No Sale

by Patrick Conrad

  “Why would your Cassin murder her anyway? He didn’t have the slightest motive. You, on the other hand…”

  “Because Dixie was a slut. Just like the other victims. Cassin is nothing but an exceptionally refined and cultured avenger, who restores morality and upholds justice.”

  “Do you realize what you’re saying,” asks Lannoy, appalled.

  “I’m not saying that, Inspector, he’s saying it,” whispers Cox, motionless in the middle of the room.

  Luyckx gets up and makes a sign to Lannoy to follow him.

  “He’s finished. I think we’d better leave him alone with Cassin and then carry on talking tomorrow at the station.”

  “No way! We should take him in now and keep him in detention until he tells the truth.”

  “If we lock him up, he’ll clam up, trust me.”

  “And if we leave him free, we’ll lose him. Fons, now that he knows that I’m on to him we can’t run that risk.”

  “He trusts me. What I suggest is that you carry on and I’ll stay here. Either he’ll sleep until the morning, or we’ll chat all night and sooner or later he’ll be in the bag. Assuming that your theory is right, of course. I’ll call you if I have to. Otherwise come and pick us up tomorrow morning at eight.”

  “I don’t know what you see in the guy,” sighs Lannoy as he opens the front door.

  “His frailty, maybe.”

  36

  The Cripple

  When Luyckx reappears in the living room, Cox is sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands. He is so sunk in thought that he does not even notice that Lannoy has gone.

  “Something isn’t right,” he says. “If Cassin also murdered Shelley, she wasn’t part of his master plan.”

  Luyckx fetches two Heinekens from the fridge, lights a cigarette and sits down opposite Cox in a sagging brown-leather armchair.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Judith is the fifth victim of the lipstick murderer. If he had also murdered Dixie, then Judith would have been the sixth one.”

  “Who’s Judith?”

  “Judith Felton… I mean Sandy Misotten.”

  “I think it would be best if you got a few hours’ sleep before we go any further.”

  “Everything seemed to fit, don’t you see? Walter Kyne Jr was a press baron, just like Baron Frans Misotten de Landshove. And Lang’s When the City Sleeps came out in Flanders as Het Vijfde Slachtoffer – The Fifth Victim… Sandy White and Sandy Misotten… They both have the same name… Of course, Vincent Price doesn’t commit suicide at the end, but that’s not relevant… Dixie Evans didn’t look like Shelley and Shelley Winters looked even less like Dixie… and Cassin…”

  “Victor, you’re just talking gibberish. Go to bed. I’m going to watch TV for a bit and then I’ll sleep on the sofa. If anything occurs to you, don’t hesitate to wake me.”

  Luyckx watches an episode of the series Wedding on Channel 2 with Louise Vlerickx in the role of the young hellcat who makes her parents’ lives a misery. He finds it hard to concentrate on the story because the image of the dead actress’s broken body in Notary Donders’s Lincoln keeps popping up in front of him, and at about eleven o’clock he switches off the television. Then he calmly looks round for the first time without anyone else watching. It’s the indescribable dreariness of Cox’s flat that strikes him. How could a film genius survive here all those years in such empty, depressing surroundings? This petty bourgeois apartment is nothing like the lair of an obsessive collector, still less that of a bloodthirsty monster.

  The pale daylight is just beginning to shine through the curtains when Luyckx hears, in his sleep, someone shutting the front door. He leaps up, swearing, and runs into the bedroom. The bed has been slept in, but it is empty. Lannoy was not mistaken: Cox has escaped.

  Luyckx opens the front door a few inches. The street is quiet and empty. The façades opposite are coming to life in the rosy glow of the rising sun. Early birds are singing loudly in the gardens. With relief, The Sponge notices that the grey Ford is still parked outside the door. Cox has left on foot, God only knows why. Luyckx sees him just disappearing round the corner and runs after him. He follows him at a distance across the square in front of the supermarket, still closed at this early hour. He loses sight of him when a dustcart stops in his line of vision to scoop up a pile of blue plastic sacks. He runs across the square, listening to the echo of his footsteps, hides behind the kiosk and sees Cox climb into a taxi.

  Luyckx gets in next to the driver in the next taxi, shows him his police ID and tells him to follow the first one.

  “OK, but there’s no smoking in my taxi.”

  “There is in mine,” growls Luyckx, opening the window.

  “Seat belt!”

  “Just make sure you don’t lose them,” says Luyckx, fixing his belt.

  On the Italielei, the first taxi goes through an amber light that then turns red. Luyckx’s driver slows down, hesitates and looks at him enquiringly.

  “What are we waiting for?” asks The Sponge excitedly.

  “I’m not driving through red. More than my job’s worth!” protests the driver.

  “Not with me on board. Give it a bit of fucking welly or I’ll take the wheel myself.”

  “Why do these things always happen to me?”

  They skid over the crossroads, missing a car coming from the left by a miracle and catch up with the first taxi on the Leopoldplaats. In the Nationalestraat, Cox’s white Mercedes slows down and stops outside number 121. Cox climbs out. Luyckx waits until he sees him disappear into the small passageway between the houses and opens his door.

  “Wait a minute! We’re not in the cinema. Who’s going to pay for this joyride?” asks the driver, damp with sweat.

  “Not me, for sure,” answers The Sponge, handing the stupefied man his visiting card. “Send the bill to the station.”

  Luyckx climbs out of the car. “Practically fucking killed me,” he hears the driver grumble.

  The passage into which Cox disappeared opens into a small courtyard full of beer barrels, bin bags and empty crates. There is just one rusty steel door in the blank wall ahead of him, and it turns out to be locked. No bell, no name. Cox must be behind that door.

  Luyckx decides to wait in the café over the road until he comes out again. He calls Lannoy on his mobile.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No way. I’m coming. Did he say anything?”

  “Come as quick as you can to the Nationalestraat. I’m sitting right opposite number 121 in a café… What’s the name of your bar again?”

  “The Bad Conscience. But just say The Cripple… Everyone knows me round here,” replies the owner, mopping the floor at the back of the room.

  “The Bad Conscience Café.”

  “Oh, The Cripple? He works for me. How did you end up there?”

  Ten minutes later Lannoy strides into the bar.

  “Hi Cripple,” he calls out as he sits down opposite Luyckx at the table by the window.

  “Lucky Luc, Jesus. It’s been a while. Coffee?”

  “Just the job.”

  Luyckx bends forwards and asks quietly: “One of your informants?”

  “A gold mine.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Well, didn’t your chum come with you?” asks Lannoy, teasing and nervous at the same time.

  “He’s locked himself in the building at the end of the passage on the other side. I followed him here.”

  “You let him get away?”

  “We were both asleep and…”

  “Obviously not in each other’s arms. That’s a relief.”

  “Luc, please! I can do without these idiotic comments.”

  The landlord shuffles up to their table in his slippers and slops two coffees across the burnt crimson plastic surface.

  “You know my boss?” asks Lannoy.

  “Of course. Superintendent Luyckx, also known as Fons The Sponge. I recognized him as soon as he came in.”

/>   “Come and join us,” says Luyckx. “I know that you sometimes help Luc out and I’ve got a couple of questions.”

  “I could tell. The price depends on the question.”

  “No. The price depends on the answer and I don’t have a penny on me.”

  “Lucky’s good for an advance.”

  “Who lives opposite?”

  “Above the launderette? Abdul and our Monique.”

  “No. The steel door at the end of the passage.”

  “No one lives there. It’s a sort of storeroom, think it belongs to the council, where the old guy keeps his junk.”

  “What sort of junk?”

  “Antiques, I think. I’ve never been in there. In fact no one has.”

  “And the old guy, any idea who he is?”

  “Some kind of wheeler-dealer. Not exactly friendly. Never speaks to a soul.”

  “Do you see him often?”

  “He comes and goes. I’ve noticed that he sometimes comes late in the evening and stays all night.”

  “Always alone?”

  “Mostly. Although I’ve seen him go in a couple of times at night with a woman.”

  “Is there another way out of the warehouse?”

  “No way. It’s completely surrounded by other buildings.”

  “Great. Ever heard of the elephant?”

  The Cripple looks at Lannoy in surprise.

  “Elephant?”

  “Forget it. Thanks anyway, not that the information was worth much.”

  “Like I said: depends on the question.”

  “Have a drink on me,” says Lannoy.

  It is half past nine when Cox finally appears with a flat rectangular cardboard box under his arm.

  “Here he comes,” says The Sponge excitedly. “I’ll do the talking.”

  Luyckx and Lannoy run across the street and stop Cox in front of the launderette’s steamed-up window. He jumps out of his skin, turns pale and stares at them wordlessly.

  “Well, Victor, did you sleep well?”

  “What… What are you doing here?”

  “We could ask you the same thing.”

  “Me? I, er… I was about to…”

  “About to show us what you hide behind that steel door.”

  “What steel door?”

  “At the end of the passage.”

  “You don’t want to bother with that. Just a lot of old junk…”

  “But I’m curious. What about you, Luc?”

  “I’m squirming with impatience.”

  “Listen, Fons, I have a meeting at ten o’clock and…”

  “I know, Victor.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Mr Cox,” interrupts Lannoy impatiently. “Either you open that door for us right away or I’ll do it.”

  Cox’s hand is shaking so violently that he has trouble inserting the key into the lock.

  “Come on, give us that box,” says Luyckx.

  “What’s inside?” asks Lannoy.

  “An old dress.”

  “A dress?”

  “One of Virginia Rappe’s. I was just taking it to the launderette.”

  Cox opens the door and steps into the warehouse, followed by Luyckx and Lannoy, who can scarcely believe their eyes.

  “Jesus Christ. What the fuck is that?”

  “The elephant,” says Luyckx calmly.

  “My temple,” says Cox with tears in his eyes. “Do you know what Jean Cocteau said about it?”

  “‘The cinema: that temple of sex with its goddesses, its guards and its victims,’” replies Lannoy.

  “How did you know that?” asks Luyckx.

  “Because it’s written up there over the door.”

  “That is, to a certain extent, the motto of my collection.”

  “How did you get that thing in here?” asks Luyckx, stepping out of the elephant and looking at the erect trunk thirty feet above his head.

  “It’s a long story. In 1916 D.W. Griffith had twenty of these beasts built for his epic Intolerance as part of a gigantic set to represent Babylon at the time of Belshazzar.”

  “Don’t tell me you bought it at an auction in Hollywood.”

  “It seems kind of familiar to me.”

  “It could well be,” says Cox. “You may have seen it in the garden of the Babylon Motel in Londerzeel on the Antwerp – Brussels highway. I saved it from being demolished in 1985. It’s the only surviving copy in the world.”

  “When Marion Mees was murdered in bungalow no. 17, just like… Who was it again?”

  “Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh…”

  “Right… When she was stabbed to death, you forgot to inform us that you not only knew the victim but also the motel.”

  “No idea.”

  “Bullshit!” growls Lannoy. “You knew very well that the motel resembled the one in the film. You had been there to pick up this ridiculous thing!”

  “All motels look the same.”

  “But at the time you yourself pointed out the connection with Hitchcock’s film!”

  “No, that was Starr. But you’re right,” sighs Cox. “I no longer know what to think. I’m mixing everything up. The closer I come to the truth, the less I understand it. The more I… start to doubt myself.”

  Luyckx opens the cardboard box and takes out the silk dress.

  “Is that Virginia Rappe’s dress?”

  “Yes. But I don’t know where the bloodstains come from. I swear it.”

  “What bloodstains?” asks Luyckx.

  “On the front…”

  “That’s not blood, Victor… Those are wine stains.”

  “Why did you think they were bloodstains, Cox?”

  “Fons,” stammers Cox. “I think I need help.”

  37

  Carla Wuyts

  That same day, Cox was transferred at his own request to the psychiatric department of Stuivenberg Hospital, where he was confined under police supervision in a single room. In view of his mental exhaustion, Dr Carla Wuyts, head of the Schizophrenia and Paranoia Department, prescribed a sleeping cure for him for the next forty-eight hours.

  Meanwhile Lannoy was combing through the warehouse on the Nationalestraat with a dozen detectives and drawing up an inventory of the hundreds of pieces included in Cox’s incredible collection. Lannoy was radiant. Anything with a conceivable connection to the films that had inspired the murders was put to one side and added to the various dossiers as potential evidence, including a pair of Thelma Todd’s pale-green, satin evening shoes, signed photos of Shelley Winters and Sandy White, press clippings about the Starr Faithfull case, the grey wig used by Anthony Perkins in Psycho, Gloria Grahame’s fake jewellery from The Big Heat and Liz Taylor’s frock from BUtterfield 8. In this delicate task he drew on the assistance of Barton Poels, the projectionist at the Film Museum, whom he had already consulted over the possible cinematographic parallels between Shelley Cox’s disappearance and Aldrich’s film.

  On Monday, 24th June 2002, Cox is sitting in light-blue pyjamas opposite Dr Wuyts, a little drowsy from the sleeping pills. Four framed diplomas and a couple of children’s drawings hang on the gleaming walls of her plain white office. The light is falling in horizontal bands through the blinds. On the window sill, snake plants sprout from five plastic flowerpots like yellow-green petrified flames. Somewhere a clock ticks unseen. Outside, an ambulance is driving into Accident and Emergency, its siren echoing. Dr Wuyts looks through her reading glasses at the file lying in front of her on the spotless, glass desktop. She has Joan Crawford’s lips, thinks Cox. Then she lights a cigarette, clears her throat, and asks: “Are you feeling a little rested now, Mr…”

  “Cox, Victor Cox.”

  “Of course. You’re a professor of film history if I understand correctly?”

  “Retired. But I have the feeling I could sleep for years.”

  “That’s quite normal. You were hospitalized voluntarily. Why was that?”

  “Because I fear I have done things th
at I cannot remember and for which I am not responsible.”

  “Such as?”

  “Have you spoken to Superintendent Luyckx?”

  “He has told me one or two things about you.”

  “Good. That makes it a little easier for me. Fons is a great chap. Well… Sometimes I have visions that lead me to believe that I have murdered my wife Shelley and my girlfriend Starr. And not only my wife and girlfriend.”

  “You mean Louise Vlerickx, Virginia Steiner, Marion Mees, Debbie Marchal and Sandy Misotten?”

  “I see that you are well informed.”

  “And why would you have committed these atrocities, Mr Cox?”

  “I really don’t know, that is precisely the problem. I am, I believe, the mildest of men. I cannot bear the sight of blood – except on the cinema screen – and even then preferably not in colour. Be frank, Doctor, do I look like a serial murderer?”

  “You look too normal not to look like one.”

  “It is as if there were someone else inside me who awakes when I sleep and without my knowing does unpleasant things of which I am subsequently suspected and which I myself am starting to believe in.”

  “A sort of dark, demonic, second Victor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which Victor do you see when you look in the mirror?”

  “Myself.”

  “And this other Victor, can you describe him?”

  “He looks exactly like me. But when he walks he is slightly more bent over. Like someone running through the rain.”

  “Or like a guilty man who doesn’t want to be recognized. So you’ve actually seen him?”

  “Once. Actually, he really was running through the rain. Across the Nassau Bridge to Docklands.”

  “And what was he doing on the Nassau Bridge?”

  “He was pushing my wife under a car.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Cassin. Henri Cassin. He writes letters to me signed Henri C.”

  “Handwritten letters?”

  “No. Typed on a computer and printed on normal white A4 paper. The sort of paper that everyone has at home.”

  “What exactly was in these letters?”