Locked Room - A Katla KillFile (Amsterdam Assassin Series)

by Martyn V. Halm

  An unexpected boon.

  She walked back along the parapet to her backpack and climbing rope, her anthracite Windstopper outfit turning her virtually indistinguishable against the dark night sky and protecting her from the chilling November wind. She carried her gear to the elevator housing, where she sat down on a self-inflating cushion and took her MacBook and her iPad from her backpack.

  The wireless CCTV of the apartment building wasn’t well protected, and she could hack into the system effortlessly. A grid pattern of monitors bloomed on the MacBook’s screen, so she could keep an eye on the main entrance. Katla switched briefly to the map and the GPS co-ordinates of the target’s smartphone.

  One more reason why she didn’t use a smartphone herself—most users didn’t understand that a phone with GPS capability could also be tracked quite easily.

  The target’s smartphone was still stationary at the Academisch Medisch Centrum, the largest academic hospital in the Amsterdam area. As his shift didn’t end for close to an hour, the phone’s position merely confirmed her assumption that her target was still at work. Or he’d left work without his phone, which was highly unlikely. Judging by the wide variety of apps, the doctor was practically married to his smartphone, which showed activity from early morning till late at night.

  In the distance a police helicopter—a dark dragonfly against the reddening sky—circled high over the Indische Buurt. Although the aircraft was far away, she made sure to play a dark game that wouldn’t illuminate her blackened face. She couldn’t do anything about the infrared camera, but doubted the helicopter was close enough to notice her.

  Besides, the police probably had other priorities.

  The Indische Buurt had erupted in looting when the electrical grid had gone down half an hour ago. It was mildly disturbing how easily the computer security of the Liander Energy Corporation could be breached. The Indische Buurt, every street named after islands in the Indonesian Archipelago, was one of those neighbourhoods rife with racial tension and animosity against law enforcement. Even if the energy company managed to restore electricity within a couple of hours, just dealing with the angry mob would take the police the rest of the evening. And if the doctor didn’t deviate from his usual routine, she should be finished with him well before the civil unrest died down.

  Katla didn’t want to enter the apartment too soon. Even luxury apartments left unoccupied for an entire day with the windows closed became slightly dank. The longer she was inside his apartment before he arrived, the higher the risk the doctor would detect an intruder before he was well and good inside the apartment. So she’d remain on the roof until the doctor left the hospital. A margin of thirty minutes was more than enough to get inside and get ready.

  Wearing e-Tip gloves, Katla played Zombie Gunship on her iPad, pausing after every round to check her surroundings and the doctor’s smartphone position, before lowering her gaze back to the screen in her lap. She stretched after blasting more zombies into smithereens and her thoughts wandered to the reason of the current assignment.

  -o-

  The Medical Disciplinary Tribunal shouldn’t have acquitted the doctor of malpractice, for he was guilty as sin. Medication for Graves’s disease can be dangerous for patients with a heart condition. And he who prescribes the medication has to make sure the medication’s side effects won’t be worse than the cure. In the case of the client’s wife, the side effects had been a lot worse. As in, fatal.

  And now, the client wanted the doctor to suffer. He’d been delighted when Katla had told him what she had in mind for him.

  The research, while interesting, had been time-consuming, and the high risk operation had to be flawlessly executed. Her fee had to reflect the difficulty and for a moment she feared she’d asked too much, but the client was not only beside himself with anger towards the target, he was also an affluent lawyer who had watched impotently as the doctor got away with murder. An appropriate punishment made the financial sacrifice of hiring Loki Enterprises of minor importance. A good thing too—a start-up business required plenty of capital. More than her side jobs of locksmith apprentice and motorcycle courier could sustain. This contract would keep her in the black for the rest of the year.

  The doctor’s residence, one of the more luxurious apartments in an exclusive building known for extravagant security measures, was the main obstacle. Especially if you were aiming for a ‘locked room mystery’ that would confound the Amsterdam municipal police forensic department. Exclusive residences meant closed-circuit cameras all over the place and the latest in anti-burglary hardware on every door. The perimeter was not guarded, probably because nobody expected a burglar to scale a twenty-two meter high blind wall to get to a rooftop that gave no access to the interior.

  -o-

  A slight drizzle began to coat the tarpaper roof. Katla thought about the tarp in her backpack, but she checked the GPS tracker first. The smartphone had left the AMC building, the doctor was on the move. Katla looked at the illuminated dial of the dive computer on her wrist. The doctor would arrive in half an hour.

  Putting away the MacBook and iPad, Katla took a pair of binoculars from her backpack and studied the windows of the office building across the street. Slightly higher than the building she was on, the top floor was unlit and the lighted windows level with the doctor’s balcony were slowly being obscured by the rain.

  Six floors down, the Wibautstraat—main artery into the city centre—bustled with evening rush hour traffic. Streams of cars and busses heading into and out of Amsterdam, heading towards the A10 ring road to the south or to the IJ-tunnel to the north.

  The dull brick wall and the overcast sky would make her dark shape indistinguishable from her surroundings, as long as Katla stayed away from lighted windows. With the grappling hook firmly attached to the steel rungs next to the elevator housing’s heavy door, Katla leant out over the parapet and lowered the weighted end of the rope down to the doctor’s balcony, two floors down.

  The balconies were not lined up, but offset against the façade, so she would pass the upstairs balcony to her right on her descent. Worse was the big plate glass window of the upstairs neighbour, directly above the doctor’s balcony. That window worried her—the rope was dark, a visible vertical line to anyone looking out the window. And the rope would be hanging down for the duration of the operation.

  Katla attached the rope to her climbing harness, stepped onto the parapet and leant out over the street. Twenty meters wasn’t high, but high enough to get seriously injured if her gear failed. The steady drizzle coated her night vision goggles as she rappelled carefully down the street side of the building, the bricks turning slick from the rain.

  Just as she passed the big plate glass window, the ceiling lamp of the room bloomed to life, throwing out light that almost blinded her in its intensity after the darkness of the roof.

  With her heart trip-hammering in her throat, Katla scrambled sideways, hoping no-one across the street had seen her silhouetted against the lighted window. Hugging the wall with one foot on the protruding windowsill, to keep herself out of view from the window, Katla willed her galloping heart to slow down to a trot and go back down to its usual spot. A shadow fell over the window as a woman walked up and drew the curtains.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Katla swung back carefully and lowered herself onto the doctor’s balcony, the apartment dark and empty before her.

  There was a housekeeper, but she was an older woman who came only in the mornings, letting herself in after the doctor went to work. Katla hoped the condition of the housekeeper’s heart was better than that of her client’s wife. Finding dead people can be stressful if you’re not used to it. Although she’d probably just alert the police if the chain was in position…

  The door to the balcony opened outward with a small hinged transom window above to provide ventilation without affecting security. The doctor was a short man and the transom wasn’t closed all the way.

  The door itself had a
central lock right under the handle and two latches that swivelled down to provide extra security in case the lock was compromised. The latches angled down, but they didn’t seem to be locked in place. And, since most homeowners considered latching a door easier than actually locking the door, she’d unlatch the door first.

  Standing on the slippery balcony railing, she inserted the slim metal ruler into the transom frame and wiggled until the handle popped up and the transom opened all the way. The gap was just wide enough for her arm to pass through, but not enough to reach the latches. From her backpack she took six sections of steel tubing, each hollow tube as long as her forearm and connected by a thin elastic so she couldn’t drop one by mistake. The first section with the rubberised steel hook went through the gap first, before she fed the second tube through the transom and screwed the two sections together. The rod with the hook now reached the top latch. She fished for the far end of the latch and pulled up the handle.

  So far, so good.

  She added the remaining four sections to the rod to reach the bottom latch and pulled that one up as well. The door remained closed, so the lock had been engaged.

  After hanging the rod from the transom’s handle, she stepped off the railing, crouched by the balcony door and switched on her muted headlamp, focusing the tiny beam on the lock.

  Weird, how they installed ordinary pin tumbler locks on the gate and the balcony doors when the rest of the doors were fitted with every anti-burglary device available.

  The key was inserted into the lock on the inside, but had been left perfectly vertical, so she inserted the blank blade of a skeleton key, and tapped the bow of the key with a small rubber hammer to dislodge the inside key far enough to turn the cylinder. Her picks unlocked the door in less than forty seconds.

  The door opened outward onto the tiny balcony. Still standing on the balcony, she spread a towel over the clean hardwood floor to avoid leaving tracks and traces as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  Another glance at her dive computer showed her this entire phase of the operation had taken fifteen minutes.

  Not bad.

  She set down her backpack on the towel and stripped off her wet outer garments. Underneath she wore a quick drying one-piece bathing suit. She left her shoes by the balcony door and put on a pair of thick woollen socks that wouldn’t track on the polished wooden floor, then donned a pair of thin lycra stretch gloves that allowed for dexterity while avoiding fingerprints.

  With her MacBook under her arm, Katla made a quick tour of the apartment to make sure she was alone, stepped into the open kitchen and put the laptop on the counter. She opened the MacBook, waited for the screen to wake from sleeping mode and checked the GPS tracker first. The doctor’s cell phone was travelling the subway, close to the Amstel Station.

  She switched to the CCTV monitors to make sure the doctor arrived alone, rummaged through her backpack and laid out a roll of industrial packaging foil and a large red plastic supermarket shopping bag.

  She rolled down the opening of the plastic bag for easy access and settled in to watch the monitors, her gloved hands folded to resist the desire to fidget.

  In a waking state—with the mind otherwise occupied—hands had a tendency to wander all over the place. If you film people in a waiting room and speed up the tape, they would appear like they had an uncontrollable itch all over their bodies. Their hands would run all over their bodies, combing hair, pulling earlobes, rubbing noses, prodding mouths, scratching shoulders, rubbing bellies, fingering pockets, stroking themselves endlessly. And not just their bodies—people sitting in waiting rooms would touch anything within reach. Patting their chairs and armrests, caressing the legs of the table, the stem of the lamps, the frames of the paintings. The higher the boredom, the more frantic the hands would wander, but even people reading magazines or listening to music would touch themselves and their surroundings continually. The hands had less tendency to wander if occupied by typing or drawing or any other purpose, but in some cases those menial tasks would be too distracting.

  So Katla’s best solution was to fold her hands in prayer and keep them firmly in her lap while she meditated on the different scenarios to aid the doctor’s demise.

  Eight minutes later, the doctor entered the lobby through the main entrance with two other people, a man and a woman. Katla studied the monitors. In the upper right corner was the camera for the corridor that led to the apartment. About five minutes later the doctor came into view. Alone. She breathed a sigh of relief, closed the MacBook to hide the bright screen, and took a position around the corner of the kitchen, just out of view from the door.

  Gearing up for the task ahead, Katla stretched her spine and breathed deeply. Her nervous energy focused into a ball of dark ice that spread like frost through her body and replaced her apprehension with a cold mirthless tension for the grisly task that lay ahead.

  About twenty seconds later the doctor’s key entered the lock. He stepped inside, closed the door behind him and slipped the anti-burglar chain into place, then reached for the light switch. Before he could turn on the light, Katla stepped out of the kitchen behind the doctor and yanked the supermarket bag over his head, clamping the plastic bag over his face with her left forearm around his neck to avoid bruising his skin. The doctor yelped and struggled, but she bumped her hip in the small of his back and used her weight to bring him to his knees. His hands went up and pulled impotently at her arm, but her left hand was clamped inside her right elbow, while her right hand curled up behind his head. The harder he pulled, the tighter her left forearm clamped around his neck. She squeezed her forearm and biceps against the sides of his neck where the main arteries supplied oxygen to the brain.

  Choking someone out, especially if you don’t want them to asphyxiate straight away or leave tell-tale bruises, was a delicate and time-consuming affair—it took almost two minutes for the panicking doctor to stop struggling and pass out from the lack of oxygen.

  Katla checked his pulse—weak, but still present—and dragged him into the bedroom. As he laid out on the floor she undressed him, neatly folding his clothes and hanging them on a chair. She put his underwear in the laundry bin, then took the foil and wrapped his legs together. With his arms angled down to his crotch she wrapped his upper body in the foil, adding layer upon layer until he wouldn’t be able to move.

  Katla fitted protective headgear for wrestlers around his head, so he wouldn’t be able to injure himself if he whipped his head from side to side. Taking care not to bruise him, she rolled him onto a tarp with sturdy handles and dragged his wrapped naked body carefully over the thresholds into the bathroom.

  Cradling his foil-covered upper body, she lifted him from the tarp and lowered him slowly into the tub. She quickly crossed the tiny hallway to the kitchen and took her backpack into the bathroom, in case she needed anything. Once the doctor regained consciousness, she didn’t want to leave the bathroom.

  As Katla opened the faucets and mixed the water until it was lukewarm, the doctor startled and writhed in the foil before he looked up at her and muttered, “Who are you? What are you doing?”

  “Who I am is not important.” Katla smiled down at him. “I’m going to assist you in your suicide.”

  “Assist? Suicide? Are you crazy?”

  Her smile widened at the fear in his eyes and she hunkered down next to the tub. “No, just well-paid to look after your demise.”

  “Paid? Who paid you?” His bulging eyes looked at the water rising around him. “I can pay you. Pay you more.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes! Whatever they paid you, I’ll pay you more.”

  “You’d just write me a check?” Katla snorted. “You have no clue how this works, do you?”

  “I have—” Water came up to his mouth and he struggled to keep his head above water. “I have cash. Fifty thousand.”

  Katla cradled his head, keeping it above the waterline. “Why would you have that much cash in the hou
se?”

  “Fifty thousand,” the doctor said. “And my Rolex is worth at least twenty.”

  “I don’t believe you. Why would you have fifty thousand in cash?”

  “I—I didn’t want to declare it. The safe is under my bed.” He looked at the water slowly rising past his elbows and gave her the code to the safe.

  Katla let go of his head, took a pen from her backpack, wrote the combination of the safe on her forearm and smiled at the doctor struggling to keep his head above water. “Thanks for the bonus.”

  “Please,” he panted. “You don’t understand, I can get you more. Double your fee.”

  “Every target I allowed to talk made me similar offers, doctor.” Katla added bath salts to the water. “You could offer to triple my fee, but that wouldn’t sway me.”

  “You are crazy!” The fear in his eyes went to full-blown panic. “You can’t just kill me.”

  The water level was about one width of her hand under the rim of the bath.

  “No? Why not?” Katla turned off the faucets. “My conscience is just as absent as yours, doctor. You should’ve accepted blame for your patient’s death without hiding behind your peers. If you had, my client might’ve been less vengeful.”

  Realisation dawned in his eyes. “I was vindicated! The medical disciplinary—”

  “Oh, please,” Katla said. “You prescribed the wrong medicine and she died.”

  “You don’t understand. She neglected to tell me her condition.”

  “You were her doctor. You neglected to check whether her heart could handle the side effects.” She rose and walked to the foot of the bath, grabbed his ankles and pulled him underwater. His abdominal muscles bunched as he bent at the waist and tried to grab some air before going under, but she lifted his ankles and his head went underwater. As the water flooded his nasal passages and hit his vagus nerve, the doctor lost consciousness instantly. Before he could drown, Katla grabbed the wrestling headgear and hoisted him back in a sitting position. The doctor coughed up water and glared at her balefully.