Black Widow

From the square it was no more than a five minute walk to Sint Luciensteeg, named for an eponymous sixteenth-century convent-turned-orphanage, now home to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum.

There were hotels, too, if a person knew where to look.

‘We could have got here a lot quicker, you know,’ Mikael said. ‘We could have taken the Duifjessteeg from Rokin. We’d have been here in half the time!’

‘Oh, I have a terrible sense of direction,’ she answered. ‘You know what women are like.’

‘Maybe I do!’

They signed it at the desk, brightly lit in relation to the dark atrium, so that the attendant had to squint in order to pick out their faces from the gloom. A flickering uplighter illuminated nothing more decorative than an assemblage of spiders’ webs, thickened with dust. Rubber plants perished in undersized pots, and earthy stains streaked the carpet. There was a photograph of Queen Beatrix, looking serene and regal yet somehow exactly like the sort of woman who worked in a laundrette.

It was, she considered, absolutely perfect.

Mikael insisted on paying. The woman didn’t object. Men should pay for the gifts they were about to receive. And if that was a contradiction in terms, then so be it.

There was a lift, an old-fashioned caged job, all gears and cables, dried oil and rust. Where metal met metal, there was a screech of bitter protest. As the door shut behind them, Mikael shook his head and looked at the woman bemusedly. His hand reached out, as if to touch her hair, but at the last moment she grabbed it, to reposition it against her breast.

‘I don’t want tenderness,’ she said. She squeezed her fingers over his until the sickness rose in her throat.

He led the way along the corridor to the room, the key fob swinging confidently in his hand.

And then they were in a despondent space of brown and beige, all hangdog drapes of curtain and cigarette burns on the carpet.

Again, it was perfect.

Because Mikael shone against this backdrop. Mikael, glistening, already naked. Mikael, cock-hard and blue-eyed and everything else she needed him to be.

She drew closer, circling him all the while with her arm outstretched, her palm pressed to his heart. She felt a pulse.

Still alive.

She pushed him backwards onto the bed. He didn’t resist. She placed her bag carefully on the bedside table. The room was hot, but she didn’t want to take off her clothes. Not for him. Instead, she hoisted her dress to her waist, climbed over his thighs, and lowered herself onto him.

He grinned, chuckling to himself all the while. Perhaps he hadn’t expected it to be this easy. She echoed the sound, but it was mimicry.

At least her fingers still had sense. She reached down, taking a set of handcuffs from her bag. She had them around his wrists, and the bedpost, before he could object. But there was no fear in him; and when she trailed her stocking across his chest (barbed wire would have been better), she only felt him grow harder.

She wrapped the stocking around the back of his neck, then crossed the two ends in front, beneath his chin. She tightened the knot a little. Still his lips, his eyes, were moist with excitement.

His ignorance was starting to grate.

She pulled the ends tighter. She saw the pulses of blood gather in his jugular, growing plump and sluggish as they drew closer to the silken barrier.

Tighter. She felt him start to struggle. At last! He tried to speak, perhaps to call out, but the words were throttled in his throat before they’d even been given a chance at life.

‘Shush,’ she murmured. ‘I will make it better. I promise. I have a gift for you.’

From that moment on there was nothing but pleasure. The world stopped spinning, and the only orbit was the movement of her hips about his thrashing. And then there were stars, actually stars.

Minutes passed. When her vision cleared, she saw that Mikael’s tongue was fat through his lips and there was blood around his eyes. The semen that leaked out from their junction had already gone cold.

She climbed off him. She took a shower. Then, pausing only to disentangle and tear a suitable keepsake from the body – a last second impulse – she headed out into the night.

Chapter 1 (#ulink_1429bd97-5208-54b4-bede-69d3188624d1)

Thursday

The Jordaan district of Amsterdam was first developed in the seventeenth century, to house a growing population of artisans and labourers. The name was said to derive from the French word, jardin, in reference to the numerous gardens that were to be found between the canals and tight-packed rows of colourful buildings. The working classes had long since departed, but the gardens remained, layered in a late summer scent of rose, clematis and honeysuckle.

But the area wasn’t uniformly pretty. Detective Inspector Tanja Pino exited her car, eyes shaded against the sun, frowning up at her place of work as if seeing its ugliness for the first time. The modernist police headquarters on Elandsgracht was built in a stubborn, functional style, each of its five storeys defined by the absolute absence of whatever it was that made the wider Jordaan such a joy to behold.

Tanja smoothed her skirt, and strode over to the Politie building.

She showed her badge at the front desk, as if it were needed.

Inside, she could feel her colleagues watching her: the uniformed officers and the sharp-suited detectives. The pale-faced IT bods. Each was aware of what had happened, how the great – their word, not hers – Tanja Pino had finally, catastrophically and publicly, failed; how, at the last, she’d allowed the distractions of her private life to get in the way.

She climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, where the various serious crimes departments were to be found. More faces, disparate expressions united in degrees of speculation. Tanja nodded a collective greeting. She lowered herself into her chair, her eyes hooded as she reached out to switch on the desk fan. It didn’t do any good. Hot sticky air slurped at her face.

Bloody heat. Amsterdam was supposed to have a cool, maritime climate. Yet here they were, in the middle of September, and summer had yet to realise that the game was up. Tanja looked at her desk calendar and realised it was Ophelie’s birthday. Her daughter would have been twenty-three years old today.

A phone rang, and Tanja felt a tingle of electricity on her skin. But as one of her colleagues began talking with her friend about plans for an upcoming visit, it dissipated. Three months had passed since the last body was discovered, and while the sick, selfish part of her almost wished that the phone would ring for her, with a fresh lead, she knew it would not.

She rubbed her temples.

Wine. There was the problem. She couldn’t quite remember what had provoked the binge. She seldom needed a reason nowadays. Save for the obvious, of course.

‘Detective Inspector?’

Tanja looked up, to see that she was being watched by a young man, who was standing beside her old partner’s desk. Alex’s desk. She still thought of it as Alex’s, even though he’d long since moved to the Diemen station.

The intruder was quite tall, maybe six-one, broad in the shoulder, and slim in the hip, so that every part of him seemed to fall in a straight line. His sandy hair was close-cropped, whilst his eyes were very dark against his pale Dutch skin. His smile was broad, and easy, which immediately set Tanja’s teeth on edge. Nothing in life was that easy.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ she demanded.

The smile slipped, and he offered his hand. ‘Detective Pieter Kissin.’

She ignored the hand.

There followed an awkward moment. Kissin attempted to fill it by peering up at the ceiling. Christ he looked young!

‘Ah, I see you’ve met your new partner!’

Tanja turned to see Chief Inspector Anders Wever. He was smiling.

Tanja closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the kid was still there, and Anders was still smiling, and she was still in danger of losing her temper.

Her voice remained steady. ‘Can I have a word with you, sir? In private.’