tone. ‘So, what’s she like?’
‘Her name’s Frances. She’s a teacher. She’s very calm, very smart. Very kind. I met her at the bridge club in St Andrews. I meant to tell you. But I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure something was going to come of it. And then … well, like I said, e-mail is a good place to hide.’ He spread his hands in apology.
‘It’s OK. You don’t owe me anything.’ Their eyes locked. They both knew it was a lie. She wanted to ask if he loved this Frances, but didn’t want to hear the wrong answer. ‘So, do I get to meet her?’
‘I told her we’d be working this evening, so she’s not coming over. But I could call her, ask if she’d like to join us for dinner if you’d like?’ He looked dubious.
‘I don’t think so. I really do need to pick your brains, and I have to go back tomorrow.’ Carol drained her coffee. Picking up her cue, Tony finished his drink and stood up.
‘It’s really good to see you, you know,’ he said, his voice softer than before. ‘I missed you, Carol.’
Not enough, she thought. ‘I missed you too,’ was what she said. ‘Come on, we’ve got work to do.’
All violent death is shocking. But somehow murder in a beautiful nineteenth-century house overlooking a tranquil canal, a medieval seat of learning and an impressive church spire provoked a deeper sense of outrage in Hoofdinspecteur Kees Maartens than the same event in a Rotterdam back street ever had. He’d come up the ranks in the North Sea port before finally managing a transfer back to Regio Hollands Midden, and so far his return to his childhood stamping grounds had lived up to his dreams of a quieter life. Not that there was no crime in this part of Holland; far from it. But there was less violence in the university town of Leiden, that was for sure.
Or so he’d thought until today. He was no stranger to the abuse that one human – or several combining in the same blind fury – could inflict on another. Dockside brawls, pub fights where insults real and imaginary had provoked clashes out of all proportion, assaults and even murders that turned sex workers into victims were all part of a day’s work on the Rotterdam serious crimes beat, and Maartens reckoned he had grown a second skin over years of exposure to the ravages of rage. He’d decided he was impervious to horror. But he’d been wrong about that too.
Nothing in his twenty-three years at the sharp end had prepared him for anything like this. It was indecent, rendered all the more so by the incongruity of the setting. Maartens stood on the threshold of a room that looked as if it had been fundamentally unchanged since the house had been built. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with mahogany shelving, its ornate beading warm with the muted gleam of generations of polishing. Books and box files filled every shelf, though he couldn’t see much detail from here. The floor was burnished parquet, with a couple of rugs that looked worn and dull to Maartens. Not something I would have chosen in so dark a room, he thought, conscious that he was avoiding the central focus of the room with all his mental energy. Two tall windows looked out across the Maresingel to the historic town centre beyond. The sky was a washed-out blue, thin strips of cloud apparently hanging motionless, as if time had stopped.
It had certainly stopped for the man who occupied the hub of this scholar’s study. There was no question that he was dead. He lay on his back on the wide mahogany desk that stood in the middle of the floor. Each wrist and ankle was tied to one of the desk’s bulbous feet with thin cord, spread-eagling the dead man across its surface. It looked as if his killer had tied him down fully dressed, then cut his clothes away from his body, exposing the lightly tanned skin with its paler ghost of swimming trunks.
That would have been bad enough, a profanation Maartens hoped his middle-aged body would be spared. But what turned indignity into obscenity was the clotted red mess below the belly, an ugly wound from which rivulets of dried blood meandered across the white flesh and dripped on to the desk. Maartens closed his eyes momentarily, trying not to think about it.
He heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. A tall woman in a tailored navy suit, honey blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, appeared on the landing. Her round face was serious in repose, her blue eyes shadowed beneath straight dark brows. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, her understated make-up deliberately making her appear even more bland and unthreatening. Maartens turned to face Brigadier Marijke van Hasselt, one of his two team co-ordinators. ‘What’s the story, Marijke?’ he asked.
She produced a notebook from the pocket of her jacket. ‘The owner of the house is Dr Pieter de Groot. He’s attached to the university. Lectures in experimental psychology. Divorced three years ago, lives alone. His teenage kids come to visit every other weekend. They live just outside Den Haag with the ex-wife. The body was discovered this morning by his cleaner. She let herself in as usual, saw nothing out of the ordinary, did the ground floor then came on up here. She glanced in the study door and saw that –’ Marijke gestured with her thumb at the doorway. ‘She says she took a couple of steps inside the room, then ran downstairs and called us.’
‘That’s the woman who was waiting on the doorstep with the uniformed officer when we got here?’
‘That’s right. She wouldn’t stay in the house. Can’t say I blame her. I had to talk to her in the car. Tom’s rounded up some of our team and set them on door-to-door inquiries.’
Maartens nodded approval of her fellow coordinator’s action. ‘Later, you can go over to the university, see what they can tell you about Dr de Groot. Is the scene-of-crime team here yet?’
Marijke nodded. ‘Outside with the pathologist. They’re waiting for the word from you.’
Maartens turned away. ‘Better let them in. There’s bugger all else we can do here till they’ve done their stuff.’
Marijke looked past him as he moved towards the staircase. ‘Any idea on the cause of death?’ she asked.
‘There’s only one wound that I can see.’
‘I know. But it just seems …’ Marijke paused.
Maartens nodded. ‘Not enough blood. He must have been castrated around the time of death. We’ll see what the pathologist has to say. But for now, we’re definitely looking at a suspicious death.’
Marijke checked her boss’s dour face to see if he was being ironic. But she could see no trace of levity. In two years of working with Maartens, she seldom had. Other cops protected themselves with black humour, an instinct that sat comfortably with her. But comfort was the one thing that Maartens seemed inclined to prevent his team ever experiencing. Something told her they were going to need more than Maartens’s austerity to get them through a murder as horrible as this. She watched him descend, her heart as heavy as his tread.
Marijke crossed the threshold of the crime scene. The recherche bijstandsteam had a fixed system, even though murders didn’t happen often enough on their patch to be routine occurrences. Her role while Maartens briefed the forensic team and the pathologist was to make certain the crime scene remained secure. She took latex gloves and plastic shoe covers out of the leather satchel she always carried with her and put them on. Then she walked in a straight line from the door to the desk, which brought her level with the dead man’s head. This study of the dead was her job, the one Maartens always avoided. She was never sure if he was squeamish or simply aware that he was better occupied elsewhere. He was good at putting people to tasks that suited them, and
