Hells gate, p.5
Hell's Gate, page 5
“Stop that. It’s not fair. Stop it now—seriously.”
He stopped but seemed hurt. Zoë tried to make up for it, but she couldn’t.
Kenneth hung up shortly after that without saying goodbye. Well done, Zoë. An argument with Kenneth and a bizarre game of cat-and-mouse with a psychopath on the same day. She angrily threw her phone onto the bed and sat there for a while. She was done with today. She brushed her teeth, said good night to Naveed, and went to sleep.
FRIDAY
* * *
Day three. The thought shot through Zoë’s mind as she opened the curtains. Today, Sven would make himself known. Outside it was pouring with rain, and Brighton’s exuberant pier seemed to have gotten duller overnight, as if a gray filter had been added to the whole city. She took a shower in her hotel room’s small bathroom and got dressed. After barely two days she’d managed to make an enormous mess of her room. She picked up some loose items of clothing from the floor and tossed them onto the bed. Naveed had fallen asleep, and she carefully walked around him to open the door to her room.
Just before she stepped over the threshold, Zoë realized she couldn’t just go without leaving a message for him. If he woke up and she wasn’t there, he’d sound all kinds of alarms. She picked up a pen and wrote a message on the newspaper in front of Naveed, circling it a few times so he wouldn’t miss it.
Downstairs, the hotel was almost deserted, and Zoë decided to settle down on a large leather sofa in front of the window. While she sat there, an employee came in to start preparing the breakfast buffet.
“You’re early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
The woman disappeared into the kitchen.
Zoë thought about the rainy, drizzly day ahead of her. She had to think differently. She needed to get one step ahead of Sven, or maybe just crawl into his head somehow. What would he be doing right now? He was probably looking forward to what he’d be sending her, hoping she’d be impressed, at the very least convinced she was getting started with it. He probably also wanted to lead her on a bit, send her on a wild-goose chase (he had managed it before, after all). It must have been wonderful for him to realize he knew her so well that he was able lead her down the garden path easily. He had a thing for locations and threes. So far, they had the location where the victim was kidnapped and the location where she was found dead.
Zoë suddenly started to feel feverish. Seriously? Why hadn’t she thought of this sooner?
The waitress brought out her coffee and set it down next to her, but Zoë barely noticed in her distraction. Yesterday, she’d taken a picture of the map hanging in Liam’s office. She looked up the photo on her phone now. It was possible. Yes, it was certainly a possibility. She had to wake the others.
First she knocked on Linda’s room, and she opened the door surprisingly quickly.
“Has he sent something?”
“No,” Zoë said, “but I might have an idea of where we should be looking.”
“Give me five minutes.”
“Do you know where Liam is?”
Linda shook her head. “No. No idea.”
Zoë knocked on Leo’s door next. No response. She knocked harder. Still no response. She couldn’t knock any harder, otherwise she’d wake the whole hallway. Instead, she walked downstairs and asked for Liam’s room number. The receptionist looked at her with suspicion. Zoë briefly explained they were police colleagues and this was an urgent matter relating to a case. The woman checked the computer and called Liam, and after she hung up she gave Zoë his room number.
“Up on the third floor,” the receptionist added.
Zoë ran up the stairs and got to the third floor out of breath. Just as she was about to knock, Liam opened the door wearing full jogging gear.
“I was just about to go out for a run. What’s up?”
“I think I know where to look,” she panted.
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
Liam walked downstairs with Zoë, where they found Linda waiting for them.
“So . . .?”
They took a seat at a breakfast table, and Zoë showed them the picture of the map.
“We have two locations diagonally above one another. Suppose these are two points of an equilateral triangle, then the third location is approximately here.” She pointed to the left of the location where the victim was found.
“Fucking hell, of course.”
“I’ll call the team, and we’ll reconvene at the station.” Liam picked up his phone and started to make the calls.
“What about Leo?” Linda asked Zoë.
“I couldn’t wake him up.”
“Want me to give it a try?” It wasn’t really a question as Linda had already started walking in the direction of the stairs.
Zoë, meanwhile, sprinted to her own room to pick up her things. Naveed woke up as she bustled in through the door, startled.
“Oh, bollocks. I’m really sorry, I—”
Zoë shrugged it off. “It doesn’t matter. It happens. I have to go now.”
Naveed stayed silent.
Zoë searched around for her things, chucking everything into her backpack and grabbing her leather jacket from a chair. Together, she and Naveed walked downstairs, where she had to wait ten long minutes before the others joined them. Miraculously, Linda had managed to wake Leo up. His long hair hung loose over his shoulders, and Zoë noticed he’d buttoned up his shirt incorrectly. There was no time to comment on it now.
In the consultation room, the map was placed on the table, and using an ingenious calculation they determined the exact coordinates of the third point.
“What now?” Zoë asked.
“We’re leaving as soon as possible. We’ll drive there in two cars and be joined by an armed response team,” Liam told her. “That’s who we’re waiting on.”
Zoë slammed her fist on the table, though she was the most shocked by it out of everyone. “How long will that take?” she exasperated.
“Not too long,” Liam responded calmly. He seemed unimpressed by Zoë’s annoyance.
Zoë walked out of the room to the coffee machine in the hallway. Before she could find the right button to press, she felt two hands on her shoulders. She could tell it was Leo and turned around to face him.
“I know, I know, I have to be patient, but I want to get going. I need to know.”
“I totally agree. I hate waiting. But coffee is also a good plan.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at his last comment.
They lingered in the hallway until Linda came to collect them, then they headed out with Liam, John, and Ann while Graham and Seamus stayed behind.
Outside in the courtyard was a dark van, which they followed on a long drive of almost two hours down winding country roads. About three hundred yards before the location in question, they pulled into a parking lot and stopped. It was a wooded area. Six heavily armed colleagues got out of the van, the oldest walking up to Liam and briefly consulting with him. Liam then turned to the rest of the team.
“They’ll go in first. Once they’ve given the all-clear, we’ll follow on behind.”
Of course they had to wait again. Zoë kicked a tree out of frustration.
The firearms team slowly disappeared into the forest. It took more than twenty minutes for two to return with an update.
“We’ve found a red metal box.”
“Holy fuck.” Zoë knew exactly what this meant. A literal red herring from Sven, who’d previously left a red metal box in the Quackgors nature reserve containing a note with the text:
“Very smart, Janssen, but not smart enough.”
“Where is it?” she asked.
“We can’t just pick it up. It might have explosives in it.”
“It doesn’t.” Zoë was certain.
“You don’t know that. We’ve called in the bomb squad—they’re already on their way.”
In the Netherlands, a colleague had simply pulled the box out of the tree and opened it without hesitation. In retrospect, Zoë knew that may have been a slightly naïve move.
“So we have to wait?”
“We have to wait.”
They took a seat in the car, where Zoë checked her phone. She’d received messages from Kenneth and her brother on WhatsApp and a text from Lennard. Lennard didn’t seem to use WhatsApp. In fact, he probably didn’t even know it existed.
Kenneth was disappointed in his behavior last night and apologized for his actions, while Derk said the family was doing well and he’d be taking her boys and his daughters to an amusement park next week. Marsha would even be going along with them. It was great of him to do this, and Zoë sent an enthusiastic text in reply to say she was doing well, but that the investigation would probably take a while. She checked Lennard’s text. He wanted to speak to her about the profile. He thought she’d done a good job and had a couple more additions, so would she be able to call him as soon as possible?
Zoë looked around. The bomb experts still hadn’t arrived yet. She called Lennard, but it went straight to his terribly formal voice mail.
Two green vans drove into the parking lot soon after. Three men got out and consulted with the head of the armed unit, who’d waited for them in his van. There was a lot of nodding, and then a few more men tumbled out of the bus. A kind of impromptu containment booth was quickly set up and placed over the tree stump, while two men in full bomb disposal gear walked into the woods. They were experts who had been sent to deal with the bomb.
Zoë couldn’t believe it. She expected they’d find nothing in the box apart from a sloppily written note.
Within ten minutes, the leader of the bomb squad came over to them. “It’s not a bomb. There’s some sort of amateur mechanism inside, but it’s definitely not explosive. Do you want to come with us?”
They walked into the woods through the rain, meeting the firearms team on their way out. They came over to say goodbye since their work here was done. One of the bomb experts held the red metal box in his hands. It wasn’t the same box Sven had hidden in the Netherlands, but it was similar, only slightly larger. Liam gave Zoë two latex gloves so she could open it, though she felt it was a questionable honor. Regardless, she took the box from the bomb expert and carefully opened it.
Inside she found two things: a folded-up note and an even smaller box containing a wooden music box.
First, she unfolded the note. The text was almost identical to the text they’d found in the Netherlands.
Very smart, Janssen, but not smart enough.
Hahaha, Sven
Just the red herring she was expecting, which she’d known about from the moment she figured out which location to investigate. The third point of a triangle. It was too easy, too obvious, and it was especially stupid no one had thought of it before. She gave the note to Liam, translating it out loud for him, then she picked up the music box. There was a small crank on one side of it, which Zoë started to turn. The box began to play a tune.
“What on earth is this?” she heard Linda say behind her.
“I don’t know it,” Leo replied.
“I do.” Zoë kept turning. “I do,” she said again, but more softly. “It’s a song by Oscar and the Wolf, my favorite band. The song’s called ‘Breathing.’”
“How does Sven know this is your favorite band?” Liam asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe I posted about them being my absolute heroes on Facebook sometime.” Zoë walked a few meters away from the others and stood with her back to them. She wiped her wet hair out of her face and closed her eyes.
It had begun. Sven was intruding on everything she loved and held dear. She felt violated, the way she imagined people felt when their houses got broken into and they realized a stranger had been sitting on their furniture and touching all their things. He was all over her.
“Let’s head back,” Liam shouted.
Leo came to stand next to Zoë and squeezed her shoulder. The squeeze was too soft to hurt, but hard enough to snap her out of her train of thought. She followed the others back to the cars, where they had a two-hour drive ahead of them.
“Is anyone going to be patrolling here?” Linda asked Liam.
Liam looked at Zoë and raised his eyebrows.
Zoë replied for him. “I don’t know. Sven’s extremely careful, and he’s played it safe so far. I don’t think he’ll come back here, but I can’t rule it out completely.”
“Today and tonight I’ll have the location guarded,” Liam decided. “We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
They got back in the cars and drove off after each other, stopping at a pub halfway through the journey to have lunch. Not in the mood to eat, Zoë just ordered a scone with a dollop of cream and strawberry jam. The others ate an extraordinary amount of food for lunch as they discussed the music box. Zoë, on the other hand, stayed mostly silent, as if she were only physically present.
At the end of lunch, Linda asked Zoë to come sit next to her for the rest of the ride. It would allow them to get some work done while on the road. “We have to keep going, Zoë,” she said.
Linda was right. She couldn’t dwell on her pain for too long. With a deep sigh, Zoë threw herself into the discussion.
“Finding this box was a coincidence,” she said. “I don’t think this is the real clue.”
“Why not?”
“We could have easily missed him. Sven will send specific instructions on day three, day six, and day nine, as promised. This one doesn’t matter and is only designed to tease me. A terrible bonus. We’ll definitely get something from him today. A real, viable clue.”
“A code?” Linda ventured.
“Who knows?”
“Kak,” Linda said in primitive Dutch.
“What she means to say is ‘shit,’” Leo quipped, looking at Liam and his two other British colleagues.
The whole team laughed.
They paid the bill and headed off. As they drove along, Linda flipped open her laptop next to Zoë, and Zoë did the same. Leo was in the front, already busy going through the lyrics he’d promised to dissect for them on his phone.
Linda looked up a map of Sussex on her computer. “We have three locations. Did we miss another one?”
“If we take the first two points, you could make another triangle with a point diagonally to the top right,” Zoë said.
Very cleverly, with the aid of a computer program, Linda drew a line to the top right of the digital map, creating a triangle that was upside down. She zoomed in on the location she’d found.
“That takes us to the middle of a lake. Seems like a no-go to me.”
“It’s also not an equilateral triangle as Sven intended. The equilateral triangle symbolizing kingship has its first point at the top, facing up,” Leo explained, drawing the shape in the air with his finger.
“I expect something else to happen at the second location,” Zoë said.
“What do you mean?” Linda asked.
“Think of the pattern of the stab wounds. The first victim at the first location, marked with a single stab wound, and the second victim at the second location, marked with two stab wounds.”
“And the third victim at location three?” Leo said. “That means you’re assuming Sven had a map in mind for the pattern of the stab wounds.”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s still the question of if we’ve found the right triangle,” he said dryly.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe Sven has another triangle in mind, one that’s bigger or smaller than we think. The only point that’s correct, according to the knife mark pattern, is the first point where the victim was found. Victim one at location one.”
“Kak,” Zoë said.
“Did you mean ‘shit’?” Seamus asked from the driver’s side.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.”
They sat in silence for a while. Zoë and Linda got to work on their laptops, and Leo seemed deep in thought—or taking a nap. The difference between the two wasn’t fully clear.
They were back in Brighton by around 3:30 p.m. A whole day wasted on a music box and a note. Zoë felt like crying.
Even before they’d fully set foot inside the station, she could sense excitement in the team room. John beckoned them to come closer. On the desk in front of them was a copy of the Sussex Times, and he pointed to one of the small ads.
“We just happened to see it fifteen minutes ago.”
Zoë read the ad:
“You’ve got to dance, little sister. Don’t give up today.” S.
“It’s in the same place where your picture was yesterday,” Seamus said. “I called the newspaper ten minutes ago. They received an envelope yesterday morning containing this text and the exact guidelines for where the ad should be placed today. Exactly where they posted the feature about you yesterday. The sender paid for the ad in cash, three times what a normal ad costs. No return address. Graham’s on his way to pick up the envelope and text now.”
“It’s a lyric from a song called ‘Dance Little Sister’ by Terence Trent D’Arby,” Zoë heard Leo say in the background. She suddenly felt dizzy. Little sister.
“I have a little sister,” she muttered as she sat down on a chair.
“Call her,” Leo said quickly. “Now.”
Zoë grabbed her phone and called Marsha, but it went straight to voice mail. Zoë asked her to call back. “It’s urgent,” she said with fear in her voice. Panic began to race through her body as she tried her brother, Derk, instead. Thankfully, he picked up.
“Where’s Marsha?”
“Good afternoon to you too. She’s sitting here next to me in the car. She had an appointment at the clinic, and I went with her. Why?”
