No Sale

by Patrick Conrad

  Cox stares dumbfounded at his notes. Before him is the proof that could just about reconcile his craziest theories with the absurd truth. He gets up and stands by the open window. He stares out into the emptiness, as if the whitewashed garden walls, the late-budding beech tree, the clouds in the thin air, the backs of the houses opposite had all disappeared. Only Mrs Kountché, who seems to live on her floating balcony, waves at him like a bright flag for the second time that day. She must be wondering why he is running around with a plaster on his forehead. One day I will take her with me to the elephant, he thinks, because I’ve made that woman much too inquisitive. Then he goes back to his computer to note down his astonishing discovery. To leave behind a trail, in case anything should happen to him. Just as in the classic thrillers, anyone who has stumbled across the truth – like James Stewart for example in The Man Who Knew Too Much, must learn to live with the idea that they could be eliminated at any moment as an inconvenient witness. The truth, when it threatens to emerge into daylight, can sometimes be dangerous.

  Sunday, 9th June 2002 – continued

  I must and will avenge Starr. After my discovery, Luyckx and his incompetent police force would just be in the way. This much is clear: Starr, Debbie Marchal and Marion Mees were all murdered by the same individual. I can imagine no more fascinating adversary than a cinema-loving psychopath who knows as much about film as I do. Perhaps a former student that I treated unfairly. Or a frustrated director, who in revenge for his failed career restages spectacular murder scenes. My life makes sense once again because I can finally put all this useless accumulation of knowledge to some good use. I am playing the leading role in a film of which I do not know the screenplay. I am playing the hero who gropes in the dark for a faceless enemy.

  Debbie Marchal was not only murdered because she had the misfortune to resemble Gloria Grahame, but above all because she smoked in the same way as Debby, the gangster’s moll in The Big Heat, and wore the same fur coat. Perhaps her murderer had been following her for some time from one hotel bar to another and waited until 14th October to strike. This date does correspond to the date when the film premiered, and the whole world saw Vince’s mistress die on-screen, forty-nine years ago. Perhaps he was walking around the hotel lobby, although I do not remember bumping into anyone that evening that looked like Lee Marvin. Unless he was waiting for her in the car park in order to strangle and then burn her.

  The resemblance to Marion Mees’s murder is striking. In both cases the victim has the same name as the character murdered in the sequence that is being mimicked. But in the Mees case the murderer went further in his disgusting staging. The choice of the abandoned motel, the room number, the number of stab wounds, the shower – everything fitted.

  If he also murdered Starr, it shows that despite the show of force by the gendarmerie and the Ostend police the next day, he was still hanging around the neighbourhood of the Hotel Astoria. He had probably heard that she had come to see me, and the opportunity was too good to miss. Because just like his other victims, she must have long been on his list. He knew everything about her, things of which I had no idea, details that I still do not know. Well before me, he was familiar with the resemblance to Starr Faithfull, and today I find it hard to come to terms with the notion that he knew her better than I did.

  Who were her best friends? She had no friends. At least as far as I know. It wasn’t worth the trouble, she said, as if she was just passing through and our love was enough for her. Just now I realize how little I knew her, despite the passion that united us. Who in our circle knew as much about film as we did? No one. Perhaps it was someone she had known in the United States who had followed her surreptitiously to Europe. A childhood friend who knew the story of Starr Faithfull, and her sister Tucker and her dog Congo, and – who knows – the unspeakable secret that tied her to her invisible father and explained her penchant for older men. Or an American fellow student whom she admired for his knowledge of film when she played strip quiz in New York. Unless…

  Cox gets up and goes to the bathroom, avoiding the window so that he does not have to wave at Mrs Kountché. He looks through the words NO SALE on the mirror at a lonely, clapped-out old man, at the stubble on his sunken cheeks, at the purplish bags under his eyes, at the plaster on his forehead. Then he bends over and kisses the letter A, licks the dried lipstick and tastes the lips of Starr. Unless…

  He goes back to his desktop and types with sorrowful fingers:Unless Starr herself did away with the other two women out of jealousy. She knew better than anyone the films that served as the model for both murders. I remember that the pushy way that Marion Mees pursued me in the corridors of the Institute got on her nerves. The night that Marion was murdered, she was not with me. She even lied to the police, apparently to protect me, when she declared that we had been in bed together. And as far as Debbie Marchal is concerned, perhaps Starr had arrived one day earlier in Koksijde to surprise me and had seen us chatting in the bar. Mad with jealousy, she attacked the singer as she made her way to her car. She knew The Big Heat and set up the murder to put the police on a false trail: the trail of the cinema-loving serial murderer. The next day she staged her own murder and promptly disappeared, utterly and completely, from my life.

  Cox rereads the last few lines that he has written down. It is an absurd theory. His imagination is running away with itself. How can he suspect Starr of such abominable deeds? Wincing, he deletes the paragraph. He feels dizzy and there is an acid taste in his mouth. He has eaten nothing all day and decides to go to Docklands. Perhaps his regular table at Ma Mussel’s is free. The table next to the group portrait with Dixie on the wall.

  26

  Clint Eastwood

  It was one of those sensuous spring evenings when everything seemed possible; the café terraces were buzzing like bee hives and the young women on bikes were showing off their legs again after the endless winter. Safe and sound beneath its blue dome, the city dawdled before nightfall. It was the first time since Starr’s disappearance that Cox had left his flat to explore the world with no other purpose than to breathe in the scent of spring and enjoy an evening stroll. A three-dimensional world in colour, inhabited by carefree people of flesh and blood. It was as if he had awoken, pale and weak, from a nightmare, a bloody nightmare that smelt of celluloid, popcorn and Chanel No. 5.

  As he crossed the Groenplaats, he thought back to that evening when he had paraded arm-in-arm with Louise Brooks among the fluttering pigeons. When they got into the taxi everyone was looking at them because she was so beautiful and he was so old. Later that evening the body of Marion Mees was discovered in the Babylon Motel and… Stop! He had promised to forget the ghosts of the past this evening.

  As he walked along the Oude Mansstraat and smiled pleasantly at the whores ogling him from their pink cocoons, he decided it would not be such a stupid idea, after eating, to come back and be pampered by one of these ladies; if only to wipe the memory of his nights with Starr from his mind once and for all. He turned into the Verversrui to have a look at the windows of the new Eros centre, and bumped into Luyckx, who was coming out of one of the brothels. Perhaps because he felt he had been caught out, The Sponge immediately launched into an attack.

  “Who do we have here! Out hunting, Mr Cox?”

  “I would not dream in the slightest of trespassing on your hunting reserve, Superintendent.”

  “Just joking. Someone lucky enough to have a stunning young girlfriend like you do wouldn’t come looking for anything here. How is she?”

  Venomous bastard, thinks Cox and replies: “She gets prettier by the day.”

  Just then Luyckx’s Polish girlfriend Katia appears in her display window. She sits down on the black imitation leather barstool in her golden bikini and starts to put on purple lipstick.

  “Just like Katia. You met her some time ago at Ma Mussel’s. In Docklands.”

  Luyckx taps with his signet ring on the window and motions to Katia to greet Cox. She waves like a
pale automaton bathed in blacklight. Cox waves back and says: “Actually I was just on my way to Ma Mussel’s.”

  “That’s what I was planning too. I’m parked over there. They wouldn’t dare give me a ticket. Do you want a lift?”

  “Why not?”

  Less than a minute later Cox is sitting in the police car, while Luyckx, to create the right impression, clenches his jaw, puts on his Ray-Bans and races over the Falconplein with siren screaming and blue lights flashing. Through the windscreen Antwerp looks just like San Francisco.

  The restaurant is full, but his table is still free.

  “Hi, Spongey!” cries Ma Mussel, planting her lips like two sticky suckers on Luyckx’s. “It’s a real pleasure to see you! Table for two?”

  “Three. Katia’s coming along after work. Or should we make it four?” he asks over his shoulder.

  “I’m alone this evening.”

  “Left on our own by the young ones?” laughs Ma Mussel.

  “It’s my evening off,” laughs Cox feebly in reply. “But if you could I would like our regular table over there in the corner.”

  “No problem, darling. Blokes who come without their women can do anything here. How about a nice little aperitif?”

  “The usual shampoo,” replies Luyckx, sitting down on Starr’s chair. “Been in an accident?” He points at Cox’s forehead.

  “I fell over on a breakwater on Saturday night.”

  “And what were you doing on Saturday night on a breakwater? Sorry – professional instinct.”

  “Every year on the eighth of June I commemorate Shelley’s death and throw a wreath of white lilies into the sea at midnight. They were her favourite flower. And I think it’s more dramatic than the Bonaparte Dock.”

  “More romantic, anyway. But didn’t she die on the sixth of June?”

  “For me she was only dead once I knew. And that was the eighth.”

  “Four years ago… I can still see you writing in my office… Christ, how time flies!”

  “Two mussels à la provençale?”

  Ma Mussel sets the champagne down on the table in a plastic ice bucket.

  “I would rather have them straight,” says Cox.

  Luyckx fills two glasses.

  “Me too. Recovered from our little drive?”

  “Most impressive. I thought I was in Dirty Harry’s car during that chase in Magnum Force.”

  “San Francisco PD Inspector Harry Callahan! My hero! A true cop on the beat who wants only one thing – results. In the force they say I’m a bit like Clint Eastwood.”

  “That would be the glasses.”

  “And the method, Cox, the method. And what’s more we’re the same height and I often wear light-grey tweed. I don’t often go to the pictures, but I’ve seen all of his.”

  Luyckx forms a pistol with his hand, sticks his extended forefinger between Cox’s eyes and says, barely moving his lips: “This is a forty-four Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world…”

  “Good imitation,” says Cox, taking a sip from his glass.

  “I know what you’re thinking: did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I’ve kinda lost track myself. But this being a forty-four Magnum, it would blow your head clean off… You’ve got to ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?”

  “Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry, a Warner Brothers-Malpaso production from 1971.”

  “You’re unbeatable. Cheers.”

  They clink glasses. Ma Mussel places two steaming pots on the table with great to-do and says: “If those aren’t the biggest and best mussels you’ve ever eaten, I’ll shut this place down tomorrow.”

  “Could I have a chilled pint of beer, please?” says Cox.

  They start eating in silence. Gloria Gaynor’s Walk On By is playing on the jukebox. Ma Mussel hands Cox his beer.

  “The difference between Callahan and you,” he says calmly, emptying his beer glass in small sips, “is that he always manages to catch the murderer.”

  “That’s the difference between the pictures and real life,” snaps Luyckx. “Two things that you mix up.”

  “Two worlds that complement each other, I would say. But that’s enough theory. How’s the investigation going?”

  “Which investigation?”

  “The murders of Louise Vlerickx, Virginia Steiner, Marion Mees, Debbie Marchal, Sandy Misotten…”

  “We’d have made more progress if we could prove there was a connection between the different cases. But we are making progress, real progress… I heard from my Ostend colleague Lejeune that you knew Ms Marchal personally. Is that right?”

  “‘Know’ is putting it strongly. I met her in the bar of the Astoria in Koksijde the night that she was murdered. But I was not the only one.”

  “Out of ten million Belgians I only know one who ran into three of the five victims. And that’s you. I don’t know why, Mr Cox, but since we got to know each other I have the impression that you know much more than you let slip.”

  Luyckx fills his glass, empties it in one go and lights a cigarette.

  “You know what Callahan would do in my place?” he continues. “He would take out his Magnum and stick the chrome barrel down your throat. He’d take you by your hair into the kitchen and hold your head above the frying pan and scare the living shit out of you until you dropped to your knees among the potato peel and begged for forgiveness and choking and sobbing confessed everything. That’s what Dirty Harry would do.”

  “That’s the difference between the pictures and real life,” says Cox with excessive composure. Luyckx breathes deeply to calm down. He puts out his cigarette in a mussel shell and looks through his shades at the group portrait on the wall without recognizing Shelley.

  “But if you ask me a question I’m prepared to answer to the extent possible.”

  Cox is playing the game. He is certain that Luyckx did not have the slightest intention of coming to eat here tonight, but is taking advantage of their chance encounter to give him an informal grilling.

  “Why didn’t Starr come with you? The last time I was at your place she wasn’t there either.”

  Cox hesitates. Is it to his advantage to continue lying or has the moment come to tell the truth? The only problem is that he does not know what the truth is.

  “The situation is more complicated than you think. I haven’t seen Starr since the fourteenth of October last year.”

  Luyckx takes off his sunglasses. Callahan would have done that too. At this point in the conversation, eye contact is called for.

  “Did you enjoy them?” asks Ma Mussel, who could not have chosen a worse moment.

  “First class,” says Cox.

  She looks sternly at Luyckx’s half-full pot.

  “Well, Spongey, no appetite?”

  “I’m on a diet.”

  “Trying to look like Clint Eastwood,” laughs Cox.

  “He does look like him,” says Ma Mussel. “Especially with those cool shades. How about a nice digestif?”

  “I’ll just have another pint.”

  Ma Mussel clears the table. Luyckx fills his glass again, lights another cigarette, and says: “I’m listening.”

  “Well on the fourteenth of October we were together at the Astoria Hotel. It was already getting dark and Starr proposed going for a swim together.”

  “The day after Marchal was murdered?”

  “Yes, but that has nothing to do with my story. I was under suspicion and could not leave the building. I went on to the balcony and watched through my binoculars as she dived naked into the waves. I have not seen her since.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Lejeune about this right away?”

  “Because it did not cause me any immediate concern. Starr was an excellent swimmer. I went to have a drink in the bar and when I got back to the room her things had disappeared.”

  “And you never thought it necessary to inform me?”

  “Of course not… I s
till hoped that she would come back. Because who else would have taken her clothes from the room? Nothing suggests that she is no longer alive. No one has reported her disappearance. And her body has never been washed ashore.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Last Saturday I found the belt from her bathrobe on the beach.”

  Cox does not mention the eerie resemblance to Starr Faithfull’s story. That was his personal information and it was too soon to share it with Luyckx.

  “Eight months later?”

  Luyckx pours the last drops of champagne into his glass.

  “Here’s our pint,” says Ma Mussel.

  “Thank you. I hadn’t been there for eight months.”

  “I’ll have a cognac, Ma. And you’ve heard nothing of her since the fourteenth of October? No letters, no phone calls, nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Funny that you didn’t go and look for her. I assume she did have an address?”

  “She had an address. But she’s moved. No one knows where to.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this the last time I came to see you?”

  “Because I did not want to burden you with my sorrows.”

  “By the way, the lipstick on your bathroom mirror is not the same lipstick that we found on Sandy Misotten.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That night when I was in your bathroom, I scraped off some lipstick from the word ‘NO’. To have it analysed.”

  “Why?”

  “And a cognac for our Spongey!” cries Ma Mussel from behind the bar.

  Luyckx gets up and takes the pear-shaped glass.

  “The face and breasts of your good friend Sandy Misotten had been crudely smeared with lipstick. And on one of the windows of the greenhouse where we found her there was a text in English. Which had also been written in lipstick.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Catch me or there will be another murder.”

  The night is bright and the sea breeze blowing out of the purple north over the bay of the Scheldt smells of iodine. The coloured lights of the bars and restaurants opposite are reflected like thousands of trembling serpents in the inky waters of the Bonaparte Dock. Cox strolls along the terraces that are still packed full at this late hour and looks almost tenderly at the festive crowds. They all seem so happy and innocent, he thinks, despite the fact that one in three of them voted for the fascist morons of the VB Flemish nationalists. Who knows what blind hatred and ignorance, what excruciating vacuity is concealed behind those glittering masks? Who knows what immeasurable stupidity and suppressed violence is hidden by their forced bonhomie? They are not who they appear to be and their hollow laughter prevents us from understanding how rotten the world is, and how sick the chanting wraiths who populate it are.