A State Of Sin Amsterdam Occult Series Book Two, Mark Hobson [notion reading list txt] 📗

to blink, her eyelids wouldn’t shut. They couldn’t because something was fixed to her eyes, something sharp and painful holding them wide open.

It took a few moments for things to slowly come back to her. The journey through the city to the clinic at Osdorp – setting off the smoke alarm and following the red line down the corridor – entering the restricted part of the facility. After that point, she could remember nothing, until she’d awoken just moments ago.

Twisting her head from side to side, her eyes pinned open, Kaatje looked around.

She was in a small room, the walls painted a pale green colour. She lay upon a grey leather examination couch, her arms and legs strapped in place. Overhead was some kind of box with a small circle in the centre, like a single eye staring down at her. To her right was a large diagnostic display covered in dials and buttons. Sitting in a chair was the figure of a man: she couldn’t twist her head far enough to see who it was, just that he had on a white coat.

Kaatje could feel fear course through her veins. She had no idea what was going on, but instinct told her it was something bad. Just then, a familiar voice started to speak in quiet and calming tones.

“Ah, you’re awake I see.”

Julian Visser moved into her line of sight, his face peering down at her.

“You’re just in time. I’m just about to start.”

Kaatje’s heart was pounding in her chest, and again she strained against her restraints.

“What the hell’s going on?” she demanded, her voice weak and trembling. “Let me get up.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s for your own good. If you move around too much, it might make the procedure go wrong.”

“Procedure? What are you talking about?”

“Of course, if you hadn’t been so nosey, looking around without permission and entering parts of the clinic that you are not cleared to see, then none of this would be necessary. So you could say that you’ve brought this upon yourself. No pun intended, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.” Visser sniggered quietly to himself.

She saw him reach forward to either side of her head and she felt something slide against her temples. Some kind of brace, to lock her head into position.

“Shall we begin?”

He turned away and flicked a few switches on his control panel, and with an electronic hum, the box-shaped piece of equipment above her head slowly lowered itself into position, stopping mere inches from her face and with the single glass eye looking straight down.

“This is called a Lasik LEN-XR Laser System,” Visser explained. “We normally use it to carry out simple and straight-forward procedures such as repairing detached retinas, cornea reshaping, that kind of thing. But today I’ll be using it for another purpose.”

“Look, this has gone far enough.” Kaatje heard herself starting to babble incoherently.

Visser went on as if she had never spoken.

“I would normally administer a mild anaesthetic in the form of eye droplets. On this occasion, however, that won’t actually be very helpful for you, so we shall skip that part. I will also adjust the setting on the laser to suit today’s procedure.”

She heard him tapping away on a keyboard.

“The normal range for the focusing beam is 4.5 to 7, with a maximum of 7.5. I think 15 shall do. And a pulse strength measuring 193nm is standard. Let’s push that up to 300nm’s shall we? That will ensure maximum depth and should result in permanent effectiveness. Very good, we are all set.”

Visser leaned forward in his seat and gazed into the magnifying eyepiece attached to his diagnostic display.

“You will experience a series of rapid pulses of light, first in your left eye and then your right eye. There will also be a burning sensation as the cornea peels away under the focussing beam and XR Laser, followed by the lens becoming permanently displaced. After this, the light pulses will penetrate through the vitreous body of the eye to the optic nerve. The damage will be unrepairable.”

“Please Visser, stop this. I’m a police officer! For Christ’s sake don’t do this!”

Visser made no comment, now too intent on his work.

Kaatje lay there helplessly, her breathing coming in quick and short gasps, hoping, praying that he was just bluffing, but when she heard a high-frequency whine come from the machinery and then saw the lens of the laser above her suddenly dilate and turn white, her fear made her heart leap up into her mouth.

A series of rapid white pulses made her vision blur, and a split-second later the excruciating pain hit her, and she screamed like she had never screamed before. It felt like someone had pushed a red-hot piece of wire straight into her eye, going deeper and deeper, and the burning agony ratcheted up so high that her brain flared red.

Kaatje bucked and twisted on the couch.

The laser seemed to melt right through her skull.

The pain went up and up.

It continued to soar.

◆◆◆

Pieter reached his home just as it was growing dark.

He’d decided to pop in to work for a couple of hours on the Saturday afternoon, still frustrated at the lack of progress in the case, pessimistic at the potential of any major breakthrough.

Yesterday’s chat with Ernie Clegg had been disappointing but at least the old soldier had given him a description of their as-of-yet only suspect, and so Pieter had entered the details into the national crime-linkage database, ViCASnl (Violent Crime Analysis System Netherlands) to see if any links with other offences or known criminals triggered a hit. Yet he didn’t hold out much hope. The description – a well-built white male wearing brown overalls and work boots and a baseball cap, driving a dark van – was so vague that it probably encompassed half of the crimes committed on a daily basis throughout the country.

Next, he had popped down to see Floris de Kok (aka Adolf) down in his basement filing section to ask him to