Arrest and Support Unit car number 166-D: It was Vondelstraat wasn’t it? Confirm please.
Dispatch Operator: Yes, Vondelstraat 175.
Car number 166-D: Can’t see a fucking thing in this fog. I think we came in at the wrong end, it must be down past the church.
Dispatch Operator: Confirm address is Vondelstraat 175, resident’s name Christiaan Bakker, plus spouse and one female child.
Car number 166-D: She was the caller right? The kid?
Dispatch Operator: Just checking. Yes, she gave her name as Nina.
Car number 166-D: She definitely gave the correct address didn’t she? Because we can’t – wait on – fuck me, there’s smoke everywhere. Hold on.
Dispatch Operator: Are you at the scene 166?
(inaudible shouting)
(muffled sound of car doors slamming and running footsteps)
(long pause -30 seconds)
Car number 166-D: There’s a fucking fire! The whole place is burning! The whole damn building! Send back-up now!
Dispatch Operator: Can you repeat your last?
Car number 166-D: The house is on fire, damn it! The front entrance is like a fucking furnace!
Dispatch Operator: Vondelstraat 175?
Car number 166-D: Yes, yes, send help, send everything you have! We can’t get near!
Dispatch Operator: Acknowledged.
Radio message ends at 7.23pm
The main Amsterdam Police Headquarters building on Elandsgracht was an ugly red-bricked modern office block, its roof bristling with numerous radio antennae and satellite dishes. The inside was not much better, with every room filled to capacity with untidy desks and chairs and PC monitors, the tired and harassed police officers and civilian admin staff working their fingers to the bone.
Inspector Pieter Van Dijk had managed to acquire for himself one of the few corner offices, up on the top floor. It was small and cramped, with one tiny window looking out onto the busy squad-room, and another overlooking Marnixstraat and the canal outside. To add a bit of festive cheer he had stuck a tiny piece of tinsel on the top of his PC monitor with blue tack, and on the table in the corner was an old plastic Christmas tree covered in coloured lights, which he’d found in a cardboard box in the storeroom. The cheap lights flickered occasionally from a loose bulb, but Pieter hardly noticed.
He was too busy re-reading the transcripts from last night’s emergency 112 call, and the subsequent police radio message from the cops first on the scene. They made for grim reading, particularly the call from twelve year old Nina, Mr and Mrs Bakker’s young daughter. The terror in that call was clear, the girl’s pleading for help and the operator’s futile attempts to keep her calm. Even though it was a printed transcript set out verbatim and therefore cold and soulless, the fear of that brief conversation still came through, and Pieter shivered at the emotional impact it had on him.
At lunchtime, a little over an hour ago now, he had received a brief update from the scene of the fire. The police and fire service forensic teams, working in tandem, were still in the process of picking their way through the debris, but several things had already been established. First was that arson was definitely confirmed to be the cause of the fire. Traces of a flammable liquid, in this case petrol, had been discovered in the downstairs hallway, with the heaviest concentrations around the front doorway and over the floor. This was the seat of the fire, the exact spot where the damage was worst and therefore where the inferno had been started. It was also the location of the first body, initially only presumed to be the corpse of Elise Bakker (Pieter could still see her face when one of the techs had rolled her over). This had now just been confirmed by STRs and mtDNA sequence results rushed through the NFI lab in The Hague. They had also verified the identity of the second body, recovered in the dining room; this was indeed the husband, Dr Christiaan Bakker.
So far, so good. Nothing unusual up to that point. They were still searching through the upper floors of the large house for the body of the child, and Pieter expected any time now to hear that her remains had also been recovered. But in the meantime, an odd bit of news had reached him; a piece of info gleaned from the early search of the crime scene. Which connected nicely to something that officer Kaatje Groot had told him last night.
The object that she had observed sticking out of the chest of the male corpse, and which she thought was a small knife, was in fact a hypodermic syringe. This in turn led his memory back to the small plastic cap that he had accidentally caught with his shoe on their way outside.
Pieter hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. He just assumed that it was for someone’s medical requirements. Perhaps a member of the family was diabetic or needed regular injections for another ailment, or maybe it was connected to Christiaan Bakker’s occupation.
But this unusual development regarding the syringe sticking out of the doctor’s chest certainly changed that, and now Pieter was wishing that he’d bagged and tagged the yellow plastic cap.
He hadn’t however, and the chances of ever finding the cap again were slim to non-existent, he reckoned. Not with the number of people passing to and fro through the building, and with the firefighters still damping down the place, and dragging debris out to check for more bodies and to ensure the place was safe and stable.
Of course, he could be barking up the wrong tree. The presence of the syringe might mean absolutely nothing. They would have to wait for any blood and toxicology test results to come back from the lab to see if Dr Bakker had been injected with anything that may have contributed to his demise, instead of this being a case of death resulting from an arson attack.
Yet there was the phone call. The 112 emergency plea for help, and the young girl’s description of an intruder, and a violent struggle involving her
