by Mark Hobson
“He’s a ship breaker. He works for NV Damen, a small business in the Western Islands. When they have enough work for him that is.”
Pieter knew the place. It was just to the west of Centraal Station. He and his dad used to take walks there sometimes, when the weather was nice and his dad was sober.
“Do you have an address for him? Where is he living these days?”
He tried to sound casual, but inside he could feel his excitement starting to build.
“He moved out in January. To a small place in Warder. It’s on the coast, just north of Edam. A tiny community full of fishing boats and seagulls. He was brought up in that part of Holland. Tobias has always liked the smell of the sea.”
◆◆◆
Tobias had been in another of his rages for nearly two days now.
Down in the basement, Nina heard him stomping back and forth across the room just over her head, banging doors and talking loudly but inaudibly to himself, and occasionally screaming obscenities.
She’d heard him arrive back home the night before last (on a Friday evening she thought, although she was already losing track of the days) and all that night she had lain in her bed listening to him tearing the place apart, smashing things, thumping and kicking the walls, or overturning the furniture by the sounds of it, yelling and making a terrifying ruckus, and Nina had shut her eyes and tried to block out the noise. It had been impossible. The sheer violence of his anger petrified her, making her cringe and duck at each new bang, at every guttural and muffled roar. It was only towards the early hours that things had finally gone quiet; perhaps sheer exhaustion had eventually overcome Tobias.
What was wrong? Nina wondered.
Was it something to do with what had happened that morning at breakfast, the way he had reacted after she’d asked him, in all innocence, if Tobias truly was his name? The way he had quietly left as though the question had unsettled him somehow? Thinking back, she remembered hearing him talking loudly to himself soon after followed by what she thought was the sound of crying, and then a short while later by the slamming of a door. He’d been gone all that day, returning later and launching into this never-ending rage.
The following morning she had awoken to relative quiet. A short time after, and she could make out the muffled sound of a TV or a radio. During the afternoon there was the occasional banging and scraping, a little more shouting, and then more hush. But as the day wore on the shouting became worse again, and by early evening the commotion and discord grew into a continuous uproar.
Luckily, he had not been down to see her or to bring her food, and although she was grateful for that considering his obvious anger, this also concerned her. And as Saturday night stretched into Sunday morning with no let-up in the sounds from above, and after two days of being left alone down here, Nina had come to the conclusion that she needed to get out of here. She needed to try and escape.
That Tobias – if that were even his real name – was totally and dangerously deranged was now obvious to Nina. Her attempts to talk to him, to befriend him, had failed. It had seemingly made her situation much worse, to the extent that if she didn’t try and do something about her predicament, then there was only one way this was headed.
Sitting at the small table, Nina looked around at her now-familiar surroundings, wondering what she could possibly do. The door at the top of the steps was always kept locked apart from when Tobias had come and gone, so she doubted if she could somehow break out that way. There were no windows down here, nor any ventilation shafts to crawl through. The bathroom likewise was completely sealed in. Tobias had obviously taken some time to prepare the place and to make it seemingly escape-proof.
Could she distract him somehow, perhaps cause a diversion or something to get him to come down here, and then attempt to overpower him? Standing, she wandered around the basement, looking for something she could use as a weapon. The knives and forks were all of the cheap plastic types found in motorway cafes, and useless to use for stabbing or slashing someone. There were wire coat hangers in the wardrobe, but these were fixed to the rail. The small lamp on her bedside table had a short flex which if she unplugged it might be used to strangle or tie someone up, but Tobias was a strong man and she had no delusions of how successful that would be. There were the two chairs which she might be able to throw at him, along with plenty of small items like books and DVDs, as well as the cushions from the couch, even the bookshelf, but again he would probably just brush those aside with his big, powerful arms. And if she failed, if he fought her off, what then? Would his wrath and terrible temper get even more out of control? Whatever she decided to try she would have just one opportunity, and if the door were locked anyway, it would all be for nothing.
Nina slumped down onto the edge of her bed.
Her chin trembled, and she started to cry.
Overhead, Tobias had gone quiet again.
They were in position by midday.
Pieter raised the binoculars to his eyes for what must have been the ninth or tenth time in the last five minutes.
He was lying on top of the sea dyke, and he was bitterly cold even with the thick fleece he wore and the woolly hood pulled up. The ground beneath him was frozen solid and as hard as concrete, and at his back was the huge expanse of the Markermeer lake, which was really part of the North Sea but for the 30km long dam separating the two huge bodies of water. A cold wind blew over the white-crested waves straight towards where Pieter had taken up position, and he wondered again why he had chosen this spot, but knew that for all of its discomforts, this really was the best place from which to watch the house.
Overhead a seagull hovered in the stiff wind, and he hoped it didn’t give away his location. There was a strong salty smell in the air.
Running along the top of the embankment was a footpath which was popular with dog walkers, and just below and running parallel with it was a narrow road. On the far side ran a shallow ditch, solid with ice, and with small footbridges crossing over every hundred yards or so. Beyond this was the bungalow.
It was a ramshackle place Pieter thought, giving it another scan. The old pebble-dash walls and doors looked on the verge of falling down, and there were clumps of weeds growing out of the guttering. One window had a taped-over crack in the corner. The kind of dwelling hurriedly constructed after World War 2 by the thousands all over Holland, and allowed to run into disrepair by their owners.
High hedges surrounded the yard out front but through their twiggy branches he could see a propane tank and a green-painted corrugated iron shed, and an empty field beyond.
It was the kind of non-descript run-down home out in the middle of nowhere that most people wouldn’t have glanced twice at. The perfect location you could say. Parked in the yard was a black van.
Just then a movement caught his eye and Pieter spun the binoculars a little to the left, and he saw coming towards him a man walking a dog, crossing over the narrow footbridge next to the bungalow’s driveway. Hurriedly, Pieter rolled over onto his side, ducking down out of sight below the level of the dyke, and he felt his nerves jangle.
Footsteps were coming up the other side of the grassy slope, someone muttering to themselves, and a dog’s panting breath.
Then someone was slipping into position beside him, and the dog was licking his cold fingers which felt good, and a familiar face peered at him from beneath a red woolly hat.
One of Dyatlov’s men, a member of the assault team.
“Well?” Pieter asked him.
“Quiet as a graveyard. Nobody stirring at all, not even a little mouse with fucking clogs on. Looks like he’s having a Sunday morning lie in.”
Pieter looked once again at the house and their surroundings. From here he could see the various members of the assault squad in position, ready to launch the raid from different points. They had assembled in double-quick time and rushed out from Amsterdam to the small coastal community of Warder, approximately 35km to the north, and once here they had hurr
iedly formulated an assault plan. Go in hard and fast but with no fanfare and with as little disturbance to the locals as possible, as the element of surprise was essential if they were to rescue Nina alive and well. Now they were all ready and just waiting on Pieter to give them the green light.
“It’s your call,” Dyatlov’s man reminded him unnecessarily.
After a couple more beats of his racing heart, Pieter gave the tiniest of nods.
“It’s a go, repeat, it’s a go,” the other man whispered into his walkie-talkie, and then he slipped away, taking the dog – who may have a role to play in the assault – with him.
Within sixty seconds the various teams were on the move. Working in pairs, with one man armed with an SBR Full-Auto assault rifle and his buddy carrying a Kevlar shield tall and wide enough to protect both men, they moved silently towards the target. One team trotted silently down the roadway and through the main gates, gliding towards the bungalow. A second team came from the field and slid along the side of the green shed, hugging the walls. A third team appeared through the hedge at the rear of the premises. Further along the road, an armoured police vehicle appeared and slew sideways to block access to any traffic: this was the command vehicle, from where the squad leader Dyatlov would choreograph the raid. In the village itself there were two ambulances on standby should they be needed.
From his perch atop the frozen dyke, Pieter gritted his teeth anxiously and watched the men move in.
As it happened, the opportunity for Nina to get away came about by chance.
During the lull in Tobias’ shouting and raging, she had risen from the bed to make a coffee, hoping the hot drink would feel comforting.
As she stood waiting for the electric kettle to boil she noticed the sudden hush that had descended, wondering what he was doing up there. Was he sleeping, having worn himself out? Or had he left on another of his errands? Whatever the reason, she hoped and prayed that his violent episode was at an end.
Yet even as she thought this, and just as she was pouring the hot water into her mug, she heard quick and hurried footsteps overhead, and then the sound of bolts being drawn back and the key turning in the lock, and as she glanced up in sudden fear, the door at the top of the steps opened and Tobias appeared.
She saw him standing there, bare-chested and wearing just jeans and boots, his upper body sheathed in sweat despite the freezing weather outside. His face and his blue eyes were expressionless, and he looked down at her blankly as though wondering who she was and what she was doing here, and then a flicker of recognition suddenly animated his face and he came quickly down the steps, leaving the door open and smiling broadly as he moved across the room towards her.
“Elena,” he said breathlessly, “I knew you’d come back.”
Nina hesitated for perhaps half a second. Then she threw the scalding liquid at him. It splashed into his face, his eyes and over his chest, burning him. Tobias screamed loudly and flung his hands up and dug his fingers into his eyes, the hot coffee temporarily blinding him, and he staggered sideways and went crashing over into the television.
Nina flung herself past, jumping over his legs as he rolled around on the floor, and raced straight for the steps. She reached the bottom and grabbed a hold of the wooden pommel of the handrail and spun herself around, hearing a huge roar of anger from behind as Tobias came to his feet.
Then she was climbing, with her eyes fixed on the opening above and her mind on one thing: to get through the doorway and run, run as fast as she had ever run before, just to keep on going, and her heart leaped up into her mouth as she heard the crashing of heavy footsteps as Tobias gave chase, right on her heels.
They gained entry through the front and back in perfect sync, using hand-held battering rams to cave the doors in with one blow, the old wood providing little resistance. The team by the green shed covered them.
As was their training, once they were inside the idea was to create as much noise and confusion as possible in order to frighten and overwhelm any occupants, and so the squad members screamed and shouted and smashed their way through the building room by room, kicking in doors and clearing the bungalow with maximum force behind a wall of noise. So much so that they could not hear themselves think.
Beyond the front entrance there was a short hallway lined with wooden panels, with a right-hand turn at the end. The pair of armed men rushed down, all pretence of subterfuge gone, and they found themselves in a kitchen. There was a table and chairs, the units and shelves all covered in dust and cobwebs, and on the far side a partially-opened door leading to the basement.
Skirting the room, sticking to each other shoulder-to-shoulder, gun and shield held forwards, they approached the door.
Nina made it with inches to spare, just as she felt Tobias snatch for her ankle with his huge hands, his fingers very nearly getting a hold. She kicked out and felt her foot hit him square in the face, and he yelped and staggered back.
It gained her perhaps two or three seconds. Nina burst from the basement, through the doorway.
The kitchen was a wreck, with smashed furniture and broken crockery everywhere, the units and sink ripped apart, the shelves flung onto the floor. Above her, the fluorescent light was flickering wildly. Nina charged through the mess, her eyes darting around until she saw another door leading off from the kitchen, and she made straight for it, hoping to God that it wasn’t locked.
She flung it wide and found herself in another room, a parlour by the looks of it with old-fashioned furniture and lace curtains over the windows and an ancient record player in the corner. This room was undamaged, but with motes of dust floating in the sunbeams coming through the glass, and it smelled musty and unused.
Nina gave it no further consideration because behind her she could hear Tobias coming after her, pushing through the wreckage in the kitchen to clear himself a path. Nina crossed the parlour in a flash, towards another door which surely must lead to the outside.
“Elena!” she heard Tobias roaring. “Come back!”
Twisting the door handle she pulled, and so suddenly that she couldn’t quite believe it was happening, she found herself outside and running over a gravel yard, the strong smell of brine and the sea calling to her.
She stood there for a few seconds to get her bearings. She’d had no real plan on what to do if she ever reached outside, she had never really thought that far ahead and the whole thing had happened so quickly that she was dazed. Perhaps in her mind she had this idea that there would be people around and that she could fling herself into the nearest pair of arms crying for help. But the reality was different.
The place was deserted and desolate, and it was exposed to the elements with a freezing wind buffeting over a huge expanse of water, and snow was driving hard into her face. She was dressed in leggings and a hoodie and her running shoes, and after a few seconds Nina was shivering from the cold.
Behind her there came more shouting and she glanced back in time to see Tobias emerge from the building, which she now saw was nothing but a dilapidated shack with wooden walls and a tin roof with a tiny chimney pot on the top, with a lean-to on the side and a yard full of rubbish and a long greenhouse with most of its windows smashed and brown dead plants inside.
Tobias saw her and came tottering towards her, his arms flapping and tears streaming down his face.
Nina turned and fled.
The yard sloped down to a three-barred gate and she quickly climbed over and found herself on a dirt track, which was frozen hard and difficult to run on. It branched in two directions. The left went past a junkyard full of old rusty cars and boat keels, with a large crane boom towering above. The right path followed a rocky shoreline towards an empty concrete jetty and then further along it curved back to the left in a square shape, like some kind of small inner harbour. From somewhere behind her, she could hear the sound of cars whizzing by at high speed – a motorway by the sound of it. But to go that way would mean running back into the yard, back towards the ho
use.
Then she spotted about fifty yards in front of her a small motor-launch tied up to a wooden pile on a narrow pebble beach. It was little more than a fisherman’s rowing boat with an outboard motor, but it might be her salvation if she could get there in time.
Nina sprinted forward, her arms pumping hard. Onto the pebbles, which slipped and slid under her feet, slowing her progress.
“No!” she heard Tobias shouting. “NO!!”
She heard the fury in his voice, and it terrified her. If he caught her… She refused to think anymore and put all of her efforts into reaching the boat. If she considered the outcome of Tobias catching her, then she would just collapse in defeat.
Already he was gaining. She could hear him breathing hard through his nostrils, was sure she could feel his hot breath on the back of her neck.
With just a few yards to go her foot became entangled in a twisty length of seaweed and it seemed to snake around her ankle, and her foot was caught fast and down she went, hitting the beach so hard that she was winded.
Nina stretched out her hand and touched the wooden boat with her fingertips, a cry of dismay escaping her lips. Then Tobias was on her, kneeling on her back and bearing down with his full weight to pin her flat to the ground.
“Bitch,” he whispered, with his mouth close to her ear.
Scooping her up in his arms and flinging her over his shoulder he carried her back up the beach, over the track and through the gate, then back across the yard, into the house.
Nina screamed and screamed.
Pieter felt his mobile phone vibrate in his breast pocket. He fished it out with his cold fingers and saw that it was Dyatlov calling from the command vehicle.
Swiping the screen he said: “Yes? Do we have her?”
Dyatlov’s strong Russian voice came over the line. “Sorry boss. The place is empty. No sign of Nina Bakker or the creep who took her. It’s the wrong place.”
