Black Widow

‘Don’t say that,’ Pieter protested earnestly.

Tanja shifted gears with a forceful clunk. ‘But there’s no sense in looking back, I suppose.’

It wasn’t far to Enge Lombardsteeg, but the traffic was tightly packed into the one-way system, and the tourists seemed to have no compunction about further clogging the roads. What might have been a comfortable twenty minute walk turned out to be a fractious twenty minute crawl, Tanja’s language growing more Limburgish all the while.

‘So where are you from, originally?’ Pieter asked.

‘Maastricht. We moved to Amsterdam when I was thirteen. But I learnt to swear properly before we left, if that’s what you are getting at.’

They arrived at another roadblock, this time in the form of a broken-down tram. Pieter winced, expecting a further eruption, but to his surprise, Tanja started to hum. He thought he recognised the melody. ‘To Love Somebody?’ he asked. ‘The Bee Gees?’

‘Right song, wrong band,’ Tanja answered. ‘I prefer the Janis Joplin cover.’

‘Are you a fan?’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’

Snippets of civilised conversation aside, being alone with Tanja in her little car wasn’t a comfortable feeling. It was to Pieter’s considerable relief that they finally pulled to a halt outside a coffee shop, Incan Gold, and he was able to take a shot of fresh air.

Actually, it wasn’t that fresh: waves of sweet smoke were oscillating through the open door.

‘Are you sure this is the place?’ he asked as he peered up at the gold-leaf sign. Incan Gold? A hash reference, presumably.

‘It’s the right address,’ Tanja answered as she stepped inside. ‘The Den must be downstairs.’

Sure enough there was a spiral staircase in the furthest corner of the café, leading down into a yet dingier depth, where clumps of second-hand smoke gathered like ghostly muggers.

‘It’s not exactly signposted,’ Pieter observed.

‘No.’

A rope was drawn across the stairs. Tanja unhooked it, and stepped through.

There was a door at the bottom, labelled simply, Private. Tanja tried the handle. Unlocked.

The decor was much classier on the other side of the door, if still imbued with an appreciably seedy aspect. Classical music swelled gently in the background; whilst flickering electrical candles seemed to serve no other purpose than to define the limit of strategically placed shadows. There was a bar, well stocked, flanked with a row of stools. There were paintings on the wall, prints, most likely, of what appeared to be English landscape scenes. Some exotic variety of vine twined itself around a brass pole, twisting hungrily towards a shaft of natural sunlight, which somehow penetrated below ground. Mirrors, Pieter suspected, if not actually smoke.

A woman appeared from the shadows. ‘Welcome to the Cougar Club!’ she said, smiling. She wore an evening gown of palest jade. It didn’t seem to matter that it was still a little early for that sort of attire; she had the look of a woman who tended to draw evening out as far as was possible. She was rather striking, tall, with longish, blondish hair. Her bare arms were thin, whilst her breasts were larger than they needed to be. She was roughly fifty years old, Pieter guessed.

Tanja looked at Pieter confusedly, before turning her attention back to the woman. ‘I’m sorry – we were looking for The Den.’

‘Well, some people might call it that. But not you two, surely?’

‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Tanja admitted.

‘Look, as far as my accountant is concerned, this is indeed The Den. But most of my customers refer to it by its unofficial name.’

‘I see,’ said Tanja.

The woman nodded happily, and took a step towards them. ‘My name is Sophia Faruk. I’m the owner here.’

‘Hi,’ said Tanja, more reservedly.

Sophia diverted her attention to Pieter, slowly, languorously, yet with a great weight of irresistible determination, like a canal bridge swinging open. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Can I touch?’

She didn’t wait for an answer. She reached out a hand, to brush fingers to Pieter’s chest. He was so taken aback, he didn’t move. Sophia sighed wistfully, then returned her attention to Tanja. ‘You know it’s our strictest rule – no hogging the pretty ones!’

Tanja showed her badge. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Pino. And this is Detective Kissin.’

His partner’s scorched-earth gaze met Sophia’s eyes of polder-grey. For a moment an unspoken challenge seemed to rise between them. Pieter wasn’t surprised that Sophia should be the one to break the contact. There was a fire to his partner’s eye that burnt without thinking.

Sophia’s expression flickered, then grew impassive. ‘How may I help you, Detective Inspector?’

Tanja reached into her pocket, to remove a colour photocopy of Mikael Ruben’s security pass. ‘Do you recognise him?’ she asked, tapping the image in the corner.

Sophia looked at the picture. ‘Maybe.’

‘Only maybe?’ Tanja pressed. ‘One of the “pretty ones”, no?’

Sophia shrugged. ‘I never focus on the faces for long.’ She chuckled, but the sound seemed to sit awkwardly.

Tanja shook her head impatiently. ‘Please, this is important.’

Sophia looked at the image again. ‘All right. Now that I think about it, I do recognise him. He comes in a couple of times a month.’

‘And when did you last see him?’ Pieter asked.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Last night, perhaps?’

Sophia shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

Tanja showed her a copy of the receipt. ‘This would suggest otherwise. You see the date?’

Sophia studied the receipt. ‘Yes. But really, I’ve said too much. My customers expect a certain discretion on my part.’

‘Trust me,’ said Tanja, ‘Mikael Ruben will not care.’

Sophia licked her lips. Pale lipstick glistened, briefly. ‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s dead.’

Sophia put her hand to her mouth. She groped blindly behind her, and settled back into a chair. She started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. ‘Poor Mikael,’ she finally stammered.

Tanja took a step closer to Sophia. ‘So, you will forgive me if I ask you again, Ms Faruk: did you see Mikael Ruben last night?’

‘I have already said that I didn’t,’ Sophia said. She composed herself with a visible effort. ‘But then, I wasn’t here all evening. I left early.’

‘What time did you leave?’

‘I couldn’t say for sure. I never wear a watch. The passing of time – well, I’d rather not know.’

‘Do you have security cameras?’ Pieter asked. ‘A tape we can study?’

‘No,’ Sophia answered. ‘The last thing my customers want is to be filmed. At least not here.’

Pieter found that he was starting to enjoy the process. This was much more like it. ‘So tell me, Ms Faruk, what exactly is the Cougar Club?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Let’s assume it isn’t.’

That laugh again. ‘You aren’t from round here, are you, Detective? It’s very simple. Some women prefer the company of younger men, just as some men prefer the company of older women. This is where they like to meet.’

‘Was anyone else working last night?’ Tanja asked. ‘A bartender, perhaps?’

‘Just Frank,’ Sophia answered, quite sullen now.

‘Do you have a doorman?’

‘Jacobus, yes. He won’t be around for another hour, though. We aren’t officially open yet.’

‘And Frank?’

‘He’s in the cellar, doing a stock check.’

Frank was duly summoned. There was a pale sheen of sweat on his skin, and his eyes bulged from deep-set sockets. He had the look of a man who had spent his life in a dark cave. He glanced at the receipt, and the photograph, then screwed his eyes shut as he struggled to remember. Sophia looked at him for a moment, then drifted away, ostensibly to study her mobile. But it was obvious that she was listening intently.

‘Yeah, he was definitely here,’ the barman said. ‘We talked about the game on Saturday – did you see it? What the hell was Jol doing? Honestly, we’d have been better off sticking with van Basten. You don’t counterattack against Feyenoord – you pound em, you understand, like the scum they are. It’s the only way –’

‘What time did he leave?’ Tanja interrupted.

‘Oh, not late. Ten, maybe? No, that’s not right. Earlier. Because I remember talking to another customer about De Klassieker later, and he asked me the time, and it was nine-thirty. So, it would have been, oh, twenty minutes before that?’

‘And did he leave on his own?’ Pieter asked.

‘No,’ the bartender answered, drawing the syllable out as he pondered the question. ‘Don’t think so. I think I saw him talking to a woman, if only for a minute or so. I’ve an idea they went out together. They usually do!’

Pieter was making notes. ‘What did this woman look like?’

‘Sorry,’ Frank replied, ‘I really couldn’t say. Blonde hair, maybe? But it gets real smoky as the evening wears on. And of course Ms. Faruk turns the lights down low. Sometimes it’s hard to keep a track of who’s who.’ He winked. ‘Besides, I’m told not to stare.’

‘She didn’t order a drink?’ Tanja enquired.

‘I don’t think so. It’s mostly the men who buy the drinks round here.’ He lowered his voice a little. ‘Although there are some ladies who prefer a more hands on approach, if you know what I mean.’

‘Where do you keep your copies of the bar receipts?’ Tanja asked.

‘In here,’ Frank answered. He opened a manila folder, leafing through in dextrous fashion. ‘Ah, here we are,’ he said. ‘I believe this is Mr Ruben’s. He ordered, yes, two Grolsch.’

‘May I?’ Pieter asked.

Frank handed Pieter the folder. He flicked through, noting that the bartender was right: perhaps four-fifths of the names on the receipts were male. All part of the ritual, he supposed. There was certainly no record of a Hester Goldman.

‘Do you have a membership roster, something like that?’ Tanja asked. ‘We’ll need to speak to your patrons. Someone must have got a decent view of this woman.’

‘There’s nothing like that.’ Sophia said quickly as she moved back over to join them. ‘As I say, we are very discreet. We rely on word-of-mouth. No one has to sign in. There are no membership fees. My only recompense is whatever passes through my till. That and the satisfaction of knowing that I am providing a valuable service, of course.’

‘Good for you,’ Tanja said shortly. ‘So you’ve nothing else to tell us?’

‘No. I don’t think so. Though obviously I will call you if anything occurs.

Tanja handed Sophia a card. ‘Thank you, then. Oh, and if you could ask your doorman to call me as soon as he gets in. Jacobus, was it?’

‘Yes. I’ll tell him.’

Tanja strode away, climbing the spiral stairs in a vibration of ringing iron. She hurried through the coffee shop, Pieter struggling to keep up.

‘What I can’t understand,’ Tanja suddenly blurted, ‘is the promiscuity.’

‘Oh?’ said Pieter carefully.

Tanja dragged her foot across the dusty pavement. ‘I’ve only had, oh, eight boyfriends in my life. And never more than one at the same time.’

‘You think these women sleep around, then?’

‘I reckon!’

They shared a look. Pieter nodded, to express his understanding. Tanja wasn’t like the women who came to the Cougar Club; fine, he got it. But he supposed he could understand her sensitivity, under the circumstances. Janssen had told him all about Tanja and Alex Hoekstra, his similarly youthful predecessor. It really didn’t bother him, though, and even if it had, he would have kept his mouth shut. Tanja’s private life was none of his business.

They rode in silence back to the station. Pieter was left to reflect that it had actually turned out to be an unsatisfactory interview. They hadn’t really learned anything new. Ruben had probably left with another woman, but they’d suspected that anyway.

All in all he felt that he’d learned more about Tanja in the last few hours, than Mikael Ruben’s killer.

*

Harald Janssen had never really understood his sobriquet. Lucky? It was an insult, really. Professionally speaking, everything he’d achieved had been a product of hard work. And expertise. He was clued-up. He took his statutory two days’ study leave each year, and remembered almost everything he’d learned.

And in a private sense, well, he’d had no luck at all. Three messy wives, and three messy divorces, and three messy kids who would rather stay with their grisly mothers than hop on a tram and visit him occasionally. And the alimony! He was getting poorer each year.

He stretched, yawned, and decided that he would take a nap as soon as the opportunity presented itself. The murder had messed up his sleep patterns. He was supposed to have switched over to nights, yet seemed to have been awake for at least a day and a half.

He was at Mikael Ruben’s apartment on Vossiusstraat, overlooking the pleasant expanse of the Vondelpark. This was Tanja’s case, of course, but she could not be everywhere at once, and he’d been happy to help out with the preliminary legwork. She would want to come here herself soon enough, but someone needed to check it out right away, just in case. Someone trustworthy, with an eye for detail.

The apartment was impressively large, but Ruben clearly hadn’t been one for furnishings, either soft or hard. Tellingly, there was nothing in the way of cushions, nor candles, nor any of that other crap that women tended to like. If Maria (or whoever) had ever spent the night here, then she certainly hadn’t been allowed to linger. There were no extra toothbrushes in the bathroom, no hidden stash of tampons, no secret hordes of emergency shoes.

Harald approved of the minimalist approach. The place must be a joy to clean, he considered as he pulled on a pair of sterile gloves. His own house was a mess. Too much clutter. Too much correspondence from his wives’ lawyers.

So, there was very little sign of recent habitation. Just a pile of laundry, and a plate of pork chops resting by the cooker.

Harald instinctively sniffed at the chops, his thoughts momentarily drifting towards dinner, or supper, or whichever was next on the agenda. God, he was disorientated! Breakfast felt like lunch; lunch felt like second supper. And Christ knows where mid-morning crepes fitted in.

There was no sign of the proverbial black book. Nor, with the exception of a few bills, any written documents of any kind. Of course, Ruben had been an IT specialist; he’d doubtless kept all his contact details on his laptop, or maybe even his phone. Harald believed that you could do anything with a phone nowadays, if you had small enough fingers.

His own fingers were meaty, and so inflexible that he sometimes wondered if he might be missing a joint or two. It was symptomatic of his body all over, really. He had no illusions as to his physical appeal; his first wife had said he was arranged like an ink-blot test.

He looked in the few cupboards, and beneath the bed, all the usual places. Sure enough he found a laptop, a new Macbook. He didn’t try to turn it on himself; he would suggest to Tanja that she should have the IT bods take a look at it. Just in case. Maybe there was a thingy, a spreadsheet.

Harald had embraced the technological age, though only in the sense that a child might embrace a senile old grandmother, with hairy warts, and a bladder problem. The last computer he’d owned – the only computer – had broken the day after the warranty expired, presumably in protest at all the emails it had been receiving from the bloodsuckers at Swartout, Schoonhoven and Rosenthal. Lucky? Hah!

He checked his watch. The day wore on. Handing the key back to the building superintendent, he headed out to his car, and braved the traffic back to the station. He hoped to catch Tanja before she left for home. He had no real news to report, but he liked to be near her.

Chapter 5

It was gone six by the time Tanja dropped Pieter back at his flat at the edge of the Binnengasthuis. The heart of student land, she considered wryly. The kid might have been better served doing another degree. Or going to work on Daddy’s farm. She could see him on a tractor, a gold-plated tractor, slow-ploughing neat lines into his inheritance.

It hadn’t been a long day by any means, but she could tell he was tired. He invited her in for a coffee, but she declined. She had something else in mind.

Something foolish. She knew it was that, even as she steered her car towards the south-east, towards Diemen. Towards Alex. Dumb, dumb, dumb!

She made a beat of it: Dum-dum-dum, tapping it out on her steering wheel.

It was a pointless trip, in so many ways. And the A1 was a bitch at this time of day. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. Saturday still felt like a lifetime away.

Besides, she had some of her most inspirational moments in her car.

She temporarily forgot about Alex, and thought instead about Mikael Ruben. To die like that, to go to the afterlife, or oblivion, without being able to see where he was heading! And his parents! A couple of agents had been dispatched to Den Haag to speak to them, and by all accounts the mother’s grief, in particular, had been hard to bear.

It was always the parents who suffered most, Tanja considered bleakly. Perhaps the worst aspect of the Butcher case had been speaking with the little girls’ families. There had been times when she’d found it close to unbearable. She still did.

Detachment, Tanja!

Anyway, the officers hadn’t learned anything from the trip. As far as the Rubens were concerned, their son had been an angel; no one could have taken a dislike to him.

She didn’t think that inspiration going to come to her tonight. At least not in that sense. So she turned on the stereo. It hadn’t worked in ages, but Pieter had surprised her by fixing it whilst she was filling up with petrol.

‘Just a broken fuse,’ he’d shrugged. ‘You didn’t seem to have any spares, so I took one from the ABS circuit. Just try not to slam on your brakes in the wet, okay?’

‘What?’ Tanja protested.

‘Only kidding, Detective Inspector. There was a spare, actually.’

It was weird, that he dared to tease her. Yet stranger still was that she found it hard to take issue with it. Not properly, at any rate.

She reached into the glove box, withdrawing a CD at random. It was one of her homemade compilations by the look of it. Good; she liked variety in her music. Her moods changed all the while; it was fitting that her tunes should do likewise.

The opening bars of Lithium worried at the speakers. She was immediately transported back to ‘91, when she’d seen Nirvana play at the Paradiso. A year or so after Anton and Ophelie had been killed, the denial turning to anger. She’d been shocked by the volume, and the sweat dripping from the ceiling into the gob-smacked, demented mouths of the fans.

But Nirvana was angry young person’s music, not angry old person’s music. She skipped forward a track. Modulated guitar. Jimi. Little Wing.

Skip. Me and Bobby McGee. Perfect!

No, not perfect. Janis and Bobby’s love affair is doomed to end, way too soon, somewhere near Salinas, wherever that might be. Hardly a positive message.

Tanja stabbed at the button. The End, by the Doors. Christ.

She chewed on her lip. Never mind that they had an agreement in place for dinner Saturday night; she had to see him now. She was like a girl, albeit without the saving grace of innocence: save for the small chance that they might end up in bed together (and how she longed for that; it had been ages), no good could come of it.

The music swelled; the music died. Ah, of course, it was that old classic: artists who had died at the age of twenty-seven!

Mikael Ruben was twenty-seven, she considered.

Alex, too.

She put her foot down, feeling anxious again.

Diemen had been a separate town, once, but it had effectively been subsumed into the sprawl of Greater Amsterdam. It was divided into three parts. Old Diemen was pretty enough – though that prettiness hadn’t extended to the station building on Den Hartoglaan, which, in conceptual terms, was the mirror of the gloomy Elandsgracht headquarters.

‘I’m looking for Detective Sergeant Hoekstra,’ she said to the uniformed girl on the desk.

The young woman looked up from the document she’d been studying. ‘Is it a police matter, madam?’

‘No. He’s a friend of mine.’

The desk officer’s eyes widened, but she didn’t pass comment as she reached for a phone. She was a good-looking girl, Tanja supposed, her hair lustrous, her skin smooth. The usual superficial nonsense.

Tanja sniffed, the air catching awkwardly in her offset nose. It was just a small thing, really, hardly noticeable. Just one of many battle scars. It didn’t bother her at all.

Character, she thought; her body had that lived-in look. But it was all right; Alex liked that sort of thing. He’d told her so, more or less, on a windswept beach two years ago. The North Sea beating around the Frisian island of Texel, the October sky streaked with all the colours of a forge, the few trees likewise turned gold and bronze. And Alex, his arm around her shoulders, saying, in his typically roundabout fashion, that he would rather live in an older house than a new one; that autumn was his favourite season. She remembered thinking that he was an idiot, but a charming one.

The girl replaced the phone, blowing a strand of long hair from her eyes as she did so. Perhaps Tanja would call the clinic again, at some point. Just to satisfy her curiosity.

The desk manikin worried at a finger. ‘I’m afraid he’s already left for the day.’

‘Where’s he gone?’

‘I can’t say.’

Tanja showed her badge. ‘I need to speak to him.’

The girl straightened up. She was quite tall; gravity had yet to drag her down. It would, of course. This thing she had now – it would pass quickly. And then she would have to perfect some other trick, as all women did. Tanja didn’t envy her at all, because the trick was hard to master.

‘You’ll find him across the street, ma’am,’ the desk officer said after a brief pause. ‘There’s a bar –’

‘I know it,’ Tanja said, and she was already on her way out the door.

She ducked behind one of the ugly brick sculptures which fronted the building, to check her reflection in her compact. She didn’t wear much in the way of makeup, but maybe a little more lipstick would be advisable. That done, she adjusted the line of her skirt, undid a button, tweaked the cleft of her cleavage, felt a bit tarty but who cared, then jogged across the road.

It wasn’t much of a bar, but it was convenient. The majority of customers had the look of police officers. Some were still in uniform.

She saw Alex across the bar. He was part of a small group. Two other men, and a woman, gathered around him in a snug alcove.

He saw her, gave a little start, then crossed the floor to join her. She felt his lips brush her cheek.

‘Hi,’ she said coolly, employing all the self-control at her disposal. God, she wanted to kiss him! ‘I hope you don’t mind? I know we are getting together on Saturday – we’re still okay for that, right? – but I was just passing, and thought, well, you know.’

Alex’s smile was gentle. ‘Well, it’s certainly a surprise seeing you here. But a good one!’

‘Yeah?’

‘Of course it is!’

Alex looked at her for a long moment. His grey eyes had that familiar, lighthouse glint which came with each slow blink.

She steeled herself; it needn’t be this complicated.

‘This is Detective Inspector Pino!’ Alex informed the others as he steered her back to the alcove. ‘A good friend of mine! Tanja, say hello to Ricky, Wim and Margarete.’

‘Hi,’ said Tanja. Her tone was light, but her thoughts were heavy. She knew what they were thinking, particularly with Alex in attendance: that she was little more than a middle-aged nympho, who was so obsessed with the notion of energetic sex that she found it impossible to form relationships with men her own age.