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

to look at the wide field ahead of them. On the far side were more trees leading off into the distance. They needed to get across soon if they were to keep on schedule, and so after waiting for several minutes to make sure that the way was clear, they all rose from their crouching positions and made a dash for it.

Half way across Hirsch failed to notice the thin strip of wire stretched between two fence posts, and as her foot pulled it clear there was a huge blast as the tripwire triggered the grenade buried in the ground. She fell to the ground clutching her leg, and Leitgeb’s jaw was blown clean off in a spray of gore. He twitched a few times and then lay still.

Hirsch’s injury would not be fatal, but with her leg broken and torn open she could not carry on. As the three remaining men gathered around her she looked at them in turn, her face twisted in agony. Then she reached out and passed her small knapsack to Wenzel.

“Get to the convent.  You know what needs to be done.”

CHAPTER 9

WEREWOLVES

On the Sunday morning they walked to Dam Square and caught the tram out to Vondelpark, where they had lunch in the Blue Teahouse. Afterwards they enjoyed the warm spring sunshine.

On the Monday morning Pieter thought it was time to get back to work, and so Lotte decided she would spend the day looking for a new job and a place to live (one which Bart didn’t know about). Pieter told her there was no rush and that she could stay as long as she needed.

The first thing he did on arriving at HQ was to arrange for a motorbike courier to take the soil sample he’d retrieved from his attic floor over to the NFI forensic lab in The Hague. He marked it as PRIORITY so hopefully the results would be back first thing tomorrow and possibly sooner. Having done this he went up to his office and set to work catching up on developments.

There he found a message from Daan Beumers written on a post-it note stuck on his PC monitor. The sergeant was working on trying to get the security cam footage from the corner café enhanced, but in addition he had two more sets of cameras that may have caught the suspects fleeing from the murder scene at the outdoor urinal. Everything was on a file attached to an email which he’d sent over to Pieter. Finding the file, Pieter dragged it to his desktop and clicked.

The three sets of footage showed the same thing from three different angles. The first – and most interesting – was from the café, featuring Henrietta and Maarten cosying up on the bridge with the shadowy form of a fleeing person racing by. Exactly like Beumers had done several days earlier he played it back several times, and as with his colleague he could not help the shiver run down his spine, like someone dropping an ice-cube down his back.

The other two cameras were from the doorway of a store selling kinky leather gear, one pointing up the alley towards the bridge and the other aimed down the opposite way. The first angle also showed the same bizarre figure fleeing at breakneck speed, but this time hunched over and with its head angled down, perhaps aware of the cameras. The second one had this person – and from its diminutive size it certainly appeared to be a child – rushing headlong down the alley before quickly disappearing to the right, onto the parallel canal there.

The young couple, Henrietta and Maarten, were both adamant that there had been three people fleeing, one slim adult and two kids. But none of the footage showed the other two suspects. Having been down that alley many times over the years Pieter knew there were a number of other even smaller passageways branching off from the main one, snaking deeper and deeper into the creepiest parts of the red-light district. The area was like a rabbit-warren, dark and dangerous for the unwary. In all likelihood the suspects had split up and disappeared for good.

Let’s hope Beumers could get the footage enhanced and sharpened up, perhaps enough to pull a reasonable image of the suspects face.

Next Pieter took a quick and rather cursory glance at the autopsy results from the Oliver Monroe murder, which didn’t really show anything totally unexpected. The guy had all sorts of drugs in his system: a fair quantity of cocaine and Tangerine G13 weed, plus some phencyclidine angel dust – the usual party drugs that lots of tourists and visitors to Amsterdam enjoyed. He had also recently had sex as there were traces of condom spermicide on the remnants of his penis, plus traces of semen inside his underwear. Once again, nothing unusual in that.

The injury to his scrotum was the only significant wound, other than bruises and light abrasions probably as a result of a brief struggle. The cut through the testicles had been done by a blade with a serrated edge – ouch! – and would have resulted in huge blood loss, followed quickly by unconsciousness and death. The scrotum itself had been recovered as Beumers had indicated at the time.

His hotel room had revealed nothing of interest. Staff there confirmed he was a regular guest, and also that he often returned late after the main doors were locked for the night. Checks on his hotel key cards showed he accessed the elevators and main doors at various times in the early hours, so it seemed that during his regular business trips to Amsterdam he thoroughly enjoyed the night life. Again, no surprise. In the meanwhile his wife back in London confirmed she was well aware of his cheating, but confided that she kept this knowledge to herself for the sake of their marriage and the small child they had.

Pieter briefly broke away to make himself a coffee, standing