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.

Chapter 6

Friday

Jasper Endqvist had his routines. Every Friday he would buy his lunch at Jan’s Poffertjeskraam on the west bank of the Singelgracht. It was a tiny little place, not much more than a market stall, which nevertheless served up the best soft pancakes in the city.

True, the kraam was an awkward walk from the insurance office in which he worked, but it was worth it. He’d even made a few calculations, – the journey burned off a good hundred calories, which was worth half a pancake in itself. And it wasn’t as if he was fat; his calorific intake was mostly offset by regular doses of squash and jogging.

Jan was just turning the cinnamon coated treats as Jasper appeared. ‘You’re thirty seconds late,’ he grinned.

Jasper pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Sorry!’

A minute later, a brown paper bag of poffertjes in one hand, a Styrofoam cup of frothy coffee in the other, he made his way outside –

There was a thud, and a yelp, as a woman walked straight into him. Jasper cursed, and feared for his lunch, and might well have remonstrated further if not for the pained look on the woman’s face.

She was a good twenty years older than him, in her fifties, maybe, but certainly fit enough, if you liked that sort of thing. Which Jasper did, albeit in a very low-key way.

‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ she apologised. ‘My fault entirely.’

‘No,’ Jasper responded automatically. ‘It’s my fault. As soon as it’s lunchtime I get my blinkers on.’

‘I wasn’t looking where I was going. I’m new to the city. I was looking at the canal –’

‘It’s a very nice canal,’ Jasper noted. ‘The Singelgracht has always been a favourite of mine.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s got character,’ Jasper explained. He pointed at an unusually shaped houseboat, bobbing on the water just a few metres away. ‘See that, for instance? That’s the Poezenboot. It’s a sanctuary for stray cats. See what I mean? Only on the Singel!’

‘I love cats!’ the woman said, as she plucked at her blouse. Jasper’s coffee had spilled all over it, to interesting effect.

‘That’ll need dry cleaning,’ he said. ‘I feel bad – I’ll pay for it, yes?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Why should you pay for my clumsiness?’

But Jasper was fully committed to his chivalrous course, now. He fished about in his pocket, to hand her his card. ‘Really, I insist. Let me know how much it costs to put right, and I’ll send you a cheque.’

The woman – she really was quite striking – bowed her blonde head, and murmured her thanks. Jasper watched her leave, all thoughts of his ruined lunch forgotten.

*

Chief Inspector Wever worried at another biscuit, knowing that he would regret it later. His metabolism was no longer the worker of miracles it had once been; his gut no longer performed that dance of osmotic alchemy (as Erik Polderhuis had once described it) that had kept him thin right until his late forties. Meals tended to lurk in his body, nowadays, with all the grubby determination of squatters.

He was getting podgy, frankly. His wife had told him so that very morning. He frowned, as he considered a visit to the station gym. It really was the most god-awful place, populated by the most god-awful people. The smell of sweat and guilt always stuck in the throat. He didn’t know any man who exercised out of choice. It was always a consequence of a doctor issuing a health warning, or a woman intimating that she would rather sleep with herself than a fatty. The pervasive atmosphere of any gymnasium was one of resentment and desperation.

He looked disconsolately at the biscuits, wondering if there might be anything in this anti-fat pill he’d heard so much about.

Or maybe he could simply send for Tanja. Ten minutes in her strenuous company was the equivalent of going for a ten mile run, Harald Janssen argued. Not that he would know anything about that sort of thing.

Well, slimming aid or otherwise, Anders needed to speak to Tanja. He was still feeling a little dazed from the fallout of her recent meltdown. He couldn’t let it happen again.

He opened his door. ‘Tanja!’ he called out, half hoping that she was out of the office.

A hard little shape detached itself from the softer fuzz of rubber plants and monitors. She seemed as trim as ever, Wever noted sourly.

He’d known Tanja, what, twenty-two years? Through her husband first, but later they’d stayed close. And in that time she’d always frustrated him intensely. Surprised and occasionally delighted him with some unexpected act of kindness, yes, but frustration was the main thing. She could be rude, snappy, and dismissive of the chain of command. She doubtless had a persecution complex. And yet he still worried about her. It was the main reason, in fact, he’d invested so much time in selecting her new partner. Young Kissin had many qualities, not the least of which was an imposing physical presence. He also had one of the highest recorded clean-kill percentages at the Academy firing range. He would keep Tanja safe if anyone could.

Wever was unashamedly old-fashioned in that regard. Pulling a trigger required no special skill, but aiming did, and the simple truth was that women weren’t very good at it. Take their gun away, and things were even worse. He remembered the first time Tanja had been hurt in the course of her work, when she’d been set upon by the suspected arsonist she’d been trailing. It was soon after she’d lost Anton and her daughter, and her mind was probably elsewhere. He’d ripped the gun from her hand before she could get off a shot, then proceeded to beat her senseless. He’d left her for dead.

Wever smiled grimly, as he considered the arsonist’s fate. Being burnt alive in one of his own fires was too good for him.

Tanja entered his office, coffee in hand. She still had that commemorative Janis Joplin mug, chipped and faded now, yet she wouldn’t drink out of anything else. And they said he was set in his ways! She was smiling, probably for his benefit. She wanted him to think that everything was going smoothly. He really hoped it was.

‘Any luck?’ he asked.

‘Well, not as such,’ she answered. ‘We think Ruben left the bar with an older, blonde-haired woman, but we’ve yet to confirm it.’

‘Oh?’

‘The barman was a bit vague,’ Tanja explained.

‘No doorman?’

‘Yes,’ Tanja replied. ‘I’ve left a message for him to call me. But he hasn’t done so yet. I’ve tried ringing the bar owner to find out why, but no answer. It’s still a bit early for people like that, I suppose.’

Wever grunted, and glanced at the brief summary of the witness statements which sat on his desk. No one save the Asian night clerk had seen Ruben and Hester Goldberg arrive. And the girl had no recollection of seeing the woman leave. But her statement, tenuous as it was, tended to confirm that Tanja was on the right track. The main details of the woman being middle-aged, and blonde, were the same in each case.

‘This club sounds like a fascinating place,’ Wever said. ‘I must visit.’

‘Trust me, Anders, you wouldn’t be welcome. Not unless Ms Faruk has a few octogenarians stashed away in the cellar.’

‘This Sophia, then. Tell me about her.’

Tanja shrugged. ‘Blonde-haired. Fifty-ish, maybe. A little bit guarded.’

‘You think we should run a check?’

‘Probably,’ Tanja replied. ‘Although she claims she was elsewhere when Ruben left with the mystery woman.’

‘Have we confirmed that, yet?’

‘I thought it was a little soon to be asking for alibis. And really, she would have to be a bit mad, to pick up a man in her own bar and then kill him.’

Wever reached for his biscuits. ‘You know, it occurs to me that we really don’t know enough about this woman.’

‘We’re at a very early stage in the investigation,’ Tanja responded, perhaps a little defensively.

‘Even so. We need an advantage, I think.’

Tanja’s face was quite expressionless. ‘You’re thinking of calling in a profiler?’

‘Well, it’s a thought.’

‘Antje Scholten? Is that who you have in mind?’

‘She’s very good, Tanja. Her help was invaluable during the Butcher case.’

‘Was it? I never noticed.’ Tanja moved closer to Wever’s desk, her hands resting on its edge. ‘It’s way too early to be calling Scholten in. Let me see what I can dig up, first.’

Wever held her gaze for a moment, then looked away. ‘Right. You’d best get on with it, then.’

*

Tanja and Pieter had already visited two of the five Hester Goldbergs who were to be found in the local area. It was a largely pointless task, Tanja reasoned, as she rang the door buzzer of their latest target. Setting aside for one moment the possibility that the killer might easily have come from further afield, it seemed highly unlikely that she would have been so careless as to use her real name. The more Tanja cast her mind back to the crime scene, the more she believed that there was something preternaturally cold and premeditated about it. The fact that the killer had afterwards lingered to take a shower, for instance: it didn’t speak of panic; quite the opposite.

This Hester Goldberg lived in a flat above Dag En Nacht, one of the numerous gay bars which were to be found along Kerkstraat, which, in typical Amsterdam fashion, was equally famous for its beautiful churches. For all that it was only just after lunch, the bar leaked a noisy throb of sickly sounds and colours onto the street, the plate glass wobbling to the mellow bass of a trance anthem.

‘You’d have to be a fairly party-orientated person to live here,’ Pieter observed, as he peered up at the upstairs flat.

As it happened, his assessment was completely wide of the mark. As Hester buzzed them in, and they stepped inside her mean, one-room apartment, it was immediately apparent that the last thing on her mind was partying.

The room was almost entirely bereft of furniture. A black-and-white television sat in one corner, a coat-hanger aerial arranged above it. There was a bed, of sorts, which was really little more than a mattress on the floor. There was a sink, a tap dripping constantly into a stained bowl. And a cooker, the oven door dented, the enamel chipped. The walls were of bare white plaster, which had flaked here and there, perhaps in response to the constant pounding from below. The sound was felt, more than heard.

And in the centre of this empty space sat a woman who gave the distinct impression of being even emptier. Her blue eyes – the only spot of colour that Tanja could discern in the room – were wide and staring. Her hair was of a pale, lank blonde, and rested flat, lifeless, against her head.

She was a little older than Tanja, but still within the compass of the Cougar Club’s typical age range.

Tanja exchanged a look with Pieter. Had they got lucky?

‘What do you want?’ the woman asked.

Tanja introduced herself and Pieter. Hester glanced at the proffered badges, without seeming to see them.

‘We are sorry to disturb you,’ Tanja began.

The woman nodded. ‘Yes, and you should be. I am very busy, as you can tell.’

Tanja had seen a great deal, but there was something in Hester’s patently self-mocking bitterness which disconcerted her. She stiffened, thinking that yes, they might have got lucky. If this woman were ever to direct her self-loathing outwards –

‘We are investigating a crime,’ Tanja said. ‘A murder.’

‘And you think I did it?’ Hester laughed, a creaking, grinding sound.

‘We are not saying that at all,’ Pieter interjected smoothly. ‘But it would certainly help us if you could answer a few questions.’

Hester nodded. ‘All right.’

Pieter smiled gratefully. To Tanja’s surprise, Hester offered a little smile of her own. The kid had that way about him. People seemed to like him, as a matter of principle. She couldn’t condone it, but she did recognise that it might prove useful.

‘So,’ Pieter continued, ‘perhaps you could start by telling us where you were on Wednesday night, between, say, eight-thirty and midnight?’

‘I was having dinner,’ Hester answered. ‘With my friend.’

Pieter nodded, and took out his notebook. ‘And your friend’s name?’

‘Heidi Brinkerhoff.’

‘Do you have an address for her?’

‘She lives in Eindhoven, somewhere. I can never remember the name of her street. All I know is I turn left at the Philips Stadion, and then I’m there.’ She turned away, chin in hand, seemingly bored with everything. ‘Anyway, she put me up for the night.’