by Mark Hobson
“I admire your commitment. Long may it last.”
He handed her the Post-it note where he’d scribbled the evidence bag number.
“Pop down to Floris will you, and ask him to find me this? He has his own crazy system for filing evidence and paperwork that I haven’t mastered yet.”
Kaatje took the note. “Will do sir.”
As she hurried away Pieter could hear her happily humming Christmas tunes to herself.
Five minutes later she was back.
Placing the small clear plastic evidence bag on his desk she loitered in his office, looking over his shoulder.
Pieter glanced around.
“That will be all for now officer.”
“Oh, of course. I’ll be just outside if you need anything else sir. That’s my desk,” she pointed, “just there.”
When Kaatje was gone Pieter turned back and picked up the slim bag and peered at the contents.
Pay your debt, or get what’s coming.
The message was hand-written on a small scrap of lined notepaper. The letters were written in a very basic form as though purposely over-simplified, no doubt to fool any handwriting experts. But that in itself could be revealing as to the sort of personality and characteristics of the person responsible.
As to the actual contents of the message? Well, it was short and to the point, and it certainly carried a direct threat, but what that threat and the wording alluded to was harder to conclude. What debt was it referencing? Also, if this debt wasn’t forthcoming, what was waiting just around the corner for Mr and Mrs Bakker and their daughter?
The motive to most murder cases could nearly always be found by looking into the victim’s personal life or financial circumstances, and that was always the first step. Getting forensic evidence to back up any theories came second, as often any results from the lab could take days or weeks, and sometimes months, to come back down the line.
Get someone to check the family's background and their associates, and find out if they had any enemies. And whilst the police were doing that, hope that the boffins at NFI would ferret out any forensics.
Pieter read a couple of notations in the file. The handwriting and notepaper hadn’t yet been tested. Presumably once the threats stopped any urgency to do so ceased to be a priority.
So he filled out requests for EED and Electro-static Detection Apparatus tests to be done on the paper, as well as to run the handwriting sample through the database.
Just then his phone buzzed and vibrated on his desk, and he picked it up to see he had a text message. He checked the sender – Fleur van den Heuvel, the Chief Fire Officer on the scene. He remembered the sour-faced female firefighter from last night, and his lip involuntarily turned up.
REMAINS OF TWO ADULTS RECOVERED.
NO THIRD BODY. FULL CHECK OF THE PREMISES COMPLETED.
He thought about texting back, perhaps adding a love heart, but the compulsion soon left him.
So, there was no sign of the daughter, which begged the question: where was Nina Bakker?
Chapter 6
Arrival
While Pieter was at work slowly reaching the conclusion that they were now dealing with a murder and kidnapping/abduction case, Johan Roost’s flight from Johannesburg was just coming in to land at Schiphol airport. The long twelve-hour overnight flight had been the usual never-ending nightmare of uncomfortable seats, combined with tasteless food, ridiculously bad movies to watch on the entertainment system and stale recycled air. So, even though he hated crowded and hectic airport lounges, he was glad when it was time to get off the plane and stretch his legs as he strolled through Arrivals.
His niece, the beautiful and hypnotic Lotte, had made it quite clear that he should under no circumstances draw attention to himself, or that they should be seen in public together. And although she could easily have arranged for a driver to meet him at the airport, he actually preferred to travel incognito, and with minimal fuss. So he followed the signs for the NS station beneath the airport terminal, to travel by train to Amsterdam’s Centraal Station.
He had just one medium-sized suitcase with him. His other kit, containing the AX338 Sniper Rifle as well as specialized surveillance gear, had been re-routed from South Africa to The Netherlands via Russia, and thanks to some old contacts he had there from the Soviet era, had been repackaged in crates stamped with a diplomatic seal and the necessary customs forms filled out, all to ensure they arrived untampered with. They should all be in place waiting for him.
So he walked through the airport, mingling with the crowds, looking like any other tourist here to enjoy a few days in the Dutch capital.
When he was down on the train platform he took out one of three cheap burner phones he carried and switched over to the national mobile network. He sent a quick text to a memorized number – LET’S HIT THE TOWN BUDDY? – and then deleted the message. Moving casually down towards the end of the platform Johan removed the SIM card and dropped it into a litter bin, and then, ensuring nobody was watching, he dropped the phone itself onto the rail tracks near the tunnel entrance.
Onboard the train he stood near the door and watched the scenery through the windows, the white and frosty fields soon giving way to the city’s outer suburbs. It was sleeting, and the sky was a dismal grey colour, the light already leaking from the sky even though it was only mid-afternoon. He was freezing cold. He longed for the warmth and open spaces of home, yet an undeniable thrill passed through him.
The familiar and electrifying buzz that he always felt when carrying out a hit.
◆◆◆
After a short rest, Johan had hired a car using a cloned credit card and driven through the confusing network of roads across Amsterdam’s Old Centre, weaving his way around trams and bicycles, and then found a place to park near the canal on Elandsgracht. Just over the road was the main Police Headquarters building.
From where he sat he had a clear view of the area reserved for staff parking, just at the side of the red-bricked office block. He could also keep watch on the main entrance, and could see people coming and going.
He waited for nearly two hours. Outside, it grew dark, and he sat with the car’s heating turned up to full, feeling the cold seeping through the thick fur-lined jacket he wore.
Eventually, a little after seven o’clock, he spotted his target emerge from the building and stroll along the pavement before turning down the side street. Johan watched him climb into his car, turn on the headlights, and then slip out into the flow of traffic.
Turning the ignition, he waited until the other vehicle was about fifty yards ahead, before he pulled out and followed on behind.
It was only a short journey to the policeman’s house. Johan already knew the address and he could have just waited for him there, but whenever he was on a job he liked to learn a bit about the target, his route to and from work, his daily routines, whether he diverted to visit friends or family, if he might call for a drink or a bite to eat and where his regular haunts were and what kind of car he drove, his habits, the gait of his walk even. Every tiny detail could prove to be important when the time came, and careful reconnaissance work like this could prove the difference between success and failure, and how to deal with any unexpected hitches that might crop up. The more he knew and learnt, the more groundwork he carried out, the better.
They drove down Prinsengracht, Johan noting all the lights everywhere, with all the bridges over the canals lit up in fancy displays of colour. He remembered Lotte mentioning some special annual event, The Festival Of Light or some such shit, which he admitted to himself did look pretty, with all the nice reflections rippling on the water in a thousand different patterns. Part of the Christmas celebrations he presumed. Yes, certainly the city did look nice at this time of the year, just as his niece had said. If only it weren’t so fucking cold.
On the far side of the canal loomed the tall spire of Westerkerk, and shortly after, the car up ahead turned right. Johan followed, and they drove
over four different bridges before turning left onto Singel Canal. Here, he slowed down in order to hang back, and he watched the other car slowly crawl down the cobbled road. It came to a brief halt, an electronic garage door opened below one of the houses, and the other car was steered inside. The door came back down.
With his own car engine idling quietly further up the road, Johan watched and waited. A couple of minutes later, and the upstairs lights went on in the tall canal house.
Johan eased his car forward and parked up just opposite the closed garage doors, and he turned the engine off.
Twisting sideways, he reached behind him and retrieved a slender aluminium case from the backseat. Placing it on his lap he tapped in a six-digit number into the small touchscreen keypad and popped open the lid.
Inside were a small laptop and an integrated 8-Antenna handheld 4G IMSI – catcher. The mobile-phone interceptor was an EU/UK P8-LG version, with a 30-metre radius, and would be perfect for the job.
An IMSI device acted like a fake mobile phone mast to intercept calls and texts. It could be used to listen in to phone conversations or to record them and play them back later from any targeted mobile phone. Incoming and outgoing calls could be tagged, likewise with text messages. A handy gadget, completely illegal, but easily purchased online.
Johan booted up the laptop and phone-catcher and ran the software to automatically scan the surrounding area within a 30 metre radius of where he was sitting, which easily included the tall canal house over the road. Five different phone numbers in the locale appeared on-screen. He typed in the target phone’s long IMSI number, and a few seconds later the words TARGET CAPTURED popped up and began to flash.
Satisfied that all was in order Johan sat back in his seat. Now all he had to do was wait.
Pieter made a stir-fry for dinner, and afterwards tried to watch a bit of TV, but he could find nothing interesting in the schedules and he wasn’t in the mood to watch anything on-demand, so after a half-hour, he switched it off. For a while he pottered about. Yet his mind kept returning to the case, unable to stop going over events and running through various scenarios. Eventually he decided to go up to the attic and switch on the old PC, to check his emails and any updates from work.
As he suspected, there was nothing yet from forensics or the post mortems, plus it was still too early to know what was in the syringe sticking out of Christiaan Bakker’s chest. Waiting on any results from the lab could be the worst part of the job, particularly when dealing with a murder case. If they were also looking at an abduction then time was of the essence, and considering that the missing person was a twelve year old girl gave things an added level of concern. The clock, therefore, was ticking.
Tomorrow afternoon a press conference had been scheduled to update everyone on the current state of affairs. His boss, Commissaris Dirk Huijbers, had decided to helm the media circus, and Pieter was grateful for small mercies. If Huijbers wanted all the limelight then that was fine by him. However, Pieter had received instructions to bring the Commissaris up to speed on where the investigation was, and their face-to-face meeting was scheduled for one hour before the press briefing was due to kick off, and this early in the case he had very little to report. Huijbers no doubt knew this. He was just happy to make Pieter squirm, especially after the fiasco of the Werewolf case. But whether he liked the idea of getting another rollicking or not was neither here nor there. He had to have something to give to Huijbers, some small scrap of progress, if only to see the smirk disappear off his face, so hence the reason for tonight’s bit of out-of-hours prepping.
Pieter once again considered the possible motives for a double murder and abduction. The latter part was self-explanatory: whenever a young child, especially a girl, was taken then the sexual element was always at the forefront of the list of reasons as to why a child was taken.
Most abductions tended to fall into two categories. Either the victim was known to the perpetrator, and he or she had held unhealthy thoughts about the victim for quite some time – perhaps a relative or close friend of the family. Or it was a stranger who, unable to control his desires any longer, grabbed the first opportunity to abduct a child to quickly satisfy his perverted desires. Yet with the second category – a stranger snatching a child – the vast majority of times these were unplanned, a quick grab and snatch of a child walking home from school for instance, and last night’s abduction didn’t feel like that. It was early days of course, but Pieter had the sense it had been carefully planned and prepared. In which case it most likely fell into the first category of child abductions - that the person who took Nina had actually known her.
However, once again that didn’t feel right. Why take the huge risk of taking her from home? Why not arrange to take her from a safer location? So much could have gone wrong last night for the kidnapper, there were so many unknowns. Also, committing a double-murder was a huge step-up from some sick paedophile with a liking for young girls.
So, was child abduction the real motive here, Pieter wondered? Was Nina even the real target? Taking her to hold for ransom seemed unlikely given the fact that her parents, who were both wealthy, had been murdered. If that were the motive – taking the child for financial gain – then why murder the parents?
Which brought him back to Christiaan and Elise Bakker.
The motive to most murder cases could nearly always be found by looking into the victim’s personal life or financial circumstances. His own thought from earlier came back to him, and tonight, sitting at the wooden desk up in the cramped attic room of his canal house, Pieter considered this.
Yes, first thing tomorrow he was determined to open a new element to the investigation.
Perhaps murder was the main motive, and the taking of the child was secondary.
Looking into the parents' private lives might be the key. Did they have marital problems, or issues at work, or money worries? The latter seemed unlikely given their apparent wealth, but of course appearances could be deceptive. Perhaps Christiaan Bakker had run up debts (the threats referred to such a possibility) and he was keeping this from his wife, a very common thing where male pride was concerned. Had this resulted in his making enemies?
Pieter got up from his chair and strolled around the attic room, thinking fast.
They would have to look into the Bakkers banking arrangements. Plus get access to their mobile records, their email correspondence, and their browser history. The fire damage would delay this, but remote access to the necessary details wouldn’t be too difficult, but it would take several days.
In the meantime, there was something he could be doing.
Pieter picked up his mobile from the desk and scrolled through the list of contacts from work. He found Kaatje Groot’s number, and after a moment’s hesitation, he messaged her.
HEY, YOU FANCY TAKING A TRIP IN THE MORNING?
He tucked the phone into his rear pocket and strolled over to the small dormer window. The earlier sleety weather had cleared, leaving a cloudless night sky sprinkled with stars. It would be cold tonight, with a heavy frost in the morning. Maybe the canals might freeze over this winter, which would be nice.
His phone buzzed with a reply, which read:
YES PLEASE ☺ WHERE ARE WE GOING BOSS?
He tapped out a response:
IT’S A SURPRISE. I’LL PICK YOU UP AT YOUR PLACE. 8am SHARP
Pieter hovered his finger over the mobile’s keypad and decided to add a smiley of his own at the end. He tapped SEND.
A couple of minutes later and Kaatje replied with her home address.
Sitting in his car across the street, Johan Roost followed the exchange of messages.
Chapter 7
The Basement
On the second morning, Nina Bakker was woken by the sound of the metal door scraping open, followed by the clomp-clomp of heavy work boots coming down the stairs.
She stirred, reluctant to open her eyes and come to full consciousness. She had been dreaming about her parents,
a memory of the time last year when they had gone to Kinderdijk to see the windmills there, and Nina clung to the dream in desperation. But the images broke up in her mind, dissolving like the spring dew on the grass, and she rolled over on the bed. Sitting up, she looked across the basement room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
The man in the welder’s hood and boiler suit was back. He was standing by the small dining table, holding a tray of cereal and orange juice and toast, which smelled nice. He placed it on the wooden surface and then turned to her, his body posture non-threatening but still guarded, hanging back as though not quite sure what to do next.
Through the narrow visor his eyes, which during his visits yesterday she’d seen were a clear blue colour and soft, so soft, appraised her calmly, and despite the horrible situation she was in Nina no longer felt quite so scared.
Yesterday had been her first full day here, and sitting on the edge of the bed now, and looking back at him, she thought back, her mind going over the previous day’s events.
Like today he had brought her breakfast. She’d no idea of the time but presumed it must be quite early. Through the leather hood, he had mumbled a quick hello, and then left, locking the door behind him.
Sliding off her bed and still wearing the same clothes that she’d been wearing the night before when she had been snatched from her home and her parents, Nina had cautiously approached the dining table. He’d brought her hot pancakes with syrup, a glass of fruit juice and a bowl of yoghurt and apple slices. Looking at it, with her tummy rumbling, she’d realized just how famished she was, and so she’d sat in one of the chairs and ate ravenously, keeping one eye on the door at the top of the stairs.
Finishing her breakfast, Nina stayed seated and cast her eyes around the room again, once more taking in the basement area. She thought about taking a shower as she felt grubby and smelly, but was too nervous to place herself in a potentially vulnerable position like that. At least not yet, not until she knew she could trust him. He’d made it quite clear last night that he didn’t intend to do anything weird but until she felt more at ease, washing and showering could wait for now. But what she could do was quickly change her clothes.
