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.
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