon she was in a pretty bad state about the whole situation. No doubt about it, she was telling the truth."

Ribb leaned back in his black leather chair and stared at the two men for what seemed an eternity. "All right. I'm going to give you extra manpower to track down this Karl Webber and the hospital temp."

"If you don't mind Chief, Bakker here is doing a great job, and putting more men on our line of enquiry will only slow us down."

"That's how we work Detective Wall."

"I understand that, but every step we make is literally one at a time. It goes as quickly as the information we gather from one subject to the next. With more than two men, we will not gather the intelligence any quicker. That's what I mean when I say the extra help will slow us down."

"Well, since you seem to be a good team and you have dug up more information on this case than any of the other detectives I'll let you work alone on this."

"Thank you, Chief," Wall replied.

"For twenty-four hours."

"I don't know if that will be enough."

"It will have to be. Thank you, gentlemen."

Back at their desks, Bakker switched on his computer. "I'm going to see if there is any info about Karl Webber in the system. I can check to see if he is still alive and getting benefits from the government or any government agency, that sort of thing."

"Great. I'm going back to the hospital. I want to see which temp agency that _Ans_ nurse was working for."

Bakker gestured to the phone on Wall's desk. "You can do that by phone."

"I could, but I won't. I'll see you later." Wall got up, and grabbed his jacket.

"It's hot outside, you don't need that."

"What are you now, my _mother_? Not warm enough pal, see you later."

Outside the station the number of media satellite vans had dropped from eight to three. CNN was still there, with a lone young technician in the front seat eating a sandwich. Wall went over to the van and tapped on the window. The technician rolled it down.

"I've been watching you guys on TV. Great reporting."

"Thanks a lot." The technician had a Dutch accent.

"Where's the rest of your crew?"

"They are out, or actually _she_ is out trying to dig up more information about these deaths."

"Yeah, it's the weirdest shit. Can't believe it myself. Where is she from?"

"She said her ancestors were Dutch, but she comes from Michigan or something like that."

On the nose, Wall thought. The melting pot of New York was a top-class training ground in getting to know nationalities and accents. It always interested him, more than his colleagues. "What do you think about these deaths?"

The young technician took a bite out of his sandwich. "I think they have been drinking canal water."

Wall laughed. "You could be right pal. I got to go, see you around."

Wall took the tram to the Leidseplein, then a taxi to the hospital on the Boelelaan, crossed the street and went into the administration building opposite.

In the HR office, the young woman they had met before called her boss the moment Wall entered the office, and waved him through. Evelien Ruiten was already standing when Wall entered.

"Nice to see you again, Detective Wall."

"Please, call me Harvey."

"And you can call me Evelien."

"Evelien," Wall repeated.

She reached out and shook his hand. "What can I do for you?"

"I've got another name, but again only half."

"Is this how you always do your work? Half names? I'm beginning to see a trend here."

"It's not usually like that, believe me, but it's the only information I have. And just like you helped me with Margot, we might be able to give her a surname. We can be like a team. I supply one half of the information and you provide the other."

"Hmm." She tried to hold back a smile. "All right, so it's a female."

"Yes, another nurse. She worked here the same time as Margot."

The head of human resources turned to her computer. The sweet scent of her perfume caught his attention once again. It was light, subtle, not cheap or overpowering or assaulting his nose like a chemical warfare attack. The woman had class.

"What was her name?"

"Ans. I think you spell that as ANS."

"That's exactly how you would spell it," she said, and flashed a smile.

"She also worked in the same ward or at least the same floor at the same time as Margot van der Kalk."

Evelien Ruiten searched the database, but could not find anything, then started up another database. "I can't find an Ans working on that floor at the time."

"She was a temp."

"Aha, that's another story." She stood up and left her desk. "I have to look that up on another computer. Give me just a minute."

As she walked past him towards the door, the scent of her perfume wafted in her wake. He took a deep breath and inhaled deep. Looking around, her office was decorated with light colours, nothing jumped out. On the wall hung a couple of diplomas. He got up and stepped forward to take a closer look. Human resources management, taken at some college in London – that explained the accent. No photos of a husband or children on her desk. Was she single? Lesbian? Wall sat down and waited for about ten minutes before she returned with a sheet of paper in hand.

"Her name was Ans van Royen, and she came to us from the Medroep agency." She handed him a copy of an invoice with the Medroep logo on the top. It contained details about the hours Ans van Royen had worked.

"I'm afraid I don't have any personal details, but you can get them from the agency itself. The address is on the invoice."

"That's just what I need. Thank you very much'. Wall looked at the address. It was unpronounceable.

"How are you enjoying Amsterdam." Evelien asked.

"I like it. It's a beautiful city, but I'm spending so much time on this case I'm not getting to take in much of it, except for the parts I see while running around with Bakker. Unfortunately, the way he drives he has me concentrating on how to keep my food down, rather than look at the beautiful buildings."

"Have you ever been on a boat trip on the canals?"

"I've seen them, but I haven't been on one yet."

"When this is all over let me take you and show you the city in a nice relaxing way. That's if you don't get seasick of course."

"It could never be worse than Bakker's driving, that's for sure."

"Believe me, it's quite safe. I don't think we ever had a patient with seasickness from a canal boat trip."

"That's very kind. I'd like that." Harvey Wall reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a business card from the hotel.

"That's where I can be reached at the moment."

She took the card and studied it.

"My cell number is on the back."

"A hotel in Amsterdam and a US number beginning with 212, New York I believe?"

"Yes, I still have to get normal cards and a mobile from the police department here. Since the deaths everything has been just crazy, and they haven't got round to that yet."

"I understand." She reached into a small pocket in the side of her suit, and took out a card. "Here's mine."

Wall glanced at it briefly and slipped it into his back trouser pocket. "Well thank you for your help. This will help us track these guys down," he said, holding up to copy of the invoice.

"I hope so."

They shook hands again, and he left.
Chapter Thirty-One

Bakker opened his desk drawer hoping to find a pizza slice. Empty – he had finished off the last a couple of days ago. He slammed the drawer shut, which caught the attention of others in the room, then went back to his computer and continued his extensive search for the name of Karl Webber. Nothing showed up in any of the databases. He dug deeper, going back ten years, typing in every variant he could think of; delinquent, troublemaker, rowdy, youth offender, then he typed in wheelchair, and got a hit.

Webber had been stopped by traffic police for racing a souped up electric wheelchair through the narrow streets of the Jordaan, nearly colliding with pedestrians and cyclists. Three different incidents and each time he was caught after a wild chase, and only after his battery had ran out. Twice he was cautioned, but the third time he received a hundred Euro fine. Bakker checked his address. At that time he was in a special care home for handicapped children, which was nowhere near the Jordaan.

"So, you lost the baby?" A familiar voice said from behind.

Bakker turned to see Corso directly behind him, looking down at what he was doing. He pulled up Wall's empty chair and sat down next to him.

Bakker was confused. "What?"

"Has the babysitter lost the baby?"

"I'm not his babysitter."

"Or maybe it's the other way round?"

"Very funny.

"So what happened? Gone back to New York?"

"He's out digging up some information on a suspect."

"You've got a suspect?"

"Seems like it, but we are running into dead-ends every time. What are you up to?"

"The usual. Someone has to do the regular work since half the national police force has been drafted in to find your crazy killer. I have to deal with the regular robberies, muggings, and domestic violence. With or without these weird deaths, life goes on."

"So you're out on the beat?"

"More or less what I always do. Who's the suspect?"

"Got a couple of names but we are not too sure at the moment."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, some kid who is meant to be dead."

"How's that possible?"

"We don't know yet. But we also don't know if it's the same guy. Could be mistaken identity or identity fraud."

Bakker's mobile rang. Wall's number came up. "Gives me a sec." Bakker answered the call.

"I've got an address of the agency of that temp." Wall said, sounding enthusiastic and impatient. "I think we better get over there together, right away."

"Where are you?"

"I'm at the hospital, Human Resources."

"I'll pick you up in about fifteen minutes. What's the address of the agency?"

"You have to see it, I can't pronounce it."

Fifteen minutes later Bakker pulled up to Wall standing outside the admin building on the Boelelaan. Bakker looked at the address. "Roggeveenstraat," he said, exaggerating the guttural G's.

"Too many G's in there for me. I'd probably need throat surgery if I tried that."

"I think I know where it is, in the Haarlemmerbuurt area, near the old harbour."

Wall took out his iPhone and started up his apps map.

"You drive, I'll do the satnav."

"But I know the way."

"My satnav doesn't know any shortcuts. Last time I nearly launched my lunch all over the inside of your beautiful automobile. This time I'm going to make sure you take some straight roads."

The Roggeveenstraat was outside of the tourist route. It was narrow, with some trees, and showing its years more than most streets he had seen. Bakker found a parking space near the address – a three-story late nineteenth-century red brick building, with large windows that looked empty. Standing in front, Wall took a couple of steps back to study it.

Although most of the buildings on the street were residential, this had been an office, and difficult to say how long it had been empty. Frosted window film covered the bottom half of the large rectangular windows, making it impossible for anyone to look in.

Bakker tried to peer in through the letterbox of the dark green front door. "There is some post on the floor, but I can't make out who it is for."

"That's good."

"Good? What's good about that?"

"Postmark dates will tell us how long the building has been empty unless someone has been picking up the post."

"I would have thought of that."

"I can pick the lock if you want," Wall said.

"Please don't, we are not one hundred per cent certain this is the right address."

"Of course it is. The address was on the invoice."

"We have to prove this is the right place before we enter. Police rules."

"No problem." Wall took his iPhone out of his inside jacket pocket, lifted the flap of the post-box and stuck it through the slot. The camera flash could be seen through the small window above the door.

Together they studied the photo.

"It's impossible to read the addresses. The print is far too small." Bakker said.

Using his index and middle finger Wall zoomed in on the letters; " _Medroep_ ' was now more than clear.

"Okay," Wall said. "Let's try to keep the investigative part with the two of us. But we need to get the Chief and forensics to come over and go over this place with a microscope. I bet we'll find fingerprints, DNA, and all types of evidence here. Hell, we might even find traces of the bird man."

In less than thirty minutes two forensics trucks and a bunch of detectives led by Chief Ribb arrived. At least ten people, forensics and detectives, stood and waited outside, ready to enter the building as a locksmith worked on the lock. Chief Ribb stood next to Wall and Bakker, who also wore the white protective clothing. Bakker had provided him with an extra pair of protective overalls which he kept in the back of his Citroen. Unfortunately, they were at least two sizes too small.

"They're checking the details of this company with the Chamber of Commerce back at the station." Ribb told them. "I had to bring in extra people for this."

Bakker turned to his boss. "But...'

"You can't do this all on your own. We are under a lot of pressure here. I know I gave you time to operate as a team, but when I see the amount of work that has to be done I don't think you are being fair with your colleagues.

"Fair on colleagues?" Wall cried out. "Some of those guys couldn't find shit in the pigsty."

"And if you let me finish Detective Wall?"

Wall took a deep breath.

"Thank you. What I also wanted to say before you interrupted, it is also not fair on the people who died."

That was a cheap shot, but it hit home. Wall nodded. Chief Ribb was right. If this was New York his boss would have demanded a detailed report every day, and assign extra men to work with him right from the start. No way would they have been allowed the same amount of leeway this new boss had given them.

The door to the building on the Roggeveenstraat was finally opened by the locksmith.

"Why didn't they just break down the door?" Wall asked.

"Do you know how much it would cost to replace it?" Bakker said, then disappeared into the building behind Chief Ribb. Wall shook his head. There was something about Dutch logic he could not fathom. He followed them in.

Other than the pile of post inside the door, the rooms downstairs were completely empty. The forensics team immediately began to dust for fingerprints and swab for evidence of DNA. On the ground floor, the only thing Wall and Bakker found were scraps of paper lying on the floor. Wearing latex gloves, Wall picked one up by the edge. It had a partial print of the Medroep logo.

"More evidence that they were here," Wall said, and handed it to one of the forensics men who bagged the remainder.

One by one Wall and Bakker opened the cupboards; all empty. In the hallway Wall opened the cupboard under the stairs. Tucked deep into the back, where the stairs met the floor, was an ancient vacuum cleaner.

He reached in, and pulled the old sky blue Electrolux out into the hallway. Carefully, he unlocked the latches and took out the paper vacuum bag. It was full, but light.

Cautiously he ripped it open, trying not to spill the contents. He found clumps of fibre and dirt and dust and strands of hair and more scraps of paper. He called one of the forensics men over.

"You got a bag?"

The forensics man quickly produced a plastic bag. Wall grabbed a handful of the hair and dropped it into the bag. He then picked out long snippets of paper, no more than a couple of millimetres in width, and looked at them closely. He held them up to Bakker. "What does that look like to you?".

"Judging by the colour and some of the lines on it I'd say it was part of the map."

"That's what I was thinking. He handed the complete vacuum cleaner bag to a technician. "There you go my friend. See if you can work out which map that is."

At the back of the hallway, the door to the back garden opened, and another forensics man in white overalls entered with a large black bin bag. It looked full, and lightweight.

Wall held out his hand. "Can I take a look at that." He put the bag down in the middle of the hallway and opened it up. It was full of strips of shredded paper.

' Right, Wall said, with a deep sigh. "Whatever it was, they didn't want nosy parkers like us reading. Whatever it is, it's going to take a while to work all that out."

"Why didn't they burn it?"

"Probably greenies, environmentalists, and all that shit. They didn't want to pollute the planet."

Bakker rummaged through the contents of the bag. "I've got a computer program that can connect up all the different pieces of paper and join them up in the right order."

Wall closed the bag and handed it to Bakker. "Cool. It's all yours."

Bakker took the bag. "Great, thanks." He looked bemused, and passed it on to forensics.

Upstairs, there were four large rooms, again all empty. Wall could see the imprint of tables on the carpeted floor and remnants of blue tack stuck to the walls. "That blue tack will probably have some prints on them."

"Maybe that's where they had the map."

"You bet your sweet ass it is." Wall replied.

"Up here," Chief Ribb shouted, from the floor above.

The stairs led up to a small, narrow and dark attic room. When Wall got to the top of the stairs the air quickly became pungent, stale, and musky.

It could have been rotting human tissue, he thought, but this was different. The rear windows were wide open, but a thick black curtain covering them blocked all light from entering. Ribb stood in the middle of the darkened room next to a small single bed. Remnants of a fully clothed female, in a dark grey cardigan, lay in the bed, melted, just like Raemon Dort, except there was no water to keep it all together.

"I think we have found our _Ans_ ," Wall said.

Bakker pulled open the curtains, the light flooded in. Her body lay on top of the blankets. Wall looked away, then back again to see if what he saw was really there. Everything was totally flat, as if the body and clothes were laid out just after ironing.

Her arms hung over each side of the bed. A pile of melted flesh and bone lay at the bottom of each sleeve. Wall recognised four fingers and a thumb sticking out from under the clump. Her face had melted into the contours of the pillow, still recognizable, but flat. A lock of wavy dark brown hair was the only thing that remained intact.

"I'd say this was a deliberate murder," Wall said cynically.

"And why is that Mr. Wall?" Chief Ribb replied, as if testing him.

"All the other bodies we found, and I'm not including the goddamn cat, were like experiments. Some were different, some the same, as if everything is all one big test. Mouth, belly, chest, whatever. This lady got the whole shebang, just like the guy in the bathtub. I don't think you'll find other strange deaths in the vicinity." Wall looked over at the dead flat body small single bed. "Definitely murder, and the guy in the bathtub was probably revenge. He had an argument with his girlfriend, right?"

"True, we know that from the message left on the answering machine. We checked her out, but could not find anything to connect her or him to any of this."

"I know, I read the notes."

"So what's your point Detective Wall?"

"If this is the _Ans_ lady then she helped our mystery friend, who in some weird way got out of the hospital and escaped death. There is no way he would want to kill her."

"Suicide?" Bakker suggested.

Wall shook his head. "So she cleans out the building, comes up here then kills herself like this? I don't think so. This has to be done by someone else. There is definitely an organized operation going on behind this, and this is the latest victim."
Chapter Thirty-Two

Just after noon, Karl Webber opened his eyes. Clouds had blocked out the sun, and the temperature immediately dropped a few degrees. On the far side of the lake the grass was being cut. The little wind there was blew towards Karl. It smelled sweet, fragrant, and familiar. Nothing had an aroma of freshly cut grass, he thought.

It was a stark contrast of the attic of the Concertgebouw, where he smelled nothing of the outside world. Stale, dry, and musty, especially when the building was empty. Replaced during a full concert by the tang of perfume, aftershave, body odour and sweat, all rolled into one. It took a couple of months before he got used to it, driving him out of his hideout and onto the roof. But it did not take long before the lure of the music pulled him back in.

During his years in hospital he spent most of his waking hours listening to the national or local radio stations. The biggest irritation were disc jockeys who yapped continuously between each record yet said nothing worthwhile. Eventually he switched to stations that only played rock or pop, with no disc jockey. Not long after, that became monotonous, eventually reaching a switch in his brain, marked bored. He stopped listening. Never had he thought he would come to enjoy classical music, but when he settled into it – mostly by not being able to listen to anything else during the hours spent waiting on you assignments, it opened up a whole new world in his mind. Each time he heard the same piece it would bring up different feelings, different thoughts, like a new experience being reborn over and over again. Nothing modern could go as deep.

The high point came one Saturday night when it was cold outside, windy, lashing rain, a concert started he would never forget, Mozart's Requiem. There was no recording that evening, which meant there would be no sound engineers in the attic. It was safe to come out of the hideout. The quiet sounds of the violins and woodwinds in the beginning caught his attention, then came the choir, and they female soloist. He never considered classical music very melodic, but this had a style and a rhythm all of its own, and a haunting and powerful melody.

Out of his hideaway, Karl sat on the floor directly above the stage and the orchestra, and peered through the holes in the ceiling used to lower cables for the recordings.

To each side of the enormous organ, encased in an elaborate and decorative wooden frame that towered above the orchestra at the back of the stage, a large male and female choir dressed in black suits and gowns sang. Hearing everything directly above the orchestra was an incredibly moving experience. It brought back memories of his mother, her death, and his father he never saw since he walked out on the family. Remembering the moment, tears flowed down his face once again.

Slowly, his awareness came back to the Vondelpark where the sun had reappeared. He could feel the muscles in his body tingle, which made him restless, and the urgency to move. The drugs had kicked in – he needed to burn off energy. Karl got up and walked around the edge of the pond to the far side, then headed back to the Concertgebouw. It was easy to walk in with the rest of the staff in his black clothing, unnoticed. In his hideaway, he checked out the postal codes connected to the addresses, then decided to check out the area on foot. An hour later he was heading for the Jordaan, an area he knew well but not the exact locations for the experiments. This time, unlike the others, he had to prepare and research carefully. There was no room for mistakes.

Karl strolled through the streets of the Jordaan, working out the route he could take over the rooftops. He had to physically see if it was possible to jump the narrow streets or descend easily to street level. He soon found it was no easy task to negotiate the four different streets where his targets lived. Little had changed over the years except the dilapidated houses he remembered as a kid that were replaced by modern apartments that did a bad job blending into the old-style street architecture.

His first hit was in the Nieuwe Leliestraat.

He approached the three-story building that was probably once a workshop on the ground floor, with two floors of living space above. Most of the buildings in the street were original, old and full of character. Little had changed here since he was a boy. The second street was in an unfamiliar part of the Jordaan. He stopped to look around to get his bearings. He thought he had worked it all out, but somehow had lost his orientation. If that happened at night, he could end up on the wrong street and administer the experiment to the wrong person. Karl turned and walked back a hundred meters, then stopped. Something was not right. The numbers on the houses did not add up. Maybe he took a wrong turn or was on the wrong street, he was not sure. He looked up at the apartments and wondered where he could have gone wrong. The street was little more than a car wide – and quiet. The odd bicycle went by, and that was about it.

Karl stopped in the middle of the street and checked his notes. Maybe he made a mistake with the postcode. He turned and walked to the end of the street, looking for number 367B, but the numbers on the street ended at 210, then he headed back down the street once again. A door to his left opened about thirty meters away, and two youths came out of a house.

"Looking for something?" The first youth asked. They casually strolled towards him. Aged about seventeen or eighteen, with tinted skin, and an accent, his friend, who trailed two steps behind, took out his mobile and began texting. They were both taller than him, and muscular.

"Just looking for an old friend's house, but I think he's moved."

"You're not looking for a friend," the first youth replied aggressively. "What are you looking for, asshole?"

"I told you, I'm looking for a friend."

"You've got no friends here, fucking mongrel."

Karl rolled up the piece of paper in his hand. They are stopped a little more than a meter away.

The first youth reached out to grab the paper. "What's on the paper?"

Karl took a step back. "Don't touch," he warned.

The muscled youth laughed. "Do you hear that Achmed? Don't touch he said."

His friend finished texting and put away his mobile. "He's here to cause trouble."

The first youth reached out to grab Karl's jacket, but was not quick enough. Karl took another step back. The two youths advanced slowly, smiling, confident. Behind him he heard a couple of doors slamming. He looked around and saw two more youths of similar age heading towards him.

"I think you're here to rob our houses, shit face."

"I told you. I'm looking for an old friend."

"Why don't you meet my friends."

The youth in front made eye contact with the others coming up behind. Karl was suddenly grabbed with one hand by the neck from the rear, then the youth in front of him lunged forward – he brought back his fist to smash into his face.

Karl dropped immediately to his haunches – the smash to his face missed, the grip on his neck released. He turned sideways towards his attacker from the rear and rammed his left fist up into his crotch – he doubled from the pain. Karl swiftly stepped to the right, and punched the boy in front directly in the diaphragm. The shock and surprise on his face said enough. He fell forward in agony, and gasped for air. Karl stayed low, and caught sight of the message guy who now looked on, bewildered, confused. He leaned over onto his left leg and his right foot shot up, catching the underside of his jaw, which connected perfectly. The texter lifted about four or five centimetres into the air before falling back. His head hit the concrete with a thud. Karl was sure he heard his skull crack.

The fourth assailant stood for another two seconds with his mouth open in utter shock, then ran when Karl stood up. He straightened his jacket and walked away. As he did the first two were still bent over and groaning, while the third remained flat on the concrete, either unconscious or dead. Karl did not bother to look back.

Through the white lace curtains she continued to film with her mobile until the man moved out of sight, then she turned back to film her cousin lying on the road in front of her. Shocked at what happened, she was not angry. Her cousin and his pals were the tyrants of the neighbourhood and had terrorized her and her friends for years. As time went on they got bolder. Whoever he was, she felt he had just saved her life. They had learned their lesson and would not try anything for a while. She knew it would not be too long before they would go back to their old ways, then the terror would start up again. She stopped filming and went to her laptop. The video had to be kept safe and out of sight. Her brother and her cousin were always checking her mobile, looking for signs of a boyfriend or anything they could use against her. The problem was where to hide it. She had to think, fast.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Every room in the building on the Roggeveenstraat was photographed, dusted for prints, and searched for DNA. Wall looked on as one of the forensic team took samples from the toilet bowl; the strangest he had ever seen. He thought he had come across every type of toilet for every type of ethnic group in New York – bidet's, squat toilets the Chinese and Moslems used, but a toilet with a shelf designed to catch your shit before you flushed it through, was definitely a first. Where normally the hole would be with the water reservoir at the bottom, was a raised flat white ceramic area, that held just a couple of teaspoons of water. Faeces would land on the flat surface, and remain there until it was flushed into the bowl and water reservoir in the front. From there it disappeared down the sewer in the regular fashion. What was the idea? Examine it before it got flushed away? Was it a health thing? But whatever the idea behind it, the forensics guy seemed to be having a ball scraping off bits of dried shit from the white ceramic tile.

The pathologist Dr Conver arrived with a small team and took his usual samples of the body. The only problem was how to get it out of the building without spilling anything. The bathtub option of solidifying everything did not work in this case. Two small windows at the front of the attic made that route impossible. The only way to move the corpse, or what was left of it, was down the narrow attic stairs.

Wall was surprised with the solution they came up with. At the foot end of the bed, supports were placed under the frame, then they removed the entire end piece. A long hard plastic sheet, about a centimetre thick, but slightly smaller than the width of the bed, was the answer to the problem. Holes had been cut into each side to attach straps in order to carry it. They slid the plastic sheet under the blanket the female was lying on. What seemed difficult and puzzling to Wall was easy compared to what they had to do next, ply the melted arms and hands from the floor and place them on the bed.

Conver guided a female and one male assistant as they ran a broad thin metal spatula under the small heaped mass, careful not to distort the fingers. With the spatula successfully under the fleshy remains, two other females from Conver's crew gently took hold of the cardigan arm, then the four of them lifted everything in one go up onto the bed.

Wall, Conver, Ribb and Bakker looked on as they completed the second arm with very little distortion. Leather straps were now placed in the holes of the sheet plate. When everything was complete, six technicians were called up to the attic to remove the body. Three men each side lifted it up and carried it to the stairs. Two technicians went to the front end then turned and backed slowly down the stairs, while they held the plate high to keep everything level. Slowly, step-by-step, they descended the stairs. To everyone's relief, they made it to the first floor without spilling a drop of the body.

Outside, screens had been erected around the entire building, which block off direct view of the entrance to the house. As they came out the front door and turned to place the body into a waiting ambulance, the sound of cameras clicked and buzzed from the large gathering of journalists and photographers through small gaps in the screen. Wall watched them load the body into an unmarked van, and drive away. Minutes later, he went with Bakker into a large portable tent and removed his white overalls.

With difficulty, he peeled off the tight fitting overalls. "Next time I'll bring my own."

"I'm going to go back to the station. I want to get started on that paperwork."

"Paperwork?"

"The bag of shredded paper. They didn't shred that for nothing. There might be something valuable in there."

"Good luck with that. I'm going back to the hotel to get a shower and get changed. I'll be back at the station in about an hour to help out."

Getting back to the hotel took Wall longer than he would have preferred. The roaming taxis to be found all over New York were nowhere to be seen here, at least not in this part of Amsterdam. The only taxis he remembered spotting in Amsterdam were those huddled in groups on the Leidseplein, central station, and the airport. He could have asked Bakker or one of the other officers for a lift, but everybody had their hands full. Checking his iPhone, he realized he only had to walk about six hundred meters south to catch the number three tram on the Zoutkeetsgracht. That would bring him all the way to the Concertgebouw, a few hundred meters around the corner from his hotel.

He relaxed in the tram, totally exhausted from the day's events. Bakker's overalls were so tight they had made him sweat. The smell of his own body odour was overpowering. A shower was badly needed. Could he have been contaminated by the dead woman? Conver had mentioned it was not contagious, whatever it was had to be digested, the pathologist told them. Still, it made him nervous.

When Wall got off the tram, he never noticed Karl Webber standing about thirty-five meters away, next to the corner of the Concertgebouw, watching and waiting to enter the artist's entrance.

Karl waited at the front of the building, on the right hand corner, watching. Musicians would arrive around this time for rehearsals, or drop off instruments in the basement before they went out to dinner prior to the concert. They would be back on time to change into their black attire, then relax with a cup of coffee in the artists foyer in the basement before the concert began at the usual time of 8:15 PM.

Karl spotted his moment. A group of five male and three female musicians headed for the side entrance. From their instrument cases he knew they were a mix of violinists and cellists. When they were roughly ten meters from the artists entrance, he took off, joining up at the rear as they entered the impressive concert hall. The security man gave a courteous "hello' to them all, including Webber, who looked like one of the staff in his black attire. He followed the musicians around the far side of the high security desk, through the door and down the stairs to the basement to the artists foyer. From there he went up a separate stairs the musicians took to get to the side entrance of the stage. There he gently opened the door to the grand concert hall, it was empty. He took the small stairs up onto the stage and cut across to the left where the violinists and woodwind players would sit later, then casually walked up the stairs which ran from the stage floor up onto the first floor at the rear. Passing the impressive organ on the right, he cautiously opened the door at the top of the stairs. Again, no staff to be seen along the red-carpeted hallway. Directly to the left he opened an unassuming door which led up to a service room, then took the steel stairs up to the attic. Halfway, he stopped to listen. Sound engineers or other staff could always be around, carrying out their work. Everything was quiet, the attic was all his.

He would rest until midnight, then head to the Jordaan district to carry out the experiments.

The walk to the hotel from the tram stop in front of the Concertgebouw took less than ten minutes. The young male receptionist greeted him with a familiar smile.

Refreshed after a long shower and feeling clean once again, Wall put on his boxer shorts and lay down on the bed. The image of the dead body on the bed stuck in his mind. Stranger than the man in the bathtub, this was the city of incredulities, something new around every corner. Okay, New York had its surprises now and again, but here it was one surprise after another.

New York was probably going to be a lot more boring when he got back. Exhausted, he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

The sound of the applause in the concert hall just after ten o'clock that evening woke Karl Webber from his nap. Luckily it was Schubert, Chopin and Satie – and not Wagner or Rachmaninov, otherwise he would never have slept at all. He waited until just after midnight before he put on the pouch containing the ampoules. Tonight was going to be the toughest assignment yet. The apartments he needed to reach were not as easy as the others, and spread out over different streets with canals between, which meant he had to spend more time on the ground than usual.

Next to the rear wall inside his hideout he reached up and grabbed a rectangular metal panel slotted into the roof, then pushed it to one side. The sky was clear, the stars spectacular. Outside the temperature was warmer than it had been for the last few weeks, but not warm enough for people to want to sleep on a roof or balcony.

He gripped each side of the large roof beams and propelled himself up – his feet landed on the top of the beam. From his hanging position in the gap he then shimmied down to the flat area of the roof. Getting to his feet, he picked up a second panel lying out of sight in the corner, and placed it over the exposed gap, sealing off his hideout. Karl had accidentally found the panel when they were renovating the roof, which gave him the opportunity to create the entrance to the attic. It served its purpose, mostly late at night, when there was no concert, and alarms were switched on in other parts of the building, which restricted his movements. Within minutes, he was down on the ground at the rear of the Concertgebouw. In the distance, he could hear the last of the night trams race by, familiar sounds of steel wheels on rails gave him comfort and a certain amount of reassurance.

He should have been dead, he knew that. It felt good to soak up life as it was in the Vondelpark. The warmth of the sun on his face that afternoon was an experience he could never forget. This was life, the true life he could feel and touch, and without the experiments he had carried out in Amsterdam, it would never have been possible.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Harvey Wall awoke just after ten that evening. The idea was to just close his eyes for twenty minutes to get some shut eye, but two hours later was not the plan. "Damn," he muttered under his breath. There was so much work to do, sleep was the last thing he needed. Quickly he put on fresh clothes and left the room. The receptionist was surprised to see him walk past.

"Good evening Mr. Wall. Going out to have some fun?"

"I wish. See you later."

He had got to know the different receptionists pretty well, but made it a point never to talk to them about his work. All they knew was that he had something to do with the police in Amsterdam, he never went into detail. People coming and going, strangers or guests picking up loose info was dangerous. What people did not know was his protection. In front of the Concertgebouw he got the number five tram to the police station on the Marnixstraat.

The squad room was still bustling with detectives working on information and evidence they picked up that afternoon in the Roggeveenstraat. Dop turned to glance at Wall as he came through the door. His stare was blank, no recognition, no familiarity, then turned back to the computer. Wall reckoned he was still angry about the incident at the airport.

"He's down in the technical room," a Detective in the corner shouted over to Wall as he noticed him staring at Bakker's empty desk.

"Gotcha." He turned and headed back out to the door.

There were three different technical rooms in the building, and all down in the basement. Working his way down through the various levels, the building felt strange. The regular office staff had finished at five, leaving a sort of vacuum; the emptiness in the building was unfamiliar, and eerie. These deaths had apparently taken all the detectives by surprise. From what he heard, none of them had ever come across anything like this before. The tense atmosphere that had taken hold of everyone in the building, seemed to have seeped into the walls, floors, and into the very foundations of the building itself.

He found Bakker bent over a scanner lining up strips of shredded paper on the glass plate. He could see right away it was time consuming, and demanded a high degree of patience. He felt in debt to Bakker, and guilty he had fallen asleep for so long. "How's it going?"

Bakker looked up, his eyes were bloodshot and tired. "Getting there," he moaned.

There was no smile or acknowledgment, he just turned back to the scanner and continued to line-up the paper strips. After trying meticulously to get them as straight as possible, Bakker lowered the lid of the scanner and pressed the button. It whirred into action, a shaft of light moved slowly across the edge.

"I'm sorry did not make it back earlier pal. After a shower, I lay on my bed just to rest for a few minutes and drifted off."

"It's okay. There's not a lot for you to do here anyway."

"Let me do the rest, you take a break."

"No, I'm okay. There's not much left, it's nearly finished."

Wall looked at the black bin bag on the chair. Bakker was right. It was almost empty, probably only fifty or sixty strips to go. "It's still going to take you a while. Why don't you let me finish this lot and you go get a pizza or something."

"I'm not hungry."

Bakker never lunched in the canteen, he was a hamster. He would gather his food and bring it to the place where he was working at the time. Wall could see no sign of food or empty burger or pizza boxes. He probably had nothing to eat since breakfast. Before Bakker could reach for new strips to lay on the glass plate, Wall took two steps towards him and grabbed him by the shoulders. He pulled him away from the scanner, then guided him out the door and onto the corridor.

"You go organize some food for both of us. A pizza or something. I'm starving, and maybe a couple of Cokes to go with it." Wall pulled out his wallet and gave Bakker a fifty Euro note.

"That should cover it."

Bakker was about to object when Wall stepped back into the room and slammed the door shut. He picked up a handful of strips and placed them face down on the scanner, and followed every move Bakker had made, then pressed the button.

A half hour later, looking refreshed and in a better mood, Bakker returned with two pizza boxes and a couple of Cokes. Wall placed the last strips of paper on the scanner, closed the lid and pressed the button.

"Now that's timing," Wall said, and grabbed a pizza and Coke from Bakker, "this one mine?"

"It doesn't matter, they're both the same."

"Come on, let's get out of here. We'll eat upstairs in the squad room, it's too cramped in here."

Back on the third floor, Bakker cleared his desk while Wall opened the pizza boxes. He stared down in shock at the pizza covered in broccoli, peppers, cheese, and tomatoes.

"What the fuck is that?"

"Pizza."

"I can see its pizza, but it's not the pizza I usually eat. Where's the friggin pepperoni?" Wall shouted.

"Meat?"

"Pepperoni, bacon, sausage, I suppose that's meat. Where is it?"

"But I don't eat meat."

"What?"

"I haven't eaten meat since I was fourteen."

"No wonder you look like shit."

"But that shouldn't be a problem, its food, it's healthy."

Wall took a deep breath to calm himself. "How can you have pizza without pepperoni."

"Have you ever tried pizza without pepperoni?"

That was a question he wasn't expecting. "Ehh, no."

"Then sit down and shut up and eat your pizza."

Wall looked at Bakker in surprise. It was the first time since they met he had ever spoken out to him. Bakker took a slice out of the box and bit into it. Wall was still speechless.

"Eat," Bakker commanded, through his stuffed mouth.

Wall suddenly realized he was being stupid – acting like a kid. He always got what he wanted in life, and if he didn't, he would let people know he was not happy about it. He had bawled out so many because of that, including his mother. Bakker was an okay guy. He did his best, and had just spent hours working on those strips of paper. He did not deserve his protest.

"Sorry." Wall finally said, then reluctantly took a bite out of the pizza. "Mmmm, it's better than I thought."

Bakker nodded, then reached with both hands for his keyboard. With a slice of pizza hanging in his mouth, Bakker accessed the un-shredder software. He located the scanned files, loaded them into the software, pressed enter, then sat back and bit into the pizza – the remains landed in front of the keyboard. Wall looked on in disgust.

"How long is it going to take?" Wall asked.

"Depends, this Israeli software can take hours, or days."

After fifteen minutes Bakker had finished half the pizza, then put the other half into his drawer.

"That is gross, you know that?"

"If I put it in the refrigerator it won't last very long with the other guys."

"You should put your name on the box, believe me, they won't touch it."

Chapter Thirty-Five

By the time Karl got to the Nieuwe Leliestraat it was nearly one o'clock in the morning. The streets were practically empty. After his encounter with the youths that afternoon he found the street he was looking for, and the apartment. He would have preferred not to have got into that fight because it drew attention to himself, but there was no other way out of it. Karl looked up and down the street, checking for bikes, cars, or any life at all. The coast was clear. With a little effort, he climbed the two meter high wall and effortlessly negotiated the rusted barbed wire to land on overgrown derelict ground on the other side. The apartment he wanted was a few doors further up, but first he would have to scale the back wall of the building using the drainpipe on the corner. He waded through the long weeds and grass, then took off his knapsack. Leaning against the wall he strapped on his crampons which gave him the grip he needed. Minutes later Karl sat down on top of the roof and attached the hard rubber birds feet to the tips of the crampon spikes. This would not only dampen the sound of him walking on the roof, but also help him get silently into the apartments.

Because of the publicity surrounding the deaths he knew the situation was going to be more difficult, but he had taken measures to counteract any problems. For the first time Karl brought a small crowbar to pry open closed windows. On earlier trips he could mostly pick and choose. People were now alert since the police advised everyone to keep their doors and windows shut. Luckily not everyone went along with the rules, but he expected one or two apartments to be shut and locked down tight; the crowbar would sort that out.

Rooftops of new apartments were generally flat in this neighbourhood, only a couple were peaked, so moving around would not be too difficult. Karl walked along the gable walls. After fifty meters he reached his target then stopped and looked down. Modern homes had a small balcony front and back, while older apartments usually only had one at the rear, if any at all. This had both.

He lowered himself over the edge and peered into the pitch dark bedroom. The door was slightly open. He heard snoring.

Karl got up then went to the front of the building to check out the second balcony. The door was closed, but next to it a small top window was ajar. Within a few minutes he was standing in a relatively modern and dark living room, and removed the crampons. The only information he had about this apartment was the address. He knew nothing about the victims, nor did he want to.

Quietly, he opened a second door and could see the kitchen across the hallway, to the left was the bedroom, the door was shut. He crossed the landing floor in his sneakers. The kitchen was as usual small and compact. Using the light from the open fridge he took an ampoule out of his pouch and emptied its contents into the milk.

Chapter Thirty-Six

After what seemed like an eternity the un-shredder software had hardly made a dent, Wall wondered if the process had been quicker doing it by hand. With shoulders slumped and bloodshot eyes, Bakker looked more tired than ever.

"Why don't you go home and get some sleep. I can take it from here."

"I'm not tired."

"Come on, man. You look wasted."

"There's a room in the station where I can put my head down for a while. Maybe I'll do that and get back when the software has done its job.' Bakker got up and headed for the door. 'I'll be back in an hour."

Only five other detectives remained in the room. Dop and Kaps were already gone. Wall knew the others from seeing them around but never really got to know them. He picked up his pizza box, still three-quarters full, and strolled over to them.

"Any of you guys want some pizza?"

"Lekker," the first Detective said.

"Lekker?"

"Yes, it means nice, tasty."

"Yeah, I've heard it before, but wasn't sure about the meaning. You're right, it's _lekker_." He held out the box to the other detectives. "Go on, help yourself."

They all took a slice.

Wall pulled up a chair. "Do you think we'll catch our guy?"

"Don't we always in the end?" The first Detective replied, through a mouthful of pizza.

"Did you see that body today? Could you believe it? What sick fucker ever came up...."

There was a crash. The squad room door behind him slammed open. A uniformed officer rushed in and shouted something in Dutch. The pizzas were immediately dropped on the desks and they scrambled out of their chairs and grabbed their jackets.

"What's going on," Wall shouted above the panic.

"Someone has been spotted on a roof in the Jordaan," the first Detective replied through a mouthful of pizza.

"That's our man." Wall dumped the remains of the pizza into a rubbish bin. "I'm with you guys."

They arrived in the Jordaan in three unmarked police cars. A number of streets were already blocked off by uniformed police. Flashing blue lights of about ten police cars lit up the walls of the apartments and houses like a disco. Many residents stared out of their bedrooms and living room windows, while others stood in doorways in their night clothes. Wall heard a helicopter overhead. He saw one of the detectives who had enjoyed his pizza talk to a uniformed police officer. Wall walked over to him and stood next to them. It was all in Dutch. Maybe it was an idea to learn the language, he thought, just enough to know what people were saying.

"What's the situation," Wall finally asked.

"Someone was seen on a roof further down the street, but the helicopter has not been able to spot whoever it was. There is a team of uniform officers carrying out searches just down there." He pointed to an area near the helicopter.

Wall watched it hover for a few minutes, then got restless. He took off down a side street. Halfway down, he saw a couple of detectives talking to uniform and decided that this search was not moving quick enough. Nobody was handing out any communication devices, there was no centre of command which meant coordination of the crime scene was not in place or badly arranged. The whole operation was falling apart even before it got started. It was turning into a sham.

Time to do it his way, he thought, something that really pissed his New York Chief big-time, but in the end generally paid off.

Those three were dead – he was still alive.

He had no clue of the neighbourhood, unlike New York. There he knew the areas he worked in like the back of his hand, and made sure he was always on top of the intelligence. Situations and streets should be known and studied – now he felt like a rookie, and in the blind. He took out his iPhone and opened the maps app. The blue dot with the arrow showed him exactly where he was, and gave him a layout of the surrounding area. Towards the end of the street he could see the flashing lights of police cars. From his position he knew there were a couple of side streets further up and behind him, he had to make his move. Wall went back to the Detective who brought him to the scene.

"I'm going to double back to see if I can spot him in any of the other streets."

"Go ahead, don't let us stop you." One of the detectives said, as he pulled out a tobacco pouch and started to roll a cigarette. Wall took off towards the canal to the left.

Standing on a rooftop a block away, Webber had heard the helicopter when he came out of the second apartment, a couple of streets from the first on the other side of the canal. In the distance, he saw the blue police lights flashing. Maybe it was for some disturbance or robbery, but deep down he knew they were looking for him. Time to move.

He made his way to the edge of the roof and found a drainpipe that took him down to the garden at the rear of the building, which turned out to be a bicycle graveyard. Bits and pieces of broken up bikes covered every available surface in the nearly pitch-black garden. He maneuvered his way through the metal mass that lined the route to a wooden door that led to the street out front. It was near impossible to put a foot down without stepping on chains, bicycle wheels, handlebars or bare bike frames. Slowly he made his way towards the door, impossible to do quietly, at least he did not think he woke anyone up before he made it onto the street.

When Wall rounded the corner of the canal, he turned right at the bridge and walked down the Egelantiersgracht. A hundred meters down he saw a lone figure walk on the other side of the canal, walking in the opposite direction. It was difficult to see his face, but the small knapsack on his back was unmistakable.

Crampons, Wall immediately thought. "Hey, fella," Wall called out.

Webber looked to the left over at the person who had just called out, and recognized him immediately.

"Do you know how I can get to Dam Square from here?" He heard him shout above the noise from the helicopter in the distance. Dam square was about one and a half kilometres to the east, obviously it was just a ploy to get him to stop. He knew what the tall black American was capable of, he had seen him in action, he picked up his pace.

"Hey, I'm lost here." Came another shout. Webber ignored him. Luckily he knew just about every street and lane. Disappearing into the maze of streets in the Jordaan would not be difficult. He came to the bridge, dumped the crowbar into the water, turned right into the street and ran.

Wall heard the splash and saw him take off. He turned and sprinted back towards the bridge. Halfway across he slowed, in the distance he saw Webber, a couple of hundred meters ahead of him, he was fast. In a burst of speed, Wall went after him. A few seconds later he saw him take a side street and disappeared from view. Wall instinctively stopped running, then turned and ran a few paces back to another side street, parallel to the street Webber took, and sprinted as fast as he possibly could. With any luck Webber would realize he was not directly behind him and slow his pace. It worked with one of the pizza thieves he caught when he first arrived in Amsterdam, there was no reason why it would not work now. It was impossible to check his iPhone while he ran, so he could only guess the layout of the area. Fortunately, around here they were laid out in a grid, and not semi-circular, like the city centre, which made it mostly straightforward. He got to the end of the street and turned left. With any luck, just a hundred meters to the next corner, Webber would walk right into his trap.

Wall carefully approached the junction, then stopped dead to listen. There was no sound of Webber. He inched his head around the corner to the left, the street came into view, empty. He looked to the right, again empty. Webber had disappeared. He stepped out into the middle of the street. In the distance he saw a figure running in the opposite direction; it had to be Webber. Wall took off as fast as he could. He must have figured out his tactics. He had to learn to be more careful. But it was too late, he had to keep him in sight from now on, and bring him down.

When Webber turned right to go down the side street, he was confronted by a figure about a hundred meters up ahead. He knew exactly who he was the moment he saw him, the Moroccan who tried to attack him that afternoon.

"I knew it," the Moroccan shouted, and pointed at Webber. He took out his mobile and began screaming instructions in Arabic.

In the far distance, the helicopter could be heard hovering above the streets.

"I bet those police are for you," the Moroccan shouted, then immediately began to run towards him. "You put my cousin in hospital. You are going to pay for that."

Webber turned, convinced he would run into the black American, but he was nowhere to be seen, he ran. With his speed and stamina he knew he could quickly outrun the Moroccan. Webber took a turn at nearly every corner, but surprisingly the Moroccan matched his speed, which gave him no time to dodge out of sight by hiding in a doorway or scaling a building. He would have to keep up his pace and hopefully tire him out.

Webber turned on to another street, and halfway down, he saw two figures in the darkness at the next corner, their silhouettes unmistakable. Keeping up his pace Webber looked around for a way out, an escape, nothing was obvious. He had to keep moving towards the two figures in the dark, who stood their ground, facing him. As he approached they came out of the shadows.

One held something in his hand. The street lighting reflected off it. It was at least a meter long and metal. He strained his eyes then recognized an aluminium baseball bat. Picking up speed he headed straight towards them on the right hand corner. Behind, about twenty or thirty meters, he could hear the sound of the Moroccan still in pursuit.

The two in front held their stance, ready for him. They raised the baseball bat to mid-level. Webber headed straight for them at speed . He could see their faces, expectant, confident. At the last moment he darted to the left down another street. This would lead back into the Jordaan, not what he wanted, but he had to avoid physical contact as much as possible. He looked back, all three were on his heels, but were falling behind.

At a distance Wall could see what just took place. Three male youths were now after Webber. The problem was who were they? Street thugs? An attempted mugging? Something else? Whoever they were, they were either doing him a favour, or getting in the way. They could catch Webber for him, which would save him this chase in the dark through unknown streets, but they could also kill him. He wanted him alive. There were too many questions to be answered. Apart from the dead woman in the house – no other person or suspect could explain what was going gone on.

He saw Webber take another turn, and the three youths converse with one another. One took out his mobile and began to shout instructions. _Backup_ , he thought. He wished he could call his own backup but never got Bakker's number. And exactly what the emergency number was in the Netherlands, eluded him. The only thing he did know, it wasn't 911.

He couldn't count on the detectives from the station sitting on their asses three or four blocks away, they were more than useless, he was alone.

The three youths, now a hundred and fifty meters ahead of him, turned another corner. He reached it as fast as he could, but it was getting confusing. All the streets in this neighbourhood looked like. Where was he exactly? He had no chance to check his iPhone – his orientation in the darkened streets had gone belly up. At the end of the street they went left again. The good news was, as far as he was aware, they did not know he was right behind them.

Webber ran towards another corner and into another street. Fifty meters down he saw another two youths run towards him, each with two halves of a broom handle. He turned left, the street was clear. He ran, and continuously kept his eyes open in the badly lit streets for an opening, somewhere to hide, but there was none, the only thing he could do was run. Then, in the far distance he saw another two men coming towards him. Trapped. There was no way of escaping from those behind or in front of him. To his surprise, he spotted a way out. Fifty metres in front was a side street to the left. He had to get there before the two thugs in front reached him He picked up speed and made it to the corner before them.

He sprinted into the Slootstraat and froze, when he realized his mistake. A wave of fear came over him. It was a dead-end street, a trap. For the last few minutes they were not running to catch him, but guiding him to this little street. He could not turn back – and could see no way out. He jogged on into the street, which was no more than thirty meters deep. Like a scared animal caught in a corner he looked for an exit, a wall he could climb, a drainpipe, anything at all, but there was nothing except a high steel fence that cut across the entire width of the street. On the other side was a children's playground. Sweat dripped from his brow, he removed his knapsack and was about to take out his crampons when he looked up.

The gang came out of the shadows, stood aligned, and blocked the exit, his only possible way out.

Nearly all carried a makeshift weapon made of metal or wood, but the one in front, the ringleader who tried to attack him that afternoon, held a machete in his hand. They stood still, all eyes were on him. For the first time since he left the hospital, he felt scared. The machete was slowly raised to shoulder height, and they started to group together and move steadily forward.

When Wall finally reached the corner he realized the situation. "Damn," he muttered.

This was no mugging, this was organized, and for a reason. Why they were out to get Webber was a mystery, it was not what he wanted. They were planning to tear him apart, he wanted him alive. His hand automatically went to that special place under his jacket, and once again, he did not have his gun when he needed it. When this was over – he was definitely going to have a serious talk with the Chief about that. Wall looked around for anything he could use as a weapon, there was nothing. The only thing he had were the tie-wraps. Fat lot of good they were going to be here.

Slowly they moved towards Webber, who had backed up against the steel fence at the end of the cul-de-sac.

It was only then Wall noticed the youth at the front with the machete in his hand. "Shit."

He had to do something, _now_.

He took a deep breath then ran at speed towards the group.

Since they had not noticed him, his only weapon was surprise. Silently coming up behind them Wall opened his arms wide, drew them back, then came in between two teenagers and smashed his fists into the back of their heads at the same time. They hit the concrete with a thump.

Wall continued forward – lining up two more in front of him – who just before the moment of impact looked around to see Wall lunge towards them. The last thing they saw was white clenched teeth in the darkness. Again they hit the ground hard.

The last three turned to face Wall.

The kid with the baseball bat swung it at him, he rapidly arched back. The polished aluminium bat missed his face by a whisker. Undeterred, the teenager was quick to take another swing, this time it hit him in the belly.

Wall doubled over, it hit him hard, and hurt. The one with the machete moved towards him.

Karl Webber saw his chance. He darted away and ran as fast as he could out of the cul-de-sac.

The machete holder shouted something unintelligible at the other two and took after Webber, who had turned right at the corner and was gone.

Wall looked up and saw the baseball bat being raised and about to come down on his head. His left hand shot up and caught it as it was about to crash into his skull. He held it firmly then stood up straight. A look of shock came over his attackers face.

The kid with the broom handle took a swing at Wall's head. He caught it with his right hand – and held it fast. The two youths looked at one another, confused and scared. With a sudden jerk, Wall rammed the baseball bat and broom handle back into the stomach and chest of his attackers. They both went down.

Wall looked around for the kid with machete. He was gone, and so was Webber. He never saw them get away. They disappeared. Where? Which direction? He ran to the street corner. In the distance he could see the light of the helicopter hovering to the south-east, still looking for Webber three blocks away – he now had some orientation. Webber had to get out of the neighbourhood. Obviously he would head in the opposite direction. He must have gone west. Wall took off as fast as he could, and hoped he could spot him somewhere, anywhere.

After he broke away from his attackers Webber realized one of them was following him. Keeping up speed, he widened the distance between him and his pursuer. At another corner he crossed the Marnixstraat and over the bridge into the Frederik Hendrikplantzoen, a small open city park with enough trees and bushes to take cover and disappear.

Wall kept up his pace. On the Lijnbaansgracht he caught sight of a running figure. Was it Webber or the one with the machete? He watched him cross a bridge and slow down, then he saw the machete. Webber was nowhere to be seen.

Wall took cover behind a parked car and watched from a distance. No need to interfere, with any luck he would lead him to Webber. There was enough greenery for anyone to hide. The guy with the machete seemed to be looking, searching. When he took a swipe at a couple of branches, severing them clean, a figure darted out and ran in the opposite direction, Webber.

The Moroccan was only about ten meters away from where he was hiding. He tried not to move, hardly breathing, then the machete came into view and sheared the branches, he panicked.

He jumped out from behind the bushes and ran. It was a day and a night of mistakes. If only he had not been so eager to get it all over and done with. He could have waited a few days, but after getting that shot this morning he felt the need to burn off the excess energy. He ran up the van Hallstraat towards a maze of small streets between and the Central Market Halls, which were hermetically sealed off. The area was more than familiar, with any luck he could probably lose him there. He turned left at the bus stop and past a number of shops, it led to a canal unlike any other canal in Amsterdam, it had a dead-end. On the far side was the industrial market area known as the Central Market Halls. Despite its name it was in fact was a central distribution and processing point for foodstuffs in Amsterdam and the surrounding province. To everyone else, gaining entry would be nearly impossible, he knew a gap.

The houseboats at the end of the canal were next to the tall fence he could climb. He did not need his crampons, scaling it would be easy. The only problem was noise, he had to keep it down to a minimum. He went from one boat to the other, and on the far side of the canal took a run at the wall. Using rubbish dumped up against it to give him trajectory, he grabbed the top and hoisted himself up and over the other side and landed squarely on his feet. He looked around, searching, listening, there was no sign of security. Karl ran towards the large industrial warehouse fifty meters away.

Without too much difficulty he got to the roof using one of the many articulated trucks parked up against the loading bays. From a height it was easy to hide and have full view of the surrounding grounds. He lay down on his stomach, breathing heavily, sweating, waiting for the Moroccan. He was nowhere to be seen. For the second time that night he felt nervous. There was no way he could go up against a machete. He was faster, but there were limits, and he never carried a weapon. He never should have dumped the crowbar. All he had to rely on was his new-found energy.

From somewhere in the distance he heard a male voice shouting. "Hello? Who's there?"

In the distance he saw the owner of a houseboat stand on the roof of the steering cabin. Was he reacting to him, or his pursuer? From his vantage point he could see no one else in the surrounding area.

Suddenly, he heard a noise behind him. The moment he turned his head and looked over his shoulder he caught the glimpse of the machete coming down on his back. Before he could move to avoid it, he heard a CLANG – the sound of metal hitting metal – and felt a searing pain in his back.

"Aaaahhhhhh," Webber screamed. The knife had slammed with force into the knapsack, hitting the crampons. The long sharp teeth of the crampons cut through the knapsack padding and dug into his spine.

The Moroccan took a step back, totally surprised and confused by what just happened. He stared down at the large chunk of metal suddenly missing from the blade of the machete.

Undeterred, he lifted it once again.

Webber rolled to the left – the crampon dug in deeper. The knife came down, and missed his head by a millimetre. He brought back his leg and drove his heel into the Moroccan's groin – he crumbled and fell back. There was a loud clash as his knife hit a metal frame of the skylight, the glass cracked. The Moroccan dropped the machete. Webber tried to stand, his back hurt, it was impossible to straighten upright. The pain was excruciating. The spikes had dug deep. The Moroccan climbed to his feet, and grabbed the knife when Webber lunged forward. He made a swipe, and cut a gash in Webber's thigh. Impossible to stop the momentum, Webber threw himself against the Moroccan who fell back. They both crashed through the skylight, and dropped ten meters. With a tremendous thump, they hit the stainless steel metal funnel of a machine below.

Wall was already inside the compound when he heard the crash in the distance. He turned to run towards the sound, and was confronted by two security guards with flashlights.

"I'm with the Dutch police," Wall shouted. The lights blinded his eyes. He took his police ID out of his pocket and held it up.

They said something in Dutch.

"I'm with the Dutch police," he repeated.

"Normally the Dutch police speak Dutch," the guard said in English. He took Walls card and examined it close up.

"I'm on loan to the Dutch police from the New York Police Department."

"Looks genuine enough," the guard said, as he handed the card to his colleague, who scrutinized it.

"I followed two men here. One of them is wanted by the police."

"You are the only one we have seen in the compound."

"I heard a crash," Wall said. "I think it came from one of those buildings over there."

"We heard something too."

The taller of the two security guards took out his mobile. "I'll call Central."

"Wall took off towards the large warehouses. "I'm going to take a look."

The guard said something in Dutch into his mobile then they looked at each other, unsure, then followed.

"Jesus Christ, are they all like this?" Wall moaned.

They ran towards the last building. From the corner they could hear the sound of a machine rumbling inside the building.

"There should be no machines running at this time of night. This way. The entrance is on the other side."

Wall heard the sound of a helicopter and looked up. It was a couple of hundred meters away and heading in their direction. It was then they noticed the blue flashing lights on the other side of the entrance gates to the market compound. When the security guards opened the main gates it seemed that every police car in Amsterdam rolled into the Central Market with Chief Ribb leading the pack. Above him the helicopter circled and swept the area with its searchlight.

Wall was surprised to see Bakker sitting next to the Chief in the passenger seat. He went over to meet them as they pulled up to the front of the building.

"Mr. Wall," Chief Ribb said. "I hear you've been busy."

"Yes Sir. I spotted Webber and followed him here."

A uniformed officer came up to Ribb and said something in Dutch. Ribb turned to Wall.

"The helicopter crew have spotted a broken skylight in one of the buildings. Let's take a look."

The security guards opened the large factory doors and switched on the lights. Wall could see it was a white tiled meat processing plant, with packing machines and conveyor belts spread throughout the factory floor. To the left was an industrial mincer. A sizeable pool of dark red blood covered the white tiled floor. Directly under the spout of the mincer lay a large pile of minced flesh. In silence they walked towards the machine, and stopped at the edge of the blood. The mound of minced flesh and bone was at least a meter high.

"Can that be him?" Bakker muttered.

"A lot of people would like it to be, but I would have preferred him alive." Wall replied.

Wall pointed to the smashed skylight above the meat grinder. "That's where he fell through, I guess."

"I'd imagine so Mr. Wall, but how could he fall in, turn on the machine and mince himself up?"

Bakker went around to the back of the machine where there was no blood. He ran his hand along the inside of the funnel. A sensor automatically switched the machine on. The sound of bone being crushed flesh minced filled the hall. Pieces of minced flesh and bone emerged from the stainless steel spout, and landed on the heap.

"Okay," Ribb said.

"It seems like you caught your man Mr. Wall."

"I hope so, but he was being chased by another guy."

At that moment a team of forensic people in white overalls entered the processing hall.

Chief Ribb raised his hands. "Everybody except those directly connected to the case get out of this building right now and search the grounds. I don't want this area contaminated any more than it is." He turned to Bakker. "Seal off the area and search everywhere for anyone who does not belong here.

Wall stared at the minced flesh.

"More than enough flesh for one person," Ribb said.

"I saw two of them. Someone was chasing Webber. I spotted Webber close to where the helicopter was looking and took after him. Five minutes later there was a whole bunch of other guys on his tail."

"Why didn't you call for reinforcements?"

"I couldn't get a chance. I was on his tail and if I stopped I would have lost him in those small dark streets."

"Where did the rest of them go?"

"I think he gave them the slip, except for one guy. I saw him follow, then lost them both."

Chief Ribb rubbed his chin. "Hmmm."

Wall had the feeling he didn't believe him. To avoid any further questions Wall said, "I'm going to take a look around this place, see what I can find."

"You do that, but I will be expecting a full report on my desk as soon as possible."

"You'll have it."

As far as he could remember it had been years since he filled out a complete and honest report. One or two points were usually left out or added for dramatic expression.

A female voice called out from behind. "Sir? Detective Wall? A young uniformed female officer stood next to a side door about forty metres from the mince machine. "This door has a key inserted into the lock," she said in near perfect English, "and it's not locked."

"Was it open or closed?" Wall asked.

"The door was closed Sir,"

"Check with security to see if they had opened the door, then get forensics to look for DNA and prints."

The young officer radiated with confidence and said "yes Sir," then marched off in search of the security guys. Wall pushed open the door with his foot and stepped outside. The bare concrete revealed nothing. No blood, no footprints, nothing. Wall and Ribb walked over to the fence that surrounded the entire building.

"Getting out was probably easier than getting in," he told Chief Ribb.

"True, although I can see no breaks in the fence. Do a perimeter search Detective Wall. Keep a sharp eye."

Chief Ribb turned and left him standing outside, alone. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter Thirty-Seven

The canteen was once again packed full of uniform and detectives. Dr. Lynne Pruden and Dr. Marsh stood in the corner as Chief Ribb manned the microphone.

"As you can imagine from the crime scene...." The large video screen lit up and showed the inside of the warehouse. The pile of minced flesh could be seen at the bottom of the meat processor.

"It was not easy to sort this out, but up to now we have found two different sets of DNA in the meat grinder, both human. One we believe belongs to Mohammed Asha, who was reported missing by his family the next day. We were able to match his DNA with his father. The second is another matter. At first we could only presume it to be Karl Webber. However, he was not on any of our DNA records, confirmation cannot be ruled out."

A mumble of disappointment spread throughout the room. Ribb clicked his fingers for silence. "Fortunately the hospital did have a tissue sample in their laboratories which they were using for research purposes, and this matched up. So you might say - we got our man."

Wall looked over to the Detective who said before the chase in the squad room, " _we always get our man_." He looked pleased with himself, but ignored Wall.

Since the end of the operation a week ago he sensed a mixture of feelings with a certain amount of tension in the station. Some were mad at him because he left his partner sleeping, while he went out on the search. He tried to make it clear it was not intentional, since there was an emergency, and had no idea where Bakker was in the building. Others resented the fact he found most of the evidence, which was true, but that still did not lead directly to Karl Webber – that was pure chance.

His only real achievement was finding nurse Ans.

After all the evidence came in from that building there was nothing to prove Webber actually murdered her. They found no bird prints, or imprints from crampons, or extra fingerprints or any DNA. The building had been wiped completely and professionally clean. The shredded papers they discovered were invoices from the Medroep Company. According to the Chamber of Commerce records, it had been set up by nurse Ans herself, and it seemed she was the only person employed.

Bakker was not amongst the gathering. Chief Ribb had given him time off, explaining he was _stressed_ out.

"Overspannen," Chief Ribb told Wall. "That's what they called it in Dutch."

Wall couldn't see how that was possible. _He_ had tracked down most of the leads and had been in the chase with the Moroccan and his friends, and _Bakker_ was stressed out?

Wall tried to concentrate on Ribb's speech.

"Among the heap of flesh on the floor we found the remains of glass ampoules we believe Webber used in carrying out the experiments. We also found the remains of a knapsack and a couple of mangled crampons." The screen showed a photo of the twisted stainless steel with sharp deformed metal teeth.

"And something else that might be familiar to a few people..." The next photo was that of a rubber Heron's bird foot.  
Wall chuckled and looked around to see a few of the officers trying to hold in their laugh.

"... and I would like to thank Detective Wall from the New York Police Department for the incredible work he did on the investigation."

"Does that mean I get to carry a weapon?" Wall asked.

"I'm afraid not Mr. Wall, in any case, not on a regular basis."

Harvey Wall's shoulders slumped – everyone in the room laughed.

"But we are looking for a nice apartment for you right now."

"Thank you Sir. The hotel is actually not that bad and I do like the district. If there is an apartment in the area, that would be just fine."

"We will see what we can do Mr. Wall. In the meantime Dr. Pruden and Dr. Marsh will be carrying out more tests on the substances used in the attacks."

Wall glanced over at Dr Lynn Pruden, whose stare remained fixed on Chief Ribb and the screen. He thought about asking her out for another coffee, then remembered the promised boat trip with the stunning head of Human Resources at the hospital. Pruden looked like a tough nut to crack. That HR woman stirred something in him he had not felt since he was a teenager.

Within a week Chief Ribb had found him a one-bedroom apartment with a separate kitchen and living room on the van Eeghenstraat. It overlooked the Vondelpark which he compared to Central Park, but totally different. The atmosphere was livelier, and at times more crowded, with some great places to have a meal or just a beer.

His end of the investigation into Webber came to a standstill when Ribb took him off the case. Much of the work, digging through documents written in Dutch, and interviewing anyone connected was left to other detectives. There were still so many unanswered questions. The big one was why? Was he acting alone? Apart from nurse Ans, no other name showed up in the investigation, at least not while he was working on it. Now that it was out of his hands he felt bewildered. Dropping him from the investigation would never have happened back in New York. Ribb did have a point, everything was in a language that seemed impossible. Even if he did take the time to learn it, there was no way he could master it in the five months he had left.

A week and a half after the events, Bakker was still nowhere to be seen. Chief Ribb did not seem too worried about it, he told him he would be back soon. In the meantime he gave Wall extra days off to move out of the hotel and into his new apartment.

Luckily it was already furnished – the only thing he had to do was stock the kitchen, and get some wine and candles for eventual special visits. With that in mind, he called Evelien Ruiten, and without hesitation she agreed to take him on a boat trip soon.

Finally his six-month vacation with full pay could begin in Amsterdam. From now on he was going to enjoy himself, relax, and make the most of his time in what the press had finally stopped calling – Def-Con City... as least for now!

End of part 1

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dick Dekker whose sound knowledge of the Dutch police force helped me enormously. Louis Lucas whose knowledge of Amsterdam and the tram system was also a great help. Nico Swaan whose sharp eye and lightning speed review helped me get everything ready for print and last but not least Nico Beentjes for his extensive editing and remarks that highlighted my dyslexia in greater detail.

About the Author

Brian Christopher was born in Ireland and has worked as a producer for various broadcast companies in Ireland and the Netherlands. He resides near Amsterdam.

Help

If you enjoyed the story I could do with your feedback. This will help me write full time and create more stories like this. You can also send me a direct email (I reply to all) at brian@brianchristophernovels.com

www.brianchristophernovels.com

Other Books By Brian Christopher

The Amsterdam Chronicles Def-Con City Part 2

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