Angel took care of the new lock with his own pick set. Hendricksen stayed outside by the canal to keep watch, although little danger remained of the police or anyone else coming to investigate further. He simply had no desire to enter that building again. He watched Angel and Louis go inside, the door closing softly behind them, and felt a chill enter his bones.

The shutters were drawn, but both Angel and Louis carried small flashlights, the bezels wrapped with Scotch tape to narrow the beams, thereby reducing the risk of attracting attention. The bloodstains had turned to ocher, but Louis thought that he could still taste copper on his tongue and pick up the smell of a charnel house. The two men moved from room to room, first downstairs, then upstairs, concluding in the bedroom where the women had died. They exchanged no words, but instead bore silent witness. Theirs was an act of empathy, an attempt to grasp the depth of the suffering that had occurred here. The photographs might have been enough for some, but not for them. Sometimes you had to walk the ground. This they had learned from the private detective named Charlie Parker.

Finally they returned to the front door. Angel opened it slightly and waited for Hendricksen to confirm that it was safe to leave. He nodded once, and they joined him by the water.

‘So?’ said Hendricksen.

‘As you warned us: blood,’ said Louis.

‘I’d like to say that I’d never seen so much before,’ said Hendricksen, ‘but it would be a lie.’

‘I don’t understand it.’

‘Is there something to understand?’

‘All that pain,’ said Louis, ‘just to avenge a life as worthless as Timmerman’s.’

Hendricksen stared into the dark water of the canal. ‘Spiridon Vuksan may be insane. I hope so. It would be more frightening were he not.’

‘What about the men with him, and his brother?’

‘His men are rapists and butchers, and if Radovan ever had a conscience, it was extirpated a long time ago. So what now?’

‘I have some calls to make,’ said Louis, ‘and you need to book a flight.’

‘To where?’

‘Vienna.’

‘The lawyer?’

‘Yes,’ said Louis, ‘the lawyer.’

Chapter XXXII