“Poels isn’t a psychopath, he’s a humiliated, degraded, envious man, who like a methodical, obsessive bureaucrat devised the perfect plan to avenge himself on Cox. He knew that sooner or later Cox would spot the connection with the films, especially after Shelley’s death. He’d been spying on Cox for years and knew that he sometimes confused his dreams with reality. He also knew that we would treat Cox as a suspect because he selected victims who Cox had come across one by one in his own life. What he couldn’t predict was that Starr would disappear and that Cox would start to cooperate with us. And then he had the ingenious idea: the letters that would make Cox doubt his innocence so much that he would accuse himself of the murders.”
“Do you think he had other murders planned?”
“Starr, but she moved abroad unexpectedly. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had shown BUtterfield 8 and knew the story of Starr Faithfull.”
“It does sound convincing. But if it’s true he’s a total genius. The Maradona of evil, the Elvis of revenge!”
“There’s more, Luc. Poels had a key to the storeroom in the Nationalestraat.”
“How do you know?”
“Starr told me that he tried several times to lure her to the elephant. Allegedly to show her his collection. Perhaps he lured the other victims into his trap in the same way.”
“Does he know she’s in Antwerp?”
“Of course not. He thinks Cox murdered her.”
“Where is Poels now?”
“At the Film Museum. He’s working until eleven thirty tonight and won’t get home before midnight.”
Poels lives in a cluttered studio apartment smelling of cat’s piss on the eleventh floor of one of those blocks of council flats thrown up in Wilrijk in the Fifties. The house search begins at nineteen hundred hours on the dot. A locksmith opens the door in the presence of a bailiff. Luyckx and Lannoy are accompanied by two members of the duty squad and four detectives from the technical service. Within a quarter of an hour they have collected all the evidence they need to arrest Poels: press cuttings about the various murders, especially Louise Vlerickx, articles about the five films, plans of Baron de Landshove’s estate, photos of the garages and cars belonging to Notary Donders, handwritten notes about future victims, Virginia Steiner’s torn clothes, books about Thelma Todd, a dartboard displaying Cox’s photo, a biography of Fatty Arbuckle sent by registered mail, Polaroid photos of the corpses, a videotape showing Cox and Starr entering the auditorium of the Film Museum, and posters for Psycho and The Big Knife that were probably stolen from the warehouse in the Nationalestraat. And, in his computer memory, the two letters that Poels sent to Cox.
“Think that will do?” asks Luyckx, grinning.
“It looks like he was expecting our visit and got everything ready for us. I admit you’re right, Fons. Lucky I found out about the existence of Poels.”
Two hours later, the studio has been thoroughly combed through. Two gendarmerie vans are needed to take everything that has been seized to the station. By nine o’clock everyone has gone except for The Sponge, who decides to wait for Poels and arrest him when he arrives home. Down below four detectives are concealed in their cars. Lannoy hides in the emergency exit at the end of the corridor to take up position right outside the door once Poels has come in so as to catch him if he tries to escape. The neighbours are ordered not to let anyone in or out and not to leave their flats.
Luyckx removes the main fuse, so that the studio is illuminated only by moonlight. Then he pushes the stained, sagging, wine-red sofa up against the wall opposite the door and sits there for three hours in the darkness under an enlarged portrait of Louise Brooks, with a cat purring on his lap, breathing in the deathly atmosphere. He realizes he is running a risk not arresting Poels directly at work, but this is more stylish. It’s a final duel, the ultimate confrontation between good and evil, the dramatic denouement that Inspector Harry Callahan would have chosen.
At seven minutes to twelve the cat jumps to the floor and takes up position by the door, miaowing. A minute later Luyckx hears a key in the lock. The door swings slowly open and the bent silhouette of Rudy Poels appears in the weakly lit rectangle of the doorway. He pulls the key out of the lock, shuts the door, feels automatically for the light switch and swears. He picks up the cat and looks around confused in the semi-darkness without noticing Luyckx, who is sitting motionless on the sofa, his pistol in his hand.
Poels moves like a blind automaton towards the balcony. As his eyes begin to grow used to the darkness, he realizes that the room is almost empty. He barely even reacts, as if he had expected this, steps outside, leans against the railing and looks into the distance at the flickering lights of the city, as he whispers soft words of farewell to the cat.
“Poels! The game’s up. The party’s over!”
When Poels hears Luyckx’s voice behind him, he does not even turn round, but hurls the cat, like a cast-off toy, into the void. The poor creature lands with a hard, dull thud on the bonnet of Lannoy’s car. One of the detectives gets out, looks up confused, and sees Poels on the eleventh floor, balancing unsteadily on the concrete balustrade of his balcony.”
“Jesus, he’s going to jump!”
“Poels, don’t do anything stupid,” says Luyckx softly, approaching him step by step.
But Poels is not listening. For him, the movie’s over. He stretches his arms in the air, turns his head, laughs defiantly, baring his rotten teeth, stares Luyckx wildly in the eyes and cries: “Look, Ma, top of the world!”
Then he lets himself tumble forwards and flops down a couple of seconds later like a broken tailor’s dummy next to the body of his cat on the Opel Vectra. In the distance the bells of the Christus Koningkerk strike twelve.
42
Starr Baker and Victor Cox
Monday, 15th July 2002
A week ago I could not have imagined ever sitting again at this desk in front of my computer as I used to, with the familiar beech tree full of thrushes at my back and, behind the beech, Mrs Kountché waving cheerfully from her balcony. She was so happy that I had come back. Tomorrow I shall take her with me to see the elephant.
I was discharged from the hospital on Saturday morning. According to Dr Wuyts I could not be held responsible for the fact that Poels had used those innocent victims as an instrument of his revenge. Despite the rain, Fons was waiting for me outside the main entrance. That’s what I call a friend.
For the last three days the doctors had stopped sedating me, so I could read the papers and follow the news on television. I had known that Poels was not particularly fond of me, but not for a moment did I think that his hatred would drive him so far. It is no surprise that he took his own life. The lipstick psychopath in While the City Sleeps ended the same way after murdering his fifth victim. Poels played his macabre game to the bitter end.
According to Fons, before he jumped he cried: “Look, Ma, top of the world!”
Those were the last words of Arthur “Cody” Jarrett, the psychopath who suffers from a mother complex in White Heat, in a superb interpretation by James Cagney in Raoul Walsh’s 1949 film. Poels too must have thought for a fleeting moment of ecstasy that he had reached the top, as he climbed on to the balustrade of his balcony and hurled a last, pathetic, defiant curse at the world at his feet.
When I noticed that Fons was not taking me home but was driving to the Groenplaats, I asked him what his plans were.
“I’ve got a little surprise for you,” he mumbled with a mysterious smile on his lips. He dropped me off at the entrance of the Antwerp Hilton and told me that someone was waiting for me in the bar.
All the tables in the bar were occupied. She was sitting in a deep armchair with her back to the entrance. I walked past her and looked around. Then I heard her voice through the soft murmuring of the bar, that deep voice that had long vanished from my memory and that I recognized at once, like an unexpected caress, an impossible signal from the hereafter. “Good morning, Professor,” she said, and I understood, I heard:
“Good morning, Victor.”
I turned round and she was sitting there in a dove-grey Armani dress, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. I had to get used to her new hairstyle. Months ago I had seen Louise Brooks disappearing into the waves of the North Sea, and today Marilyn Monroe is arisen before my eyes in the bar of a luxury hotel. And yet, I knew it was her. I recognized her legs and the way she crossed them, her hands and the way she held her cigarette between the tips of her elegant fingers, her perfume, Chanel No. 5. I knew that she was sitting there before me and yet there was something unreal about it. It was like one of those dreams of long ago in which a dead and departed film star stepped out of the screen and came to join me in the cinema. I was rooted to the spot.
“Starr?” I whispered. With a question mark. As if there were still some doubt that she had come back.
“Sit down,” she said, as if we had seen each other only the day before. “I’ve delayed my trip to Paris especially for you.”
She did not ask any questions. Probably because she already knew the answers and out of politeness did not want to rake up recent events. She told her story: the move with her family to New York, her marriage to Joe Baker. She described the mood in New York, how everything had changed since the 9/11 attacks. She said that she was happy to see me and asked if there was anything she could do for me.
“Yes,” I replied, without thinking.
I realized that what I was asking her was madness. But she agreed without blinking; it was just like Starr.
“This evening, then,” she said calmly, “because tomorrow morning I’m taking the nine-thirty flight to Paris.”
At seven o’clock I came to pick her up to drive to the coast. But she had ordered a white limousine, and one hour later the chauffeur dropped us off outside the Astoria in Koksijde. In the car we drank chilled champagne as we discussed the impressive career of her husband.
It must have been the first time that a limo like that, twenty-four feet long with tinted windows, had stopped in front of the hotel, because François rushed out to open the door. When he saw Starr and me climb out, his mouth dropped open.
“Professor,” he stammered, “I’m afraid we’re fully booked. It’s the middle of the high season…”
“Don’t worry about that, Monsieur François, we won’t be staying the night here. But I did promise to come by one day with my girlfriend. Is there anywhere Miss Starr can get changed to go swimming?”
“In my private bathroom,” said the general manager, who had joined us with Nick, the barman. “Where else? It’s not every day that we have a real star in the hotel.”
They must all have been aware of the latest developments in the Poels affair. But no one alluded to it or asked any questions about the limousine. I felt I was living in the clouds.
“I’ve seen every one of your films,” said Monsieur François to Starr as she mounted the stone steps. “I’ve been a fan of yours right from the start.”
“I always said that Professor Cox knew everyone in Hollywood,” said Nick. “What a pleasant surprise, Professor!”
As my usual room was occupied, I took a seat on the roof terrace, while Starr got changed downstairs. Nick brought me the usual dry Martini. He complimented me on my girlfriend then left me in peace. The sun was hanging low over the sea, colouring both sky and water red. Storm clouds were sliding ominously across the horizon like black trails of smoke. At this late hour and wary of the threatening storm, most of the bathers had left the beach. The tide was out and the sea was far. The set was as I had dreamt, in CinemaScope format.
I bent over the railings and saw her down below, crossing the promenade on her bare feet. She was wearing a soft white bathrobe from the hotel. Before descending the bluestone steps to the beach, she turned round – just as I had asked – and waved. Then she ran over the endless sands to the sea. When she reached the surf, I began to follow her in close-up through the little pair of binoculars I had brought for the purpose. It was a thrilling picture. I watched as she let the bathrobe slide from her shoulders to the ground. She was naked and turned round as agreed one last time before walking into the water. On the bend by the square behind the hotel, the square with the king on his horse, the seaside tram screamed in its tracks. She was standing up to her hips in the water now, and I felt that I was beginning to die with her in the arms of my poor, poor sea. As if today did not exist, nor yet tomorrow, I imagined her thousand lovers and began to whistle softly, as you whistle along with the blackbirds in the distance. She was playing now in the waves and it was as if I could touch her through the binoculars. “Do not tell me,” I whispered, “what I have come to know: that nothing survives time unchanged, everything shrivels and fades and turns to stone, but no one ever disappears entirely. Do not forget me, the little boy without dreams that I have become, the wicked child from the evil years that crawls away to weep.”
I left the hotel by the emergency exit before she came back. In the taxi that took me to the station, I looked through the window at the sea of fire flashing by and thought:What shall I – who have seen everything – entrust
to the cold earth, if not some shrill words
in a forgotten script, the stench of my burnt wings?
What shall I – in despair and no longer waiting for her –
spread over the low lands trampled underfoot,
if not the seed of the weeds that I sowed?
What shall I – my eyes full of the ages,
my lungs full of lead – leave laughing to the vultures,
if not the desire for one last flight, some rotten roses,
the shade of sorrows on wounded shoulders?
Or countless films from days of glory,
when celebrating sadness disguised as joy
helped me through the snares of the night.
Or six inconsequential words
like six dull balls in the damp and cold,
engraved in granite somewhere in a park:
Stars have no tears to cry.
Cabrières d’Avignon
14th July 2006
BITTER LEMON PRESS
First published in the United Kingdom in 2012 by
Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW
www.bitterlemonpress.com
First published in Dutch as Starr by
Houtekiet, Antwerp, 2007
The translation of this book was funded
by the Flemish Literature Fund
(Vlaams Fonds voor de Letteren - www.vfl.be)
© Patrick Conrad, 2007
English translation © Jonathan Lynn, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher
The moral rights of the author and the translator have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978-1-904-73898-5
Typeset by Tetragon
Printed and bound by Cox & Wyman Ltd. Reading, Berkshire
No Sale Page 22