Peccadillo - A Katla Novel (Amsterdam Assassin Series Book 2)

by Martyn V. Halm

  “That was three days ago.” Katla tilted her head. “You think he’s dead?”

  “We don’t rule it out. His bank cards haven’t been used, his cell phone is unavailable, nobody has seen him, his car was parked at an isolated spot.”

  Katla nodded. “How can I help?”

  “Your last conversation, could you tell me what you spoke about?”

  “Sure. Pascal inquired whether Sphinx should acquire more vessels. If so, he knew about an auction where vessels similar to our fleet were going on sale. A bargain, he claimed.”

  “Claimed? You didn’t believe him?”

  Goedhart gazed at her intently. Like he practiced before a mirror.

  “In business matters, I don’t believe anyone without verifying the facts for myself, but that’s not what I meant. I asked him about recouping our investment and his forecast didn’t appeal to me, so I wasn’t interested.”

  “And Mr. Bootz?”

  Katla took a sip from her water bottle. “I didn’t consult with Emil.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t have to. I’m the majority stockholder.”

  “So Mr. Bootz has no say in the matter?”

  “If the investment had been worthwhile, I would’ve asked for his opinion, but since that wasn’t the case, your question is moot.”

  “And Vermeer shared your opinion?”

  “Pascal mentioned running the proposal by Emil. At that time I don’t know if he’d done that already or wanted to do that after speaking with me. If what you’re saying is correct and Emil hasn’t spoken to Pascal for a week, then I guess he didn’t.”

  “What was your impression?”

  “About?”

  “His proposal. Was it on the level?”

  Katla tilted her head. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Well, he’s an accountant. Finding you new vessels is not his business, is it?” The detective tilted his head. “Wasn’t it unusual for him to make this proposal?”

  “His non-voting stock in the company is five percent. So I assume he’d get a separate commission for brokering the deal.”

  Goedhart jotted something down. “The seller?”

  “All I remember is that the auction would be abroad. I don’t recall going into details after I vetoed the deal.”

  “Maybe Mr. Bootz has more information?”

  Katla shrugged. “If Pascal ran the proposal by him, maybe.”

  “But you don’t think he did.”

  “Unless he ran the proposal by Emil a week ago, then waited five days before he ran the proposal by me. Does that make sense to you?”

  The detective appeared to be at a loss of what to ask next.

  Katla finished her bottle of water. “Is there anything else?”

  “Can we contact you if we need more information?”

  “Sure.” Katla rose from her chair. “And I’d appreciate it if you could keep me posted on any new developments.”

  Goedhart shook her hand and walked her to the door. “I will, I promise.”

  “I can find my way out,” Katla said and stepped out of his office. She walked back to the reception slowly, hoping the Chinese disposed of Pascal’s body properly. The police might focus more attention on Sphinx if his corpse was found with two bullets in the head.

  GENERATOR

  Zeph re-started the generator, but the grinding noise was still there. Cursing under his breath, he shut down the generator, wiped his hands on his trousers, took the handle of the hurricane lamp in his mouth, and climbed out of the engine room.

  A whole morning wasted and he still needed a mechanic. Last time Obadiah helped him out, but only Jah knew where Obie hung out now. And he couldn’t let just anyone in to fix it, not when the mechanic had to pass through his hothouse. Maybe Bram would know someone. Or he would have to find an affordable new generator and ditch this one, but the main problem was getting the generator installed. He didn’t want prying eyes on the Mojo.

  Zeph strolled through the dark hothouse. The air was moist enough, but the clones needed the UV lights. He turned down the wick until the flame extinguished itself, and hung the hurricane lamp from the hook on the third rung. He opened the hatch and climbed out of the cargo hold.

  He gazed out over the bay and the Zuiderzeeweg angling down from the Amsterdamsebrug towards the motorway. In the distance he could hear the humming of car wheels on tarmac. The rain had gone and a watery sun was visible behind the clouds. He whistled for Shaitan, but the Rottweiler was standing at attention on the roof of the pilothouse, her gaze fixed on a big black motorcycle parked on the soft shoulder of the embankment, opposite from the gangway. The rider was nowhere in view.

  Zeph walked to the gangway and spotted Katla, sitting on a bollard by the water’s edge, dressed in dark-grey motorcycle gear, a black full-face helmet by her side.

  Although he didn’t make any noise walking up to the gangway, Katla turned her head, her eyes covered by darkers with matte silver lenses.

  “Hi, Zeph.” Katla removed her darkers and gazed at him with twinkling eyes. “That’s a fierce looking animal you got there. I figured I’d better not step aboard.”

  “You figure right, sista. Bram tell you how to find me?”

  “I knew your boat was called the Mojo and where it was berthed. It’s not that difficult to find. Did you manage to follow those gangsters to their hide-out?”

  “I followed them to the Zeedijk, sista.” He smiled. “You want come inside? I-man fridge is on the blink, but I can make java.”

  “Your fridge broke down?”

  “No, sista. Trouble with I-man generator.”

  “Electric or diesel?”

  “Diesel.”

  Katla tilted her head. “Would you like me to take a look at it?”

  “Can you fix generators, sista?”

  “Maybe. I’d have to see it first.”

  Katla came to her feet, picked up her helmet and her cane, and limped up the gangway. Zeph took her helmet and said, “What happen to the Vespa?”

  “Nothing. I ride whatever serves my mood.”

  Shaitan tried to circle behind Katla, who didn’t turn her back to the Rottweiler.

  Zeph snapped his fingers. “Heel.”

  Shaitan sat at his feet and he said, “You can pet her now.”

  “I believe you.” Katla made no move in the Rottweiler’s direction. “You live here by yourself?”

  “I live with Shaitan.” He patted the Rottweiler. “She have the deck and I have the rest.”

  “Shaitan? That’s one of the Islamic names for Satan.”

  “It is from a book. Dune by Frank Herbert.”

  “Islam precedes Frank Herbert by some thousand years.” She grinned at him. “Where is the generator?”

  He put her helmet inside the pilothouse, strolled to the front cargo hold and lifted the hatch door. “Down here.”

  Katla stuck her cane in her belt, gazed into the hold and smelled the air. “Plants?”

  “I-man hothouse.”

  Katla climbed into the hold along the iron rungs. Zeph followed and halted next to her, while he lit the hurricane lamp.

  “You have one generator for everything?”

  “It is big enough.”

  She smiled in the flickering light. “Maybe it had to work too hard.”

  Zeph preceded her down the aisle between the shelved flower boxes. When the lamp illuminated the door to the engine room, Katla grabbed his shoulder. “What are you doing, Zeph?”

  He turned around. “Show you the generator.”

  “You want to enter a room filled with diesel fumes carrying a flame?”

  He tapped the hurricane lamp. “Flame behind glass, sista.”

  “As if fumes care about that.” Katla took a small flashlight from her inside pocket. “Put out that lamp before you blow us to Zion.”

  She switched on the flashlight, waited for him to put out the lamp and pointed an incredibly bright beam at the door. “Go ahead.”


  Zeph opened the door and descended the ladder to the silent generator in the middle of the forecastle. Katla followed him and limped around the generator. The bright beam of the flashlight played over the greasy machine and she asked, “Does it still run?”

  “Yes, but it make a strange sound.”

  “Start her up.”

  The beam of the flashlight skittered across the floor and centered on his toolbox. Zeph started the generator and the grinding noise filled the forecastle. The machine room lights flickered to life. Katla squatted next to the machine, head tilted to the side. He squatted next to her and studied her while she played the beam of the flashlight over the generator. She turned to him and drew a finger across her throat. Zeph thought she meant the generator was irreparable, before he realised what she wanted and shut down the generator. Katla didn’t move as the lights dimmed and went out, not even to play her beam around, just listened as the engine slowed down and came to a full stop.

  “Do you run this generator all the time?”

  “Twenty-four-seven, yes.”

  “When was the last time it was cleaned?”

  “Cleaned?” He squatted beside her. “You think it dirty?”

  “Maintained, serviced. How long ago?”

  “Six month.”

  “Really?” Katla straightened. “You’re lucky it still runs.”

  “It don’t look that bad, sista.”

  “Yes, it does. Do you have a user manual?”

  “I buy it second-hand, sista. No manual.”

  She studied the plaque fixed to the side of the generator, limped to the door, climbed out of the engine room and waited for him. He grabbed the extinguished lamp and followed her.

  “Can you fix it?”

  “I need a user manual and my tools.” Katla halted under the open hatch and looked at her watch. “I’ll be back in forty minutes.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Come?”

  “I have a helmet.”

  “I’m sure you do, but I’ll just be popping over to get my van from the garage.” She motioned for him to go first up the ladder to the hatch. Zeph climbed out of the hold and preceded her to the gangway. Shaitan watched them from the pilothouse as they went down to the hulking matt-black enduro motorcycle. Zeph studied the motorcycle up close, trying to figure out the brand. The tank was dull black, with the word CTHULHU in silver letters around the fuel cap.

  He turned to Katla as she limped up to him. “This Russian motorcycle?”

  “Rat bike,” Katla replied. “Built it myself.”

  She disassembled the cane, put it inside her jacket, donned her helmet, started the motorcycle, and said, “Don’t start the generator up again, okay?”

  Without waiting for an answer she roared off, the motorcycle accelerating as it disappeared around the bend.

  -o-

  When the ship’s bell rang, Zeph glanced at his watch. Thirty-five minutes. He went outside and spotted Katla unloading a primer-spotted Citroën van. As he went down the gangway she took out a small roll-up octagonal case and put it on top of a larger box-type toolbox with a handle on top. Zeph looked inside the van. In a net suspended from the ceiling hung a blue metal tank with a big round bulb near the top and a harmonica loop with a mouthpiece in the middle. It looked like scuba gear, but not like any he’d ever seen.

  Throbbing voodoo music filled the van and vibrated the floorboards. A dark ominous voice growled menacing over the music, the words like an incantation.

  “What music is this?” Zeph asked.

  “Fields of the Nephilim,” Katla replied.

  “Big sound system for this old van.”

  “Don’t let the exterior fool you.” She pressed a button on a small remote and the music stopped. “This is a beast. It’s spotted and it growls if you tickle it.”

  “I know this van, it not that fast.”

  “This one is. I modified the standard Citroën engine. Gave it extra horsepower and changed the gear ratios.”

  “You always tinker with machines?”

  “Only to improve them.”

  Zeph pointed at the scuba gear. “You modify them too?”

  “No. That’s a closed-circuit re-breather.”

  “Re-breather? You inhale what you exhale?”

  “In a sense. What you exhale goes back into the unit, where carbon dioxide is filtered out and a helium or nitrogen-based gas is added until the air is breathable again.”

  “Must be expensive equipment.”

  “This one is, but commercial re-breathers are not expensive. About twice that of standard scuba gear. And the costs of additional training, of course.”

  “Additional training?”

  “A re-breather behaves differently and can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “If them equipment so dangerous, why use them?”

  “Re-breathers increase bottom time. And you don’t startle the fishes with your air bubbles.”

  Zeph dragged on his spliff. “You study sea creatures?”

  “I explore shipwrecks.” Katla closed the Citroën’s sliding door and locked the van. “Diving is an expensive hobby, so I’m for hire for archeological or other scientific expeditions. I don’t do salvage or demolition jobs.”

  “No treasure hunts?”

  “I found seven gold coins in ten years. That doesn’t even cover the cost of my Nitrox. And archeological treasures are donated to museums to be studied or exhibited.” She pointed at the Mojo’s gangway. “You’ll have to do the carrying.”

  “That I gathered, sista.”

  Zeph took out the toolboxes and carried them up the gangway. Shaitan sniffed the toolboxes with interest as he placed them near the hatch door and went back for the rest. Katla donned her jacket and handed him a battered flashlight and a blocky spotlight encased in a fat bulb of yellow plastic.

  “What’s this?”

  “Underwater lamp. Works on dry land as well.”

  He held up the battered flashlight. “You no think the Streamlight throw enough light?”

  “Not for working on that generator.”

  She pointed at the gangway with her cane and followed as he carried the lamps to the deck. Shaitan nuzzled the underwater lamp, while Zeph grabbed the rope with the hook and threaded it through the handle of the large toolbox to lower the gear into the cargo hold.

  The underwater lamp threw bright white light against the walls and Katla positioned it at an angle where she didn’t look into the glare. She shrugged out of her jacket, hung it from the engine room door, and unrolled the small toolkit. She took a jar of dark jelly and rubbed it in her hands.

  “What’s that?”

  “Protective jelly. Makes it easier to clean my hands afterward.”

  “What I can do, sista?”

  She uncoupled the cables. “Throw the switches in the fuse box.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Watch what I’m doing. Next time you can try it yourself.”

  Zeph sat on the floor and watched her dismantle the generator. She hummed under her breath and moved unhurried but steadfast, arranging the parts she removed in ordered rows on the engine room floor.

  Katla straightened. “My pager is vibrating. On my belt.”

  She turned her left side to him and Zeph slipped the pager from the clip on her belt, showing her the number on the screen. “Bram.”

  “Can you call him from your cell?”

  He called Bram, who answered on the first ring. “Ja?”

  “Yo, bredda. You page Katla?”

  “Is she with you?”

  “She is fixing I-man generator,” Zeph said. “I put her on.”

  He held the phone at her ear and Katla asked Bram in Dutch where he was. She listened with a grave expression on her face, told him to come to the Mojo and looked at Zeph. “You can switch it off.”

  “Bram coming?”

  “Yes.”

  He pressed the red button on his phone. “Ever
ything cool, sista?”

  “No problem,” she replied and resumed her work on the generator, not humming under her breath anymore.

  -o-

  Finished with cleaning the generator, Katla leant back and rolled her head like a boxer, to ease the stiffness in her neck.

  “Done?” Zeph asked. She turned to the Rastafarian and said, “Time to test it.”

  She started the generator. The metal walls echoed the sound back to her, but she disregard the echo and listened to the main rhythm.

  “Sound good,” Zeph spoke behind her. “No noise.”

  Katla put a finger to her lips to silence him and adjusted a valve with her screwdriver. The basic design made tuning the generator far less difficult than the average car engine, but it was still a precision job. She took a voltmeter from her kit and measured the outlet under the light switch and nodded at Zeph. He threw the first switch in the fuse box. The fluctuation was probably a result of the ancient wiring. The lamps in the machine room bloomed to life when he flipped the second switch and she measured the outlet again.

  Still the same. Good. Otherwise the whole ship might have to be rewired.

  Zeph tapped the last switch. “Hothouse.”

  “Flip it,” Katla said, her eyes on the voltmeter’s digital readout. Again a flicker, but the drain was constant, so there was no need to worry. From behind the door came a hum and a reddish glow.

  Zeph grinned. “UV lights.”

  Katla wiped her hands on a dirty cloth and packed her tools, still listening to the smooth thrumming of the generator. Zeph took her toolboxes and carried them out of the engine room. She followed him with the underwater lamp and halted by the door. The cargo hold in front of her held five long rows and three stories high of flower boxes. Zeph placed her toolboxes by the ladder, walked back and halted in the middle of the hold.

  “You like I-man hothouse?”

  Katla climbed out of the engine room. “Is that cannabis?”

  “Ganja, sista. Tha Holy Herb.”

  Each box was provided with an electric dripper to moisten the earth and adjustable ultraviolet lamps that hung from the shelf above, except for the boxes on the top shelf, whose lamps were attached to the iron dome of the cargo hold.