The Public Prosecutor (15 page)
Read The Public Prosecutor Online
Authors: Jef Geeraerts
“Fancy a bit of a walk?” he asked, rubbing Soliman’s flank.
Soliman stretched his neck, sniffed, cocked his ears and snorted.
Johan D’Hoog made his way to the saddle shed, rested the rifle against the wall, grabbed a bridle, returned to the stables, propped the bit in the horse’s mouth and pulled the bridle over his head. Soliman accepted the bit, chewed at it for a moment, and allowed D’Hoog to fasten the bridle. He returned to the saddle shed and selected Albert’s saddle. Before removing it from the rack, he tugged the stirrups a couple of holes shorter.
“His legs might be longer than mine,” he muttered, “but that’s the only thing!” Once again, he couldn’t resist a laugh.
10
Wednesday 16 May 1999 promised to be yet another sunny day with temperatures around seventy-five degrees.
8.30, the start of a new working day.
The dark-blue Mercedes van was parked on the eastbound carriageway of Amerikalei, not far from where it had been parked the evening before. The morning traffic was making slow but steady progress towards the city centre, hindered by the perpetually desynchronized traffic lights. Joost Voorhout kept a close eye on house number 124A through the one-way glass. Half an hour earlier, he had faxed an observation report to Marlowe & Co.’s headquarters in Brussels. In addition to Albert’s unanswered calls to Louise and the conversation between Louise and D’Hoog, reference was also made to Louise’s late-night conversation with Albert. The van was in permanent radio contact with Jean Materne, who was parked a little further up the street in a Volkswagen Passat, waiting for a signal to start shadowing Albert. Materne was still enraged about the death of his pit bull, which he had dumped in the Albert Canal on the way from Sint-Job-in-’t-Goor to Antwerp. Joost Voorhout, the team leader, had submitted a false report, aware that Materne would otherwise have been dismissed on the spot. It was against his better judgement, but collegiality and his conviction that Materne was an excellent worker got the better of him. No reference was made to the pit bull. Voorhout had also run the digital camera through the computer and wiped out every trace of the compromising snapshots. Three of the photos were particularly useful: the rear of the Volvo hatchback (Johan D’Hoog’s number plate), together with two suggestive shots of Louise Dubois holding D’Hoog in her arms, she wearing a see-through negligee and he stripped to the waist. There was no trace of the rifle or the dead dog. He had submitted the three relevant shots to Marlowe & Co. over the Internet.
At 8.35, chief sergeant Verhaert of the Brecht gendarmerie called his friend, sergeant Jef Vermeersch of the Antwerp CID, and told him about the events of the evening before, down to the last juicy detail. Vermeersch, who had secret, B-listed information at his disposal on the relationship between Louise Dubois and “Number 1”, listened with interest and urged Verhaert to fax him the official report by way of information, a serious procedural error, but a practice that had become commonplace since the Octopus police reforms of 1998, inspired by the fact that the gendarmerie were now running the show when it came to national police policy. This was due in no small part to the former socialist Home Office Minister (a friend of the socialist corps commander) and his extraordinary support for the gendarmerie. The commander’s resignation (he had “stepped aside”) after Marc Dutroux’s spectacular escape from the courthouse in Neufchâteau at the end of April 1998 had done nothing to curb the trend.
Vermeersch was smart enough to insist that Chief Sergeant Verhaert submit the report without delay to the procurator’s office and mark it URGENT. He called this “throwing sand in someone’s eyes to keep one’s own hands free”, an approach in which he could claim many years of experience.
At 8.42, Johan D’Hoog called Louise. He had been thinking about the contradictions in the declaration they had made to the gendarmes the night before and was in a panic. He advised Louise to pretend to be very confused if she received another visit and say that she was so upset by what had happened that her declaration might not have been entirely accurate. When Louise told him she had mentioned taking Igor to the vet for stitches when she was on the line to Albert, D’Hoog called her an idiot, insisted this was news to him, and told her he was bringing forward his plans to leave for Botswana with the UN programme “Wildlife and Cattle Interference”. Louise burst into tears and wasn’t even listening when he barked that one of the overalls, the tall blond bastard, had taken “
a whole fucking series of fucking pictures!
” “
And for someone else’s pleasure, Jesus Christ
,” he roared and slammed down the phone.
a whole fucking series of fucking pictures!
” “
And for someone else’s pleasure, Jesus Christ
,” he roared and slammed down the phone.
When she had calmed down, Louise called Albert at 8.52. He was just about to leave for work. She asked him not to come over that morning because she wasn’t feeling well. Albert replied curtly that he was only planning to stop by for a minute to see how she and Igor were doing and that there was no changing his mind.
At 8.55, Joost Voorhout informed Materne that the target had just left in his black Opel Omega and was probably heading for the Waalse Kaai. Address: Court of Appeal, Antwerp. Materne slipped out of the row of parked cars and was just in time to observe a black Opel Omega turn right into Graaf van Hoornestraat in the direction of the Museum of Fine Arts. He shifted into second gear and drove with screeching tyres through the red light, ignoring the double line of waiting traffic that started to move when the lights turned green. He watched the Opel slowly turn off Leopold de Waelplein into Burburestraat, heading towards the Waalse Kaai.
“I’m on his tail,” he radioed his partner.
“Roger… over,” Voorhout answered.
“Wait.”
“Roger.”
The Opel stopped no more than forty yards from the Court of Appeal building. Albert, dressed in a dark-blue suit, stepped out. The car continued and Albert walked towards the rear of building, produced a key from his pocket, opened a metal door and disappeared inside.
Materne reported what he had seen and concluded: “Mr high and mighty prefers to use the tradesman’s entrance… over.”
“Roger… out,” Voorhout replied. It was high time for a nap, he thought. He turned the loudspeaker to maximum and lay down on the floor of the van.
At 9.11, Albert called the local chief officer of the gendarmerie, Major de Vreker, a man he had known for all of ten years and with whom he had an unusual but excellent relationship. Albert had once helped him out of a delicate situation when he was still lieutenant, something he liked to call “exaggerated diligence”, another word for arbitrary and heavy-handed arrest without permission from the examining magistrate, after which the arrested individual, who turned out to be innocent, was confined to hospital for ten days.
Without offering further details, he ordered de Vreker in an official tone to copy a specific police report from the Brecht office and have it “sent to his office” by special delivery in a sealed envelope. The Major, one of the few army-trained officers still working for the gendarmerie, assured the public prosecutor that his orders would be carried out post-haste. Albert knew him well enough to be sure that the matter would be taken care of.
At 9.17, he called his friend Jokke to tell him that his prostate was in good shape and that he would make an appointment for a later date.
“I’d have my PSA measured if I were you,” Jokke answered, slightly nettled.
“What’s that?”
“Prostate Specific Antigen test. Can identify the presence of a tumour.”
“I
don’t
have cancer.”
don’t
have cancer.”
“How do you know, man?”
“There’s never been cancer in the family. You’re the one who’s always saying it’s a question of genes…”
“Dirty Jesuit!”
“Say that to my father-in-law.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Barely.”
“The class structure is part of God’s plan.”
“Bye, Doctor. You have a good day now.”
“You too, Attorney General.”
Albert hung up the phone with a smile, looked round and headed towards the door. A crew of workers armed with pneumatic drills were making a hellish din in the corridor, cutting a groove in the wall behind the skirting board to hide the cables for the new computer system. When they were finished, the computers were expected to work, albeit without the appropriate software. They had asked for six million francs to be included in the 2000 federal budget for a team of programmers. On the advice of a friend at the Department of Justice, Albert had requested double the required amount, because the salaries for software specialists were expected to rise dramatically in the near future. Up to that point, not a single programmer had answered the advertisement in the Antwerp newspapers. He closed the soundproof door, but it made little difference.
At 9.31, Albert called Louise on his mobile. She picked up and sounded as if she had been crying. He felt sorry for her and asked if there was anything he could get her.
“Honestly, I don’t need anything,” she replied, which was not her custom.
“That’s right, there’s still lobster and smoked salmon in the fridge from yesterday, eh?”
“I had to throw it out.”
“What?”
“It had started to smell.”
“And the caviar?”
“There’s still a bit left.”
“Did you try some?”
“Yes.”
“OK, I’ll stop by, but only for a quick visit. How’s Igor?”
“He’s lying here beside me.”
“I’m on my way.”
“OK. See you shortly.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“Don’t mind me. See you.”
He hung up and muttered: “Young people these days! Everything in the bin. A couple of years on a kibbutz would have made all the difference.”
He got to his feet, left the room, popped his head into the room next door and said to his secretary: “I’ll be away all morning. I should be back this afternoon to run through the ethics reports with Barrister-General Bergé.”
“Thank you, Public Prosecutor.”
Albert headed towards the elevator, pressed the call button and the door glided open in an instant.
“Jean, he called his lady friend in the woods again,” said Voorhout with a giggle. “Duration: sixty-four seconds.”
“Roger… out.”
A minute late Materne announced: “Target leaving the building on foot. I’m onto him.”
“Roger… out.”
Materne had thought that the target would head for his car, but it was nowhere to be seen. He kept him in sight as he crossed the parking lot towards the Vlaamse Kaai and turned into Pourbusstraat. He drove after him at speed and was just in time to see him disappear through the gates of a former warehouse. Lack of street parking forced Materne to position himself immediately in front of the gate, where he was able to keep an eye on Albert’s movements. He hoped there was no other exit, but leaving his car behind at this juncture seemed inopportune. His wisdom was confirmed when the target left the warehouse shortly afterwards in a black BMW. As he followed the BMW towards the city bypass, he reported everything to Voorhout, including the vehicle’s number plate: 9B959.
Materne’s Volkswagen was fitted with a digital camera and a high-capacity zoom lens. He took a few shots of the rear of the BMW together with a close-up of the number plate. They drove at roughly forty miles per hour with just one car between them towards the E19 and the motorway approach road for Hasselt-Luik-Breda.
“I think he’s heading into the bush,” said Materne.
“Stick to useful information, over,” Voorhout responded.
“Roger… out.”
Once he had reached the city bypass, the target stepped up the pace. They ploughed along the fast lane at eighty-five miles per hour in a sixty-mile-an-hour zone. The E19 narrowed to two lanes as they passed the Sports Stadium, and overtaking trucks forced them to slow down. Just before the slip road for Sint-Job-in-’t-Goor, the BMW suddenly swerved to the right, cutting in front of a Dutch trailer-truck, much to the trucker’s irritation. Materne followed the target with two cars between them. When the BMW veered right onto the slip road as expected, a wicked grin appeared on his face. A few days without shaving, together with the moustache and sideburns, made him look like a bandit, something that gave him an enormous sense of pride. They were driving to the place where his cherished pit bull had been shot dead the night before during a bungled operation that had run out of hand. His rage returned. He was determined to have his revenge, but wasn’t yet sure how to go about it. When they reached Sint-Job town centre, he fell back to a safe distance from the BMW. Without being able to see the vehicle, he drove to the Oude Baan, where the tarmac road gives way to a dirt track, and saw the BMW’s break lights flicker roughly two hundred yards ahead, in front of the farmhouse, which he was now seeing for the first time in daylight. He zoomed in to the maximum and waited. When the young lady came outside accompanied by the fucking Labrador, which was to blame for everything, he took an initial series of snapshots, followed by a further series of the target kissing the woman, kneeling down beside the Labrador and petting its head.
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