No Sale

by Patrick Conrad

  “Only things that I could have written. With one small exception. C. disapproves of Luyckx, whereas I admire him. At times, Luyckx makes me think of Dirty Harry.”

  “Well, Mr Cox, that all sounds very interesting,” says Dr Wuyts. “I think that’s enough for an initial conversation. Let’s talk some more tomorrow morning. The best thing you can do for now is to get some sleep.”

  Wuyts accompanies Cox to the door. In the waiting room, besides his nurses and three gendarmes, there are two men in uniform talking to Luyckx. Cox knows where The Sponge has come from: the whole place smells of coconut milk. But he does not care. The Verversrui is part of another life now.

  “Morning, Victor, sleep well?” asks Luyckx with a reassuring smile.

  “Everyone is asking me the same question.”

  “Could I have a word with you, Superintendent?” asks Dr Wuyts from the doorway.

  “Sure. Victor, these gentlemen will accompany you to your room. They’re going to take some fingerprints. It’s part of the routine and won’t hurt.”

  Cox stares ahead hazily, as if he hardly feels affected by what is happening.

  “Good,” he says. “That way you’ll have Cassin’s prints too.”

  “People smoke in here, I can smell it,” says Luyckx, sitting down opposite the doctor and lighting a cigarette.

  “All my adult patients are chain-smokers.”

  “I didn’t think Cox smoked.”

  “One month in our institution and he’ll be on two packs a day, trust me.”

  “You’ll keep him here that long?”

  “We’ve only had a short chat so far because he’s still too tired, but I can tell you now that this is a complicated case. On the one hand he’s displaying all the symptoms of a classic case of schizophrenia, on the other hand I have the impression that he’s play-acting.”

  “Like I said yesterday, as far as I’m concerned he’s innocent. But then I’m not a psychiatrist. I know him pretty well. He’s living in another world. Cox is one of the loneliest people I’ve ever met in my career. Even when he was married, he would run off alone into his dreams of Hollywood, while living with a woman who he could see wasting away, ravaged with drink. After she died he had a pretty strange relationship with a woman called Starr…”

  “Who he’s afraid he murdered…”

  “And who I met a few times. She was much younger than him and actually looked like a Twenties film star. She knew it and really put it on. I think that what attracted him was this artificial, unreal character rather than the girl herself. With her he walked through the looking glass so to speak and his dream became reality. But I didn’t buy their relationship. When she vanished from his life he buried himself in his studies and his collection in order to forget how lonely he was, and his passion for film ended up with him confusing fiction and reality. For me, Victor is just a pathetic, naive romantic.”

  “Nice analysis, Superintendent. But at the same time there really are some things that link him directly or indirectly to the murders.”

  “Right. But on the other hand he’s got some pretty strong alibis.”

  “He’s now personally convinced that he has the murders of his wife and girlfriend on his conscience.”

  “What do you mean? Since last night we know for certain that Starr is still alive. My colleague has been in touch by phone with the Mortenson family. Since she disappeared she’s been living in the United States, and she’s arriving at Zaventem tomorrow evening at a quarter to ten.”

  “I would prefer it if he didn’t find out about that. For the moment he mustn’t be subjected to any emotional shocks. It’s possible he would clam up altogether and I want him to talk. If he is accusing himself of murders that he didn’t commit I want to know why.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll go personally to pick up Miss Mortenson at the airport. I want to be the first to have a chat with that young lady.”

  Part III

  Starr Baker

  38

  Starr Baker

  Luyckx is holding up a cardboard sign saying Starr Mortenson when the first passengers off flight AA 2176 appear in the crowded arrivals hall at Zaventem. It was a good idea. Because he wouldn’t have recognized the platinum blonde beauty in her Armani dress, pushing a trolley full of Louis Vuitton bags and hiding behind her dark sunglasses, if she hadn’t looked up in surprise at his sign in the crowd.

  “Superintendent Luyckx? This is amazing! How did you know?…”

  “It’s my job to know everything.”

  “Don’t tell me something awful has happened.”

  “Yes and no. I guess you’re tired, but…”

  “No way! The beds in first class are heavenly.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I’ve booked a suite at the Antwerp Hilton.”

  “Do you mind if I take you there? I mean, you’re not expecting a limo?”

  “Not at all, it would be cool to be in a normal car again.”

  Luyckx sits down next to Starr at the wheel. It’s never happened to him before, but he has to start the engine three times before it gets going. The car smells of Chanel No. 5. It would be stupid to light a cigarette now and spoil this sensual aroma from across the ocean.

  “To tell the truth I wouldn’t have recognized you,” says Luyckx, as they turn on to the Brussels ring road.

  “New life, new hairdo,” laughs Starr.

  “New life?”

  “I’ve got married. To Joe Baker, the producer. A very influential man in the movies. It was in all the papers.”

  “There’s no business like show business.”

  “Joe is a real teddy bear. Older men have always attracted me. He’s starting next week on the new Clint Eastwood film. And then Joe will be so busy I’ll hardly see him.”

  “So have you met Mr Eastwood personally?”

  “I had lunch with old Clint yesterday at Zoe’s. Why do you ask?”

  “Just for the hell of it.”

  “So I took the opportunity to go away for a few weeks. After Antwerp I’m going on to Paris, then Milan and Rome. Shopping. But why did you come and pick me up?”

  “It’s Victor.”

  “Victor?”

  “Cox, Victor Cox.”

  “Professor Cox? What’s up with that old dreamer?”

  Luyckx can’t figure out why Starr is being so cold and distant. It’s as if she barely remembers Victor.

  “But you were more than just good friends, right?”

  “That’s what he’d have liked, sure. He was in love with Louise Brooks and Clara Bow, and Pola Negri and Theda Bara. He didn’t realize it himself any more.”

  “I thought you were in a proper relationship and were living together.”

  “What? I went out with him twice to the cinema. And after I finished my studies we went out a couple of times together for dinner to talk about films…”

  “When I called round, you opened the door.”

  “That was just a coincidence because I’d come round to bring back the books and DVDs that he’d lent me.”

  “And the black lace knickers?”

  “My knickers? You must be joking!”

  “I found a pair of your knickers in his bathroom.”

  “They certainly weren’t mine. Cox was very popular with his students. You could just as easily have bumped into someone else.”

  “So there was nothing between you?”

  “Where did you get that idea? Is he having you on?”

  “Did he bother you?”

  “No. Professor Cox always behaved like a gentleman. Which is more than you can say of some people.”

  “Even so, once you told me you’d spent the night of Saturday the nineteenth to Sunday the twentieth of June in bed with him – the night that Marion Mees was murdered in the Babylon Motel.”

  “That was a joke, of course. And a little white lie. I felt sorry for him. Sometimes he looked so helpless. I wanted to give him an alibi.”

  “A
nd what happened last year on the fourteenth of October when you’d arranged to meet him at the Astoria Hotel in Koksijde?”

  “Superintendent! I’ve never arranged to meet Cox in a hotel! I’ve never even heard of the Astoria in Koksijde. Before I moved to New York I did spend a couple of days on the coast. I had to go to a reception in Ostend on the Seastar II to stand in for my father because he’d already left the country.”

  “Why didn’t you warn Cox that you were leaving?”

  “Why should I? He wasn’t that important!”

  “Victor claims that you went swimming that night and never came back to the room. That you drowned. Or were murdered. Just like Starr Faithfull in 1931.”

  “Could I have one of your cigarettes? In New York I more or less had to give up, but after what you’ve been saying I really feel like one.”

  Luyckx takes one for himself with relief and hands her the pack. Just the way she takes a cigarette out of the pack with her long blood-red fingernails gives her the air of a star. He thrills with pleasure to think that he is sitting in his car next to a woman who only the previous day had lunch with Clint Eastwood.

  “Who exactly was Starr Faithfull?” asks Luyckx, exhaling.

  “It’s unbelievable that Cox stumbled across that. He’s a living encyclopaedia. Starr Faithfull wasn’t even an actress. She was a typical victim of American hypocrisy during Prohibition and the Depression. My parents called me Starr because Mortenson was also Marilyn Monroe’s surname. Baker too, by the way. It’s always pursued me, but that’s fine. I was one year old when my father read an article about the unsolved death of Starr Faithfull. He developed a weird sympathy for this innocent creature that had the same name as his daughter, and when my little sister was born he gave her the same name as Faithfull’s little sister: Tucker. Not exactly good taste. Later, when I got a dog for my eleventh birthday, we called him Congo, just like Faithfull’s dog. But there the resemblance ends.”

  “What’s behind the words NO SALE?”

  “No sale? No idea. Not for sale, maybe? Why?”

  “Cox claims you wrote that on his bathroom mirror in lipstick. I saw it because he never wiped it off.”

  “Oh that! Now I remember. I did do that, yes. One of the few times I called in on him. It was meant to be a game. He had to guess what film it came from.”

  “Butterfly 8.”

  “No, BUtterfield 8. So what exactly are you accusing Cox of?”

  “Me? He’s accused himself.”

  “Of what?”

  “A whole series of murders, including you and his wife. The doctors say it’s schizophrenia.”

  “And do you think he…”

  “I could imagine it. Does the name Henri Cassin mean anything to you?”

  “It does remind me vaguely of a character in a film. But what film?”

  Luyckx has forgotten the name himself, but her answer is enough. He stubs out his cigarette and says: “Doesn’t matter.”

  “We’d all noticed our nice old professor was a little absent-minded. But I didn’t know him well enough to imagine that things were so bad. Where is he now?”

  “The psychiatric department at Stuivenberg Hospital.”

  “Poor bastard. Can I visit him?”

  “He’s not allowed any visitors for now.”

  “But if he sees me he’ll realize that everything was just a fantasy. I’m living proof that he’s innocent!”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  The car disappears into the Craeybeckx Tunnel.

  “Are we already in Antwerp? You must have driven really fast.”

  “It’s nothing compared with Harry Callahan.”

  “Who?”

  “Clint Eastwood! Dirty Harry on the streets of San Francisco. That’s something else!”

  “That was stuntmen, not him.”

  So as not to be held up by the traffic lights, but mainly to impress her, Luyckx sticks the blue light on the roof of his car. Five minutes later he pulls up at the entrance of the Antwerp Hilton.

  Luyckx signals to the porter to take care of the luggage and walks up to reception. He’s known the concierge for years, but he’s never seen the young man standing in for him tonight.

  “Superintendent Luyckx, Antwerp Detective Branch. Ms Starr Baker has just arrived. We’ve escorted her here from Zaventem at the request of the Ministry of Culture. I hope you realize who she is. I’m counting on you to treat her with proper consideration.”

  “Her suite is ready, Superintendent. With the white roses and bottle of Dom Pérignon 1977 that her husband ordered.”

  Starr makes her entrance, and the few men still hanging around the bar at that late hour hold their breath.

  “Your suite is ready,” repeats Luyckx, who likes the sound of the words.

  “Thanks for the crazy ride,” she laughs. “And don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.”

  “Pleasure,” says Luyckx, bending over to kiss the hand that only yesterday had touched the cold talons of old Clint.

  39

  Barton Poels

  “Luc, who’s that overblown idiot pacing up and down outside who talks to me as if I’m the lowliest cop on the beat and claims to be working as the scientific adviser to Chief Superintendent Lannoy?” asks Luyckx as he walks into his office. “And what are you doing in my office, come to that?”

  “I was waiting for you. Like always,” replies Lannoy tersely, glancing out into the corridor. “That’s Barton Poels, the man who’s handed me the solution to the murder of Cox’s wife. You know, the film by Aldrich. He’s also helped me select all the incriminating material from Cox’s collection. Free of charge, to boot! He’s the projectionist at the Film Museum and knows just as much about films as our hero.”

  “Really? Get him in.”

  “Mr Poels!” cries Lannoy through the doorway.

  Poels comes into the office. A plastic bag from the supermarket is hanging on his left arm. The Sponge guesses he’s around sixty, but with his sparse white hair, zinc-grey eyes behind bulging glasses, sunken cheeks and wan skin he looks older. At first sight he looks like Cox – or rather like a hypocritical, vicious, poisonous copy of Cox. A Cox with scales, who has not seen the sunlight for years.

  “Can I speak to you alone?” he asks Lannoy.

  “Mr Poels,” says Luyckx calmly, “you’re on my turf here and if you have something to say you can say it to me. Personally, I have no objection if Inspector Lannoy stays to listen.”

  “Chief Superintendent Luyckx,” mumbles Lannoy irritably.

  “It’s all the same to me. I found something else in a rubbish dump in the courtyard on the Nationalestraat that will interest you.”

  “Let’s see,” sighs Luyckx.

  Poels pulls the champagne bottle with the photos of Fatty Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe, that Cox had been looking for, out of his plastic bag.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” asks Lannoy.

  “It’s a rather tasteless souvenir that you could obtain at the time of Fatty Arbuckle’s trial in Hollywood. As you can see, the neck is broken. It’s probably the murder weapon used by Cox to fatally wound Virgina Steiner.”

  “The examination will determine that. You seem pretty well informed.”

  “Inspector Lannoy has brought me up to date with the latest developments. How else could I find what I needed in all that junk? Who could have thought that Cox would do something like that?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Unfortunately. I’d started lecturing again at the Institute when on the sixteenth of February 1975 – I’ll never forget the date – I was taken to hospital with kidney stones. Cox was my stand-in. When I came back three months later they’d given him my job. That’s what happens in education.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “On the dole for seventeen years. Until an acquaintance in the Ministry got me a job as projectionist in the Film Museum in Brussels. When the Film Museum opened here in ’95 I was switched to
Antwerp.”

  “You don’t seem very fond of Cox.”

  “How would you react?”

  “Have you seen him recently?”

  “The last time was two years ago at his pathetic farewell drinks at the Institute, which, incidentally, I wasn’t invited to. But since I’d seen him come into the place to slide into my job while I was croaking in hospital I couldn’t honestly miss the chance to see him go. As usual he was showing off with all the prettiest students. He thought he was irresistible.”

  “Perhaps he was,” teases Luyckx.

  “I can see that you don’t really know him. Cox is an arrogant pseudo-intellectual who’s been running unsuccessfully around every woman like a randy dog since his wife died. He shouldn’t have murdered poor old Shelley, though I admit that there wasn’t much left of her by then.”

  “So you knew his wife too?”

  “Who didn’t know Drunken Dixie? She was a legend on the party scene. A sad legend. I don’t go out much but even I’d heard of her. A Veronica Lake or Frances Farmer type, if you get my meaning.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” says Luyckx, making no effort to hide the fact that he can’t stand this guy.

  “What’s worse is the way he disposed of Starr Mortenson. She was a wonderful kid in the prime of life.”

  “You know Starr too?”

  “Just by sight.”

  “Seems like you know everyone.”

  “She often went to the Film-Museum cafeteria. She stood out because of her incredible resemblance to Louise Brooks. Once I saw her from the projection room sitting next to Cox during German Expressionism Week. He was behaving as if they were an item. Pathetic. Typical.”

  “Luc, how did you come across Mr Poels?”

  “Via The Cripple. I was looking for someone who knew about films and The Cripple introduced me to him.”

  “It’s a small world, isn’t it? Do you go to the Bad Conscience often, Mr Poels?”

  “Now and again for the quiz evenings and only when it’s about films.”

  “So you know that Cox was renting a warehouse on the opposite side of the street to keep his collection in?”