Climbing behind the wheel of the truck, Johan started the engine and slowly navigated his way along the trackway as it followed the icy watercourse out across the swampy and frozen marsh.
Five minutes later and it came out by the bungalow. The place was barren and desolate, and there was a smell of seaweed on the gusty breeze. Outside were a tiny and dilapidated wooden landing and a small boat, which was half-submerged beneath the frozen water.
He’d phoned ahead, using one of his burner phones, to check if the place was occupied. He’d been slightly surprised when somebody did actually answer, impressed that any of the survivors from the clinic had made it this far, blind and hardly dressed for the conditions as they were. But then again, he reminded himself, these weren’t normal people anymore.
He’d told them to leave a light on, not for their benefit but as a beacon to mark the spot for him, and he was gratified to see an orange glow shining through a single window.
Parking up outside, Johan switched off the engine and sat looking through the windscreen and checking his mirrors, trying to see into the shadowy undergrowth around the house. When he was sure that all was clear he slipped out and hurried along the pathway, up onto the porch, and pushed open the door and stepped into the main living area.
There were four of them, sitting on chairs and huddled around a log fire, two men, a woman and a very young child, a boy of five or six.
They had changed into proper clothes, he saw, having switched their pyjamas for thick woolly jumpers and trousers.
In the background, he heard a radio playing quietly, tuned to a news station.
Feeling suddenly apprehensive, Johan hesitated briefly and then strode further into the room, and he coughed gently to get their attention.
“I need a hand outside. We have some gear to bring in. Charlotte is in trouble and she needs our help.”
In perfect unison, the three adults and child came to their feet and turned to face him, and he vaguely noticed the boy’s nose was all crooked as though it had recently been broken. Across his throat was a large white plaster, right where his voice box once used to be.
The child’s mouth opened, emitting a peculiar mewling sound that made Johan’s skin crawl.
Then his gaze flicked up over the boy’s face, expecting to see the strange eyeless gaze staring blindly back at him, the way Lotte had described.
Instead, a pair of new eyes watched him, and they made him squirm with revulsion. They were huge, and bulbous, and looked like they had burst out through the skin, and were pure white, with tiny jet-black pupils at their centre that seemed to bore right through to his soul.
God, what the hell kind of unholy mess had Lotte left him with now?
◆◆◆
Pieter stayed until the police truck holding Lotte pulled away with a pair of Spartan APCs acting as escort.
He needed to call Prisha Kapoor and speak with Kaatje, to hear her voice. It would ground him back in reality. But when he pulled out his phone he saw it was damaged beyond repair from his tumble down the embankment followed by his icy swim. So he made his way back along the roadway, skirting the wreckage of the downed chopper. The fire was out, but the heat of the inferno had melted the snow for a hundred yards around. The road’s surface was now covered in fire-retardant foam. He re-trod his route back down the winding pathway to the small dock and Tobias Vinke’s old home. It was fully dark by now so he had to pick his way carefully.
The mobile command centre was still parked near the ruins of the three-barred gate and he wearily climbed up the two steps and pushed open the rear doors, and asked one of the communications operatives if he could use a phone line to place a quick call.
Prisha was in the kitchen, making three mugs of hot chocolate and listening as Rowan and Kaatje talked quietly in the other room, when the doorbell rang.
Since Pieter had dropped her off in the early hours of that morning, Kaatje had slept through most of the day. The sleeping pill, as well as the strain of the past few days, seemed to have totally knocked her out. So she and Rowan had left her snoozing on the couch, tip-toeing around her but keeping a close watch. In the middle of the afternoon, the young police officer had stirred and rolled over and then sat up. They had then eaten a light meal – salad sandwiches – and then chatted and waited for any updates from Pieter Van Dijk.
So, when Prisha heard the doorbell ring she naturally assumed that he was back, and so she hurried across the living room and swung the door wide.
She stopped dead and then stepped back one pace when she saw the diminutive little man standing in the hallway in a long grey trench coat with a black trilby hat on his head and glasses perched on the end of his nose. He carried a small leather bag in one hand, looking a little like a doctor on call she thought.
“Oh, hello,” she said. “Can I help you?”
The man gave a tiny smile and a curt nod of his head, and he looked up at Prisha with steely eyes that flitted back and forth.
“I’ve come for Miss Groot. Kaatje Groot.”
Somewhere behind her the phone began to buzz.
Pieter heard the line ring and ring, and just when he was about to give up and try Kaatje’s mobile number, someone finally picked up.
There was a long drawn-out silence, and then a rustling noise and a loud bump.
“Hello, is that you Prisha?” he asked. “It’s Pieter. I’m calling
