Black Widow

And, because of her, he was still out there.

Tanja stuffed the paper in a drawer of her own desk.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s him.

‘The Butcher of the Bos’, as he’d come to be known, after the area of woodland where the first body was found. A lovely spot. Families used to go there for picnics.

Pieter returned her gaze with a level look of his own. His eyes expressed sympathy, but what could he know? He hadn’t found the bodies of Lisa Fröm, of Hilaire Klimst, of Greta Paulsen. He hadn’t seen the look of betrayal frozen into their eyes; the sense of bewilderment. He hadn’t seen the twisted set of their limbs, the blood on their thighs. Ophelie had been roughly the same age when she’d died, but at least that was quick. And she’d had her daddy with her.

Tanja stared at Pieter until he had to look away. It was important to make this stand now, if they were really going to work together. The fact that her colleagues often seemed scared of her brought no satisfaction, but at the same time she’d come to depend upon it.

She looked through the window, towards Jordaan. The air was shimmering in the heat, the pastel colours blurred into one, so that it looked more like some Middle Eastern enclave than the most fashionable district in Amsterdam. Closer in, more clearly defined in a black leather coat, a man was carrying a placard which proclaimed the imminent end of the world. Not through global warming, or anything so mundane; it was the coming of the devil he feared.

The old Tanja would probably have rolled her eyes at this. But maybe it was true that the devil took many forms.

Her phone rang. She jumped, causing everyone else to look up and stare at her.

‘Want me to get it?’ Pieter offered.

Tanja ignored him, snatching the phone from the receiver. She listened intently, every part of her tensed, until the pertinent details seeped through.

Male, approx. thirty years old…

She put the phone down, relieved, disappointed. All the usual contradictions. ‘You ever seen a dead body before, Kissin?’

He shook his head. His eyes were wide, and his expression faintly idiotic. ‘No, not really. Well, not unless you count my grandfather, of course. I was there when…’

But Tanja was already on her way out the door.

*

Gus de Groot’s editor was shouting at him again. She did this a lot. Sometimes he deserved it, but mostly he was sure that he did not. He had an idea, in fact, that he’d become the focus of some deeper frustration on Miriam’s part. He considered a number of explanations as to why she might be picking on him, before settling on the sexual angle. Her marriage had gone sour (if his sources in HR were to be believed), and she clearly wasn’t getting any. And it was a fact that middle-aged women with personality issues tended to get cranky if not regularly attended to.

Gus nodded, satisfied that he’d gotten to the heart of the matter. Or the vagina, or whichever organ made for the most appropriate metaphor when dealing with menopausal bitches. Was the vagina an organ, technically speaking? He was unsure. What he did know was that he was thirty years old, good looking in a lopsided kind of way, and somewhat dangerous to be around. No wonder Miriam should vent her frustrations on him. He was all the desirable men she couldn’t have, in one intriguing package.

‘Gus?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Are you even listening?’

‘Of course, Miriam. We were discussing the fact that the Mayor has been illicitly diverting civil engineering funds into a housing development, which just happens to be run by his cousin. Quite a story.’

She banged her fist on the desk. ‘It would be, if it were true!’

Gus leaned away. ‘My source is very reliable.’

‘Your source has just been fired – by the Mayor himself – for making a series of improper remarks to a colleague.’

‘Ah. He never mentioned that.’

‘And maybe – just maybe – he’s holding a grudge?

‘It’s a possibility,’ Gus conceded.

‘Which hardly makes him a credible informant!’

‘No,’ said Gus.

Miriam tossed a folder at him. ‘It’s all in the open. As you would surely have discovered for yourself if you’d adopted a more diligent approach. There’s nothing illicit about it. The funds were reallocated on the authority of a sub-committee.’

‘But the Mayor has influence, surely?’

‘Look, the housing development is canal-side. The canal was found to have sprung a leak. They do that, from time to time. It’s the Authority’s responsibility to make repairs. There’s no mystery to it.’

‘The Mayor must be up to something, though,’ Gus countered, seizing what he considered to be the nub of moral high ground. ‘Isn’t it in the nature of politicians to abuse their power?’

‘Maybe so,’ Miriam said coolly. ‘But then again, he might just be the most honest man in Amsterdam.’

‘Hah!’

Miriam made a visible effort to rein in her temper. ‘This time you’ve gone too far, Gus. What would have happened, do you think, if we had run this story?’

‘We’d have found a few more readers?’

Miriam was clearly between hot flushes, and was as cold as yesterday’s obituaries. ‘You’re off Crime,’ she said. ‘You’re on Tourism. And try not to screw up this time. The subs are already demanding danger money.’

‘But –’

‘Get out, Gus.’

Gus didn’t protest further. He had his dignity to consider. Besides, he was positive this would only be a temporary setback. Miriam needed reporters like him. Truth was one thing, and of course it was easier when a story was supported with hard evidence, rather than the sort which gave a little under close scrutiny. But the fact of it was that journalists were increasingly a part of the entertainment industry. And Gus understood what his readers wanted to hear.

Shit, though. Tourism? He hated tourists.

There was a buzzing in his pocket. A text message. Elizabeth. One of his informants at the station. Left tit substantially bigger than the right, which offered a useful reference point in the dark, should he lose track of which way was up. She thought she had a chance of marrying him. Charming, really.

Gus was a firm believer in Providence. And a kind of inverse journalistic karma, which no one else seemed to understand. Whatever the truth of it, it seemed there had been a murder out on the Sint Luciensteeg. In a hotel. Well, well.

Hotels, Gus reasoned, were often frequented by tourists.

Chapter 2

‘We could cycle,’ Pieter Kissin suggested as he followed his new partner down to the station car park.

‘Exercise is bad for you,’ Tanja countered. ‘Look at joggers – always dropping dead of heart attacks. Or footballers, always rupturing their cruciates or whatever.’

Pieter smiled his easy smile. ‘So why do you spend every other night in the station gym?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Harald Janssen.’

Jesus, Lucky loved to gossip.

‘And what else did he tell you?’

Pieter shrugged, but didn’t see fit to answer the question. ‘Do you want me to drive, then?’

Tanja fixed him with a dangerous look. ‘What, because I am a woman, and you think women can’t drive? Let’s get one thing straight –’

Pieter offered an apologetic shrug. ‘Actually, Detective Inspector, it’s more that I think you might still be a little intoxicated.’

Tanja stopped and tightened her grip on the car keys. ‘What?’

‘I am sorry. I don’t know how else to say it. But alcohol leaves a certain residue on the breath.’ He sniffed delicately. ‘Wine, I should say. Probably white. I’d hesitate to specify the grape, though.’

There was no dignified response to this allegation. And, now that she’d been caught out, Tanja saw no alternative but to capitulate. She threw him the keys to her battered old Opel, and, dammit, there she was, blushing.

‘Did you perfect your nose at the Academy?’ she enquired, if only to hide her embarrassment.

‘No. We used to holiday in France when I was a child. The Médoc. We always seemed to end up at a vineyard.’

‘Oh.’

He started the car. It fired first time, which to Tanja’s way of thinking was a little disloyal, when in her case it was never better than fifty-fifty if it would start at all.

‘So where to?’ he asked.

‘Sint Luciensteeg.’

‘And which way is that?’ he queried.

‘Turn right out the gates. Oh, and be careful. This isn’t a tractor, or whatever counts as a runabout in the country. You can’t simply drive over things. You have to go around them.’

‘I’ve driven a few tractors in my time,’ Pieter noted mildly as he steered the car onto Elandsgracht. ‘My parents own a farm, near Vreeland. It borders the river. Very pretty. You’d like it.’

‘I doubt that. But I thought your father was Chief of Police?’

Pieter’s tongue played thoughtfully inside his cheek. ‘I asked the boss to keep that a secret.’

‘It wasn’t him. But you’ll learn as you go on that police stations are riddled with snitches. Most of whom are on the payroll.’

‘Ah.’ He flashed her an anxious look. ‘I hope it won’t put a strain on our relationship?’

‘Why would it?’ Tanja answered blandly. ‘You could be our dear Prince of Orange himself, and you’d still have to fetch your own coffee.’

‘I get it.’

‘Anything else I should be aware of? Any other secrets?’

‘Secrets?’ Pieter mused. ‘Oh, I’m allergic to penicillin. Does that count?’

‘Not really.’ The Opel forged a spluttering and environmentally suspect path through a swarm of cyclists, simply belching out those hydrocarbons it lacked the stomach to digest. ‘So how did your dad come by the farm?’ she asked.

‘He inherited it. It’s been in the family three hundred years. He employs a manager to run it, of course.’

‘Oh, of course. And it will be yours, one day?’

‘I’ve never really thought about it. But I suppose it will, yes. I have a sister – an elder sister, actually – but you know how these things work.’

Tanja knew.

‘You married, Kissin?’ she asked.

‘No ma’am,’ he said with a sideways glance. ‘You?’

She looked out of the window to hide her face. Lucky hadn’t told him everything, then. ‘Not any more.’

They soon pulled up outside the hotel, the Royal William, a typically narrow, four-storey building of pale red brick and white window frames, strangled in a creep of wilting ivy. A uniformed officer, an agent, was standing outside, his arms folded, his eyes fixed on a chattering crowd of onlookers. A Walther P5 pistol was holstered at his waist. The pistol had been in service since the late seventies, and there was talk of replacing it, but for now its compact dimensions and reliability made it a favourite. He had a baton, too, and a can of pepper spray, all standard equipment. He offered careful greeting to Tanja as she approached the cordon, and a look of what might almost have been commiseration to Pieter. Tanja pretended that she hadn’t noticed.

Inside, she was immediately struck by a sense of decay, evidenced by a greasy bloom of nicotine on the walls, and streaks of fossilised sweat on the wooden reception desk. The air smelt variously stale, or oily, depending on which way the hotel’s internal currents were shifting. A draft crept in beneath a door, marked salle à manger, as if in homage to the old French domination of the city; or else blew more brazenly through the margins of a revolving door, which offered a distorted view out onto the street beyond. A newspaper sat on a table, dated to three days before.

‘Been here before?’ Pieter asked.

‘No,’ Tanja answered. ‘But I recognise the type. Not every man wants to take his kicks in a privehuis.’

Another officer was in conversation with two women, one of oriental extraction, the other dressed in the uniform of a desk clerk. Witnesses, hopefully.

The uniformed hoofdagent briefly detached himself from the women. ‘Ma’am.’

‘What can you tell me?’ Tanja asked, as, despite everything, she felt her heart start to beat that little bit faster.

‘Only a little,’ the sergeant replied. ‘We’ve sent a car to pick up the night clerk for questioning. But I can tell you that the murdered man and his, ah, lady friend, signed in under the names Mikael Ruben and Hester Goldberg.’

Pieter made a note of this information on a pad. ‘And where are the other guests?’ he asked.

‘In the dining room, awaiting interview.’

‘Right,’ Tanja acknowledged. ‘Bag the register and keep me informed.’

They took the stairs. Tanja had a mild fear of lifts, particularly when their innards were on full display. But more than that, she’d learned the benefits of drawing such moments out. First impressions were never more important than when dealing with a murder scene: with her heart racing, and her mind awhirl, there was a danger she might miss something. So, she took a series of deep, if surreptitious breaths, focusing on the stairs before her, and no more than that.

Fifty-two steps in total to the top floor. Kissin barely seemed to notice, but she was breathing a little heavily by the time they reached the top. Not through any lack of fitness – it was just that she’d had her nose broken a few years back, and sometimes she couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs. She’d even visited a plastic surgeon, to see if there was anything that could be done. There was, apparently. And it needn’t cost her anything: her police medical insurance would take care of it, seeing how the injury had been sustained during the course of her work.

Still, her brother officers could be merciless about such things. They would inevitably find out, and there was no way she was going to let herself become the butt of their jokes. Times changed, but not much, and the one thing a female police officer could not afford was accusations of vanity. It was hard enough to be taken seriously as it was.

She moved along the landing, her nostrils flaring to the faint aroma of rust. Or blood. The principal component was the same in each case.

The room was located at the end of a gloomy corridor, which was lined with a selection of Rembrandt prints. Pieter called out the title in each case: Bathsheba At Her Bath; followed by Belshazzar’s Feast; and finally The Jewish Bride.

‘So you are an art lover, as well as a wine expert, Kissin?’

‘I didn’t always want to be a policeman,’ he answered with a shrug.

He seemed cool enough. Yet Tanja suspected that it was an act. She remembered a similar occasion, just a few short years before, when Alex had accompanied her to his first crime scene. His aura of toughness had dissipated rather quickly, as she recalled.

So much had happened since then. Tanja closed her eyes, just for a second –

‘Are you all right, Detective Inspector?’

Tanja blinked. ‘Of course.’ She brushed an imaginary speck of dust from her blouse, and took the final few steps along the corridor.

The diminutive Scene of Crime Officer, Nelleke van Wyk, was her usual fastidious self, making a point of asking their identity, and various other self-evident details, and recording them on her clipboard. Whereas Tanja thought nothing of circumventing an unnecessary formality, it was the process itself that van Wyk seemed to live for. She made no secret of the fact that she loathed Tanja’s methods; Tanja made no secret of the fact that she didn’t care.

‘You’ll need to suit up,’ van Wyk instructed.

‘Are we talking the full ensemble?’ Tanja enquired.

‘Can’t be too careful, Detective Inspector.’

‘Fine,’ said Tanja, as she set about shrugging herself into the proffered coverall. There were also gloves, boots and a mask to deal with. It was never a quick business.

‘Keep to the walls as much as possible,’ van Wyk added.

‘Of course,’ Tanja acknowledged.

She moved inside, Pieter a step behind. The first thing she noticed was that the room was L-shaped; that the bed, and its contents – apart from one pale foot – were neatly hidden from view by a wall. The forensics team, looking more comfortable in their white suits and blue booties than she felt in hers, were already moving through this space. One or two nodded greeting; others seemed to look straight through her. They were a curious bunch, not easily understood. Chief amongst them was Karl Visser, so laconic she wondered if he had a pulse. She waved a greeting across the floor. He shrugged.

Pieter edged ahead of her, but she blocked him with an arm.

‘What’s the rush, detective?’ She handed over a pencil. ‘How about you draw me a nice picture instead?’

‘So what are we going to do?’ he protested. ‘Wait for our friend to fossilise before taking our hammers to him?’

‘Don’t forget you are on probation. I can have you transferred at any time.’

‘You can?’

Tanja tapped a finger to her head. ‘I’ve made a mental note, to investigate how I might get rid of you.’

‘How about an acid bath?’ Karl Visser suggested as he held up a microscope slide to the window.

‘Funny,’ said Pieter.

‘Hey, relax,’ Visser said. ‘He’s not going anywhere. Not without his guide dog, at any rate.’

‘What does that mean?’ Pieter said.

‘You tell me. You’re the detective. Or so I’m led to believe.’

Tanja held up a hand to forestall further bickering. ‘How’s that picture coming along?’ she asked Pieter. ‘I’m expecting something in the Rembrandt envelope, at least.’

‘Or perhaps we could simply wait for the photographer?’

‘I want both. Do it.’

Tanja moved slowly around the wall, Pieter beside her, sketching all the while. Tanja noticed that he was working in 3D, rather than the usual plan. So, he was either being facetious, or stupid. On balance, she hoped it was the former. A stupid cop had nothing to fall back on save luck. And Harald Janssen had already cornered that market.

The room was fairly grubby, and gave the impression that it hadn’t been decorated in thirty years or more. The walls were magnolia, whilst the carpet was beige. There was an interior door, closed, which presumably led into the bathroom.

The floor was covered in a loose pile of male clothing, suggesting that the dead man had been in a hurry to get naked. Well, no mystery there; men were like children in that regard.

A low-def TV sat in one corner, a coat-hanger aerial arranged above it. The plug was missing. Tanja didn’t suppose that most guests had cause to notice. There was a kettle and accompanying tea service. The cups were face down.

Kissin’s impatience aside, there was value to be had in dealing with the mundane details first. But only to a point.

‘Let’s have a look at him then, shall we,’ Tanja said.

She stepped around the corner of the L, Pieter right beside her.

There was a sound. It seemed to come from somewhere deep within Pieter’s throat.

‘Oh, shit,’ he groaned.

He staggered away – sticking to the safe route, Tanja noted – and dropped to his knees over the cleaner’s bucket in the hall outside. One or two of the forensics boys cheered as he hurled up his breakfast; van Wyk cursed. Tanja was better able to control herself, but her stomach still gave a queasy lurch. A person never got entirely used to it.

She gazed down at the body, letting her sense of outrage run its brief, if heated course. As ever, she fought against the feelings of sympathy, of empathy; as ever, she lost. Her old boss had told her that a sense of detachment was vital to a cop, but it was a skill she’d never been able to master. All she could do was fake it.

Her practised eye took in the significant details in an instant. The victim was a youngish man, maybe thirty years old. There was blood on his wrists, and ligature marks about his neck, suggesting that he’d been tied up, and strangled. He was still semi-hard: funny the way that happened, sometimes.

There was a little blood on his bloated face, too. One of the eyes had been pressed back into its socket. The other was missing, the optic nerve dangling free like some parasitical worm. She got down on her knees, to see if the eyeball had fallen beneath the bed, but there was nothing there save dust.

There was a knock at the door. An oversized head appeared, followed soon after by a less imposing body. ‘Ah, if it isn’t my second or third favourite detective inspector. Looking good, Tanja!’

It was Erik Polderhuis, the medical examiner. He was pushing sixty, but didn’t look, or act, it. Outside of work, he was known for his determination to form romantic attachments with girls who were precisely half his age. But the maths never held true for long, and so it was that he’d never been able to settle down. His hair was blonde, whilst his blue-grey eyes, so cold, might have been scooped directly from the North Sea. Somewhat paradoxically, there was a great warmth in his smile. He had various faults, most of them founded in a sense of mischief, but it was also true that he had an eye for detail. Tanja was actually rather fond of him, although she would never admit to it.

‘Erik,’ she acknowledged. And then, as a green-faced Pieter reappeared, ‘This is Detective Kissin. He’s from the Vecht.’

‘Shit,’ Erik sympathised. ‘Tough break.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Was that you I saw just now, losing your breakfast?’

Pieter nodded unhappily. ‘Yes. But it won’t happen again.’

Erik didn’t seem to hear this promise. ‘Well, try not to throw up on the victim, please. Or fart unnecessarily.’ He knelt down beside the bed. ‘So what’s going on with this poor bastard?’

Whilst Erik went to work, Tanja carefully picked her way through the pile of clothes. The trousers were grey, skinny-fit Girbaud; whilst the shirt was from Turnbull & Asser. Not necessarily an indication of wealth in themselves (maybe these were his pulling clothes; maybe he wore supermarket fashions, mostly), but the contrast with the cheap surroundings was marked.

She went through his pockets, finding a packet of cigarettes (Marlboro Lights – the equivalent of shooting yourself in the head with a low calibre bullet, she supposed), a packet of condoms (Cardinals, a Dutch brand, rumoured to be the best available), a Zippo lighter, and a wallet (croc skin?).

She opened the wallet. She found an ID card, complete with a photo: Mikael Ruben, North Holland IT Solutions. It matched the name on a selection of bank cards. The colour was gold in each case, but again, that was hardly an indication of superior status nowadays. Tanja had a gold card herself, and she was far from rich.

There was also a receipt, from a bar, timed and dated to the night before. The Den on Enge Lombardsteeg. It didn’t ring any bells, which was odd, as she was sure she’d visited all the places on that street, at one time or another. Anyway, Ruben had ordered two lagers, by the look of things. Hardly a skinful; he would have known what he was doing.

‘Well, I think it’s safe to say he was tied up,’ Erik declaimed. ‘Cuffed, in all probability. See? Around the back of the bedpost? The wood is a little splintered, doubtless where he struggled to free himself. It would take metal, or something similarly hard, to do that.’

‘If it weren’t for the business with his eyes,’ Tanja noted, ‘I might be tempted to suggest that he was caught up in a sex game, that his death was an accident.’ She shrugged. ‘But as it is –’

Erik nodded. ‘Yes, you’re probably right. Throttling a man to within a centimetre of his life in pursuit of the ultimate ejaculatory high is not in itself indicative of murderous intent. But running off with his eyeball probably is.’

‘Christ,’ Pieter groaned.

‘Would you rather wait outside?’ Tanja asked, her impatience rising.

Pieter shook his head determinedly, and dropped down on his haunches, that he might further examine the pile of clothing.

‘This sort of excision,’ Tanja asked Erik. ‘Is it a tricky procedure?’