Black Widow

‘Of course, Tanja.’

‘I don’t need a new partner,’ she said when they were alone in Wever’s office. ‘Certainly not a teenager.’

‘He’s twenty-four,’ Wever advised as he set about pouring coffee from a thermos. His wife packed him a lunch every day.

‘Even so.’

Wever looked at her over the plastic rim of his thermos mug. His eyes betrayed a familiar mischief. She knew what he was thinking and what he was about to say. She lowered her gaze, hoping that would be enough for him, but no, it seemed he would have his fun.

‘But look,’ he said, ‘I thought you liked them young. How old’s Alex? Twenty-five?’

Tanja’s head snapped up. ‘With respect, sir, piss off.’

He considered this response for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’

She bit her lip. ‘And he’s twenty-seven. As you well know. You must have seen his personnel file, when you arranged his transfer.’

Wever sighed. ‘Don’t start that again, Tanja. You know I had no choice.’

‘As you say.’

‘And haven’t things been, you know, better, since he moved to Diemen?’

Tanja had to concede this was true. She and Alex had even come to a tentative agreement, that they would give their relationship a second chance. They were due to meet up on Saturday.

But Wever was doubtless referring to Tanja’s professional situation, too. And in that regard she was less convinced. Wever had gone out of his way to feed her a succession of easy cases, in recent months, the investigative equivalent of low-fat meals-for-one. All part of the rehabilitation program, as he put it – which only served to remind Tanja of the extent to which she’d been crippled.

Everything was linked; she wondered what Alex was doing.

‘Tanja?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Don’t get sidetracked, eh?’

Wever set about arranging his features into a more conciliatory expression. He had a solid face, undermined a little by the subsidence of fifty-odd years. His beard was dark, tinged with ginger; his hair was veined with silver. There was something of autumn in the way he looked, a sense that every colour was on the turn. It was a fairly melancholy state of affairs, to Tanja’s way of thinking, but Wever seemed happy enough. He had his wife, and he had his kids. He had an Ajax season ticket. He had a dog named Denise, and a classic VW. If he were to die tomorrow, those who knew him would doubtless claim that he’d lived a rich life.

Wever took a slurp of coffee. ‘Kissin graduated top of his class at the Academy, you know. Sailed through level five; waltzed through level six.’

‘He’s got his Masters, then?’

‘Yep,’ Wever confirmed.

‘Has he done any actual police work yet?’

‘He worked the beat for a while. In the Vechtstreek.’

Tanja massaged her throbbing forehead with a weary hand. ‘The Vechtstreek? I bet there hasn’t been a murder in the Vecht since the Germans last invaded. There’s nothing there but theehuisjes and cows. And I hear the cows lead fairly exemplary lives.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with a nice tea house, though,’ Wever argued. ‘There’s a place I know near the river, on the outskirts of Loenen. The tea’s fine, but you really go for the spiced cheese. The secret’s in the proportion of cumin to cloves, you see – —’

‘Now who’s getting sidetracked?’ Tanja interrupted.

‘What? Oh, of course. Well, I’m afraid the decision has been taken.’ He pointed a finger skywards. ‘They have spoken. It’s not up for discussion.’

‘Great.’

‘Now, you will be nice to him, eh?’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘I mean it, Tanja.’ Wever’s expression was a little pained. ‘And try and play it by the book, will you? At least for the first few weeks. If he picks up any of your more questionable habits now, he’ll be stuck with them for life. He’s at an impressionable age.’

‘Aren’t we all,’ Tanja muttered.

The conversation went nowhere after this. Tanja headed back towards her desk, just about resisting the temptation to slam the door. As she pulled out her chair, she felt a tap on the shoulder. Harald Janssen, a fellow detective in Homicide and Violent Crime. To everyone else he went by the name ‘Lucky’, owing to the remarkable frequency of kindergarten cases that fell onto his desk. If there was a stabbed corpse floating in the canal, with no discernible forensics and no leads, it would be just Lucky Janssen’s good fortune that the perpetrator walked into the Elandsgracht front office and gave himself up along with the murder weapon.

Harald’s grey eyes were alive with a rare mirth, which sat incongruously with the crusty residue of his usual grouchiness. A few strands of white hair were standing on end, as if party to secret currents; others were lank and greasy against his scalp, beyond the reach of all but the most overt breeze. At forty-six, he was a couple of years younger than Tanja, but seemed a good deal older. Breath rattled noisily in his chest, and there was only so much that could be explained away by childhood asthma.

‘See they’ve finally found you a fresh canvas on which to work your dark art, Tanja.’

‘What?’ she said irritably.

‘The new lad. Christ, you’d think they’d have learned by now. You’re going to mould him in your own tortured image?’

‘Shut up, Harald.’

Janssen coughed into the back of his hand. There was an unpleasant sense of things being dislodged. Yet still the grin. ‘Did the old man tell you all of it? Did he tell you who Kissin’s dad is?’

‘No.’

‘He only heads the Vecht police department. Which means our Pieter is practically royalty!’

‘Jesus,’ Tanja muttered, as Harald wheezed away, perhaps to take a nap.

She returned to her seat, glaring at Pieter all the while. Three years on patrol, four on volume crime, five more in Vice, and God knows how many in Homicide – everything she had, she’d earned. And now here she was, saddled with a daddy’s-boy partner, who was doubtless already being groomed for an unmerited promotion.

There were surely better, less frustrating jobs. Not for the first time in recent weeks, Tanja wondered how her life might have turned out, if she’d followed a different path. She had a degree, in history. And a good one at that, from the University of Amsterdam. If she’d listened to her mother, she might have become a teacher. And the sum total of her troubles would have been bound up in the misdemeanours of a few disruptive kids.

Pieter reached out across Alex’s desk and plucked a sheet of paper from the back board. His lips pursed as he took in the image on the front, then he turned to Tanja. ‘Is this – ?’ he began.

But Tanja was out of her chair in a second, to snatch the paper from his hand. She didn’t even look at the photofit; she didn’t need to. The face – middle-aged, lean, calculating – was always with her: from the first shudder of morning, to the final drink of night.

One less familiar with the face might have guessed him a schoolteacher too, or some respectable civil servant. Perhaps he was. But this face without a name also liked to kidnap little girls, rape them repeatedly, then strangle them.

And, because of her, he was still out there.

Tanja stuffed the paper in a drawer of her own desk.