by Kim Knight
Madeline got off the toilet seat and moved closer to the door to hear the conversation.
The door swung open and some more women entered the bathroom. The noise level picked up, which made it impossible to hear the conversation between silver shoes and purple stilettos.
Madeline decided against using the toilet and exited the cubical.
Her eyes moved around the small space, glancing at faces and feet. Where are you, ladies?
She tried to place the voices she heard to the purple and silver shoes, but the women she had seen when she first entered were long gone.
16
Out of the Woodwork
Madeline Sloane
An hour later, Madeline was behind her laptop again.
The evening had passed quickly. It was already eleven at night. She left the Red Light District satisfied that she had information to follow up on.
For one, what the hell are sugar daddies all about? Did Ana go on a date with someone from there? If so, what happened to her?
Madeline poured a glass of rosé wine and typed the name into Google. A list of various links came up, one pulled her in to take a closer look. ‘Handsome, rich men seek women to marry’ was the tagline, she clicked on it.
Every woman deserves to be treated like a princess. Men from all over Amsterdam, who are financially stable, are looking for their princess.
Scrolling through the website, Madeline viewed the eligible bachelors listed—all claimed to be wealthy within their own right. Each of them sought out the right woman to spend their life with. The site looked convincing and authentic.
Hmm. Easy to see why any woman would sign herself up to find a date, Madeline thought as she looked over the pages.
The conversation she had with the barmaid, earlier that evening, came to mind along with the information she overheard in the bathroom. All three women had confirmed hearing about the dating site. And it was rumoured, Ana might have made contact with a man.
I bet the police never followed up on this, she pondered the possibility. Let alone set foot in any of the bars to speak to the women who had worked with Ana. I should contact Detective Janssen later this week and ask.
She turned her focus back to researching the women, but little information came up. Other than the police reports and newspaper articles, they all skimmed over the woman’s unfortunate fate.
Her phone buzzed with a text message. Madeline grabbed it, then unlocked the device.
—Hey, hope you had a good day.
—I’ve made reservations at a Chinese restaurant.
—Friday at 8:00.
—Here’s the address, 1789 Dam Square.
—I can pick you up if you’d like.
Madeline’s mood lifted at the dinner date invitation. Chris seemed sweet, someone she’d like to get to know better. She tapped out a response.
—Cool sounds great!
—I’ll meet you there.
A reply came back straight away, so she read it.
—Can’t wait!
—See you then.
Madeline smiled at the message, then turned her attention back to her computer screen.
The faces of the missing women, apart from Suzy, stared back at her.
She typed in ‘Suzy Chan’s Murder’ into Google. The first link that appeared was a news report, so she read through to the end.
Madeline’s gaze roamed over the woman’s picture.
Suzy was petite, with pretty oriental features. Her hair was a naturally dark, chestnut brown, and the ends were dyed a pale blonde. She appeared to be an attractive and trendy girl with her dress sense and style.
The report didn’t offer her any new information on the girl’s murder, it only confirm where she was found dead, and that they needed witnesses.
She shook her head, drained her wine, then pulled up a fresh Word document.
I got work to do, another appeal, based on the information she had was indeed needed.
17
Dead End
Detective Janssen
Bright and early the next morning, Janssen entered her office. The silence of a new day greeted her. It was a time she relished—a time she liked facing alone.
“Morning.” Gibson sipped his coffee.
“Dammit.” She flinched, then closed the door behind her.
“It’s only me.” He sat on her sofa with one leg crossed over the other, and the morning’s paper on his lap.
“Jesus.” A familiar aroma hit her nose. “Don’t do that shit.”
“Well, good morning to you too, partner.” Gibson rose, then held up his mug. “Coffee?” Then he crossed the room, approaching the kettle.
“Tea, please.”
Janssen unwrapped her scarf from around her neck, then unbuttoned her winter coat. She pulled off her black fedora hat and placed it on her desk with her handbag, then ran a brush through her short, blonde hair.
“Right. That witch’s brew. Which one can I get for you this morning?”
Janssen chuckled and glanced over her shoulder at her partner. “Mint, please.”
“One or two frog legs?” Gibson teased.
Janssen shook her head and giggled some more. “One sweetener, please,” she called over her shoulder.
“So, what’s up with the witness interview you had yesterday? How did it go? Gibson asked as he filled Janssen’s mug with hot water.
“Nothing else came to light.” Janssen sighed. She sat down behind her desk and powered up her computer. “What about you?”
“Searched Suzy’s apartment and talked to her roommate.”
“Find anything?”
“An address book and her laptop.” He grabbed a mint teabag, opened it, and then plopped it inside the mug.
“Anything of use?”
“Yeah.” He ripped the top off a sweetener package, then added it to the tea. “But you go first. What’d you find out?”
“Well, I went over the old case files. And I focused on the witness statement for Ana De Jog’s case.”
“Oh, yeah?” Grabbing the kettle, he topped up his cup, added more coffee crystals, then stirred.
“I told Denz to follow up with Ana’s witness. The contact only confirmed what we already knew.”
“Which is?” He grabbed his coffee and her tea.
“She saw a woman fitting Ana’s description talking to a man with dark hair outside the Amsterdam Centraal station on the evening she went missing.”
“That’s all?” Gibson set the mug down on the side of Janssen’s desk, then took a seat in the chair opposite.
“That’s all. But she said she couldn’t be sure it was her. The jacket she had on seemed familiar from the appeal she had seen on the news. That’s what made her come forward.”
“And the CCTV footage around the station?” Gibson whirled his mug around.
“I got a copy of it. The transport Polite uploaded it to the secure cloud, then emailed me a link. It’s here.” She tapped her system.
Janssen logged into her computer and pulled up her emails. She located the email with the secure link to the video footage.
“Here it is. The twenty-four hours before she was reported missing, right up until the time the witness was at the station herself.” Janssen typed in the password to the security system.
The CCTV footage from eight months ago loaded up, and Janssen hit play. Both she and Gibson frowned at the screen as if to single out any suspicious movements or dark-haired men and a woman fitting Ana’s profile.
On screen, the busy footfall of people in and out of the station played out. Janssen rose from her desk, then crossed the room toward her filing cabinet. She fished out a key from her trouser pocket and unlocked it.
“Hold up,” she called over her shoulder. “Let me grab the file and check the time of the sighting from the witness.”
With the file in hand, Janssen doubled back to her desk, took a seat, then flipped open the pages. She pulled out the witness statement and scanned over it.<
br />
“Okay, around six-thirty or so that evening, that’s when the witness was heading into the station.”
She handed the paper to Gibson. He placed his mug down and retrieved the paper to study it. Janssen fast-forwarded the footage to an hour before the stated time and let it play out.
Janssen watched the screen, willing Ana to appear.
“Hold up.” Janssen jumped forward in her seat to pause the footage. “We’ve got something.” She shot Gibson a side-glance, then zoomed in on the camera.
“Looks like that could have been her. Dark jacket. Similar hair colour.” Gibson leaned in closer.
She pressed play. “Looks like she was waiting around for something, or someone.”
“Hmm. Yep, but who?”
Janssen watched the screen with interest.
The woman fitting Ana’s description kept glancing at her wrist. When she turned around, the camera got a good shot of her.
In that moment, Janssen hit pause and zoomed in on her face.
“Fuck.” Janssen slammed her fist on the desk. “That’s not her?”
She looked over at Gibson, who was thumbing through the thick file. He pulled out the victim’s picture, and then held it up to the screen.
“Hard to say. This isn’t the clearest CCTV. Plus, it’s dark and there’s not many streetlights.”
“Damn this. Okay, let’s keep going.” Janssen resumed play of the footage.
She kept her eyes peeled for anyone who approached the woman. After a few moments, the woman of concern, jogged over from the where she was standing outside the station, then stepped out of view.
“Shit.” Gibson sighed.
Janssen clicked a button on her keyboard. “Hold on. Let’s speed this up.”
The footage sped up to double speed. And the woman came back into view. She walked toward the entrance of the station. This time, she was linking arms with another female.
“You seeing this?” Janssen’s mouth hung open. She studied Gibson closely as if to try and read his mind.
“We need to put this footage out for appeal. And ask the woman to come forward and identify herself. That’s the easiest way to check the validity of this witness’ statement,” he said after a beat.
Janssen contemplated the idea, following the woman on screen. She went into the station and disappeared off the radar.
“Either that, or we have the wrong footage,” she retorted. “But the witness specifically said outside the station. And this is the camera facing the entrance.” Janssen paused the video.
“Outside could mean anywhere, not necessarily directly,” Gibson theorised.
“Point taken.” Janssen clicked out of the footage.
She went back into the cloud system she had access to and checked the positions of the other cameras.
“All the other cameras are located in different directions, so this has to be the one,” she said.
“Then if that was Ana, and she was with a woman and not a man, that witness either made a mistake, or meant somewhere else around the station.” Gibson leaned in to look at what Janssen had found.
The endless possibilities hung in the air between then. Janssen sat back in her chair, folded her arms across her chest, and allowed her gaze to penetrate the image of the paused scene on the tape outside of the train station.
“Let’s make an appeal,” she said, “see if that woman comes forward to identify herself. If she does, we go back to the witness and push some more.”
Gibson cocked his head to one side and glanced over at her. “And, if she doesn’t come forward?”
“We follow up with the witness.”
“Cool.” Gibson glanced at his watch. “Lunch time and an early evening news appeal today?”
“Sounds about right.” Janssen sighed.
“In other news, I got a lead on Suzy’s parents.”
“From the address book? Where are they?”
“Still in Hong Kong.” He sipped on his coffee. “I phoned them.”
Janssen froze with her mug halfway to her mouth. “Really.” She looked into her partner’s eyes.
“How did they take it?”
“Well, I spoke to her mum. They had no idea she was a working girl in the city. They thought she was here studying.”
Janssen throw her head back and shook it from side to side. “I don’t believe it, seriously?”
“Yep, seriously.”
“I bet she was in denial about it all, being so far away?”
“Exactly, anyway, I spoke with Dr. Cleveland, and we managed to shoot over a few pictures the doc took during the autopsy.”
“Ahh. So, she could identify the body?”
“Yeah. Hopefully, I’ll get response today. That is if it didn’t come in overnight with the time difference.”
Janssen nodded her head. “Okay, we’ve got work to do. I feel like this killer has been way too careful, so careful, in fact, we don’t even have anything solid to follow up, suspect wise.”
“Hmm, I hear you.” Gibson flicked his wrist to check the time again.
“Let me handle the news appeal. It’s not even nine yet. We need to make sure there’s some lunch time appeals.”
“Yeah, okay. Sounds good.” She tapped her fingers against the surface of her desk. “Looks like my morning will be spent reviewing all the camera footage.”
Gibson rose to his feet, tucked his chair in, then crossed the room to place his mug on the other table.
“Cool. I’ll be in my office if you need me.” He headed to the door.
Once he left, Janssen rewound the tape to the morning of Ana’s disappearance. She rose and placed her mug in the microwave to heat up her mint tea. Once done, she slumped down into her chair and allowed the footage to play.
She kept an eye on it and opened up Gibson’s discarded paper. Flipping through the day’s news, her jaw fell open on page sixty-five. It was obvious to her that Gibson had not read that far into the paper. She continued reading.
Red Light Girls: Appeal For Information
Official sources can confirm the following women were all working girls of the Red Light District at various clubs.
•Ana De Jog: missing for over eight months.
•Lotte Van De Berg: found dead a month after Ana’s disappearance.
•Fenna Bakker: missing for six months.
•Zoe Van Dyk: missing for five months.
•Suzy Chan: found dead this week at Amsterdamse Bos.
It has been confirmed Suzy and Ana contacted an unknown man via the website Sugar Daddies—a site dedicated to matching Amsterdam’s wealthy men with women seeking love.
This is an official appeal for witnesses or users of the website to contact De Telegraaf with any information they may have. All information received will be treated in the strictest confidence.
18
You’ve Got Mail
Madeline Sloane
Madeline exited the train station, took a left to make her way to the Politie Bureau in Amsterdam Centraal. As she walked along the pavement, she stopped to pick up a copy of De Telegraaf newspaper from a street vendor.
Turning to page sixty-five, she scanned the section for the article she wrote, following her research at club Erotica. It was due to appear in this morning’s paper.
She smiled down at the short piece. Pleased with her national appeal for information, she closed the paper, folded it up, and then continued to walk as quickly as she could in the direction of the police station.
Glancing down at her watch, she noted it was early afternoon. Detective Janssen had seen the appeal by now. She thought to herself as she hurried along.
Yeah. There’s no doubt, she mused, pleased with her decision to run the appeal.
Even if the police had not seen it first, Fleur—her boss, and the editor of the De Telegraaf, welcomed what information she had to share with the world and told her it would be printed.
At the top step of the station, Madeline pushed open the heavy do
ors, then stepped inside.
Sitting at the reception desk, a uniformed officer focused on his screen.
Madeline crossed the threshold and cleared her throat loud enough to catch his attention.
The officer glanced up at her, not pleased with the interruption.
“Hi, there,” she said. “Is Detective Janssen available?”
The officer looked in her direction, giving her a good once over—taking her in from head to toe as if trying to figure out who she was with her smart, business appearance.
“Your name, Ma’am. Do you have an appointment?”
“Ahh, no. But it’s urgent, I’m Madeline Sloane.”
“What’s this regarding, Ms. Sloane?”
“Suzy Chan and her murder.” Madeline waited impatiently.
“Okay.” The officer nodded his head slowly. “Maybe I can help you,” he said. “Do you have any information that would help us?”
“I really need to speak to Detective Janssen. Please let her know I’m here. It’s urgent.”
Madeline slid her work ID badge from under her coat, then placed it in front of the officer’s face.
“I see. The local paper.” The officer inspected the badge. He dropped his pen, then pointed over to the waiting area. “One second. Take a seat.”
Madeline did as she was instructed and sat down on the plastic bench opposite the reception desk. She watched closely as the officer picked up the phone and punched in some numbers. Straining to hear, she listened in on the officer’s one-sided discussion, as he let whoever had answered know, that she was there.
A few moments later, a stone-faced Janssen thew open a door next to the reception area, then stepped out.
“Ms. Sloane, I told you this is official police business. You had no right to get involved with that article you wrote.”
Janssen waved a copy of the De Telegraaf paper in the air.
