Authors: Isadora Bryan
‘No, of course you don’t,’ she said, as she reached for something else. Something sharp. ‘That is doubtless why I find it so easy to do what must be done. The only time any of you get close to understanding is when you are about to die.’
She held the new instrument before her, her thumb playing at its base. Something spat out the end, catching in a shaft of sunlight, the mist refracted into a series of rainbows.
Not adrenaline. It was blue.
‘I’ve been experimenting,’ said Scholten. ‘To be honest, I’ve only had limited success. Still, we persevere.’ She sighed again, more wistful, now. ‘Cornelius had the most extraordinary eyes. Even when he had his hand around my throat, telling me that he would strangle me if I ever so much as thought to tell anyone, it was his eyes which held me. “I’m watching you,” he said. “I’m always watching”.’
Pieter turned his head, and was sick across the carpet.
In all his life, he’d never imagined anything like this. Never imagined a feeling of such utter helplessness. Of terror. Of revulsion.
The needle drew closer. He shut his eyes desperately.
‘Now, don’t be foolish,’ she murmured. ‘If you co-operate, at least you can be sure that my aim will be true.’ She paused. ‘Or else I could cut your eyelids out. You think I won’t do it? I will. But you wouldn’t enjoy that, Pieter.’
Pieter knew he was going to die; he also knew that the best he could hope for was to do so with his dignity intact. But he was twenty-four years old, his mind a store of unfulfilled ambitions.
Fuck dignity, fuck heroism; this was about survival. If he could just draw this out a little longer, maybe help would come.
‘We’ll catch him,’ he gasped. ‘Cornelius.’
Scholten gripped the back of Pieter’s head and yanked back the hair.
‘You can’t touch him! You never could!’
‘Help us.’
Scholten’s lips were so close they brushed his cheek. ‘You know the last thing Debre Kerk said, before she went catatonic? That wherever she looked she saw his eyes. The bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Always, always watching.’
Through his fear, the rational part of Pieter’s mind clinked. Debre? The little girl who escaped. He opened his eyes.
‘The Butcher?’ he said.
‘If you must call him that.’ Her words were flat, her face expressionless. ‘By the time I’d made the connection, it was too late; too late to see him suffer. Thanks to the ineptitude of Detectives Pino and Hoekstra.’
Despite everything, Pieter found room for his guilt. He should have believed in Tanja; she was his partner. He hadn’t really understood what it meant before, but he did now.
‘To be honest,’ said Scholten. ‘I was planning to strangle you with one of Tanja’s stockings, then dump your body in the park behind her apartment. I have a key – the maintenance man handed it over without a word. But that idiot –’ she gestured towards the bathroom, ‘–has complicated things a little.’
Pieter struggled again, testing the strength in his limbs. There was nothing. ‘Please…’ he said. ‘Let me go.’
She stroked fingers to his cheek, gentle as a mother, then pressed her elbow into his throat, pushing his head hard against the wooden floor. The syringe dripped a blue jewel and blurred in his vision. He screwed his eyes shut.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It won’t hurt much. Now
open
your
fucking
eyes
!
’
Tanja arrived at the Binnengasthuis and immediately saw van Kempen standing beside Wever’s ageing Mercedes. There was also a squad of gun-toting officers, four she could see. Good. It might be an overreaction on van Kempen’s part, but they couldn’t be too careful. Killers like Scholten rarely came easy.
Strangely, she didn’t recognise any of the officers, none of whom were wearing uniform. Resting her bicycle against the wall, she began to walk in their direction.
The gun barrels lifted as one, to point straight at her. Van Kempen’s, too.
Anders was shaking his head all the while. But he’d also taken aim, and his hand remained steady. He’d been a celebrated shot in his day.
‘On the ground Tanja!’ van Kempen instructed.
‘What are you talking about?’ she shouted. ‘I’ve told you, it’s Scholten!’
‘Get on the floor, Tanja,’ van Kempen said again.
Tanja stared at him, blinking slowly all the while. ‘You will shoot me?’
He swallowed, but his voice remained calm. ‘Yes. If necessary.’
‘Anders?’
He wouldn’t look at her. ‘What would you do, Tanja? You’ve left us no option.’
Tanja started to back away. Her eyes darted about, looking for the most likely escape route. There was a dull blur, as the muzzles of marksmen’s Heckler and Koch MP5 machine-pistols twisted in the sunlight. H&Ks? Jesus. If they were all to fire at once, there wouldn’t be much left of her.
Van Kempen glanced at his men, signalling his determination with a series of whispered commands.
There was a screech; an Opel Senator slewed to a halt. Harald Janssen emerged, his breath coming in fat gasps as he ran over to join his superiors. He whispered a few words, furious; then, with a fluidity which was quite at odds with his usual inertia, proceeded to brush aside van Kempen’s animated protest, to run across the road towards Tanja.
‘For fuck’s
sake
!’ van Kempen cursed.
Janssen skidded to a halt two metres in front of Tanja, his heavy frame shielding her from the gunmen. The marksmen shifted their positions accordingly.
‘Tanja,’ he grunted. ‘Listen to me. We’re going to be calm, yes?’
‘Harald – it’s me.
Tanja
.’
Janssen waved a hand behind him. ‘Lower your guns!’ He turned back to her. ‘This isn’t the place, Tanja. Just give me your gun and get on the ground before you get us both killed.’
She looked over his shoulder and spotted, through a gap in the trees, Pieter’s Fiat parked alongside the university building. ‘Where’s Kissin?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But that’s his car. Where is he? Phone him!’
‘Tanja, this isn’t the time.’
‘Do it!’ she cried. ‘I’ve tried ringing him myself, but he didn’t answer. He could be in danger!’
‘Enough Tanja!’ Harald hissed. ‘Just give me your gun before I have a heart attack.’
‘I don’t have it,’ she said, pulling open her jacket with one hand. Harald ran his hands inside.
Van Kempen was moving in behind Janssen, his Walther pointed at the ground, but no less threatening for it.
‘Lower your guns,’ shouted Harald. ‘She’s unarmed.’
Van Kempen waved his free hand. The barrels dipped.
Tanja had maybe a second to make the connection, and act on it.
‘Scholten has Pieter,’ she said.
Harald gawped at her. She shoved him hard into van Kempen and sprinted away from the Grimburgwal, towards the university buildings. She heard van Kempen’s shouts, but no shots. No one was going to shoot an unarmed officer in the back. Tanja plunged into the Binnengasthuis, weaving a path between the tourists and students, until she came to a building, a lofty, grey-hued folly, which rose from a perfectly manicured lawn of uniform green. She could hear the cries of her pursuers, as they sought to clear the area of bystanders, but she paid it no heed.
Tanja entered the building, following a steep spiral staircase to the top floor. She’d been here twice before, but instead of the heavy tread of her former visits, this time she was running full pelt, taking three steps at a time.
There was a door at the end of the corridor. It was shut, but not locked.
She opened it.
Pieter’s long white frame was stretched out on the floor, his arms pinned back to a radiator. On top of him sat a twisted, naked creature, and it took Tanja a second to realise that it was Antje Scholten. She had no hair, and her breasts were pressed against Pieter. Tanja’s first instinct was to redouble her fist, and smash it repeatedly into her face.
But a ten-centimetre needle was resting against Pieter’s cheek. There was blood, seeping from red scratches, and his eyelid looked swollen and torn. A dribble of blue lay across his skin Some kind of poison? Had she injected any of it? It was impossible to tell.
‘Just take it easy, Antje,’ she said.
Scholten was off Pieter in an instant, crossing the room and toppling a pile of books. Tanja leapt after her, but now Scholten had turned to face her. And she was holding something. A gun.
My gun
.
‘I’m sorry Tanja,’ said Pieter from the floor.
Scholten’s hand was steady on the trigger. ‘You let him escape,’ she said. ‘He stole my life from me – and you let him
escape
.’
Tanja met the other woman’s eyes, trying to focus beyond the gun barrel. How quick was Scholten?
How quick am I? Not as quick as I was, at any rate
.
‘We did our best,’ Tanja said.
Scholten laughed. ‘Your best, Detective Inspector? Are you sure? If by your best you mean, drifting in and out of work at all hours, that you might better manage your relationship with that boy you were fucking – then yes, I suppose you did your best. But otherwise I’d have to take issue. Do you know where you were, when Debre had her seizure? I’ll tell you. You were looking through the window of a travel agent, doubtless planning a trip away. I saw you step inside; when you reappeared, you were holding a brochure. For the Maldives. The fucking
Maldives
! Thought you could fly away and recharge your batteries, maybe?’
Tanja felt reckless. She hadn’t had a single day off in two months during the hunt for the Butcher. She’d pulled twenty-hour shifts, day after fucking day.
‘What about you, Antje? Has it never occurred to you that if
you
had spoken up against Cornelius at the time, then maybe those other girls would not have been killed?’
The gun wobbled. ‘Trust me, Pino, there is nothing you can say that will add to
my
guilt. But you’ll appreciate yours soon enough.’
‘Come on, then, Antje!’ Tanja shouted, every nerve on fire. ‘Show me!’
Scholten took a step back. Brought her left hand up to steady the gun. ‘I always thought I understood the women I wrote about,’ she said softly, ‘but I wasn’t even close, you know? It’s a glorious, glorious –’
The window glass shattered.
Tanja instinctively threw herself to the floor. When she looked up, she saw red mist in the yellow light. Scholten’s wrist went limp and the gun fell as her other hand went to her neck. Blood seeped out between her fingers.
Tanja looked through the window and caught a glimpse of an armed officer in the three storey building opposite. She signalled frantically.
The sniper looked at her through his sight. She remembered something that an old superintendent had once told her, that the finest marksmen were only one step away from being serial killers themselves.
The gunman peered out from around the sight. There was a hint of teeth, something like a smile.
Scholten slumped onto the floor. Her amber eyes jagged about in their glassy sockets, like wasps in upturned beer mugs. Bitter words bubbled in the frothy mess of her throat:
‘It’s too soon,’ she said.
Tanja snatched some sort of furred academic’s gown from the desk, and pressed it up against the professor’s wounded neck. It was a pointless gesture. She knew enough about gunshot wounds to know this was fatal. Scholten’s skin was almost white.
One of the other snipers appeared at the door, gun trained.
‘An ambulance!’ Tanja shouted. ‘Call a fucking ambulance!’
Van Kempen burst into the room behind him, gun drawn. He took in Pieter’s naked body, then Tanja standing over Scholten.
‘Is she –?’ he asked.
‘Almost,’ Tanja answered, even as Scholten’s eyes grew still, and there was a pulse, faint yet startling, a heart retiring from its lifelong trade.
Wever appeared, and Janssen, both men breathing heavily at the effort of climbing the stairs. He was followed by two paramedics, who asked Tanja to step aside.
‘See to Pieter, first,’ she said.
‘Is it safe to come out?’ said a voice from an adjoining room.
The voice was querulous, shorn of its usual swagger, but unmistakable.
Gus de Groot appeared around the door, his mobile still pressed to his ear.
‘Lucky for you,’ said Wever, gesturing towards Gus, ‘we got a call.’
Tanja hadn’t anticipated it being this cold, though of course it wasn’t unusual for the time of year, with the North Sea gathering itself in preparation for winter. It wasn’t so bad out of the wind, but she was still shivering as she took another coffee in the rough café which stood beside the Oosterdok.
She wasn’t sure why she’d come to the
Haven
, though perhaps it had something to do with a vague notion that she should really get away.
Alex was dead. Taken before his time, like Anton and Ophelie. She would come to terms with it, just as she had with them. It hurt as much as ever, but at least she could approach his loss in a rational fashion. In Scholten’s office, she’d known, for a second at least, what madness was. She’d wanted Antje to pull the trigger. Tanja felt her cheeks flush shame, though no one was watching her. Only she knew how close she’d come. How she’d given in. Well, perhaps Pieter too, though he claimed to remember nothing specific.
To lose control like that, it wasn’t what Detective Tanja Pino did.
Saved by a sniper’s bullet.
Or perhaps not. For all she knew, she was dead, too. Maybe Scholten had shot her after all. Maybe this was how the afterlife would be for her: trussed up in tiredness, a ghostly refugee at the edge of a busy port, lacking the wherewithal to escape to warmer climes. Jumping at each blast of a foghorn, thinking it an accusation.
‘You want something to eat, madam?’
Tanja shook her head at the patron, and deposited a few euro on the table. ‘No, thanks. I have to be going. To a funeral. We had to wait a few weeks you see. The post mortem was, ah, a little tricky.’
He nodded sympathetically. ‘I understand. Well, you look after yourself, you hear?’
She headed outside. She’d come here on foot, and maybe that was a bit stupid, as she’d barely left herself time to get to the Nieuwe Ooster.