Black Widow (24 page)

Wever poured himself a mug of coffee from his thermos. ‘Are you sure you want to be discussing this, Pieter?’

Pieter squared his shoulders. ‘I must.’

‘All right. For all Antje’s successes, Tanja has only previously worked with her on the one case. And that case turned out to be a disaster. And now every time Tanja sees Antje, she’s reminded of it.’

‘So it isn’t actually the science of criminal profiling that Detective Inspector Pino finds offensive, but the professor herself?’

‘Maybe.’

It sounded so simple, when put like that. And childish. ‘So what did the professor mean, when she said that DI Pino had been camped outside Alex Hoekstra’s flat, begging to be let in?’

‘Exactly what she said.’ He blew on his coffee. ‘Why don’t you have a seat, Detective.’ Pieter accepted. ‘Tanja,’ Wever continued, ‘she’s not quite as hard as she seems. Not quite as self-reliant. She came to depend on Alex. For emotional support, as much as professional. He could hardly have left her at a worse time. So, we had snippets of evidence, which we couldn’t link together. Tanja was maybe – and I stress
maybe
– the only person who could have galvanised the team into making sense of it. But I remember there was a week when she called in sick three times. Tanja
never
gets sick, Pieter.’

‘And now Hoekstra’s left her again.’

‘So I hear.’ Wever sipped at his drink. ‘You should know that under the normal course of events we would never be having this conversation.’

Pieter swallowed. ‘No?’

‘The notion of junior officers plotting against their superiors makes me mad. You remember what I said, about your first loyalty lying with your partner?’

‘I’m not “plotting”, sir!’

‘No? You aren’t thinking how you might free yourself of Tanja?’

Pieter hung his head. ‘I will admit that the thought had crossed my mind.’

Wever reached into his desk. He withdrew a piece of paper. It was a photocopied A4 image of Tanja, beneath which was the legend,
The Cougar Awakes
. ‘Have you seen this, Kissin?’

Pieter studied the poster with distaste. ‘No sir.’

‘It was found in one of the meeting rooms,’ Wever advised. ‘I suspect there are others dotted about. Now of course police officers are notorious for having a weird sense of humour. Hell, I’ve played a few pranks myself in my younger days. But I can’t help but think that in this case someone has gone too far, and that if I find out who that someone is, I’ll probably fire them on the spot. No negotiations, no tribunals – they’ll be gone.’

‘That seems reasonable, sir.’

Wever screwed the paper into a ball and dropped it in the bin. He peered up at Pieter, his eyes very bright. ‘Tanja Pino is your partner, boy, and you should count yourself damn lucky that she is.’ He let a silence drag. ‘The truth is, I am obliged to recognise your concerns, even if I do not necessarily share them. So, I am relying on you to offer her all the support you can. Do you understand what I am saying?’ He reached for a biscuit, then seemed to think better of it. ‘You’re dismissed, Kissin,’ he said, a little coldly.

*

It wasn’t much of a party. The flat was cramped, and the music set at an irritatingly low volume so as not to upset the neighbours. The host, a nervous girl with glasses, whom Ursula had erroneously decided was a lesbian (the clumping boots were more a consequence of club feet, apparently), pottered about with a plate of bread, cheese and ham. Ursula despised her, and pretty much everyone else in attendance.

Save for Maria, of course; she and Maria were the only lesbians here. True, Maria wasn’t quite aware of her sexual orientation just yet, but it was only a matter of time.

If only she would cheer up a bit!

‘So tell me again,’ the third, uninvited member of their group, a philosophy student said. ‘Why is it, exactly, that men are so inferior to women?’

Ursula no longer looked to debate these things in public. She didn’t see the point. She’d tried evangelising, once, but the last thing men wanted to hear was that they were inferior beings; they were too emotionally immature to accept it.

So Ursula hadn’t started the conversation. But the man had clearly heard of her reputation, and was minded to provoke her into losing her temper. She was sure it was that – provocation. No one could
really
believe the things he was coming out with.

‘How long have you got?’ she responded coolly.

‘Two minutes, maybe?’

Ursula opened her argument with an old classic. ‘Well, you are emotionally crippled, for a start.’

‘I’ve heard that!’ The student ran a finger along the length of a heavy brow ridge, which might have rested more comfortably on the face of a Neanderthal. ‘Well, at least our emotions, such as they are, aren’t primarily determined by our hormones. You know what
women
are, emotionally speaking? Little more than the product of various chemical imbalances.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ Ursula hissed. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s like.’

‘I have a pretty good idea, actually. My ex-girlfriend liked to share the pain.’

‘She left you, then?’ Ursula queried. ‘Well I’m staggered, frankly.’

‘It was a mutual termination.’

‘You make it sound like an abortion!’

‘It was,’ the student said. ‘I was scraping my flat clean of her stuff for ages. So, what else have you got?’

Ursula wanted to walk away. Unfortunately, Maria seemed quite happy to stay where she was; she might even have been smiling. And Ursula would not leave her.

‘You think you are so clever, don’t you?’ Ursula muttered.

‘Well, our brains are ten per cent heavier than yours, on average.’

‘Irrelevant! Everyone knows it’s how knobbly your brain is, not how big it is. What have men ever given to the world?’

‘What, apart from every great work of art, and most of the great works of literature, and music? Apart from democracy, and science, and philosophy, and religion? Apart from every technological and medical breakthrough? Name something you use on a daily basis, and the likelihood is that it will have been invented by a man.’

‘You’re a jerk,’ Ursula said.
Laugh while you can
.
I’ll have her kill
you
, next. I’ll let her practise on Lander, then I’ll have her cut your throat.

The student scratched at his goatee. ‘All you do, as a gender, is sit there and disavow any notion of individuality, of original thought. And the truly dumb thing about it is that you don’t actually realise how reliant you are.’ He sketched a bow. ‘Anyway, I think I’ve made my point. Good evening, ladies.’

‘He seems a bit angry,’ Maria noted after the stranger had left.

‘Misogynistic prick,’ Ursula raged. She shook her head, disbelieving. ‘He doesn’t even know me. Why are all men such arrogant bastards?’

Maria smiled, but then she sighed, and slumped against the wall. ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said.

Ursula pushed her anger to one side, and moved in smoothly, her somewhat larger frame adding a further layer of privacy to their alcove. ‘Rubbish. This is exactly what you need. I am sure if the situation were reversed, Mikael wouldn’t think twice about rejoining the scene.’

‘God, I’m not looking to
pull
, Ursula.’

‘Well, the night is young. And sometimes these things just happen.’

Maria made a little sound, which Ursula couldn’t interpret. But she didn’t worry about it; she was rather intrigued. What other sounds might this beautiful girl make, she wondered. In bed, for instance?

‘So you think Mikael was playing around,’ Maria said.

Ursula nodded, delighted at the turn the conversation was taking. ‘Yes. I do.’

‘And do you have any proof of it?’

‘What, other than the fact that he was naked when they found him?’

Maria looked at the floor. ‘I have been thinking about it, over and over. And, yes, I suppose you could just be right.’

‘I am.’ She reached out a hand, not sure where to place it, before finally settling on Maria’s cheek. It was cold. ‘Maria? You have to face the truth: Mikael was deceiving you. And you – you deserve so much better. You deserve – someone who will love you.’

‘What, like you Ursula?’

Ursula closed her eyes, as soft, as vulnerable as a girl. ‘Yes.’

There was silence. Ursula had never felt this happy.

But then Maria started to laugh. ‘You think
I
would sleep with
you
?’

‘Well, not straight away. I want it to be a special. We can build up to it, if you like. Slowly.’

‘But I’m not into girls. The thought of it turns my stomach, frankly. I mean, what would we do?’

‘Maria – I know my feelings must come as a great surprise to you.’

‘Oh, shut up, Urse. It isn’t a surprise at all.’

‘What do you mean?’

Maria reached into her pocket. She withdrew a photo. It was the one of Maria showering.

‘I’ve been looking for the right moment to talk about
this
, Ursula. Well, I guess that moment is now. I found it in your bedside table, earlier. I was looking for a lighter. Sorry for going through your stuff without permission, and so on – but I’m still kind of glad that I did, you know? Are there others? No, don’t answer that.’

‘You must think I’m awful,’ Ursula said, almost choking on her embarrassment.

Maria reached out a finger, and tweaked Ursula on the nose. ‘You! What a minx you are.’ Yet still her dark eyes smouldered with anger and something else. Pity.

Ursula wrung her hands. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t mean any harm. I love you!’

‘Oh, Christ, Ursula! Don’t be ridiculous.’ Maria ran her hands through her hair. ‘I can’t deal with this now. I’m going back to the flat.’

*

She’d been following Lander Brill for a few hours. She’d seen him get in his car, and drive to the supermarket. She’d followed him down the aisles, the reek of stale alcohol hardening all the while, as he’d proceeded to fill a shopping trolley with booze and microwave meals. She’d followed him back along a succession of greasy streets, to the ugly little townhouse he called home. He’d stopped off on two separate occasions along the way to take a swig of cheap Dutch whisky, and now, as he fumbled for his keys beneath a flickering streetlight, he seemed almost blind to the world around him.

He made for a contemptible figure; killing him would be as distasteful as stamping on a rat. He was perhaps forty years old, and balding, with a persistent cough. He was as far removed from her youthful, vital ones as could be imagined. Was it even murder if the person was half dead already? Perhaps it was more like euthanasia. Not that it mattered either way.

She put a gloved hand over her mouth to combat the feeling of nausea. But she didn’t hesitate. She crept up behind the man, and stabbed a scalpel deep into his throat, the edge ripping a gash between the windpipe and neck muscles. Her fingers were pinpricks of nervous empathy. She felt the carotid sag against the pressure, then tear, first one branch then the other. She stepped back neatly to avoid the jet of blood, which transcribed a neat circle on the ground as her victim span about, to come to a slumped halt against the front door. He looked up at her, each breath a gobbet of blood. He tried to speak; he could not. He reached out a hand to her, his fingers clawing impotently at the air.

‘You’ve got maybe two minutes before you pass out,’ she said. ‘Five until you bleed to death. Just in case you were wondering.’

She snapped a Polaroid, then strode away. She didn’t even think of taking a souvenir.

Now it was simply a question of secreting the photo in her number-one fan’s specified place. It remained to be seen if her correspondent would stick to her promise of confidentiality, of course. But that was all right; she was planning to take steps, anyway.

Chapter 17

Tuesday

Maria was still mad at Ursula. So much so that she had half a mind to demand that the other girl move out. She would probably have left herself, but the only place she could go was her mother’s, and somehow that seemed a less attractive proposition than staying put.

The situation with the photo, though – it was horrible. What else had Ursula seen? Had she set up secret cameras, perhaps, in Maria’s bedroom? Did she have tapes of Maria and Mikael going at it?

No, probably not. Ursula wasn’t into that sort of thing, was she. Lesbian porn, maybe, but never the conventional sort.

Maria sat at her dresser, brushing the tangles from her hair. She didn’t understand how a person could be like that; how she could so comprehensively disregard the laws of nature. And be so devious with it!

If there was any scope for forgiveness, it lay with the fact that Maria knew how it felt to be in love. Love could make a deluded fool of anyone. At any other time she might even have found it a little flattering.

Beep!

There it was again. The sound was coming from Ursula’s room. Every few minutes or so, another beep. It was starting to get annoying.

‘Ursula?’ Maria called out. ‘Would you stop that?’

No answer. Maria padded from her bed and crossed the hallway. Her fist hovered over Ursula’s door for a few seconds.

She knocked. ‘Are you in there? Look, we should probably talk.’

No answer.

Maria tried the handle. Unlocked. She stepped into Ursula’s room. The curtains were open, a weak spray of sunlight picking out the stern faces on an assemblage of feminist posters. What was the collective noun for such a group, Maria wondered. A Scowl? A Vexation? It wasn’t a world she wanted anything to do with. It seemed so
ugly
.

All she’d wanted was to marry Mikael. To care for him, and their children. To be as close to him as possible; to lose her identity in his. There was no provision in modern Dutch law for a woman to change her name on marriage, but some girls still did so anyway, on an unofficial basis. Maria would have been one of those. Just like her mother.

No, not like her mother; that was the last thing Maria wanted. Becoming a Ruben would have been a part of that process, of getting away.

Maria Ruben had been murdered, as surely as Mikael.