A State Of Sin Amsterdam Occult Series Book Two

by Mark Hobson

  Further along, a doorway led into a modern study, with beautiful display cabinets holding more expensive ornaments, a brown couch and wooden chairs, a desk with a computer monitor, and a wooden floor covered in a square brown rug. It was spotlessly clean, Pieter thought as he stood there taking in the scene, beautiful and very plush. The window by the desk had shattered and spilled glass onto the wooden surface, and a draught gently blew snow through the opening. A lamp standing in one corner cast a gold haze over the room.

  At the far end there was a huge glass wall and door leading to the bedroom, and beside them a set of steps leading up to the attic presumably. In the bedroom there was a large double bed, some potted plants and side-tables and furniture, as well as a bookcase, a cream carpet, and overhead a ceiling with wooden beams and more spotlights.

  Pieter stepped over and passed through the glass doorway, and he stood looking at the bed.

  He found his mind going back to the period during the spring when Lotte had stayed with him for several nights, having concocted some story about problems with her boss at work (a ruse as it turned out, for the person was in fact her older brother Bart). They had grown close for a time for his head was a mess back then, with pressures of work and the terrifying case that had gripped the city for several weeks taking their toll, and Lotte had breached through his defences to seduce him and visit him at night.

  Thinking about it now he felt stupid, almost as though it hadn’t happened, for reality had become mixed up with his feverish nightmares until he wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t. More than six months on and he still didn’t fully understand everything.

  Pieter mentally shrugged his shoulders and slipped back into the study.

  The computer on the desk showed a screensaver of a woodland setting, but when he tapped a key at random the monitor came to life.

  The IMSI-catcher programme was still running. He recognized his mobile number on the screen, and when he clicked on it a list of all the phone calls and text messages he had exchanged over the last few days appeared.

  He recognized most of them, especially the ones between himself and Kaatje.

  HEY, YOU FANCY TAKING A TRIP IN THE MORNING?

  YES PLEASE ☺ WHERE ARE WE GOING BOSS?

  IT’S A SURPRISE. I’LL PICK YOU UP AT YOUR PLACE. 8am SHARP.

  He’d even tagged a smiley of his own on the end ☺

  Huijbers had been right. He should never have involved Kaatje, a rookie cop fresh from passing out from the police academy at Eindhoven. Of course, at the time he had no inkling that Charlotte Janssen was behind the whole thing, otherwise he would never have brought her in on the case. But it was a decision that would have lifelong consequences for Kaatje.

  Leaving the computer Pieter swung about to take a better look around when his foot caught the edge of the square rug covering the floor, nearly tripping him. Getting his balance, something caught his attention, a line scratched into the wood underneath where the corner of the rug had rolled back.

  Pieter bent over and grabbed the thick mat, and a sense of deja-vu went through him as he recalled the foot-track spell left behind by the intruder in his attic room during the WEREWOLF case, but he grunted, tired of acting like a nervous old spinster, and he rolled it all the way back in an angry flourish.

  Carved across the flooring in painstaking detail was an intricate design. A series of concentric circles and runic symbols, signs of the zodiac and crescent moons and ancient script with swirling letters and god knows what else. All beautifully worked into the polished wood floor.

  Chapter 21

  Visitation

  Pieter waited until his colleagues arrived before heading back to his car. He briefly explained just what had happened, quickly telling them to put out an alert with a description of the motorcycle. He also showed the team leaders the various crime scenes: the apartment, the lane and the alleyway, and he pointed out the spent brass cartridge cases on the ground, and watched as a full search by the armed response unit took place, the armour-clad men moving from building to building, asking the residents to temporarily leave their homes while they made sure the place was safe and harbouring no more wanted fugitives. They even dragged the church caretaker out of his home on nearby Gedempte Sloot to open up the building to check inside. Satisfied that the whole place was clear, they next sealed the courtyard off and marked it out with little yellow flags and the forensic personnel began their work, moving through the scene dressed in white coveralls and looking like snowmen magically come to life.

  Pieter went out by the smaller exit and walked across Spui Square, noticing that more police were checking out a second hire car parked nearby, which reminded him of the one outside his home with the IMSI-catcher. He went over to pass this information on to them and then drove back over to the hospital, his nerves still jittery. He couldn’t stop thinking about the large symbol beneath the rug.

  Arriving just outside Kaatje’s room, he kicked himself. In all of the drama over the last hour or so he’d completely forgotten about bringing a few things over for her. However, on walking through the door, he was pleasantly surprised to find her sitting on the edge of her bed fully dressed and with her small overnight bag packed.

  She turned her face on hearing him enter.

  Pieter stood there confused, looking from her gauze-covered eyes to the bag.

  “Hey, what’s going on?”

  Kaatje smiled when she heard his voice.

  “They said I can come home. Well, not home home.”

  “Already? But I thought…?”

  “The doctors told me there’s no reason for me to stay here. Especially when I explained to them that I’d be staying with a friend. I think they probably need the bed, you know what hospitals are like these days? They ship you out as soon as they’ve patched you up. Besides, there’s nothing to report yet on how the op has turned out.”

  She shrugged, looking all tiny and fragile, he thought.

  He went over and sat on the bed next to her and gave her a big hug.

  “That’s great news,” he said.

  “Has something been going on while I’ve been in here?” she asked.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Oh, it’s just that when they brought me back up there was a lot of commotion going on just outside my room. I could hear the guard out there on his radio, and then some other people joined him, I think I recognized their voices from the station, and they were talking about a shoot-out or something. Is it connected to the case, Boss?”

  Pieter laughed gently. He found her amazing.

  “What are you laughing at?” She stuck her elbow into his ribs.

  “Nothing. But don’t you start worrying about work, you need to rest, put your feet up on the couch for a few days, let me wait on you hand and foot.”

  “Boring! I want to crack on with the case Boss, find the people who did this to me and get Nina back safe and sound. We’re a team, remember?”

  Kaatje hopped to the floor like a determined little pocket-rocket or something, ready to go. Then she wobbled and tottered to the side, and he grabbed her quickly as she sagged.

  She let him support her, and this time her smile was a little weaker, and she leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “Come on,” he told her. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  Pieter used the remote on his key fob to open the electronic garage doors, and turned the wheel to steer the car inside. Out in the street a tow truck was just winching the hire car away. The snow had stopped, the blizzard having temporarily moved on, and overhead the night sky twinkled with stars.

  Punching in a six-digit code into the touch-screen display on the wall, he set the garage alarm, and then tapped in a different sequence of numbers to open the door leading from the garage to the house. The front door itself had its own alarm system, as did all of the windows, including the attic dormer beneath the bell gable. After his intruder earlier that year, who had somehow managed to get into hi
s home - something he could still not explain - he was taking no chances.

  Guiding Kaatje gently by the elbow he led her up the flights of narrow wooden stairs, explaining the rough layout of his home as they went. She asked a few questions but was mostly quiet, her pinched face and small mouth all serious and listening to his every word, which brought another laugh from him and another frown from her.

  The main living area was on the third floor and Pieter paused on the landing by the window.

  “Welcome to your new home,” he said gently. “I’ll take you to your room.”

  Kaatje took a hold of his hand and held him firmly, and then she pressed her tiny frame into his, seeking warmth and comfort he thought, but before he knew what was happening she kissed him on the lips, her mouth parting slightly. After a moment she pulled back, and he saw she was breathless, and he touched the bandages over her eyes tenderly.

  “Make love to me,” her whispered words came to him.

  Afterwards, they lay on the bed holding tightly onto each other, their bodies bathed in sweat and their limbs still entwined. There was nothing to say to one another, for their shared fears had found an outlet and a temporary respite, and they sank into its soft welcoming void. To forget, if only for a short while.

  They drifted off to sleep.

  Just as oblivion took him, a thought pushed its way into Pieter’s mind. Something he should have done. He struggled to remember what.

  Something about the bed.

  The salt. Yes, that’s what it was. The circle of salt around the bed.

  Sleep overcame him, and the thought melted away in the dark.

  ◆◆◆

  Nina had remained locked inside the small cage for over two full days now. Since her failed attempt to escape, she had seen nothing of Tobias, nor had she eaten or drank anything. Her empty stomach felt like a hollow pit and her lips and throat had become parched, her tongue all swollen up, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth.

  Her entire universe had shrunk down to this tiny, square prison. She barely had room to sit up or to stretch her legs out, and after several hours her body had become painfully cramped, the muscles in her thighs and back feeling as hard as iron, all twisted and knotted together.

  She was also frozen to the core. As punishment Tobias must have switched off the heating, and although there was a rolled-up blanket in the cage, dressed as she was in just leggings and a hoodie it was completely inadequate in keeping her warm.

  There was also nothing to use as a toilet. She had held off needing to pee for the first night, but by the middle of the following morning her bladder felt like it was about to burst, and so with little choice she had hitched down her clothes and squatted in the far corner.

  Throughout, she was petrified.

  Petrified that Tobias would come stalking back down the stairs and kill her for what she’d done.

  Then later and after several hours with no sign of him, she became petrified that he had just upped and left, having decided to abandon her here to a horrible fate, to die slowly of hunger.

  But the following morning she had heard the faint sound of the van revving and driving away as he’d set off for work, just like on the other days. Which had led Nina to believe that everything might still be ok after all. Her ordeal would go on, and her situation was a whole lot worse than before, but at least she was alive, and hopefully not alone.

  The thought of Tobias coming down to see her didn’t seem so bad anymore.

  Anything was preferable to the silence and the loneliness.

  The hours stretched on and on. Down here there was no real way of knowing the time, but over the last few days the daily routine of waking, eating her meals, reading, watching a DVD, had at least given some kind of structure to her days, and this allowed her to judge the approximate time of day, or at least work out if it was day or night. But trapped in the cage, with no distractions or break in the monotony, she soon became lost in her own thoughts. And when she had eventually drifted off to sleep towards the end of the second day, and then awoken later feeling refreshed and with a clear mind, she knew it was the following morning and Tobias had still not returned, he had not been down to see her or to bring her food and something to drink as he always did, then it had dawned on her that her worst fears were realized. Tobias had indeed left her for good.

  Nina had never felt so low. Even when she had first been snatched from home and bundled into the oblong metal box in the back of the van, driven away through the night and then carried down here, she had never felt such hopelessness as she did now.

  The thought of spending her final days in this cage, growing weaker and weaker as she slowly died, wondering if anybody would ever find her body and know of her fate… it was enough to break her completely and Nina had wept openly, crying out for her parents who she knew were dead also. These feelings of utter wretchedness pressed down on her and crushed any last lingering shred of hope.

  But later, much later, having cried herself to the point of exhaustion, a sound reached her. Very faint at first, so quiet that she wondered if her frightened mind had imagined it.

  Then it grew louder, a steady drone that increased in volume, coming closer.

  Something in the yard outside.

  Sitting up, Nina listened carefully, and after another minute she recognized the sound.

  A motorcycle. Yes, that’s what it was. Somebody was outside on a motorcycle.

  The engine cut out and she held her breath, straining her hearing.

  She heard a door opening. Footsteps across the room above her.

  ◆◆◆

  Lotte stood in the parlour and looked around at the dust and old furniture, the mouldy, musty smell making her nose wrinkle.

  So this was the place? she thought to herself. Tobias Vinke’s home, and where he’d brought the girl. Miles from anywhere, way off the beaten track, a spot where nobody would think to look. Just as he’d told her. At least his part in the plot had mostly gone according to plan, until the final few days when he’d started to get cold feet. But her Uncle Johan had taken care of that.

  And now here they were, come to babysit the kid she thought in annoyance.

  Not quite how things should have turned out.

  But no matter. It wouldn’t be for long.

  She heard her uncle enter the room behind her and watched as he dumped the carryall containing the sniper rifle onto an old armchair. From the back of his waist belt he removed his small handgun.

  “I’m going outside to check on our security. Then we’ll take another look at that arm of yours.”

  “Look in on the girl first. She should be down in the basement.”

  “If you say so.”

  He pushed open the door into the kitchen.

  “It’s a fucking mess in here!”

  Lotte ignored him. She was still perturbed by her mixed-up emotions, triggered by the earlier crossing of paths with Pieter Van Dijk, brief though it had been.

  The distraction was becoming a hindrance, coming at a time when clear heads and calm restraint were required. But pushing thoughts of him to the back of her mind was proving difficult, which irritated her even more. And now that the immediate danger had passed, and they had made it out of the city more or less in one piece and reached the temporary safety of Tobias’ hideout, she found herself struggling to let these feelings go.

  Try as she might to ignore this unwanted intrusion, Pieter was dead-centre in her thoughts. And for the first time in many months, she felt her resolve weaken.

  Lotte paced back and forth across the old, threadbare carpet, her gaze no longer looking at her surroundings but instead with her thoughts turned inwards.

  Damn it! Why was this happening now?

  Yes, the two of them had a bond, but built on a lie. The friendship, which became very intense, was really nothing more than a sham. She had drawn him into her intricate web over many months, helped by her mother Famke, who likewise had befriended Pieter’s father, the old drunk on
the houseboat. But inevitably their relationship, both platonic and later sexual, was bound to have left behind some residual emotions for both of them.

  She stopped beside the window and briefly lifted the curtain to peer out at the night, but all she could see was her own pale reflection staring back.

  She was human, she concluded. Not as strong as people presumed.

  But she needed to put this to bed quickly.

  Lotte was in her astral form once more, moving through the night, with the city far below her.

  She travelled with ease, and some inner sense alerted her to her destination, the house she was looking for, and she swooped down and glided smoothly through the outer walls and into the bedroom.

  Floating above the bed, invisible in the real realm, she looked down at the sleeping figures embraced together.

  Pieter… and the girl! The girl at the clinic!

  A wave of anger passed through Lotte’s astral incarnation, and for the briefest of moments she appeared as a ghostly shape, rippling and surging with energy, like a shimmering cloud flashing with lightening…

  …while back in the parlour, tears appeared in the eyes of the reflection cast in the window…

  In a fury, the apparition opened its mouth wide in a silent scream, but Pieter and the girl blissfully slept on.

  A white miasma floated out from between its lips, like a cloud of condensation, and it twisted and snaked through the air, across the bedroom, and then slipped silently into the girl’s mouth.

  Kaatje breathed in the ectoplasm, drawing it into her core.

  ◆◆◆

  A shifting of the bed woke him and Pieter lay there for several moments looking up at the dark ceiling, his groggy mind slowly coming alert.

  All was quiet around the house. There was a draught coming from somewhere, raising goosebumps on his bare arms, and he wondered if he had left a window open? Unlikely at this time of the year.