When Wall got back to the station the squad room was buzzing more than ever. The extra manpower brought in from major stations around the country had moved up to the canteen. Those who had a regular desk like Bakker were allowed to work from their usual place.
Wall came up behind Bakker, leaned over and put the beer mat with the address of the hospice down in front of him.
"You know where this is?"
Bakker looked at it. "Yeah, I think so. It's in the Pijp."
"The pipe?"
"The Pijp is an area in Amsterdam."
"Okay I believe you, but you've got really weird names over here. Come on, let's get over there."
"Why, what's up?"
"I'll tell you on the way, grab your stuff."
Five minutes later they were sitting in Bakker's car and heading for the Pijp.
"Do you really believe the nurse?"
"Why should I not believe her. She didn't come to the hotel to get into my pants, and she was really shaken up about the guy in the photo."
"What was she like?"
"Okay - nothing special."
"Really?"
"Too old for you and not hot enough for me. Does that answer your question?"
The hospice was situated on a regular street with red brick town houses on each side. What struck Wall the most was its location, at the end of a dead-end street, which seemed ironic and appropriate at the same time. Bakker parked about thirty meters away from the hospice.
"That's the place," Bakker said, as he stared at the large three-story red brick building in front of them from behind the wheel of his car. "But it looks like any other building,"
"Why shouldn't it?"
Bakker shook his head. "A place where people come to die. It gives me the creeps."
"I suppose you haven't seen too many dead people."
"I've seen enough, especially the last couple of weeks. This is different. To think there is a place for people to come to die just doesn't sound right."
"And that coming from a guy who lives in a country where euthanasia is legal."
Bakker shrugged his shoulders.
"Five years ago my dad died in a hospital in New York from cancer. Let me tell you pal, a hospital is not the nicest place in the world when the last thing you see on this earth are white walls and fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. Wouldn't you prefer to go out in the surroundings of a beautiful building like that?"
"You may be right, but I just can't get my head around it."
"Death and taxes pal, that's what they say."
"Huh?"
"The only two things certain in life, well at least death in any case, I know plenty of people who don't pay tax. But no matter how you look at it, there is no escape in the end. When your time has come, that's it, lights out. I've even helped a few people achieve it sooner than they thought."
"You've killed people?" Bakker said, shocked.
"Why, haven't you?"
"No, of course not. How many?"
"Only three."
"Only three? Why?"
"Because they were bad guys who tried to kill me first. Not all at the same time. Three separate incidents, but all in the line of duty."
Wall had to laugh at the expression on Bakker's face. He genuinely looked surprised and appalled. "When I tell that to anyone back home they usually pat me on the back or buy a drink."
"But still, three is a bit much," Bakker remarked.
"Put it this way. The last thing they saw on this Earth was my beautiful face, instead of the white walls of some lousy hospital. Isn't that nice? Doesn't that make you feel good?"
Bakker shook his head in disagreement. "I don't know. I don't think your face is the last thing I want to see before I die."
Wall opened the car door. "Come on, let's go find us a dead body or a ghost at least."
Wall rang the bell of the dark green painted door. A man in his middle forties, with light brown hair, a warm round face and wearing small oval glasses opened it with a smile. Bakker introduced them in Dutch and explained something Wall did not understand, but he guessed what he was saying.
They were invited in and guided into a very relaxing front room. Two rustic brown leather sofas faced each other, separated by a glass coffee table with an unusually large vase that contained a stunning arrangement of fresh yellow flowers. On two windowsills were more fresh flowers. The walls were painted in the lightest of yellows and covered in amateur art in modern dark brown varnished wooden frames.
Somehow everything seemed to be balanced perfectly, Wall thought. It was a welcoming room. He realized patients would come here during the last stages of their life, possibly with friends and loved ones and this was the entrance to the last months, weeks or days of their lives. There was nothing sentimental about it, or ecclesiastical. Neither was it dry or sterile or cold like a funeral parlor.
His father would have loved this.
After a couple of minutes Bakker finished explaining the situation to the man, who then left the room.
They stood in the room alone. No street sounds penetrated the walls; in fact they could hear nothing at all.
"Want to sit down?" Bakker asked.
"No thanks." He walked over to the front window and looked outside.
"Me neither. This place still gives me the creeps."
"It doesn't give me the creeps. It's okay here. Nice and peaceful."
"A bit too peaceful if you ask me."
They stood in silence for about five minutes before the door opened and a middle-aged woman in a three-piece suit and short gray hair came into the room with a ledger in her hand.
Wall stepped forward. "My name is Harvey Wall and I'm with the New York Police Department, and at the moment stationed in Amsterdam working with the Dutch police."
"My name is Claris van Overhoven. I'm the director of the hospice."
"I'm pleased to meet you."
"My colleague told me you were looking for a Mr. Karl Webber, I believe."
"That's correct. I was told by a nurse that Mr. Webber, who was suffering from muscular dystrophy and near death, was taken out of the hospital and brought here to spend the last weeks of his life."
"Well, I'm afraid I have no name of Karl Webber on our list. He must have been taken to another hospice."
"Are you sure?" Bakker asked.
"Not only have I gone through the records on the computer but also the written ledgers," she said, and held up the ledger in her hand. "It could be possible that one entry did not make it into the computer, human errors happen, but everything is always in the books. Unfortunately, I cannot find his name."
"Maybe we got the name of the wrong hospice. We'll go back and do some more checking. Thank you very much for your help."
Outside Bakker turned to Wall. "What do we do now?"
"The nurse wrote her number down for me. You call her."
Wall handed Bakker the number he wrote down back at the hotel. He dialed the number on his mobile and listened. His face changed from one of expectation to confusion.
"It's a wrong number," Bakker suddenly said.
"What do you mean wrong number?"
"I'm getting a sound that the number is not correct or disconnected."
"That can't be."
"Maybe she wrote it down wrong."
Wall looked Bakker dead in the eye, and raised his finger to him.
"I don't think so. Try again."
Bakker checked the number, re-dialed, then pressed the speaker button on his mobile. They both heard the familiar two-tone sound of a disconnected number.
"That's the number and it's still not right."
Wall scowled. What went wrong?
"Mirrors," Wall moaned. "I hate friggin mirrors. Let's get back to the hospital."
"What do you mean by mirrors?" Bakker asked, as they drove towards the hospital.
"Someone is making us go round in circles. Wall said angrily. "Tricks. You can play tricks with mirrors, sending people in the wrong direc
tion. It's a pain in the butt."
"What was the name of the nurse?"
"Margot, or at least I think it was. She used that guttural sound like you as if you're trying to scrape your throat with your tongue, but I think that's what she said."
"So how are we going to find her? Do we have to go through the entire hospital?"
"They've got a personnel department, right?"
"Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that."
"Minus ten points for you, my friend. Let's see if you can get those points back at the hospital."
The human resources department was on the fourth floor in a building across from the main hospital.
Four people were in the office, each at their own desk. A young female in her twenties nearest the door was the only one to greet them with a smile. Bakker pulled out his police ID, and explained what they needed to know.
She picked up the phone.
"She has to call the head of human resources, her boss." Bakker told Wall.
Wall could not understand a word of what was being said, but she seemed to have a different accent to most of the Dutch he met so far. He wondered if they had different accents like they had in the US. Back home, some fellow cops told him that Dutch was very like German, but the Germans at the hotel sounded totally different. Sometimes he could recognize an English word or two but the rest was gibberish. Maybe Dutch was made up of different languages.
The young woman who had smiled at them put down the phone and got up from her desk. She said something again in Dutch and headed towards an adjoining office.
"Let's go," Bakker suddenly said, and they followed the twenty-something.
The head of human resources was female and beautiful. She came out from behind her desk and introduced herself as Evelien Ruiten. She had a dark tone to her voice, like a smoker's voice, mellow, soft. Most Dutch women he met at the station and hotel had a high pitched voice, more so than what he was used to back in the states. As much as he tried, Wall could not smell the slightest whiff of tobacco from her.
Evelien Ruiten had long straw-colored wavy hair tied neatly in a fancy curl at the back. She had full luscious lips, a slender body and large breasts. Although he always was interested in breasts, it was impossible to take his eyes off her lips. Stern, but expressive, meaty, and incredibly sexy. This was no silicon job, she didn't even wear lipstick; a natural beauty few he had ever met were born with. Her eyes were light blue and sharp. This lady was no pushover.
Bakker started off by explaining everything to her in Dutch. She listened intently, pinching her eyes, nearly closing them, concentrating on everything he was telling her. Then he heard Bakker mention his name and she looked up at him.
Suddenly the seriousness left her face and she smiled. All the features in her face lit up, and as if a spell had been cast, she looked suddenly like an angel from heaven. His heart skipped a beat. His face began to glow.
What the hell? He could feel himself blush, a rarity. He hoped she would not notice, although there were few who could see he was blushing through his dark skin.
"So you want to know about a nurse," she asked Wall, in near perfect English, which had a mixture of Dutch and British accent to it.
Wall took a deep breath. "Yes. I had a meeting with a nurse this morning who brought me evidence relating to the deaths that have been in the media recently. I want to ask her some more questions, but I only have a first name. She was called ?M?' Wall hesitated, wondering if he was going to try and pronounce that guttural G.
Then Bakker said, "Margot," picking up the slack.
Evelien Ruiten didn't move a muscle. She just sat there, with an expectant face, waiting on something that did not seem to appear.
"Surname?" she finally asked.
"Oh God, right? ehm? yeah. I apologize," Wall replied. "I did not get a surname."
"I see." She pulled a stern face which quickly rolled over into a warm smile. "Do you know how many people with that name work at this hospital?"
Bakker and Wall shook their heads.
"Well, you are lucky. It is not a name that comes up a lot, so I do not think it will be all that difficult to track her down. If it was a man called Jan, we would be in trouble."
She swiveled her chair towards her computer to the left and began to type. Within seconds the results of her search appeared on the screen.
"There are eleven Margot's working at the hospital." She said, then hit another button and four photos appeared on the screen along with hospital details. She turned the monitor towards Wall.
"Do you recognize anyone?" she asked.
Wall leaned in over her desk to get a better view. "No," he quickly said. "She's not there."
He caught a whiff of her scent. It was sweet, honey, coconut, feminine. She hit the keyboard and the next four appeared. He tried to concentrate on the monitor.
"No." Wall said, once again.
Evelien Ruiten hit the keyboard one more time and the last three came into view. Margot the nurse he had seen earlier that day did not appear. He looked at Bakker, puzzled.
"Mirrors again?" Bakker said. "But that does not mean she still has to be working here as a nurse. Maybe she moved on to another hospital."
"That's an idea," Wall replied.
"I think we can find her through another angle." Bakker said, then turned to Evelien Ruiten. "The patient's name was Karl Webber. Can you see when he was here?"
"Let's hope he really was here," Wall said. "Otherwise I can take the next flight home."
Using her mouse she swiftly clicked to another database containing names of patients who had been in the hospital for the last ten years.
"Lucky for you he also has a very distinctive name," she said, then typed in the name and found Karl Webber.
"He was here two years ago."
"Can you see if there was a nurse called Margot working on that floor," Bakker asked.
She typed in some more data. "There were two," she said, sounding relieved. "I have to go to another database for former employees."
In a separate database a photo appeared on the screen. Wall shook his head. "No, that's not her either."
She entered the second name, and another face appeared.
"That's her," Wall immediately said, nearly shouting, pointing at the screen.
"Her name is Margot van der Kalk. Do you want her address?"
"That would be great." Wall replied.
"Now you don't have to take the next flight home. You can stay a little longer in our beautiful city," she told him.
Out in the corridor, Wall had difficulty in separating the image and the fragrance of Evelien Ruiten from the investigation. He tried to concentrate on Margot, the nurse, but the HR lady dominated his mind.
As they walked down the stairs, Bakker took out his mobile.
"I'm going to call the Chief. Let them know we are on to something."
Wall quickly snapped out of his dream world and grabbed the mobile out of Bakkers hand. "Are you nuts?"
"What. Why? We have to call in if we get any good leads."
"So you think we have good leads?"
"Margot van der Kalk and Karl Webber. Those are good leads. In fact, they are the best anyone has had until now. We've got names."
"So why don't you put in Indiana Jones or Thelma and Louise."
"Don't be ridiculous. They're fictional characters."
"And so are these. Margot van der Kalk and Karl Webber are only fictional characters. We have names, but we haven't been able to find them. They are as real as movie characters."
Bakker stopped on the stairway and looked at Wall. "I don't know about keeping this from the Chief. That's not a good idea. I think we have something."
"What we have is hot air. There is nothing substantial. You can see right through it for Christ's sake. If we don't get laughed at, he just might have us doing something else then send in the baboon club back at the station who will mess it up so bad we'll lose every possible chance of solving this."
> Bakker shook his head slowly and went down another couple of steps.
"I don't know," he said hesitantly.
"Look, I'll make a deal with you. When we actually find either Margot van der Kalk or Harry Houdini otherwise known as Karl Webber, then we will go straight to the chief. How does that sound."
"That sounds like a bad plan."
Wall winced.
"But a good idea," Bakker followed up.
Slowly, a smile came to Wall's face. He handed Bakker back his mobile. "Come on, let's get to work. The first thing we do is go to the nurse's address and see if that's real."