by Pieter Aspe
She pulled the piece of paper from between his fingers and studied it for a few seconds.
“I presume Mr. Degroof doesn’t correspond in Latin,” she sneered.
Fucking intellectuals, said Van In under his breath. “I don’t know too many criminals who draft their messages in Latin either, do you?” he replied with more than a hint of sarcasm. The discomfort refused to let go. The naïve self-assurance she radiated gave him goose bumps.
“Absolutely, Commissioner, spot on. Criminals don’t tend to leave messages in Latin,” she laughed, seeing the funny side.
Jesus, that too, Van In sighted. She’s a good loser and she’s got a sense of humor! His thoughts returned to the fleeting knee contact. Had she done it on purpose, or was she teasing him? Maybe she sensed that he wasn’t really in his comfort zone. Van In was a realist, but a warm, tingling thrill ran through his body.
She walked around the desk, grabbed her chair, and sat down beside him. She placed the piece of paper on the table in front of them.
“‘Rotas’ means ‘wheels,’” she said pensively. The word made up the top of the square.
ROTAS
OPERA
TENET
AREPO
SATOR
Intended or not, Hannelore was very close to him yet again. She smelled of Lux toilet soap and had a couple of freckles around her nose. Was she really a Deputy public prosecutor? Van In shook his head.
“So what do you think ‘rotas’ means?” she responded without taking a breath.
Van In jumped. He had strayed in his thoughts to the carefree moments he had spent with Sonja.
“Sorry, my thoughts were elsewhere.” He wanted to light a cigarette, but changed his mind. For some non-smokers, one cigarette was enough to spoil a friendship and he wasn’t prepared to take the risk.
“It looks like a puzzle … a sort of cryptogram. Don’t you think, Commissioner?” Her voice changed tone like a screwed-up adolescent. In the space of a few minutes she had shifted from interfering bitch to impish schoolgirl.
“If you’re right, then we must have a bit of a weirdo on our hands, or an idealist, or a combination of both.” Van In sighed. He was suddenly grateful to De Kee. Time to put the case to bed as quickly as possible.
“Or someone who’s been watching too much American pulp TV,” she added cleverly.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Van In groaned. “Spare me!”
“What did you say?” Hannelore glared at him. Her upper lip was trembling and it looked as if she was about to burst out laughing. Van In presumed he was now blushing.
“Typical police talk,” he said, brushing it off.
“You don’t say.”
Van In understood that there was no point in trying to fool her. She would only insist.
“You’re right, ma’am. It’s high time I updated my vocabulary.”
“Rags, Commissioner, rags. That’s what I used to say when I was in the shit.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, honestly, it harks back to my student days,” she recounted eagerly. “I turned up for my first oral exam in jeans, brand-new jeans no less. Can you guess what the professor said when he saw me?”
“No,” said Van In innocently.
“‘I don’t examine rags. Come back in September for a re-sit. Run along.’ I cried my head off!”
“You’re kidding.” He was barely aware of the fact that their conversation had become just as irrelevant as the anecdote she had just told him. They were in the middle of an investigation, after all. Another Jesus H. Christ was on the tip of his tongue. He was grateful no one else was in the shop.
“So where did you pick up the expression?” She poked him in the ribs with her elbow.
It was hard to tell whether Leo had been eavesdropping, but in any case his timing was perfect. He wheezed a little from sitting on his heels. His sleeves were rolled up and his piggy eyes flashed back and forth between Van In and Deputy Martens.
Hannelore put on a serious face. All this was new to her and she was having a whale of a time. She had long forgotten her colleagues’ wise advice. Pulling her weight was fine for a while, but she couldn’t keep it up. It wasn’t her style. No wonder they all walked around at the courthouse with a miserable face.
“Find anything?” Van In inquired.
“No prints,” Leo declared in a resigned tone. “And the gloves aren’t much help either … recent design, available everywhere. Maybe a microscopic examination might come up with something.”
“And the aqua regis?” Hannelore turned toward Vanmaele.
“What do you mean, ma’am?”
“Can’t it be traced? If you ask me, there’s a good ten gallons of the stuff in that tank. A sizeable amount for something that’s not available in the supermarket.”
“So you think there might be a record somewhere of such a purchase? If only. Aqua regis isn’t as rare and exotic as the name suggests. It’s just a mixture of one part nitric acid and three parts hydrochloric acid. Two innocent components you can buy in any drugstore without arousing anyone’s suspicions. Jewelers use it to separate gold from other alloyed metals.”
Leo grabbed a chair and sat down opposite Hannelore and Van In. He took off his glasses and launched into his explanation. Leo had started his career as a schoolteacher. He loved teaching, but the pupils at a variety of high schools hadn’t shared his enthusiasm.
“Pure twenty-four-karat gold is soft and unworkable,” he lectured. His round rosy cheeks were riddled with rosacea. “What we know as eighteen-karat or fourteen-karat is in fact an amalgam of gold and copper, silver, nickel, or palladium. The more the copper, for example, the yellower the gold. So-called “white gold” is a combination of gold and palladium or nickel. Eighteen-karat is an alloy containing 75 percent gold.”
“Well, well,” said Hannelore, “you learn something new every day!”
Leo thanked her with a broad smile. The lovely Hannelore was apparently everyone’s favorite.
“Processing old gold, or ‘scrap’ as they call it, is a question of separating the components. And one of gold’s more agreeable features is that it’s impervious to acid. The procedure is child’s play. You make a cocktail of two concentrated acids and dump in the ‘scrap.’ That’s how jewelers recover the pure gold.”
Leo Vanmaele returned his glasses to his nose as a sign that his lecture was over. He peered at the lovebirds in front of him through his thick lenses. For Leo, the situation was crystal-clear: something was blossoming between those two. His only problem was trying to understand how a woman like Hannelore could fall for the likes of Van In. His friend was forty-one, smoked like a nineteenth-century chimney, and drank like a Hummer in overdrive.
“So Degroof has nothing to complain about,” Hannelore concluded.
“The gold can still be used.”
“Absolutely, ma’am,” said Leo with a little too much emphasis on the “ma’am.” As if he wanted to underline the difference in rank.
“But ninety percent of the retail value of an exclusive piece of jewelry is in the design and the labor costs. Whoever did this caused a great deal of damage. If they had just taken it all, the insurance would have paid Degroof back to the last cent. Now it is more complicated.”
“Revenge,” said Van In cautiously.
“Exacted by a classically schooled psycho.” Hannelore waved the square of paper in the air.
Leo didn’t understand what she was talking about and paid no attention to her remark.
“If it was an act of revenge, then whoever did it was perfectly prepared,” he said. “No amateurs involved here. Semtex was used to blow open the safe, and that’s not the kind of thing you can pick up at the local bakery. The entire process of dissolving gold in aqua regis also takes more than twenty-four hours. Whoever was responsible must have known that the shop was closed on Saturday.”
“And don’t forget the alarm system. The culprit knew the code and the procedure followed by
the security firm,” said Van In.
Hannelore fished a pack of cigarettes from the ample hip pocket in her loose-fitting skirt.
“Are you a smoker, Commissioner?”
Van In could hardly believe his ears. “Yes, thanks,” he said.” Leo refused the offer with a resolute gesture of the hand.
While Van In was enjoying his first greedy puff, Hannelore said unexpectedly: “Strange that someone who knew the alarm code didn’t know the combination of the safe.”
Leo looked at Van In with the words pretty-and-intelligent-who-would-have-thought written all over his face.
“My compliments, ma’am. As my old school teacher used to say: a good score, my boy, is a step closer to the front of the class.”
“Why didn’t we think of that,” said Van In.
“Because women just happen to be sharper than men, Commissioner,” she bragged and beamed. “And not to forget the Latin puzzle, Commissioner, eh?” She slipped the paper across the table to Leo. “You studied Latin at school if I’m not mistaken, Mr. Vanmaele?” Van In didn’t understand why they kept up the pretence and didn’t just use first names. But Leo didn’t seem to be bothered by it.
“That’s correct,” he smirked, pushing up his glasses and subjecting the piece of paper to a detailed examination.
“If we’re talking about revenge,” said Hannelore, “then it seems logical to me that we should be looking for the perpetrator or perpetrators in the immediate vicinity of the Degroof family. Revenge is an extremely personal matter. It’s more commonly associated with crimes of passion than with burglaries, at least if you can call this a burglary.”
She stared at Van In in expectation.
“I’ll try to put together a profile of the culprit tomorrow,” he said. It annoyed him that he couldn’t speak freely. “The guys from missing persons might be good for ideas. But I’m personally not convinced we’re dealing with a psycho.”
“But just then you said …”
“That was just then, ma’am.”
“Okay, everyone’s entitled to a change of opinion. But what makes you think it’s not a psycho? Intuition?”
“Indeed,” Van In smiled, “male intuition in this case.”
Bulls-eye, thought Leo. He had been listening in while trying to decipher the Latin text. The meaning of “rotas,” “opera,” and “tenet” was obvious, and he had also noticed that “arepo” and “sator” were “opera” and “rotas” in reverse. But he still couldn’t figure what it was about.
“Not easy, Van In,” he said, removing his glasses as a sign that he had given up. “It was all so long ago. I think we’re going to need to consult a philologist. And if we translate it, does that mean we’ve figured it out? Did you notice that ‘rotas’ and ‘opera’ are also written backward, both vertically and horizontally?”
“So you also think it’s a sort of puzzle?” said Van In, leaning forward and taking the paper from Leo.
“But there has to be some kind of meaning behind it. Criminals don’t just leave messages behind for no reason, do they?” She brushed her hair behind her ears with both hands.
“Except in American pulp,” said Van In, straight-faced. “Then anything’s possible.”
“Come on, gentlemen. Stop messing me around,” she said indignantly.
“All we can do is wait for the results of the investigation. Face it, ma’am. We don’t have any other option.”
“And what about the radio appeal?” she asked angrily. Hannelore Martens clearly did have a volatile temperament.
There she goes again, Van In sighed. She was right, of course. Someone must have seen or heard something.
“Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m sure the chief commissioner will agree to your proposal. But at this moment in time I think I’d be more useful back at the station. There’s a load of paperwork involved in this, and I can’t let sergeant Versavel deal with it alone.”
“Fine, Commissioner, but I’ll be following the case closely.”
“Mr. Vanmaele probably wants to hang around here a little longer.”
Leo nodded.
“Then I’ll be going. By the way, according to Versavel, Degroof gave the keys to the shop to Officer Decoster. I’ll tell him to wait until you’re ready, then he can close up.”
“Okey-dokey,” said Vanmaele. “I can come back tomorrow with a van and a couple of helpers to bring the tank with the golden gunk to the lab. Then we can determine precisely how much gold was dissolved. I figure that’s what Degroof wants to know more than anything else.”
“So that’s agreed.” Van In got to his feet.
“I presume we’ll meet again,” he said to Hannelore.
“I very much hope so, Commissioner. It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she purred. Van In was never going to understand women. She shook his hand and held it firm for a moment. “And don’t forget the radio,” she winked. “I’m certain an appeal will lead to something, and apart from that I insist that it happens,” she added sternly. “If they don’t broadcast it tomorrow morning, I’ll take care of it myself. On the record, of course.”
Outside, Decoster and Vermeersch were having a hard time keeping the curious at a distance. The street was crawling with tourists and everyone wanted to know what was going on.
A thin young gentleman watched events unfold with evident amusement. His short, bald, and unstoppable sidekick took photos of the scene. He was a local reporter who never left the house without a camera. He had bought the story for a thousand francs from one of the officers keeping the crowds at bay.
Van In wriggled his way outside, doing his best not to draw attention. The heat of the summer sun coiled like a burning snake between the rows of houses. It was going to be a sweltering day. Festive flags hung unruffled from the city’s façades, ready for the annual celebration of the Flemish Community the following day. Van In tried to pick up his pace but it was hopeless. There were tourists everywhere, slowing everything down, and they got out of the way for no one.
He kept close to the house fronts, using the walls as cover. His thoughts still fluttered around Hannelore Martens, like a butterfly over a bed of flowers. Van In was angry with himself. He had behaved like an idiot.
Okay, a bit of an idiot, he corrected himself. She hadn’t exactly played the respectable Deputy public prosecutor either.
Versavel was in room 204, his back to the window, sweating over an old-fashioned mechanical typewriter.
“Aren’t you tired yet?” asked Van In as he walked in the door. The sergeant barely looked up from his work. His coarse fingers continued to batter the broken-down Brother without pity.
“Another five minutes,” he groaned.
Van In collapsed into the chair behind Versavel’s desk and lit a cigarette. He ignored the “No Smoking” signs. They were for visitors only.
“And did you wangle a date out of her?” asked Versavel dryly.
“Jesus H. Not you too. Leo spent the whole time winking at me. Why should I? She was just out to impress. Beginners are always a bit weird.”
“She couldn’t keep her eyes off you,” said Versavel, unperturbed. “I’d watch my ass if I were you, buddy.”
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the clatter of the typewriter. Van In wasn’t really sure why he was making a fuss. If it had been up to him, he would have taken her out that very night.
“So, done and dusted,” said Versavel, relieved. He rolled a densely typed sheet of paper from the typewriter and placed it carefully on top of the pile he had completed earlier. “Well-earned overtime. It’s all yours.” He stood and stretched.
“You on duty tomorrow?” asked Van In. “De Kee insists that I take personal charge of the case, and it would be good if I could rely on your assistance.”
“No problem,” Versavel answered.
It was clear that he felt honored by the commissioner’s request. He may only have been a sergeant, but he had proved himself more than enough in the past. Van In wa
s one of the few officers who appreciated him.
“Thanks, Guido, but there are a couple of complications,” said Van In in a confidential tone. “De Kee’s under pressure from Degroof senior. He’s insisting on absolute discretion and no publicity.”
Versavel frowned, but said nothing.
“We can do discreet, can’t we?” asked Van In.
“But then our pretty miss Deputy is determined to broadcast an appeal on local radio in the hope of picking up a witness.”
“Is that so?”
Versavel nodded.
“That complicates matters even more.” He didn’t inquire any further, just accepted the absurdity of the situation as one would expect of an experienced policeman. “So, if you don’t mind, I want you to pick up the phone tomorrow if anyone calls about the case. I’ll ask them to broadcast the appeal between seven and nine. De Kee won’t be in until later and we can only hope that Degroof doesn’t listen to local radio. From the moment someone comes forward as a witness we’re covered. We write up their statements, stuff them in the file and send it to Miss Martens. Then everybody’s happy.”
“I hope so, for your sake,” said Versavel skeptically.
“Don’t worry about me, Guido. I’ve survived bigger disasters.”
“See you tomorrow, then. I’ll make sure I’m here before seven.”
“Thanks, Guido. Now go the fuck home, man.”
“Have a good one, Commissioner.”
Versavel slammed the door hard behind him and legged it down the corridor, whistling as he went.
Before rolling the first sheet of paper into the typewriter, Van In smoked a cigarette. He hated the mass of paperwork that was going to take up the rest of his day. He took a long draw on his cigarette, knowing it was nothing more than a pointless tactic to delay the inevitable.
5
GUIDO VERSAVEL CRUMPLED THE PLASTIC coffee cup he had been holding in his left hand and tossed it into the wastebasket. His aim was perfect. It was seven-fifteen A.M. He felt upbeat and rested. Nine hours of sleep and a hot bath had neutralized the fatigue of the previous day.
He had brought a small, portable radio to work and had tuned in to Radio Contact, a popular local broadcaster. The telephone operator had been instructed to transfer incoming calls related to the Degroof case directly to room 204.