Black Widow (25 page)

Maria fingered her crucifix. It helped, a little.

There was no sign of Ursula. Maria was starting to feel a little anxious. Stupid, really. Ursula didn’t deserve her concern.

Beep!

It seemed to be coming from beneath the bed. Maria steeled herself, nervous about what she might find there, whilst at the same time a little intrigued.

She got down on her hands and knees. She saw Maria’s bag.

She really had no right to look in there.

On the other hand, Ursula had more or less waived any right to privacy.

She opened it, finding the secret pocket quick enough. The beeping was coming from a mobile phone, which was down to its last reserves of power.

Mikael’s phone.

She scanned through the call register, seeing her own number amidst the thirty-eight missed calls.

What was Ursula doing with Mikael’s phone?

She had a horrible thought. She recoiled from it, collapsing weakly onto the bed as a single word trembled at her lips.

Mikael
…

But no, that wasn’t possible. Ursula had been at the theatre at the time Mikael had been killed. Surely –?

Back in her room, Maria rang the theatre. She explained who she was, and that she’d left a ticket in reception for a friend the week before. She wanted to know, had that friend picked it up.

There was a sound of computer keys being pressed. ‘No,’ the ticket clerk answered. ‘That seat was never claimed.’

‘Are you sure? Please, it’s very important.’

‘Hang on…’

Maria remembered a time, almost a year before, when she’d gone walking with Mikael in the Bos. It was just a few weeks before the police had found that poor little girl’s body, and the wood, modelled on an English parkland, was busy with picnickers. Yet still they found a secret place, a grotto of their own, the floor covered in a layer of fresh-fallen leaves, which whispered at each footstep and playful tumble. Mikael took her hand, to tell her, with frightening certainty, that he would never leave her…

‘No,’ the clerk said finally, ‘the ticket is still here, in the collections folder.’

Maria ran her hands through her hair, her eyes awash with fresh tears. Ursula, with her constant espousal of women’s superiority to men; who talked so proudly of her dissertation, which was set to focus on the activities of female serial killers.

She dropped the phone on the floor.

‘You killed him,’ she said out loud. ‘You killed my Mikael.’

She walked to the window, her footsteps so heavy that she thought she might even fall through the floor. She opened the window, and looked out on the city, her city, which she no longer recognised. Everywhere she looked, she saw a needlepoint tower, stitching thread into a torn sky. But it continued to bleed. Call it rain, call it what you like; it was blood. She opened her mouth, caught a drop on her tongue.

But that was the limit of her madness. By the time she’d broken into the caretaker’s closet, and found a suitable weapon, she was feeling quite sane.

*

Harald Janssen sat back in his chair, his hands folded behind his head. He looked around, wondering if he dared to close his eyes for a while.

Probably not. Too many suits about.

Which was a shame, as he was feeling a bit tired. And stressed! His most recent wife, Manuela (she was half Spanish) was demanding that he cough up more money. Something to do with his kid needing expensive dental work.

Buck teeth! He was going to be declared bankrupt, because José had buck teeth.
Jesufuckingcristo!

José Janssen. The kid was going to get
teased
, however he looked.

Anyway, Harald wasn’t sure how he was going to cope, financially. Hence the insomnia.

Lucky Janssen? Like fuck.

He needed a piss. Maybe he would turn it into a sit-down, and grab a few zeds in the process. He hauled himself to his feet, and crossed the floor towards the toilet.

There was a message board on the wall outside. He saw another one of those damn posters.

Actually, it was an updated version. Tanja’s face looked the same, but the legend had been changed. It now read,
Pino’s Coming
.
Lock up your Men!

Harald glared at it, then ripped it down, all thoughts of his bladder forgotten. He trudged back to his desk, feeling sick inside. Someone thought this was funny?

His phone rang. He listened to the message with a growing feeling of despondency. Another murder. Nothing to do with the Cougar Killer by the sound of it, but any death was to be lamented. The paperwork!

‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

It took an age to battle through the traffic. Arriving at the dead man’s place, Harald quickly conferred with the Scene of Crime officer. Not Nelleke van Wyk this time; some other woman. Kim, was it? He struggled with names.

‘Got anything for me, Kim?’

‘His throat’s been cut, Detective Inspector,’ the officer advised. ‘And my name’s Lucia.’

‘Uh? Of course. Sorry, Lucia. Long day.’

A tarpaulin had been erected around the body. Harald poked his head through. Erik Polderhuis was already busy with his examination. The dead man himself was slumped against the front door, his palms upturned on the floor beside him, as if he’d been begging for change. Or his life. He was surrounded by a slick of blood, turned black like a tar pit. A bag of shopping had spilled onto the path. One of the bottles had broken, adding a sour note to the earthy aromas.

There wasn’t much room in the tent. ‘I’ll come back,’ Harald said. ‘I don’t like confined spaces.’

‘If you were a bit thinner,’ Polderhuis said without looking up, ‘then you’d have more space. And then it wouldn’t be a problem.’

‘Good point, Doc. But if I didn’t eat crap I’d have to take my comfort elsewhere. Heroin, probably. Are you really suggesting I become a junkie?’

‘You could try women,’ Polderhuis suggested. ‘I’ve always found them to be quite diverting.’

‘Been there, done that, got raped for the alimony. No thanks.’

Harald stepped outside the tent and looked around. It was a poky sort of neighbourhood, which always seemed suspicious, when set against the effortless beauty of the city as a whole. Harald’s own place in Haarlem looked quite similar.

The neighbours were out in force, gathered round the cordon in a rough semi-circle of conspicuous unemployment. These were not working people, Harald supposed, Credit Crunch or otherwise. It was every Dutchman’s inalienable right to do as little as he pleased, a kind of conscientious objection for the working age.

He approached the crowd, notebook and pen at the ready. ‘Who found him?’

‘I did,’ a tatty woman with the look of roadkill answered. ‘I live next door. I was on my way to the shop to get some cigarettes when I saw Lander sitting there. I thought, that’s funny, but I didn’t think much more of it until I came back and he was still sitting there. So I decided he was probably drunk, and passed out. Thought it was red wine on the floor around him. But when I went out later for some more cigarettes, he was
still
sitting there. That’s when I called you. Although I must confess I did wait for
Big Brother
to finish first.’

‘Well, I’m glad you did, Ms –?’

‘Barculo. Cristina Barculo. What’s your name?’

‘Harald Janssen, love, pleased to meet you.’

‘You’re a police officer, then?’

Harald flashed the badge. ‘You got me. So what’s his name? Lander, is it?’

Cristina nodded; ash tumbled from her cigarette. ‘Lander Brill, yes.’

‘And how would you describe him? Character wise I mean.’

‘Oh, quiet.’ She thought about it a bit more. ‘Except when he was drunk, of course.’

‘And how often was that?’

‘Most nights he was here,’ Cristina replied.

‘And how often was
that
?’

‘Most of the time.’

‘And when he wasn’t here?’

‘He used to boast of having a girlfriend,’ she answered. ‘I’d imagine he was with her.’

‘Do you know her name?’ Harald asked. ‘Where she lives?’

‘No.’

‘What did he do? Did he have a job?’

Cristina shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

‘Did he have any enemies?’

‘I’m guessing that he probably owed a bit of money. Who doesn’t? And the sharks round here got
big
teeth.’ She nudged one of her friends in the ribs; the other woman laughed, and tossed her bleached head.

‘Right,’ said Harald. ‘Any friends?’

‘I doubt it,’ Cristina answered. ‘I tried speaking to him once. I found him a bit, well, rude. But if he
did
have any friends – or enemies, for that matter – they’d probably be in the Flying Dutchman. It’s a bar, just round the corner.’

Harald trudged off. Speaking to scumbags about other scumbags – it was a depressing business.

*

Tanja and Pieter had so far interviewed five names on the cosmetic surgery list. It had proved a far from straightforward process, largely because the patients themselves tended to be embarrassed, or angry, that doctor-patient confidentiality had been circumvented. Most grew more co-operative when it was explained why it had been necessary to break that code, though one woman, the recipient of a gratuitous lip augmentation, still insisted that she would be speaking to her lawyer.

‘Why would a person do that to herself?’ Tanja muttered as they returned to the car. ‘Last time I saw lips like that the teeth were chewing cud.’

‘Don’t know,’ Pieter answered. ‘Low self-esteem, maybe?’

Tanja fidgeted. ‘That’s an easy thing to say.’

‘Perhaps she’s a porn star, then.’

‘Whatever. She looks ridiculous.’ Tanja wrestled with the steering lock. ‘Bloody thing,’ she cursed.

‘Want me to give it a go?’

‘No.’ She gave up for a moment; the best tactic was usually to take the car by surprise. ‘This is going to take forever,’ she noted, waving the list in an accusing fashion.

‘I thought you liked that sort of thing, ma’am?’ Pieter said. ‘Honest police work, I mean.’

‘Not when the reasoning behind it is so tenuous!’

And not when I’ve seen fit to tamper with the material.

Tanja tried not to think about that. She could hardly undo what she’d done; all she could do was run with it. And doubtless suffer for it later. That was how it usually worked.

Her phone rang. It was Dedrick van Kempen.

‘Pino?’

‘Sir.’

‘We’ve had some information back from our lab in Driebergen. Our technicians have found traces of a synthetic resin finish on the hair fibres you found at the Royal William. Apparently the substance is used almost exclusively in the production of wigs.’

Tanja took a moment to digest the information. ‘Did we find similar fibres at the other murder sites?’

‘Yes. I’ve just this second had that confirmation through. Just the one solitary fibre on James Anderson’s body, but it’s definitely a match. I’m willing to bet that we’ll find something similar at Theo Gentz’s place, if we look hard enough.’

‘Great,’ said Tanja. ‘So we probably aren’t looking for a blonde.’

‘Could be a double bluff, of course,’ van Kempen suggested. ‘Could be a blonde wig over blonde hair.’

‘Is that likely, sir?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But I like to keep an open mind. Oh, and there’s one other thing: I’ve been speaking to Polderhuis, too, and the blood work has confirmed that Anderson smoked a lot of cannabis in the hours leading up to his murder.’

‘Well, we pretty much suspected that anyway.’

‘Right. But facts are always better than suppositions, don’t you think, Detective Inspector?’

‘Every time, sir.’

Tanja hung up. She looked through the window. The day was drawing on, and with evening approaching, it only seemed a matter of time before the killer struck again.

‘Let’s get on with it, then,’ she said to Pieter. ‘The sooner we get to the end of the list, the sooner we can throw it in the bin.’

*

The second-hand bookshop was found amidst the web of narrow streets which radiated away from the arched span of the Torensluis bridge. Ursula parked her bicycle in one of the racks which lined the bridge, and spent a moment in contemplation of the canal. The Singel was the first of Amsterdam’s “concentric” canals, and had a reputation for being one of its most romantic.

She looked down into the black waters, finding a degree of peace there. But she didn’t feel anything in the way of romance; she wasn’t sure she would ever know romance again.

She shook her head. It didn’t matter. Personal feelings were nothing, compared to being a part of her heroine’s great work.

Ursula’s skin was itching to an unbearable degree. She’d cut herself three times since posting the letter through the killer’s letterbox, to no effect. It was the anticipation; she could hardly stand it.

The bookshop stank of leather and learning. And tobacco – the proprietor, a man so withdrawn into his books that he might as well have been a monk, puffed on a pipe, and didn’t look up as Ursula entered his shop. She’d bought a number of books from him in the last year, and not once had he even acknowledged her presence.

The crime section was housed in a dark alcove, away from the proprietor’s line of vision, if such a thing could be said to exist. Ursula scanned the shelves, until she found the book she was looking for.
A Woman Scorned.

It was one of Ursula’s favourites; she had copy of her own back at the flat. But she also recognised that it wasn’t a subject a normal, blinkered person might be interested in. Which made it an ideal repository for the proof she craved. And the shop was perennially quiet; no one else would have touched the book in weeks.

With one exception. Hopefully!

Ursula opened the book with trembling fingers. A photograph dropped onto the floor.

Lander Brill, his throat cut, his eyes wide, looking wonderfully shocked; as if, in death, he was finally made aware of the contemptible fool he’d been.

Ursula gave a little groan, and crossed her legs against an involuntary trickle of urine. She wanted to laugh, and she did, on the inside.

But there was something else. A photocopied map of Amsterdam, marked with a cross. And a time, fifteen-hundred hours.