Black Widow (18 page)

The barman scratched vaguely at his chin. ‘Maybe I did, y’know.’

Tanja exchanged a glance with Pieter. ‘Can you describe her?’

The man tapped a yellow finger to a yellow tooth. ‘About as old as you. Maybe a bit taller? Or maybe a little shorter, dunno. I only saw her when she was sitting down. And she had this longish grey hair, maybe, or it could have been blonde – it’s hard to tell, y’see, when it’s all smoky, and we got the light show on mellow yellow.’ He pointed up at the ceiling, where a number of spotlights cycled through a bruised spectrum of colours. There was no evidence of cameras; coffee shops by their very nature tended to be peaceful places.

‘And did they leave together?’ Tanja asked.

‘Yeah,’ he confirmed. ‘I know that cause the guy asked me to order a taxi for them.’

‘Can you remember the name of the firm you called?’

‘Of course. Always the same firm. Joe’s Taxis. It’s sort of a play on that old Vanessa Paradis song, isn’t it? At least I like to think so. Nothing freaks me out like a coincidence.’ He handed Tanja a card with the firm’s contact details.

Tanja nodded her thanks. Maybe it was just the heat messing with her mind, but she had an idea that this path might lead somewhere.

*

The Picasso statue was entitled ‘The Fish’, but to Gus’ eye it looked more like a woman standing on her head with her legs open. Blue Period, indeed! Gus leant against the largely pointless object, thinking that it at least made for an excellent prop.

The Vondelpark was located just to the west of the city’s Museum Quarter, which rivalled Jordaan in terms of prestige, if not coolness. Now that the hippies were mostly gone, the park was perceived to be the sparkling emerald in the city’s jewel box, but right now it was looking a little sorry for itself. The verdant spaces had been turned a thin, dusty brown, whilst the fountains had been turned off to save water. Orange was the nation’s colour, but green was increasingly in its heart.

Gus didn’t really see the point in ecology. Where was the sense in cycling everywhere, when there were a billion Chinese, and a similar number of Indians, who had all been promised cheap (and presumably smoky) cars by their governments?

Holland, and Amsterdam, were small fry in the global ocean. Gus recognised that. But it was all right – he would move to America, one day. He would get citizenship. An SUV. A Pulitzer. A beautiful young wife who would probably take to drink and drugs when it became clear that he actually preferred older women (that fact was becoming clear to him now). Still, as long as she gave him healthy children. He couldn’t be doing with a handicapped.

Citizens ambled by, dragging panting dogs or kids in their wake. The old, and the lonely, who had nothing else in their lives save the weather, recalled previous heat waves, and talked about them in loud voices to anyone who would listen.

Still, there was a hint that the heat was about to break. The sky wasn’t quite the pure shade of blue it had been; there was a mulch of grey saturation. Gus poked out his tongue, tasting the humidity on the air; it seemed unnaturally thick.

In the meantime, some of the park-goers seemed to have lost their sense of direction. There was one man in particular, who had passed Gus by on at least three occasions.

On the fourth pass he stopped, and, his beady eyes seeming to wave about, scuttled sideways across the floor to Gus.

‘Shit,’ Gus cursed under his breath, as he took in the man’s flared pupils, and stained trousers.
A junkie. Great.

‘De Groot?’ the man said.

‘Yeah.’

The man had a carrier bag. He held it up before him. ‘I got it.’

‘Let’s see it, then. Whatever it might be.’

‘In a minute! Show me the money.’

Gus shrugged, and reached for his wallet. He opened it, letting the man see the thick slice of euro, before stowing it safely back in his jeans pocket.

The man grunted, and emptied the contents of the bag onto the floor.

A blonde wig.

Gus prodded it with his foot. ‘So –?’

‘I got it from around the back of the hotel.’

‘What were you doing round there?’

‘Looking to score, all right? My man – he was supposed to be there. Louis always comes on Saturday. But he didn’t show.’

‘Tough break,’ Gus shrugged.

‘So, it’s midnight, and I’m just about to go looking for my backup, when I see this blonde woman coming down the fire escape.’

‘How could you tell she was blonde?’

‘The light was shining on her as she opened the door. Then she goes into the shadows, and all I can hear is the clang, clang, clang of her feet. But then she passes by, real close, and I can just about see her throw something into one of the hotel bins.’

‘So naturally you dive in after?’

The man had his hands in his hair. It was sweaty, congealed, and not necessarily as a consequence of the heat. He was shaking. ‘You’d be amazed what you can find in a bin,’ he said. ‘So, I look inside, and see that it’s almost empty – except for the wig.’

Gus dropped down on his haunches to examine the hairpiece in more detail. It wasn’t a uniform blonde, he saw. There was the odd darker patch.

He whistled, more interested now. ‘Is that –?’

‘Yeah,’ the man said, puffing out his scrawny chest as he did so. ‘It’s blood. I’m sure of it. So when I see the police hanging around the next morning, I think, man, it must be important, you know?’

‘Can you describe this woman to me?’

‘Not really. I only got a passing glimpse.’

‘And what colour was her hair when she took off the wig?’

‘I didn’t see.’

Gus picked up the wig, and looked inside. Maybe the woman had sewn her name into the lining.

Nothing. No maker’s mark; nothing.

Not for the first time in his life, Gus was faced with a dilemma. This wig might well be a crucial piece of evidence. For all that the junkie had presumably shed his filth all over the fibres, it would doubtless still be of use to the forensics boys.

It was quite clear that he should contact the police immediately.

But Gus was a journalist first, and everything else second. Somehow the story seemed more important than the real life tragedy; Mikael Ruben and James Anderson were dead, but the story was a living thing, and it needed to be nurtured.

Gus handed over ten fifty-euro notes, counting them slowly into the junkie’s filthy hand. ‘Go and get happy,’ he said. ‘And don’t be afraid to call me again, if anything else occurs.’

The man stuffed the money into his jacket, and lurched away. Gus guessed he’d be dead within the year.

For the second time that day, Gus had cause to think of his mother. He’d held her hand for hours, afterwards, but all he could think of was his relief, that it was finally over.

Death hadn’t held any particular fear for Gus since then; sometimes it was for the best. Sometimes he even felt, in the secret place he refused to call his heart, that the murderers were performing a useful service.

*

The taxi firm kept a reasonably comprehensive record of its drivers’ fares, so it didn’t take much detective work to find out which employee had been responsible for picking up Anderson and the woman from the Green Leaf café.

The driver, Simon Gansevoort, was returning from a job, and said that he would stop in at the station directly. As she waited, Tanja glanced through a report, freshly delivered from IT (the donut grease was still glistening on the cover; these were not
skinny
geeks) – whilst keeping one eye on Wever’s office.

The chief’s door was ajar, a consequence of the heat and faulty air-conditioning rather than any open-door policy. A man was sitting opposite him, sharply dressed in what looked like an expensive suit. Or else it was a cheap suit, and he just happened to be built to a perfectly standard specification. Tanja didn’t recognise him, though she recognised his type. So, the Chief of Police had called in the big boys. For fuck’s sake.

Tanja tore her eyes away, to focus instead on the brief, if intriguing, report. There had been a development, with regards to Mikael Ruben’s laptop. The IT bods had examined it, finding that it was very much a professional tool, at least on the face of it. Ruben had been working on an SQL database for a chain of hotels, and most of his files had been given over to that. But there was also evidence that he’d spent a good deal of time surfing. And whilst he’d expunged his history folder the day before his death, he hadn’t bothered to
erase
its contents: the entries were easily recoverable, with just a standard undelete programme.

Mikael had liked his porn. There was nothing illegal to his taste (though it was still a little repugnant to Tanja’s mind) – it was exclusively mainstream, MILF sites, none of which set any alarm bells ringing.

But one address failed to show up on the official radar, and for that reason Tanja was interested to learn more about it.

www.cougar-contacts.nl
.

Tanja scanned the site’s homepage. There was nothing pretty about it, no flashy graphics nor welcoming tune; it seemed to have a more home-built aspect, in fact. There was a logo – pagan feel, like two lengths of yew intertwined – but that was it.

She tried to enter the chatroom. A password dialogue box opened. Damn.

She fired off a note to IT, asking the geeks if there was anything they could do to get her in. And then she largely forgot about it; if experience were anything to go by, she doubted that access to the site would prove particularly illuminating. Besides, she had more immediate leads to focus upon.

The phone rang. She jumped, as ever, but it was only Pieter, advising that he’d met the cabbie at the front door and was taking him to the interview room.

Tanja exited the website, then made her way to the room, passing Wever’s office as she did so. The KLPD man looked up, and smiled, as if he recognised her. Tanja responded in kind, but didn’t wait around to exchange pleasantries. She had none to give.

Anders wouldn’t meet Tanja’s eye. She was glad of it. If it must be like this, then let him feel guilty. See how
he
liked it.

She stamped down the corridor, the fluorescent bulb flickering to the beat of her angry footsteps. Maybe she’d been naive, to think that her bosses would simply forget what had happened with the Butcher case. Yet still she felt the KLPD’s involvement as a betrayal.

The taxi driver was quite apologetic, saying that he really knew nothing. Tanja listened to his protestation, whilst not believing a word of it. A witness could pass on any number of vital clues, without even realising it.

‘Thanks for coming in,’ she said by way of greeting.

‘Glad to help.’ He looked around the dingy room, beaming all the while.

‘If we could press on, then?’ Tanja began. ‘Has Detective Kissin told you that we are investigating a murder?’

‘Yes. An Englishman, isn’t it?’

Tanja nodded. ‘So you picked him up from outside the Green Leaf?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Was he alone?’ she asked.

‘No, he was with a woman.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Well – blonde, I think. Does that help?’

‘Yes,’ Tanja answered. ‘But more than that? Was she young, or old, short, or tall?’

‘Um, I really didn’t notice,’ the cabbie replied. ‘Older, I think.’

‘Fat, thin?’

The man’s face was starting to crease. ‘Fat, or thin, you say? Well, she might have been… No, I have to say that I didn’t see.’

‘Leggy? Flat-chested? Busty?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Please,’ Tanja said, ‘don’t be coy. I’ve not met a man yet who couldn’t pick out a woman’s vital statistics from fifty metres, however dark it might be. And it all helps build up a picture.’

The man blushed. ‘Well, I didn’t notice that she was particularly, you know. Up top, as it were. Or that she was particularly, well, the other thing. Somewhere in between, perhaps?’

‘So you are fairly sure she was blonde, with a medium build,’ Tanja concluded peevishly. ‘That narrows it down to the entire female population of North Holland, and Scandinavia.’

‘I did say I wouldn’t be much help,’ Simon mumbled.

‘Did they talk about anything?’ Pieter interjected.

‘Well, yeah, I suppose,’ Simon affirmed, with a worried glance at Tanja. ‘In English.’

‘What did they talk about?’

‘Well, let’s see. I can probably be more helpful here. I’m more of your listening cabbie than your speaking cabbie, you see. Blame my wife for that – can’t get a word in at all. So, they talked about the weather, of course. The woman said she was quite enjoying it.’

‘Did she have much of an accent?’ Pieter enquired.

‘Hard to say,’ the taxi driver answered. ‘Seeing how she was speaking English and so on. It all sounds the same, to me.’

‘Right,’ said Pieter, a little bashfully.

Tanja was starting to learn a little more about her partner. He wasn’t
quite
the carefree fool she’d first identified. He had triggers. For instance, he wanted to
seem
clever. He probably was – but he wanted people to know it.

‘What else did they talk about?’ Tanja asked.

‘Well, they spoke about the Hash Museum on the Achterburgwal. The man said it was a fun place to visit, but the woman got a bit cross, saying how wrong it is that the police should keep raiding it.’

Tanja grunted. ‘The Narcotics boys can’t help themselves. So, what else can you tell us?’

‘What else?’ He frowned, clicking his front teeth together three times. ‘Ah, yeah, I remember her saying that she’d lived in England, for a while, many years ago.’

Pieter leant forward in his chair. ‘Did she say whereabouts?’

‘Well, she might have done. But she was speaking real fast by this point, you see, and I tend to struggle with English at anything more than walking pace. Sorry about that.’

Pieter shook his head. ‘Don’t be. You are being very helpful.’

‘Did she mention who she lived with, in England?’ Tanja pressed. ‘What she did there?’

‘She mentioned something about, now who was it – her brother?’

‘Did she give his name?’

‘No. Don’t think so.’ He slapped a hand to his head. ‘Ah, there’s another thing. She was carrying a very large handbag. Red, I think, or maybe brown. I remember that because she insisted on paying, and had to reach into it to fetch her purse.’