Black Widow (23 page)

‘Always useful.’ The assistant carefully noted some figures in the ledger. ‘Now, we’ll need hat sizes.’

‘Oh? Perhaps you could offer a selection – from small to large.’

The assistant drew himself up to a fuller height. ‘We don’t work like that, sir. We take a certain pride in getting things right, you see. If you’re looking for a quick solution, I suggest you go synthetic. I believe there is a stall in the market –’

‘No, no. It’s okay – I will just have to make a few phone calls.’ He had an idea. ‘You know, if we are going to do this properly – and you are
so
right in that regard, by the way – then I really should look at what else you have to offer. The original idea was to have the chorus looking identical, but maybe that’s being a bit blinkered.’

The assistant nodded, clearly relieved that the importance and prestige of his work had finally been understood. ‘And don’t forget that one of the girls – was it Agnetha, or Anni-frid? – was a brunette. Perhaps your order should reflect that?’

‘Yeah!’ Gus enthused. He looked around, taking in the racks of wigs. Most were dark. Some were blonde. ‘But now that I think about it, didn’t the brunette have, well, sort of gingery lowlights? Have you got anything like that, you know, beneath the counter?’

The assistant frowned. ‘We might have something in the storeroom. Shall I fetch it?’

‘Please,’ Gus responded.

He waited for the assistant to disappear behind the curtain, then, perfectly happy in his work and in himself, picked up the ledger and walked out of the shop.

‘You’re good,’ he congratulated himself. ‘Very good.’

Chapter 16

The director of the New Look clinic hadn’t been able to furnish Tanja with a list of patients. At least not during the course of her visit. Apparently the girl who dealt with that sort of thing had just gone to lunch, and no one else had even the slightest idea how to go about retrieving the information from the computer. But he promised that he would fax it through as soon as his secretary returned. Tanja didn’t wait around to express her frustration; now that her secret was close to being out, the place gave her the creeps.

Damn that Pieter! And Scholten, too. One tenuous connection, and suddenly Tanja was on the verge of becoming a laughing stock. Doubtless the rumours would start to circulate any moment soon – Tanja was contemplating a facelift, Tanja was going to get her tits enlarged, Tanja was having her lips done.

What were the odds, she wondered, that Theo Gentz would work at the same clinic she had visited? True, there were only three such surgeries in the city, but still it almost felt as if she were being conspired against.

Sobriety’s making you paranoid
, she thought.

She sat at her desk, her attention drifting back and forth between the fax machine, and Edwin Meijer, the Chief of Police, who was deep in discussion with van Kempen, and Saul Kuiper, a Politie hoofdinspecteur. Wever was there, too, but looking increasingly like an adjunct.

Short of imposing a curfew (a practical impossibility, unless the army were brought in), Tanja didn’t see how they could stop the killer from striking again. For all its burgeoning commercial power, Amsterdam still relied on tourism. And a large part of that tourist trade was founded in the liberal, sexually charged atmosphere the burghers had always been so keen to tolerate. They could not over-react.

Something caught her attention. There was a menu affixed to her blackboard. For Qin Shi Huang’s. She stared at it. She hadn’t put it there. She was sure of it. She screwed it up and tossed it in the bin. She wouldn’t be eating there again; from now on it would be Indian or Indonesian food all the way!

‘Tanja?’

Tanja looked up with a start, to see that Antje Scholten was standing before her.

Trapped. ‘What?’

Scholten forced a smile. ‘Do you think we should talk?’

‘What about?’

‘Our relationship.’

Tanja put her hands behind her head, and stared without reservation at the profiler. ‘All right, let’s talk. I wasn’t aware that you and I had a
relationship
, to be honest. Though, of course, you’d know more about that sort of thing than me, being such an expert in human psychology and so on. Maybe we’re best friends, and I haven’t yet realised it.’

Antje rested her hands on Tanja’s desk, and leant forward, her eyes hardening all the while. ‘Look, can’t you see I am trying to build bridges here?’

Tanja was aware that people were starting to stare, but there was no way she was going to back down. ‘I’d save your breath,’ she said. ‘We have to work together, fine. Never mind that what you do has nothing to do with fact, and everything to do with conjecture – fine. But if it’s all the same with you, Professor, I won’t be attending any of your dinner parties.’

‘Why are you so antagonistic?’ Scholten demanded. ‘My record speaks for itself.’

‘Does it? You’re no different to a spirit-medium, in my eyes, putting on a show for the vulnerable and the credulous. Most of what you say is so vague that it could be interpreted in a thousand different ways. But foolish people will always
believe
, because, more than anything, that is what they want.’

Antje started to walk away, but then she stopped, and turned slowly on her heel. ‘It’s not my fault, you know, that you didn’t catch him.’

‘No?’

‘I did everything I could.’ She hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘
My
conscience is clear.’

It was one thing to suspect that Tanja’s colleagues were thinking along those lines, but to actually have it said out loud, in public –

Tanja reached into her desk, to withdraw Scholten’s profile of the Butcher. She held it up before her, and slowly ripped it in two.

Antje gasped, and looked about herself with wild eyes. Tanja was aware, dimly, that her bosses were staring at her, that a murmur of astonishment had moved through the office. But she was unrepentant. And perhaps she was even enjoying it.

Finally, I’ve got to her!

That moment of satisfaction soon passed. ‘“The killer has never been able to form relationships with women,”’ she quoted from memory. ‘“Exceptionally close to his mother, her probable death at an early age would have been devastating. He has inevitably compared other women to her, and found them lacking, hence his obsession with pre-pubescent girls…”’ Tanja stood, her hands locked rigidly to her side. Months of frustration had suddenly come to a head. ‘How
dare
you pass off your abstract bullshit as valid police work? How dare you sit there in your office, neatly parcelling up your theories, when little girls are being raped, and worse?
And now you are at it again
!’

Antje tossed her hair, her hardness quite the match for Tanja’s. ‘Well, at least I was thinking about the case, eh? At least I wasn’t camped outside my toy-boy lover’s house all the while, begging him to let me in.’

Tanja was out of her seat, but Pieter stepped between them. Antje walked away, calm now, yet still clearly mortified to have lost control in such a way.

Across the floor, Tanja saw the Chief shaking his head. Wever looked furious. Doubtless a small-to-middling reprimand would be coming her way.

The fax machine beeped into life. Glad of the distraction, she hurried across the floor towards it.

The machine was spewing out a sheet of paper. She snatched it from the tray. It was headed
New Look Clinic
.

The list was arranged alphabetically. There was no reference to a Hester Goldman.

But there was a Tanja Pino.

‘Anything stand out?’ Pieter asked carefully as he returned from the coffee machine, where he’d been waiting in voluntary exile.

‘Not immediately,’ Tanja answered. ‘Let me just go and make a few photocopies.’

‘You could ask one of the Admin girls to do that for you,’ Pieter suggested.

‘I’ll do it myself.’

‘Um, are you all right, ma’am?’

‘Yes. Fine.’

Tanja took the list to the photocopying room, and closed the door behind her. She leant against it for a few seconds, struggling to get her breath.

‘Tanja Pino,’ she read. ‘Forty-seven. One consultation re. rhinoplasty (reset break). Second consultation, further exploring possibility of other enhancements. Surgeon has concerns re. patient’s low self-esteem, which is probably age-related.’

If anyone else were to see this –

More than ever, Tanja was dependent on the opacity, the inviolability of her public persona. If that defence were to be undermined, well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

There was a pot of correction fluid by the photocopier. She looked at it, unaware, at first, of what her subconscious was plotting.

She didn’t need this complication, this distraction. No one in the department needed it. She’d learnt her lesson; she, and everyone else, needed to focus on what was important. The case. There could be nothing but the case.

She reached for the pot of correction fluid. It would be such a small thing, really. No harm would come of it. It wouldn’t show up on the photocopy – there would simply be a blank line. No one would question it.

It would be easier. And in this case the easy option was surely the better one.

*

At Wever’s insistence, Tanja had taken an extended lunch break. Pieter sat alone at his desk, going through the photocopied list. It ran to some fifty entries. He glumly considered that it pointed the way to more legwork.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like exercise. He was a keen runner, and had already applied for membership of the Stadionplein athletics club, where he would continue his mission to break fifteen hundred metres in under four minutes. It was just that, in a policing sense, he was more interested in adopting the smart approach. The intellectual approach. The
modern
approach. Hence, in part, his fascination with Antje Scholten.

‘The thing about women,’ Lucky Janssen said as he sidled over, ‘is that they are too emotional, you know? Can’t separate their personal feelings from the job.’

‘I’ve heard that,’ Pieter responded. ‘But I’m not sure it’s true.’

‘Poor old Tanja.’ Janssen looked this way and that. ‘It’s no surprise she blew up. You’ve heard, I take it?’

‘Heard what?’

‘That Hoekstra’s left her again!’

‘No,’ Pieter answered, ‘I hadn’t heard that.’

‘It’s true,’ Janssen insisted. ‘I was talking to van Kempen –’

‘How did he know?’

‘The KLPD know everything.’

Pieter frowned. ‘You make them sound like the Gestapo.’

Janssen grinned, and ran a hand through his lank hair, which flopped back over his forehead like an old dog settling in for the night. ‘Well, they aren’t that bad, I suppose. But doubtless Hoekstra’s latest conquest let something slip at Diemen, and it has filtered back through the wires. You know what women are like.’

‘Not really. My last girlfriend was a mystery to me, right until the day she packed her bags and moved to Belgium.’

‘Well, you’ll learn, in time, with a few divorces under your belt.’

‘I’m not really planning to get married, sir,’ Pieter said carefully.

‘No? That’s like saying you’re not planning to get cancer. Sometimes these things just happen. But you’d better watch out, kid. For all her protestations of innocence, Tanja is never without a man for long. You might find yourself at the top of her hit list.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Detective Sergeant, I find that remark a little inappropriate.’

‘Really, Kissin? I can think of worse things than getting to know Tanja Pino properly. But the truth is, she tends to go for the younger, athletic types. With one exception! When she got married –’

‘She was married?’

‘Yeah. At twenty-one. Her husband was four or five years older than her. Another cop!’

‘What happened?’ Pieter asked. ‘Did they get divorced?’

‘No. There was an accident.’ Janssen’s expression momentarily glazed over, only to return a second later with its more usual, slightly seedy aspect. ‘Anyway, she’s always gone for the younger man since then. And I’ll say it again, kid – you’d better watch out!’

The thought of it, however absurd, served to solidify Pieter’s vague concerns, that Tanja might not necessarily be the ideal partner for him. Hell, even Janssen might be preferable.

The thought nagged, growing more vociferous all the while. When Janssen finally made his way back to the burger carton vista of his own desk, Pieter sat for a few minutes, his attention fixed on Wever’s door.

Pieter knew that the boss was in. And that he should probably speak to him. He hated the thought of going behind Tanja’s back, especially with the memory of his recent conversation with Wever so fresh in his mind, but people were
dying
. He had to think of his broader responsibility.

He knocked on Wever’s door. ‘Come,’ a gruff voice instructed.

Wever was standing at his window as Pieter entered, looking out along the length of Elandsgracht.

‘It used to be a canal, you know,’ he said.

Pieter nodded. ‘The clue’s in the name, I suppose.’

‘I used to dream of owning a canal boat. Thought I might simply float away, somehow.’

‘Why was the canal filled in?’ Pieter asked.

‘No idea. You’d have to ask Tanja.’

‘She seems to know her local history.’

‘Of course,’ Wever agreed. ‘She’s got a degree in Dutch History from UvA. A first, I think. I believe her dissertation had something to do with the history of the city’s development.’

Pieter blinked. ‘I never knew that. I suppose – well, I never really had her down as an academic.’

Wever grunted. ‘She’s just about the most academically able detective I’ve ever worked with. It’s just that she doesn’t always trust in her intelligence, or choose to show it.’

Pieter’s courage was starting to evaporate. It had to be now. ‘Sir?’

‘What?’

‘Why does Detective Inspector Pino find it so hard to get on with Antje Scholten? I mean, a degree of scepticism is healthy, but the professor’s record really does speak for itself. I’ve been going through the summaries of her old cases – she’s helped to catch three rapists, and four murderers. And in each case the officer in charge said that her help was invaluable.’