Styx

by Bavo Dhooge

  Styx picked up the record, turning it over. The woman running the stand, who was dressed as a fisherman’s wife for the occasion, launched into a sales pitch: “That’s Marv’s last album for Motown. It’s worth a lot of money, the autograph’s guaranteed authentic.”

  He examined the singer’s elegant photo on the back cover, avoiding the woman’s eyes.

  “It’s thirty-some years ago he washed up here,” she went on. “Yeah, he was pretty far gone, but our Freddy helped him get back on his feet. They made a movie about it in the States, shot it right here. Freddy’s wife used to cook for him. He was crazy about her chicken and applesauce. He was reborn here.”

  Reborn, Styx thought.

  He paid what she asked for the record and stuck it under his arm.

  “You know nobody in Ostend except Freddy and his wife had any idea who he was? He’d walk into the cafés and shoot a game of darts with the locals, and no one knew he was this big American star.”

  Styx walked on, fiddling with Marc Gerard’s pocket watch. There were people everywhere, a hundred lively conversations blurring together all around him, enveloping him in a sea of conversation.

  He came to a sudden stop. This was the Flemish part of Belgium, the north, not the Wallonian south, and the Ostenders spoke almost exclusively Dutch.

  Then why had those costumed people in the station hall been speaking French? That was strange, now that he thought about it.

  He forced himself to shake off the thought. After all, what difference did it make?

  He realized he was still holding the pocket watch and slipped it, unopened, back in his pocket.

  Where are you scurrying off to, Styx?

  He spun around. There was no sign of trouble, just one big happy party.

  He continued on his way, bumping into arms and elbows as he pushed through the throngs.

  He had to get out of there. His world was turned completely upside down: twenty-four hours ago, he’d been after the Stuffer, but now their roles were reversed.

  There’s no escape, Styx. I’ll find you.

  He looked back over his shoulder and for just a moment saw the Stuffer almost hidden in the crowd. A man in a yellow oilskin jacket with hard, deep eyes beneath a sou’wester. Styx could feel those eyes boring into him. How long had the oilskin been following him?

  He moved on more quickly, dragging his right leg behind him. When he looked back again, the sou’wester was still there. A hat and rain slicker on a sunny day! Styx felt the sweat and foundation trickling down his face, running like Isabelle’s mascara ran when she cried.

  He heard a burst of laughter behind him and whirled around.

  The man in the jacket and hat had stopped at the last of the market stalls and was chatting animatedly with one of the fisherman’s wives.

  Styx drew a deep breath and sighed it out slowly.

  Styx sat in the living room of his father-in-law’s house, the only place in Ostend he could think of to hide.

  How many times in the weeks since Marc Gerard’s death had Isabelle asked him to clear out her father’s place, haul all his unwanted junk to the dump? Her only surviving family was an older sister who’d moved to the south of France years ago. They’d each selected a couple of mementos after the funeral, but neither of them had any interest in their father’s furniture or old clothes.

  Styx considered the house-cleaning job a punishment, a penance for his many sins, and had found excuses to avoid it. At least now he had a furnished apartment in which to fester.

  He tried to get out of the chair, but couldn’t do it without the support of his father-in-law’s old walking stick. It was a classic piece of woodworking, hand carved from beautiful birch, with a copper grip in the shape of a fish.

  “You crippled bastard,” Styx said aloud, not sure if he was talking to himself or Marc Gerard, a crotchety devil he’d always hated.

  He hobbled back and forth across the living room, testing out the cane. It really did take a lot of the strain off his hip.

  There was a sudden noise outside the window and he whirled, half expecting to see the Stuffer lurking there, stalking him. But there was nothing but a tree branch rattling against the window.

  Styx asked himself the same question that was probably also on the Stuffer’s lips right now:

  Where are you? Where the fuck are you hiding?

  Half a day earlier, in the middle of the night, the Stuffer had parked his car along the dike, close to the cabana. His equipment was neatly packed into the trailer: sica, scalpel, butcher’s knife, fishing line, a miner’s lantern, a few other necessities.

  There was nothing to be heard but the murmuring of the waves and a loosely tied piece of canvas that fluttered in the breeze. He crept along the line of cabanas, looking for the one where he’d left Raphael Styx. He slowed when he saw that one of the shack doors stood half-open. The silly huts all looked the same, but . . . wasn’t that the one he’d selected? He thought he recognized the stone, but beach stones were as alike as beach cabanas, and it was lying now a few inches away, not propped against a closed door as he’d left it.

  “Hello?”

  He approached cautiously, preparing an explanation for his own presence in case someone had already discovered the body.

  “Anyone there?”

  No answer.

  The Stuffer swung the door wide and held up his lantern.

  “Fuck!”

  There was nothing in there. No body, no Styx, nothing but bloodstains.

  Where the—?

  He stood in the middle of the small space, completely dumbfounded.

  He’d shot the bastard. Three times! He’d felt for a heartbeat. He’d even taken pictures of the bloody body. Nobody could have faked being dead like that.

  He couldn’t understand it.

  It couldn’t be the cops. If they’d found the corpse already, they’d be here waiting for his return. There’d be police tape cordoning off the area. There’d be searchlights. There’d be patrol cars and emergency vehicles on the dike.

  Wouldn’t there?

  It had to be some kind of a trick.

  The Stuffer swallowed the sour taste that was suddenly in his mouth. The wind whistled in through the open door, through cracks in the wooden walls.

  Goddammit.

  Something was very wrong here.

  Somebody’s fucking with me.

  He considered the possibilities.

  One: somehow, Styx wasn’t dead after all. Wounded, yes, badly wounded, but not dead, and he’d managed to get up and leave the cabana under his own steam.

  No. Bullshit, the guy was fucking dead, there was no question about that.

  Okay, then, two: the cops had found the body and taken it away.

  No, if that had happened, he’d be in handcuffs by now, in the back of a patrol car, on his way to jail.

  Fine, three: somebody else had stumbled across the body.

  But then why hadn’t they called in the cops?

  Would they have taken the body away on their own, without calling it in?

  But why?

  Every pioneer attracts his imitators, he thought. Was this some sort of copycat?

  With pride and frustration and forboding swirling around in his brain, the Stuffer left the cabana and strode across the sand toward his car.

  He never even considered the fourth possibility.

  Who would have?

  At first glance, Gino Tersago thought the police department’s interrogation room looked a lot like a container. Only half the size, but otherwise it was just as bare and echoing as the interchangeable offices he had down at the Ostend harbor.

  Unfortunately, Tersago wasn’t sitting across from one of his clients now, but Commissioner John Crevits.

  Tersago was outfitted in his favorite imitation-leather jacket, a red-and-white Michael Schumacher Formula One knockoff he’d set aside for himself off the top of a recent shipment. He wore the collar popped, which he thought made him look tough.
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br />   “Look,” he said, for the second time in as many minutes, “I’m telling you what I told Styx: I don’t know shit about those Stuffer killings. And I haven’t talked to Styxie since the last time I saw him.”

  “And when exactly was that, little man?”

  “I don’t know,” Tersago shrugged. “A couple weeks ago, maybe. I haven’t seen him much since that shit with Amanda went down. He took it pretty hard when she dumped him.”

  Crevits lumbered out of his chair and walked around the table, out of sight.

  “You sure? You haven’t talked to him since then?”

  Tersago half turned his head. “I’d remember, wouldn’t I?”

  “You didn’t weld him into one of your fucking containers and ship him out of the country?”

  “Why would I do a thing like that?” the petty thug demanded, the picture of offended innocence.

  Crevits grabbed the collar of Tersago’s jacket and turned it down. His rough hands tenderly smoothed out the fake leather and came to rest on either side of Tersago’s neck.

  The air went out of Gino Tersago like a balloon.

  “I don’t know,” said Crevits patiently. “Maybe he got sick of working with you—or for you—and told you he was turning you in?”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  Like an old-fashioned schoolteacher smacking down a class clown, Crevits slapped the back of Tersago’s head. “Don’t fuck with me, son. You and I both know what you did for Styx and what he did for you. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s disloyalty, especially from a lowlife like you, Gino, and especially after everything Styx did for you.”

  “Nobody twisted his arm, man.”

  Crevits picked an invisible speck of lint from Tersago’s shoulder. “You want me to twist yours, Gino? Don’t make me ask you again.”

  “I swear,” Tersago insisted, jerking forward out of Crevits’s reach. “I don’t know a fucking thing.”

  “Because if I find out you’re lying to me, I’m going to charge you with every piece-of-shit crime you ever committed and about a hundred more I’ll make up. Without Styx in your corner, you’re dead meat, you know that.”

  “Exactly!” Tersago cried, spinning his chair around to face the commissioner. “Why would I do anything to get rid of him?”

  “Like I said,” Crevits reminded him, “he wanted out, and he knew too much.”

  “Come on, man, you know better than that. The fucker was totally dirty.”

  And then he saw the rage in Crevits’s eyes and leaned back in his chair, bumping so hard into the interrogation table he almost overturned it.

  “You think whatever you want about me,” Tersago said quickly, “but the fact is I liked the bastard. He could be a total prick, but I respected him—more’n I do you. He wasn’t exactly an honest cop, but you knew that, right? I mean, you busted him yourself.”

  Crevits had to let that comment pass; everything said in the interrogation room was being recorded. So he returned to his chair and turned the conversation in a new direction. “Maybe he stumbled onto something else?”

  “Like what?” Tersago resettled himself in his chair and flipped his collar back up. “Like your wife’s a hooker?”

  This time, Crevits didn’t rise to the bait. The last thing he needed was the distraction of an excessive-force complaint.

  “What if he found out you were up to something a little more serious than smuggling?”

  “Like what?” Tersago said again.

  “Like three murders, for example.”

  “Jesus Christ! You think I’m the fucking Stuffer? Shit, I don’t have time for that, Commissioner. I’m a businessman, we don’t like to get our hands dirty.”

  “Your hands are filthy, son. They’re as full of shit as the rest of you.”

  But Tersago didn’t bite, either, and the two of them sat there glaring at each other until Crevits shoved his chair back and threw open the interrogation-room door.

  “Get out,” he growled. “But leave the jacket here. It’s going into evidence: you’re under suspicion of receiving stolen property.”

  The Styxes’ apartment was in the Milho complex, former site of the city’s military hospital. Joachim Delacroix sat on a plush armchair in the living room facing Isabelle Gerard. Their pit bull lay quietly beside the sofa.

  “Shelley’s disconsolate,” said Styx’s wife. “He misses his master.”

  “You have a nice place here,” said Delacroix, unsure how to broach the reason for his visit.

  “I like it. I don’t think Rafe really paid attention.”

  She petted the dog, whose chin rested on his forepaws.

  “He doesn’t—didn’t much care for new buildings.”

  Delacroix glanced at his notebook. It still felt weird to be investigating the murder of Raphael Styx. The man’s reputation had been almost mythical.

  “Why”—Delacroix coughed uncomfortably—“why do you think that was?”

  “I don’t think he liked anything new. He was an old-fashioned, conservative man.”

  “And you?”

  “Well, the longer I knew him, the more obvious it was that we were two completely different types. It was hard for Victor, who takes after me about ninety percent. Lately, he and his father just couldn’t see eye to eye.”

  “Strange.”

  “Not really. I’m sure you know Rafe always called it as he saw it.”

  Delacroix glanced around the room, took in the minimalist décor. It was like a museum, but a museum from which all the paintings had been stolen. The mausoleum of a dead marriage.

  So far, Delacroix had written down that Isabelle Gerard, born in Wenduine, was the only child of an antiquarian and a lawyer and had enjoyed a happy childhood. She was in her late thirties, impeccably dressed, with short dark hair in a cut that was perhaps a little young for her. Her face was her best feature, effortlessly sensual, with a lovely chin, a small mouth, full lips, flawless pale skin. Like Nicole Kidman in that movie Birth, where the kid tries to convince her he’s the reincarnation of her dead husband, except with darker hair. She seemed, Delacroix decided, like a woman who’d been a wallflower through her twenties and was only now beginning to come into her own.

  “Mrs. Gerard, I know this is painful, but is there anything else you can tell me about your husband’s disappearance?”

  “Not really. I mean, there was nothing unusual about it until Crevits called.”

  “Go on.”

  “He just didn’t come home,” she said, her eyes dry. “He used to get called a lot in the middle of the night for work, so I was used to him being gone.”

  “He wasn’t working last night, though.”

  “No. He always took Shelley out for a walk at night. He said it gave him a chance to decompress from his day.”

  “And that’s why he didn’t take his phone with him?”

  Isabelle smiled. “I suppose. If it were up to him, he would have thrown it in the sea. He hated carrying a phone, but of course he had to for work. He used to say he’d like to live out in the forest, off the grid, no phone, no computer, as far away from the world as he could get.”

  “After he retired, you mean?”

  “No, now. Rafe didn’t like people, Inspector Delacroix. I guess you didn’t know him very well? He was what you’d call a misanthrope.”

  Delacroix was fixated on Isabelle Gerard’s left eye. A doctor probably would have called it a lazy eye, but he’d say languid, not lazy. It didn’t always look where the other one was looking. Delacroix found it sexy.

  “Where’s his phone now?” he asked.

  She stood up. In her simple salmon summer dress and sandals, she looked like a farm girl heading out to pick flowers or collect shells on the beach. She handed him an iPhone and went back to the sofa.

  “I’ve already looked,” she said. “No calls.”

  “Thanks.”

  Scrolling back through the log, he saw several missed calls, most of them from the detective s
quad.

  “You don’t know of any appointments he might have had?”

  “No. He didn’t really talk about his work at home. When he was home.”

  “And there was nothing at all unusual about last night? Nothing out of the ordinary?”

  “Look, Inspector,” she said, suddenly more animated, “the ordinary at home has been—how can I put this?—not so good lately. Victor was having a rough time with his exams, my husband was busy with the serial murders, and, when he was home, all he really wanted to do was go right back out again with the dog. Are you married?”

  The change of subject surprised Delacroix.

  “No, not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “I mean, no.”

  “Well, you spend more than a decade in a marriage, Inspector, and the thrill is basically gone. Rafe and I had some good years, at the beginning, but lately . . . Why do you think it’s so empty here? The only thing he was interested in was his work. Rafe’s, I don’t know, his soul just dried up and blew away. There was nothing left. When he was here, he wasn’t really here, you know? It was just work, work, work. Your boss, Crevits, he called it passion, but that wasn’t it. It was obsession. That, and pure selfishness.”

  “No other hobbies?”

  She laughed derisively. “Not counting other women, you mean? No, no hobbies. His hobbies were walking the dog and playing hide-and-seek from his family. It had gotten so bad we were thinking about divorce.”

  “ ‘We?’ Or you?”

  “I never actually brought it up, because Victor was having such a hard time and I didn’t want to make things worse for him. And I don’t think Rafe even knew there was anything wrong; he just went his merry way. But I was at the end of my rope.”

  Delacroix nodded.

  “He changed so much, these last years,” she whispered. “I hardly knew him anymore.”