Baroness Amandine nodded cheerfully and said: “Didier’s practice is doing very well, Papa…”
“I suppose it would… there’s a lot of criminality in Amsterdam, but that’s because they don’t respect the constitution. It’s different here in Belgium. We still have article sixty-nine. Fortunately…”
“True, Papa,” Amandine concurred. She stood up, spooned a lump of custard from the corner of her father’s mouth and quickly licked the spoon. She caressed his hand once again and sat down.
“Madeleine!” the Baron roared with his incredibly sonorous bass voice. He groped for the brass bell shaped like a Dutch farmer’s wife with a clapper under her skirts, but couldn’t find it. The door opened and a chubby woman dressed in black with a white cap on her head entered the room.
“You called?”
“
De la soupe
, in the name of God!” he thundered, thumping the table with his fist. “Will there be soup? Yes or no?”
The maid appeared to be at her wit’s end and turned to Baroness Amandine, who smiled and shook her head.
“Have you forgotten, Madeleine, that my daughter and son-in-law are joining us for lunch today?” the Baron snapped with a strong Antwerp accent. “Is the soup ready? Yes or no?”
Baroness Amandine got to her feet a second time and kissed her father on the head. The Baron suddenly took hold of the arms of the chair and yelled: “
Je dois faire pipi!
”
The maid rushed over to him, grabbed the back of the wheelchair and pushed him out the door. The Baron ripped off his napkin on the way and tossed it to the floor.
“I suppose we should leave,” said Amandine with a sigh. She folded her napkin and looked at her watch. “It’s not even one o’clock…”
She blessed herself and got to her feet.
“I’m taking an earlier train,” said Didier. “I still have a lot of work…”
“Whatever you think best, my dear.”
She reached out to caress his hand, but he pulled it away as if she had given him an electric shock.
“Does Daddy still think I’m a lawyer?” he asked without looking at her.
“You’re still a member of the bar, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but I don’t have an office…”
“Pff… He hasn’t a clue. When did he ever show any interest in his children?”
A look of disgust covered her face. She quickly turned away and sniffed.
“There’s a train at seventeen minutes to two,” said Didier. He blessed himself and got to his feet. He hesitated.
“What’s the matter?”
“Shouldn’t we say goodbye to Grandpa? He usually has a cheque for me…”
“Let me take care of that. Let’s go. Madeleine will be busy for a good half-hour” (changing his soiled Pampers, she thought).
They left the dining room and passed through a salon full of dark furniture, carpets and nineteenth-century paintings. She stopped briefly in the corridor, opened her handbag, to which she had attached a Hermès scarf, donned the glasses hanging on a chain around her neck, removed a cheque from the bag and handed it to her son.
He glanced coldly at the amount, handed it back to her and said: “Add Grandpa’s money and something extra for the flowers you forgot to pay for in May.”
“But then I’ll have to write another cheque.”
“Whatever…”
He glared reproachfully at his mother, and pursed his lips as his grandmother had done in the portrait.
She returned to the salon, sat down at a bridge table, tore up the cheque and produced another.
“Forty thousand,” he commanded.
His abruptness surprised her. “But Didier—”
“Forty thousand.”
She stifled a groan and scribbled the amount. He took it from her without saying a word, slipped it in his wallet and looked at his watch.
“Here,” he said, breaking the silence, and he handed her an envelope.
Amandine looked at him.
“The dentist’s bill.”
She nodded and stuffed the envelope into her handbag, aware that candidate numeraries were expected to submit themselves to a thorough dental examination.
“I’ll order a taxi,” she said.
He nodded stiffly.
There was a telephone on the bridge table and she called a taxi.
“Come, it’s time we got moving…”
She looked back into the salon for a moment, as if she had forgotten something, and sighed.
They walked down the marble stairs in the vestibule. Didier opened the door, stepped outside, stood at the edge of the pavement, looked at his watch and started to chew the nail on his little finger, or what was left of it.
On Saturday 5 June at three thirty in the afternoon, an impressive Honda CBR sports bike stopped in front of Sacco’s junk shop on Antwerp’s Falconplein. The man in black leathers astride the fiery red machine took off his helmet, dismounted, looked around and made his way into the shop, his legs stiff, his back arched. He was small and wiry with pitch-black hair, a moustache and a handsome brown pockmarked face. A portly man with a heavy moustache was leaning on his elbows at the counter. He recognized the motorbike rider, gave him the thumbs up and pointed to the floor above. The man left his helmet on the floor, opened a door and headed upstairs.
When he returned to the shop roughly an hour later, he took a seat at a table in the corner. Moments later, the portly shop-keeper appeared with a kebab sandwich and a glass of tea on a tray. They exchanged a few words and the man started to eat.
His name was Mehmet Alia and he was thirty-four years old. He was a distant cousin on his mother’s side of Ramiz Shehu and worked for his uncle on a full-time basis as a messenger and money launderer. He flew every week to Sofia with a case full of dollar bills, which he transferred into the account of an international criminal organization using an import-export firm as a front for trading in expensive stolen cars. He had managed to save enough in three years to buy a house in the old city, which he was renovating with a couple of family members. The Honda was worth at least half a million francs.
Before coming to Belgium, he had done his apprenticeship as a “hit man” in Istanbul. This had nothing to do with contract killing. He had an ordinary day job with a private collection agency, visiting debtors and using violence where necessary to make them pay up. The incredible inertia of the Turkish courts tended to encourage this method as the only way to ensure payment. Mehmet Alia was known as a hard man. He had fled to Belgium in great haste after crippling someone for life with an iron bar.
He was prepared to do anything Shehu asked of him. He called his uncle
aga
, an old-fashioned form of respect borrowed from the Turkish occupiers of Albania, which had fallen out of use and been replaced by the simple
baba
or father.
They had just discussed the “hit” he was to carry out the following Monday at three in the morning in a village called Overbroek roughly twenty miles from Antwerp. He had already made an exploratory visit.
22
Monday, 7 June. Paul Hersch and the detective from Marlowe & Co. waited side by side in the same Volkswagen Passat used by Materne the week before to shadow Albert on his way to Sint-Job-in-’t-Goor. The man at the wheel was an old hand, fifty-five years of age, plenty of experience, and able to remain calm in difficult circumstances.
Hersch, on the other hand, had barely slept the night before and was as nervous as a kitten. He was dressed in a dark suit and wore the same hat as he had done in Kortenberg. He hadn’t said a single word during the journey and his shirt was soaked with sweat. They drove into Overbroek’s sodium-lit high street. The village was sound asleep. He looked at his watch: 2.55.
Albert waited in the shadows at the side of the church, where he had an excellent view of the square. He could see a urinal against the wall of a café. He had parked the BMW on a country lane roughly five hundred yards from where he stood. He was wearing a denim jacket, jeans and trainers. The CS gas spray was tucked away in his trouser pocket. He was holding a package made to look as if it contained 1,000-Swiss-franc banknotes. In reality, it was stuffed with pages from a marketing magazine folded to size. The package had been taped shut using what appeared to be an entire roll of tape. Albert was nervous and angry. He looked at his watch: 2.55. A car appeared from nowhere and stopped on the other side of the street. He presumed the driver had let it roll for fifty yards or so with the engine off. The car reversed into a side street, its headlamps dimmed. A man stepped out.
Mehmed Alia had pushed his Honda CBR Blackbird to its maximum 120 mph on the motorway between Merksem and Brecht, slowing down moments later to what he called his cruising speed of 100 mph. He was aware of the risks - make a mistake at 120 mph and it’s over - but he couldn’t resist. The rush of adrenaline left him shaking. When he rode the bike he felt like an
ülkücü
, a Turkish samurai, a warrior with the courage of a lion. He had learned the
ülkücü
doctrine from his Turkish-born uncle Gunca Us, who was known for his heroism in the struggle against the Serbian oppressors and for his leadership role in the Black Malissors. His uncle had disappeared without a trace one day and had never been seen since.
He took the exit for Brecht, tilting his machine to the limit in the sharp bend, and ripped through Sternhoven crossroads at 110 mph, slowing down abruptly when he reached Overbroek high street. The four cylinder 1,100 cc engine purred gently in second gear and was barely audible.
Alia got off his bike at the same discreet spot, roughly one hundred yards from the church, from which he had observed the Belgian gentleman’s last meeting. He glanced at the Honda’s digital clock: 2.55 precisely. He took off his gloves, placed his helmet on the saddle, opened a metal box at the rear of the bike, and removed what looked like a length of gas pipe, but was in fact a telescopic truncheon with a leaded tip, a weapon he knew how to use. He crept silently towards the church.
The bell of Saint Willibrord’s church sounded three. At that moment, Paul Hersch wandered onto the square. Albert immediately recognized the heavy-set man with the short legs and the dark hat. He came out from the shadows at the side of the church, walked towards him, handed him the package and told him in a muffled voice that he should count it (the sign agreed with the Albanian). Paul Hersch started to remove the tape with difficulty. Albert looked around and was thinking that the Albanian had failed to deliver on his promise, when a figure in black suddenly appeared and hit the man with the hat on the head with a short baton. He fell to the ground and the Albanian set about his task.
The man tried to avoid the blows and started to shout for help at the top of his voice. The sound echoed through the entire village.
A light went on in the café next to the church and a man opened a ground-floor window that looked out onto the square. “What the fuckin’ hell is goin’ on?” he yelled. The man with the black hat had grabbed the man in black by the ankle with both hands. The beating continued but he refused to let go. His cries for help sounded like the squeals of a pig in an abattoir.
The man at the window turned around and shouted: “Bruno! Attack!”
A dark-brown Doberman leaped through the window with amazing agility and attacked the man in black, who stopped beating the man on the ground and took his turn at screaming for help. The Doberman had dug its teeth into his arm and was refusing to let go.
The animal’s owner had dialled 101 in the meantime, the number of the local gendarmerie. His name was Jan Vissenberg and he was owner of a café, The Pigeon Fancier.
The detective, who had timed the whole incident (it had lasted exactly seventy-two seconds), drew the appropriate conclusions. His client had apparently dug himself into a hole without telling the firm the truth about the nature of the assignment. He was also fairly certain the police would be on their way.
Marlowe & Co. regulations prescribed immediate departure from the scene in such circumstances. He did not hesitate for a single moment. He drove out of the side street with his headlights dimmed - once he was on the main street he switched to full beam and hit the floor.
The Brecht gendarmerie appeared at 3.14. Chief sergeant Verhaert was accompanied this time by his apprentice, twenty-year-old sergeant Peeters, who had been awarded his first stripe a month earlier. The crime scene they encountered on arrival included Jan Vissenberg with a shotgun poking the chest of a man on the ground. The Doberman sat close by, its ears pricked up, determined not the let the man out of its sight. A second man was lying unconscious on his back, his arms spread out like Jesus on the cross. He had lost his hat and his bald head gleamed like ivory in the neon light.
“Hey, Jan. What’s been goin’ on?” said Verhaert, who had known Vissenberg for years.
“Let me think: I couldn’t sleep, and had just put out a cig when I heard someone outside squealing like a pig. So I open the window and what do I see? This dirty Moroccan bastard laying into a bald guy with a one of those special truncheons. I’ve got it here…” Vissenberg handed Verhaert the telescopic truncheon.