And so they had developed the habit of spending an hour or so in each other’s virtual company several nights a week. Tonight there was no prior arrangement in place, but Marijke knew that if Petra was at home and awake, she’d be in one of the public chat rooms on the gay police site, and that she’d be able to tempt her away from the crowd into private discussion.
She connected to the website and clicked on the <chat> icon. There was a list of public discussion areas, and she went straight to the Debating Forum, a room where people tended to talk about policy and its impact on their work. Half a dozen people were engaged in a heated argument about undercover operations, opinions flying as fast as fingers could type, but Petra wasn’t one of them. Marijke exited and entered the Lesbian Issues area. This time, she was lucky. Petra was one of three women rehashing a recent Danish case of alleged lesbian rape, but as soon as she saw Marijke’s name on her screen, she escaped and took her into a private area where they could exchange on-screen messages without anyone eavesdropping.
Petra: hello, love. how are you tonight?
Marijke: I just got in. We caught a murder today.
P: that’s never fun.
M: No. And this was a really nasty one.
P: domestic? street?
M: Neither. The worst kind. Ritualistic, organized, no obvious suspects. Clearly personal, but in an impersonal sort of way, if you see what I mean.
P: who’s the victim?
M: A professor at the university in Leiden. Pieter de Groot. His cleaner found the body. He was in his study at home, staked out naked on his desk. He’d been drowned by having a funnel or a pipe shoved down his throat, then water poured through it.
P: very nasty. was he one of those scientists who do animal experiments?
M: He was an experimental psychologist. I don’t know much detail about what he did. But I don’t think this is about animal rights. I think this was a one-on-one. There’s more, you see. Whoever did this, they didn’t stop at killing. There’s mutilation as well.
P: genital?
M: Yes and no. The killer left his prick and balls intact, but scalped his pubic hair. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was almost worse than if he’d been castrated. That would have made more sense, more typical of what the sexually motivated killer would do.
P: you know, this is ringing bells with me. some bulletin i glanced at. not one of ours, a cry for help from another force.
M: You mean there’s been a case like this in Germany?
P: can’t say for certain. but something’s niggling at the back of my mind. i’ll do a computer trawl in the office.
M: I don’t deserve you, do I?
P: no, you deserve much better. so, now we got the shop talk out of the way, you want to get personal?
Marijke smiled. Already, Petra had reminded her that there was more to life than murder. At last, she could see a route that might take her to sleep.
The Wilhelmina Rosen sat unusually high in the water. She’d discharged her cargo that morning, but someone at the shipping agency had screwed up, and the load that should have been stowed that afternoon had been delayed till the following day. He wasn’t unduly anxious. He could probably make up the day once they were under way, even if it meant bending the rules about how long their watches should be. And the crew were happy enough. They weren’t going to complain about a night ashore in Rotterdam, since it wasn’t a delay that would put a dent in their pay.
Alone in his cabin, he unlocked a small brass-bound chest that had belonged to his grandfather and contemplated its contents. The two jars had originally contained pickled gherkins, but what floated inside now was infinitely more grisly. Preserved in formalin he’d stolen from a funeral parlour, the skin had lost its flesh tints and assumed the colour of tinned tuna. Fragments of the small muscles were darker, standing out against the skin like a cross-section of tuna steak grilled rare. The hair remained curled, though now it had the harsh dullness of a bad wig. Still, there could be no doubting what he was looking at.
When he had first fantasized about this, he’d known he would need some souvenir to remind himself how well he’d done. He had read books about murderers who had excised breasts, removed genitalia, stripped the skin from their victims to clothe themselves. None of this seemed right. They were weirdos and perverts, whereas he was driven by a motive far more pure. But he wanted something, and he needed it to hold meaning for him alone.
He ranged over the indignities he’d been forced to suffer at the hands of the old man. There was no blurring at the edges of his memory. Even commonly repeated tortures failed to merge into one big picture. Every detail of every mortification was pinprick sharp. What could he take that would keep his purpose fresh, clear and meaningful?
Then he’d remembered the shaving. It had happened soon after his twelfth birthday, a day unmarked by gifts or cards. The only reason he knew it was his birthday was that he’d caught a glimpse of his birth certificate a few months before when the old man had been sorting through some papers. Until then, he’d had no date to call his own. He’d never had so much as a birthday card, never mind presents, cakes and parties. But who could have been invited to any party of his? He had no friends, he had no wider family. As far as he was aware, the only people who even knew his name were the crew of the Wilhelmina Rosen.
He’d known he was born some time in the autumn, because around the turning of the leaves, the litany of rage that poured into his ears would alter. Instead of, ‘You’re eight years old, but you still act like a baby,’ the old man would snarl, ‘You’re nine now, time you learned what it is to take some responsibility.’
Around the time he turned twelve, he’d noticed the changes. He’d grown taller, his shoulders straining the seams of his flannel work shirts. His voice had become unreliable, shifting registers as if he were possessed by a demon. And around his cock, dark wiry hairs had started to sprout. He’d imagined this would happen eventually. He’d spent too long living in close confinement with three adult males not to have grasped that at some point his body was going to duplicate theirs. But the reality was simply another source of anxiety. He was leaving childhood behind, without any clear idea of how he could ever become a man.
His grandfather had noticed the changes too. It was hard to imagine how he could be more brutal, yet he seemed to regard it as a challenge to find fresh sources of humiliation. Things had reached a new level of horror when a hawser snapped one morning as they were docking in Hamburg. It had been one of those things that was nobody’s fault, but the old man had decided that someone had to pay the price.
When they’d got back to the apartment, he had ordered the boy to strip. He’d stood shivering in the kitchen, wondering which of the familiar agonies awaited him, while his grandfather had raged through to the bathroom, swearing and insulting him. When the old man had returned, he was carrying his cutthroat razor, the blade open and gleaming like silver in the dimness of the afternoon light.