Wolf Angel, Mark Hobson [best free ebook reader for pc .txt] 📗

on the job, decided to jet wash inside the urinal. Probably the first time in years that it’s been done, those places stink something terrible. Anyway, he spotted the guy just before he turned on his thingamebob, thought he was either a crackhead or someone sleeping off too many tequilas, until he noticed the guy’s pecker sticking out of his pants was all mangled up. He raised the alarm, or rather his boss in the road sweeper did when he saw the kid crawling on his hands and knees puking up his syrup pancakes. Our guys were here within a few minutes, but in the meantime Mr Jobsworth, in his nice warm cabin there, went straight back to work cleaning the square. Fucking fucktard, has he never seen CSI Miami? Says he has a schedule to keep.”

“Just the single injury?”

“From the looks of it yes. Sliced his balls clean off. Luckily they were too big to disappear down into the drain, so at least they can be reattached by the undertaker in time for the viewing. He had a few scratches and bruises here and there but they were probably self-inflicted whilst he’d be no doubt thrashing about.”

Pieter looked over to where the urinal was, surrounded by the boards and sheets. A black van with blacked-out windows was just pulling up alongside.

“Please tell me we have ID’d him this time?”

“Oh yeah, pretty straight forward compared to the other night. He had credit cards on him – which obviously rules out robbery – as well as a hotel key-card for the Ibis next to Centraal Station. Dead guy is a Mr Oliver Monroe, from London.”

“A tourist, or here on business?”

Beumers shrugged. “He was booked in for just one night, so he could be either. We have a phone number for his home address, but given the early time we haven’t made the call yet. Might as well let his family have another few hours of blessed ignorance in bed before we shatter their lives.”

Pieter turned and nodded to the young couple still waiting at the end of the bridge.

Beumers followed his gaze. “We have witnesses boss.”

“They saw the murder?” Pieter asked hopefully, before his colleague shook his head.

“Not the actual killing, no. But they might have seen the killers.”

“Killers? As in plural?”

“Yep.”

Beumers led him over to where the man and woman stood hugging each other either from shock or because of the chilly morning air.

They turned out to be a young couple staying in a backpacker’s hostel over on Zeedijk. They were rocking the 70’s look, her wearing a vintage sleeveless sheepskin jacket and he a pair of bright yellow cord trousers probably bought at the market at Waterloosplein. Their names were Henrietta and Maarten. After brief introductions, Daan Beumers asked them to repeat what they had been telling him.

“We’d been over in Grasshoppers sampling the menu, and we decided to head back to our room, and so cut through here to cross the bridge,” the guy explained. “We are celebrating the first anniversary of our non-commitment binary relationship.”

Pieter smiled what he hoped passed as a warm smile.

“Anyway we stopped to take a photograph right at this spot. And that’s when we saw the commotion over there.”

“It was so strange,” Henrietta picked up the story. “No screaming or shouting, just lots of running with figures dashing about, like a scuffle or a mugging or something.”

“Over at the public urinal?” Pieter enquired.

“Yes,” Maarten confirmed. “Even though it was late, this area is always well lit, and we could tell something bad was happening.”

“And then we saw them. Three people running right past us, over the bridge and down the alley behind us, heading towards the next canal. They literally passed within about three feet of where we are standing.”

Pieter looked around, noticing that there were no obvious security cameras covering the route, but there was a café right on the corner there which might have its own CCTV coverage.

“Did you get a good look at them?” he asked.

“Not really. They were wearing black coats with their hoods turned up, and we were kinda stepping back to get out of their way.” Henrietta gave an exaggerated shiver, and Maarten hugged her tightly, his hand slipping down to gently squeeze her bum. “It was a bit of a shock, you know? Especially because of their age.”

Pieter caught the sideways glance that Beumers gave him – this part was apparently new to him. “How so?” A weird feeling made his tummy give a peculiar backflip.

“Well, one of them was an adult. Quite slim but definitely an adult. But the other two, the ones at the back, they were just kids. Small, but not too young, I’d say teenage lads.”

Pieter walked to the side of the bridge and stood by the railing. After a moment he turned, and leaned on it. “You’re sure? Absolutely sure about that?”

Henrietta and Maarten both nodded.

“And what time was this, approximately?”

“2:07am” Maarten responded without missing a beat.

Pieter felt his eyebrows shoot up like Groucho Marx’s.

Maarten fished into his trouser pocket and brought out his mobile, tapped on the screen and showed him the picture that they had been taking at the time, him and her playing tonsil tennis, the photo apparently done with a selfie-stick. He then went into the properties menu which showed the exact date and time, which was exactly as he’d said.

“When we heard from a friend at the hostel about a murder, right over there at the toilet, then we thought we should come and talk to the police. But you know what the strangest thing of all was?”

Pieter waited, not sure if he wanted to hear or not.

“They moved so fast. Literally in a blur. They were gone by us like that,” he clicked his fingers for effect. “Oh I know teenagers can move, but this was ridiculously fast. We stepped out of their way, as I say, but I twisted around to shout after them, but in the half second it took they were gone.