by Mark Hobson
After what seemed like an age, the van had slowed down. She could tell from the volume of the engine, but also with the motion and juddering, and then they had turned slowly about, the wheels bumping over something in the road, before coming to a halt. The engine gave one final splutter and then fell quiet.
She had waited, her whole body quivering, and she had tried to stifle her sobs, thinking crazily that if she remained quiet the driver might somehow forget about her, which was stupid and childish she knew, but Nina was desperately afraid and panic was seizing her, making wild thoughts flit through her imagination.
She heard the driver’s door slam shut, then the crunching of footsteps on gravel, followed by the loud scrape of the van’s rear door being yanked open. Laboured breathing, then the snap of what must be a padlock right beside her ear, hinges squeaking loudly. Finally, strong hands grabbing her, shoving the gag further into her mouth to silence her scream, and before she could think straight she was being manhandled out of the box and carried away. Freezing cold air brushed against her face and she caught the faint whiff of something familiar, which she was sure was the smell of the sea. Yes, she could hear waves breaking on a shore close by, could recognize the salty tang blowing in the air.
Then they must have been inside somewhere, the man carrying her huffing and puffing as he lugged her along, the chill making her bare arms go all goosebumpy. Nina had felt herself lowered to the floor, and the simple command of: “Stand.”
A key turning in a lock and the recognizable noise of a heavy door opening, then she was scooped off her feet again, the door banging shut. Down some steps and finally she was placed gently onto a soft mattress and the gag removed from her mouth, the blindfold from her eyes.
Now the man telling her he wasn’t going to harm or hurt her.
“That’s not why you are here,” his gruff voice coming from behind the leather hood. “I’m not like that.”
Nina turned her gaze away from him and surveyed her surroundings.
She was in a large room, laying on a small bed pushed into the corner, which had clean sheets and blankets. There was a wardrobe and a set of drawers which also acted as a nightstand, with a lamp on top. On the wall above the bed were a couple of posters showing pop stars, although they were quite old with the corners curling inwards and she didn’t recognize who they were. Beyond this small sleeping area, the rest of the room opened out into a large space containing a couch and a small TV, a tiny square table with two wooden chairs, a rug on the bare stone floor. A bookcase contained a mixture of books and magazines, plus what looked like a selection of DVDs. Over in the far wall was another open doorway, and through there Nina glimpsed a shower cubicle together with a sink and toilet. In the corner of the main room was a wooden staircase that led up to a big, rusty door. It was slightly ajar, and through the gap was the bluish glow of a flickering fluorescent light.
Nina stared hard at the opening, a feeling of desperate hope temporarily flashing through her mind, but when her eyes moved on, a tiny shudder passed through her, for what she saw next crushed that fleetingly brief notion of escape. For beneath the staircase was a tiny metal cage. Just a few feet square, with a small door in the front, and inside a rolled-up blanket. She looked at the cage, and again tears welled up in her eyes, and she shook her head. She was determined not to cry.
The man in the hood must have noticed her reaction for he turned to follow her gaze, and then swivelled his head back in her direction.
A silence stretched out, and after a minute Nina was finally able to speak, her small voice trembling.
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Tobias, if you like,” came the muffled reply.
“Where are we?” Her eyes darted about the room again, noticing for the first time that there were no windows at all.
“That does not matter for now. But you are safe here.”
“Where are my parents?” Nina dreaded hearing the answer. “I want my mum and dad.”
The man gave the tiniest shake of his head. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I’m afraid that you won’t be able to see them again. Not for a long time.”
He stepped a little closer, and she could hear his laboured breathing again.
“This is your new home now. You will be staying here. Is that clear?”
Nina did not respond. A horrible empty feeling in her stomach made her suddenly nauseous, and she was afraid she might vomit.
“I have made a lot of effort making it look nice for you. It is clean and warm, there is heating which you can turn on or off, and you have your own bathroom for your privacy. There is hot water, and a kettle for you to make drinks, with a choice of coffee, hot chocolate, plus snacks. I will bring you food for breakfast and in the evening, or sometimes if I am away I will leave you sandwiches. The TV works and you have lighting, plus books and even some jigsaws. In the wardrobe are new clothes, which I hope will fit you.”
Nina listened as he went on.
“The rules are simple. If you behave and do not cause me trouble then I will treat you kindly. I will not harm you or touch you, I will not do anything inappropriate. Do you understand what that means?”
Nina nodded.
“Good. But if you break the rules, if you give me problems or are unruly, then there will be punishments. Do I need to spell those out for you?”
Again Nina looked over towards the cage in the corner, and she meekly shook her head.
“Very well. I am going to untie you now. Do not scream, do not fight, or bite, or spit. Understand?”
“Yes,” Nina managed a strained whisper.
Reaching forward, the man unfastened first her feet and then her hands, and he quickly stepped back. Nina curled up into a foetal position and pressed her back into the wall behind her.
“Now try to sleep. I will bring you food in the morning.”
With that, he turned and walked away.
Nina watched him climb up the staircase and pull the heavy door shut behind him with a resounding thud, the narrow strip of light from the room above disappearing, taking all hope with it. A key was turned in the lock, bolts were snapped shut - then silence.
Chapter 5
112 Emergency
Telephone call logged as commencing at 7:12pm
Operator: Emergency call-centre 112. Who do you want to talk to?
(inaudible)
Operator: Hello, which service do you require please?
Nina: (whispers) Help, please.
Operator: How may I help you?
Nina: There’s someone in the house.
Operator: Who is in your house?
Nina: A man I think. He’s downstairs and (inaudible)
Operator: There’s a man downstairs? Is he inside your house? Can you see him?
Nina: I’m upstairs, but he’s with mum and dad. They are shouting.
Operator: Your mum and dad are shouting? Are they arguing? How old are you dear?
Nina: Twelve.
Operator: And what’s your name? Are your mum and dad having a row?
Nina: My name’s Nina. There’s a man, and he’s shouting.
Operator: Is it your daddy shouting dear?
Nina: No, the other man. I think they are fighting. I heard them fighting and there was screaming.
Operator: A man is in your house and he is shouting and fighting with your parents? Is that what you mean?
Nina: Yes, he rang the buzzer and then they were fighting and my dad was screaming.
Operator: Ok dear, please give me your address. Do you know your house address?
Nina Bakker provides her home address.
Operator: I’m going to send the police to your house. Is the man still in the house dear?
Nina: Yes, he’s downstairs and I can hear things breaking.
Operator: And whereabouts in the house are you Nina?
Nina: Upstairs, in my bedroom.
Operator: Very good. Please stay where you are Nina. Don’t go downstairs
alright?
Nina: But I think he’s hurting my mum and dad. I can’t hear my mum anymore, but my dad keeps shouting and screaming.
Operator: I understand dear, but it’s very important that you stay in your bedroom.
Nina: (whispers and crying) OK.
Operator: Do you know who this man is Nina? Do you recognize him?
Nina: I don’t think so. I didn’t see him, I just heard his voice and then they started shouting.
Operator: Has this man broken into your house? Is that what you think has happened?
Nina: I think so. (long pause) It’s gone quiet now. They’ve stopped fighting.
Operator: The police are on their way Nina. They should be there very soon.
Nina: Should I go downstairs? Can I go and find my mum and dad?
Operator: No Nina, you need to stay where you are. Wait until the police arrive. Do you understand?
Nina: Yes.
Operator: Good.
Nina: I think (inaudible)
Operator: I didn’t hear you Nina. Can you say that again?
Nina: (whispers) I think someone’s coming upstairs (crying)
Operator: Nina? Do not leave your room. Unless it is your mum or dad, or the police, do not leave your bedroom.
Nina: It’s him. I can hear him coming upstairs. (inaudible) scared.
Operator: I know, dear. Please try and hide somewhere, the police are coming as fast as they can.
(inaudible) (crying)
Operator: Can you hear me Nina?
Nina: He’s outside my room. Please, oh please come quickly.
Operator: Nina, try and stay calm and tell me –
Call ends at 7:16pm
Police Radio message logged as commencing at 7.20pm
Arrest and Support Unit car number 166-D: It was Vondelstraat wasn’t it? Confirm please.
Dispatch Operator: Yes, Vondelstraat 175.
Car number 166-D: Can’t see a fucking thing in this fog. I think we came in at the wrong end, it must be down past the church.
Dispatch Operator: Confirm address is Vondelstraat 175, resident’s name Christiaan Bakker, plus spouse and one female child.
Car number 166-D: She was the caller right? The kid?
Dispatch Operator: Just checking. Yes, she gave her name as Nina.
Car number 166-D: She definitely gave the correct address didn’t she? Because we can’t – wait on – fuck me, there’s smoke everywhere. Hold on.
Dispatch Operator: Are you at the scene 166?
(inaudible shouting)
(muffled sound of car doors slamming and running footsteps)
(long pause -30 seconds)
Car number 166-D: There’s a fucking fire! The whole place is burning! The whole damn building! Send back-up now!
Dispatch Operator: Can you repeat your last?
Car number 166-D: The house is on fire, damn it! The front entrance is like a fucking furnace!
Dispatch Operator: Vondelstraat 175?
Car number 166-D: Yes, yes, send help, send everything you have! We can’t get near!
Dispatch Operator: Acknowledged.
Radio message ends at 7.23pm
The main Amsterdam Police Headquarters building on Elandsgracht was an ugly red-bricked modern office block, its roof bristling with numerous radio antennae and satellite dishes. The inside was not much better, with every room filled to capacity with untidy desks and chairs and PC monitors, the tired and harassed police officers and civilian admin staff working their fingers to the bone.
Inspector Pieter Van Dijk had managed to acquire for himself one of the few corner offices, up on the top floor. It was small and cramped, with one tiny window looking out onto the busy squad-room, and another overlooking Marnixstraat and the canal outside. To add a bit of festive cheer he had stuck a tiny piece of tinsel on the top of his PC monitor with blue tack, and on the table in the corner was an old plastic Christmas tree covered in coloured lights, which he’d found in a cardboard box in the storeroom. The cheap lights flickered occasionally from a loose bulb, but Pieter hardly noticed.
He was too busy re-reading the transcripts from last night’s emergency 112 call, and the subsequent police radio message from the cops first on the scene. They made for grim reading, particularly the call from twelve year old Nina, Mr and Mrs Bakker’s young daughter. The terror in that call was clear, the girl’s pleading for help and the operator’s futile attempts to keep her calm. Even though it was a printed transcript set out verbatim and therefore cold and soulless, the fear of that brief conversation still came through, and Pieter shivered at the emotional impact it had on him.
At lunchtime, a little over an hour ago now, he had received a brief update from the scene of the fire. The police and fire service forensic teams, working in tandem, were still in the process of picking their way through the debris, but several things had already been established. First was that arson was definitely confirmed to be the cause of the fire. Traces of a flammable liquid, in this case petrol, had been discovered in the downstairs hallway, with the heaviest concentrations around the front doorway and over the floor. This was the seat of the fire, the exact spot where the damage was worst and therefore where the inferno had been started. It was also the location of the first body, initially only presumed to be the corpse of Elise Bakker (Pieter could still see her face when one of the techs had rolled her over). This had now just been confirmed by STRs and mtDNA sequence results rushed through the NFI lab in The Hague. They had also verified the identity of the second body, recovered in the dining room; this was indeed the husband, Dr Christiaan Bakker.
So far, so good. Nothing unusual up to that point. They were still searching through the upper floors of the large house for the body of the child, and Pieter expected any time now to hear that her remains had also been recovered. But in the meantime, an odd bit of news had reached him; a piece of info gleaned from the early search of the crime scene. Which connected nicely to something that officer Kaatje Groot had told him last night.
The object that she had observed sticking out of the chest of the male corpse, and which she thought was a small knife, was in fact a hypodermic syringe. This in turn led his memory back to the small plastic cap that he had accidentally caught with his shoe on their way outside.
Pieter hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. He just assumed that it was for someone’s medical requirements. Perhaps a member of the family was diabetic or needed regular injections for another ailment, or maybe it was connected to Christiaan Bakker’s occupation.
But this unusual development regarding the syringe sticking out of the doctor’s chest certainly changed that, and now Pieter was wishing that he’d bagged and tagged the yellow plastic cap.
He hadn’t however, and the chances of ever finding the cap again were slim to non-existent, he reckoned. Not with the number of people passing to and fro through the building, and with the firefighters still damping down the place, and dragging debris out to check for more bodies and to ensure the place was safe and stable.
Of course, he could be barking up the wrong tree. The presence of the syringe might mean absolutely nothing. They would have to wait for any blood and toxicology test results to come back from the lab to see if Dr Bakker had been injected with anything that may have contributed to his demise, instead of this being a case of death resulting from an arson attack.
Yet there was the phone call. The 112 emergency plea for help, and the young girl’s description of an intruder, and a violent struggle involving her parents.
And finally, there were the death threats.
A number of different warnings had apparently been received by the Bakkers, some by telephone and some by hand-written notes. Initially, these threats were only made to Dr Bakker, and in order to shield his family from them, he had decided not to tell them, hoping the threats would either stop or that perhaps he could deal with the situation without alarming his wife and daughter. But later, these messages had been directed at
his wife, Elise. And they had grown increasingly menacing, to such an extent that Dr Bakker had decided to report them to the police.
Sitting in his office Pieter read through the file. There wasn’t much there. The threats had been logged into the system, but no action had been taken, mostly because as quickly as the messages had begun they had stopped, at the exact time that the Bakker’s contacted the police. It may have just been coincidence, but more likely the perpetrator of the messages had got wind that the police were involved, and panicking, he or she had decided to quit rather than risk arrest. The last threat was over three months ago, and since then, nothing.
So, thinking the problem had gone away, Mr and Mrs Bakker, and their daughter Nina, had got on with their lives.
Until last night, that is.
Pieter scrolled back to the previous page on the file and made a note of the evidence bag docket number of this last threat, which had been in the form of a handwritten message. Standing up, he went across to the window looking out onto the squad-room office.
Kaatje Groot, the young rookie officer from last night, was at her desk. She had been hanging around all morning, he’d noticed. Technically, she should have been downstairs with Floris De Kok helping him in the files section, but somehow she had managed to find some task that kept her up here in the main squad-room instead. Her desk was also suspiciously close enough to Pieter’s office so that she could keep one eye on his door, and she had angled her chair and laptop so that she was facing in his direction.
Pieter gave a little shake of his head and smiled to himself.
He tapped on the glass to get her attention, and her head snapped up. Beckoning her over, Pieter reached for the yellow Post-it note he’d written on, and in the three seconds this took, she was there in the doorway, looking at him with her wide brown eyes.
“Hello sir.”
“Officer Groot. What time did you finish last night?”
“Oh, about 5am this morning”
“Shouldn’t you be off duty until later? Getting some shut-eye?”
Kaatje Groot shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not a very good sleeper sir. I don’t see the sense in mooching about back home when I could be here, working and, you know, helping out.”
