Black Widow

But the sad thing was, she would rather they think of her in those terms than as the woman who had let the Butcher of the Bos escape.

A space was made for her, opposite Alex. She lowered herself into it. She rested her hands on the table, and listened as the others continued with a story about a local blind man, who had got himself into trouble with a length of cheese wire.

‘Anyway,’ Ricky elaborated, ‘he’d just wrapped the wire about his cock –’

‘Why would he do that?’ asked Margarete.

‘You’d have to ask him that,’ Ricky answered with a shrug. ‘So, there he is, happily exploring the limits of his pain threshold, or whatever, when – boom! – he has a fit. Yeah, he’s an epileptic, too. Did I mention that part?’

‘Ouch,’ Alex winced. ‘I think we can guess the rest!’

‘That’s not the worst bit,’ Ricky drawled. ‘No, the worst bit is – get this – his guide dog ate it.’

‘Christ!’ Margarete exclaimed. ‘Really?’

‘Honest,’ Ricky affirmed. ‘I know the paramedic. Seems that not only is the poor guy blind, and epileptic – and into weird forms of self-abuse – but he’s also a strict veggie. Won’t allow meat in his house. Not even for his dog. So when the mutt sees the treat on the floor, she can’t help herself.’

And so it continued. The conversation alternated between the ridiculous, and the deadly serious, the tone hardly changing from one topic to the next. This was how police officers dealt with the pressures of work, generally. You either made light of it, or you went mad. Or joined Interpol.

Tanja listened without contributing, just happy to be a part of Alex’s circle. This was the sort of thing that couples did.

‘So how’s your day been?’ Alex asked her suddenly.

‘Oh, busy,’ Tanja answered haltingly, aware that the others had broken off their conversation; that they were waiting for her to say something contentious. ‘They’ve given me a new partner.’

‘It was bound to happen eventually,’ Alex said. ‘Is he any good?’

‘He’s not awful,’ she answered, as she struggled to divine a note of jealousy in Alex’s voice. But there was nothing there; his expression was quite neutral.

‘High praise indeed!’ he said.

Tanja nodded, but she suddenly felt drained. Disconcertingly so. She stood. ‘I should probably be off,’ she said.

‘So soon?’ Ricky protested.

‘I’m sure we’ll meet again,’ Tanja responded.

Alex had stood with her. She motioned him apart a little. ‘I’ll see you in a couple of days, then?’

Alex nodded. ‘Looking forward to it! Do you want me to see you to your car?’

‘No, I’ll be fine.’

She waited for a few moments outside, but it seemed he’d taken her at her word.

She drove back to her flat, going over each aspect of the evening in her head. She didn’t think she had made any progress. But neither, to be fair, had she lost any ground.

She was greeted at the door by an old ginger cat. Gember peered up at her, his tail twitching to express his irritation at her late arrival.

He made no attempt to head outside, as another cat might. He’d been run over twice in his youth, and seemed to have decided that no mouse was worth the ignominy of spending another week at the vet’s. Either that or he was agoraphobic. It was possible: Tanja had heard that, human beings aside, cats were more prone to mental instability than any other animal.

She was hungry now. Padding into the kitchen, she tugged open the fridge, hoping that something edible might have appeared. But no, there was nothing save a portion of pickled nieuwe haring, which she kept as a treat for Gember. She mashed the herring onto a plate (he had sore gums, nowadays, and struggled to chew), then sat back to watch him eat. She’d had him nearly fifteen years. He’d been in her life longer than anyone save her mother. She loved him, and just between the two of them, had no problem admitting it.

Tanja took the photo from the dresser. Ophelie sitting on her shoulders, the Eiffel Tower perfectly to scale in the background. Anton had taken it on the final day of their holiday in 1990, and his thumb was slightly obscuring the corner of the picture. It hardly mattered.

The first time Alex had come to hers, she’d taken down all the photos of her former husband, but not the ones of her daughter. And Alex seemed interested in her past, his questions sensitive rather than prying. He knew instinctively just where to tread.

‘Happy birthday, sweetheart,’ she said, placing the photo back.

Afterwards, she sipped a glass of wine while Gember sat on her lap, purring imperiously as she stroked his soft little head. He claimed this affection by right. And Tanja gave it willingly, because she knew that he would never throw it back at her.

‘So what do you reckon, Gember?’ she asked. ‘With regards to Alex, I mean? You remember Alex? Of course you do. You like him. He feeds you spiced cheese when he thinks I’m not watching. So, am I being foolish, wanting him back? After all, it got pretty tricky, before!’

Gember yawned, and scratched at his chin, grunting at the effort this required. He wasn’t as flexible as he might once have been.

Tanja chuckled at his indifference. Cats had no concept of loneliness.

*

Gus de Groot looked around the inside of the subterranean bar, struggling to make sense of what he was seeing.

On the one hand there were the women. God, the women! All in their forties or fifties, smartly, if thinly dressed. All sipping delicately at their drinks, giving the impression that it was merely a warm-up for some other act of swallowing.

And then there were the men, the oldest of whom was perhaps Gus’ age. Thirty. Or twenty-seven, in real terms. Gus had recently worked out his own system, a sliding scale, determined by such factors as looks, vigour, and general underground coolness.

Whatever, it seemed an unlikely demographic, statistically speaking. Ten middle-aged women, in a room with a similar number of men who weren’t much more than half their age? The only other place you might see that sort of mix would be at a Take That reunion concert. And in that case all the men would be gay.

He made a mental note to send Elizabeth a bunch of flowers. She might only have been an admin monkey, but she came into contact with some juicy documents. He’d primed her to the sort of stuff he was interested in, and now she could hardly fire the texts off fast enough. The last was a beaut: Gus – just photocopying bar receipt for case file: dead guy was drinking in Den on Enge Lombardsteeg before getting killed. Love you!

It was clear that there was something going on here. Gus had been safely stowed in the shadows of the upstairs coffee shop when Pino and her sidekick arrived. Luck really, that he’d decided to purchase a few loose joints before pressing on – if the crazy-eyed bitch had arrived ten minutes later, she’d have caught him mid-snoop. And then there would have been trouble.

He’d seen the thunderous look on her face when she’d left. She was clearly unhappy about something, which could only be good news as far as his story was concerned. And in a personal sense, too. Gus didn’t like Pino, the sanctimonious old witch. Those little girls – of course it was sad. But the public had a right to expect that journalists would perform their duties to the limit of their abilities, however gruesome the case. And if the girl who’d escaped the killer had afterwards gone a little mad, well that was hardly his fault. Debre’s parents had been with her when he’d asked the questions. They’d been happy to take the money. If there was any blame to be apportioned, it didn’t lie with him.

Uh-oh. A woman was drawing near, her hand tracing the line of a velvet cushion, a wall hanging, and now the bar. So, she was either blind, or else she was in that tactile mode that women tended to employ when drunk or horny. They were like kids, when their juices were flowing; they had to touch.

Gus understood, now: the place was some sort of brothel, only in reverse.

Which kind of made him a prostitute. A weird feeling, but not altogether an unfamiliar one.

‘My name is Sophia,’ the woman breathed. ‘I own this place.’

‘Gus,’ he grunted. He didn’t bother with pseudonyms, generally; he always tended to get them muddled up.

‘You’re new here, Gus.’

‘Hmmn!’ He turned to the bartender and ordered a drink. ‘Chivas Regal,’ he grunted out of habit, not for one moment expecting that the place would stock anything so prestigious. Or expensive. ‘Double.’ The whisky had been the favourite drink of Hunter S Thompson. Gus was quite devoted to it, at least in public.

‘We have a twelve year vintage, or an eighteen,’ the barman said. ‘Alas, I’m afraid we’re just out of the twenty-five.’

Shit. Gus winced, aware that he was here on his own imitative, without the safety net of an expenses form. ‘I’ll go for the twelve,’ he said. ‘I prefer that mellow taste.’

‘Ah,’ said Sophia, ‘but the eighteen is far more sophisticated. Things get better with age, Gus, don’t you think?’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Gus said. He hesitated a moment, then gestured at the barman. ‘And one for the lady!’ he added.

Sophia inclined her head graciously. ‘Thank you. I’ll have a small glass of Rioja.’

Sophia moved closer, lowering herself onto the barstool beside him. Gus reached into his jacket, ostensibly to remove a packet of cigarettes, but in reality to switch on his dictaphone.

Well, that was what the uninitiated might term it. More accurately, it was a professional grade digital voice-recorder with 24-bit pulse code modulation recording capability. Which meant that it could pick up a mouse’s fart at a range of a hundred metres. Gus liked his gadgets.

‘So how did you hear about us?’ Sophia asked. ‘We don’t exactly advertise.’

‘Oh, I’ve got contacts!’

‘That’s a bit secretive, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe,’ Gus answered, grinning his lopsided grin. He was gratified that Sophia responded with a more measured smile of her own.

She looked at him in quizzical fashion, then briefly brushed her fingers to his arm. It was clearly a test of some sort. Gus concentrated on seeming to enjoy her touch. But it was hard. Whatever the nature of her business, the idea that she might have a chance with him was clearly outrageous. He would no more sleep with a geriatric than a wolf would feast on rotten meat.

He tapped his fingers on the dark mahogany of the bar. Maybe it was just the weed in his system, but it occurred to him that he’d felt the same way about sushi, until he’d tried it.

‘So how’s your day been?’ he asked.

She scowled. ‘Oh, difficult.’

Gus took a deeper drag on his Gitanes, before belatedly offering her the packet. She shook her head.

‘How so?’ he enquired.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Hey, now who’s being secretive?’

Sophia fixed him with a strange look. ‘You really want to know?’

‘I’m a good listener, Sophia.’

Sophia leant closer. ‘You know, Gus, it might be good to talk to someone about it. But not here.’

‘Where, then?’

‘Oh, I know a place. It isn’t far. A hotel.’

Jesus fucking Christ! thought Gus.

‘Well, in a minute then,’ he said.

He polished off the remainder of his whisky, then ordered another. And another. By the time he’d finished his third double, Sophia’s thinly veiled proposition no longer filled him with absolute loathing.

It had been a while, he supposed. And his dick had needs. And he was a professional; there was literally nothing that he wouldn’t do to get his story.

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