Black Widow (2 page)

She showed her badge at the front desk, as if it were needed.

Inside, she could feel her colleagues watching her: the uniformed officers and the sharp-suited detectives. The pale-faced IT bods. Each was aware of what had happened, how the great – their word, not hers – Tanja Pino had finally, catastrophically and publicly,
failed
; how, at the last, she’d allowed the distractions of her private life to get in the way.

She climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, where the various serious crimes departments were to be found. More faces, disparate expressions united in degrees of speculation. Tanja nodded a collective greeting. She lowered herself into her chair, her eyes hooded as she reached out to switch on the desk fan. It didn’t do any good. Hot sticky air slurped at her face.

Bloody heat. Amsterdam was supposed to have a cool, maritime climate. Yet here they were, in the middle of September, and summer had yet to realise that the game was up. Tanja looked at her desk calendar and realised it was Ophelie’s birthday. Her daughter would have been twenty-three years old today.

A phone rang, and Tanja felt a tingle of electricity on her skin. But as one of her colleagues began talking with her friend about plans for an upcoming visit, it dissipated. Three months had passed since the last body was discovered, and while the sick, selfish part of her almost wished that the phone would ring for her, with a fresh lead, she knew it would not.

She rubbed her temples.

Wine. There was the problem. She couldn’t quite remember what had provoked the binge. She seldom needed a reason nowadays. Save for the obvious, of course.

‘Detective Inspector?’

Tanja looked up, to see that she was being watched by a young man, who was standing beside her old partner’s desk. Alex’s desk. She still thought of it as Alex’s, even though he’d long since moved to the Diemen station.

The intruder was quite tall, maybe six-one, broad in the shoulder, and slim in the hip, so that every part of him seemed to fall in a straight line. His sandy hair was close-cropped, whilst his eyes were very dark against his pale Dutch skin. His smile was broad, and easy, which immediately set Tanja’s teeth on edge. Nothing in life was
that
easy.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ she demanded.

The smile slipped, and he offered his hand. ‘Detective Pieter Kissin.’

She ignored the hand.

There followed an awkward moment. Kissin attempted to fill it by peering up at the ceiling. Christ he looked young!

‘Ah, I see you’ve met your new partner!’

Tanja turned to see Chief Inspector Anders Wever. He was smiling.

Tanja closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the kid was still there, and Anders was still smiling, and she was still in danger of losing her temper.

Her voice remained steady. ‘Can I have a word with you, sir? In private.’

‘Of course, Tanja.’

‘I don’t need a new partner,’ she said when they were alone in Wever’s office. ‘Certainly not a teenager.’

‘He’s twenty-four,’ Wever advised as he set about pouring coffee from a thermos. His wife packed him a lunch every day.

‘Even so.’

Wever looked at her over the plastic rim of his thermos mug. His eyes betrayed a familiar mischief. She knew what he was thinking and what he was about to say. She lowered her gaze, hoping that would be enough for him, but no, it seemed he would have his fun.

‘But look,’ he said, ‘I thought you liked them young. How old’s Alex? Twenty-five?’

Tanja’s head snapped up. ‘With respect, sir, piss off.’

He considered this response for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’

She bit her lip. ‘And he’s twenty-seven. As you well know. You must have seen his personnel file, when you arranged his transfer.’

Wever sighed. ‘Don’t start that again, Tanja. You know I had no choice.’

‘As you say.’

‘And haven’t things been, you know, better, since he moved to Diemen?’

Tanja had to concede this was true. She and Alex had even come to a tentative agreement, that they would give their relationship a second chance. They were due to meet up on Saturday.

But Wever was doubtless referring to Tanja’s professional situation, too. And in that regard she was less convinced. Wever had gone out of his way to feed her a succession of easy cases, in recent months, the investigative equivalent of low-fat meals-for-one. All part of the rehabilitation program, as he put it – which only served to remind Tanja of the extent to which she’d been crippled.

Everything was linked; she wondered what Alex was doing.

‘Tanja?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Don’t get sidetracked, eh?’

Wever set about arranging his features into a more conciliatory expression. He had a solid face, undermined a little by the subsidence of fifty-odd years. His beard was dark, tinged with ginger; his hair was veined with silver. There was something of autumn in the way he looked, a sense that every colour was on the turn. It was a fairly melancholy state of affairs, to Tanja’s way of thinking, but Wever seemed happy enough. He had his wife, and he had his kids. He had an Ajax season ticket. He had a dog named Denise, and a classic VW. If he were to die tomorrow, those who knew him would doubtless claim that he’d lived a rich life.

Wever took a slurp of coffee. ‘Kissin graduated top of his class at the Academy, you know. Sailed through level five; waltzed through level six.’

‘He’s got his Masters, then?’

‘Yep,’ Wever confirmed.

‘Has he done any actual police work yet?’

‘He worked the beat for a while. In the Vechtstreek.’

Tanja massaged her throbbing forehead with a weary hand. ‘The Vechtstreek? I bet there hasn’t been a murder in the Vecht since the Germans last invaded. There’s nothing there but
theehuisjes
and cows. And I hear the cows lead fairly exemplary lives.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with a nice tea house, though,’ Wever argued. ‘There’s a place I know near the river, on the outskirts of Loenen. The tea’s fine, but you really go for the spiced cheese. The secret’s in the proportion of cumin to cloves, you see – —’

‘Now who’s getting sidetracked?’ Tanja interrupted.

‘What? Oh, of course. Well, I’m afraid the decision has been taken.’ He pointed a finger skywards. ‘
They
have spoken. It’s not up for discussion.’

‘Great.’

‘Now, you will be nice to him, eh?’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘I mean it, Tanja.’ Wever’s expression was a little pained. ‘And try and play it by the book, will you? At least for the first few weeks. If he picks up any of your more questionable habits now, he’ll be stuck with them for life. He’s at an impressionable age.’

‘Aren’t we all,’ Tanja muttered.

The conversation went nowhere after this. Tanja headed back towards her desk, just about resisting the temptation to slam the door. As she pulled out her chair, she felt a tap on the shoulder. Harald Janssen, a fellow detective in Homicide and Violent Crime. To everyone else he went by the name ‘Lucky’, owing to the remarkable frequency of kindergarten cases that fell onto his desk. If there was a stabbed corpse floating in the canal, with no discernible forensics and no leads, it would be just Lucky Janssen’s good fortune that the perpetrator walked into the Elandsgracht front office and gave himself up along with the murder weapon.

Harald’s grey eyes were alive with a rare mirth, which sat incongruously with the crusty residue of his usual grouchiness. A few strands of white hair were standing on end, as if party to secret currents; others were lank and greasy against his scalp, beyond the reach of all but the most overt breeze. At forty-six, he was a couple of years younger than Tanja, but seemed a good deal older. Breath rattled noisily in his chest, and there was only so much that could be explained away by childhood asthma.

‘See they’ve finally found you a fresh canvas on which to work your dark art, Tanja.’

‘What?’ she said irritably.

‘The new lad. Christ, you’d think they’d have learned by now. You’re going to mould him in your own tortured image?’

‘Shut up, Harald.’

Janssen coughed into the back of his hand. There was an unpleasant sense of things being dislodged. Yet still the grin. ‘Did the old man tell you all of it? Did he tell you who Kissin’s dad is?’

‘No.’

‘He only heads the Vecht police department. Which means our Pieter is practically royalty!’

‘Jesus,’ Tanja muttered, as Harald wheezed away, perhaps to take a nap.

She returned to her seat, glaring at Pieter all the while. Three years on patrol, four on volume crime, five more in Vice, and God knows how many in Homicide – everything she had, she’d earned. And now here she was, saddled with a daddy’s-boy partner, who was doubtless already being groomed for an unmerited promotion.

There were surely better, less frustrating jobs. Not for the first time in recent weeks, Tanja wondered how her life might have turned out, if she’d followed a different path. She had a degree, in history. And a good one at that, from the University of Amsterdam. If she’d listened to her mother, she might have become a teacher. And the sum total of her troubles would have been bound up in the misdemeanours of a few disruptive kids.

Pieter reached out across Alex’s desk and plucked a sheet of paper from the back board. His lips pursed as he took in the image on the front, then he turned to Tanja. ‘Is this – ?’ he began.

But Tanja was out of her chair in a second, to snatch the paper from his hand. She didn’t even look at the photofit; she didn’t need to. The face – middle-aged, lean, calculating – was always with her: from the first shudder of morning, to the final drink of night.

One less familiar with the face might have guessed him a schoolteacher too, or some respectable civil servant. Perhaps he was. But this face without a name also liked to kidnap little girls, rape them repeatedly, then strangle them.

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.’