The Red Light Girls (Unsolved Mysteries Book 2), Kim Knight [old books to read TXT] 📗

observing the scene by a Politie van. He was out of ear and eye shot of Janssen, so she headed over to him.

“Officer, who was she? What do we know?” Madeline crossed her fingers, hoping he would spill the beans.

The officer looked at Madeline and shook his head.

“Ma’am you’re not meant to be here.” He took Madeline by the elbow gently and guided her towards to exit. “Let me escort you out. You need to leave, now.”

Madeline snatched her arm back, then pulled out her ID badge from underneath her jacket.

“Please officer, I want to help with these cases. From what I’ve dug up, it’s getting serious,” she said.

The officer glanced down at her De Telegraaf badge, but he didn’t say a thing.

“I’m not trying to sell papers,” she continued. “This is about catching whoever this sick bastard is.”

The officer raised his sunglasses and looked closer at Madeline’s badge. He sighed, lowered his glasses and chewed loudly on his gum. Briefly, he glanced around, then he leaned into her.

“She was female,” he whispered. “Probably in her thirties and Chinese.”

He looked around cautiously again, then over a shoulder. He grabbed her elbow and started to march her in a different direction away from his co-workers.

Madeline followed his lead with interest. “What else?”

“Definitely a Red Light girl. Her clothes were in her bag. Suzy Chan’s her legal name from the ID, that’s all we know,” the officer said under his breath.

“Thanks,” Madeline responded. “Anything else?”

“I’m only telling you this as we need all the help we can get to catch this sick person.” The officer kept walking at swift pace.

Madeline struggled to keep up.

He turned to her once more. “That’s all I can say. And you never heard it from me. Now, please leave.”

Madeline nodded in agreement and watched the officer disappear into the sea of uniforms around her.

Janssen looked over in her direction with a frown on her face, then approached.

Madeline took a deep breath. Great. This should be interesting.

“What did I say to you?” Her voice remained stern and even toned, but her body language showed sheer annoyance. “You need to leave. I don’t want the press here. Understand?”

“I’m on my way, Detective. Don’t worry.”

Madeline turned to leave, and as she did, Janssen moved off in the other direction. She heard the detective bark orders at her team of officers behind her, but she couldn’t make them out. Glancing back, she locked eyes with Janssen and quickly moved away from away from the area.

A name, that’s a start. Now, I wonder where she worked? Madeline thought to herself.

She headed toward the exit of the park.

Glancing at her watch, it read a few minutes before six. At this hour, the bars around Dam Square and the Red Light district would start to get busy.

She made her way back up the pathway she had taken prior. And since her last trek through the area, more leaves had flooded the ground. Her boots ate them up, crunch by crunch, under her feet.

It was getting colder, and the evening had started to draw in. The park’s lamp posts flicked on as she walked toward the exit of the park.

Once there she took one final glance around at the officers patrolling the area, then made her way back to the tramline toward Amsterdam Centraal.

The tram was packed. It reminded Madeline of the underground in London. All the times she had crammed herself in there like a sardine, with a bunch of Londoners who had no clue about personal hygiene, caused her to chuckle.

Some things never change.

Standing with one hand on a rail to steady herself, and pressed up against a man behind her, she held her free hand up to her nose, then glanced around. The person whose bodily smell assaulted her nose could have been anyone. The passengers were that close.

Madeline jumped off the tram at her stop. A rush of passengers moved on and off the carriage. As they did, she weaved her way in and out of the sea of people.

The short walk to the Red Light district was just as busy. She imagined that some locals were making their way home from work. Others were on their way to the Red Light area.

No doubt for a coffee and a smoke.

She pictured some of the girls as working women, on their way to hustle for the night, and line their pockets with the notes men were happy to place in their skimpy underwear.

Madeline had grown to enjoy the contrast between London and Amsterdam. While still busy and always bursting with people, just like Chris had said, and with cannabis being a legal substance, the city was much more relaxed than London.

People being too stoned, most of the time, to commit a crime—his words made her laugh.

She kept walking along the cobbled pavement packed with people. As Madeline approached the Red Light area, she had no idea where to start to make enquires about Suzy. She stood on the corner of the road by the canal, next to a lamp post.

She was next to a man smoking a joint.

The smell drifted toward her, and she breathed it in with pleasure and contemplated what she really could do. All she had was a name of the woman who was found dead.

She might have worked in any one of the gentlemen’s clubs in the area.

On a whim she headed toward to main strip where the window girls were. She walked along through the crowd of people, every now and then, she glanced to her left at the girls in the shop front windows.

The girls smiled, blew kisses, and teased the people standing around with their phones out, snapping pictures of them.

Randomly, she headed into the second bar she passed.

Inside, it was pretty calm for the early evening, or so she noticed. As she glanced from her left to right, she noted both male and female customers scattered around drinking, smoking, and talking.

Cannabis smoke wafted freely through the air. The pink hue of lighting caused Madeline