Black Widow

‘Do you have a phone number for her?’ Pieter pressed.

Hester stared at him for an instant, her lifeless blue eyes momentarily teeming with flecks of shoaling silver. But then she sighed, and grew still again. ‘There’s an address book by the cooker,’ she said.

Tanja moved to retrieve it. She flicked through, noting that it contained just the four names: Hans, Laura, Cornelius, Heidi.

And I thought I was lonely, Tanja mused.

Pieter seemed to be doing all right, so Tanja stepped out onto the landing, so she could ring the number herself. Heidi answered, and soon confirmed what Hester had said. Tanja sighed, knowing that the chance of making a quick arrest had passed her by. Of course, there was always the possibility of collusion; that was a given.

‘Is Hester all right?’ Heidi asked. ‘She’s not in any trouble?’

‘None at all,’ Tanja answered.

‘Only I’m very worried about her. I’m really the only person she has, now that Cornelius – her brother, I mean – is dead.’

‘Ah,’ Tanja sympathised. ‘A recent loss?’

‘A few months back. But Hester can’t let it go.’

‘Well, thank you for your help!’

Tanja hung up, and made her way back into the room. She caught Pieter’s eye. He shrugged, and shook his head a fraction.

They left the grieving woman to her misery. It was a relief, in truth, to get away from her.

*

Hana Huisman and Anita Berger had only met through their student daughters, but they’d quickly developed a quirky friendship of their own. It was an odd mix on the face of it: Anita was brash, and seemed to think of nothing but having as much fun as she could; whilst Hana liked nothing more than to revel in her own downtrodden misery.

At least that was how it seemed to her daughter. Ursula poked her head round the sitting room door, wondering if her mother’s boyfriend – the root of Hana’s unhappiness – was in residence.

No, of course he wasn’t. Lander Brill never came round when her mum had a friend over; he seemed to have a sixth sense in that regard. Anita Berger probably had no idea that he even existed. Hana would certainly never have mentioned him. She was ashamed, and with good reason.

Lander Brill! The sweat-stinking, woman-beating, oath-breaking Lander Brill, for whom Ursula had dreamed up a perfect end – involving a wooden box, and a hungry rat. She’d got the idea from a recent trip to Amsterdam’s Museum of Torture. The idea was that the box was fixed tight to the victim’s stomach, the rat inside: the only way the rodent could escape was to eat its way through the man’s guts.

Anyway, Lander was elsewhere, presumably in a bar. Ursula stepped into the room, nodding greeting. Anita, she saw, was dressed in the fashion of an eighties prostitute; her mother looked like some fifties hausfrau.

So, Anita and Hana were quite different. But then, so were Ursula and Maria. And the girls could hardly have been closer, in Ursula’s mind.

‘Anyone want a coffee?’ Ursula asked as she moved into the kitchen.

‘No thanks,’ Hana answered, without looking up. Her gaze was fixed on Anita.

The sitting room was within earshot of the kitchen and Ursula could easily hear what they were saying. She didn’t pay their conversation much heed, at first – but as the kettle came to the boil she heard a name filter through the whistling.

Mikael Ruben.

‘Of course,’ Anita said, ‘I always thought he was a bad sort. And my Maria, so sweet and trusting! I warned her about him, you know.’

‘It must be awful for her,’ Hana murmured.

‘She’ll get over it,’ Anita responded, somewhat brutally. And then, ‘I was shocked to hear of his death, though. It’s always sad when someone dies.’

‘Do we know how he died, though?’

‘Well, not exactly,’ Anita admitted. ‘The police were quite circumspect. But I can guess, given the kind of man he was!’

‘You think he kept other women?’

‘Well, as I understand it, yes.’

Ursula’s eavesdropping was disturbed by a familiar snuffling. A scruffy mongrel, half Labrador, half something unidentifiable, pottered into the kitchen, his nose twitching and his tail wagging.

‘Go away,’ Ursula instructed.

Benny sat down on his haunches, his tongue lolling in response to the heat. Ursula frowned, but gave him a quick pat on the head. She was actually quite fond of the dumb creature. They’d bought him a few years back, at the suggestion of Hana’s doctor. Ursula’s mother had always suffered from withering bouts of depression; the doctor argued that having a dog around might help to keep her cheerful. It hadn’t actually; she’d simply developed an allergy to go with her other problems. But Hana would rather put up with a permanently runny nose than countenance giving Benny away.

Or a bloody nose, if the alternative were to risk losing Lander Brill.

Stupid, stupid woman.

Ursula took her coffee through into the sitting room. Benny followed her, his lead clasped optimistically in his mouth.

‘He wants you to take him for a walk,’ her mother said, stating, as ever, the completely fucking obvious.

‘Can’t you do it?’ Ursula retorted. ‘I’ve got some college stuff to take care of.’

‘I’m entertaining, Ursula!’

That and the fact that she was scared to leave the house. The only time the poor dog ever got walked nowadays was when Ursula came round.

Or so she’d thought. ‘I’ll take him,’ Anita offered. ‘We had a fine old time when we went to the park before. Didn’t we, boy?’

Benny whined, and gave the impression that he really didn’t give a shit who took him.

‘Thanks,’ Ursula mumbled. And then, ‘I’m sorry for your trouble, Mrs Berger. Poor Maria.’

Anita sighed, and shook her head sadly. ‘Yes. Poor Maria. She will be relying on her friends to get her through this, you know.’

Ursula nodded. ‘Well, I’m her best friend. I’ll see to it.’

Ursula smiled. Anita smiled. A simple enough exchange, which nevertheless seemed to follow some deeper course. It was good; they had an understanding: neither would hog Maria during her time of need.

Ursula closed the sitting room door behind her, and, pausing only to snatch the Amsterdam Post from the doormat, flew up the stairs two at a time. It was good to be back home, if only for a few hours!

There was a brief write up of the murder, by a certain Gus de Groot. It didn’t amount to much, just a name and a location. Ursula pursed her lips, irritated at the reporter’s lack of daring. He must know more than that.

Still, she had a ritual to perform. She took out a pair of surgical scissors from her sewing kit beneath the bed, and proceeded to cut the article from the paper. Her mother would never notice: Hana never read the paper, for fear of upsetting herself; the limit of her interest was to have it delivered. Lander Brill for his part was probably illiterate, and had his own place besides. He only came round for sex, and to punch Hana in the face.

Ursula cringed at her mother’s weakness, but for once didn’t fixate on it. She rather took out her scrapbook from the locked attaché case, and proceeded to glue the article in place.

The scrapbook was almost full, now, crammed with five years’ worth of newspaper cuttings. Each related to an act of female violence. Where that violence served as vehicle for revenge, the cutting was framed in a red border.

The scrapbook was Ursula’s most prized possession. What had started out as a hobby had, in recent months, become the focus of her academic studies. It would form the basis of her dissertation soon enough. This was her final year; her year of triumph.

She spent a few minutes leafing through the scrapbook, feeling cheered by what she read there. She wasn’t alone; there were other women, just like her, who recognised men for what they were. And some of those women were living in this very city! Here, amongst the flower markets and canals, the museums and the parks, there lived a woman who seemed determined to change everything!

Let her kill again, Ursula thought.

Feeling a little more relaxed now, she opened her bag and removed her laptop. She drummed her fingers impatiently whilst waiting for it to power up, then navigated her way through the tortuous branches of an old-fashioned file tree, until she found a folder labelled Coursework. She entered her password, then opened a sub-folder, Research.

Fifty-six icons, photos-in-miniature, peeked out at her. Closing her eyes and letting the mouse move where it would, she double-clicked, opening her eyes slowly to see what she might have unearthed.

It was Maria, a ten-pin bowling ball in hand, pointing at her feet, and laughing. Yes, those shoes were funny. And Maria, delicate thing that she was, seemed to be struggling to lift even the lightest ball.

Click. Maria standing on the steps of the Stadsschouwburg theatre, wearing a gown, looking like the most beautiful gypsy princess who ever lived.

Click. Maria asleep in bed, the duvet resting about her waist, her breasts bared. They were large enough, and perfectly symmetrical, in a way that breasts mostly weren’t. But that was Maria all over – each part of her body seemed to exist in perfect harmony with its neighbours, and itself.

Ursula scowled as she considered how all this might look to a casual observer. To her mother – no, even worse, a man. Hideous men, with their objectification of women and pornography and mindless arousal. Where was the beauty in that?

Click. Two dark bands, and a bright line between, and in the centre of that brightness Maria, showering away the dirt of the filthy world that men had built.

Fuck it, even language itself was a male invention, if Ursula remembered her literary theory. There were no words in the corrupted lexicon of men to describe what she felt for Maria.

Ursula powered down her computer and sat very still on the edge of the bed. She could hear the other women downstairs, their voices a drone, and they might as well have been ghosts.

She took out her phone, opening the picture library. She’d taken a number of shots, during the course of her surveillance.

Mikael had fascinated her, as a virologist might be fascinated by a deadly virus. She’d wanted him destroyed, clearly, but at the same time there was a great satisfaction to be had in hunting him down. So, she’d tracked him all the way to Enge Lombardsteeg.

Something had prevented her from following him downstairs into that strange underground bar. So she’d remained upstairs. She smoked a joint; marijuana was a feminine pleasure, born of the fertile earth.

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