Black Widow (16 page)

Pieter saw that fires were building in her eyes. But more than that, she almost seemed
relieved
that there had been another death.

It didn’t do much for his state of mind.

*

The woman who had killed Mikael Ruben and James Anderson sat on a bench outside the offices of the
Amsterdam Post
. The city continued to sweat all around her, but she was quite serene, with barely a bead of perspiration to interrupt the smoothness of her brow. She was dressed in her casuals, a pair of jeans and a white blouse, knotted beneath her breasts in a fashion which suggested either tartiness, or freedom of spirit. Either way, she’d the body for it. Age hadn’t withered that part of her.

The media was starting to take an interest in her campaign. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this. On the one hand, it was gratifying to have the broader details of her mission promulgated; on the other, there was a danger that the journalists’ snooping might catch her out. She had no faith in the police force, but the newspapers were surely populated by more imaginative sleuths. And imagination was vital: even mathematicians, on the face of it the dullest, most logical people in the world, prized that quality above all others.

One of these journalists was arriving even now. On a motorbike. He blipped the throttle as he pulled into the car park, the flare of revs setting off a nearby car alarm.

It was Gus de Groot. He took off his helmet, ran fingers through his dark hair, and swaggered up the steps to the front door. He was a funny one, she considered. Insensitive and boorish and utterly self-obsessed – to a degree which quite possibly indicated some past psychological trauma – but with a real knack of getting to the guts of a story. Whatever the cost. She’d followed his work, over the years. And now she thought she knew him better than ever.

She’d also revisited the scene of her original crime, and had noticed him snooping around the hotel. She would have to keep an eye on him.

If necessary, she would take steps.

Chapter 11

Ursula awoke with a nervous start.

Emmeline was still dozing beside her, looking soft and pretty, yet nothing like as soft or pretty as Maria. Part of the problem was that she lacked Maria’s physiological subtlety. Her hips were too broad, her breasts too big. Her mouth hung open as she slept, and sounds caught in her nostrils, coarse and discordant. One nipple was hard; the other was soft. There was no balance.

Well, none of that was her fault, to be fair. And anyway, it was her expertise that Ursula most craved.

Ursula rolled over onto her side, and blew into Emmeline’s ear.

Emmeline awoke with a sigh, and then a giggle. ‘Do you want to?’ she breathed.

‘Later!’ Ursula answered. ‘I’m still catching my breath from last night.’

Emmeline’s eyes were wide. ‘Tell me about it! You were so, well, you know –. That’s not how I remembered it from before, Ruse.’

‘Yeah, I guess. But look, you remember those photos I mentioned?’

‘You want me to take a look at them?’ Emmy offered.

‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Anything for you, babe.’

Emmeline padded from the bed, snatching up her bra and pants as she did so, then headed next door, into her study. Ursula got dressed then followed after, carrying her phone, her body tingling with anticipation.

Soon I’ll know who you are…

Emmy’s computer was already buzzing away. She hooked up the phone to a USB socket, and uploaded the three images that were held within.

‘You mentioned this was something to do with your coursework,’ Emmeline said.

Ursula winced. ‘Well, that’s not entirely true. To be honest it’s more of a personal matter.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s to do with a friend of mine,’ Ursula expanded.

‘Anyone I know?’

‘Don’t worry, she’s straight!’ It was a painful lie, but expedient.

Emmeline frowned. ‘So why tell a fib?’

Ursula held up a hand. ‘Sorry. It’s just that when I saw you last night, my head was in a spin, and I wasn’t thinking straight. But look, my friend – Sarah – I’m sure her boyfriend is cheating on her. I think these photos might help me prove it.’

Emmeline seemed happy to be a part of the investigation. She loaded up some image-enhancing software, which she said was based on a series of programs that had been developed by the CIA.

Three images sat side by side on the monitor. Ursula tapped the most likely candidate, the one with the flare of street lighting through the woman’s head. ‘That’s her. I need to know who she is.’

Emmeline isolated the region of the woman’s head, then steadily increased the magnification. Complex subroutines kicked in all the while, reducing the effects of granulation.

The streak resolved in high res. Still utterly opaque.

‘I’ll try altering the saturation,’ Emmeline said. ‘Maybe add a polarising filter or two. But to be honest, I’m not sure there’s much I can do. The computer can’t
guess
what’s behind the obstruction; it can only extrapolate.’

And so it proved. Ten minutes later, no matter what Emmeline tried, the woman’s face lay just out of reach. Ursula ground her teeth at the frustration of it.

‘Well, we gave it a go,’ Emmeline said.

‘Damn it to fucking hell,’ Ursula cursed.

Emmy patted her hand. ‘Look, why don’t you just tell Sarah anyway? If you’re a good friend, she’ll surely believe you.’

‘She thinks she’s in love,’ Ursula said bitterly. ‘She’s impossible to reason with.’

Emmeline stood, stretched, and placed a warm hand between Ursula’s shoulder blades. ‘I’m popping to the shops to get something for breakfast. Will you be staying?’

‘If you like,’ Ursula answered.

‘You know I like! Any special requests?’

Ursula wasn’t hungry, but she thought she should eat. She would need all her strength, if she were to salvage anything from her disappointment. She’d been so sure that Emmeline would be able to help her. And now she felt, well, a little let down.

‘Have you got anything sweet, Emmy?’ she asked. ‘
Stroop
, something like that?’

‘Treacle syrup? Maybe. I’ll get some bread as well!’

Emmeline got dressed, singing all the while, before leaving in a swish of long skirts. She dressed like Maria.

How
dare
she?

Ursula felt a warm sensation at the tip of her nose. She brushed it with her finger. Blood. It happened, sometimes, when she was cross.

She stared at the monitor, willing the woman’s face to appear.

Nothing happened; there was no intervention. There were no angels of the abyss beneath her; no feminine spirits in the air.

And all the while blood continued to drip onto Emmeline’s wooden floor.

As if Ursula’s brain were menstruating; as if it were expelling the rotten eggs of unfertilised curiosity.

She made no attempt to stop it. It was a natural process.

One drip. Two. Three –

She stabbed at the mouse, calling up the next image: a rear view of Mikael Ruben and the woman walking off along a well-lit street, in perfect focus. He was looking over his shoulder; her head was turned, slightly down, and to the left. But her face was hidden.

Ursula remembered this portion of the pursuit well. She’d taken the shot from behind the wing of a parked car, from a distance of no more than three or four metres.

Might as well have been a kilometre away, for all the good it did her.

Drip. Drippity-drip.

She caught a drop on her fingertip, saw it distend, changing colour all the while, its surface now glassy.

She almost thought she could see her reflection in it. Pretty girl. Angry girl. Sad little girl.
Tattooed bitch-monster girl, gonna cut yourself tonight?

Something stirred at the back of Ursula’s mind. Something to do with physics.

And then she saw. There were other cars parked along the street. The woman’s face was turned to the nearest of these, as she surreptitiously checked – it was obvious, now! – her reflection in the wing mirror. It was something that all women did, instinctively.

Ursula magnified this section, her heart racing as the software slowly extrapolated a smooth image from the matrix of discrete pixels. The processing time rose exponentially with the degree of magnification, and it took a good five minutes for the time bar to count down to zero.

But there it was. And there
she
was. The face of a killer.

‘I do know you,’ Ursula breathed. ‘Christ, I
do
know you.’

She turned off the computer, and sank back into the chair. She felt sick, dizzy, blinded.

But that initial disorientation quickly passed, and by the time Emmy returned with their breakfast things, Ursula’s nosebleed had stopped, and the blood had turned black on the floor.

Everything was as it should be. Ursula smiled at Emmeline, fond of her again.

Now she felt omniscient.

*

They had so far managed to round up nine members of the stag party. The men made for a sorry sight. The shock of their friend’s murder was doing battle with the intoxicants in their systems, to messy effect. Some were sick on the floor of the hotel lobby; one beat his fists into the walls; others simply stared, unseeing. A couple swayed to their feet, saying that they were going to look for the bitch who’d killed their mate. Tanja was forced to call in uniformed backup, to make sure their rage didn’t spill out onto the streets. Not quite the full riot squad (like every
regiokorps
, Amsterdam kept a ‘mobile unit’ of some fifty officers on semi-permanent stand by) but enough men to make a point.

A degree of calm finally settled over the party. And now a consensus was starting to emerge, that James Anderson had definitely been with them in an Irish pub. O’Halloran’s, until about ten’ clock, when they’d split up. Everyone save James had opted for a strip joint.

‘He said he wanted a smoke,’ one said. ‘He loved his weed. Fucking hell, I’ve known him since we were kids. And what are we going to tell his wife? They’ve just had a little girl.’

Tanja wanted to ask then what the fuck was he doing with another woman, but she held her tongue. Become too judgmental in this job and you would never get anything done.

‘Did you happen to see him talking to any women?’ Pieter asked, his English perhaps a little smoother than Tanja’s. ‘In the pub, I mean.’

‘No,’ the man answered.

‘You didn’t notice anyone looking at you? From across the bar, maybe?’

‘No,’ another said. ‘There was just us. Just the boys.
Shit
.’

Tanja and Pieter left the men in the hands of a uniformed sergeant, then went back outside to the car. She retrieved a map from the glove box, laying it out on the bonnet. ‘O’Halloran’s is here,’ she said, pointing at a spot roughly half way between the Central Railway Station, and Dam Square. ‘We’ll start from the pub, and work our way outwards. If he was drunk, and anxious for a smoke, he would probably have stopped at the first place he came to.’

‘Or else he might have caught a taxi to some cafe on the other side of town. He might have, you know, if he was a connoisseur.’

‘Did those boys look like connoisseurs of
anything
, Pieter?’

‘No, I suppose not.’ He sighed. ‘Well, let’s get started, then. Am I right in thinking that this is going to involve a lot of leg work?’

‘Sure. Unless we get lucky.’

‘Want me to give Janssen a call? Maybe we could have him throw a dart at a map or something.’

Tanja grinned. ‘Not a bad idea. Thing is, I’ve seen him at the firing range. He’d probably miss the map, and hit Wever in the eye.’

‘That doesn’t sound very lucky.’

‘No? With Wever out the way, there’d probably be a big shake-up. Janssen might be in line for a promotion.’

*

Hoofdinspecteur
Dedrick van Kempen was a good five or six years younger than Anders Wever, maybe more. No surprise there, Wever supposed;
everyone
was younger than him nowadays. Still, rising to the rank of superintendent so quickly was no mean achievement, and spoke of either the man’s ability, or his deviousness, or both. Anders leant back in his chair, studying the thin, somewhat aquiline figure who stood before him, if not fully on his guard then close to it.

‘So what are you doing in Amsterdam?’ he asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Van Kempen shrugged. ‘Driebergen has been unbearably stuffy these last few weeks. I thought your proximity to the North Sea might provide some relief.’

Wever snorted. ‘Some hope! It’s all to do with the Azores, apparently. Or God. Or the devil.’

‘Speaking of which –?’

‘What? Oh, I see. Our friend.’

‘This “Cougar Killer”, yes.’ Van Kempen winced. ‘You know, that’s a
terrible
name.’

‘Blame the hacks for that. But it’s the only name we have at the moment,
Hoofdinspecteur
.’

‘Hmmn,’ said van Kempen, as he scratched delicately at the tip of his hawkish nose. ‘Maybe we should try and do something about that.’

Van Kempen was KLPD:
Korps Landelijke Politiediensten,
indicating that he was a member of the National Police Services Agency
.
It was a blanket term, which could be further subdivided into any number of departments, leading to a similarly chaotic assemblage of acronyms. So, there was the
National Criminal Investigation Service
(DNR); the
National Criminal Intelligence Service
(NRI);
the International Police Cooperation Service
…

Wever opened a fresh packet of biscuits. The key thing about the KLPD – one of the key things – was that it operated on a national level. It tended to focus on crimes which transcended the boundaries of the regional police forces, of which Amsterdam was the largest. Drug trafficking was a particular favourite of the KLPD, as was organised crime.

But there was also a focus on crimes which were of national
interest
. It had still required an official invitation on the part of the Chief of Police,
Hoofdcommisaris
Meijer, but Wever didn’t doubt that van Kempen had been only too willing to accede.