Excerpt: The Five Hands of Gert de Vries

Making a beeline for the shelf that he guessed was the right one, Derek scanned the titles of the individual files carefully - now that it had come down to it, part of him wondered if it would even be there. Sure, the police probably had little idea just how crucial the watch was in this case, but if they had taken thirty or forty percent of the files anyway, then they could have picked this one randomly. Or maybe Thomas had got rid of it himself . . .

That thought was soon disproved when Derek came across a file entitled thusly:

The Five Hands of Gert de Vries

There was only one thing a phrase like that could refer to: the watch currently in Radimir’s possession.

Hardly daring to believe his luck, Derek snatched up the file and quickly flicked through it - it was a fairly complete file; it looked as though Thomas had done some research into the watch. Staring as the words sadly as they flickered across his vision, the American closed the file satisfied that most - if not all - of its contents were still in place, but also wondering just how much of this research had been undertaken in the days leading up to Thomas’s death. His sadness, however was touched with determination; he was now more convinced than ever that bringing justice to Thomas van Kempen’s killer was the right thing to do - and a few tiny breakages of the law were alright if that remained his ultimate goal.

Taking one last look around the study that had been so much of Thomas’s life, Derek Lancashire blinked back tears and quickly turned away, returning to Chares Coburn’s house using his semi-secret passage once more.