The Midas Murders

by Pieter Aspe

  “In part, ma’am. The attacks were intended to create anxiety. While the city’s businesspeople are reeling from the effects of the economic crisis and the traffic-circulation plan, an additional crisis, brought about by a wave of terrorism, was guaranteed to bring them to their knees. No one can afford another bad season.”

  “Unbelievable,” Hannelore shivered.

  Van In lit a cigarette. Too much information. His head was spinning.

  “Is Creytens a member of Thule?” he asked.

  Xavier produced a notebook. “Creytens, Lanssens, Bostoen, you name it. They’re all part of one massive plot.”

  “And the MWR?”

  “Afraid not, Commissioner. The revival of the MWR was concocted by Bostoen. If they can prove the Walloons were responsible for the bomb attacks, then the hunt is on. And a witch hunt is precisely what Thule is after.”

  “Creative stuff.”

  Van In poked the fire and stared at the pallid young man. Xavier and chaos theory were a perfect match. His testimony allowed Van In to create order in what was otherwise a series of apparently unconnected people and events. He now knew that Creytens had passed on information about Adriaan Frenkel via Thule to the man who had killed him.

  22

  NICOLAI ARRIVED IN BRUGES SHORTLY before noon. The young Walloon was inconspicuously dressed in a black track suit and a short woolen jacket. His nylon rucksack contained two hundred feet of thin-gauge climbing rope, a pair of pliable shoes, a harness with a figure-eight descender, a dozen or so pitons, and a sack of magnesium chalk. He was carrying a sports bag without a logo in his right hand.

  He had called his client the evening before. The message was short: I climb tomorrow.

  “Okay,” was the response from the other end of the line.

  It was a couple of degrees warmer in Bruges than in Ghent. According to the official forecast, temperatures that night weren’t expected to drop below 45°, slightly overcast with a moderate southerly. This was the ideal moment, the moment he had been waiting for.

  Nicolai took the bus to the center of town, passing the statue of King Albert on horseback for the second time. His muscles quivered, and an accelerated pulse pumped adrenaline-rich blood to every part of his body. Nicolai was always nervous before a climb. He knew from experience that he would only calm down when he had confronted the enemy face to face.

  He got off the bus on Market Square, under the indifferent gaze of Jan Breydel and Pieter Deconinck. The diminutive Walloon looked up with a degree of admiration at the men who had once fought for Bruges’s freedom.

  In 1302 they had defeated the cream of France’s cavalry in the Fields of Groeninge in Courtrai. They had fought for their freedom and confronted the tyranny of an arrogant feudal liege. Cities such as Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres had struggled hard to cast off their vassal state and had aspired to greater independence by extorting various privileges. Priceless documentary evidence of their successes was preserved in the Belfort. The tower functioned as a shrine to the rights these “free citizens” had toiled to acquire. The halls beneath symbolized freedom of trade.

  Nicolai had prepared his task to the last detail. He had spent the last few days reading whatever he could find on Bruges. The Walloon considered it important to know his adversary through and through.

  Nicolai had enormous respect for the thirteenth-century tower and the chunk of history the proud Belfort harbored within its walls. But he had come, nevertheless, to mutilate Bruges’s fortress in exchange for a handful of silver.

  Van In had tossed and turned the entire night. Hannelore had sought refuge on the couch downstairs. In moments of crisis, she preferred to leave him to his own devices. Truth be told, Xavier Vandekerckhove’s story had also taken her unawares.

  The world was a rational place these days, she thought, or pretended to be. Solutions that appeared out of the blue could be hard to digest.

  She brought him a cup of coffee in bed and found him snoring loudly. When a kiss didn’t work, she shook him by the shoulder.

  “Eight o’clock, honey, time to get up!”

  Van In opened his eyes in a daze, blinked in the brightness of the light, and pulled the blankets over his head in a temper.

  “It’s Sunday,” he growled.

  Hannelore shrugged her shoulders, left the tray on the dresser, and took off her clothes. She snuggled up against his back, and within thirty seconds he was wide awake.

  “It’s Wednesday,” she said.

  When they were done, Van In lit a cigarette and looked at his alarm clock.

  “Twenty past eight,” he grumbled.

  “You’re not twenty anymore,” she teased.

  Van In stubbed out his cigarette and made his way to the bathroom, mature perhaps but still an Apollo.

  “Are you free tonight?” he shouted before turning on the tap.

  Hannelore followed him, pulled back the curtain, and joined him in the shower.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  They stood under the hot shower for ten full minutes. When they were getting dressed, Hannelore couldn’t resist ruffling his dripping wet hair with her fingers.

  Van In was waiting for her at the courthouse around seven-thirty that night. He had hurried to be on time. He and Versavel had spent a busy day organizing all the paperwork. Now his heart was pounding. With a little luck, this sordid business would be over by the morning.

  They didn’t have much trouble finding Enzo Scaglione’s farm. The farmhouse was clearly visible from the old Roman road connecting Torhout with Diksmuide. A narrow winding gravel track led up to the property.

  One side of the farmyard served as an asphalt parking lot with room enough for three cars. Scaglione had commissioned a landscape gardener with a painful lack of imagination to design the remainder. What was supposed to be a garden consisted of a patch of uniformly mown grass with a trio of birch trees in the middle, and an elongated rose bed running parallel with the front of the house.

  An obligatory privet hedge shielded the green wilderness from prying eyes.

  The farmhouse had been completely renovated. The old narrow windows had been replaced by expensive and more substantial frames, and a rickety but picturesque two-part stable door had been restored and preserved. Scaglione had left the white exterior plasterwork untouched, together with the tarred black strip along the bottom of the wall. A niche above the door still housed a polychrome plaster statue of the Blessed Virgin.

  Van In parked the VW Golf on the asphalt in front of a massive barn door.

  “Do you think he’s at home?” asked Hannelore as she stepped out of the car. She shivered as a gust of icy wind cut through her jacket.

  “We’ll soon find out,” said Van In optimistically.

  Enzo Scaglione had seen the police vehicle drive up the gravel track. He had prepared for this moment a thousand times. His heartbeat slowed, though, when he realized there was only one car. If they had come for the reasons he was expecting, there should have been more of them. As the VW Golf approached at an exasperatingly slow pace, he tried to work out what he had done wrong. Frenkel was dead, and he was the only one who could have queered the pitch. The Dutchman had followed Fiedle for some reason or other, and he hadn’t been able to finish him off as he had planned. Good thing the German had died from his injuries. He couldn’t understand how the cops had made the connection. Herr Witze had assured him that Frenkel hadn’t reported a crime, and the investigating magistrate who was handling the case was a prominent member of Thule.

  Enzo carefully concealed his Magnum in a specially carved hollow in one of the beams supporting the ceiling. He had carved out the secret compartment himself and attached a door that could be opened and closed with the flick of a finger.

  “There’s light inside,” said Van In, pointing to the chink in the heavy curtains.

  “Be careful, Pi
eter. Are you armed?”

  He shook his head.

  Hannelore was afraid, but she too refused to back off.

  Van In inspected the front door. There was no bell. He clenched his fist and knocked.

  Enzo took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his hair, and headed for the door. He waited to open it until the policeman had knocked a second time.

  “Good evening,” he said stiffly.

  “Good evening, Mr. Scaglione. Van In, Bruges Police.”

  He deliberately didn’t introduce Hannelore.

  “May we come inside?”

  An ordinary cop, he thought with suspicion.

  “Of course.”

  Enzo let them pass and pointed to a comfortable lounge suite. “How can I help you, Mr. Van In?”

  He grabbed a chair and positioned it beneath the beam with the secret compartment.

  “This is an informal visit, Mr. Scaglione, more or less,” Van In smiled affably. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Feel free. There’s an ashtray on the side table.”

  As Van In lit his cigarette, Scaglione suddenly had an exceptionally unpleasant thought. On Sicily, hired killers sometimes pretended to be policemen. The woman was only a distraction.

  Scaglione got to his feet and rested his hand on the side of the wooden beam.

  “I don’t have the police at the door every day,” he said apologetically. “But isn’t it usual for you to identify yourself first?”

  “No problem.”

  Van In reached into his inside pocket. Enzo propped the tip of a finger in the groove above the compartment door.

  Van In produced his police ID, and Enzo dropped his hand.

  “The farm here is a little remote,” he laughed nervously. “You can never be careful enough.”

  Neither Van In nor Hannelore reacted to his transparent cliché.

  “May I ask the reason for your unexpected visit, Mr. Van In?” He straightened his tie and sat down again.

  “I presumed you would know the reason, Mr. Scaglione. Don’t you read the papers?”

  Hannelore braced herself. She planned to hit the floor if Scaglione made a false move.

  Enzo shrugged his shoulders. “How could I possibly know, Mr. Van In?”

  “Last week, someone blew up the statue of Guido Gezelle,” said Van In coolly.

  The atmosphere in the tiny living room was extremely tense. Hannelore watched Scaglione. The man was pretending to be nervous, and that worried her.

  “You probably think I followed in my father’s footsteps,” Enzo drawled.

  His eyes glistened like polished silver. Van In said nothing and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you, Mr. Van In. My father is dead. He abandoned my mother when I was a student. I earn an honest wage. Look around you. The BMW in the garage is my most precious possession.”

  Van In nodded superficially. The living room furniture was basic, the television prehistoric, and the paintings on the walls were garage-sale and worse.

  “If I had come to arrest you, I wouldn’t have come alone,” said Van In, easing the tension. “To be honest, the past doesn’t interest me.”

  Enzo made a vague gesture with his hand.

  Van In continued: “I know in the meantime that the Mouvement Wallon Révolutionnaire is no big deal. Thule has been trying to pull the wool over our eyes, and the society almost succeeded.”

  Scaglione didn’t visibly react to the word “Thule.”

  “Whose idea was it? Fiedle’s? Vandekerckhove’s? Bostoen’s? Or yours, Mr. Scaglione? I’m curious to know what’s next on the program.”

  “Mr. Van In,” Scaglione protested. “Forgive me, but I really don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  The Sicilian pretended to be upset. Hannelore registered his reaction down to the last detail.

  “Then let me come to the point, my dear Enzo.”

  Van In had confused him. The unexpected use of Scaglione’s first name was consciously timed.

  “If I’m not mistaken, your mother was killed by a drunk driver eight years ago.”

  Scaglione jumped to his feet. An excellent opening move, Van In exulted.

  “Sit down, Enzo, and listen carefully.”

  Scaglione collapsed onto his chair like a sack of flour. Van In knew he had won the argument. The man’s emotional reaction to the death of his mother was still intense, in spite of the intervening years.

  “The killer”—he used the word on purpose—“did a runner and the case was never solved. But what you don’t know, Enzo, is that the police were bribed.”

  Scaglione looked up. He gritted his teeth, and his upper lip trembled, a not-uncommon reaction for a southern type, for whom the boundary between unbridled sadness and vindictive rage was often extremely narrow.

  “And you said nothing,” he roared, flying from his chair and pacing up and down.

  “Take a seat, Enzo. I only discovered the truth yesterday.”

  Van In had succeeded in completely disorienting Scaglione. He had confronted him with a feeling of guilt he had been carrying around for years. Enzo had come home late that night. He had promised his mother he would go shopping with her to the market, and when he didn’t show up she had decided to go alone. At least that’s what it said in the official police report Van In had received by fax from Neufchâteau.

  “So you know who killed my mother, Mr. Van In?”

  “And I can prove it, Enzo.”

  Scaglione took a deep breath and turned around. His sadness had dissipated and his penetrating gaze gave Hannelore the shivers.

  “I guess the information isn’t free of charge,” he said impassively.

  “That’s what I was trying to explain, Enzo. I want the bombings to stop.”

  Scaglione started to pace up and down again. A Sicilian’s oath of secrecy was a sacred thing, but he was also half Belgian.

  “I’m informed that the bomb attack has to do with ‘The Pride of the Polders.’”

  Scaglione glanced skittishly in Van In’s direction. This cop knew more than was good for him.

  “The bomb was intended to pressure the mayor into approving the project. Blowing up Gezelle was a warning. Am I right?”

  Scaglione nodded, searching feverishly for a solution to the dilemma that was tearing him apart.

  “Okay, Enzo. We’re off to a good start. Take a seat, then we can discuss things calmly.”

  Scaglione obeyed like a fractious jailbird. “Good, but first I want to know who killed my mother,” he said.

  Van In lit a cigarette and offered the packet to both Hannelore and Scaglione.

  “Do I look like someone who doesn’t keep his word?” he asked, feigning a huff.

  “No,” said Scaglione.

  He suddenly got to his feet and crossed to an old-fashioned dresser next to the oil stove. Hannelore tensed her muscles. Neither she nor Van In were at their ease. What if I’ve overplayed my hand, Van In thought. The clatter of glasses broke the tension. Enzo turned to reveal three gold-rimmed shot glasses in one hand and a bottle of amaretto in the other. He set everything down on the coffee table, pulled up his chair, and poured unasked.

  “The Belfort is the next target,” he said as if he was announcing a sports event.

  “When?” Van In barked.

  “Next week.”

  “When exactly?”

  “Wednesday,” said Scaglione without emotion.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Van In.”

  “Who?”

  Scaglione shrugged his shoulders.

  “I only spoke to the man by telephone. He called me. I have no idea where he lives.”

  Van In emptied his glass of sweet amaretto in a
single gulp. Hannelore followed his example. She was happy all the commotion was over.

  Scaglione refilled the glasses. He looked relieved.

  “Are there other bombings on the cards?” Van In asked.

  “I don’t think so. After the Belfort, Travel Inc. will make the city of Bruges an offer. Vandekerckhove will cover the restoration costs in exchange for approval for his polder project. He’ll be more subtle, of course, but that’s the gist of it.”

  “I can picture him now,” Van In concurred.

  “And now the name of the killer, please.”

  Van In wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  “I’m a man of my word, Enzo.”

  He produced two sheets of paper from his inside pocket and gave them to Scaglione.

  “This is a copy of the official police report. When you lodged a complaint with the local police in Neufchâteau, they tracked down a witness. The man described the car and was able to remember the first two letters of the license plate. A list was generated of every Mercedes with license plates beginning with AV. The local police in Bruges located a dark brown Mercedes with license plate AV 886. They put together an official report that was delivered to the public prosecutor’s office two days later. In spite of the serious dent in the radiator, they didn’t pursue the case, on the advice of Investigating Magistrate Creytens. The man in the car was Georges Vandekerckhove, Enzo, the man whose dirty work you’ve been taking care of.”

  “Creytens?”

  “You know him, apparently,” said Van In nonchalantly.

  Scaglione realized he had let something slip.

  Hannelore found it strange that his reaction to the name of the killer was minimal.

  “My father was a friend of the Creytens family for years.”

  “Creytens senior, I presume.”

  “Who else?” Enzo snapped.

  “Aha, yes, the Nibelung treasure,” Van In jested. “How could I forget that little episode? So your father found the treasure after all.”

  Scaglione said nothing and gulped angrily at his amaretto.

  “Come on, Enzo. That inquiry was shelved a century ago. Everyone knows that Creytens senior referred your father to the courts in Tournay. But our Luigi was an impatient man. Instead of waiting until the prosecutor general had convinced the local judge that a court case in Bruges would be ill-advised, he gave orders from prison for his comrades to place a bomb in front of the courthouse. He was unlucky. His lawyer was sick and hadn’t been able to inform him in time that the judge in Bruges had already agreed to his request to have the case heard in a French-speaking court.”