And finally, there were the death threats.
A number of different warnings had apparently been received by the Bakkers, some by telephone and some by hand-written notes. Initially, these threats were only made to Dr Bakker, and in order to shield his family from them, he had decided not to tell them, hoping the threats would either stop or that perhaps he could deal with the situation without alarming his wife and daughter. But later, these messages had been directed at his wife, Elise. And they had grown increasingly menacing, to such an extent that Dr Bakker had decided to report them to the police.
Sitting in his office Pieter read through the file. There wasn’t much there. The threats had been logged into the system, but no action had been taken, mostly because as quickly as the messages had begun they had stopped, at the exact time that the Bakker’s contacted the police. It may have just been coincidence, but more likely the perpetrator of the messages had got wind that the police were involved, and panicking, he or she had decided to quit rather than risk arrest. The last threat was over three months ago, and since then, nothing.
So, thinking the problem had gone away, Mr and Mrs Bakker, and their daughter Nina, had got on with their lives.
Until last night, that is.
Pieter scrolled back to the previous page on the file and made a note of the evidence bag docket number of this last threat, which had been in the form of a handwritten message. Standing up, he went across to the window looking out onto the squad-room office.
Kaatje Groot, the young rookie officer from last night, was at her desk. She had been hanging around all morning, he’d noticed. Technically, she should have been downstairs with Floris De Kok helping him in the files section, but somehow she had managed to find some task that kept her up here in the main squad-room instead. Her desk was also suspiciously close enough to Pieter’s office so that she could keep one eye on his door, and she had angled her chair and laptop so that she was facing in his direction.
Pieter gave a little shake of his head and smiled to himself.
He tapped on the glass to get her attention, and her head snapped up. Beckoning her over, Pieter reached for the yellow Post-it note he’d written on, and in the three seconds this took, she was there in the doorway, looking at him with her wide brown eyes.
“Hello sir.”
“Officer Groot. What time did you finish last night?”
“Oh, about 5am this morning”
“Shouldn’t you be off duty until later? Getting some shut-eye?”
Kaatje Groot shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not a very good sleeper sir. I don’t see the sense in mooching about back home when I could be here, working and, you know, helping out.”
“I admire your commitment. Long may it last.”
He handed her the Post-it note where he’d scribbled the evidence bag number.
“Pop down to Floris will you, and ask him to find me this? He has his own crazy system for filing evidence and paperwork that I haven’t mastered yet.”
Kaatje took the note. “Will do sir.”
As she hurried away Pieter could hear her happily humming Christmas tunes to herself.
Five minutes later she was back.
Placing the small clear plastic evidence bag on his desk she loitered in his office, looking over his shoulder.
Pieter glanced around.
“That will be all for now officer.”
“Oh, of course. I’ll be just outside if you need anything else sir. That’s my desk,” she pointed, “just there.”
When Kaatje was gone Pieter turned back and picked up the slim bag and peered at the contents.
Pay your debt, or get what’s coming.
The message was hand-written on a small scrap of lined notepaper. The letters were written in a very basic form as though purposely over-simplified, no doubt to fool any handwriting experts. But that in itself could be revealing as to the sort of personality and characteristics of the person responsible.
As to the actual contents of the message? Well, it was short and to the point, and it certainly carried a direct threat, but what that threat and the wording alluded to was harder to conclude. What debt was it referencing? Also, if this debt wasn’t forthcoming, what was waiting just around the corner for Mr and Mrs Bakker and their daughter?
The motive to most murder cases could nearly always be found by looking into the victim’s personal life or financial circumstances, and that was always the first step. Getting forensic evidence to back up any theories came second, as often any results from the lab could take days or weeks, and sometimes months, to come back down the line.
Get someone to check the family's background and their associates, and find out if they had any enemies. And whilst the police were doing that, hope that the boffins at NFI would ferret out any forensics.
Pieter read a couple of notations in the file. The handwriting and notepaper hadn’t yet been tested. Presumably once the threats stopped any urgency to do so ceased to be a priority.
So he filled out requests for EED and Electro-static Detection Apparatus tests to be done on the paper, as well as to run the handwriting sample through the database.
Just then his phone buzzed and vibrated on his desk, and he picked it up to see he had a text message. He checked the sender – Fleur van den Heuvel, the Chief Fire Officer on the scene. He remembered the sour-faced female firefighter from last night, and his lip involuntarily turned up.
REMAINS OF TWO ADULTS RECOVERED.
NO THIRD BODY. FULL CHECK OF THE PREMISES COMPLETED.
He thought about texting back, perhaps adding a love heart, but the compulsion soon left him.
So, there was no sign of the daughter, which begged the question: where was Nina Bakker?
Chapter 6
Arrival
While Pieter was at work slowly reaching the conclusion that they were now dealing with a murder and kidnapping/abduction case, Johan Roost’s flight from Johannesburg was
