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

pull a list of all known paedophiles on the city’s sex-offenders list and to run checks on their whereabouts and alibis for the approximate time of the fire and abduction. He also requested information on their current occupations.

He’d set off home, calling off at the minimarket on Raadhuisstraat to buy a few essentials for the weekend. Ten minutes later he pulled to a halt outside the tall canal house where he lived on the Singel canal, noticing vaguely the hire car parked by the pavement, and used the key fob to open his garage doors. Then he was climbing the stairs up to the third floor – the living area of his house – and started to unpack his shopping. Outside, it was just starting to snow.

His phone vibrated and it took him a moment to fish it out of his jacket, which was hanging on the back of the kitchen door.

“Hello,” he answered without bothering to check the caller ID.

After a moment’s pause a voice responded. Just two simple words, but they were enough to freeze him to the spot, and his heart skipped and twitched tightly in his chest.

“Hello Pieter,” said a silky, and instantly familiar voice.

He dropped the box of eggs that he had been holding, barely registering the splat that they made as they hit the floor. A wave of dizziness nearly overwhelmed him and he quickly grasped the back of a chair.

“You?” he breathed, his throat all scratchy and constricted.

“I’ve missed you,” Lotte told him, and, shit, she actually sounded like she meant it!

Pieter could think of no response. A whole range of thoughts and emotions whirled through his head as he tried to comprehend this unexpected turn of events. That Lotte was still around and on the run was no surprise: after all, he had seen her very briefly during his period of convalescence on the coast during the summer, and the international manhunt for her was still as active and intense as ever. But until now there had been no leads or sightings of her anywhere, no clues as to her whereabouts. Yet here she was, popping up like some horrible memory, resurfacing, leaving him feeling like he’d been kicked in the gut.

“I’m afraid that I can’t see you in person. Not on this occasion anyway. Maybe next time, and we can catch-up. But I do have someone here who wants to talk to you.”

There was another long pause, then a different voice, this one almost incomprehensible and talking slowly, sounding like a drunk, the words all slurred.

“Pieter… I… please, they have done something to my…”

“Kaatje? Kaatje, is that you?” A coldness went through him like his veins were suddenly filled with ice instead of blood.

“I’m sorry…” she managed to say, her voice quiet and shaky.

Then Lotte came back on the line.

“Look outside your window Pieter.”

The phone went silent.

For several seconds he didn’t react. He just stood there looking at the mobile phone in his hand. When the words eventually registered he dashed headlong through the kitchen door, along the short landing, and through to the lounge. He yanked the curtains aside and stared down at the street below, a sense of deja-vu flickering in his memory.

The streetlight there showed him that the lane was empty apart from the parked hire car: he could see no figures or traffic, nothing out of the ordinary, only falling snow flakes. Then, from the silence came the sound of a car’s engine, suddenly increasing in volume and in seconds becoming a loud roar. It came into view and screeched to a halt just opposite, and the rear passenger door was flung open and something dark fell out into the roadway, and in an instant, the car was pulling away again, the door slamming shut as the vehicle raced out of sight.

Pieter stared hard at the object lying motionless on the cobbled road. He knew very well what it was. Who it was.

He raced down the stairs, tearing headlong from the third floor all the way to the entrance hallway at street level, and he quickly flung open the heavy front door and leaped down the stone steps into the cobbled street.

He approached the body lying in the road on legs that had suddenly turned to jelly, fearing the worst, but as he reached Kaatje he caught the slightest of movements from her, and relief washed over him as he grabbed her by the shoulder and rolled her over.

Pieter recoiled in horror.

Her face was deathly pale and her lips had turned blue, and she was quivering, her whole body now starting to convulse violently. But the worst thing, something that he knew would stay with him forever, were her eyes.

Twin bloody holes where the eyes should have been stared sightlessly back at him, as though they had been torn or ripped out, or something had bored deeply through them.

Pieter looked down at Kaatje, a deep well of pity bringing tears to his own eyes, and he held her tightly, shouting for help, for somebody to call an ambulance.

He saw her mouth move. She was trying to tell him something. He leaned his ear close to her lips, catching her whispered words.

“Visser. Visser did this.”

Then she slipped into unconsciousness.

Snow continued to fall, wrapping them in a white cocoon.

Chapter 13

Unit 1 – Red Zone

He stayed with Kaatje until the paramedics arrived. They spent over thirty minutes trying to stabilize her before setting off to the hospital, and Pieter spent the whole time holding her hand as she lay in the back of the ambulance. At one point she had regained consciousness and started to talk incoherently, becoming more and more agitated, and he had tried to reassure her with words of comfort, even though there was little he could say to allay her fears: he was no expert, but it seemed obvious to him that, although her life may not have been in danger, the damage to her eyes would be permanent. She would never