and an impressive church spire provoked a deeper sense of outrage in Hoofdinspecteur Kees Maartens than the same event in a Rotterdam back street ever had. He’d come up the ranks in the North Sea port before finally managing a transfer back to Regio Hollands Midden, and so far his return to his childhood stamping grounds had lived up to his dreams of a quieter life. Not that there was no crime in this part of Holland; far from it. But there was less violence in the university town of Leiden, that was for sure.
Or so he’d thought until today. He was no stranger to the abuse that one human — or several combining in the same blind fury - could inflict on another. Dockside brawls, pub fights where insults real and imaginary had provoked clashes out of all proportion, assaults and even murders that turned sex workers into victims were all part of a day’s work on the ^ Rotterdam serious crimes beat, and Maartens reckoned he had grown a second skin over years of exposure to the ravages J of rage. He’d decided he was impervious to horror. But he’d been wrong about that too.
Nothing in his twenty-three years at the sharp end had prepared him for anything like this. It was indecent, rendered .
52
all the more so by the incongruity of the setting. Maartens stood on the threshold of a room that looked as if it had been fundamentally unchanged since the house had been built. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with mahogany shelving, its ornate beading warm with the muted gleam of generations of polishing. Books and box files filled every shelf, though he couldn’t see much detail from here. The floor was burnished parquet, with a couple of rugs that looked worn and dull to Maartens. Not something I would have chosen in so dark a room, he thought, conscious that he was avoiding the central focus of the room with all his mental energy. Two tall windows looked out across the Maresingel to the historic town centre beyond. The sky was a washed-out blue, thin strips of cloud apparently hanging motionless, as if time had stopped.
It had certainly stopped for the man who occupied the hub of this scholar’s study. There was no question that he was dead. He lay on his back on the wide mahogany desk that stood in the middle of the floor. Each wrist and ankle was tied to one of the desk’s bulbous feet with thin cord, spread-eagling the dead man across its surface. It looked as if his killer had tied him down fully dressed, then cut his clothes away from his body, exposing the lightly tanned skin with its paler ghost of swimming trunks.
That would have been bad enough, a profanation Maartens hoped his middle-aged body would be spared. But what turned indignity into obscenity was the clotted red mess below the belly, an ugly wound from which rivulets of dried blood meandered across the white flesh and dripped on to the desk. Maartens closed his eyes momentarily, trying not to think about it.
He heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. A tall woman in a tailored navy suit, honey blonde hair pulled back in a
53
ponytail, appeared on the landing. Her round face was serious^ in repose, her blue eyes shadowed beneath straight dark brows. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, her understated make-up deliberately making her appear even more bland and unthreatening. Maartens turned to face Brigadier Marijke van Hasselt, one of his two team coordinators. ‘What’s the story, Marijke?’ he asked.
She produced a notebook from the pocket of her jacket. ‘The owner of the house is Dr Pieter de Groot. He’s attached to the university. Lectures in experimental psychology. Divorced three years ago, lives alone. His teenage kids come to visit every other weekend. They live just outside Den Haag with the ex-wife. The body was discovered this morning by his cleaner. She let herself in as usual, saw nothing out of the ordinary, did the ground floor then came on up here. She glanced in the study door and saw that
Or so he’d thought until today. He was no stranger to the abuse that one human — or several combining in the same blind fury - could inflict on another. Dockside brawls, pub fights where insults real and imaginary had provoked clashes out of all proportion, assaults and even murders that turned sex workers into victims were all part of a day’s work on the ^ Rotterdam serious crimes beat, and Maartens reckoned he had grown a second skin over years of exposure to the ravages J of rage. He’d decided he was impervious to horror. But he’d been wrong about that too.
Nothing in his twenty-three years at the sharp end had prepared him for anything like this. It was indecent, rendered .
52
all the more so by the incongruity of the setting. Maartens stood on the threshold of a room that looked as if it had been fundamentally unchanged since the house had been built. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with mahogany shelving, its ornate beading warm with the muted gleam of generations of polishing. Books and box files filled every shelf, though he couldn’t see much detail from here. The floor was burnished parquet, with a couple of rugs that looked worn and dull to Maartens. Not something I would have chosen in so dark a room, he thought, conscious that he was avoiding the central focus of the room with all his mental energy. Two tall windows looked out across the Maresingel to the historic town centre beyond. The sky was a washed-out blue, thin strips of cloud apparently hanging motionless, as if time had stopped.
It had certainly stopped for the man who occupied the hub of this scholar’s study. There was no question that he was dead. He lay on his back on the wide mahogany desk that stood in the middle of the floor. Each wrist and ankle was tied to one of the desk’s bulbous feet with thin cord, spread-eagling the dead man across its surface. It looked as if his killer had tied him down fully dressed, then cut his clothes away from his body, exposing the lightly tanned skin with its paler ghost of swimming trunks.
That would have been bad enough, a profanation Maartens hoped his middle-aged body would be spared. But what turned indignity into obscenity was the clotted red mess below the belly, an ugly wound from which rivulets of dried blood meandered across the white flesh and dripped on to the desk. Maartens closed his eyes momentarily, trying not to think about it.
He heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. A tall woman in a tailored navy suit, honey blonde hair pulled back in a
53
ponytail, appeared on the landing. Her round face was serious^ in repose, her blue eyes shadowed beneath straight dark brows. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, her understated make-up deliberately making her appear even more bland and unthreatening. Maartens turned to face Brigadier Marijke van Hasselt, one of his two team coordinators. ‘What’s the story, Marijke?’ he asked.
She produced a notebook from the pocket of her jacket. ‘The owner of the house is Dr Pieter de Groot. He’s attached to the university. Lectures in experimental psychology. Divorced three years ago, lives alone. His teenage kids come to visit every other weekend. They live just outside Den Haag with the ex-wife. The body was discovered this morning by his cleaner. She let herself in as usual, saw nothing out of the ordinary, did the ground floor then came on up here. She glanced in the study door and saw that
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