The Fourth Figure

by Aspe, Pieter; Doyle, Brian;

  The barkeeper acknowledged him with a knowing glance, the look you expect to see on the face of a hunter inspecting a fellow hunter’s prey. Van In and Saartje found a table by the fire.

  The place was almost empty; only three tables were occupied, and a single lonely trucker was holding up the bar, devouring a portion of spaghetti Bolognese. Van In lit a cigarette, his fingers trembling, and coughed after the first draw. Growing old wasn’t easy, especially for someone whose lung capacity was half that of a normal person.

  “Good evening, Commissioner, Miss …”

  The barkeeper wiped the table with a damp cloth, flipped a beer coaster from his shirt pocket, and placed it under a frothing Duvel.

  “Looks like they know you around here,” said Saartje.

  Van In nodded. The barkeeper offered Saartje a drinks menu and waited until she made her choice.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” she said, pointing to the Duvel. The barkeeper poured a second in the blink of an eye.

  “Muylle remembered Jonathan buying drinks for the whole bar all night long.” Saartje raised her heavy Duvel glass and ticked it against Van In’s. “And El Shit claims that Jonathan disappeared for a couple of hours that night. When he got back, Muylle was sound asleep and snoring at the bar. Jonathan paid the bill and they left together in a taxi.”

  “Is that it?”

  “El Shit also told me that Jonathan and Muylle rarely hung out together.”

  Saartje looked at him. Muylle had spent most of the evening bullshitting about his arrest, and she’d had to treat El Shit to a big wet kiss to get him to squawk about Jonathan.

  “According to El Shit, it was the first time Jonathan had ever paid for a round. He mostly scrounged from the other drinkers, but that evening, he coughed up the best part of six thousand.”

  “Maybe he netted a serious haul that day.” Van In tugged on an imaginary fishing rod to illustrate his words and accidentally jabbed Saartje in the ribs with his elbow.

  “Ouch.” Saartje doubled up.

  Van In turned toward her, automatically resting his hand on where he’d bumped her and rubbing it gently. She didn’t stop him.

  “Sorry, but that’s not what I meant,” he said when he felt her body stiffen. “Does it still hurt?”

  When she didn’t answer, Van In looked up and saw her staring blankly at the door. He followed her gaze and felt his hand wither. This kind of thing only happens in B movies, he thought.

  “So here you are.” Hannelore grabbed a chair and sat opposite Van In and Saartje. It was clear that she’d been crying, but now an icy calm had settled on her as if she was in a trance. “I scoured half the city, Mr. Van In.”

  Van In pulled his hand away. A jabbing pain in his chest made him dizzy. “It’s not what you think, Hanne. Miss Maes …”

  “I’m not interested in your excuses, Mr. Van In.”

  “Deputy Martens, I can explain everything. The commissioner and I …”

  “Barkeep! Bring me a double whiskey and give these turtledoves here something to drink.”

  The smattering of guests sniggered. The trucker pushed his spaghetti to one side and lit a cigarette. This was more exciting than a TV soap.

  “And bring a napkin while you’re at it. Someone here appears to have been dribbling.”

  “Hanne! You have to hear me out.”

  “Have to, Van In?”

  She had been standing outside l’Estaminet, peering through the window. When she saw Pieter messing around with a child young enough to be his daughter, her world suddenly collapsed. Everyone had warned her about Van In, and the backstabbers had been right all along. Their marriage had been nothing more than a bubble and now it had burst. Hannelore tried to remain calm. She had to think of her baby.

  The barkeeper filled a long drink glass halfway. Pregnant or not, the whiskey would calm her down. He served it along with a couple of Duvels and felt like a prison guard bringing a condemned man his least meal.

  “I’d enjoy the first night, Miss Maes, if I were you. There’s a chance Mister Big Man here might be spending the next couple of years behind bars.”

  Van In knew Hannelore. He recognized the sarcasm when she asked for the napkin, but exaggeration wasn’t her style.

  “The federal police searched our house this afternoon, and guess what they found?”

  Hannelore emptied her glass in a couple of slugs. Everyone, including Van In and Saartje, waited with bated breath to hear what was coming next.

  “Five hundred grams of pure, uncut heroin, Mister Van In.”

  Before Van In could respond, she slammed the glass on the table, threw back her head, and got to her feet. “Adieu, Mister Van In.”

  She headed for the door. “And be careful he doesn’t get you pregnant.”

  The whiskey worked fast. Hannelore felt a little dizzy. She hadn’t eaten since lunch. When she got home, she would toss a couple of spring rolls in the fryer and then pack her bags. One more unwed mother didn’t mean the world was about to come to an end.

  Bert Vonck e-mailed in his article just before the deadline. The editor had promised him the front page, and that news had left him slightly euphoric. He poured himself a whiskey and collapsed on the sofa. The printout of his article was lying at his side.

  The article went out of its way to put the headline in perspective. It was full of conditionals and hypotheticals, as the chief editor had insisted in the event that someone might later lodge a complaint for defamation or libel.

  He read the headline again. “Bruges Police Commissioner a Heroin Dealer.”

  13

  A home without a woman can be a lonely place to live. Van In woke up in a cold bed. He could smell his own body, sour, the smell of a bachelor who had struggled to get to sleep. It took a couple of minutes before he remembered what had happened the evening before. Saartje had walked him home and left him at the door. She’d said no when he invited her in. He had thrown his arm around her neck like a shipwrecked castaway, but she had fended him off. All he got was a chaste peck on the lips and she was gone.

  Van In threw back the comforter. He hadn’t undressed the night before. That explained the smell. Odors tended to combine with moods; the worse people felt, the more likely they were to stink. Now he knew why the perfume stores that were popping up on every corner were doing such good business.

  He stumbled downstairs, put on some coffee, lit a cigarette—still three in the pack—and looked out of the window at the icy waters of the river Reie. A couple of gulls pranced graciously on top of a craggy strip of wafer-thin ice that meandered along the riverbank on both sides. The sight saddened him. He longed for a ray of sunlight, but even the elements seemed to have deserted him. The firmament was gray, and clouds hung like lead over the rooftops. He felt like throwing open the window and proclaiming his powerlessness for all to hear. The world was unjust. Had he been so bad to her? He sniffed. Hannelore, my love. Why did you abandon me?

  Guido let his eggs get cold. Frank was sitting beside him, and the newspaper was open on the table in front of them, a black-and-white bird that had fluttered from the sky, its wings outstretched. “Bruges Police Commissioner a Heroin Dealer.” A massive photo graced the center of the page: Van In with a five o’clock shadow and a Duvel within easy reach. It made him look like a real dealer. All that was missing were the sunglasses and the gold chain.

  “What now?” asked Frank, removing the plate with the fried eggs and dumping them in the trash. Guido remained seated. Frank put the plate on the kitchen counter. Washing up was for later. He sat beside his partner. Guido needed him.

  “He’s your best friend, Guido. I know what you’re going through.” Frank wasn’t jealous of the commissioner. Van In and Guido had something platonic between them, and he didn’t mind at all.

  “They must have planted it,” said Guido. “Pieter’s
no saint, but he’s never had anything to do with drugs. I have to help him.”

  Frank glanced at the clock, a modern thing without numbers that had been all the rage a couple of years earlier. “Then you better get moving. It’s seven forty-five already.”

  Guido gave Frank a kiss and hurried to the front door buried in thought.

  Although there wasn’t a soul in sight, Van In couldn’t help feeling he was running the gauntlet as he made his way down the corridor to his office. He could feel his colleagues staring at him through the walls. Every office had a copy of the newspaper.

  Saartje Maes was standing at the window dressed in jeans and a heavy sweater that was clearly a couple of sizes too big. In spite of the slovenly outfit, she had failed to conceal her firm buttocks. On the contrary, they stood out more than ever. She turned only when Van In spoke.

  “You’ve no reason to feel guilty, Saartje.” He used her first name on purpose. She looked at him, her eyes aglow with compassion and understanding. Van In leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

  “That won’t make it any worse,” he said softly. “Let people think what they want to think. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  Guido waited in the corridor until Van In sat down at his desk. He knew that the chaste kiss meant nothing, but he didn’t want to embarrass his friend. They had other fish to fry. “Coffee?”

  Van In nodded.

  “Bracer?”

  Van In nodded again.

  “Jenever or rum?”

  “Throw in some rum, Guido.”

  No one said a word about the article in the paper, as if silence could somehow change reality. Van In stretched his legs. Today was lining up to be a day like any other. The hours would pass at a snail’s pace and then he would go home. A shot would help ease the pain. Why stay sober all day when there’s no one at home waiting for me? he thought.

  “We discovered something interesting yesterday,” he said, turning to Saartje. “Two weeks before the shooting, Jonathan got our friend Muylle drunk at the Iron Virgin. I’m wondering why.”

  Van In had broken the silence in order to chase the demons from his head, but Hannelore was still there, haunting his thoughts. She had probably moved back in with her parents and it didn’t look as if she was planning to come back home any time soon since all her clothes had disappeared.

  Guido poured a serious shot of rum into a cup and mixed it with a dash of coffee. “In that case, logic suggests that we accept the hypothesis put forward by Miss Maes. Jonathan deliberately sought contact with Muylle, got him drunk, and took the opportunity to steal his car key and have it copied. Muylle is a regular at the Iron Virgin, and whoever was responsible for the shooting wanted us to trace the car. Muylle was the ideal suspect. He has a police record and connection with a satanic fraternity.”

  Guido’s conclusion was simple and logical. Van In didn’t understand why he hadn’t come up with the same. But why had the killer abandoned the car in front of the train station in Blankenberge?

  “That would explain everything, Guido,” said Van In, sitting upright in his chair. He forgot about Hannelore for an instant. If Guido was correct, then they were on the right track. Jonathan had played an important role in the entire affair, and perhaps there was a link between the Trui Andries murder and the shooting after all. But who was Jonathan working for? Venex? And who was Venex? Jasper? That’s what Richard Coleyn claimed, but Van In wasn’t convinced. As far as he was concerned, only Jonathan could answer that question.

  Suddenly the phone rang.

  “Van In speaking.”

  He placed his cup on a paper napkin that was lying on his desk. A dribble of brown liquid trickled down the outside of the cup and formed a circle on the napkin.

  “Are you certain, Mr. Geens?”

  Guido cocked his ears. Van In gestured that he should listen in on the other phone.

  “The rumor is doing the rounds,” Raf Geens, the crime lab technician, was saying. “Maybe it’s not important, but I thought you should know nonetheless.”

  “How long ago?” asked Van In.

  “I’m guessing twenty years.”

  Van In took a sip at his rum-laced coffee. “Was Veerle Andries one of his patients?”

  “That’s precisely why the affair caused such a stir, Commissioner. Veerle claimed he raped her. The Medical Association was about to suspend him.”

  Van In tried to assimilate the new information, but it was a struggle. The inside of his head was like a stew that had been too long on the heat. All the ingredients had mixed and mingled until everything tasted the same. “But they didn’t.”

  “Lack of evidence,” said Geens. “The baby disappeared, and Veerle committed suicide a couple of months later.”

  Van In thanked Geens and hung up the phone.

  Guido had scribbled a few notes in his pad and now read them aloud: “Veerle Andries, sister of Trui Andries. Pregnant by Dr. John Coleyn. Raped? Abortion? Committed suicide on October tenth, 1979. Case dismissed. What do you think, Pieter?”

  Van In was deep in thought. What he really wanted to do was call Hannelore and explain to her what didn’t happen the evening before.

  “I think it’s time we had another little word with Coleyn,” he said emotionlessly.

  The telephone rang again. Van In jumped to his feet with a spark of hope and grabbed the receiver. His face froze when he recognized Chief Commissioner De Kee’s nasal voice. He listened to what his boss had to say, put on his jacket, and made his way to the third floor like a lamb to the slaughter. Guido tugged at his mustache, while Saartje remained standing by the window.

  Richard Coleyn had spent the night with a girlfriend who had kindly shown him the door after breakfast. That’s what she always did when she got her way. It was okay to go to bed with her, but a relationship was out of the question. His dating agency wasn’t called Xanthippe, after Socrates’s notoriously prickly wife, for nothing.

  Richard turned into Hoogstuk Street and pulled out his key. Venex didn’t expect him until seven that evening. He had plenty of time to catch up on lost sleep. He greeted his neighbor, who was peering at him through a gap in her curtains, turned the key, and pushed open the front door.

  A house in which someone has died holds on to the presence of the dead person for a while. Anyone who has ever lost someone at home will confirm it. The air is heavier and the silence seems to absorb sounds before they’re made, like a cemetery where even the shrillest voice sounds muffled. It was different when the reaper had somehow lost the fight and was forced to beat a retreat empty-handed. Then there was a sense of unease, the upset balance and inaudible cry for help of a victim who had escaped the scythe.

  Richard had smoked a shitload the night before—his girlfriend only kicked on dope—and fatigue clouded his perception, but he immediately sensed that something wasn’t right. He clambered up the stairs and threw open the spare room door without hesitation.

  Jonathan was lying on the bed in the fetal position, an empty syringe jabbed into the mattress at his side. Richard stood still for a couple of seconds. He cursed himself for taking the boy in. If Jonathan was dead, he was in a serious mess. The police would ask him uncomfortable questions. Weren’t they looking for Jonathan in connection with the shooting at the church? He had to warn Venex, ask his advice, and get rid of the body.

  Richard had started to sweat, a cold sweat that made him shiver. Below him, a door slammed shut. He froze on the spot, paralyzed by fear. A sickly sensation in his stomach suddenly sank to his legs and turned them to rubber. The walls of the tiny room started to close in on him, threatened to crush him. There was only one way out. He threw open the window and stuck his head outside.

  His neighbor had just dragged a bucket of tepid water outside and was getting ready to wash her windows. She did the same every Tuesday, whatever the weather.

 
The scrawny woman looked up and saw his ashen face. “Are you sick or what?” she said in a flat Bruges accent. Richard tried to speak, but his voice was hoarse and what he said sounded like the groans of someone having a heart attack.

  “Stay where you are. I’ll call an ambulance.”

  The woman hurried inside and punched in the number of the emergency services with trembling fingers. She then ran outside and started to cause a commotion on the street.

  In contrast to what Van In had expected, De Kee welcomed him into his office with a warm handshake. The diminutive chief commissioner was wearing a pinstriped suit that didn’t really flatter him in spite of the expensive cut. People in West Flanders had a vivid way of describing the likes of De Kee: He looked like a potato farmer.

  “Prosecutor Beekman called me yesterday,” he said.

  No one, not even Adjutant Delrue, believed that Van In was dealing drugs. But public opinion was another thing altogether, and the newspaper article had caused a stir.

  “We discussed the case and I’m thinking it might be better if you take some time to …” De Kee hesitated. “How shall I put it?”

  Van In asked himself what the old bugger was on about.

  “It would be better for all concerned if you were to disappear from the public eye for a couple of weeks,” said De Kee with a broad smile. “With the investigation at this advanced stage, the last thing we want is negative publicity. If you get my drift.”

  Van In got his drift. This was the perfect opportunity for De Kee to sideline him.

  “The federal boys will set up an investigation, pro forma of course, and Beekman has appointed an examining magistrate just to be on the safe side. So you have nothing to fear, Commissioner. Before long, the public will have forgotten your role in this nasty business and you’ll be able to get back to work at your leisure.”