Black Widow

By Isadora Bryan

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…

Someone is killing and mutilating young men in Amsterdam – the murders are brutal, sexual, and ritualized. For detective Joyce Pino, after a succession of failures, this is the perfect case to get her back on track.

But as it becomes clear the murderer is a middle-aged woman, the case shifts uncomfortably close to home. Some of the victims are associates, and a criminal profiler and external agencies are beginning to point the finger at Joyce herself. Added to this, she has a new rookie partner who’s far too handsome and clever for his own good.

Detective Pino needs to keep a grip on the investigation long enough to find the killer.

Black Widow is a taut and chilling new crime novel, perfect for fans of Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Apr 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781474032810

Book preview

Prologue

Wednesday Evening

She’d been watching him since he entered five minutes before. He was a youngish man, maybe late twenties. Perfect.

At the bar, he put a cigarette to his mouth, then made a show of looking for his lighter. She missed nothing; she’d already seen him put a Zippo in his top pocket, but didn’t pass comment as he strode over to her table.

She offered him her lighter. He lit his cigarette without a word of thanks, then sat down beside her. His cheekbones were sharp beneath a layer of stubble. She wondered if this was a stylistic affectation, or just a consequence of laziness. She didn’t pay it much heed; she was more taken with his eyes, which were unequivocally blue.

‘My name is Mikael,’ he said.

‘Hester.’

‘You have been watching me.’

‘Have I?’

‘You know it.’

‘Maybe it was more that I was staring into space,’ she suggested languidly, ‘and you just happened to be occupying the space I was staring into.’

Mikael took a deeper drag on his cigarette. He made as if to stand. ‘Hey, you know what? I don’t much like playing games.’

The woman placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. She felt the strength in him, that uniquely masculine hardness. He was no different to his hunter-gatherer forefathers, genetically speaking: built to kill, and impregnate, and not much else. It made her feel sick.

She refocused. ‘I love playing games.’

Her fingers traced the line of his arm, to his belt, then his thigh. ‘How old are you, Mikael?’

‘Twenty-seven.’

The woman who called herself Hester was twenty years older, roughly. But that was all right; that was what they came here for, the young ones.

She could feel the thump of blood in her temple, which desperately needed letting. ‘So where’s your girlfriend this evening?’

He shrugged and, to his credit, made no attempt to deny that such a person existed. ‘On stage, would you believe. A Doll’s House, I think it’s called. You heard of it?’

‘Yes,’ the woman answered. ‘The first feminist play, as it is sometimes known. Of course, Ibsen always denied it.’

‘Well, aren’t you the clever one!’

The woman looked at him for a long moment, and in that moment, they both understood there was no need for further manoeuvring. She swept a strand of blonde hair from her brow and leant closer. Her heart was racing, but she was in control.

‘Then perhaps we should find a room,’ she said. ‘And I will show you just how clever I am.’

He thought this was an excellent idea, particularly when she revealed that she already had a place in mind. And so it was they climbed the wrought iron stairs to a semi-secret door, which in turn opened onto the smoky prospect of a gedoogbeleid coffee shop. The woman saw the usual mix of tourists, the drop-outs and the off-duty whores, looking for something to take the edge off their self-loathing.

She held her breath until they were safely outside on the Enge Lombardsteeg, hoping that her companion would do likewise. Pot, even the second-hand variety, robbed a man of his vitality, his virility. That wouldn’t do at all.

It was dark, but the September night was unseasonably warm, and the narrow street was a mass of shirt-sleeves and summer dresses. It hadn’t rained in a fortnight, and everywhere in the city that wasn’t a canal was coated in a fine layer of dust, as if Amsterdam were slowly being scoured of life.

The Enge Lombardsteeg soon gave way to the grand thoroughfare of Rokin, which they followed, in silence, to its terminus at Dam Square. Mikael, impatient, suggested that they might take one of the white and blue trams to wherever it was they were going, but the woman said no. Drawing the moment out, torturing herself a little, was part of the process. A necessary part.

Dam could be pretty, but seldom at night, when the uglier mutants came out of their sewers. She saw a kid busking a Beatles medley on a sitar. Another offering the hand of friendship, or maybe it was drugs, to a black kid with gold teeth and big feet. And a girl of indeterminate age, her face a mass of splotches and scars, staring vacantly into the afterglow of light pollution that gently cooked the sky. She saw all this and more, and each encounter left her feeling a little sicker, a little more in need of Mikael’s attention.

She turned on her heel, her face pinched. Someone was watching –

No, she was being silly. There was no one there. At least, no one who mattered. She saw a tramp pissing himself in a gutter. That was all.

‘All right?’ Mikael enquired. ‘Not having second thoughts?’

‘I never do,’ the woman answered.

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

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.’

‘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.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s him.

‘The Butcher of the Bos’, as he’d come to be known, after the area of woodland where the first body was found. A lovely spot. Families used to go there for picnics.

Pieter returned her gaze with a level look of his own. His eyes expressed sympathy, but what could he know? He hadn’t found the bodies of Lisa Fröm, of Hilaire Klimst, of Greta Paulsen. He hadn’t seen the look of betrayal frozen into their eyes; the sense of bewilderment. He hadn’t seen the twisted set of their limbs, the blood on their thighs. Ophelie had been roughly the same age when she’d died, but at least that was quick. And she’d had her daddy with her.

Tanja stared at Pieter until he had to look away. It was important to make this stand now, if they were really going to work together. The fact that her colleagues often seemed scared of her brought no satisfaction, but at the same time she’d come to depend upon it.

She looked through the window, towards Jordaan. The air was shimmering in the heat, the pastel colours blurred into one, so that it looked more like some Middle Eastern enclave than the most fashionable district in Amsterdam. Closer in, more clearly defined in a black leather coat, a man was carrying a placard which proclaimed the imminent end of the world. Not through global warming, or anything so mundane; it was the coming of the devil he feared.

The old Tanja would probably have rolled her eyes at this. But maybe it was true that the devil took many forms.

Her phone rang. She jumped, causing everyone else to look up and stare at her.

‘Want me to get it?’ Pieter offered.

Tanja ignored him, snatching the phone from the receiver. She listened intently, every part of her tensed, until the pertinent details seeped through.

Male, approx. thirty years old…

She put the phone down, relieved, disappointed. All the usual contradictions. ‘You ever seen a dead body before, Kissin?’

He shook his head. His eyes were wide, and his expression faintly idiotic. ‘No, not really. Well, not unless you count my grandfather, of course. I was there when…’

But Tanja was already on her way out the door.

*

Gus de Groot’s editor was shouting at him again. She did this a lot. Sometimes he deserved it, but mostly he was sure that he did not. He had an idea, in fact, that he’d become the focus of some deeper frustration on Miriam’s part. He considered a number of explanations as to why she might be picking on him, before settling on the sexual angle. Her marriage had gone sour (if his sources in HR were to be believed), and she clearly wasn’t getting any. And it was a fact that middle-aged women with personality issues tended to get cranky if not regularly attended to.

Gus nodded, satisfied that he’d gotten to the heart of the matter. Or the vagina, or whichever organ made for the most appropriate metaphor when dealing with menopausal bitches. Was the vagina an organ, technically speaking? He was unsure. What he did know was that he was thirty years old, good looking in a lopsided kind of way, and somewhat dangerous to be around. No wonder Miriam should vent her frustrations on him. He was all the desirable men she couldn’t have, in one intriguing package.

‘Gus?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Are you even listening?’

‘Of course, Miriam. We were discussing the fact that the Mayor has been illicitly diverting civil engineering funds into a housing development, which just happens to be run by his cousin. Quite a story.’

She banged her fist on the desk. ‘It would be, if it were true!’

Gus leaned away. ‘My source is very reliable.’

‘Your source has just been fired – by the Mayor himself – for making a series of improper remarks to a colleague.’

‘Ah. He never mentioned that.’

‘And maybe – just maybe – he’s holding a grudge?

‘It’s a possibility,’ Gus conceded.

‘Which hardly makes him a credible informant!’

‘No,’ said Gus.

Miriam tossed a folder at him. ‘It’s all in the open. As you would surely have discovered for yourself if you’d adopted a more diligent approach. There’s nothing illicit about it. The funds were reallocated on the authority of a sub-committee.’

‘But the Mayor has influence, surely?’

‘Look, the housing development is canal-side. The canal was found to have sprung a leak. They do that, from time to time. It’s the Authority’s responsibility to make repairs. There’s no mystery to it.’

‘The Mayor must be up to something, though,’ Gus countered, seizing what he considered to be the nub of moral high ground. ‘Isn’t it in the nature of politicians to abuse their power?’

‘Maybe so,’ Miriam said coolly. ‘But then again, he might just be the most honest man in Amsterdam.’

‘Hah!’

Miriam made a visible effort to rein in her temper. ‘This time you’ve gone too far, Gus. What would have happened, do you think, if we had run this story?’

‘We’d have found a few more readers?’

Miriam was clearly between hot flushes, and was as cold as yesterday’s obituaries. ‘You’re off Crime,’ she said. ‘You’re on Tourism. And try not to screw up this time. The subs are already demanding danger money.’

‘But –’

‘Get out, Gus.’

Gus didn’t protest further. He had his dignity to consider. Besides, he was positive this would only be a temporary setback. Miriam needed reporters like him. Truth was one thing, and of course it was easier when a story was supported with hard evidence, rather than the sort which gave a little under close scrutiny. But the fact of it was that journalists were increasingly a part of the entertainment industry. And Gus understood what his readers wanted to hear.

Shit, though. Tourism? He hated tourists.

There was a buzzing in his pocket. A text message. Elizabeth. One of his informants at the station. Left tit substantially bigger than the right, which offered a useful reference point in the dark, should he lose track of which way was up. She thought she had a chance of marrying him. Charming, really.

Gus was a firm believer in Providence. And a kind of inverse journalistic karma, which no one else seemed to understand. Whatever the truth of it, it seemed there had been a murder out on the Sint Luciensteeg. In a hotel. Well, well.

Hotels, Gus reasoned, were often frequented by tourists.

Chapter 2

‘We could cycle,’ Pieter Kissin suggested as he followed his new partner down to the station car park.

‘Exercise is bad for you,’ Tanja countered. ‘Look at joggers – always dropping dead of heart attacks. Or footballers, always rupturing their cruciates or whatever.’

Pieter smiled his easy smile. ‘So why do you spend every other night in the station gym?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Harald Janssen.’

Jesus, Lucky loved to gossip.

‘And what else did he tell you?’

Pieter shrugged, but didn’t see fit to answer the question. ‘Do you want me to drive, then?’

Tanja fixed him with a dangerous look. ‘What, because I am a woman, and you think women can’t drive? Let’s get one thing straight –’

Pieter offered an apologetic shrug. ‘Actually, Detective Inspector, it’s more that I think you might still be a little intoxicated.’

Tanja stopped and tightened her grip on the car keys. ‘What?’

‘I am sorry. I don’t know how else to say it. But alcohol leaves a certain residue on the breath.’ He sniffed delicately. ‘Wine, I should say. Probably white. I’d hesitate to specify the grape, though.’

There was no dignified response to this allegation. And, now that she’d been caught out, Tanja saw no alternative but to capitulate. She threw him the keys to her battered old Opel, and, dammit, there she was, blushing.

‘Did you perfect your nose at the Academy?’ she enquired, if only to hide her embarrassment.

‘No. We used to holiday in France when I was a child. The Médoc. We always seemed to end up at a vineyard.’

‘Oh.’

He started the car. It fired first time, which to Tanja’s way of thinking was a little disloyal, when in her case it was never better than fifty-fifty if it would start at