Wolf Angel by Mark Hobson (best e reader for manga .TXT) 📕

figures – he assumed they were men from their gait and build – unleashed their pent up excitement and launched themselves at Joos, attacking him in a crazy blood-lust of violence, hacking and slashing. Joos screamed in agony, and he thrashed his body in a futile attempt to escape his bonds, and as they cut and chopped his cries of pain became pleads as he begged them to stop, and the sound of his death-cries echoed and bounced off the walls and ceiling. He whimpered as fountains of red sprayed and drenched the two robed men, and then he was twitching and fell quiet, until the only noise was the sickening ripping of flesh as the butchery went on. Finally they stopped, but only from sheer exhaustion, and they stood looking at their handiwork and panting for breath.

Lotte again made the sign of an inverted cross and moved away into the shadows of one of the alcoves.

Pieter stared down at the floor in abject defeat.

The circle of robed figures started to quietly chant, their incantation almost sounding like a hum of electric energy, and they slowly swayed from side to side. The temperature in the room seemed to suddenly drop, until the air was chilled. Pieter could feel goose bumps on his arms, and the hairs at the base of his scalp became brittle like minute icicles.

There was a rattle of something moving, a dragging of feet and a crunching like someone walking over autumn twigs, and Pieter lifted his head and turned towards the sound, seeing Lotte reappear from the shadows. She was holding something to her body, something brown and thin, held together with shredded and tattered cloth. Pieter saw the legs and the rib bones, the thin and rotten arms that she held out, the human skull lolling back against her breasts with its jaw grinning as though in pleasure.

She stepped into the circle of chanting followers holding the human skeleton to her body, and she swayed in ecstasy, crying in pleasure through the goat-skull she still wore, moving the dead and lifeless body in a mad parody of life, dancing a macabre dance of death.

CHAPTER 19

FLORIS de KOK (ADOLF)

It was 9pm and Floris de Kok was still working down in his private office on the basement level. On the floor beside his small desk he had stacked the large box files containing the paperwork from the Finland case. On the room’s only spare chair, which he’d wheeled across, was a thick pile of cardboard slipcases, which he wanted close to hand as he worked his way through the details of the murders and subsequent trial perpetrated by the occultist, Gerdi, and her cult members during the 1970’s and 80’s.

At the moment he was reading through the list of known assets and properties and business interests connected to her and her family members.

In truth there wasn’t much.

The Finnish police had very little information about Gerdi at all. They did not have her exact date of birth – although it was guessed at being sometime around about 1930 – nor did they have any real knowledge about where she was born. They knew she was from Holland, and there was mention of a convent somewhere near the border with Germany, but whether she had been born there or ended up being raised as an orphan there was not clear.

At the time of her arrest it was clear that she was a woman of means. She held 25% shares in two large companies: Metsä Electro Energies and O P Group Medical, as well as business interests in heavy construction projects. Her husband – name unknown – was chairman of FCone Software, an early computer industries working group. Upon her conviction and subsequent death her shares had passed to her children, principally her daughter. The trail went quiet after this, but the next known facts stated that around about 2002, the family estate, a large house on the outskirts of Helsinki, was signed over to her grandchildren, even though they were both minors: a boy aged twelve and a girl aged five.

However, they did not stay here for long. As soon as the boy turned eighteen the property was sold, and he and his sister, together with their mother, moved to Amsterdam.

Things became hazy at this point once again.

It was thought that with their substantial wealth, the family purchased more property throughout the city. Two particular properties caught Floris’s attention:

A business premises in the Red Light District which five years ago was granted a licence to sell alcohol. The bar was leased under the name of a male individual – Bartholomew Janssen.

And here, in this file, was another property owned by the same individual: Schreierstoren, better known as Weeping Tower. The location of yesterday’s shootout!

Floris sat up straight in his chair. The lease ran out last year and the building had since remained empty, but surely this was too much of a coincidence?

There was nothing else about this Bartholomew Janssen so he went back to the file index to see if there was anything in there about his younger sister who, from his quick mental calculation, would be in her early twenties by now. Yet he found nothing, he didn’t even have a first name for her.

Instead, feeling a frisson of excitement start to pass through him, which in turn set his arm off trembling, Floris booted up his computer and immediately found the police database containing public records on building ownership/leases and the District Probate Registry. Technically, as a civilian employee, he shouldn’t be doing this, but what the hell?

When the system was up he typed in BARTHOLOMEW JANSSEN. The same two entries came up: The Newcastle Bar and Schreierstoren Tower. But there was a link to another individual.

CHARLOTTE JANSSEN.

With it, two property leases.

One for a flat in De Gooyer, which was listed as her place of residency.

And another for…

He leaned close to the computer monitor, wondering if he’d read it right.

“Bingo.”

Adolf ran for the stairs.