On the other side was a small room. He saw an L-shaped desk with computer monitors and a swivel chair, and a black examination couch, with what he presumed to be various eye-testing equipment, portable microscopes, diagnostic displays and halogen lamps clustered around it. There was nobody about, and he shrugged, seeing nothing out of the ordinary.
He carried on walking.
Further along, and the blue line branched away down a short side-passage, towards a set of wide swing doors. The sign above read: THE JACQUES DAVIEL WING. This would be the recovery ward, the plush overnight accommodation for the rich clientele, and so he turned away and went on.
Now there was just the single red line on the floor, straight as an arrow, and Pieter followed it deeper and deeper into the facility.
So far he had not passed a single person, and he was beginning to wonder where all of the staff and patients were.
Glancing at his watch he saw he’d been exploring for nearly ten minutes. Surely by now the receptionist would have noticed his absence and would be checking her monitors, but as this thought passed through his mind, he realized that he hadn’t seen a single security camera anywhere, which was more than a little odd.
Thinking he was probably about to run out of luck, Pieter was on the verge of giving up and heading back – after all, what had he been expecting to find? – when suddenly the red line swung down a cross-hallway and came to a halt before another doorway.
On the wall above was written: OPHTHALMIC THEATRE 1B + 2AB.
To either side of the closed door was a pair of huge and burly security guards.
They both jerked in surprise at his sudden appearance, and then came instantly alert, scowling at him.
Pieter had to crane his neck back to see their faces way above him, so tall were they, and their heavy brows and hard faces were more than a little disconcerting.
One of the men, who had a heavy black beard and his hair in a ponytail, said with a strong East European accent: “This area is out of bounds, mister. Go away.”
Recovering his equilibrium, Pieter fished inside his coat pocket and flashed his ID
“I’m a senior police officer investigating a serious crime. Can you let me pass please?”
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re Elvis Presley himself, now piss off.”
Pieter wondered if he should just walk straight past them and push through the door, just to see what happened, but after a second appraisal of the two men, he wisely deduced that that wouldn’t be the best course of action.
The second guard – this one sported a tiny tattoo of a black ace-of spades on his neck – pointed to a sign beside the door, and Pieter saw a familiar symbol warning of radiation from x-rays.
“It is a restricted section of the clinic. It has to remain completely sterile.” He looked Pieter up and down, and added: “No dirt allowed beyond this point.”
In unison, they both took a single step forward, and Pieter backed up and raised his hands.
“Okay, I get the message.”
“Do you need escorting back to reception?” asked the one with the ponytail.
“No, I’m a big boy, I think I can find my own way back, but thanks all the same.”
Pieter took one more look at the door, curious about what was on the other side.
“Nice meeting you guys.”
He turned about and headed back the way he had come, stepping around the corner.
Behind him, he heard someone say: “Oink oink,” followed by quiet laughter.
Back out in the car park, Kaatje asked: “What do you think it means Boss?”
When he’d made it back to the foyer area she had been waiting for him in the seating area, with a worried frown on her face. The receptionist looked at him with barely concealed contempt, all pretence of friendliness gone. Another security guard stood by the entrance doors in a not very subtle hint that it was time for them to leave; apparently, the other two goons had reported back about him skulking about and making a nuisance of himself.
Stepping outside, he briefly told her what he’d found as they walked back to their car and climbed in. He mentioned the two men guarding the entrance to the restricted part of the clinic, and the strange quiet, the lack of staff or patients anywhere.
“I’m not sure,” he told her, “and it’s probably nothing, but something just felt a bit off, you know? They certainly didn’t want me seeing what was on the other side of that door.”
“It seems like a lot of security for a private clinic. The kind of people who come here aren’t like your typical patients, and they are definitely not like all the junkies who hang around normal hospitals.”
“Well, we can run Visser through the system, see if anything pops up on him, we have nothing to lose. How did you get on?”
“Just a few tidbits really, nothing special from what I could tell. She couldn’t stop gushing about Christiaan Bakker. How nice he was, very generous with his staff, more of the same as before, blah blah. I get the feeling that she had a bit of a crush on him, but probably not reciprocated from reading between the lines. Oh, she did tell me something about Nina. She recently became a member of that exclusive riding school on Vondelstraat, you know the one,
