Styx

by Bavo Dhooge

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It’s something. You’ve got nothing but a few tableaux vivants and some hallucinations.”

  “Listen to me,” said Styx. “Ensor said something interesting last night about masks and a possible motive for the murders. We assumed the killer’s just trying to give Death a hand, but he’s not.”

  “So what is he doing, then?”

  “The perp’s interested in resurrection, in life after death, which might explain the sand sculptures. At least, that’s what I understood from Ensor. He was talking about the ancient Egyptian high priests who mummified the dead kings, and how man’s not immortal and even the doctors can’t—”

  “And this is all going to help us catch the bastard how?”

  Styx heard a door close somewhere in the office suite. “Let me know about Delvaux,” he said, and broke the connection.

  A voice echoed faintly in the distance, as if Dr. Vrancken was talking on his own cell phone or saying good-bye to another patient.

  Styx hadn’t seen the orthopedist in quite a while—their last visit had been, in a very real way, a lifetime ago. All he could remember were the surgical scrubs: no lab coat, but a blindingly white short-sleeved shirt and drawstring trousers, as if Vrancken had been modeling the latest OR fashions for a magazine spread. Oh, and a white surgical mask that hung around his neck, like a general practitioner would wear a stethoscope.

  Now that was a true professional.

  Styx waited for the door leading back to the doctor’s consulting room to open.

  He waited and waited, but no one came.

  Was this what purgatory was? A lonely wait in an empty room and piano music floating from the office stereo?

  Again he heard a voice behind the door. He seemed to recognize it. It was the same voice that had responded to his ring at the front-door bell a few minutes ago, but he was sure he’d heard it somewhere else, not long ago.

  He sat bolt upright on the sofa. No, that had to be a coincidence. Over a cheap electronic intercom system, all male voices sound pretty much the same.

  He remembered looking into the camera lens in the lobby of the mysterious Spilliaert’s apartment building in the Hofstraat, remembered the sound of the voice that had then responded to his ring. Could that voice and this voice possibly be the same?

  He struggled up from the sofa. The longer he sat, the more pain radiated from his hip down through his leg to his foot. He stepped closer to the wall and examined the rectangles of unfaded wallpaper. He couldn’t remember what exactly had hung there on his previous visits, but he had a vague recollection of colorful art prints. It was one of the things that had impressed him about S. Vrancken: the doctor, he remembered thinking, had taste.

  But . . . ?

  What had happened to the framed pictures?

  He heard a soft cough from the other side of the door, which led from the waiting room to the back of the office suite. Could that be Dr. Vrancken or his nurse coming to usher him into the consulting room? He turned away from the missing pictures and looked back and forth between the two doors. One would take him deeper into Vrancken’s territory, the other would return him to the street. Which way should he go?

  He was frozen to the spot, unable to move in either direction.

  Something was holding him fast, refusing to permit him either to advance or retreat.

  What was it?

  He knew the answer had something to do with those missing pictures—and then he had it.

  The Surrealists!

  He remembered the doctor’s confident, comforting voice, and the white surgical mask he always wore around his neck. According to James Ensor, even the absence of a mask is just another mask.

  “My God,” he whispered.

  Man wasn’t made to be immortal. We age, we sicken, we die. We fight against it—think of the medical profession—but the battle has never, will never, can never be won.

  What did doctors do if not fight against death? Could it be the Stuffer lurking behind Dr. Vrancken’s waiting-room door?

  Had the doctor recognized him on the surveillance cam’s monitor, just as he’d recognized him in the lobby of the mysterious Spilliaert’s apartment building in the Hofstraat and buzzed him in?

  Did one of the missing frames here in the waiting room once hold a reproduction of a painting by Léon Spilliaert?

  He couldn’t remember. His brain was a sieve, and he could no longer tell the difference between his memories and pure hallucination.

  Styx stumbled back a few steps. He’d come here for an injection, not to confront the Stuffer. He reached for his phone and was about to call Delacroix again when some faint sound or fainter instinct warned him that S. Vrancken was shuffling about his office.

  What was he doing? Styx silently turned the knob and eased the waiting-room door open. At the end of the hall, the door to the doctor’s office stood ajar. He could hear someone moving around in there. There was the rustle of papers, files, reports. How much longer before the doctor came for him?

  Styx retreated back through the waiting room and out to the street. Moments later he had Delacroix on the line.

  “I think I’ve got something,” he said.

  But Delacroix didn’t let him finish. “Us too. Delvaux’s gone. Packed his bags and put his penthouse up for sale.”

  “What?”

  “You need me to spell out for you what this means?”

  “But—”

  “What have you got?”

  Styx was at a loss for words. Was he wrong? Was he losing his mind? It had all seemed so logical. But now, speaking with Delacroix, it all seemed like mere superstition and coincidence.

  “Chief Inspector?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Delacroix. “We’ve put an APB out on Paul Delvaux, and we’ve got every available man looking for him. But there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  There was a long pause, and then Delacroix said, “Your funeral.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. It’s official. They’ve announced that you’re dead.”

  “They haven’t found a body!”

  “It’s going to be a sort of memorial service. Burial at sea. Isabelle says that’s in your will—which she found. Under the woodpile next to the fireplace, right?”

  Burial at sea, Styx thought. Yes, that’s what he had wanted.

  He’d even specified a recording he wanted played at the service, a catchy little rock song called “Come Sail Away.”

  I’m sailing away, set an open course for the virgin sea . . .

  Kind of a no-brainer, really. He remembered his mother playing the record for him back in the late seventies, when he was just a kid, and telling him proudly that the musicians who wrote and sang it had created it just for him. They were an American band, Mama told him, and their name, like his, was Styx.

  “It’s tomorrow morning,” Delacroix said. “You want to go?”

  The memorial service for Chief Inspector Raphael Styx took place in the Ostend harbor, on the little square where the Kapellestraat meets the Leopold III-laan. The mayor was in attendance, as were Commissioner John Crevits, most of Styx’s colleagues on the force, friends, acquaintances, and even some of Styx’s rivals and enemies.

  The crowd was gathered around a long box draped in a white cloth. It looked more like an altar than a coffin. Victor and Isabelle, both completely emotionless, were the first to approach the altar. Each of them laid a single red rose on the cloth.

  It’s like a puppet show, thought Styx, who watched the proceedings from the balcony of Joachim Delacroix’s apartment. Delacroix was wearing one of his most expensive suits for the occasion: a three-piece sea-blue Hugo Boss pinstripe set off by a matching pocket square and a gold tie clip. His Borsalino hat was cocked at a somber yet somehow rakish angle.

  Styx leaned on Marc Gerard’s old walking stick
and watched through a pair of binoculars, like a crippled king observing a military parade. He wondered how the squad had managed to organize it all so quickly.

  “What are they trying to prove?” he asked.

  “They’re not trying to prove anything,” Delacroix said patiently. “They’re burying you at sea.”

  “But I’m standing right here. What’s in the box?”

  “About two hundred pounds of rock. It was Crevits’s idea. We had to do something. The Stuffer called him. He said he’d stop killing if we’d turn your body over to him. He said you’d be his coup de grâce.”

  “So Crevits set up this charade just to piss him off? Or does he think the bastard might actually turn up? To watch, or to try to stop the show?”

  “What they don’t want,” Delacroix said, “is to let him think he’s got the upper hand. Crevits made it absolutely clear: we don’t make deals with serial killers. So we’re mounting this performace to show him he can’t have what he wants.” He smiled. “We’re doing a nice job, aren’t we? The only thing missing’s a choir.”

  “Are Isabelle and Victor in on it?”

  Delacroix’s smile disappeared. “They know you’re not in the box,” he said. “But they don’t know why we’re doing it. I think Isabelle assumes it’s all for her benefit, to give her some sense of closure.”

  There were several police vehicles parked on the Mercator side of the Kapellestraat, but it wasn’t clear if they were intended as a sort of honor guard or if they were there in case the Stuffer put in an appearance.

  As six uniformed officers loaded the box onto a small boat tied up at quayside, the first notes of a song began to play through the speakers that had been set up for the event. Despite the specific instructions Styx had left, it wasn’t “Come Sail Away.” Instead, he heard the lilting wail of Van Morrison:

  Beside the garden walls, / We walk in haunts of ancient peace.

  Styx had to admit that the song fit the occasion well.

  “Who picked the music?” he asked.

  “Isabelle.”

  Her name floated away on the salt breeze.

  “Where are they taking me?” Styx finally asked.

  “Out there,” Delacroix said, pointing north to the sea.

  “Isn’t that what they did with Osama bin Laden?”

  “I don’t think they made such a big show of it,” Delacroix pointed out.

  Through the field glasses, Styx watched John Crevits and a few of Isabelle’s relatives step forward to offer comfort to his son and wife—his widow.

  “Shit, this almost makes me want to cry,” Styx said.

  The boat pulled away from the dock as Van Morrison’s voice faded. It swung out of sight around the sharp bend that would take it out into open water, and the crowd gradually dispersed.

  Styx focused the binoculars on his son, standing there stoically with an arm around his mother’s waist. He was proud of the boy’s strength, yet he wished he could assure him that his father wasn’t really gone, not entirely.

  Styx swallowed uncomfortably. “You think he showed?” he croaked.

  “Who?”

  “Who the fuck do you think?”

  “The Stuffer?”

  “Yes, the goddamn Stuffer! He must have heard about it, right? I mean, that was Crevits’s whole point?”

  “Paul Delvaux is probably long gone, but maybe.” Delacroix pulled off his Borsalino. “You think he’d have the balls?”

  “Why not? We aren’t even sure Paul’s our guy. The Stuffer could be anyone.”

  “It’d make sense he’d want a front-row seat.”

  “I know one thing,” Styx said. “If it were me, I’d be there.”

  A man stood on the deck of the Mercator, the famous ship that had brought the mortal remains of Father Damien, “the Apostle of the Lepers,” back from Hawaii to Belgium. He had no interest in touring the ship. He’d bought an admission ticket only because it provided him with an almost perfect view of the policeman’s funeral service. If it really was a funeral service.

  He knew better than to show up at the quay, although he was confident that no one would recognize him. On the prow of the three-master, he felt safe enough to relax and enjoy the festivities: the eulogies, the poem read tonelessly by the tight-lipped little son, the oh-so-touching send-off ballad by that crabby Irishman Van Morrison.

  What was going on here? What exactly were they up to?

  The idea of consigning Raphael Styx’s body to the sea simply made no sense. He had of course been following the case with intense scrutiny, and nowhere in the media—not in the papers, not on the radio or television, not on the internet—had there been any mention of the dead cop’s body having been discovered.

  There would have to be some sort of announcement if a missing person was found, wouldn’t there? Dead or alive, it wouldn’t matter, the news of such a find would be news indeed.

  He didn’t understand it.

  And not understanding it made him angry.

  Because he knew Raphael Styx wasn’t dead. He’d seen him, still alive, with his own two eyes.

  Delacroix said, “Crevits thinks the funeral will force the Stuffer back out in the open, whether or not he actually shows up for the ceremony.”

  “He won’t be able to stand all the attention focused on something other than himself, you mean?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  They were sitting in one of the eight theaters in the Kinepolis multiplex. Every September, the Ensors—the Belgian Oscars—were held here, but this week the complex was hosting a retrospective of the films of Ken Russell. On the screen, Russell’s 1986 Gothic was playing, and the poet Percy Shelley, his novelist-wife Mary, Lord Byron, and Byron’s lover, Claire Clairmont, were gathered around a human skull before a roaring hearth in the huge main hall of an English castle.

  Byron ripped open his shirt, so close to the fire that he was in danger of immolating himself. The flames cast menacing shadows of his body on the wall.

  But Styx wasn’t interested in the movie.

  “I want you to do something for me,” he whispered.

  “Sure,” said Delacroix.

  “I want you to get a list of Dr. S. Vrancken’s patients.”

  “Vrancken? Your orthopedic guy?”

  “I want to check a few names.”

  “The man’s a doctor, Styx. What’s on your mind?”

  “You ever heard of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? I was at his office yesterday, like I told you, and I did a little research after I left.”

  “And?”

  Styx began with some background. The rectangles on the waiting-room wall, the déjà vu similarity between the voices over the two intercoms. “And I found out,” he went on, “that Vrancken lost his medical license not too long after he advised me to hold off on a hip replacement and right before the Stuffer’s first killing. Officially, his practice is closed. That’s why there were no other patients there yesterday, and no receptionist or nurse.”

  “Why’d they pull his license?”

  “He was accused of malpractice. He’s under investigation for negligence and medical errors.”

  “What sort of errors?”

  On the screen, a Venetian mask was carefully fitted over the face of one of the women. Styx leaned closer to Delacroix. “Two of his surgical patients complained to the commission.”

  “Who? Don’t tell me they were two of the Stuffer’s victims?”

  “No, but I’d really like to know if any of the dead women ever consulted the good doctor.”

  “What were the complaints?”

  “I found an article that said he apparently left a medical instrument inside one patient’s body. In the other case, there was severe internal hemorrhaging as a result of unsterile operating conditions.”

  Delacroix considered this. Finally, he turned away from the screen and said, “So?”

  “So?”

  “So what does that have to do with the Stuffer? Those cases prove the go
od doctor’s a bad doctor, not a homicidal maniac.”

  Styx got up and walked out of the theater. Delacroix followed him.

  “Look,” Styx said, “you don’t have to agree with me. Just get me the patient list.”

  “Those records are confidential. I—”

  “He didn’t just have a private practice, Delacroix. He was also on staff at the Damiaan Hospital.”

  “Which is important why?”

  “Just listen to me. He saw some of his patients at his office—that was mostly people who could afford his private rates. His hospital patients were less well off. And the Stuffer’s victims weren’t exactly rolling in it.”

  “So you want the hospital list, not the private-practice list, I get it. But I still don’t know how you expect me to get it.”

  “Don’t play dumb. You know Isabelle works at Damiaan.”

  “Oh, come on, Inspector. She won’t—”

  “Then figure something else out. Go back and talk to the murdered women’s families and friends. You’re a cop, remember? Check their appointment books, their medical histories, their bank statements. I want to know if any of them ever saw Dr. Vrancken.”

  He turned away and hobbled off, then changed his mind and brought his dilapidated body to a halt.

  “I want to rip off the fucking mask,” he said.

  Although the memorial service had been tiring, and although Isabelle Gerard had been offered a week’s compassionate leave by her supervisor, she went to the hospital that evening to work her usual overnight shift in the geriatric ward. There was no way she’d be able to sleep. She didn’t like leaving Victor home alone, but he’d insisted he was fine to spend the evening by himself. They were so much alike in that regard—each of them respected the other’s need to process the funeral in their own separate ways.

  There was a fruit basket and a collection of sympathy cards in the fourth-floor canteen. From ten to ten thirty she was kept busy delivering cups of yogurt and glasses of water to her elderly patients. Then things began to settle down and by midnight the ward was quiet. The last medications had been administered, and the corridors were empty. Except for dealing with the one old codger with Alzheimer’s who jabbed his call button every ten minutes to demand she put the dentures he’d just fished out of the glass of water on his side table back into the glass of water on his side table, there was really nothing to do.