In less than thirty minutes two trucks from the forensics team arrived and were zipping up, getting ready to enter the building. Ribb stood next to Wall and Bakker, who were already in their white protective clothing. Bakker had an extra pair in the back of his Citroen which he gave to Wall. 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 really have to bring in extra people with this right now."
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 my colleagues?" Wall cried out. "Those guys couldn't find shit."
"And if you let me finish detective Wall?"
Wall took a deep breath.
"It's also not fair on the people who died."
That was a cheap shot, but it hit home. Wall nodded. 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 as much leeway Ribb had given them.
The door to the building on the Roggeveenstraat was opened by a 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 with Ribb. Wall shook his head. There was something about Dutch logic he could not fathom. He followed them into the building.
Other than the pile of post inside the door, the rooms downstairs were completely empty. The forensics team immediately began dusting for fingerprints and swabbed for evidence of DNA.
Wall and Bakker went into each room on the ground floor. The only thing they found were scraps of paper on the floor. 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. Wall carefully unlocked the latches and took out the paper vacuum bag. It was full, but light.
Cautiously he ripped it open, trying carefully not to spill the contents. He found clumps of fiber and dirt and dust and strands of hair and more scraps of paper, and 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 the small snippets of paper and looked at them closely. He held them up to Bakker.
"What does that look like to you?" Wall asked Bakker.
"Judging by the color 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 a white overalls entered with a large black bin bag. It looked full, and lightweight.
Wall held out his hand. "Let's take a look at that." He took the bag and put 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. "It's going to take a while to work all that out."
Bakker rummaged through the contents of the bag. "I don't think so. I've got a computer program that can connect up all the different pieces of paper and join them up in the right order. It will probably take more time to lay them out to scan them."
Wall closed the bag and handed it to Bakker. "Cool," he said. "Then it's all yours."
Bakker took the bag. "Great, thanks," he said, looking 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."
"I think that's where they had the map."
"You bet your sweet ass it is." Wall replied.
Bakker took a closer look at the blue tack. "Looks like thumbprints."
"Up here," Ribb shouted, from the floor above them.
The stairs led up to a small, narrow and dark attic room. As 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. There were remnants of a fully clothed female, in a dark gray cardigan lying in the bed, melted, just like Raemon Dort, except there was no water to keep it all together.
"I guess we found our Ans," Wall said.
Bakker pulled open the curtains and the light flooded in. Suddenly they could see everything. Her body was lying on the 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 could recognize 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 murder," Wall said cynically.
"And why is that Mr. Wall?" Ribb said, as if testing him. There was no doubt this was an accident. He decided to play along.
"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 it is all one big test. Mouth, belly, chest or whatever. This lady got the whole shebang, just like the guy in the bathtub. There were no other strange deaths found in his vicinity, and I don't think you'll find them here either."
Wall looked over at the dead flat body small single bed. "This is definitely a 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. But 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 get out of the hospital who in some weird way 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-Three
The Amsterdam Chronicles: Def-Con City Trilogy Part 1 Page 47
