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

“How many were there?”

“Three or four. I didn’t do a head count, because those stairs come right past this spot, and I ducked inside my hut. Anyways, they didn’t see me, which considering what they done over at the tower yesterday tells me I was damn lucky they didn’t, otherwise they’d have stopped to finish me off. If it was the same people that is. Do you think it was the same people mister?”

“It certainly sounds like it. What happened to the boat?”

“It floated away some, but not far. It got caught up in that bunch of trees over there, where the wall juts out. You can still see it.”

Pieter certainly could. It was bumping and rocking gently in the water, but didn’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon.

“What did they do next? Once they reached the top of the stairs?”

“There was a black van waiting for them at the roadside. It had blacked out windows, and had its engine running, like the occupants were ready for a quick getaway, and they all got into the back and off it sped. There must have been someone in the back because the rear doors were flung open from the inside.”

The old lock-keeper came to his feet then, his knees creaking like pieces of river flotsam. He walked to the edge of the lock where a short gangplank joined it to the pathway running along the riverside. He pointed towards the long street leading away from the river.

“They drove hell for leather down Utrechtstraat and then turned right at the end.”

Pieter joined him, noting that a turn to the right would have taken them over Prinsengracht canal. Back toward the city centre.

                                    Looking towards Skinny Bridge

◆◆◆

Pieter and Joos clambered down to the muddy riverbank and pushed their way through the trees to the spot where the speedboat had drifted ashore. The front had become fouled up in some old discarded pallets and they had to shift these to one side and then pull the boat further up the banking.

“You’ll have to get the stern and push it. We don’t want it floating away on the high tide.”

“Thanks,” Joos replied, and waded out into the water.

Together they managed to get it onto the riverbank beneath the trees. Grabbing a rope that was dangling over the side, Joos tied it to a tree trunk and then stood back, wiping the mud off his hands and looking at his ruined shoes and trousers.

Pieter clambered aboard to have a quick and cursory look around. However, he soon established there wasn’t much of note, just a pair of gloves on the pilot’s leather seat up front. There were no discarded firearms. But the keys were still in the ignition.

Jumping back down he said to Joos: “You’d better call it in, get somebody to tow it away to the forensics shop. Then you can drop me off somewhere else for a few minutes, before giving me a ride back to HQ.”

“Anything you say, sir.”

◆◆◆

He decided it was time to pay Bart another visit over at The Newcastle Bar.

As the morning wore on he had become increasingly concerned for Lotte’s wellbeing, puzzled over her sudden departure, and more than a little worried over her safety and whereabouts. He had tried calling again, and texted her, but to no avail, and by lunchtime a small knot of tension had started to form in his stomach.

Loos dropped him off around the corner. Pieter told him to wait in the car again.

The bar itself was still shut, but the large doors were open and a delivery driver was busy lugging in crates and barrels of beer for the lunchtime trade. Pieter strolled in and looked around for Bart.

He was just coming up from the beer cellar, huffing and puffing as he emerged through the trapdoor behind the bar.

As his head appeared from out of the hole he made eye contact with Pieter, and a flicker of alarm crossed the barman’s face, before it morphed into a look of fear. He froze in place, his lower body out of sight, but then he dropped his hands back down into the opening, and Pieter wondered if he was reaching for a weapon, a baseball bat perhaps. But then Bart slowly climbed out through the trapdoor, unarmed, and stood there looking meek and unthreatening.

“What do you want?” he mumbled. Pieter saw his face was still swollen with bruises.

“Have you seen Lotte recently? Or spoken to her?”

“What? No! Not since she left.” He was standing well back from the bar, as though worried that Pieter might vault over and start punching him again, which he was tempted to do.

“Are you sure? You better not be lying to me. If I find out you are, and you’ve threatened her again or hurt her.” He left the consequences of that to Bart’s imagination.

But the fat barman was shaking his head, and looking petrified. “I want nothing more to do with that bitch. I’m glad to see the back of her. Why?”

Pieter just told him: “it’s none of your business why.”

But then a light seemed to come on in Bart’s head, a rare moment of intelligence, as he put two and two together. “Ha, she’s left you already. Your girlfriend’s dumped you. Hasn’t she?”

He suddenly looked emboldened, which pissed Pieter off, and so he took two quick strides towards the bar, and Bart shrunk away in terror. He stared hard into the barman’s face, and then turned and walked out.

CHAPTER 15

THE HOSPITAL MORGUE

After Pieter left, Prisha Kapoor processed one more body in the hospital morgue and then instructed her assistant to clean up and store away the bodies inside the freezer units. Except for the body bags containing the bones: he was to leave those for the time being. Then she went to get some rest.

Her office was at the end of the corridor.