The Amsterdam Chronicles: Def-Con City Trilogy Part 1

  Every room in the building on the Roggeveenstraat was photographed, dusted, and searched for DNA. Wall looked on as one of the forensic team took samples from the toilet bowl; the strangest he had ever seen. He thought he had seen every type of toilet for every type of ethnic group in New York. Bidet's, squat toilets the Chinese and Moslems used, but a toilet with a shelf designed to catch your shit before you flushed it through, was definitely a first.

  Where normally the hole would be with the water reservoir at the bottom, was a raised flat white ceramic area that held just a couple of teaspoons of water. Faeces would land on the white flat surface and stay there until it was flushed into the bowl and water reservoir in the front. From there to the sewer in the regular fashion. What was the idea? Did you have to examine it before it was flushed away? Is it a health thing? But whatever the idea behind it, the forensics guy seemed to be having a ball scraping off bits of dried shit from the white ceramic tile.

 

  Conver arrived with a small team and took his usual samples of the body. The only problem was how to move it out of the building. Two small windows at the front of the attic made that route impossible. The only way to move the corpse, or what was left of it, was through the narrow attic stairs. But because the body was partially in a fluid-like state they had to keep everything as level as possible.

  Wall was surprised with the solution they came up with.

  At the foot end of the bed, supports were placed under the frame, then they removed the entire end piece. A long hard plastic sheet, about a centimeter thick, but slightly smaller than the width of the bed, was the answer to the problem. Holes had been cut into each side to attach straps in order to carry it.

  They slid the plastic sheet under the blanket the female was lying on.

  What seemed difficult and puzzling to Wall was easy compared to what they had to do next, ply the melted arms and hands from the floor and place them on the bed.

  Conver guided a female and one male assistant as they ran a broad thin metal spatula under the small heaped mass, careful not to distort the fingers. With the spatula successfully under the fleshy remains, two other females from Conver's crew gently took hold of the cardigan arm, then the four of them lifted everything in one go up onto the bed.

  Wall, Conver, Ribb and Bakker looked on as they completed the second arm with very little distortion. Leather straps were now placed in the holes of the sheet plate. When everything was complete, six technicians were called up to the attic to remove the body. Three men each side lifted it up and carried it to the stairs. Two technicians went to the front end then turned and backed slowly down the stairs, while they held the plate high to keep everything level. Slowly, step-by-step they went down the stairs. To everyone's relief, they made it to the first floor without spilling any part of the body.

  Outside screens had been erected around the entire building, which block off direct view of the entrance to the house.

  As they came out the front door and turned to place the body into a waiting ambulance, the sound of cameras clicked and buzzed from the large gathering of journalists and photographers through the small gaps in the screen.

  Wall watched them load the body in and drive away, then went with Bakker into a large portable tent set up to the right of the building and removed his white overalls.

  It was difficult to peel off the tight fitting overalls. "Next time I'll bring my own."

  "I'm going to go back to the station. I want to get started on that paperwork."

  "Paperwork?"

  "The bag of shredded paper. They didn't shred that for nothing, I think there might be something valuable in there."

  "Good luck with that. I'm going back to the hotel to get a shower and get changed. I'll be back at the station in about an hour to help out."

  Getting back to the hotel took Wall longer than he would have preferred. The roaming taxis to be found all over New York were nowhere to be seen here, at least not in this part of Amsterdam. The only taxis he remembered spotting in Amsterdam were those huddled in groups on the Leidseplein, central station, and the airport.

  He could have asked Bakker or one of the other officers for a lift, but everybody had their hands full. Checking his iPhone, he realized he only had to walk about six hundred meters south then catch the number three tram on the Zoutkeetsgracht. That would bring him all the way to the Concertgebouw, a few hundred meters around the corner from his hotel.

  He relaxed in the tram, totally exhausted from the day's events. Bakker's overalls were so tight they had made him sweat. The smell of his own body odor was overpowering. A shower was badly needed. Could he have been contaminated by the dead woman? Conver had mentioned it was not contagious, whatever it was had to be digested. Still, it made him nervous.

  As Wall got off the tram, he never noticed Karl Webber standing about thirty-five meters away next to the corner of the Concertgebouw, watching the artist's entrance.