No Sale

by Patrick Conrad

  “We will do the best we can,” sighed Luyckx, “although we cannot avoid the normal procedures. Lannoy, call the duty officer and the technical service and ask Sax to come down. No one must touch anything. Including you, Doctor. With all this coming and going we’ve lost every footprint as it is. Jules, have you by any chance found the lipstick?”

  “No, Superintendent, but I did find something. Come and have a look.”

  Luyckx and Lannoy followed the gardener outside. He pointed at one of the rectangular windows of the greenhouse, on which someone had written in lipstick: CATCH ME OR THERE WILL BE ANOTHER MURDER.

  Luyckx, who until now had not succeeded in establishing any logical connection between the different murders of the young women, was now certain that he was dealing with a serial killer who had been striking since 1995 and who was now becoming uneasy because he had still not been exposed. It was the first time the perpetrator had made an attempt at dialogue. Fairly normal behaviour for the sort of psychopath that wants recognition and needs a game of cat and mouse with the police to enjoy their atrocities to the full.

  “Where were you last night?” Lannoy asks Jules.

  “At home. I don’t live on the estate and only get here around seven in the morning.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “No. With my brother Romijn.”

  “Do you have any further need of me?” asked Dr Leenaerts.

  “Not for now, Doctor.”

  “Shall I have her transferred to the funeral chapel?”

  “No thank you, our people will be coming along to pick her up and take her to the lab for the autopsy.”

  “An autopsy, how awful… I don’t know whether Frans will agree to that. Just the idea that her body is going to be cut open…”

  “I’m afraid that it’s not up to him to decide.”

  Luyckx has another quick look at the kitchen garden, while Lannoy starts to work his mobile. Three or so beds had been destroyed and the soil churned up. That showed that Sandy Misotten had resisted the rapist desperately and that there had been a violent struggle. Her clothes – a loose white cotton Ralph Lauren skirt and a beige T-shirt – had been torn to shreds and were lying a little farther away, stuffed among the rhubarb. Her Gucci boots lay on the dung heap, as if her attacker had flung them away. However, Luyckx could not find a single trace of underwear. Either the murderer had taken her knickers and bra with him as trophies, or she had been wearing nothing under her clothes.

  Luyckx asked Lannoy to wait for their colleagues in the greenhouse, while he talked to Frans Misotten. The press baron was waiting for him in his cabinet of curiosities. He was standing motionlessly behind an overflowing desk in a dust-filled beam of light, staring out of the window. The cabinet stood in the west wing of the chateau. It smelt of beeswax and camphor and was filled with the most diverse objects that Misotten had inherited from his father and grandfather, had brought back from his travels or acquired from antiques dealers or at auctions. Stuffed apes, tigers and birds of prey, the empty, waxed shells of giant tortoises, the bleached skulls of rhinoceros and hippopotamuses, jars full of strange shells, foetuses, serpents, frogs and salamanders in preserving fluid, bowls full of petrified eggs and fossils, baskets full of coral, ostrich feathers, heaps of minerals and crystals, display cabinets full of butterflies, beetles and dried sea horses, an enormous illuminated globe, hunting trophies, old copper measuring instruments, a human skeleton, herbaria, exotic fabrics and jewels, animal skins, weapons, microscopes, daggers, bows and an outsized photograph of the baron himself in a tropical uniform standing among pygmies.

  “This is the place where I savour my triumphs in silence and can hide my tears,” he said when The Sponge was led in by the butler. He did not turn round and remained for a while gazing out of the tall windows at the oak trees swaying in the wind. “The room where I guard my treasures, my secrets and my sorrow.”

  The decor reminded Luyckx a little of the Africa Museum in Tervuren which he had visited years ago on a school trip.

  Frans Misotten turned and said: “Sandy never came here. She loved life, and in this room everything is dead. Now she too will be part of my collection. Just like the old nobility, the genuine old nobility, which now belongs only in a cabinet of curiosities.”

  “You have my sympathies, Baron Misotten.”

  “I do not expect any feelings from you, Superintendent, but I do expect you to find the monster who murdered Sandy and destroyed my life. Nothing more, nothing less. I am at your disposal.”

  “I won’t trouble you for long. Just a few routine questions.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did you and your wife receive any kind of threat recently?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, no.”

  “And did madam have any personal enemies? Out of envy, for example?”

  “Sandy had only friends.”

  The Sponge studied the slim old man, who with dignity and a minimum of visible emotion was praising the joie de vivre of his murdered wife. It was clear that Sandy Misotten had many friends. She was young, beautiful, rich and, for good measure, had a pleasant character. In a word, she was suspiciously perfect. But why had she married this press baron, who lived like a fossil among his fossils, unless it was for his fortune and title? Something or someone was missing from her too happy story.

  “Where and when did you meet her, if I may ask?”

  “Three years ago. At the Raamtheater in Antwerp, at the premiere of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge in which Sandy played the role of Catherine. The production was sponsored by the Multipress Foundation, of which I’m the chairman. After the performance I went to congratulate her with a few prominent members of the foundation. I felt immediately attracted to her, but she was so young, so fresh, so flawless that I dared not imagine that it could be reciprocated.”

  “So Sandy was an actress?”

  “After our marriage she gave up her career to devote herself completely to the management of the estate. She is irreplaceable.”

  “Did she remain in contact with artistic circles?”

  “Of course. At our receptions. The de Landshoves are well known as disinterested patrons of the arts and sciences.”

  “Have you any idea what she was doing in the kitchen garden last night?”

  “She lived, as it were, in a symbiosis with nature. She spoke to the plants. The scent of dew on young spinach, the softness of a young pea in the palm of her hand, could move her to tears. Sandy was an exceptional being. A gift of the gods. There won’t be an autopsy, I hope.”

  “We can’t avoid that. It would only create suspicion.”

  “A de Landshove is above all suspicion, Superintendent.”

  Luyckx found it unnecessary to prolong the conversation with this arrogant old bore. He quickly and politely took his leave and asked him not to leave the country for the time being.

  “As if I feel like travelling now,” came the curt reply.

  Lannoy was downstairs waiting for him. Under Sandy’s rumpled clothes he had found her handbag with her mobile and address book.

  “Two items that are absolutely necessary when you go gardening at night,” said The Sponge, clearly out of sorts after his discussion with the baron. “Is there anything in them that’s worth looking into?”

  “Hundreds of names, addresses and phone numbers. We’ve got our work cut out.”

  “It’s not that late, Mr Cox. I do have a couple of questions,” says Luyckx. “But can I first take a slash? I’m bursting.” He is visibly clenching his buttocks. It’s not the first time in his career that The Sponge has used this trick.

  Cox shows him the way to the bathroom.

  On the mirror above the basin Luyckx sees the words NO SALE in red lipstick. The Sponge takes out his penknife and scrapes a few centimetres of the letter L off the mirror, smears the lipstick on to a piece of toilet paper which he folds carefully and puts in his trouser pocket. He flushes the toilet and searches the cupboards. In a dr
awer he finds a pair of black lace knickers, which he also puts in his pocket. There’s no business like show business, he thinks, and makes his way back to the living room.

  “To get back to the address book…”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that I have no idea how my name and telephone number ended up in the address book of some elderly baroness.”

  “Elderly baroness, you say? Sandy Misotten was barely twenty-six.”

  “A real babe, believe me,” adds Lannoy.

  “Some young women fall for more mature men – you should know.”

  “She used to be an actress.”

  Cox frowns.

  “Do you know her maiden name?”

  “I’ve noted it somewhere,” says Lannoy. “Here you are: Michiels, Alexandra Michiels.”

  “But I do know her! I had an Alexandra Michiels in my class. She was in the Department of Theatre Studies. She graduated in 1997. Very talented. Very attractive too. A real ‘babe’, as you say. But I didn’t know she had got married to this old Misotten.”

  “Did you ever meet her again after she had finished her studies?”

  “I saw her acting a couple of times. She would sometimes invite me to a premiere. That’s why she had my number, I assume.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Two or three years ago. When Starr and I went to a performance of A View from the Bridge. Alexandra played a brilliant Catherine. Less melodramatic than Carol Lawrence in Sidney Lumet’s film version. Couldn’t her husband be the murderer?”

  “Baron de Landshove was in Barcelona last night. And where were you, Mr Cox?”

  “Here.”

  “Alone?”

  “With Hitchcock.”

  “And did Hitchcock write those nice words on your bathroom mirror?”

  Luyckx notices that his colleague is looking at him mystified.

  “In lipstick, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “That was my girlfriend. She always used to do that.”

  “No sale. What did she mean by that?”

  “I haven’t been able to make sense of it so far. It’s a game. It has something to do with a film.”

  “She didn’t happen to leave her lipstick here?”

  “She never left… she never leaves anything here.”

  “Whose are these then?”

  Luyckx produces the lace knickers.

  “You’re really going too far now! You’ve no right to go nosing around in my cupboards without a warrant! Give them to me! That’s a personal memento! A present from Starr.”

  “We’ll have to look into that.”

  Luyckx presses the knickers to his nose and sniffs.

  “But in any case they don’t smell of Chanel No 5.”

  “I can file a complaint about this.”

  “You’ll get them back, Mr Cox, but for now I’m adding them to the evidence in the Misotten case.”

  “What in God’s name does Starr’s underwear have to do with the Misotten case?”

  “We couldn’t find Sandy’s knickers,” says Lannoy, as if he has known the young baroness for years. The first bars of Beethoven’s Ninth sound from his jacket pocket.

  “Lannoy here. To who?… Yes he’s sitting next to me.”

  Lannoy hands the mobile to The Sponge.

  “Luyckx speaking… Yes… What?… When… Yes… You don’t say!… Are you already there?… Good… Make sure no one touches anything… Twenty minutes.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Dr Leenaerts. Misotten has shot himself through the head with a hunting rifle in his cabinet in front of his life-sized photo while listening to the national anthem. The good family doctor was woken half an hour ago by the shot and discovered the bloodbath. And wait for this: Leenaerts was in bed with the butler who’d been his lover for years. Mr Cox, you can go to sleep now.”

  22

  Gloria Wandrous

  On Thursday, 6th June, Cox is watching a panel discussion in which Superintendent Luyckx, a gendarmerie colonel, an American criminal profiler, two legal experts and the Minister of Justice are talking about the five unsolved murders for the first time. He learns that since 1995 in connection with these cases more than one hundred suspects have been questioned, including three priests, a so-called “Flemish celebrity”, a leading member of Amnesty International and people from the underworld who had connections with the Royal Court. He also learns that Stanislas Larsky, who has long been suspected of the murder of Debbie Marchal, has never confessed. The profiler is convinced that there is a single perpetrator, especially since the latest murder when a message to the police was left behind. Which logically means that Larsky is innocent. He describes the serial killer as a relatively educated person in middle age, with a strong power of imagination, who like most psychopaths looks quite normal, and who, between attacks, leads a peaceful life with his wife and children. The minister promises solemnly to have the perpetrator arrested before the next elections. The legal experts talk about textbook examples from abroad. The colonel says nothing.

  Cox switches over to another channel and selects a film in which Elizabeth Taylor is riding around in a Sunbeam Alpine. He cannot quite place the Metrocolor images and looks up the film in the TV programme. It is Daniel Mann’s BUtterfield 8, a 1960 adaptation of the novel of the same name by John O’Hara. Cox remembers having seen the film once at the cinema. It is the story of Gloria Wandrous, a call girl with a murky past. As a child she was sexually abused and plunged at a young age into the underworld where she was employed by the most notorious bars in Manhattan. Weston Liggett, played by Laurence Harvey, is a dissolute, unfeeling lawyer unhappily married to the fabulously wealthy Emily, played by Dina Merrill. When they meet, Liggett is just one of Gloria’s anonymous clients, but their relationship rapidly evolves into something more profound and romantic. The question is whether this tender affair can change their futile way of life for the better or whether, on the contrary, it will result in them destroying each other implacably. Cox knows how the story ends: Gloria dies in a car accident. So hardly an unforgettable masterpiece. Rather a carefully chosen commercial vehicle for the disconcerting beauty of Liz Taylor, who picked up an Oscar for her portrayal.

  Cox rolls off the sofa, makes his way with a yawn to the kitchen and opens the fridge. He’s out of beer. Once Starr would have made him some tea. He misses her penetrating commentary and her critical view of the films that they would watch in the evening, snuggled up together under a blanket, until their eyelids drooped. He misses her goodnight kiss. It is now nearly eight months since she disappeared from his life. The shutters on the house where she lived with her parents have remained closed since then. No one talks about her any more and he no longer asks any questions. Even the sound of her voice is fading and it is as if she never really existed. Sometimes he thinks that he just dreamt that Clara Bow or Louise Brooks appeared to him from the hereafter to look him up like an old lover and thank him for the unconditional love he had shown for both stars. Because sometimes life is like a film.

  He strolls back to the living room to turn off the television, but waits for the sequence in which Gloria Wandrous wanders around Liggett’s flat in a beige satin nightgown. She gives a disapproving look to the banknotes that the lawyer has left on the dressing table in the bedroom and writes on the mirror in lipstick. Cox holds his breath as he reads the first word: NO. He shuts his eyes, he dares not look. Waits a couple of seconds. He holds his hands to his face, then peeps through his fingers and reads: NO SALE. He runs to the bathroom. Even the handwriting matches: just as in the film the O that Starr has left is not completely closed.

  Part II

  Starr Faithfull

  23

  Starr Faithfull

  The next morning Cox phones the police station and asks to speak to Luyckx. After a couple of minutes he is put through.

  “Luyckx.”

  “This is Victor Cox.”

  “Mr Cox! You must be calling because y
ou saw me yesterday on TV.”

  “I did follow the debate, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “They said I came over rather well. According to my colleagues I reminded them of an American actor. Any idea who they could be talking about?”

  “It doesn’t immediately spring to mind. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I have deciphered my girlfriend’s message in the bathroom. You know, NO SALE. It was a joke. She had seen Liz Taylor write precisely those words with her lipstick on a mirror in a film. And I had to guess the film.”

  “And what was the film then?”

  “Daniel Mann’s BUtterfield 8.”

  “Never heard of it. So what did she mean?”

  “Not for sale.”

  “My English is good enough to figure that out. But what did she mean by that message?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sounds like a great game.”

  “By the way, my girlfriend was asking about her knickers.”

  “What knickers?”

  “Her panties that you took away that evening.”

  “Oh, right! I’ll get them back to you. Sandy Misotten never wore underwear.”

  He did not go out all day and let the spring weather waft in through the open window as he put the finishing touches to the lecture on Hitchcock that he had to give the next evening at the High Noon Film Club. His text ended with the image in which the Master merged Eros and Thanatos in a morbid ballet: the murder scene in Dial M for Murder from 1954. He read the closing lines out aloud.

  “Captain Swann Lesgate, played by Anthony Dawson, is engaged by Tony Wendice, played by Ray Milland, to murder his wife Margot, played by Grace Kelly. When he throws himself on to the victim to kill her in the darkness of her flat, she falls back on to her husband’s desk. She is wearing a transparent, light-blue nightdress. The scene is filmed in a way to suggest that they are making love, that the murderer is her lover who has come to see her while her husband is out and in his ardour does not even take off his raincoat. As he strangles her with a silk stocking, she manages to grab a pair of scissors lying amidst the clutter on the desk and stabs her assailant in the back. He collapses with his head between her heaving breasts with his eyes wide open. Like after an orgasm – the orgasm of death.