The Fourth Figure (3 page)

“That's strange.” Guido was opening the remaining drawers in the desk. “Somebody's been cleaning up.”

The drawers were completely empty. Van In shook his head. The entire affair was beginning to stink. “Maybe we should put things on hold for a bit,” he said guardedly, “wait until we know the precise cause of death.”

“You're afraid we might stir up some hornet's nest.”

“I'm praying we haven't already, Guido.”

“Prayer sounds appropriate, given the circumstances,” Guido said with a smile.

They made their way outside to find the Singel just as dreary and desolate as ever. The strips of red-and-white tape that marked the place where Trui Andries had met her end fluttered in the wind like party streamers with nothing to celebrate. Guido looked up at the sky, at the ominous clouds drifting low above the treetops, making the street even more miserable than it already was.

“There's rain on the way, Pieter.”

He'd hardly finished speaking when the first heavy drops exploded on the cobblestones like liquid coins. Both Van In and Guido were soaked through by the time they reached the Volks­wagen Golf.

“Looks as if Inspector Pattyn's on the job,” said Guido, pointing to the police vehicle parked in front of the Golf. Pattyn was charged with the local door-to-door canvassing, and everyone in the corps knew that the ambitious inspector would do anything to get promoted. Guido started the engine and turned the wipers on full blast.

“Let him get on with it. That way he won't get under our feet.” Van In took his cell phone from the glove compartment and called the police physician. It took a while before the man answered.

Van In peered through the windshield at the pouring rain. There had been no sign of a phone index or address book when they were searching the house, and two of the drawers in Miss Andries's apartment had been emptied, as if someone had been trying to wipe out any clues that might say something about her private life. The letter between the pages of the Leopold Flam book was apparently the only item to have survived the cleanup. Van In was pretty certain that the hard disk in her computer had also been “cleaned.”

“Hello. Commissioner Van In here. Is the doctor available?”

A refined female voice explained that the doctor wasn't in his office. Van In left a message, disconnected, then lit another cigarette. “I'll be happy when today's behind us,” he said with a shiver.

“Me too,” said Guido. “Frank's planning breast of duck with red wine sauce. And for dessert …”

“Don't get him pregnant, Guido.”

They laughed.

2

The drive from the Singel to the police station was much like a visit to the car wash. It poured so hard that the wipers were virtually useless. Even the warm air from the heat vents felt humid.

“Now I know what the back of a waterfall must feel like,” said Guido.

“And we'll soon know what it's like to walk through one,” Van In grumbled.

Guido drove into the police station's inner courtyard and parked the car in the only available space: farthest from the entrance, needless to say. Van In pulled his jacket over his head, ran across the courtyard, and sought shelter under the awning above the main door. The sergeant joined him a second later and shook himself like a wet dog.

“Shame we finished the rum,” said Van In as they stood in the elevator. “I could use a pick-me-up.”

He shivered. Lack of sleep combined with the hours in Trui Andries's unheated house were beginning to take their toll.

“Is Jenever an option?” asked Guido.

“Is there any left?”

Guido nodded and held up three fingers to indicate how much was still in the bottle. Van In made a face. He'd need more than that to drive the cold from his system.

“Fancy a shot yourself?”

Guido understood that this was a rhetorical question, but he shook his head just to be clear and, of course, to reassure his friend.

Van In draped his jacket over the back of a chair, pushed it up against the radiator, sat down at his desk, and lit a cigarette. Just as he was about to treat himself to a sip of Jenever, the telephone rang. The sudden, loud ring made him knock over the glass, and the Jenever spread across his desk like an oil slick. Before he could do anything about it, some of the stuff poured onto his pants.

He cursed and picked up the phone at the same time. “Hello, Van In.”

Instead of biting the caller's head off, he grabbed an old newspaper and tried to stop the flow of Jenever. Guido saw him nodding. That was a bad sign. Suddenly Van In put down the paper and started to tap nervously on the arm of his chair. Guido was now more or less certain of the caller's identity. He grabbed a dishtowel and started to wipe Van In's desk dry.

“Okay, I'll be there in two minutes.”

Van In slammed down the receiver just as Guido was finished with cleaning. The surface of the desk was spotless. The alcohol had dissolved years of coffee and nicotine into a brown sludge that the dishtowel had absorbed.

“I'm guessing De Kee.”

“Bull's-eye! If you ask me, the man's lost it altogether.”

Chief Commissioner De Kee and Van In weren't the best of friends. The old man, as Van In liked to call him, saw his subordinate as a blot on the corps's reputation, and Van In was convinced that his superior was as dumb as they came.

“Shall I keep the coffee warm?” asked Guido.

Van In removed his jacket from the chair by the radiator and sniffed at it. It smelled like a bar at closing time, but he put it on anyway. De Kee hated informality.

“Another Jenever sounds a lot better, Guido,” said Van In as he turned and headed for the door. “Shit, my pants.” He groped in panic at the Jenever stain.

“Your pants were already wet from the rain, Pieter. No one will notice.”

Like Thomas, who refused to believe until Jesus invited him to place his finger in his wounded side, Van In continued to grope at the inside of his thigh.

Guido shook his head. “You don't think I would let you leave the office with a wet stain on your pants.”

“You're an angel, Guido.”

“I know. Now get your ass out of here.”

Guido tossed the dirty dishtowel into the wastebasket and poured himself a cup of coffee. He was curious, to tell the truth. What did the old man have to report?

De Kee's third-floor office was spacious and comfortable, the place from which he directed the Bruges police force as an enlightened despot. He would have been happy to add “By the grace of God” to his job description, of course, but those days were sadly gone.

Van In straightened his wrinkled jacket and rang the bell by the door. It took a while before the little box with the red and green windows flashed to green for “enter.” Van In pushed down the door handle and entered the sanctuary.

De Kee wasn't in his usual place behind his desk but was sitting in a lounge area by the window. A young woman, twenty-five or thereabouts, was sitting opposite him, her legs crossed in the only respectable position her extremely short skirt allowed.

“Let me introduce you, Pieter. This is Miss Maes,” said De Kee with a jovial smile.

Van In scratched the back of his ear. When the old man used his first name, caution was advised. The young woman got to her feet and shook his hand. Her eyes twinkled.

“Good afternoon, Commissioner.”

Van In looked Miss Maes straight in the eye, but she neither blinked nor blushed. “So you're the journalist who wants to investigate our little enterprise.”

“I wouldn't say ‘investigate,' Commissioner. I'm preparing a series of articles on cooperation between the municipal police and the federal police.” She dropped the name of a prominent weekly. “It might sound a little banal, but it's still a topical issue, rest assured,” she said with a laugh.

Van In took a seat beside De Kee. He felt a little awkward in his damp clothes and did his best not to dwell on what he looked like, although he was certain wet hair added at least ten years to his appearance.

“Miss Maes is keen to follow an investigation at close quarters, one involving ourselves
and
our federal colleagues,” said De Kee, sniffing the air suddenly like a dog with a runny snout and shifting a little to the right, the kind of maneuver people deploy when they've broken wind and want to blame it on someone else. Van In took a deep breath and realized immediately what was going on. The alcohol on his pants had started to evaporate, giving off a thin but unpleasant bar odor. His discomfort multiplied.

“You've no objections, I imagine,” De Kee snapped.

Of course Van In had objections! For one thing, he had no intention of cooperating with the federal police, and for another, he hated people looking over his shoulder. Miss Maes seemed to sense his suspicion and tried to confuse him by uncrossing her legs. Van In looked away and shifted a little to the left. Her tactics might have worked a year ago, but now he had other things on his mind. He was reminded of a verse from the Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes: “A time to make love and a time to abstain,” or words to that effect. “If such a case should present itself, I'll be sure to inform you, Miss Maes.”

The young woman looked at De Kee, smile freezing and eyebrows raising. The chief commissioner cleared his throat. “But aren't you working on an appropriate case, Pieter?”

Van In's penny dropped. This had all been arranged in advance. Now he knew why De Kee had been using his first name.

“The incident this morning, Pieter. That bizarre suicide … the Singel.”

“But the federal police aren't involved,” Van In gently protested. “And if it turns out to be a suicide, there won't be much to investigate.”

“Do you think it was a suicide?” Miss Maes asked bluntly.

“That's not what I said, Miss. I'll need confirmation of the official cause of death before I can draw any conclusions.”

Van In almost bit the tip of his tongue. Guido would have bent double with laughter.
I'll need confirmation of the official cause of death before I can draw any conclusions.
He couldn't have sounded more officious if he'd tried.

“That's what makes the case perfect for Miss Maes.” De Kee's forehead shone like a polished billiard ball. “Don't you agree, Miss Maes?” The chief commissioner's thin lips morphed into a broad smile, the kind he usually reserved for intimates. Van In pressed his thighs together. The smell of alcohol had mixed with the musty smell of his clothes to produce an odor that reminded him of people who only change their underwear once a month. He was sure she could smell it too.

“But I don't see what the federal police have to do with this. Perhaps, in the not-too-distant future …”

“Come on, Pieter,” said De Kee, shaking his head. “If I'm correctly informed, the federal police were first on the scene. Isn't it time we acknowledge that?”

“That's your opinion, Chief Commissioner.”

“Don't let it worry you, Pieter. Saartje … I mean Miss Maes … is only interested in the investigation itself. She's not planning to draw attention to every little friction between the police services. Am I right, Miss Maes?”

“Goes without saying, Chief Commissioner.” The journalist presented two rows of snow-white teeth and a tilted-up nose surrounded by a garland of tiny freckles.

Van In sighed deeply. He was exhausted and wasn't in the mood to fight windmills, certainly not two at a time. “Do I have a choice?”

De Kee shook his head a second time. “We have to move with the times, Pieter. Transparency and openness. They're not just meaningless words anymore. Anyway, the federal boys have already agreed to cooperate. Miss Maes will pitch tent with us for the first week, then move on to our colleagues.”

Coming from De Kee, the words
pitch tent
sounded particularly ambiguous. Everyone knew his mistress had dumped him a month earlier and he'd been on the prowl ever since. Van In sighed.

Frederik Masyn closed the door to his study behind him and turned the key. In his daily life, he wasn't known as a new initiate into the Church of Satan, but rather as a respectable notary who spent most of his day witnessing the signing of important documents.

Although he heard the door's deadbolt click as it should, he grabbed the handle firmly and checked three times to be sure the door was well and truly locked. He then switched on the light, closed the shutters, pushed aside an armchair, and lifted a corner of the rug to reveal a tiny door with sunken hinges in the parquet floor. Frederik unlocked the door with a key he kept on a chain around his neck. He flipped it open, looked around suspiciously, got to his feet, walked to the door, and checked for the fourth time that it was properly secured. Having completed his usual ritual, he got to his knees in front of the hole in the floor and leaned over the little safe. A plastic bag containing white gloves was attached to the door. Frederik put the gloves on and dialed the combination, a four-letter word rarely heard on national television because of the censor. From a distance, the entire performance looked like some kind of religious event. After the final click, Frederik got to his feet, dropped his pants, and started to masturbate.

When Van In returned to Room 204, Guido was reading one of the books he had taken from Trui Andries's bookcase. The sergeant looked up, not sure what to expect, although the way Van In slammed the door was already an indication. Guido mentally prepared to handle the inspector with kid gloves, put his book to one side, slinked toward the filing cabinet, and returned with the bottle of Jenever.

Van In lit a cigarette and nervously tapped his shiny desk with the tips of his fingers. Guido served him a stiff double and then some and returned to his book. The thrumming concert came to an abrupt end, and silence descended on Room 204.

The relentless rain outside had steamed up the windows, creating an agreeable cocoonlike atmosphere. Guido read with pleasure. From age ten to age sixteen he had spent many a winter evening alone with a book and had managed more or less to clean out the school library. He later ventured into more serious literature, and that hadn't disappointed either.

“De Kee's lost his mind completely,” said Van In after a minute. “Starting tomorrow we've been saddled with a journalist, a young slip of a thing, wants to write an article about cooperation between us and the federal boys. Can't see the point myself.”

Guido closed his book for the second time. “I can see you're looking forward to it,” he said. “How long?”

“A week.”

Guido sighed. He knew Van In. If the journalist got on his nerves, he could look forward to a week of moaning and groaning from his boss.

“Don't you have three weeks' holiday time you can take? Perhaps—”

“Don't be such an asshole, Guido.”

“Sorry. It was only a suggestion.”

Guido returned to his book. Given the circumstances, reading was the safest option. He looked at the clock above the door. His shift was over in fifteen minutes. Good thing too.

A sudden racket in the corridor outside made both Van In and Guido jump to their feet. They heard someone cursing, and seconds later a young man in handcuffs flashed past the window, followed by Inspector Pattyn and a couple of other cops. Doors opened the length of the corridor, and heads followed the juvenile fugitive as he reached a dead end, unable to open the door to the stairwell with his hands cuffed. Pattyn threw himself at the boy like a lion attacking its prey, dragging him to the ground and pressing him flat with all his substantial weight. His victim floundered like a fish on dry land, his eyes full of despair.

“What's going on, Pattyn?”

The cops standing in a semicircle around the detainee let Van In and Guido through. Pattyn turned to them with a grin on his face, but the boy took advantage of the inspector's distraction and rolled onto his side, knocking Pattyn off balance. He started to kick out in every direction and managed to land a bull's-eye in Pattyn's crotch. The poor inspector screeched like a slaughtered pig and grabbed himself with both hands. Van In stood back and enjoyed the entertainment. His colleagues, on the other hand, seized their rubber batons in unison and set upon the prisoner like a bunch of animals. Van In didn't pause. He threw himself into the fray but had to use all his authority to put an end to the aggression.
Homo homini lupus
. The effort required to end the scuffle left him gasping for breath.