Nearly all the tables in the police canteen had been moved to one side for the presentation. Ribb stood next to a large screen at the rear, along with Dr. Conver and another male and female Wall did not recognize. In front of them the projector stood on a single square pedestal, on standby. The squad room where they worked from had become too small. The detective division for the case had grown extensively in size with extra manpower drafted in from The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht and other parts of the country to handle the amount of interviews and investigative leg work.
The day before Ribb announced the presentation in an email and explained, much to Wall's delight, that it was going to be done in English. Wall estimated about two hundred people present, causing the room to become very humid, very quickly. Ribb looked at his watch. The presentation was planned for three o'clock; it was now one minute past. He walked up to a small white canteen table where he had his notes, the room immediately went silent.
"Ladies and gentlemen, because we have international guests with us today we are going to do this in English. If at the end you have not understood everything, please drop by my office and I'll explain it in Dutch." He glanced over at Dr. Conver standing in the wings.
"Some of you know Dr. Conver, the city pathologist," Ribb turned and gestured to the woman standing next to him. "We also have with us Dr. Lynne Pruden, an American working with the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and Dr. Geoffrey Marsh from the VU medical center in Amsterdam."
Ribb indicated to Dr. Conver, who stepped up to the table. The lights went out and the projector lit up the screen next to Dr. Conver.
"This little get-together is to try and explain what we are dealing with." Dr. Conver said. "For many of you it will be familiar if you took your biology lessons serious and you have remembered the basics of chromosomes and genes and DNA."
About half the room said yes, others murmured or nodded.
"The number of genes we have is roughly 23,000, right?"
Some nodded, but only one or two actually said yes.
Wall glanced around the room. If this had taken place in New York the FBI, CIA and possibly homeland security would be doing the presentation. Here they did not seem to have specialist crime departments. It looked as if it was all down to a group of detectives with no real specialists among them, and presented by experts who seemed to be hired help. This was going to be a laugh.
"Okay, let's make this a little easier." Conver continued. "What is probably more familiar is that we have forty-six chromosomes, or twenty-three pairs." Now nearly everyone agreed.
"So that makes us human, right?" Again, most nodded.
"So all the cells in our bodies are hundred percent human, right?" There was a mutual murmur of agreement in the room.
"Wrong," Wall suddenly said, breaking through the yes vote. The room went silent. Wall stepped forward, leaving Bakker behind.
"Ah, Detective Wall," Conver said.
"What I remember is that we have lots of bugs and bacteria in our gut that live with us, but is not really part of us, so?' He paused for a couple of seconds, wondering how he was going to finish this. "? so I guess we are not all human." A number of the people in the room including Dop, Kaps and Hendrik laughed aloud, some sniggered, and others lowered their heads and stared down at the floor and shook her head in disagreement.
"Detective Wall is absolutely correct." The amount of people who were not laughing in the room at first were now laughing while the rest suddenly fell silent.
"Let me introduce Dr. Lynne Pruden whose specialist field is the very subject detective Wall brought up."
Dr. Lynne Pruden was small, thin, probably Italian parents or great-grandparents, Wall thought. Maybe her name was originally Prudino or something like that. But her face was of a woman in her late thirties, early forties, with a thin, gaunt face, fine delicate lines, and a dark Latin hue to her skin. Not too dark, not too light, but five minutes in the sun and Wall knew it would darken her complexion immediately. She had the face of a model, but the rest of her incredibly thin and small body would have let her down. She stepped up to the table.
"Ladies and gentlemen, your colleague is right." She said in a soft American tone.
Wall tried to place her accent but could not exactly pinpoint it. It was neutral, not from New York or the West Coast, possibly the great Lakes.
"The amount of bacteria, or microbes as we prefer to call them, that are not human, outnumber our own cells at roughly 10 to 1."
There was a murmur in the room. Wall realized she was not American after all, but Canadian, probably Vancouver.
"Have any of you ever seen those wildlife programs on Animal Planet or National Geographic where you see a rhino or a wildebeest grazing and they sometimes have small birds on their backs picking off fleas and ticks?"
There was no response from the detectives.
Pruden carried on. "They seem to be looking after the animal, but they just want a meal as well, so they both benefit. That's on the outside, but on the inside we have the microbes doing exactly the same thing."
Ribb realized she was well used to giving lectures like this.
"So that is what those butterflies are doing in my stomach every time I fall in love," someone said from the middle of the crowd. Everybody laughed.
The slightest smile came to Lynne Pruden's face, then she soldiered on, unphased.
"The highest concentrations of microbes you have are in your gut, but you'll also find them in your nose, mouth, private parts and so forth. Normally they live in harmony with your body, helping to keep you alive. But we have found that the microbes in the recent victims had been genetically manipulated not to work with the body but against it, eating up the gut and the tissue."
She nodded to a young assistant at the projector, who pressed a key on his laptop and the first slide showed two different microbes.
The first looked like a rounded oblong pill with an inverted ring in the center. Enterococcus faecalis was printed under it. The second microbe called listeria monocytogenes, was elongated like a small worm, but with no distinct head or tail.
"As I said, these microbes have been genetically manipulated not to work with the body, as they have done from the very beginning of man's time on earth, but against it. Therefore eating up the gut and tissue."
A new slide appeared on the projector screen showed the man on the Overtoom melted into his armchair. The room was now totally silent.
One of the women working behind the counter of the canteen fainted.
"As you see, this has caused a devastating effect on those who ingested the manipulated microbes. It is something we have never come up with against before, meaning we have no cure. But we are working on something to try and stop the microbes in their tracks should they be ingested. You could look at it as something like anti-venom for snake bites. We will try to keep you informed as we make progress on the research."
Dr. Lynne Pruden turned to Conver.
"Thank you, Dr. Pruden," Conver said. "Unfortunately that is not the only problem. You remember earlier we had those heart attack victims in the van Baerlestraat. That was something else altogether.
Dr. Marsh stepped up to the table and nodded to the assistant behind the projector. The picture of two familiar strands of DNA appeared on the screen.
"I suppose many of you are familiar with this picture." Dr. Marsh said. Wall could hear he was English, but could not place exactly where. To him most of the British sounded either like Hugh Grant or Stephen Fry. Other UK accents were usually incomprehensible.
"The victims in the van Baerlestraat did not die from the ingestion of microbes, this was a lot more sophisticated, namely DNA manipulation."
Wall noticed Pruden's face twitch with the slightest of irritation when he said more sophisticated.
"Every day we hear about genetic manipulation of food such as soya, maize, but also in animals. All have caused controversy over the years but none more than the manipulation of genes in humans. Through genetic therapy we hav
e been able to help blind people partially see again. We can replace a mutated gene that caused a disease with a healthy copy. Gene therapy is only used on people where there is no other available cure, and it is now mostly in test stage. What happened to those people with the heart defects is totally new to us."
Wall raised his left hand. Marsh stopped talking immediately and gestured to Wall.
"New meaning you guys hadn't tried this before or new meaning you didn't think it was possible."
"Both," Marsh replied. "And a very good question. Let me say that we try to fix defects in the human body, not mess them up. Splitting DNA and trying to target particular areas of the body is a very difficult and complex science, which is why we have not achieved a great deal up to now. But I think you already know how controversial it is. There are laws and rules and regulations that kept everyone involved on a very tight leash. The problem now is that all those laws have been broken and the person or persons carrying out these murders do not give a damn about rules and regulations. How they managed to achieve this exact type of concentrated genetic manipulation is something we haven't figured out, but we are working day and night on this. Any more questions?"
Marsh looked around the canteen to see if there was anyone else in the room who had any questions. There were none.
"Thank you for listening," he finally said, then turned to Ribb.
The lights went back on in the crowded canteen and Ribb stepped forward.
"So now you know what we are dealing with ladies and gentlemen. We already have a team working on the biomedical end of this, checking all the medical data and leads of specialists who might be involved. There are thirty detectives working on that, and now we are bringing that up to fifty. Most of you have a team leader, you report to them if you find anything and they report directly to me. Are there any more questions?" The room was silent.
Ribb turned towards Harvey Wall. "Mr. Wall?"
"No sir. No more questions."
"Let's get out there and get some results in. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen."
Wall headed straight for Dr. Pruden as everybody headed for the exit doors or the canteen counter to get coffee or refreshments.
"It must be a pain in the ass when people take you to be a Yankee when you're not."
Pruden looked up at Wall, who was nearly twice her size. "Thank you, detective Wall, I'll take that as a compliment."
"Vancouver?"
"Right on the nose. But I was born in Toronto. So what's the Yankee doing on the dream team here."
"I needed a break from the NYPD and wanted to see how things worked over here, so I signed up for six-month exchange program."
"Sounds plausible enough. I don't think it's the whole story, but it seems okay."
"Want to go for a coffee?"
"Here?"
"The coffee is not that bad, but I do know a great place with less police body odor just up the street."
She laughed. "I'll agree to that. Let me say my goodbyes and then we can head off."
"I've got to get my jacket. I'll meet you down at the front desk."
In the squad room Bakker was back at his desk staring at the monitor when Wall came in and grabbed his jacket.
"Where are you going?" Bakker asked.
"Coffee."
Bakker got up out of his chair. "Good idea."
"Sorry pal, you are not invited."
"Aha, so you're going out with that cute little doctor."
"Aah. You really are a detective."
"Very funny," Bakker sneered. "So what are you going to talk about?"
"No idea, not about you that's for sure. But I'll tell you all about it when I get back."
"No you won't."
"Wow, you're on a roll today detective Bakker."
Bakker shook his head, and sunk into his chair.
Wall disappeared out the door, and as he came out onto the corridor a uniformed officer passed him. He recognized the face. It was the man he saw with the woman outside a Chinese restaurant a few days ago. Wall turned to see him go through the door and into the squad room.
He quickly turned and went back, and peered through the glass window in the door. The officer pulled up a chair next to Bakker. He had seen enough. Time for coffee.
Hotel Americain and was half full. They took a table next to a window well away from other clientele. The waiter quickly appeared at their table.
"Sir, Madam. What can I get you."
Doctor Pruden did not bother to look at the menu in front of her. "I'll have an espresso."
"Sir?"
"Cappuccino my friend."
"A large one Sir?" The waiter asked.
Wall looked up and recognized him. "Yeah, that's exactly what I need." The waiter noted the order and left.
"So they know you here?"
"I've been here a couple of times with my partner."
"Partner?" Pruden smiled, searching him with her eyes.
"Working partner, called detective Bakker. He's Dutch."
"I see. How long have you been in the Netherlands?"
"Just got in a couple of weeks ago and was looking forward to a nice relaxing fully paid holiday for six months. Unfortunately, that only lasted five days until this all blew up. A strange welcome to a beautiful city. What brings you here?"
"I'm at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I've been here for about a year and a half. It's nice, I like it."
"And how did you get involved with the investigation?"
"Doctor Conver called my department when he realized what he was dealing with. I've been doing research on this for years, in any case longer than most of the others in the lab, so I think that's why he called me."
"Never seen anything like this before?"
Doctor Pruden ran a petite finger through her jet black hair, pulling it out of her face to the back of her right ear.
"There is a flesh eating bacteria called Streptococcus pyogenes which would probably be the closest to something like this. Once it gets into the skin through a wound, even with a small scratch it releases toxins that disintegrate the flesh."
"Sounds nasty."
"It is. Within a couple of days you can lose half a leg or an arm."
"Is that what this is?"
"No."
"How do you know?"
"It's my job. And if it was we would have found it on the first day."
"Any idea who might be doing this?" Wall asked.
"No, not at all."
"I suppose it's a relatively specialized field, and I don't think many people in Holland or any other country would be experimenting with this sort of stuff."
"You'd be surprised. There are plenty of research labs out there and quite a number doing similar research to this."
"Okay. How many in the Netherlands."
"About four or five."
And no one is working on this sort of experiments?"
"If they were they would be behind bars." She looked at him with questioning eyes. "I gather by what you're asking, you have no leads."
The waiter came back with their order. Wall's cappuccino was in the largest cup he had seen since he arrived in the Netherlands.
"Are you sure you can manage that?" She said, smiling.
He looked down at her espresso. It was even smaller than a regular coffee cup and filled halfway.
"In New York you could get arrested for serving something that size." Wall said.
"It's meant to be small. An espresso like this packs in twice as much punch as your cappuccino. So, getting back to my question, no leads?"
He studied her expression - blank - either she was playing with him and knew more than she was saying or she was just as much in the dark as he was.
"I'm afraid not. Hundreds of people interviewed, but nobody has seen anything, heard anything, absolutely nothing. And those bodies? It really freaked me out."
"I thought you would be used to dead bodies."
"In New York I've handled every kind of mu
rder, mutilation, you name it, I've seen it. But I have never seen anything like this before."
"And not one suspect?"
Wall took a mouthful of his cappuccino. "Well, maybe one."
Pruden raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"Really?"
"A bird."
"Excuse me?"
"Blue Heron, or as it turns out?'
"?A silver Heron," she said, cutting in.
"Huh?" He looked at her with certain suspicion. "You know your birds."
"My father was an ornithologist. That was going to be my field, then I had a change of heart and I switched to studying microbes."
"I noticed you weren't too pleased about Marsh when he said his field was more complicated."
"He's good at what he does, but outside of that the man is an idiot."
"You don't like him."
"I don't know, I think that British stiff upper lip makes me want to shake him or give him a good whack across the head."
Wall laughed. "Please, just shake. Otherwise I'd have to arrest you."
"We used to have people like that in Canada, left over from the great British Empire, but we deported them all to the US."
"Okay, thanks for that. But you're an Italian, right? Pruden, maybe Prudino before that."
She smiled and glanced out the window. She did have a beautiful profile, Wall thought.
"Correct detective. A couple of generations ago one half of our Italian family emigrated to the US and the other half to Canada. I could have been a Yankee like you if my great great grandfather didn't have a feud with the other half of the family."
Wall's mobile rang in his inside jacket pocket. The ringtone was a Chinese tune.
"Great ring tone," Pruden said, looking puzzled.
"I always used it when working in Chinatown in New York. It broke a lot of ice with the Chinese who used to crack up when they heard it."
He quickly glanced at the number. It was his hotel. There was no reason in the world why his hotel would contact him unless something was wrong.
"Do you mind if I take this?"
"No, go ahead," she said, and took a sip of her espresso.
Wall tapped the answer button. "Hello?"
"Mister Wall, this is the Alfred hotel."
He recognized the voice of the receptionist immediately.
"There is a woman here at reception asking for you." Oh shit. One woman on the left hand and another on the right. He got up and walked away from the table.
"Put her on." It was probably one of the nurses he was hitting on, he thought. Whoever it was had lousy timing.
"Hello?" The female voice said. He didn't recognize it, but then again he had only exchanged a few words with the nurses he met throughout the hospital.
"This is Detective Wall, are you looking for me?"
"Yes, I'm a nurse at the hospital, and I saw the poster of the man in the window. One of the other nurses gave me your card."
"Do you know him?"
"I think so. It looks like someone who used to be a patient at the hospital."
"Do you have any details about him?"
"He had been coming to the hospital off and on for years, in fact since he was a boy."
"Do you know where he is now?"
"Yes I do. He's dead."
Wall's mind began to race. "Okay, listen. Stay at a hotel, go to the bar and get a drink or something. Put it on my tab, I'll be there in about five minutes."
"Okay, I'll wait, but I have to go to work in about an hour."
Wall went back to Doctor Pruden.
"I have to go."
"Emergency?"
"Could be a lead on our suspect."
"You found the bird?"
Wall laughed. "Something like that. I have to go see a possible witness. Where are you parked? Are you going back to Rotterdam?"
"Public transport. Don't worry about me. I can get a tram to the station easily enough from here."
"Great. I got to rush," Wall downed the remains of the cappuccino. Doctor Pruden went for her purse in the small neat dark brown handbag worn diagonally across your shoulder. He quickly pulled his wallet out and grabbed a red colored ten and a green five Euro note and dropped the fifteen euros down next to the cup.
"I got it."
"Thank you," she said, and gave him the warmest smile.
Outside the Hotel Americain they stopped at the large oval water fountain.
"Are you going back to the station?" Pruden asked.
"No, I've got to go back to my hotel. There's a nurse waiting there for me."
"Oh, I see." Pruden said, with a stern face. "You're running from the doctor to the nurse."
"No. It's not like that, I never met her before. Like I said, she's a possible witness."
"At your hotel?"
"I've no calling cards of my own at the station, so I was passing out cards from the hotel when I was looking for witnesses at the hospital."
"I'm only joking. You go to your nurse. I really hope you catch the maniac who is causing all this."
"I'll do my best ma'am."
"God," she sighed. "I haven't heard ma'am in a long time." Pruden put out her hand. "It's been nice meeting you detective," she said and shook hands.
"Likewise," Wall replied.
"Next time I'm in town I'll give you a call."
"That would be nice."
Dr. Lynn Pruden turned and headed for the tram on the Leidseplein going towards central station. Wall eyed up the taxis across the street. There were about ten cars in all different shapes and sizes waiting in line, and realized he yearned for his New York yellow cabs. He walked over to the first taxi, a large black Mercedes and jumped in the back. The driver put down the iPad he was gaming on, and turned towards Wall.
"Alfred hotel, Lairessestraat, and no sightseeing tour on the way."
"Sorry?"
"Get me there as fast as you can, pal."
The driver hit the meter which started at nearly 3 euros. Less than ten minutes later Wall walked through the reception of the hotel and into the bar on the left. There was only one woman sitting at a lounge table in the far corner. Early thirties, with natural blonde shoulder length hair, slender, and wearing white medical slacks. She immediately stood up when she saw him.
"Hello, I'm Margot," she said. There was a strong guttural rasp to the G. Something Bakker also did. He did not think he wanted to try and repeat it.
"Hi, I'm Detective Harvey Wall," he said, as he took a seat opposite her. The bartender immediately came over to Wall from behind the bar.
"What can I get you, sir."?????????????
"I'll have a Coke, straight up," Wall said, then looked across at the nurse. Her coffee cup was still full.
"Can I get you something else?" he asked.
She smiled briefly. "No thanks, one coffee is enough."
"Maybe a sandwich or something?"
"No, I'm really okay, thanks."
"Put all this on my tab," he told the bartender.
"Of course Mr. Wall," he replied, and went back to the bar.
Wall pulled out a folded copy of the photo he had in his inside jacket pocket and showed it to her.
"So you recognize the man in the picture?"
She looked carefully at the photo and hesitated. "Well, it does look like a patient I used to look after but that's not possible."
"Why wouldn't it be possible."
She shook her head in disbelief. "He was sick, in fact he was dying."
"Maybe he got better."
"No, no way," she said, with utter conviction.
"Why not?"
"He had an incurable disease. He was diagnosed with DMD, which is Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and had been in a wheelchair from his early teens." She reached into a small white leather handbag and took out the photo and handed it to Wall.
It was Margot in her nurses uniform sitting on the edge of a hospital bed next to a young man wearing an oxygen mask. He looked anorexic, with a gaunt face an
d spidery thin arms.
"All his muscles were wasted by the disease. At this stage, he had no more than a couple of months to live."
"When was this picture taken?" Wall asked.
"About a year and a half ago." She looked again at Wall's photo of the man peering in through the window of the pathologist lab. "When was your picture taken?"
"Last week."
They sat in silence as the waiter brought Wall's Coke. When he returned to the bar, she finally spoke.
"Then it's not the same person," she finally said.
"How can you be sure."
She laughed nervously. "Because it's just not possible. It must be someone who looks like him. Sure, both people in the pictures look alike but it can't be the same person.
"You saw him die?"
"No."
"So how do you know he's dead."
"Because he was terminally ill at this stage. A couple of weeks after this picture was taken he was moved to a hospice that had more comfortable surroundings and would give him a better death than a hospital."
"Do you know the name of the hospice?"
"Yes."
She wrote down the name and address of the hospice on a beer mat, and handed it to Wall.
"What was his name?"
"Karl Webber," she replied, looking at her picture of the two of them together.
"He was a nice sweet guy."
Chapter Twenty-Nine