Black Widow (31 page)

*

It hadn’t taken much of an effort for Dedrick van Kempen to get his hands on Jasper Endqvist’s diary. A quick call to the Station Commander at Balistraat had circumvented any potential awkwardness in that regard. They’d even given him a room.

Dedrick had no idea what he was looking for. But he did know that he distrusted Tanja Pino. Had done so right from the moment he’d read a summary of the paedophile case. Meeting her in the flesh had not softened that opinion.

He leafed through the pages of the diary. He had a knack for this sort of thing. He’d learnt his trade at the Utrecht politiebureau, where he’d fast built up a reputation for – amongst other things – his ability to skim off the pertinent details from any piece of written evidence: accounts, witness statements, telephone records. And diaries.

Endqvist, it seemed, had been a great diarist. He’d kept a record of everything. There was even, amidst the interminable descriptions of shopping trips, or morning jogs around the Oosterpark, the odd reference to his job.

Tanja Pino’s name was mentioned twice. And on each occasion it was underlined in red ink. Seemed she’d really got under his skin.

The final entry in the diary was the most intriguing. Van Kempen’s mouth flexed into a peculiar half-smile as he read the entry again. It was very concise, by Endqvist’s usual standards.

Dinner. With
her
. Qin Shi Huang’s. Why on Earth am I doing this, Diary?

There were no more words after this; unfortunately, Endqvist hadn’t gone on to answer his question.

Anyway, the underlining was perhaps significant. But it was the choice of restaurant which van Kempen found particularly intriguing.

Qin Shi Huang’s. There had been a menu for that very restaurant pinned to the backboard of Tanja’s desk until recently. Van Kempen knew this for a fact: he’d made a minute study of her working environment, albeit in passing, without ever stopping to linger. But he missed nothing.

He rang the restaurant. ‘Hello, I’m Hoofdinspecteur van Kempen of the Korps Landelijke Politiediensten.’

‘The what, Meneer?’ an appreciably foreign voice asked in painful, stuttering Dutch.

‘I’m a policeman,’ van Kempen tried again, this time in English. Holland was as exposed to the waves of immigration as any other part of maritime Europe; it seemed to him that Dutch speakers were actually a minority, nowadays.

There would inevitably be a backlash at some point. The racial tension which had sprung up in the aftermath of the Theo van Gogh murder had been savage enough, but van Kempen knew that there was more to come. There were numerous studies being conducted in Driebergen, as a number of would-be Hitler clones made their presence felt.

The restaurant manager cleared his throat in the fashion of the nervous smoker. ‘Ah! Policeman!’ There was a sound of whispered conversation at the other end of the line, presumably some flavour of Chinese. ‘But we here long time!’

‘It’s all right, friend. I’m not calling about your visa. But I am looking for information.’

‘Of course, sir,’ said the manager, with obvious relief.

‘Could you check your records for Saturday night? I need to know if you took a booking for a Jasper Endqvist.’ Van Kempen spelled the name out.

‘No, sir! We have nothing for that name!’

‘How about Tanja Pino?’

‘Pino, Pino… Yes, sir, that name is very much here. Table for two!’

Van Kempen couldn’t imagine why Endqvist would have accepted an invitation from Tanja to go to dinner, if their relationship had been as distant and strained as it seemed. Perhaps it had been couched in terms of a business meeting; perhaps Tanja had suggested that they get together at a neutral venue, that they might put the disputed claim to bed. Maybe there had been an element of bribery.

But however she’d persuaded him, Tanja had rewarded Endqvist’s trust by subsequently murdering him.

Van Kempen closed his eyes for a moment, as he shuffled his suspicions into a semblance of order.

But first a little housekeeping. There was a file on his desk, relating to Sophia Faruk, specifically a past conviction for arson and insurance fraud. A previous business had fallen on hard times, so she’d set it alight. He scanned the summary again, which included details of the investigative team. One of the junior officers had been a certain Anton van der Moolen. Tanja’s husband, dead now these twenty years. An automobile accident, which had also taken the life of their infant daughter.

Funny, or tragic, the way this job threw up so many coincidences. Van Kempen tossed the folder to one side. It had no bearing on the case; not now.

There was more information filtering through on his Blackberry. They’d found traces of grey automotive paint on Endqvist’s body. It was too weathered to give up any particular brand secrets, but that hardly mattered. Van Kempen pictured Tanja’s battered Opel in his mind. Parts of it were white. But most of it, including the bonnet section, was grey. He was willing to bet that there would be a match. All he needed was to chip off a sample, and send it to the KLPD lab for comparison.

And other than that? Well, Antje Scholten’s profile aside, van Kempen had no evidence as yet that Tanja had been responsible for the other murders. But he would carry on looking. He didn’t buy the Ursula Huisman theory. Not at all.

He set out towards the Elandsgracht station, phoning ahead as he did so. He had more than enough evidence to place Tanja under arrest. And he couldn’t be lax: if he were to allow her another night of freedom, she would likely as not kill again.

Dedrick didn’t feel any particular triumph; he rather felt sad, and weary, and in need of his wife’s companionship. Sonia was back in Driebergen with their children. He missed her. She was kind, and gentle. The exact opposite of Tanja Pino.

Chapter 22

Tanja had left for the evening, a few minutes early, her face set in a furious expression. Pieter had tried to ask her what the matter might be, but she’d looked straight through him.

He found out soon enough though, through the auspices of Harald Janssen, who happened to be an old friend of one of the Balistraat detectives. For once Harald didn’t seem inclined to make a joke out of it. He rather seemed deeply worried.

Pieter was worried, too. Harald was unable to tell him why Tanja and the hit-and-run victim were being mentioned in the same breath, but it would only serve to make the office gossips more vindictive. It almost felt as if he were being accused of something by association.

He was still at his desk, when he got a call from Nathaniel Barhydt, one of the IT geeks. Well, that was what Tanja called them. Having an interest in computing – particularly forensic computing – did not seem such an embarrassing thing to Pieter.

‘Is that you, Detective Kissin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is Detective Inspector Pino there?’

‘No,’ Pieter replied, ‘she’s just gone.’

‘Ah, well. It will probably wait till the morning.’

‘Have you got something for us?’

‘Maybe,’ Nathaniel confirmed. ‘We’ve found a password for that site she was interested in hacking into.’

‘What site?’

‘Cougar Contacts. Catchy title!’

Pieter didn’t say anything for a moment. The phone to his ear, he walked round to Tanja’s desk, and rummaged through her in-tray.

Yes, there it was, at the bottom, a note from IT, listing the websites that Ruben had visited.

Pieter was a little taken aback. Why hadn’t she mentioned this? ‘Have you had a look at this site yet?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Nathaniel replied. ‘We’re not supposed to.’

‘I’m coming down. Where are you?’

‘Ground floor,’ Nathaniel answered. ‘Turn left at the Sty.’

‘The where?’

‘Admin, I should say. The girls there are a bit, you know. Snouty. Is that a word? ’

Pieter hurried away from his desk to the stairs, his mind awhirl with all manner of unpleasant thoughts.

Nathaniel was waiting for him, slice of pizza in hand. ‘My shift should have ended a minute ago,’ he said. ‘This is my time.’

Pieter nodded understanding, but his attention was fixed on Nathaniel’s monitor. It was open at a web page.

‘Password is
puma concolor
,’ Nathaniel revealed. ‘Obvious really!’

‘The Latin name for cougar, maybe?’

‘Yeah. Sorry it’s taken so long. But Detective Inspector Pino was adamant that we should take care of this in-house. Our KLPD friends could probably have cracked the password in seconds, given the equipment they have available.’

‘No doubt,’ Pieter agreed. ‘Well, you might as well head off, Nathaniel. I’ll shut everything down.’

‘Okay!’

Pieter waited for Nathaniel to leave, then turned his attention back to the monitor. He was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

It seemed to be little more than a rather crude dating site, for older women seeking younger men, and vice versa.

Frustratingly, no one seemed to use their real name. He followed a conversation, which was unfolding in real time.

Kut-Shoot69:
Any you hot ladies looking for fun?

Kut-Shoot69
: I said, any of you hot ladies looking for FUN? Come on, one of you must have finished work! If you even have jobs, kept whores that you are. Log on, damn you!

PennyTration:
Hi there sweetie! My, aren’t we impatient this evening!

Kut-Shoot69:
Hi snuggles. Right on time! You going to be at CC later?

PennyTration:
Oh, yes! Mine’s a Grolsch!

QueenoftheBitchPeople:
I’ll have a
jennever
. And tonic!

Kut-Shoot69:
Hey, I’m not doing both of you. Not after last time! It went septic! Too much friction!

QueenoftheBitchPeople:
My you-know-what should carry a health warning! It’s
dangerously
tight.

Kut-Shoot69:
Well, a little danger I like. Just as long as you don’t throttle me afterwards.

PennyTration:
[Cross!] You shouldn’t joke about such things. Poor Mikael.

Kut-Shoot69:
Sorry. That was insensitive.

QueenoftheBitchPeople:
The complete opposite of my you-know-what! It’s already tingling!

The conversation ended soon after. The chatroom emptied, leaving nothing behind save a vague sense that others were still watching. And perhaps waiting.

The implications were unsettling. If Mikael had used the site, then maybe his killer had, too. Or still did.

He opened a folder, titled ‘Members’. He scanned through the entries, maybe sixty or seventy in total. More damned pseudonyms, each more cryptic than the last.

With one exception. One entry stood out for its simplicity.

Janis J’s NOF. Forty-seven
.
Looking for younger men, late twenties preferred
.
Interested? Leave me a note on the Bulletin Board, and I’ll be in touch.

He checked the message board. It only showed today’s entries, but maybe there was something still held in the host computer’s hard drive.

Something nagged. Janis J? Why did that make him nervous?

Then he remembered something Tanja had told him, about Joplin being one of her favourite singers. And the spelling of
Janis
was fairly explicit.

Nor was the abbreviation so mysterious, on second thoughts. NOF; Number One Fan.

He stared at it. The age – assuming that was what the forty-seven part referred to – was certainly right.

And then he thought, what if Tanja had been
deliberately
hiding this from him? If that was her pseudonym…

He sat still for a few minutes, not knowing what to do. In truth, it was a fairly tenuous link. He could ignore it, and no one would think badly of him. And how would it look, if he
were
to investigate the matter further? That he suspected Tanja of being connected with the killings? He didn’t think that at all.

Ultimately there was only one choice to be made. He had a lead, and he was duty bound to follow it. If he acted quickly, then there was a good chance he might be able to exonerate Tanja before any harm was done.

How, though?

He headed back upstairs, scanning the office for signs of a friendly face. But wherever he looked, he was reminded that one of these officers had been responsible for putting up those posters. There was Harald Janssen, but Pieter suspected that he would have more luck asking the cleaner. Harald didn’t do technology.

Wever, then? No. For some reason Pieter couldn’t stomach the thought of it.

Which only left one alternative. Feeling as though he was about to make a deal with the devil, Pieter returned to the IT lab, and phoned Dedrick van Kempen.

The superintendent was in his car, en route to the station. Couching his request in the most mundane terms, Pieter asked him to put out a trace on the
Cougar-Contacts
domain name. He didn’t say why, and van Kempen seemed too distracted to ask. Pieter didn’t volunteer the information.

The site was clearly as vulnerable to hi-tech infiltration as Nathaniel had intimated, and he was called back within a few minutes. The caller didn’t give his name, and Pieter didn’t ask it. He focused instead on the information the man provided: the host server was located in an internet café, not ten minutes from Elandsgracht.

The proprietress was a certain Anita Berger.

‘Fucking hell,’ Pieter said.

She’d told him at Mikael’s funeral that she ran a café; Pieter had assumed that it would be of the more prosaic coffee and cakes variety. Seemed he’d been wrong.

This was too much; he didn’t know what to do. Was
Anita
involved in some way? Christ, was she –?

‘Any luck?’

Pieter looked up with a start to see van Kempen. ‘Not sure you’d call it luck, sir, exactly.’

‘Show me,’ van Kempen instructed.

No choice now, but to open up. So Pieter passed on what he’d learned, haltingly at first, then with greater fluency. He found that if he spoke quickly, if he allowed himself less time to focus on what he was doing, it was easier. Van Kempen listened, watched, without saying a word until Pieter was done.