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

was frightening to her young mind, but she hugged him tightly anyway.

She felt him stroke her hair gently, his words soothing.

“Pass on what you learn. Pass on what you learn.”

Then his hand squeezed her narrow shoulder tenderly, and she saw the ring on his finger, with its grinning skull leering back at her.

CHAPTER 17

BART AND THE NEWCASTLE BAR

Tuesday night at just after 7pm and things were thankfully quiet at The Newcastle Bar. Standing near the cars parked alongside the canal, Pieter could see through the large doors. Inside was just one customer, sitting at a table near the wall, nursing a beer and looking well on the way to being drunk.

That was good. The last thing he wanted was a packed out bar. Hopefully this could play out nice and calmly. If he was even right about this, which he sort of hoped he wasn’t. After all, it wasn’t that unusual a name in Holland, and there was a fifty/fifty chance that he’d got this completely wrong. But on the other hand, if he had read the situation correctly?

So best to go in softly, play the role of a man worried about his missing friend, and that he wasn’t here to cause any more aggro. Simply ask a few questions, about Lotte and other loosely related matters, and see what kind of reaction he got.

Pieter moved towards the entrance, his hand subconsciously gliding across to the bulge of his firearm tucked underneath the bottom of his jacket in its holster, then unfastening the buttons at the front of his coat.

Steadying his breath, he stepped inside.

Bart was wiping down the bar and beer pumps with a wet cloth. As Pieter stepped nonchalantly forward, he looked up at him.

Scowling balefully, the barman folded up the cloth and placed it below the counter.

“You again?”

“Me again,” Pieter answered.

There was a slight pause, and Pieter could feel his heart beating against his chest, noting too late that Bart’s hands remained hidden out of sight behind the bar. They started to come up, holding something.

“So be it then, friend,” Bart replied.

Bart pulled the trigger on the gun, and the bar erupted with the deafening explosive report.

The first round tore away Pieter’s earlobe, splattering the back of his coat with blood and sinews of flesh. He barely had time to register the stinging burn before Bart fired twice more, round number two hitting the door to the toilets just behind Pieter, and the third shot punching a hole square through the forehead of the customer sipping his beer, killing him instantly.

Pieter staggered back, his head ringing and making him feel punch drunk. He watched as Bart spun away and dashed across the back of the bar, and then reach down to the floor to yank open the trapdoor leading to the beer cellar. He rushed down the steps, pausing for half a second to slap his palm against something on the wall on his way down, before disappearing through the opening.

Pieter quickly recovered from the shock. He took out his own firearm and dragged himself over the bar and tumbled in a heap on the far side. He scuttled forward towards the hole in the floor and peered cautiously over the edge.

A short flight of wooden steps led down. A bare bulb dangling from its flex lit the scene. At the bottom he could see the concrete base of the cellar floor and a couple of beer barrels, but not much else. On the wall at the side was a large red button. Fuck! An alarm of some sort. Bart had triggered an alarm.

“Put your gun down Bart!” he called out. “It’s over! I don’t want to have to kill you!”

There was no response.

Which meant he had no choice but to go down there after him.

With his gun pointing forward Pieter slowly eased himself down one slow step at a time, his whole body and mind tensed for more gunfire. Fully aware that in a confined space like a small beer cellar it would be almost impossible for Bart to miss him.

At the bottom he looked around. In addition to the beer barrels there were a couple of stacks of plastic crates leaning crazily against one wall. Other than that there was nothing. No sign of Bart, and nowhere for him to hide.

Then Pieter turned, and saw a small square opening in the bare wall behind the wooden steps. He crouched lower and passed below the wooden struts, and approached the black hole.

He peered inside, but it was too dark to see very far. Was Bart in there? He had to be.

Groping around in his trouser pocket, he pulled out his mobile and turned on the torch, and aimed the bright white light into the opening.

Stretching away into the distance was a narrow tunnel, with bare, damp walls. It twisted here and there, and sloped downwards into the ground, so that the end was lost from view.

Where did it lead?

How long had it been here?

Pieter considered turning back and calling for backup. That would be the rational thing to do. But as this was passing through his mind he heard a scurrying noise reach him from ahead, and then – and this chilled him to the bone – a crazy high pitched laughing, echoing and bouncing off the tunnel walls.

Pieter held back for a couple more seconds, and then he plunged into the tunnel after Bart.

The inside of the tunnel was tiny, perhaps four feet square, and he had to scurry along bent over in an awkward crouch with his head and back scraping across the roof. The walls were of stone as though it had been chiselled and cut straight through the bare rock.

The first few hundred feet sloped gently downwards. To begin with the floor and walls were just slightly damp, but the further, and deeper, he went the wetter the going became. After a couple of minutes he was splashing through puddles of mud, and icy drops of water were dripping