by Val McDermid
He glanced down at the high-heeled, thin-soled, fuck-me shoes she’d chosen for the occasion. “I’m not surprised. It’s easy to see you’re not a Berliner. Come back inside the foyer, it’s warmer there.” He took her elbow and steered her towards the opera house, talking rapidly into his phone as they walked. Carol was aware of several curious looks from some of their fellow patrons as they passed. That was hardly surprising; if they were familiar with Tadeusz and Katerina, the sight of her by his side would be worth some serious gossip. She could imagine it now. “Hey, did you see Tadeusz Radecki at the opera with that woman? She could be Katerina’s sister. That’s weird. What kind of pervert goes out with a woman who looks that much like his dead girlfriend?”
They stood just inside the doors, slightly apart, saying nothing. She didn’t want to break the silence with the wrong words; sometimes it was better to let the fish come to you. A few people nodded a greeting to Tadeusz as they left the building, but no one stopped to speak.
He was true to his word. Only a few minutes passed before he nodded towards a black Mercedes that was drawing up at the kerb. “My car,” he said. He walked her to the kerb and opened the rear door.
“I really appreciate this,” Carol said, climbing in. He leaned in past her and spoke to the driver.
“It’s nothing,” he said, withdrawing. “Just tell him where you want to go.” He began to close the door.
“Wait,” Carol said. “You’re not coming?”
“No.”
“But how will you get home?”
“I live close by. Besides, I prefer to walk.” This time, his smile was apparently uncomplicated. “I’ll call you,” he said, closing the door with a soft thud.
Carol gave her address to the driver and leaned back against the firm leather upholstery. It was a clever move on his part, to place her in his debt without making any kind of move on her. She wanted to shout out loud to release some of the jubilation she felt. But not in front of his driver, who would doubtless report back on every nuance of her behaviour. Instead, she let her head fall back and closed her eyes. Phase one was complete. And it had gone even better than she could have hoped.
Maybe she could do this after all.
Maybe she really could walk inside someone else’s skin.
Brigadier Marijke Van Hasselt walked into the detective squad room at Regio Leiden headquarters, carrying a carton of coffee and a bag of smoutebollen, the deep-fried choux pastry balls dredged with icing sugar that were her one concession to junk food. Carbs, caffeine and sugar; the only way to start the day.
Early as she was, Tom Brucke was ahead of her. He sat frowning over a pile of reports, his curly brown hair already rumpled from his constant fiddling with it. He looked up at the sound of her footsteps. His boyish face looked strained and tired, heavy lines tracking under his eyes. “Hey, Marijke,” he said. “Fucked if I know where we’re going to find a perp for this case.”
She took an instant decision. Two heads were, as she had already proved, infinitely better than one. “Oddly enough, Tom, I had an idea about that last night.” She pulled up a chair and sat at the end of his desk, tucking one leg under her.
Tom curled a tendril of hair round his index finger. “I’m staring at so many dead ends here, I’d seriously consider a clairvoyant,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but this case is doing my head in.”
“I keep waking up at night thinking I’m drowning,” Marijke admitted.
Tom snorted. “Drowning in a sea of fucking paper,” he said, waving a hand at the piles of reports on his desk. “Talk about living for your work. De Groot seems to have been on every committee he could get nominated for. He also organized an annual weekend conference for psychologists working in the same area as him. ‘The psychodynamics of emotional abuse,’ whatever that means. The upshot of which is that half the bloody world seems to have known him. It’s a nightmare. So what’s this brilliant idea of yours?”
“I didn’t say it was brilliant, but at least it’s something fresh to try. We’re both agreed that this is a stranger killing, right?”
“There’s nothing in his life to indicate anything different. On the other hand, there’s no sign of forced entry. Balance of probabilities? He didn’t know his killer.”
Marijke lifted the lid on her coffee and took a sip. “From everything I’ve read, people who kill like this—no apparent relationship to the victim, sexual elements in the murder—they don’t stop at one. Agreed?”
“Oh yes, I think we all know deep down that he’s going to do it again. Particularly since we don’t seem to be able to do fuck all to stop him,” Tom said pessimistically. “Are those smoutebollen you’ve got there?” He pointed to her paper bag.
“Help yourself.” She pushed the bag towards him. “Save me from myself.” Tom unwrapped the bag and pulled out one of the pastries. Icing sugar scattered on his pale blue shirt and he brushed at it impatiently with his free hand. “But what I was thinking was, what if this isn’t the beginning of his series?”
Tom stopped eating in mid-chew, then swallowed hard. “You mean you think he’s done this before?”
Marijke shrugged. “It didn’t look like an amateur job to me. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s been doing this, or something very like it, for a while.”
Brucke shook his head doubtfully. “We’d have heard about it. It’s not like pubic scalping is an everyday occurrence, Marijke.”
“We might not have heard about it if it had happened in another jurisdiction. In France, say. Or Germany.”
Tom scratched his head. “You’ve got a point. But there’s not a lot we can do about it.”
“Yes there is. There’s Europol.”
Tom snorted. “Bunch of fucking desk jockeys.”
“Maybe so, but they do send out those international bulletins.”
“More fucking paper. Who reads that crap?”
Marijke reached for her paper bag and pulled out one of the napkins she’d placed inside at the smoutebollen stall. Then she extracted one of the pastries, careful not to spill the sugar on her clothes. “I do,” she said. “And I bet I’m not the only one.”
“So you want to pass the case on to the office boys in Den Haag?” he said incredulously.
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m suggesting we send a request to Europol with details of the case, asking them to circulate it to member states, asking if anyone else has had anything comparable on their patch. That way, we can at least find out if he’s done it before. And if he has, and if we can pool our information with the investigating team there, we might start to get somewhere.”
Tom gave her a considering look. “You know, that might not be such a bad idea.”
“So I can count on your support when I run it past Maartens?”
He laughed. “You’re such a fucking politician, Marijke.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She got to her feet and retrieved the remains of her breakfast. She had just made it as far as her own desk when Hoofdinspecteur Kees Maartens barrelled through the squad-room door, his meaty hand dwarfing the can of Coke that was halfway to his mouth. He took a swig as he strode, tossing the empty can into the next wastepaper bin he passed. Recycling was for people with time on their hands, not for busy men like him, his gesture seemed to say.
“What’s new?” he demanded, stopping beside Tom’s desk.
“Nothing of any significance,” Tom said.
Maartens turned towards Marijke. “What about you, Marijke? Anything useful come through from forensics yet?”
She shook her head. “It’s all negatives. Nothing that takes us any further forward.”
Maartens rubbed a hand along his jaw. “I hate this case,” he muttered. “It makes us look stupid.”
“Marijke’s got a good idea,” Tom volunteered.
Gee, thanks, she thought as Maartens turned back to her, his heavy brows lowering in an interrogative frown. “What’s that, Marijke?” he asked.
“I’ve been thinking about how meticulous de Groot’s killer was. How methodical, how organized. This wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. It was planned. What it reminds me of is the work of a serial killer. I know we’re all worried about the prospect of him killing again if we can’t catch him, but it occurred to me that he might have killed before.”
Maartens nodded, his head to one side. He crossed to her desk and dropped into a chair facing her. “I can’t argue with the theory,” he said heavily. “But haven’t we already checked to see if there’s anything similar in the records?”
“We can only check Dutch records, though,” Marijke said. “What if his previous victims weren’t in Holland? What if he’s killed in Belgium or Germany or Luxembourg? We’d have no way of knowing.”
“And these days, post-Schengen, we’re all citizens of Europe,” Maartens said acidly. “I see what you mean, Marijke. But how does that take us any further forward?”
“Well, I’ve noticed in the past few months that the bulletins coming out of Den Haag from Europol have been a lot more specific. They used to be fairly generic, but now they’ve taken to circulating much more detailed requests for information about particular areas of concern. I wondered if it might be worth approaching them and asking them to include a request for information about any similar cases elsewhere in the EU?”
Maartens looked deeply sceptical. “Don’t you think it’s a bit too near street-level for them? They’re only interested in the stuff that lets them play with their fancy computer databases. They don’t want to get their hands dirty with something as vulgar as murder.”
“But this isn’t some run-of-the-mill killing. And murder can be part of their brief. I checked it out on their website. Where there are international implications, they’ve got a responsibility to act as an intelligence clearing house for murder as well as the organized crime stuff.”
Maartens shifted in his seat. “They’ll think we’re too stupid to manage our own cases,” he grunted.
“I don’t think so, sir. I reckon they’ll respect us for sussing out that we could be looking at a serial killer. It could be a feather in our caps. We’d go down as the ones who had the brains to see the implications of what we were looking at and the courage to say, ‘We want input from other jurisdictions.’ They’ll be able to hold us up as an example of how cross-border co-operation should work in the new Europe.” Marijke turned on all her charm as she spoke, desperate to persuade Maartens into the course of action that suited the plans she and Petra had already made.
Maartens considered for a moment, then swung round to look at Tom. “And you think this is a good idea, do you?”
Tom waved a hand over the paperwork on his desk. “We’ve exhausted every conventional avenue and we’ve got fuck all. The way I see it, we’ve got nothing left to lose. And we might have a lot to gain.”
Maartens shrugged. “OK, we’ll give it a shot. Marijke, put something on paper for me, and I’ll see it gets sent off later today.”
“I’ll have it on your desk within the hour.”
Maartens got to his feet and lumbered towards his office. “That doesn’t mean we stop working the case,” he growled as he disappeared behind his door.
“Nice one,” Tom said. “Smooth as butter, you are.”
“Yeah, well. We both know that if it works out, it’ll be down to Maartens. But if we end up looking stupid, it’ll be thanks to me.”
“It’s good to know that in a changing world, some things always remain the same,” Tom said with a smile.
And some things we can force to change, Marijke thought cheerfully as she booted up her computer. This was it. The big chance. And she was determined not to blow it.
Carol felt as excited as a teenager on a first date. He’d come to Berlin after all! She’d woken up after her dramatic night at the opera to an encrypted e-mail from Petra, revealing that Tony was staying in the same apartment building and drawing up a profile of the serial killer. And that he was expecting her this morning. But what more could Petra say? She had no idea of the complex matrix that was the relationship between Carol and Tony. She had no idea how much like salvation his arrival would feel to Carol.
Hastily, she towelled herself dry from the shower and pulled on fresh jeans and a loose shirt, the simplest outfit in Caroline Jackson’s wardrobe. She wanted to be as close to Carol Jordan as she could manage. She finger-combed her hair and hastily applied lipstick. No time for more.
Her heart was racing as she waited for the lift. Calm down, she told herself. He’s not here for you. But deep down, she was convinced he was. The murder investigation might be the perfect excuse, but he’d resisted coming back into the game for the past two years. All that had changed was that this was an investigation that offered a chance to bring them together.
She knocked on the door and, suddenly, there he was, his familiar face as dear to her as ever. Impulsively, Carol stepped towards him. Their arms went round each other in a hug, her head on his shoulder, his hand in her hair. “Thank you for coming,” Carol whispered.
Gently, Tony moved out of their embrace and closed the door behind her. “I knew Margarethe Schilling,” he blurted out.
It hit her like a glass of wine in the face, taking her breath away and making her eyes smart. “What?” she said, feeling stupid.
Tony ran a hand through his hair. “The Bremen victim. I knew her.”
“So you came out of…what? A desire for vengeance?” Carol asked, following him and sitting down in the single armchair, taking care to stay well away from the window. Even though she hadn’t spotted a tail, that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone dogging her every move and she didn’t want to reveal herself anywhere she wasn’t supposed to be.
With his back to her, Tony stared out of the picture window into the street below. “Partly. Partly because I’m big-headed enough to think I can maybe help to save more lives. And partly because…” He paused, searching for the right words. “Because what happened to Margarethe made me fret about the dangers you’re exposed to.” He turned to face her, arms folded across his chest. “I don’t mean to sound presumptuous. I don’t know anyone who’s better at their job than you. I don’t know anyone who’s more self-sufficient or stronger.” He looked down at the floor. “But I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you that I might have helped prevent.” He gave a short bark of laughter. “I don’t even know what I mean by that, which is a very strange thing for a psychologist to have to admit. I just…I don’t know. I suppose I wanted to be around in case there was anything I could do to help you.”
His words were more valuable to Carol than gold. Just when she’d thought he was delivering a slap in the face, he’d turned it into a caress. She’d waited years to hear this level of personal concern from him, and it had been worth every minute. The knowledge that he cared this much was almost enough in itself. It held its own guarantee for some sort of future. It promised the chance to take things at their own pace, without any necessity for her to push. “You have no idea how much it means to me that you’re here. Whatever the reason,” she said. “I’ve been feeling so isolated on this job. Petra’s a star, but she’s not part of Carol Jordan’s life. She’s not going to see if I’m slipping away from myself, because she doesn’t really know what that self is. You do. You can be the Carol Jordan benchmark, you can be my sheet anchor. And you can help me decide how to handle Radecki.”
“I can try. How did it go last night?”
Carol took him through her first encounter with her target. Tony sat on the sofa, chin propped on his fists, listening intently and asking the occasional question along the way. “It sounds to me as if you handled it well. I was afraid he’d be so suspicious of your resemblance to Katerina that he’d refuse to have anything to do with you. But you seem to have got over that hurdle.”
“Maybe. He’s still not called, though.”
“He will.”
“Let’s hope so. But we shouldn’t be spending a
ll this time on me. I don’t want to take you away from the work you have to do on your profile. That’s what you’re here for. That’s the most important thing. Because if this bastard isn’t stopped, he’s going to do it again and again. He’s got to be taken down. And if anyone can make that happen, it’s you.”
“I hope so. I owe this bastard a death. Or at the very least, the rest of his life behind bars.” Tony shook his head. “I still can’t take in the fact that Margarethe’s dead.”
“Were you old friends?”
“I wouldn’t really describe it as a friendship. We were colleagues with some common interests. I stayed at her house for a couple of nights once. We talked about collaborating on a paper, but we never got round to it. We e-mailed a few times a year, exchanged cards at Christmas. So, not friends, but more than mere acquaintances. I liked her. I liked her a lot. She was imaginative, intelligent. She was doing good work. And she had a son. She adored him.” He shook his head. “What does that do to a kid’s head? He must be seven, eight, something like that. And he’s going to have to grow up knowing somebody treated his mother like a piece of meat.”
“Will you let me help?”
Tony looked surprised. “Don’t you have enough on your plate?”
“I’m probably going to have plenty of free time on my hands. When I’m not with Radecki or writing up my reports, I’ve got nothing else to do.”
He frowned, considering. “I’m working at Petra’s apartment. Obviously, you can’t come there in case you’re being watched. But if I can talk through my ideas with you, that would be a big help for me. You’re always good at coming up with the off-the-wall idea that nobody else gives house room to.”
“Great.” Carol smiled. “So when do you start?”
“I made a start last night.” He glanced at his watch. “Ideally, I should get over to Petra’s now so I can start drafting out some ideas.”
“Do you want to get together later?” she asked, rising to her feet.