Naomi, attacked and left for dead.
Alex, the British cop racing them in Erik’s car to the hospital.
Naomi, paddles thrust upon her chest; her top crudely hacked away.
He gasps, sits bolt upright and looks wildly around. He has fallen asleep in a chair at Naomi’s bedside and he looks across at the heart monitor, momentarily reassured that he’s not looking at a flat line. He transfers his gaze to her face, wax-like and pale against the robin’s egg blue of the crisp, hospital sheet.
He cranes his head and sees Alex talking to a doctor outside the room and feels a momentary rush of gratitude. The Englishman is here, despite them not really knowing each other or getting off to the best start. He catches Alex’s eye, beckons with his head for him to come in. The doctor follows, busies himself with checking Naomi’s vital statistics.
“Thanks for coming back,” Erik mutters to Alex.
“I haven’t left yet, I’ve been familiarising myself with your cases,” replies Alex, and Erik sees the stack of files under his arm. “I thought since it got so close to home you might want to get this case cracked.”
Erik thinks about Alex’s words. To tell the truth he hadn’t even cast a thought towards the killings since he heard about Naomi. But now Alex has mentioned it, Erik wants the perpetrator caught. And, he realises, he wants to get him himself. He allows himself to think about it for a moment, plays it through his mind, catching him, cuffing him, and before he reads him his rights, drawing back his fists and smashing–
“Erik?” Alex has sloped across the room and is waving his hand in his face. “Dude, you need to sharpen up a bit.”
Alex drags over a chair and spreads the files out on the bed, ignoring the look of horror on Erik’s face that he is effectively using his comatose girlfriend as a table.
“Where are your men at on the CCTV?” he asks.
“I haven’t heard any news on anything new yet,” Erik replies, rubbing at his eyes and dragging one of the files towards him. “All of these previous attacks occurred at points where CCTV doesn’t cover.”
“So what does that tell you?” Alex asks, gazing at the photographs of the three victims.
Erik visibly pulls himself together, blinking rapidly and pouring himself a glass of water from the bedside table. “That it was luck, or that the killer knows the area very well.”
“Yes, exactly, so who is on your radar so far?”
Erik picks up the file nearest to Naomi’s right foot, pausing to cover up her exposed skin on her ankle with the sheet. Alex swallows, this isn’t only close to home for Erik, this could have been him sitting by Elian’s bedside. Hell, for a while in Chernobyl, it was him.
“This is who we have spoken to, so far. The Russian, the one who bought you here, Levart Abramov. I spoke to Bram Bastiaan, he’s the doctor who takes care of the girls here in Scheveningen. We’ve tracked down as many people as possible who had known contact with the victims, but that’s not many, they are mostly tourists, just here for a weekend.”
“Do they have people looking after them? I mean, like pimps, people they pay for protection?” asks Alex.
“Not so much, their employment is legal here so there’s no real need for that.”
“And is there any link between the girls, other than their work?”
“Nothing that stands out,” answers Erik. “And Naomi, now her … apart from working with them, she’s the polar opposite of the other victims.”
“So it could be an opportunist,” says Alex. “Except for Amber, he went into her home.”
Erik rubs at his face, is about to retort when the doctor who was on duty last night comes into the room. He glances at Erik, then towards Alex. By the way he’s holding Naomi’s file open Erik can tell he has some news.
“It’s okay, go ahead,” he says.
The doctor, a German by his name badge, stands at the other side of the bed and, looking to Erik for all the world like he is about to perform a sermon, begins to speak.
“Miss Wilson is currently in an induced coma, that is to say, in order to try and mend the damage done by the manual suffocation, we have put her under. She lost consciousness during the assault, but there is no fracture to the hyoid bone. More tests are needed, but right now we are confident with the brain activity that is showing on the reports.”
“So she’ll be okay?” Even as Erik says the words he feels foolish, he, better than anyone, knows that the doctor won’t make any promises or guarantees on the outcome.
Alex, however, seems to take the doctor’s words as a good sign, and he slaps Erik on the back with a grin.
“And lastly, the good news and yar, there is some,” he smiles, almost playfully at Erik, his tone so changed by his cheery expression that his German accent is suddenly a lot more pronounced. “I can confirm that the baby is absolutely fine and there is no reason to believe that would change, whatever the outcome of Miss Wilson’s condition.”
Alex is behind him again, practically hugging him now, and the doctor peers over his spectacles, beaming.
“I–I didn’t know she was pregnant.” At Erik’s words Alex’s hand falls from his shoulder, as though sensing the sudden atmosphere in the room.
“Yes, not far along,” the doctors says with a note of caution. “Only around three weeks or so, so it is very, very early. But it is there, it is fine.”
They wait in silence while the doctor makes some slight adjustments to the I.V drip and then retreats from the room.
“It’s good news though, right?” Alex’s voice brings him
