For both of us.
I wouldnt deny it. But time passes.
She returned his smile. So, do you want to hear my Mission Impossible?
Straight to the point, as always. Listen, what I thought, if its OK with you, is that we could get you settled in at your hotel then go back to my place to discuss what theyve got lined up for you. Its more private than a pub. I only suggested meeting here because its easier to find than my cottage.
There was something more that he wasnt saying. She could still read him, she was relieved to find. Fine by me. Id like to see where youre living. Ive never been here before its amazingly picturesque.
Oh, its picturesque, all right. Almost too picturesque. Its very easy to forget that passions run as high in picture postcard fishing villages as they do on the mean streets.
Carol sipped her coffee. It was surprisingly good. An ideal place to recuperate, then?
In more ways than one. He looked away for a moment, then turned back to face her, his mouth a straight line of resolve. She had a shrewd idea what was coming and steeled herself to show nothing but happiness. Im Ive been seeing someone, he said.
Carol was aware of every muscle it took to smile. Im pleased for you, she said, willing the stone in her stomach to dissolve.
Tonys eyebrows quirked in a question. Thank you, he said.
No, I mean it. Im glad. Her eyes dropped to the gloomy brown of her coffee. You deserve it. She looked up, forcing a brightness into her tone. So, whats she like?
Her names Frances. Shes a teacher. Shes very calm, very smart. Very kind. I met her at the bridge club in St Andrews. I meant to tell you. But I didnt want to say anything until I was sure something was going to come of it. And then well, like I said, e-mail is a good place to hide. He spread his hands in apology.
Its OK. You dont owe me anything. Their eyes locked. They both knew it was a lie. She wanted to ask if he loved this Frances, but didnt want to hear the wrong answer. So, do I get to meet her?
I told her wed be working this evening, so shes not coming over. But I could call her, ask if shed like to join us for dinner if youd like? He looked dubious.
I dont think so. I really do need to pick your brains, and I have to go back tomorrow. Carol drained her coffee. Picking up her cue, Tony finished his drink and stood up.
Its really good to see you, you know, he said, his voice softer than before. I missed you, Carol.
Not enough, she thought. I missed you too, was what she said. Come on, weve got work to do.
7
All violent death is shocking. But somehow murder in a beautiful nineteenth-century house overlooking a tranquil canal, a medieval seat of learning and an impressive church spire provoked a deeper sense of outrage in Hoofdinspecteur Kees Maartens than the same event in a Rotterdam back street ever had. Hed come up the ranks in the North Sea port before finally managing a transfer back to Regio Hollands Midden, and so far his return to his childhood stamping grounds had lived up to his dreams of a quieter life. Not that there was no crime in this part of Holland; far from it. But there was less violence in the university town of Leiden, that was for sure.
Or so hed thought until today. He was no stranger to the abuse that one human or several combining in the same blind fury could inflict on another. Dockside brawls, pub fights where insults real and imaginary had provoked clashes out of all proportion, assaults and even murders that turned sex workers into victims were all part of a days work on the Rotterdam serious crimes beat, and Maartens reckoned he had grown a second skin over years of exposure to the ravages of rage. Hed decided he was impervious to horror. But hed been wrong about that too.
Nothing in his twenty-three years at the sharp end had prepared him for anything like this. It was indecent, rendered all the more so by the incongruity of the setting. Maartens stood on the threshold of a room that looked as if it had been fundamentally unchanged since the house had been built. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with mahogany shelving, its ornate beading warm with the muted gleam of generations of polishing. Books and box files filled every shelf, though he couldnt see much detail from here. The floor was burnished parquet, with a couple of rugs that looked worn and dull to Maartens. Not something I would have chosen in so dark a room, he thought, conscious that he was avoiding the central focus of the room with all his mental energy. Two tall windows looked out across the Maresingel to the historic town centre beyond. The sky was a washed-out blue, thin strips of cloud apparently hanging motionless, as if time had stopped.
It had certainly stopped for the man who occupied the hub of this scholars study. There was no question that he was dead. He lay on his back on the wide mahogany desk that stood in the middle of the floor. Each wrist and ankle was tied to one of the desks bulbous feet with thin cord, spread-eagling the dead man across its surface. It looked as if his killer had tied him down fully dressed, then cut his clothes away from his body, exposing the lightly tanned skin with its paler ghost of swimming trunks.
That would have been bad enough, a profanation Maartens hoped his middle-aged body would be spared. But what turned indignity into obscenity was the clotted red mess below the belly, an ugly wound from which rivulets of dried blood meandered across the white flesh and dripped on to the desk. Maartens closed his eyes momentarily, trying not to think about it.
He heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. A tall woman in a tailored navy suit, honey blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, appeared on the landing. Her round face was serious in repose, her blue eyes shadowed beneath straight dark brows. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, her understated make-up deliberately making her appear even more bland and unthreatening. Maartens turned to face Brigadier Marijke van Hasselt, one of his two team co-ordinators. Whats the story, Marijke? he asked.
She produced a notebook from the pocket of her jacket. The owner of the house is Dr Pieter de Groot. Hes attached to the university. Lectures in experimental psychology. Divorced three years ago, lives alone. His teenage kids come to visit every other weekend. They live just outside Den Haag with the ex-wife. The body was discovered this morning by his cleaner. She let herself in as usual, saw nothing out of the ordinary, did the ground floor then came on up here. She glanced in the study door and saw that Marijke gestured with her thumb at the doorway. She says she took a couple of steps inside the room, then ran downstairs and called us.
Thats the woman who was waiting on the doorstep with the uniformed officer when we got here?
Thats right. She wouldnt stay in the house. Cant say I blame her. I had to talk to her in the car. Toms rounded up some of our team and set them on door-to-door inquiries.
Maartens nodded approval of her fellow coordinators action. Later, you can go over to the university, see what they can tell you about Dr de Groot. Is the scene-of-crime team here yet?
Marijke nodded. Outside with the pathologist. Theyre waiting for the word from you.
Maartens turned away. Better let them in. Theres bugger all else we can do here till theyve done their stuff.
Marijke looked past him as he moved towards the staircase. Any idea on the cause of death? she asked.
Theres only one wound that I can see.
I know. But it just seems Marijke paused.
Maartens nodded. Not enough blood. He must have been castrated around the time of death. Well see what the pathologist has to say. But for now, were definitely looking at a suspicious death.
Marijke checked her bosss dour face to see if he was being ironic. But she could see no trace of levity. In two years of working with Maartens, she seldom had. Other cops protected themselves with black humour, an instinct that sat comfortably with her. But comfort was the one thing that Maartens seemed inclined to prevent his team ever experiencing. Something told her they were going to need more than Maartenss austerity to get them through a murder as horrible as this. She watched him descend, her heart as heavy as his tread.
Marijke crossed the threshold of the crime scene. The recherche bijstandsteam had a fixed system, even though murders didnt happen often enough on their patch to be routine occurrences. Her role while Maartens briefed the forensic team and the pathologist was to make certain the crime scene remained secure. She took latex gloves and plastic shoe covers out of the leather satchel she always carried with her and put them on. Then she walked in a straight line from the door to the desk, which brought her level with the dead mans head. This study of the dead was her job, the one Maartens always avoided. She was never sure if he was squeamish or simply aware that he was better occupied elsewhere. He was good at putting people to tasks that suited them, and she had never flinched at the sight of the dead. She suspected it was something to do with being a farm girl. Shed been accustomed to dead livestock since early childhood. Marijke really didnt care how much noise the lambs made.
What she cared about was what this body could teach her about victim and killer. She had ambition; she didnt intend to end her career as a brigadier in Hollands Midden. Every case was a potential stepping stone to one of the elite units in Amsterdam or Den Haag, and Marijke was determined to shine whenever she got the chance.
She stared down at the corpse of Pieter de Groot with a clinical eye, one fingertip straying to touch the distended abdomen. Cool. Hed been dead for a while, then. She frowned as she looked down. There was a circular stain on the polished surface of the desk, forming a nimbus round the head as if something had been spilled there. Marijke made a mental note to point it out to the scene-of-crime team. Anything out of the ordinary had to be checked out.
In spite of her intention to scan methodically every inch of the body and its surroundings, her eyes were irresistibly drawn to the crusted blood surrounding the raw wound. The exposed flesh looked like meat left unwrapped overnight on a kitchen counter. As she realized what she was seeing, Marijkes stomach gave an unexpected lurch. From a distance, shed made the same assumption as Maartens. But de Groot hadnt been castrated. His genitals were still attached to his body, albeit smeared grotesquely with blood. She sucked in a mouthful of air.
Whoever had killed the psychologist hadnt removed his sexual organs. His murderer had scalped his pubic hair.
Carol leaned on the window sill, the steam from her coffee making a misty patch on the glass. The weather had closed in overnight, and the Firth of Forth was a rumpled sheet of grey silk with slubs of white where the occasional wave broke far from shore. She longed for her familiar London skyline.
It had been a mistake to come here. Whatever shed gained professionally from the trip was more than cancelled out by the rawness of the emotion that Tonys presence had stirred up in her. Bitterly, she acknowledged to herself that she had still been clinging to a sliver of hope that their relationship might finally catch fire after an appropriate gap of time and space. The hope had crumbled like a sandcastle in the sun with his revelation that he had moved forward, just as she had always hoped he would. Except that she wasnt the companion he had chosen to share the journey with.
She hoped she hadnt let the depth of her disappointment show as theyd left the pub, forcing her face to smile the congratulation of a friend. Then shed turned away, letting the sharp north-easterly wind give her an excuse for smarting eyes. Shed followed his car up the hill away from the picture-postcard harbour to the small hotel where hed arranged a room for her. Shed taken a defiant ten minutes to repair her make-up and arrange her hair to its best advantage. And to change out of her jeans into a tight skirt that revealed more than anyone in the Met had ever seen. She might have lost the battle, but that didnt mean she had to beat a bedraggled retreat. Let him see what hes missing, she thought, throwing down a gauntlet to herself as much as to him.
Driving back to his cottage, theyd said little of consequence, making small talk about life in a small town. The cottage itself was much as Carol had expected. Whatever this woman meant to Tony, she hadnt stamped her identity over his space. She recognized most of the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books lined up on shelves along the study wall. Even the answering machine, she thought with a faint shudder, ambushed by memory.
Looks like youve settled in, was all she said.
He shrugged. Im not much of a homemaker. I went through it with a bucket of white paint then moved all the old stuff in. Luckily most of it fitted.
Once they were settled in the study with mugs of coffee, present constraints somehow slipped away and the old ease that had existed between them reasserted itself. So while Tony read the brief that Morgan had couriered to Carol that morning, she curled up in a battered armchair and browsed an eclectic pile of magazines ranging from New Scientist to Marie Claire. Hed always read a strange assortment of publications, she remembered fondly. Shed never been stuck for something to read in his house.
As he read, Tony made occasional notes on a pad propped on the arm of his chair. His eyebrows furrowed from time to time, and occasionally his mouth quirked in a question that he never enunciated. It wasnt a long brief, but he read it slowly and meticulously, flipping back to the beginning and skimming it again after hed first reached the end. Finally, he looked up. I must admit, Im puzzled, he said.
By what, in particular?
By the fact that theyre asking you to do something like this. Its so far outside your field of experience.
Thats what I thought. I have to assume theres some aspect of my experience or my skills that overrides my lack of direct undercover work.
Tony pushed his hair back from his forehead in a familiar gesture. That would be my guess. The brief itself is more or less straightforward. Pick up the drugs from your source, exchange the parcel of drugs for cash and return it to your first contact. Of course, Im assuming theyll throw spanners in the works along the way. There wouldnt be any point in it otherwise.
Its supposed to be a test of my abilities, so I think its fair to expect the unexpected. Carol dropped the magazine she was reading and tucked her legs underneath her. So how do I do it?