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

to think it was going to be just another ordinary drugs bust, but what they found was something completely unexpected. A fantastic stroke of luck. It does happen sometimes.”

“Like the cops who caught The Yorkshire Ripper.”

“Exactly.”

“So presumably there was a trial?”

“Yes, and it was quite a sensation at the time. All of the gory details came out and the press had a field day. Witnesses, the few they were, were threatened if they gave evidence, and some were later given new identities. Two of the jurors died in mysterious circumstances, they brought in experts on the occult and Wiccan magic, and there was talk of spells and curses. The Judge had some kind of mental breakdown: apparently he was found in his chambers one day babbling about strange smells and unearthly presences. Then, when they got onto the subject of motives, the main defendant, our friend Gerdi, she started on with some nonsense about opening portals to another dimension through the practice of ritualistic killings. Can you believe that rubbish? Throughout the course of the trial she was heard chanting incantations to herself.”

Dyatlov paused then, and looked closely at Pieter.

“Are you ok?” he asked, concerned. “You look pale Van Dijk.”

“I’m fine,” he replied irritably.

Dyatlov and Floris exchanged a look.

“From the sound of it they didn’t have much of a defence? That they were pretty much admitting to everything.”

“Oh, they tried to defend what they’d done, from their own warped sense of perspective. But it wasn’t the sort of legal defence that would stand up in court. Eventually their own lawyer just gave up and sat there squirming with embarrassment. It was obvious to everybody present that Gerdi was just batshit crazy.”

“Crazy yes,” put in Floris, “but very charismatic. She wasn’t the first or the last to have that kind of hold over people. Or to be convinced that what they were doing, or hoping to achieve, was perfectly normal and rational to themselves. Nurse Beverley Allitt killed children because she suffered from Mϋnchausen’s Disease by Proxy, and thought she would be treated like a hero by bringing them back to life. Joachim Kroll was a German cannibal who killed over a dozen people in the 1950’s and cut up their bodies to make a meat stew. Ed Gein turned his victims into lampshades and liked wearing human skin, and was the inspiration for Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill.”

“Yes, thank you Adolf. The verdicts were a foregone conclusion. Guilty as hell. All of the bikers were imprisoned for life with no parole, while Gerdi was sent to a lunatic asylum.”

“It says here that she killed herself a year later.” Pieter was looking at a grainy photo in the file he held, which showed the figure of a woman hanging in her cell. “In 1982.”

“And good riddance.”

Pieter closed the file and tossed it onto his desk.

“But the case was never fully closed, despite what the Finnish police say. Some of the top detectives who worked on the case remained convinced that, even though she was an evil bitch, she wasn’t the main mastermind behind the whole thing. That she was just a follower herself, like the biker gang, being used to do somebody else’s bidding.”

“The killings stopped with their convictions though?”

“Yes, in Finland at least. Perhaps the real culprits just went to ground. Look, I know it’s only a tenuous link to our case, but with the Dutch connection and the motive, it’s the best lead we have. And like Floris said earlier, he still has loads more papers to go through. He might find something else.”

“I appreciate what you’ve done. You’ve come up with some good details Adolf. Keep digging for more.”

Floris beamed up at him. He and Dyatlov started to clear up the boxes and loose papers lying around the office.

“That file has a condensed version of what we have found so far on this Finnish link. It’s also duplicated on this laptop here. Go through it, it has lots more detail than what I’ve just outlined.”

Pieter moved his chair from behind the door and let them out.

Alone again, Pieter reclaimed his desk and sat there going over their discussion.

Certainly the Finnish angle was worth pursuing. Perhaps he could speak to the senior investigator who handled the case back then, assuming he was still alive. Reading about old cases was always informative, but sometimes certain elements were lost or left out, especially the tiny nuances of a case, the feelings and thoughts of the people running the show. Personal theories would not always be recorded in the official files, particularly if they went against the accepted facts, and even more so once a case was closed with a successful conviction. Nothing beat talking to the actual people on the ground at the time.

He picked up the heavy file and flicked through it until he found the name of the senior investigator. There was no up-to-date contact details obviously, not for a case nearly forty years old, but there was a phone number for the Helsinki Police Foreign Liaison Office.

He was about to dial it when he noticed the time – 6:30pm

Best to wait until the morning.

Instead he went back to the segment of the file concerning the woman, Gerdi, the apparent leader of this group. Leader of their cult might be a better way of describing her. A cult with a bizarre and twisted outlook on life, obsessed with the occult.

There were a few more photos of her in addition to the police mugshot and picture of her body hanging in her cell. One showed her being taken into the courtroom, turning and grinning at the crowd of onlookers. Then there were a series of post mortem images, which he skipped through. Another one was taken on a family holiday when she was a young lady of about twenty, bending over to hold the hand of a toddler as they walked along a beach somewhere.

He guessed this must be her own child. Was she married? he wondered.

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