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

curious stares and intrusive questions that his embarrassing ailment provoked.

Floris suffered from essential tremor, a disorder that caused involuntary shaking of his hands, something that had troubled him since first developing the problem when he was in his late thirties, about ten years ago. Despite what people presumed, it was not connected to Parkinson’s disease in any way, nor was it a result of excess drinking. But after a while the blatant stares and ignorant comments had ground him down so much that one day last year, totally cheesed off, Floris had uprooted from his desk upstairs and moved shop down to the small room just along the corridor from the underground car pool. And here he stayed, from 8 till 5, not even leaving for lunch, scanning documents and filing away forms and tagging up evidence.

Floris was also a bit of a history buff, especially military history. At weekends he sometimes took part in Napoleonic battle re-enactments with fellow enthusiasts, but his interest covered all periods of conflict, down to the tiniest detail.

Because of this, and the tremors, he had been given the unfortunate nickname of Adolf. Even though he looked nothing like the genocidal madman, Floris with his long hair and tattoos and no moustache. Hiding away underground probably didn’t help matters. So the name stuck, and Floris didn’t really mind.

When he heard the footsteps coming down the stairs he hoped it was just another cop come to sign out a vehicle from the parking lot, but when they paused outside his tiny office he knew someone was calling around for something, and he sighed in annoyance. When the door opened, however, and Pieter Van Dijk walked in Floris broke off from what he was doing, glad for the interruption. Pieter was ok.

“Hey buddy,” he greeted his visitor.

“Adolf, my man, how’s it hanging?” Pieter grabbed the room’s spare seat, and sat down, before whizzing across on its wheels until he was alongside Floris’ desk.

“Oh you know, topping up my vitamin D.” He closed the lid on the large file box, wrote something on the top, and added it to the pile on the floor. He noticed the small evidence bag that Pieter was holding. “What can I do for you?”

Pieter tossed the clear plastic bag onto the desk, its contents chinking quietly. “Can you identify this at all? Or at least tell me something about it?”

Floris picked it up and peered at the silver ring inside, turning it this way and that.

“Something about the emblem on the front rang a few bells,” Pieter added. He pointed at the tiny skull and cross bones with his little finger. “I’m thinking World War 2, perhaps the SS? Or am I way off the mark?”

“Fascinating,” Floris murmured, his eyes glinting with excitement.

Pieter waited while Floris studied the item, noticing a tremor starting up in his friend’s arm but saying nothing.

“You’re almost right. Certainly WW2, and Nazi-era. But the skull and crossbones are a little different from the Totenkopf – that’s the SS Death’s Head Symbol that the officers wore on their peaked caps. And the large W underneath doesn’t stand for the Wehrmacht – that’s what the German Army was called back then,” he informed him.

“So it stands for…what?”

Floris didn’t reply to the question, instead he peered at the writing etched into the side of the ring. “This here looks like some very old Nordic script, Norse as it was called hundreds of years ago. Yes, very fascinating.” He peered up over the top of the evidence bag at Pieter. “I could find out for you, but it might take a day or two. There’s a lot of stuff on the internet about this, but I have tonnes of books back home all about the rise of the Nazis, the Third Reich and so on, with some excellent illustrations of German uniforms and regalia. I could go through them for you if you like?”

“That would be cool.”

“I don’t suppose I’m allowed to take this home with me?” He hefted the plastic bag and the ring.

“Afraid not. But you can take as many photos as you like.” Pieter put on a pair of plastic gloves and then spread out another brand new evidence bag across the desk, took out the ring very carefully and laid it on the surface.

When Floris was done taking pictures with his mobile Pieter bagged it back up and headed back out the door.

“See you later Adolf.”

When he returned to his office on the top floor he pulled out his own mobile and saw that he had a message from Daan Beumers. Apparently there was something odd on the CCTV from the café, and so he was following it up, calling around at various premises along the alley where the three suspects had fled to see if they had security cam footage of their own. No further details. Pieter pocketed the phone.

The autopsy on the dead man from London was due to start around about now but Pieter had no desire or need to be present, and as any conclusions or toxicology reports wouldn’t come through until at least tomorrow, he decided to check on how things were progressing with the Mila case.

The first thing to do was to see if any progress had been made with her pimp. He had been brought in for questioning and remanded in custody on human-trafficking charges, so now Pieter turned his attention to his alibi. Going into his Gmail account, Pieter found an email waiting for him.

Cyber cops had been busy. They had checked the pimp’s smart TV and fire stick, going through his movie downloads. One of those which he had streamed from Prime – indeed it was La La Land! – was time-stamped as commencing at 9.46pm, which fit into his story time-wise, especially if he had fallen asleep for a while before going to check on his girl and discovering her corpse just before midnight. Additionally forensic guys had done a thorough sweep through his flat and found