The Tulip Virus

by Danielle Hermans

  “I see it. Now let go,” Alec said, carefully prying the book out of Frank’s hands and laying it down at his side. He leaned in close to Frank, whose breathing sounded shallow. His uncle’s eyes were glazed, and a tremor passed through his body as he lifted his head and pointed a trembling finger at the book.

  “Tulipa, tul . . .”

  Frank’s hand dropped to the floor with a thud. His head sank back, and he let out a moan. Still holding Alec in his piercing gaze, he took a deep breath and said, “The book, take the book. No police.”

  His eyelids began to droop.

  “Frank?”

  Alec could see the life seeping out of his uncle, flowing away down the contours of his body with each muscle that went slack. He grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him hard.

  “Can you hear me?” he shouted. “Please, don’t let this happen, Frank. Don’t leave me here alone.”

  Muttering curses, he took out his cell phone and dialed the emergency number. He could barely choke out the words. “Help me, please, it’s my uncle. He’s badly hurt. Eighty-three Cadogan Place. Hurry, please hurry.”

  He tossed away the phone, tears streaming down his cheeks, and buried his face in his hands. Feeling Frank take hold of his forearm, he looked up.

  “I’m so sorry,” Alec whispered. “For everything.”

  “Careful . . . dangerous. I love you—”

  The pain in Frank’s eyes ebbed away, and his face relaxed. Though he was still staring at Alec, his eyes were now dull and lifeless.

  Alec summoned all his courage, trying not to lose control. What was it Frank had said to him? Something about the book. What was he supposed to do with it? Get it out of there; no police, that was it.

  He snatched up the book, ran outside, and jumped into his car. A frantic pull of the lever and the front trunk of the Porsche flew open. No sooner had he put the book inside than he heard sirens wailing in the distance. As they approached, he slammed the trunk shut, raced back into the house, and kneeled at Frank’s side.

  THREE

  The man parked his car as close as possible to the railway bridge. As he climbed out, he wrinkled his nose in disgust. The stench of the river, copper mixed with decay, brutally invaded his sensitive nostrils. He buttoned up his coat and buried his nose deep in his scarf.

  The trunk popped open, light spilling out of it. He unzipped the sports bag that lay there, filled it with the bricks heaped beside it, picked it up, and calmly made his way to the steps that led up to Grosvenor Bridge.

  For the moment, the bridge was quiet and deserted. In an hour, the chaos of the morning commute would burst loose: crowded, foul-smelling train cars screeching past hurying pedestrians, all rushing to their offices like lemmings. To bosses they would have to satisfy, to coworkers they couldn’t stand, to their dull, pointless lives.

  He sniffed, a sense of superiority rushing through his veins and filling him with scorn. The supreme pleasure of watching people suffer, watching the life drain out of their bodies, was like nothing else in the world. He could never get enough of it, and he even got paid for it.

  Halfway across the bridge, he peered over the railing, down into the surging waters of the Thames. After a few seconds, he tore his eyes from the hypnotic current and looked up. Through the dense fog, he tried to make out the Millennium Wheel on the opposite bank of the river, and managed to discern its faint outline. It reminded him of the scene in The Third Man in which the hero, Holly Martins, meets Harry Lime, a mercenary killer, on the Ferris wheel at Vienna’s Prater Park. As they reach the top, Martins asks Lime how he feels about his victims. “Victims?” Lime says with a sneer. “Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”

  I’m just like Harry Lime, he thought. They don’t mean a fucking thing to me. Not from a distance, and certainly not from close by. The smell of their bodies, the sounds they make, even the way they move— it makes me sick.

  He ran his fingers through his short brown hair, which was damp with fog. As he looked down, he wondered how many pounds of human tissue, how many gallons of mucus, bile, and blood, the river had swallowed in its day. How many body parts— arms, legs, heads, trunks? Puzzle pieces. How many bloated purple corpses had bobbed to the surface and washed ashore on the slick brown banks of this watery grave? Always room for more, he said to himself. The more, the merrier. Then he reined in his wayward thoughts. He had to get out of there before the dots started swarming again, confronting him with their nauseating presence.

  He opened the bag, sliding a brick into the far corner, and dropping another one into the police helmet. After zipping the bag shut, he grabbed the handles, took a quick look around, and flung it into the Thames. Far below he saw the splash; a little white spot appeared and was gone again. He turned away from the railing, listening intently. The sounds of the waking city reached his ears. The stink of exhaust fumes was growing fouler by the minute.

  He thrust his hands in his pockets and strolled back toward his car, trying to imagine how the man would react when he found out it had all been for nothing.

  FOUR

  At the entrance to the Metropolitan Police Service, the New Scotland Yard sign turned swiftly on its axis, as if to suggest that the Met fought crime at the same dizzying pace. The silver letters gleamed against the gray stone background. A group of Chinese tourists were having their picture taken in front of the sign. As the photographer called out instructions, they spun along with it and burst into giggles.

  Fifteen stories up, Inspector Richard Wainwright was swiveling back and forth in the chair at his desk. Holding a mug of tea in front of his face, he stared at his own image. WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE! read the words under the photo. He knew that just then his wife would prefer him dead. It hadn’t escaped him how insufferable he’d become, but his most recent case had left him shaken. He cleared his throat. A few days’ leave, yes, that would be just the ticket. A long weekend at the seaside, Blackpool, maybe, where the salt wind could blow away the gruesome images he’d stored up over the years. On the other hand, seaside resorts always depressed him. Heaving a sigh, he scratched at the words OR ALIVE.

  He put down the mug and started up his computer. With a click, he opened his mailbox, glumly watching it fill with messages sent to him since eleven P.M. the night before. He scrolled past minutes he would never read, press releases dotted with red exclamation marks and urgently requiring his approval, internal newsletters devoid of news, and a slew of forms he’d have to fill out. Then he clicked on the next-to-last e-mail, sent at 2:03 A.M. by the forensic pathologist who had performed the autopsy on Frank Schoeller. He opened the attachment and hit Print.

  Half an hour later, he’d managed to wrestle his way through the medical jargon. Schoeller had died of a brain hemorrhage and internal bleeding. He also had five broken ribs, and the nails of three fingers had been torn off. The injuries to his upper body were too superficial to have caused his death.

  “So it was something he knew? Or something he had? What the hell were you up to, Schoeller?”

  Toward the end of the report, the pathologist noted that she’d discovered tiny flakes of gold foil on Schoeller’s hands, which she planned to examine more closely. As for the source of the flakes, her working hypothesis was that he’d been holding a book, considering the clearly visible right angles in the blood on his two palms. Some of the blood on his fingers had also come off, and she’d found fibers suggesting that it had been absorbed by paper. There were no fingerprints on the body except those of the victim’s nephew, Alec Schoeller.

  Wainwright stapled the pages together and glanced out the window. The wind was propelling the raindrops slantwise across the glass toward the narrow, rusty gutter. More than a hundred feet below, a long line of cars crept by. Umbrellas floated down the streets like rainbow-colored circles.

  He looked at his watch and stood up. A bulletin board covered much of the wall to his left. With his short nails, he pried out t
he thumbtacks. Five minutes later the floor was littered with photos, charts, maps, Post-its, and page after page of scribbled notes. He bent over, gathered them all together, and put the whole pile on his desk.

  The girl in the topmost photo exposed her braces in a broad smile. She was tipping her head slightly to one side, and her brown hair fell to the shoulders of her school uniform. Her eyes were still puffy with sleep. Her name was Isabelle White.

  “Izzy,” he said softly.

  She was the first of the six girls found in the past two years along the banks of Thames, their bodies viciously mutilated. They’d been treated like garbage, their expiration date depending on when their captor chose to deflower them. He’d tossed them out afterward, like spoiled goods.

  In time they had caught the killer. He drew up schedules for secondary schools, constantly moving from one place to another. At each one, he chose a victim. He kept their uniforms in his closet, washed and ironed, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

  What had most disturbed Wainwright were the photos the killer had taken after abusing the girls. He had drawn makeup on their faces with indelible marker— red smears bloating their lips, wild streaks of blue covering their eyelids, and false lashes that curved up to their foreheads and down below their cheekbones. Staring into the lens, the girls looked like dolls, except for the heart-wrenching fear and pain in their eyes.

  That was the first time in his career that a case had given him nightmares. “So pack it in,” his wife said. “Take early retirement. You’re getting too old for this sort of thing.”

  With a heavy sigh, he opened the Schoeller file. As he pulled out the photos and laid them in a stack, he decided to change his tactics. He would drop the courtesy he’d shown Alec the night his uncle died. Young Schoeller was hiding something, he was sure of it, and he’d find out what before the day was out.

  He lined up the photos in order and left the room.

  Alkmaar

  JULY 21, 1636

  The end of the Little Ice Age had reached the Low Countries. For centuries, the winters had been long and cold and the summers brief and humid. This year was different. The heat had been unbearable for weeks, and the nights were hardly cooler. The odor of sweating bodies drifted out through the open shutters and hung in the streets like a vile blanket smothering the town.

  Cornelius flashed an irritated glance over his shoulder. The boy kept slowing down and was now lumbering along about ten feet behind him. They had no time to waste, and besides, he felt uneasy on the streets after what had just happened. He stopped and turned.

  “Hurry up, Jacobus, we’re late.”

  He gave the boy a moment to catch up, and they walked on together.

  “You think he’s still up?” Jacobus asked. “Maybe he’s gone to bed.”

  “Don’t you worry, he’ll be awake, all right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Do you really think he would retire for the night without even knowing what happened? Mark my words, he’ll wait. Now step lively, boy, we must make haste.”

  “Yes, of course he wants to know, but I . . .”

  Cornelius glanced at his companion’s smooth chin. The boy had never before shown any signs of fear, but now there was apprehension in his voice. The orphanage had a good reputation, but of course you never knew what went on behind closed doors. What Cornelius did know was that Adriaen Koorn, the director, ran his institution with an iron fist, maintaining the strictest order and discipline.

  “Must I spell it out for you, Jacobus? Surely you understand that this was the only way to stop him?”

  Cornelius wondered if they had made a mistake. Could Jacobus really keep silent about the act that now weighed on his conscience? If he spilled their secret, the consequences would be disastrous. Not just for him, but for others as well. He had wondered whether Adriaen had made a wise choice by assigning Jacobus to accompany him, for the boy was a bit naïve and slow-witted. But he had accepted the offer, because Jacobus was tall and as strong as an ox. In any case, there was no point in worrying about it now. The deed had been done, and there was no way back.

  “No, I understand,” Jacobus said. He bowed his head and gazed at his outstretched hands. Turning them over, he splayed his fingers and stared at the dried-up rivulets of blood that ran down the lines of his palm. With a groan, he rubbed his hands together, and minute specks of red dust whirled to the ground.

  “I want to wash my hands.”

  “Come along, then, don’t fall behind. The sooner we get there, the sooner you can wash them.”

  Cornelius ran his hands through his hair, reached back, and pulled a few damp strands out of his collar. Sweat was pouring down his face. The boy’s petulant voice was starting to get on his nerves. He rubbed his belly, still feeling queasy.

  How hard it had been for him. Wouter Winckel was his second cousin, and despite their differences, they’d been good friends. Four years earlier, when Elizabet had died in childbirth, of all those who’d been there to support Wouter, it was Cornelius who had found a wet nurse for the infant. They had shared many confidences. That was why it had come as such a shock when the orphanage director told Cornelius what Wouter was up to. Cornelius had dismissed it at first, thinking it no more than a rumor, for he’d always seen Wouter as a wise man. And more important, Cornelius had always thought that he knew Wouter inside and out, that they kept no secrets from each other. But Adriaen had showed him proof of the contrary.

  At first, Cornelius had been filled with disappointment, but in time that feeling had swelled into rage. How could Winckel have so betrayed his trust? Their years of friendship had evidently been a mere miscalculation, a farce, based on nothing but lies. In all their conversations about faith, and about their own beliefs, it seemed unlikely that Wouter had ever meant what he said.

  Cornelius sighed. He knew God’s hand had guided him and forgiveness would soon follow, but he hadn’t expected it to be so hard. It wasn’t the horror of the deed that shook him; no, that meant nothing to him. But he would miss Wouter’s vitality and foolish jests, how freely he gave to others, and how he could laugh at himself. Cornelius had knocked on his old friend’s door with hatred in his heart, but now he walked away aching with sorrow.

  FIVE

  The little elevator smelled of cigarettes and fried bacon. The menu for the week, loaded with carbohydrates and saturated fats, was on display behind a grimy sheet of plastic. Alec read the death notice next to the floor buttons: the detective had been buried five weeks ago; his wife and children would miss him; the family asked that no flowers be sent. Next to the card was an urgent appeal from the Scotland Yard rugby team, which was searching for new players. It included a phone number in case anyone was interested.

  The elevator doors slid open to reveal a woman. As he stepped aside so that she could enter, she turned toward him and held out her hand. “Good morning,” she said. “I’m Dawn Williams.”

  He came out of the elevator. The woman smiled. She was tall, almost as tall as he was, and her skin was the color of mahogany.

  “You’re here to see Inspector Wainwright?”

  “Yes, I have an appointment.”

  She nodded. “I’m helping him with the investigation. Follow me, please.”

  Dawn led the way at such a rapid pace that he had to scurry to keep up with her. At the end of the corridor, she knocked on a half-open door.

  “Mr. Schoeller’s here to see you, sir.” She backed up against the door to let him pass.

  Wainwright was standing by the window, in front of a bulletin board so full of holes it looked like a woodworm colony. Daylight shone through his protruding ears, making them glow bright crimson and seem to float alongside his head. In his left hand, he was holding a box of thumbtacks.

  “Mr. Schoeller, good to see you. Take a seat. Coffee, tea?” Dawn stood waiting at the door.

  “No, thank you.” Alec sat down, his eyes drawn to the bulletin board.

  “Ah, yes, I
was just getting started.”

  Wainwright bent over his desk and jotted down something on a piece of paper. Alec heard the door click shut behind him, and the little office filled with the pungent smell of ink and the squeak of the felt-tip pen.

  “There.” Wainwright pinned the note onto the board.

  When Alec saw what it said, he grimaced and rose to his feet.

  “‘The Schoeller case,’” read Wainwright, folding his arms. They both stared at the words. Wainwright glanced at Alec and saw that his teeth were tightly clenched.

  “I don’t know why you wanted to see me again,” Alec said crossly. “I don’t know anything more than what I’ve already told you.”

  “Hmm. All the same, I’d like to go through it again, step by step, just in case we missed something— or perhaps I should say, in case you missed something.”

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that, Mr. Schoeller?”

  Wainwright turned toward Alec and took a step forward. He was standing so close that Alec could see the broken veins on his nose.

  “The more we learn from everyone connected to your uncle, the sooner we can get this investigation under way and catch the culprit. I presume we have a common interest in finding out as soon as possible who committed this crime. You’ve probably read enough murder mysteries to know that the first few hours of the investigation are critical.”

  Wainwright’s voice kept rising as he moved in even closer. Alec recoiled.

  “Am I in your space, Mr. Schoeller? Well, you had no qualms about getting into mine with your friendly advice about how to spend my time. So if it’s all right with you, I suggest we get down to work. Why don’t you hand me those photos— one at a time, please— and I’ll put them up.”