you think your erotica inspires men to commit sexually violent crimes against women, Mr Robinson?’
Dermot turned away from his view and stared at her in silence. ‘You understand the true nature of your average red-blooded male, love, you don’t need to ask that question.’
The phone rang, preventing George from asking her next questions. Dermot picked it up. Looked grave. Said, ‘OK. Jesus. Right. Well get another bloody girl in!’ and then hung up.
‘I’m going to have to cut our entertaining little tête-à-tête short, love,’ he said, scratching his moustache with a Biro. ‘Seems one of my actresses has gone AWOL. She was due on set two days ago. Now they’re telling me nobody’s seen the silly cow.’ He shook his head. ‘Can’t get the staff. You sure you don’t want a promotion?’
Amsterdam, Norderkerk, later, then, van den Bergen’s apartment
The actress, or what was left of her, was stretched across the rear seat of the Lexus. Having a wide car was very handy under these circumstances. After the bombing of the Bushuis Library, vans were still drawing the attention of the police. You were far more likely to be stopped and searched in one of those. Plenty of room for explosives in the back, if you had aspirations to becoming a terrorist. But a luxury saloon in black, with no changes to the manufacturer’s specifications, gliding along, observant of the speed limit and traffic lights…who would pay attention to a car like that? Certainly not the police. It didn’t scream, ‘drug dealer’ or ‘master criminal’. It was discreet. Elegant. Moneyed. The tinted rear windows also helped with anonymity. It wouldn’t do for a passerby to peer inside, even if the actress’ body was covered by a black tarpaulin. Obviously, lining the leather seats with plastic sheeting had been a necessary precaution, although the woman’s blood and bodily fluids had long since ceased to flow. No, this was definitely the most comfortable, logistically most effective method of disposal.
The actress had been a surprisingly good conversationalist in the end. A vivacious woman. Talking about her unusual line of work had proven fascinating. Discussing her childhood in her country of origin was an eye-opener too. And she had been an excellent lay, of course. Though she’d had enough practice in her professional life, so it had hardly come as a surprise that she’d known one end of an erogenous zone from another. She had emitted some wonderful sounds from that surgically enhanced mouth. Like a wounded animal. Vulnerable. Pliable. Submissive.
They had shared a fun evening together. Collecting happy memories was important.
It had almost been a shame to destroy that glorious body. Well, not so much destruction, really. More of a surgical deconstruction. But then, a pact was a pact, and those months of scoping the actress out had had to pay off. Obviously, there was a tremendous buzz to be had from the act itself. Getting it just right was an art of sorts. Preparing the correct environment. Actively managing her ventilation, fluid levels and organ functions to keep her in optimum condition for as long as possible, before removing the body parts. Then, finally allowing her to die. It was no small joy to feel like the techniques were being improved upon each time. Definitely better than the preceding efforts. Mastery would come eventually. In the meantime, it had been a job well done.
Now, there was just the disposal to take care of. The arrangement of the body and location in which it was left would be important to the way the police regarded the deaths and the investigative path that they took.
Pulling up outside the church, nobody was in sight. The terrible weather always drove people indoors. For a slightly built woman, the body of the actress was cumbersome. Dead weight flung over the shoulder, still obscured by the tarp. This final stage had to be deftly executed. Quickly now, with a beating heart, praying nobody was watching. It wouldn’t do to be interrupted or identified.
Whipping off the tarp at the last moment to reveal the shell that was once inhabited by an actress, famous within tight, specialist erotica circles. Admittedly, the end product didn’t look very nice. Empty eye sockets weren’t exactly a turn-on. But that was collateral damage, really. An unavoidable side-effect of the…what was it again? Oh, yes. Surgical deconstruction. That was a good one. Witty. Best to remember this woman the way she had been on the film set, and afterwards in bed. Happy memories only. Find the positives.
Of course, there was the hunt for the next subject to look forward to. And it would be imperative to keep an eye on that tall policeman who was heading up the case. The haunted-looking one with the white hair. Perhaps a little trip out to his apartment was in order. The view was astoundingly clear and uninterrupted from the street below…
At home, as the pan of pasta boiled, van den Bergen leaned over the kitchen worktop. Clutched at his stomach.
‘Jesus, help me,’ he implored a God he had no faith in whatsoever.
The pains were sharp tonight. Presenting near his kidneys. Perhaps he had kidney failure. Was that one of the symptoms? Maybe. He would Google it, although George had told him the internet was not his friend, as far as Googling illness was concerned. Every spasm, every ache, every blemish was cancer. Fast-forward to the apocalypse. He’d been that way for a long time. But now the five-year mark was upon him, it was worse. And, of course, he had something legitimate to worry about, given what he had stupidly done to his body.
He stared down at his phone, as if that had the answers. ‘Text back, goddamn it!’
Reflected in the shine of the grey tiled splashback, he considered the fragmented representation of himself that stared back at him. A scowling middle-aged man with sunken cheekbones and dark patches under his eyes. Glasses hanging at the end of a chain around his neck atop an old shirt that had a frayed collar. All wrapped up in a moth-eaten cardigan he’d had since 1995.
‘You’re a mess!’ he shouted at the grey cubist counterfeit. ‘Who would ever find you attractive? Not Andrea, that’s for sure.’ He conjured an image in his mind’s eye of his ex-wife. Happy now, with that balding prick, Groenewalt. Both of them living high off the hog thanks to the maintenance payments he still had to fork out from his modest chief inspector’s salary; atoning for a teen romance that outlived its natural best-before-date because of Tamara’s arrival. A marriage which had now been defunct for more than a decade. No, that hard-faced cow, Andrea, wouldn’t look twice at him any more. ‘Tamara thinks her dad’s some geriatric joke, too. And George…’
Feeling irritation bite, he dug his long finger inside the frayed hole in the shirt fabric and ripped along the collar’s edge. ‘Sort yourself out, van den Bergen. Get a fucking haircut!’
When the pasta pan started to spit water all over the hob, he flung it into the sink in temper, fusilli everywhere. Poured himself a glass of orange juice. Downed two codeine and winced.
He was poised to call George when his phone rang shrilly.
‘Van den Bergen. Speak!’
It was Elvis. Sounding hyper. As if Elvis sounded anything apart from bloody wired, like a kid on sugar. ‘We were just finishing up, boss, when we got a call.’
Involuntarily, he groaned down the phone at his detective. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Sorry, boss. I know you’re coming down with this stomach thing or something but—’
‘Spit
