From Bruges with Love (7 page)

Van In listened to his story. The entrance to the Love was immediately behind a sharp bend, and there had been an accident in 1979 in which someone had almost died. A motorcyclist had crashed into Vandaele's parked car while he was opening the gate. The road was narrow, and Vandaele's Mercedes took up most of it. The victim had survived the crash, but Vandaele had sworn it would never happen again.

“That's why I had a remote installed on the spot,” Vandaele concluded his story. “Prevention is still better than a cure, eh, Commissioner?”

Vandaele's account was plausible, and Van In thought it a shame. He would have Baert check it out. Anything to keep the irritating chief inspector busy and out of his hair.

“It's probably a redundant question, Mr. Vandaele, but my job requires me to ask it.”

The old man puffed long and hard at his half-smoked Davidoff. He was happy that Van In didn't want to press him on the gate story. “Please, Commissioner, feel free.”

“Has anyone ever drawn your attention to digging going on at your property?”

Vandaele had been expecting a totally different question. “No, Commissioner, absolutely not.”

“And you've never found traces of an attempted break-in?”

Vandaele shook his head. He didn't even have to lie. “As I said, Commissioner, I was only there on the rare occasion. I suspect whoever buried the body was aware of that.”

“I think so too,” said Van In. “There are plenty of similar cases in the police literature. Perpetrators usually pick remote places to dump their victims, but such places are pretty few and far between in Flanders. That allows us to conclude, give or take, that the killer was familiar with the area in general and with your property in particular.”

“Sounds like a plausible hypothesis, Commissioner. I wish there was some other way that I could be of assistance.”

Van In finished his coffee and got to his feet. Now he was looking down on Vandaele for once.

“Don't worry, Mr. Vandaele,” he said with a smile. “You've helped me a great deal.”

It was an old trick he had learned at the police academy. Always give the impression you know more than the person you're interrogating thinks you know. Doubt is a seed that can germinate in no time at all, urging suspects to be rash. “I'll keep you up-to-date on the evolution of the case,” Van In promised.

“I'll be waiting with bated breath, Commissioner.”

The old man struggled to his feet and accompanied Van In to the door. He seemed a lot less self-assured than he had an hour earlier. Or was Van In imagining things?

Most tourist guides advise unwary visitors not to wander around alone when they're in Naples. William Aerts heeded it and took a taxi to the port. The wallet in his trouser pocket was stuffed with fifty one-hundred-dollar bills and four million lire in large denominations. In spite of the unbearable heat, he had kept his hand in his pocket for the entire length of the train journey from Rome to Naples. This was Mafia territory, where throats were cut for a fraction of the amount he was carrying.

Once an exotic destination, the Bay of Naples now looked like the gray armpit of a dying organism called a city. A crazily honking taxi driver piloted Aerts through the chaos with genuine disregard for his own safety. He paid no attention to the traffic lights, carving his way through the congested streets with a curse for every obstacle. The fact that he managed to deliver his client safely to his destination was nothing short of a miracle.

Ports always stink, but the more acceptable smell of fuel and tar was nothing compared to the stench of rotting fish and urine Naples had to offer. Aerts took the inconvenience in stride. If everything went according to plan, he would be onboard within the hour.

The ferry to Palermo was packed. Aerts had to settle for a place on the forward deck out of the shade. He didn't give a damn. He'd have traveled in a coffin if he'd had to.

“Adieu, Linda; adieu, bastards,” he said under his breath as the grinding engines churned the grimy water. Half an hour later, the wind massaged his sweating face. The distant horizon beckoned. A boyhood dream was about to be fulfilled.

Lodewijk Vandaele left his office five minutes after Van In's visit.

“I'll be away for the rest of the afternoon.”

His secretary fetched his straw hat and cane.

“Fine, Mr. Vandaele. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, Liesbeth.”

Liesbeth held open the door for him and then returned to her duties.

Vandaele was in the habit of lunching in an exclusive restaurant on the outskirts of the city, but today he drove straight to his villa on the Damme Canal. The conversation with Van In still bugged him—not so much the content but the subtle way the commissioner had introduced the question of the gate. The man was dangerous, and something had to be done about it.

Vandaele grabbed a bottle of Exshaw from the liquor cabinet in the lounge and poured himself a generous glass of the twenty-year-old cognac. He then consulted his diary and punched in the number of the ministry of foreign affairs.

Johan Brys was at his desk when the phone rang. The minister had landed at the airport in Zaventem only an hour earlier. His working visit to Rwanda had yielded precious little. The country was a mess, and the hundred million francs in emergency relief he had promised to his Rwandan colleague—a substantial sum in those days—wasn't likely to make much of a difference. If they wanted to bring those guilty of genocide to justice, the country's legal apparatus had to get back on its feet, and that was going to cost a great deal more than a hundred million. It was also by no means certain that Rwanda would ever see the promised support. Brys wasn't really interested. The TV news appearance later that evening, in which he was to announce that the Belgian government (i.e., himself) was intent on doing whatever it took to help the Rwandan judiciary trace and try those responsible for mass murder, was more important for his career. Parliamentary elections were only a couple of months away, and the more he appeared on TV the more likely he was to score.

“I have a Mr. Lodewijk Vandaele on line one, Minister. He says it's urgent,” his secretary announced apologetically.

“No problem, Sonja. I know Mr. Vandaele,” said Brys. “Put him through.”

“Hello, Counselor Lodewijk.”

“Hello, Johan. How was Burundi?”

“Rwanda,” Brys corrected him gingerly.

“Rwanda, Burundi. What difference does it make?” Vandaele laughed.

He took a sip from his glass. The fact that he could get through to the minister of foreign affairs without the least resistance had a relaxing effect.

Van In arrived in Room 204 at two thirty to find Dirk Baert busy on the phone.

“Still no results?” he asked with more than a hint of condescension when Baert hung up.

“I've covered Bruges and the surrounding area. There isn't a single dentist who remembers a patient with twenty-four false teeth, so now I'm focusing on hospitals and orthodontists.”

“Reasons to be cheerful?”

“Negative, Commissioner. What about you?”

Van In turned away, irked by the question.
Nosey bastard
, he thought.

“Is Versavel back?”

“No, Commissioner. He left around eleven. He should have been back by now.”

“Let me be the judge of that, Chief Inspector.”

Baert pressed his fingernails into the palm of his hand. Why did no one like him? He grabbed the telephone book and checked off the next number. When Van In realized he was about to continue his odyssey, he stopped him, sensing a handy opportunity to get the nuisance out of his hair for a while.

“I'd like you to check the records for me, Baert. Vandaele claims there was an accident back in the summer of 1978. He's not sure of the exact date, but he remembers a motorcyclist driving into his parked car. Find out if he's telling the truth.”

Baert slammed the telephone book shut and left the room.

With the chief inspector gone, Van In planted himself in front of Versavel's old-fashioned Brother typewriter. There was paperwork to be done, and someone had to do it.

Sergeant Versavel arrived at three forty-five. “Now that's a sight for sore eyes,” he said, chuckling at the sight of his boss sweating over the keyboard.

Van In stopped halfway through a sentence full of typos. “Finally,” he jeered. “Looks like Mr. Versavel's been having a good time. Was Jonathan worth the visit?”

“Un-be-liev-able,” said Versavel, parking himself on the edge of the typewriter desk and still clearly radiant from the encounter. “He treated me to lunch at the Karmeliet. Jonathan is a connoisseur, always has been. We started with roast breast of duck on a bed of raspberry preserve with lukewarm artichoke mousse, then moved on to monkfish tartlets with stuffed endive and trout roe, followed by rack of lamb with—”

“I got coffee,” Van In interrupted with a glower.

“And Mouton Rothschild,” Versavel continued unperturbed. “1984, no less. I'm a mere mortal. How could I refuse?”

“Good thing Frank isn't hearing this,” said Van In.

Versavel shrugged his shoulders.

“Frank knows I had a relationship with Jonathan. That's the difference with you straight guys. Men like us don't sweat past affairs. A friend is a friend. Frank and I aren't jealous types.”

The Mouton Rothschild hadn't done Versavel any favors. The sergeant was acting like an aging hippy on his way down from an LSD trip.

“Did Jonathan have anything interesting to say?” Van In asked.

Versavel ignored his boss's sarcasm. In his head he was still in the Karmeliet, face-to-face with Jonathan.

Van In hadn't had a smoke for a full three hours. He rummaged for his cigarettes convinced that this was an emergency. What else do you do when you're forced to listen to a gay man on the wrong side of fifty waxing lyrical about an old flame?

“Surely you don't think I'm drunk, Commissioner?” Versavel inquired, looking his boss up and down with a boyish grin.

“Get to the point, Guido. You can siesta when you're done.”

Versavel grabbed a chair, the smile frozen on his lips.

“According to Jonathan, the Love, which is what he called the place, functioned as a whorehouse for the wealthy and influential, although it still looked like a dump from the outside.” Versavel pronounced the name of the place with an American accent, stretching the
o
.

“Names, Guido?”

“He couldn't help.”

“How did he know they were influential?”

“He just figured.”

“I see, he just figured.”

Versavel twigged to his boss's cynicism. Visiting whores wasn't a crime.

“Jonathan accompanied Vandaele a couple of times to a brothel on the main road to Male, and the Love cropped up in the conversation. The guy operating the place, a certain William Aerts, confessed that he was expected to bring the better clients and the more exceptional girls to the farm, where they could do their thing without onlookers.”

“So if I'm understanding this right, Vandaele placed the Love at the disposal of his business partners,” said Van In, clearly disappointed. He hesitated at the long
o
and what came out sounded like
Loaf
.

“Try pronouncing it L
uu
v, with a double
u
,” said Versavel.

“L
uu
v.” Van In did his best. “Any better?”

“Not bad,” said the slightly tipsy sergeant. “But
Loaf
isn't bad either. Plenty of bread changing hands. You know how it works, Pieter.”

Van In shook his head in confusion. “Time for coffee if you ask me,” he said, crossing to the window and filling a jug with water. A woozy sergeant was about as useful as a priest at a freemason's deathbed.

Van In was now up to more than half a pack a day after twelve weeks on a more restricted cigarette diet. Hannelore let him get on with it. She treated herself to an extra glass of Moselle and silently resisted the intense desire to light up and join him. They had both had a difficult day.

Van In stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. The sight of the still smoldering butt almost drove Hannelore crazy.

“Something up?” he asked routinely.

“No. What about Herbert?”

Van In didn't have much of a grasp of the female psyche, but he wasn't an idiot. Her eyes moistened as if she was about to burst into tears. “Shall I heat up a can of sauerkraut?” he suggested obligingly. He could be sweet at times. “A portion of fries?”

Hannelore's hand glided across the table. “I want a cigarette,” she said, clearly determined.

Van In tried to grab the pack, but she beat him to it.

“You can't be serious, Hanne.”

Her eyes blazed as she filled her lungs with smoke. “Just one,” she pleaded.

“I thought we'd agreed you'd stop,” he erupted. “In exchange I agreed to follow a strict diet. I've been keeping my side of the bargain: ten cigarettes a day, salad, tasteless fish, and high-fiber bread full of sawdust.”

Hannelore puffed at her cigarette like a woman possessed as the color bled from her face. “You've smoked half a pack since you got home,” she protested. “I've been counting.”

Van In tried to control himself. He asked himself if he would be capable of stopping altogether.

“OK, one cigarette. But for the love of God …”

“For the love of who? Does the commissioner think he's the only one dealing with stress? Try spending a day at court!”

“Hanne, tell me what's the matter, please.”

Hannelore got to her feet, something she always did when her emotions got the better of her. “I'll tell you what's the matter. You grouch half the evening and puff away to your heart's content, and you dare accuse me of not keeping my part of the bargain!”