Read Into the Night: Inspector Rykel Book 2 (Amsterdam Quartet) for Free Online

mike out in front of her, a cameraman rushing behind her, trying to keep up and not trip over his wires.
    Jaap wanted to duck and run.
    ‘Inspector Rykel, is it true that this is the second body found without a head?’ she asked as she got into range. The rest of the pack turned to see what was going on, their camera lenses flashing in the sun like wolves baring fangs and moving in for the kill.
    ‘I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, you know that,’ he said as he fought his way through the pack to the playground. A uniform had managed to secure the entrance, but the cameras still had a clear sight-line to what was on the concrete.
    Jaap stood by the body, trying to block the view of the reporters, and looked down.
    Another corpse. Another head removed.
    Frits had sent him the tweet, which had simply said there was a headless man at the listed address and gave a link to a photo of the body. The photo itself hadn’t shown the missing head, the top of the frame cut off just below the shoulders, but it was enough to get the media’s attention. Jaap had no idea how anyone had seen the tweet in the first place – as far as he could tell Twitter was a vast torrent of moronic shit – let alone acted so quickly.
    Seems like journalists haven’t got anything better to do than surf the Internet
, he thought as his phone started ringing.
    It was Saskia. His promise to get this case over with quickly was now going to get broken for sure. He let it ring.
    ‘Not another,’ said a voice behind him.
    Jaap turned to see the same forensic as earlier, then turned back to the body. He checked the hands.
    ‘Burned again?’ asked the forensic, putting down his bag.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Jaap, turning to the nearest uniform. ‘Let’s get a screen up around this.’
    His phone buzzed a message, Saskia asking him to call her urgently. He touched the coins in his pocket before he called her back.
    ‘I’m kind of in the middle of something—’
    ‘I’ve just had a call from Ronald,’ said Saskia.
    Jaap thought Saskia held Ronald, her boss, in way too high regard, and had recently wondered if there was something going on there. She was his ex, so it wouldn’t have been any of his business, but for Floortje. He found the thought of her having another father, even if it was only a stepfather, one he didn’t want to contemplate.
    ‘And?’
    ‘We’ve got a really bad situation going on. My main witness has been lost.’
    ‘What do you mean lost?’
    ‘He was under police protection, and someone screwed up.’
    ‘That’s the thing, the cops down in Den Haag?’ said Jaap, eyeing a reporter who was trying to edge round the newly erected screen shielding the body. ‘They’re rubbish.’
    ‘This isn’t a joke, Jaap. And anyway, it was in Amsterdam. I think it may even have been someone at your station.’
    The body was lying at Jaap’s feet. His eyes travelled up to the severed neck.
    Who is doing this?
he thought.
    ‘Look, I’m not sure what I can do, I’ve got a second body here, and I—’
    ‘I was just hoping you could find something out. Without Isovic the whole trial is going to collapse. That means letting Matkovic get away with it.’
    Jaap knew how much this meant to her. She’d been working the case since she’d gone back after Floortje was born. At times he thought she’d been working too hard, but then she was still trying to cope with Andreas’ death, and having a child. The same way he was trying to cope with Karin’s death and the new reality that the child he thought was Andreas’ was actually his own.
    They split the childcare as evenly as they could, but given both their jobs it was never easy.
    ‘Surely there’s someone working on it?’
    ‘Yeah, they said they had a team. Their best people.Which basically means they’ve probably got one washed-up old patrol guy on it.’
    Jaap guessed that was the lawyer in her, cynical, unwilling to believe anything she was told. Which was probably why