Authors: Isadora Bryan
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.
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.’