Beumers shrugged his shoulders. “Not a lot. Claims she was with the John for a long appointment, and he didn’t like to disturb them, and then says he fell asleep watching TV. Which is crap as you know. Whether they pay the usual fifty euros or pay three hundred euros, they want them to fuck the girl fast and then piss off. Mind you, he was watching La La Land so perhaps he is telling the truth and nodded off half way through.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What about the other girls down here?
“Well I’ve only had a quick chat with a few,” Beumers told him, “but surprise surprise they all claim to have seen or heard nothing.”
“Nobody? They have mirrors by the side of their doors so they can see men coming up and down the alley. I thought these girls were supposed to look out for one another?”
“Yeah well boss, they all say they were in the toilet at the time, or some such shit.”
Pieter watched as a couple of uniformed officer’s started to marshal the crowds of tourists out of the alley. At the top end, another forensic techie came down the alley with several camera bags slung around his neck.
“Well speak to them all again. And get their contact details. I’ll get some of the lads to help out because the girls will be changing shifts in a few hours.”
The camera guy stopped before them. “This one?” he asked, pointing at the door.
Pieter and Beumers nodded at the same time, and he stepped inside. The door shut and after a moment the two of them heard his muffled “Fuck me” come from within the room.
Just then the police officer he’d sent away to tape off the exits came rushing back towards them, looking flustered. “Sir, there’s something you gotta see.”
He led them down towards the darker end of the alley, where the walls closed in even more, and the old brickwork was covered in scrawled messages about HIV and flyers about illegal raves, calling back over his shoulder excitedly, “I saw it when I came down… just before the end here… I could have walked right by it, but I didn’t.”
He paused, and fished out his mobile from his back pocket, and turned on its bright white light, and held it up high at arm’s length to shine it on the wall at head height. To show this:
Beware, Werewolf is watching
It was daubed in red, presumably with blood as the writing was starting to congeal and turn a darker rust colour.
Beumers glanced sideways at him. “What are you thinking boss?” he asked.
Pieter stared with hard flinty eyes up at the wall. “What am I thinking? I’m thinking why didn’t I just get a job working at KFC when I left school?”
He turned as if to move away, out of the exit of the passageway.
“Where are you going now?”
Turning to look back over his shoulder, Pieter told him simply, “Danny boy, I’m off to get a beer.”
CHAPTER 2
LOTTE
The Newcastle Bar over on Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal was a bit of a dive. The owner must have been a surfer at one time, thought Pieter, even though the best place for surfing in the Netherlands was way over at Zandvoort on the North Sea coast. Like most surfer’s shacks, the place was run-down and dingy, with wooden planks for walls and rickety bar stools and bare floors covered in gum, with a multitude of optics and beer pumps behind the bar and the ceiling plastered with currency notes from all parts of the world, US Dollars, Japanese Yen, South African Rand, British Sterling, Swiss Franc and so on, and one whole wall made up of postcards and photos tacked over every square inch. The toilet, which was tiny and unisex and with no lock on the door, was a breeding ground for every deadly microbe known to man, and it never flushed and the sink gurgled brown water back up the plughole. Also the place was tiny, and with window brothels to either side of the barn-door entrance it tended to attract characters of a shady nature.
But Pieter liked it here.
There was something about the edgy atmosphere that seemed to appeal to him. Perhaps it was because people tended to mind their own business and ignored the dodgy dealings going down, the patrons content to sit and stare into their glasses, their eyes flicking left and right whenever anybody pulled up a stool or stumbled past as they rushed outside to puke into the canal.
Yes, it was that kind of joint.
And of course Lotte worked here.
From Finland, and in her early twenties, and on a gap year from Uni to do a bit of travelling, before ending up in Amsterdam and getting this cash-in-hand bar job, which was two years ago now, and what had initially been planned as a short stay had become a semi-permanent home.
Pieter had called in one day to have a quick drink on his way home from work and had noticed the new bar girl, who had drifted across to where he was sat at the end of the bar and smiled shyly at him, head tilted to one side to ask what she could get him.
“Heineken please.”
Watching her as she drew the beer into a chilled glass, she aware of his friendly scrutiny but a little too timid to glance across and make eye-contact, but playing with a strand of hair and twisting it behind one ear, then bringing his drink over and scooping off the frothy head with a knife, pretending to concentrate on what she was doing but Pieter noticing her swift glance towards his hand and noticing the wedding ring he wore. Then another sweet little smile. “I’m Lotte,” she
