He turns to Erik, puts a hand on his arm. “I’m coming back to the police station when you’re finished here, and you’re going to search Elian’s name in your database.”
For once Erik doesn’t argue with him and Alex nods his satisfaction and stands back to let the team get to work.
He watches through narrow eyes as they move around the apartment. When they finally move the woman Alex steps outside and looks across Scheveningen. His phone vibrates in his pocket, interrupting his thoughts and he pulls it out, ever hopeful that it will be her, his heart sinking as usual when it’s not.
“Aunty, hello,” he manages a smile into the phone. “How are you?”
“Fine, but you, have you found her?” Selina’s voice is filled with concern as she asks about Elian.
“Not yet, but I think I’m getting closer.”
“Your friend Luke called, from the lab. He said he’s not got your mobile number, he wants you to ring him.”
Alex’s mouth goes dry. “Did he say why? Did he say he’s got some results for me?”
Selina clicks her tongue, “No, he just left that message. And look, I’m starting to feel like your secretary here because I’ve also had your father on the telephone, he wants to know if you’d like to join him and your mother for a holiday,” Selina says. “I told him you were away on business; he wants you to call him, he said it was rather important.”
Alex frowns. It’s unusual for his father to contact him, especially to request his company on a vacation. “He wants me to go to Portugal?”
“They’re not at home, they’re in Majorca at the Olive Grove,” replies Selina.
Alex is silent again. He and his parents are not close, they never have been. Though he doesn’t doubt their love for him they are more like distant family members and he can count on one hand the times he has visited them since they retired abroad a decade ago. He has been to their Majorcan holiday home, set in the orchards in the south east of the island.
He shivers involuntarily; as the fog starts to hang over the North Sea it brings a chill along with it. Alex takes a deep breath, holds it and lets it out.
A Mediterranean holiday has never seemed more attractive.
If he goes, he’s taking Elian with him.
But before he can, he needs to get the DNA results off Luke.
And he hopes that once he finds Elian, he’ll finally be able to give her some good news.
51
FORTH MURDER
A BASEMENT IN HOLLAND SPOOR
11.7.15 Early hours
Lev comes to very slowly and as he cracks his eyes open he can’t work out what’s wrong. Something is, but he can’t put his finger on it. He feels like he has been on a weeklong bender. His eyes are heavy, crusted and though he is cold he can feel his body covered in a sheet of perspiration.
He looks around but it’s quite dark. He’s not in his chair, he’s sure of that. Wherever he is seated is hard, like a dining room seat, definitely not his comfortable recliner. He brings his hands up to brush his hair away from his eyes and then realises they are bound. Lev stares in disbelief and brings his hands close to his face, just about able to make out the rope binding his wrists. A surge of panic flows through his body and he tries to stand, bringing the chair with him. The rope is twisted around the legs and the arms, but his feet are not tied.
He shuffles around, panting noisily and then screwing his eyes shut he slumps back down in the chair. The silence descends again and the only sound is his breathing.
He thinks back in time. He remembers the pier, sending Roland out to get his stash. Roland took a long time, too long and Lev had gone to look for him. He had found him, but there was another man with him and … that’s all he can recall. Did they party? His stomach is cramping and he feels like he has a fever; all his usual pointers to a heavy night taking recreational drugs.
As a trickle of sweat rolls down between his shoulder blades Lev hangs his head. Why didn’t he run as soon as he saw Roland talking so intimately with the stranger? He had been concerned about his passport and his money, but fleeing across the borders on foot would have been preferable to this. What good were his documents and cash now, unless the strange man was intending to rob him? But why bring him here? Why not just take all of Lev’s money once he’d passed out in a drink and drug induced slumber? No, this was not a common thief. This was something else, something much, much worse than a simple mugging.
And finally giving in to the panic, Lev begins to sob.
The man watches quietly from his position on the concrete steps. He knows that the Russian can’t see much, indeed the man himself struggles to see in the basement, the only light coming in from a narrow pane high up near the ceiling, but for him the other senses are much more interesting. He can smell the perspiration; he can hear the change in the man’s breathing.
He’s not bought anyone here in a while. Usually he gets his business done on the streets. That’s the good thing about being constantly overlooked by society; you can live in the shadows and get away with … well, with murder.
