Another pause, and then a voice he didn’t recognize.
“Hehehehehe.”
Author’s Note
This is of course a work of fiction, but as with the first book in the series - WOLF ANGEL - some parts are based on actual events and real-life crimes.
For a brief period during the 1970s and 1980s, Amsterdam became the world’s most favoured location for high-profile kidnappings. With the influx of drugs and the arrival of underworld figures from Eastern Europe, abductions came to be seen as the route to easy riches for crime kingpins. The most famous case involved the kidnapping of Freddy Heineken, one of the world’s richest men and CEO of the famous brewery company.
In 1983 he and his chauffeur were snatched off the street outside the main Heineken Headquarters in Amsterdam, bundled into the back of a van, and driven away. Their kidnappers, a group of failed bank-robbers, kept them prisoner in an old, disused boatyard in the docklands area of the city for three weeks, demanding a ransom of 35 million Dutch guilders. The money was paid, and the two men were later released unharmed. The kidnappers were eventually caught and served prison terms, however one of the men escaped to Paraguay and another, after finishing his sentence, went on to become one of the most notorious ‘mafia-style’ crime bosses in The Netherlands. He was assassinated in 2003.
The year before, in 1982, Toos van der Valk, wife of the hotel magnate Gerrit van der Valk, was kidnapped and held prisoner for several weeks and likewise released, this time after the payment of 13 million guilders.
Although the abduction of twelve year old Nina Bakker in this novel was not carried out by organized crime kingpins, or for monetary gain, I have drawn parallels from these two famous cases and the subsequent bungled police investigations. Our kidnapper, Tobias Vinke, may have been a dangerous psychopath but he did carefully plan and execute his crime and held his victim in a spot eerily similar to the Freddy Heineken case. Sometimes true crime is just as fascinating as any fictional book!
Once again, all of the locations that I have used throughout the story are real places, and many are worth a visit:
The Vrije Geer Nature Park at Osdorp, where I have based the eye clinic visited by Inspector Pieter Van Dijk and Officer Kaatje Groot, is a beautiful location and perfect to sit on a bench for a couple of hours to read a book or to watch the wildlife. It is a little away from the city centre but due to Amsterdam’s excellent public transport system, getting there is easy. Amsterdam can get a bit crazy, so if you are staying for several days and fancy escaping the noise and the crowds, then hop on a tram and ride out here.
Café Zoku, where Kaatje goes after her dressing-down from Commissaris Dirk Huijbers, is about a ten-minute walk from the central hub of Dam Square. Between the two is the 9 Streets area which many locals regard as one of the most beautiful parts of the city (it’s certainly one of the most photographed by tourists). Also on the way is Anne Frank’s House, and Westerkerk. The café itself serves excellent lunches, and the window seats upstairs offer lovely views of the canal and trees just outside.
Hollandche Manege is the prestigious riding school on Vondelstraat attended by Nina Bakker and the place where her friend Elena Vinke has her tragic accident. It dates back to 1744 and was modelled on the famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Members of the public are welcome, either to ride the horses or to take a cappuccino on the balcony café. Over the road is the wonderful Vondel Park and on sunny days horses are taken there to ride and exercise. The park is home to a small flock of parakeets, and they make for a somewhat bizarre sight flying around at the heart of the bustling city.
The Western Islands, where Tobias works intermittently at the NV Damen Boat Yard for his fat slob of a boss and where his work ‘mates’ rolled him around in a barrel full of rats, is a great place to just wander and look at the old wharves and swing bridges. Many of the warehouses have been converted into luxury apartments or art galleries, attracting a young and ambitious class of residents, but if you explore the smaller nooks and crannies it is still possible to discover the remnants of the area’s maritime past. Most tourists don’t even know of the place even though it is just a stone’s throw from Centraal Station.
Bickersgracht is a cobbled and narrow lane, poorly lit at night and with the overgrown allotments where Pieter hides encroaching across the fence, creating a creepy atmosphere of shadows and danger. It is not unusual to see the odd rat go scuttling across your path, on its way to and from the nearby canal and boatyard. However, during the daytime, the area is safe to explore… mostly.
The passenger ferries across the river IJ are a great way to get to North Amsterdam, and they are completely free and operate 24hrs per day. Just follow the pedestrians through the tunnel below Centraal Station to the embarkation point; you can’t miss the small blue boats! The journey time across to the A’Dam Lookout tower (and the amazing film museum next door) takes just 5 minutes and you can enjoy superb views back towards the city centre just like Tobias. Alternatively, if you take the boat to the NDSM Pier further upriver the crossing takes 20 minutes, and once again it is free.
The Begijnhof is one of Amsterdam’s oldest historical sites and best-known almshouses, home to the Beguine Sisters since the fourteenth century. The peaceful little enclave has been a women’s refuge ever since the Protestant Takeover of 1578, when the city came under Calvinist rule. It
