Ribb sat in his office and listened to Bakker as he gave him the update. Wall was more than pleased he was doing it in English.
"How can you be sure the nurse was telling the truth?" Ribb finally asked, after letting Bakker brief him without any interruption, something his chief back home would never do.
He would stop him at the end of every sentence, questioning, probing, and in the end he would lose track of the events timeline? whereby the story was all over the place and nothing seemed either plausible or added up. His chief could take a few tips from Ribb, that's for sure.
"Because she came to me first," Wall replied. "And when we found her again this afternoon she was in a pretty bad state about the whole situation. No doubt about it, she was telling the truth."
Ribb leaned back in his black leather chair and stared at the two men for what seemed an eternity.
"All right, "he finally said. "I'm going to give you extra manpower to track down this Karl Webber and the hospital temp."
"If you don't mind chief, Bakker here is doing a great job and putting more men on the case will only slow us down."
"That's how we work Mr. Wall."
"I understand that, but every step we make is literally one at a time. It goes as quickly as the information we gather. With more than two men, we will not gather the intelligence any quicker. That's what I mean when I say they will slow us down."
"Well, since you seem to be a good team and you have dug up more information on this case than any of the other detectives I'll let you work alone on this."
"Thank you, chief," Wall replied.
"For two days."
"I don't know if that will be enough."
"It will have to be. Thank you, gentlemen."
Back at their desks, Bakker switched on his computer. "I'm going to see if there is any info about Karl Webber in the system. I can check to see if he is still alive and getting benefits from the government or any government agency, that sort of thing."
"Great. I'm going back to the hospital. I want to see which temp agency that Ans nurse was working for."
"You can do that by phone," Bakker replied.
"I could, but I won't. I'll see you later." Wall got up and grabbed his jacket.
"It's hot outside, you don't need that."
"What are you now, my mother? Not warm enough pal, see you later."