Purgatory

by Guido Eekhaut

  Also by Guido Eekhaut

  Absinthe

  Copyright © 2017 by Guido Eekhaut

  English-language translation copyright © 2019 by Guido Eekhaut

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First English-language Edition

  Originally published in the Netherlands by De Boekerij under the title Loutering

  This is a work of fiction. As such, you needn’t worry: it isn’t about you. Nor is it about real organizations, corporations, or situations. Any similarity to real events or imaginary ones is purely coincidental. Opinions spoken out loud by the characters are not those of the author. At least not always.

  Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Visit the author’s website at guidoeekhaut.squarespace.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Eekhaut, Guido, 1954– author.

  Title: Purgatory: a thriller / Guido Eekhaut.

  Other titles: Loutering. English

  Description: First English-language edition. | New York: Skyhorse Publishing, [2019] | “Originally published in the Netherlands under the title Loutering.”

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019004386 (print) | LCCN 2019009338 (ebook) | ISBN 9781510730700 (ebook) | ISBN 9781510730687 | ISBN 9781510730687(hardcover:alk. paper) | ISBN 9781510730700 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Mass murder—Fiction. | Cult members—Crimes Against—Fiction. | Criminal investigation—Fiction. | Ardenne—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PT6467.15.E55 (ebook) | LCC PT6467.15.E55 L6813 2019 (print) | DDC 839.313/64—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019004386

  Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

  Cover photograph: © Peeter Viisimaa/Getty Images

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Prologue

  Monday

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Tuesday

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Wednesday

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Thursday

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Friday

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Saturday

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Prologue

  BELGIUM, THE ARDENNES FOREST, early January

  An almost translucent fog hung low over the landscape and would not disappear anytime soon. It would probably last until midday if the sun came through the clouds. This was January, after all, the middle of winter, and it was a colder winter than anyone could remember. It had been snowing for a couple of days. Not much, but just enough to cover trees, rocks, and bushes with an irregular layer of crusty white powder that only the most optimistic of skiers would regard as real snow. Not that skiers would venture out here, in this thick forest. No marks covered the ground, no animals could be seen. Even the birds stayed away. Nothing in the landscape moved. It resembled a huge, dreary, life-size painting by an artist who had only white and black on his palette, maybe a spittle of brown.

  Alexandra Dewaal glanced over her shoulder at Walter Eekhaut, who was carefully following in her footsteps, head slightly down, his attention on the placement of his feet. Today they would certainly be the only larger living beings to leave their traces here.

  Eekhaut would have preferred leaving no trace at all, letting this part of the forest remain virginal. He preferred spending January in a heated office or his warm bed instead of here—somewhere in the middle of the Belgian Ardennes, isolated from any touch of civilization. Strange it was, being so utterly alone in this otherwise densely populated country. At times, he imagined he was in the Canadian north or Alaska, neither of which he had ever set eyes on.

  Dewaal stopped and consulted the digital compass she held in her left hand. Eekhaut waited patiently. It was a sophisticated military compass that indicated coordinates and other useful information, describing within a few yards where on the planet a person had decided to lose themselves.

  “And?” he inquired, his voice loud against the trees and snow.

  She shook her head. They had not yet arrived at their destination.

  “Still far to go?” He knew he sounded like a ten-year-old, trapped in a car en route to Spain or wherever with ten hours or so still to go. He was feeling chilled, as if death itself were forcing its way through the soles of his boots.

  Death.

  The thought seemed apt in these surroundings.

  She shrugged, as much as she could in that heavy, almost polar-weight parka and backpack large enough for an expedition of several days. He wondered what she had in that backpack. Not that he cared much. His own parka was warm enough, and he carried only his small shoulder bag. He had assumed they wouldn’t stay overnight, camping in the wild. He wasn’t prepared for that, anyway, hadn’t even brought an extra pair of underwear. She hadn’t mentioned camping when they left Amsterdam that morning. She’d told him hardly anything. Just that he needed sturdy shoes and warm clothes. And gloves. And he had to bring his weapon. Which he had done.

  He assumed even she didn’t know how far they still had to walk. The compass didn’t compute distances, only indicated location. For distances and directions, they had to bring a map and figure it out for themselves. And in a landscape like this, distances had to be relative, since it was not possible to walk in a straight line. It would be easy to walk a quarter mile across the frozen soil if they kept clear of trees and bushes, but farther on they would have to climb and find their way through the forest, where it became denser.

  She inspected the map she held. She had it folded up inside a plastic sleeve, as protection against the elements. It wasn’t the kind of map tourists would use.

  “Can’t be too far now,” she said, each word condensing in the air.

>   He nodded and pulled his cap down farther over his ears. She had drawn up her parka’s hood. She wore a two-piece ski suit under her parka, the kind a member of a SWAT team would wear. The suit had pockets in unusual places, allowing fast access. He had to admit she looked positively adventure-ready. Like a polar explorer on steroids. Maybe a polar bear would make an appearance. Maybe this part of the country would break away from the continent and drift toward the North Pole. Everything seemed possible in this eerie landscape.

  She gestured for him to follow. Along their left side, the landscape rose and gradually formed a steep wall with protruding lumps of rock sticking out from between the roots of plants and trees. To their right rose tight pines, like an army of pale green warriors, forbidding enough to prevent access to that part of the forest, where ancient forces might rule the deep, dark woods. Under their feet, the floor was rocky and uneven. Eekhaut slowed down to choose his footing. He couldn’t afford an accident. It would be easy enough to break an ankle.

  Dewaal paused and peeked over her shoulder. Her face remained in the hood’s shadow, and he couldn’t see her expression. She had been mostly silent all day, even during the drive from Amsterdam. Now, with only the pale tip of her nose sticking out from the shadow of her hood, she looked like a ghost.

  The forest seemed to grow still more impenetrable. Even the light disappeared between the trees, as if a veil had been pulled over the landscape. The wall on their left leaned over their heads. There was nothing farther on but more forest.

  And wolves, he thought. Or maybe wild boar. There would be wild boar in the Ardennes. He’d better keep out of their way. Weighing several hundred pounds each, they were said to be fierce and attack at the slightest provocation. He wouldn’t want to cross their path or aggravate them. He wasn’t concerned about wolves. There had been no wolves in these forests for a hundred years. Not indigenous, anyway. But some might have migrated from Germany.

  “We will have to cross that part of the forest,” Dewaal said, pointing toward the right. “Otherwise, we’d need to take a long detour.”

  He didn’t doubt her skill with map and compass, but crossing through the forest didn’t seem an attractive option. All he saw was a wall of dead branches and dead bushes between straight trunks.

  “And then?”

  She glanced at the map. “We’re almost there.” She looked up. “You still got some of that coffee?”

  He opened his shoulder bag and pulled out a slim aluminum thermos, unscrewed the cap, and poured her a splash of steaming coffee. He had filled the thermos in the cafeteria that morning, fresh out of the machine. Not that he was a fan of cafeteria coffee, but it was hot, and he had added lots of sugar. It had been seven in the morning.

  She drank the coffee in one go. She glanced at him thoughtfully, then at the map again. He put the thermos back in his bag and zipped it closed.

  “Let’s move,” she said, as if this were merely a stroll on a summer beach. Summer beaches were more what he had in mind, but he’d chosen the wrong place and season. He followed her, not having much choice. Chief Commissioner Dewaal was his superior. He might have expected her to remain behind a desk, but she chose to be in the field as much as possible. Here, in the field, she hardly acted like his superior. That was something she did only from behind her desk. And whenever she was angry at him. Otherwise, she applied the rules of the AIVD rather carelessly. She knew he had a problem with rules, both those of the AIVD and hers. She tolerated that as much as she could. She knew he, as the only Belgian officer in her department of the Dutch intelligence community, had no trouble with her personally; only with the way the government and police were run.

  She crossed the open space toward the trees and penetrated the forest. It swallowed her up. He went in after her, determined not to get lost.

  “You want me to walk in front?” he suggested.

  She hesitated. Between the trees, snow had hardly penetrated. The floor was littered with dried leaves and small branches, forming a soft, dry carpet.

  “Why would you?”

  “Because I’m bigger than you,” he said.

  She glanced at him. Of course, she knew he was bigger and should walk first, but she was used to leading, and lead she would. There would not be any immediate danger, he assumed, but still.

  “Go ahead,” she said and stepped aside.

  He regretted his offer right away, forcing his way through the dense undergrowth. It was uphill all the way now, enough to make him realize he was in poor physical condition. Soon he was hot in his parka, but he couldn’t take it off or he would freeze.

  He heard a loud click to his left and knew it was her firearm being loaded. Dewaal held her gun in her hand and frowned at him. He reached for his own weapon under his parka, pulled it out, and tugged the slide back. The sound carried a long way, even between the trees. To anyone around, their arrival was now clearly announced. They moved on. Nothing else moved.

  And then, suddenly, without any noticeable transition, they stood at the edge of a clearing. Dewaal squatted down and Eekhaut did the same. Keeping their guns at ready, they looked around the clearing that was bordered by a wall of gray, forbidding trees. It was several hundred meters across. Under other circumstances Eekhaut would have looked up at the heavens, but now his attention was fully on the spectacle in front of him.

  A terrible spectacle of apocalyptic proportions.

  Dewaal, next to him, remained silent. He expected nothing less of her. She was a very disciplined officer. During her career, she had seen horrible things, just as he had. As police officers, they had both learned to distance themselves from their feelings, to objectify horror and gore, as if they were mere props in a movie.

  But now. He didn’t know how to interpret what was in front of him. Even if the corpses chained to the stakes had long lost the essential characteristics of their humanity, they still had once been living, breathing people.

  There were the eyes, to start with. Or what remained of eyes. Or the lack of them.

  And then the rest of the faces. Faces in agony.

  “Seven,” Dewaal said, as if an independent part of her brain were registering objective details.

  Eekhaut couldn’t utter a word.

  It wasn’t that these had once been people. That wasn’t what it was about. What this was about was what they had had to endure, how they had been put to death.

  The whole clearing was deserted. Even hope had long ago deserted this place. If ever silence could be deafening, this was it. Even the ice-crusted snow beneath their feet seemed to make a terrible noise when they got up.

  “You get the camera,” Dewaal said, holstering her gun. She sounded businesslike, even though she spoke softly. She too seemed impressed by the silence. “Take as many pictures as you need. All the details. We’ll need details. Lots of them.”

  Eekhaut thought, Why don’t you snap those pictures? Why don’t you get yourself closer to the details of this . . . these things, these horrors that used to be humans, even if we prefer not to see them as such? Why don’t you?

  But he didn’t object. This was not the moment to question her authority. He noticed her body, even under the layers of fabric, was taut as a string, her face white. She had pushed back the hood of her parka.

  In the middle of the clearing, seven high stakes stood more or less erect, firmly planted in the ground. To each of them had been chained a human being. People and chains and stakes now seemed as if they were made of the same material: hard and black and jagged, like charcoal for the barbecue. Snow covered the soil around the stakes and all over the clearing, and there was snow on parts of the seven figures. He knew there would be more blackness under that whiteness.

  He deferred the most evident question. The question he didn’t want answered.

  Had they been dead already when the fire began to consume them?

  Probably not.

  Dewaal stepped up to the nearest figure. It seemed impossibly tall, taller than the average huma
n. But this was an illusion. Each stake rose out of a cone-shaped mound, about half a yard high. Each of the figures—male, female—was a caricature of a human being. Matchstick men, Eekhaut thought. He knew how only high temperatures achieved that effect. He had seen other bodies like that. Victims of aircraft fires. People burned to death in cars. The pictures the public never got to see, not in newspapers and not on TV. Because the media still possessed just enough discretion to withhold such horrors from their audience.

  Although this policy might, at some point, change. When horror sold more newspapers or more advertising time.

  He inhaled deeply. The air was odorless because of the biting cold.

  Dewaal turned toward him.

  He holstered his gun and took the camera from his bag. A small digital camera, perfect for this work. He took pictures of the nearest figure. He hardly looked at the display. Each of the pictures would show an almost abstract object, a grotesque piece of artwork.

  A piece of artwork.

  Who was the artist? Eekhaut wondered about that. Who was responsible for these figures? And would he want to meet that person? He would not. But they had come here to find answers.

  While Dewaal inspected the bodies more closely, he continued to take pictures. That took a while. He observed, although there was little to observe. The worst were the faces—or what remained of them. On two figures, the flesh was largely burned away and only the blackened and cracked skull remained. Of the others, something that could pass for a face, ears, nose, and even lips were rudimentarily present. All he could identify was the horrible pain and the last desperate cry escaping from steaming lungs and the bodies contorted as in a last effort to escape the flames.

  The worst hadn’t been the fire itself, causing so much despair, but the realization there was no escape.

  He closed his eyes and stepped back.

  His question had been answered. They had been alive.

  When he looked again, he saw Dewaal standing in the middle of the clearing. She too held her eyes closed for a moment.

  He turned his attention back to the victim in front of him. He needed to be professional. It wasn’t clear if this had been a man or a woman or what age the victim had been. Or what color their skin had been. Having these questions answered would need more detailed medical investigation.