by Mark Hobson
She heard him tapping away on a keyboard.
“The normal range for the focusing beam is 4.5 to 7, with a maximum of 7.5. I think 15 shall do. And a pulse strength measuring 193nm is standard. Let’s push that up to 300nm’s shall we? That will ensure maximum depth and should result in permanent effectiveness. Very good, we are all set.”
Visser leaned forward in his seat and gazed into the magnifying eyepiece attached to his diagnostic display.
“You will experience a series of rapid pulses of light, first in your left eye and then your right eye. There will also be a burning sensation as the cornea peels away under the focussing beam and XR Laser, followed by the lens becoming permanently displaced. After this, the light pulses will penetrate through the vitreous body of the eye to the optic nerve. The damage will be unrepairable.”
“Please Visser, stop this. I’m a police officer! For Christ’s sake don’t do this!”
Visser made no comment, now too intent on his work.
Kaatje lay there helplessly, her breathing coming in quick and short gasps, hoping, praying that he was just bluffing, but when she heard a high-frequency whine come from the machinery and then saw the lens of the laser above her suddenly dilate and turn white, her fear made her heart leap up into her mouth.
A series of rapid white pulses made her vision blur, and a split-second later the excruciating pain hit her, and she screamed like she had never screamed before. It felt like someone had pushed a red-hot piece of wire straight into her eye, going deeper and deeper, and the burning agony ratcheted up so high that her brain flared red.
Kaatje bucked and twisted on the couch.
The laser seemed to melt right through her skull.
The pain went up and up.
It continued to soar.
◆◆◆
Pieter reached his home just as it was growing dark.
He’d decided to pop in to work for a couple of hours on the Saturday afternoon, still frustrated at the lack of progress in the case, pessimistic at the potential of any major breakthrough.
Yesterday’s chat with Ernie Clegg had been disappointing but at least the old soldier had given him a description of their as-of-yet only suspect, and so Pieter had entered the details into the national crime-linkage database, ViCASnl (Violent Crime Analysis System Netherlands) to see if any links with other offences or known criminals triggered a hit. Yet he didn’t hold out much hope. The description – a well-built white male wearing brown overalls and work boots and a baseball cap, driving a dark van – was so vague that it probably encompassed half of the crimes committed on a daily basis throughout the country.
Next, he had popped down to see Floris de Kok (aka Adolf) down in his basement filing section to ask him to pull a list of all known paedophiles on the city’s sex-offenders list and to run checks on their whereabouts and alibis for the approximate time of the fire and abduction. He also requested information on their current occupations.
He’d set off home, calling off at the minimarket on Raadhuisstraat to buy a few essentials for the weekend. Ten minutes later he pulled to a halt outside the tall canal house where he lived on the Singel canal, noticing vaguely the hire car parked by the pavement, and used the key fob to open his garage doors. Then he was climbing the stairs up to the third floor – the living area of his house – and started to unpack his shopping. Outside, it was just starting to snow.
His phone vibrated and it took him a moment to fish it out of his jacket, which was hanging on the back of the kitchen door.
“Hello,” he answered without bothering to check the caller ID.
After a moment’s pause a voice responded. Just two simple words, but they were enough to freeze him to the spot, and his heart skipped and twitched tightly in his chest.
“Hello Pieter,” said a silky, and instantly familiar voice.
He dropped the box of eggs that he had been holding, barely registering the splat that they made as they hit the floor. A wave of dizziness nearly overwhelmed him and he quickly grasped the back of a chair.
“You?” he breathed, his throat all scratchy and constricted.
“I’ve missed you,” Lotte told him, and, shit, she actually sounded like she meant it!
Pieter could think of no response. A whole range of thoughts and emotions whirled through his head as he tried to comprehend this unexpected turn of events. That Lotte was still around and on the run was no surprise: after all, he had seen her very briefly during his period of convalescence on the coast during the summer, and the international manhunt for her was still as active and intense as ever. But until now there had been no leads or sightings of her anywhere, no clues as to her whereabouts. Yet here she was, popping up like some horrible memory, resurfacing, leaving him feeling like he’d been kicked in the gut.
“I’m afraid that I can’t see you in person. Not on this occasion anyway. Maybe next time, and we can catch-up. But I do have someone here who wants to talk to you.”
There was another long pause, then a different voice, this one almost incomprehensible and talking slowly, sounding like a drunk, the words all slurred.
“Pieter… I… please, they have done something to my…”
“Kaatje? Kaatje, is that you?” A coldness went through him like his veins were suddenly filled with ice instead of blood.
“I’m sorry…” she managed to say, her voice quiet and shaky.
Then Lotte came back on the line.
“Look outside your window Pieter.”
The phone went silent.
For several seconds he didn’t react. He just stood there looking at the mobile phone in his hand. When the words eventually registered he dashed headlong through the kitchen door, along the short landing, and through to the lounge. He yanked the curtains aside and stared down at the street below, a sense of deja-vu flickering in his memory.
The streetlight there showed him that the lane was empty apart from the parked hire car: he could see no figures or traffic, nothing out of the ordinary, only falling snow flakes. Then, from the silence came the sound of a car’s engine, suddenly increasing in volume and in seconds becoming a loud roar. It came into view and screeched to a halt just opposite, and the rear passenger door was flung open and something dark fell out into the roadway, and in an instant, the car was pulling away again, the door slamming shut as the vehicle raced out of sight.
Pieter stared hard at the object lying motionless on the cobbled road. He knew very well what it was. Who it was.
He raced down the stairs, tearing headlong from the third floor all the way to the entrance hallway at street level, and he quickly flung open the heavy front door and leaped down the stone steps into the cobbled street.
He approached the body lying in the road on legs that had suddenly turned to jelly, fearing the worst, but as he reached Kaatje he caught the slightest of movements from her, and relief washed over him as he grabbed her by the shoulder and rolled her over.
Pieter recoiled in horror.
Her face was deathly pale and her lips had turned blue, and she was quivering, her whole body now starting to convulse violently. But the worst thing, something that he knew would stay with him forever, were her eyes.
Twin bloody holes where the eyes should have been stared sightlessly back at him, as though they had been torn or ripped out, or something had bored deeply through them.
Pieter looked down at Kaatje, a deep well of pity bringing tears to his own eyes, and he held her tightly, shouting for help, for somebody to call an ambulance.
He saw her mouth move. She was trying to tell him something. He leaned his ear close to her lips, catching her whispered words.
“Visser. Visser did this.”
Then she slipped into unconsciousness.
Snow continued to fall, wrapping them in a white cocoon.
Chapter 13
Unit 1 – Red Zone
He stayed with Kaatje until the paramedics arrived. They spent over thirty minutes trying to stabilize he
r before setting off to the hospital, and Pieter spent the whole time holding her hand as she lay in the back of the ambulance. At one point she had regained consciousness and started to talk incoherently, becoming more and more agitated, and he had tried to reassure her with words of comfort, even though there was little he could say to allay her fears: he was no expert, but it seemed obvious to him that, although her life may not have been in danger, the damage to her eyes would be permanent. She would never regain her sight.
The horror of what she’d endured sickened him. He could not fathom the pure evil involved. But as soon as she had mentioned the name Visser the motive became clear. This was an act of revenge as well as a warning, in response to their visit to the clinic yesterday. Kaatje must have returned there on her own, or been taken against her will, and it was all tied up somehow in the Nina Bakker abduction case and the murder of her parents.
Pieter had climbed back out of the ambulance and stood there in the falling snow as the vehicle pulled away, its blue lights flashing and lighting up the wintry scene. Then he had gone back inside, up the staircase to his bedroom, and retrieved his firearm from its metal locker at the back of his wardrobe. It was strictly against regulations to keep the gun at home, and he could find himself under a mandatory referral to the Dutch Police Federation Sanctions Board if anybody found out, but ever since the spring he felt the need to make sure he was prepared for if – or when – Lotte had made a reappearance. And after tonight’s incidents, he now felt fully justified in doing so.
Putting on the shoulder holster, he slipped in the gun and put his leather jacket on over the top and then grabbed his car keys off the kitchen table.
A few minutes later and he was driving away.
Just what precisely Lotte’s role was in all of this he did not know. That could come later. For now there was only one thing on his mind.
He raced through the evening traffic with the emergency light on the dashboard flashing a warning to the other cars and bicycles to make way, and each time he reached a junction he ignored the red lights and manoeuvred his way carefully and speedily through the cross-traffic, hoping the other drivers would slow and allow him safe passage.
Approaching the eye clinic in Osdorp he cut the siren and quietly turned off the main road, noting how few cars were parked in the car park. The area reserved for members of staff was completely deserted. There was just one single car in the far corner near where the grassy slope led down to the small lake.
Pulling up in the shadows, Pieter climbed out. It had stopped snowing again and the ground was covered in just a thin dusting of white. Overhead, a crescent moon dominated the sky. The frozen lake seemed to glow a milky-white as he crunched his way over to the main entrance.
The building was mostly in darkness. The security lights on the outside walls were switched off, and the windows of the complex were dark and impenetrable. The place had a deserted air about it, which rather than making him feel more relaxed and at ease, actually triggered an internal alarm inside him, and his nerves kicked in, making him ultra alert. The more so when he saw the sliding doors of the front entrance were wide open.
He slid out his firearm and held it with the barrel pointed down at the ground. From his coat pocket he removed a flashlight. Playing the strong beam in through the entrance, he quickly scanned the interior, and once he was sure the way was clear, Pieter carefully stepped into the foyer.
It was eerily quiet. Everything was powered down; the ceiling lights, the computer monitors on the receptionist’s desk, the large HD television in the seating area. He noticed a cup of coffee on the counter in front of him, and, moving over, he reached out the hand holding the flashlight and touched it with his fingertips. Stone cold.
Pieter shook his head. During yesterday’s visit with Kaatje, the place had given him the creeps, there’d been something about the clinic that got under his skin. But now, standing in the dark and empty and silent foyer, he felt himself shiver as though something had passed over his grave, and he looked back over his shoulder towards the passage leading inside the facility. He had the damndest notion that he was being watched.
Something caught his eye then. A thin sliver of light showing underneath a door, and he remembered this was Julian Visser’s office.
Pieter trod silently over and pressed his ear to the door. He could hear nothing on the other side.
Switching off the flashlight and returning it to his coat pocket, he gently took a hold of the door handle and twisted it as quietly as possible, and eased the door open, the hand holding the firearm ready to come up.
The office was empty and he breathed a sigh of relief.
Passing through the doorway and leaving the door slightly ajar, he stood there and looked around Visser’s cramped little office.
The place was a mess. The desk, which had three computer monitors arranged in a U-shape facing the swivel chair, was strewn with papers and pens and brown cardboard folders. A glass of water had overturned and rolled onto the carpet, leaving a damp patch on the floor near a filing cabinet. Stacks of paperwork had been piled up in untidy columns on a side-table, and some of these had toppled over, making it impossible not to step on sheets of paper as he walked over to the desk.
A potted plant on top of the filing cabinet had turned brown, its leaves all curled up and dying, and a half-eaten sandwich lay discarded in a waste-paper bin. It looked to have been there for days. A dusty smell lingered in the air, adding to the sense that Visser had not been one for maintaining a clean and well-organized workspace.
Pieter put his firearm back into his shoulder holster and choosing a brown folder at random he picked it up off the desk.
On the front, handwritten in capitals, it said: PATIENT 27 – U1 RZ. PROCEDURE: 3 - date 22nd JANUARY
He flipped it open. Inside was a photo of a young child, a boy of around five or six, paper-clipped to a sheaf of medical notes. The boy’s eyes were all bloodshot and watery, but whether the picture was pre-op or post-op Pieter didn’t know.
He scanned his gaze over the paperwork which all seemed fairly standard stuff. The child’s date of birth, address, general health. There was mention of a pre-existing condition: AMBLYOPIA, which Pieter knew was the correct medical term for a lazy eye. But no name. Just PATIENT 27.
Below was a handwritten note:
Following complications the patient was recommended for SPECIAL PROCEDURE in Unit One.
It was signed by both Dr Christiaan Bakker and his assistant Julian Visser.
Pieter dropped the file back onto the desk and picked up another.
This one was for PATIENT 41 – U1 RZ. PROCEDURE: 3 – date 28th MARCH, and inside was a photo of an Asian woman, who according to her notes was aged fifty-nine and requiring lens replacement treatment.
Again the same recommendation for the SPECIAL PROCEDURE in Unit One.
Another folder: PATIENT 46 – U1 RZ. PROCEDURE: 3 – date 2nd APRIL. A thirty-six year old male needing retinal detachment repair work, and being put forward once again for the SPECIAL PROCEDURE
He tossed the file onto the cluttered desktop and stood there thinking things over.
Unit One RZ? he pondered. SPECIAL PROCEDURE? Where was Unit One, and what exactly did this SPECIAL PROCEDURE entail?
Determined to find out, and wanting to ask a few serious questions about what had happened to Kaatje, Pieter left the office, his gun back in his hand. Most of all he wanted to privately confront Visser, before he called in police back-up and let the wheels of justice take over.
He moved over to the internal corridor. The automatic doors here were locked in the open position just as the main entrance was, and once again he found himself following the coloured lines on the polished floor, using the flashlight to light his way.
The place was strangely deserted. Everywhere there was a hushed and empty feel, as though the entire clinic had been abandoned, evacuated even, in a rush. Just ahead was a wheelchair left askew across the passage, and further along a pati
ent’s gown lay discarded on the floor – not that he had seen any signs of actual patients yesterday. And as he entered the glass-covered passageway he felt something crunch beneath his feet, so he pointed the beam of the flashlight down, and saw thousands of tiny red and white capsules and tablets spilled across the floor.
Stepping through them he entered the separate building block of the facility. A few metres ahead and the yellow line swung to the right and disappeared beneath a door – CONSULTATION ROOM No 1 he remembered. He headed across.
Before he pushed through the door he noticed a bank of light switches on the wall and he reached out and flicked both rows down. To his surprise, the lights in this section still worked, and everywhere the bright ceiling lights flickered to life. Switching off the flashlight and ramming it into his coat pocket, Pieter entered, using the barrel of his gun to push open the door.
The room was familiar, and once more there was nobody here. Yesterday, during his walk around the place, he’d peered through the glass and given the place a cursory glance, and everything was how he recalled. Now he decided to have a better look around.
The first thing he noticed was that it was much tidier than Visser’s office. The L-shaped desk was reasonably well organized and the chair was pushed neatly under it. On the surface, as well as the monitors and a large, square leather blotter with pen and several blank envelopes, there was a small stack of kidney-shaped stainless steel medical dishes, as well as a chunky pair of magnifying eyeglasses with small LED lights attached to both sides. He spotted nothing unusual. Putting his gun away, he tried the desk drawers, but they were all locked and there was no key.
Behind the desk was the examination couch surrounded by a bank of equipment and lights and a keratometer. On the wall opposite was a standard eye chart of the sort found in every opticians.
Tucked into the far corner there was a tall freezer with a glass door. On the shelves inside were four or five trays filled with test tube samples.
