by Pieter Aspe
“Good thing Frank isn’t hearing this,” said Van In.
Versavel shrugged his shoulders.
“Frank knows I had a relationship with Jonathan. That’s the difference with you straight guys. Men like us don’t sweat past affairs. A friend is a friend. Frank and I aren’t jealous types.”
The Mouton Rothschild hadn’t done Versavel any favors. The sergeant was acting like an aging hippy on his way down from an LSD trip.
“Did Jonathan have anything interesting to say?” Van In asked.
Versavel ignored his boss’s sarcasm. In his head he was still in the Karmeliet, face-to-face with Jonathan.
Van In hadn’t had a smoke for a full three hours. He rummaged for his cigarettes convinced that this was an emergency. What else do you do when you’re forced to listen to a gay man on the wrong side of fifty waxing lyrical about an old flame?
“Surely you don’t think I’m drunk, Commissioner?” Versavel inquired, looking his boss up and down with a boyish grin.
“Get to the point, Guido. You can siesta when you’re done.”
Versavel grabbed a chair, the smile frozen on his lips.
“According to Jonathan, the Love, which is what he called the place, functioned as a whorehouse for the wealthy and influential, although it still looked like a dump from the outside.” Versavel pronounced the name of the place with an American accent, stretching the o.
“Names, Guido?”
“He couldn’t help.”
“How did he know they were influential?”
“He just figured.”
“I see, he just figured.”
Versavel twigged to his boss’s cynicism. Visiting whores wasn’t a crime.
“Jonathan accompanied Vandaele a couple of times to a brothel on the main road to Male, and the Love cropped up in the conversation. The guy operating the place, a certain William Aerts, confessed that he was expected to bring the better clients and the more exceptional girls to the farm, where they could do their thing without onlookers.”
“So if I’m understanding this right, Vandaele placed the Love at the disposal of his business partners,” said Van In, clearly disappointed. He hesitated at the long o and what came out sounded like Loaf.
“Try pronouncing it Luuv, with a double u,” said Versavel.
“Luuv.” Van In did his best. “Any better?”
“Not bad,” said the slightly tipsy sergeant. “But Loaf isn’t bad either. Plenty of bread changing hands. You know how it works, Pieter.”
Van In shook his head in confusion. “Time for coffee if you ask me,” he said, crossing to the window and filling a jug with water. A woozy sergeant was about as useful as a priest at a freemason’s deathbed.
Van In was now up to more than half a pack a day after twelve weeks on a more restricted cigarette diet. Hannelore let him get on with it. She treated herself to an extra glass of Moselle and silently resisted the intense desire to light up and join him. They had both had a difficult day.
Van In stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. The sight of the still smoldering butt almost drove Hannelore crazy.
“Something up?” he asked routinely.
“No. What about Herbert?”
Van In didn’t have much of a grasp of the female psyche, but he wasn’t an idiot. Her eyes moistened as if she was about to burst into tears. “Shall I heat up a can of sauerkraut?” he suggested obligingly. He could be sweet at times. “A portion of fries?”
Hannelore’s hand glided across the table. “I want a cigarette,” she said, clearly determined.
Van In tried to grab the pack, but she beat him to it.
“You can’t be serious, Hanne.”
Her eyes blazed as she filled her lungs with smoke. “Just one,” she pleaded.
“I thought we’d agreed you’d stop,” he erupted. “In exchange I agreed to follow a strict diet. I’ve been keeping my side of the bargain: ten cigarettes a day, salad, tasteless fish, and high-fiber bread full of sawdust.”
Hannelore puffed at her cigarette like a woman possessed as the color bled from her face. “You’ve smoked half a pack since you got home,” she protested. “I’ve been counting.”
Van In tried to control himself. He asked himself if he would be capable of stopping altogether.
“OK, one cigarette. But for the love of God …”
“For the love of who? Does the commissioner think he’s the only one dealing with stress? Try spending a day at court!”
“Hanne, tell me what’s the matter, please.”
Hannelore got to her feet, something she always did when her emotions got the better of her. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter. You grouch half the evening and puff away to your heart’s content, and you dare accuse me of not keeping my part of the bargain!”
Van In hadn’t been silenced like that for a very long time. He immediately recognized the old enemy. Irrationality left him powerless. He felt like he was being choked and the rage built up in his gullet as he was confronted with a past he thought was dead and buried. He jumped to his feet and stormed into the kitchen, his jaws locked tight. There was still half a bottle of scotch in the fridge.
Hannelore took a final puff. Her head was spinning. She looked up at the stars, heaved a sigh, and flicked the butt between the roses. The refrigerator door closed with a gentle thud.
“Go on, get soaked. I’m going to bed!” she yelled as she marched through the kitchen.
Van In took a swig at the bottle of J&B. The whiskey burned in his stomach. He listened as she climbed the stairs in tears, and felt lonelier at that moment than Robinson Crusoe.
The crossing by catamaran from Syracuse to Malta was uneventful. The sea was smooth as a baby’s bottom and the futuristic boat glided across the water like a spaceship. The hundreds of tourists onboard had enjoyed their trip to Sicily. No one paid the least attention to the oddity on the afterdeck staring at the vessel’s wake.
Aerts had paid the second officer five hundred dollars to allow him to travel incognito and not include his name on the passenger list. The foam-crested waves would soon erase his final traces forever, freeing him to start his new life. Amand had arranged everything to perfection. They could search the entire planet, but they would never find him.
“Sorry, sweetheart. Forgive me. I take the blame, all of it.”
Van In placed the bottle of Moselle on the nightstand and offered Hannelore a cigarette.
“Take another. I had no idea that it was causing you so much pain.”
She was lying on the bed and seemed fragile, vulnerable.
“Never mind, Pieter. I’m beginning to feel better.”
Van In got to his knees and held her in his arms. The tears returned.
“I had an appointment with the gynecologist earlier.”
Van In suddenly felt as if a hundred spiders were crawling up his back.
“I knew there was something,” he said, sounding awkward. Men are often left speechless in such situations. “Does it hurt?” he asked after a few moments of silence.
She dabbed her eyes with a paper tissue. “I’m worried about the baby. I’ve asked for an amniocentesis.”
“An amniocentesis! But why the worry? You’re always so confident.”
Hannelore ran her fingers through her hair. She wanted to be sure he didn’t feel guilty, whatever the cost.
“I want to be sure, Pieter. I’m thirty-six, for Christ’s sake.”
Van In poured himself a glass of wine. He was forty-three. His lungs were full of tar, and his blood only kept flowing because he thinned it every day with alcohol.
“Another sip?” He held out his glass. “A drop of wine won’t do him any harm.”
She wasn’t interested.
“The boy has alcohol in his genes,” said Van In. “Believe me, on t
hat score I’m the dominant one.”
Van In could be incredibly illogical at times. Hannelore didn’t understand why she followed his argument and accepted the glass. An unpleasant silence filled the air, leaving time enough for Van In’s head to fill with apocalyptic images of hideously deformed babies.
“What do we do if … I mean … Suppose …” he stammered.
The mental specter with which Van In was now struggling had been chasing Hannelore for days. “I wasn’t planning to tell you this evening. Maybe I should have waited … To tell you the truth, Pieter, I don’t know what to think. Everyone’s talking about heredity these days and genetic research. The papers are full of it. And you’re right. I used to laugh about it in the past, but yesterday my sense of security collapsed like a house of cards. Now I need to know if everything’s OK.”
Was this a moment for a man to put on a brave face, or was he allowed to show his emotions? Van In had no idea. The answer was probably in a book somewhere, a book he hadn’t read.
“This is your last warning,” Leen Vermast roared. “It’s eleven o’clock. Get to bed and go to sleep this instant, both of you.”
Tine heard her mother thunder up the stairs a few moments later and quickly stuffed her discovery under her pillow. Joris was sitting on the bed cross-legged. He stared at his sister in desperation but didn’t budge an inch when his mother barged into the room. Leen felt sorry for him. She tucked him in and gave him a kiss. Then she turned to her daughter.
“If I hear another sound, you’re grounded.”
Tine bowed her head, chastened. She was planning to go riding the next day with her friends. Mommy didn’t have the right to steal her fun.
Leen switched off the light. She took off her dress on her way downstairs and appeared in the living room topless. Hugo had only forfeited two items of clothing. Jef was in his socks, and Annelies was fully dressed. How come she always lost when Jef and Annelies stopped by for a game of strip poker?
5
A couple of miles outside Victoria, the island of Gozo’s largest city, Amand Dekeyzer ran the only three-star restaurant on the Maltese archipelago. Originally from Knokke on the Belgian coast, Amand had discovered a gap in the Maltese market and had exploited it for the best part of twenty years. While the local islanders bent over backward to give the tourists what they wanted, their culinary skills tended to fall short on a variety of levels. Was the lack of gastronomic inventiveness a result of British influence on their eating habits, or was the island’s overwhelming dryness to blame? In ancient times they called the place “the land of honey,” but that didn’t square with present-day reality.
Whatever the explanation may have been, Amand realized that the customary combination of plum pudding, pizza, and couscous was open to improvement. He started small, importing produce from Flanders, and after five years he was proud to call himself the owner of a popular restaurant cum nightclub.
William Aerts arrived in the late afternoon. Amand was taking a breather on the blustery terrace in front of the restaurant. He recognized his old friend immediately.
“William!” he shouted enthusiastically. “I didn’t expect you so early.”
They shook hands long and heartily. Amand snapped his fingers and ordered pilsners—Belgian, of course—and snacks.
“Finally,” said Aerts. “From this day forth, Belgium can go screw itself.”
“Fantastic, William. Now that calls for a celebration.”
Versavel sailed into Room 204 like a well-rigged packet boat—stately and majestic. He was wearing a trendy suit, a bronze-green shirt, a black tie, and a celestial smile.
“You’re late,” Van In grunted.
Versavel took off his jacket, tossed it with a flourish over the back of a chair, walked to the window, and took a deep breath.
“It’s nine fifteen, Guido. Don’t tell me your head’s still full of Mouton Rothschild. I’m the one who gets to be late around here, remember.”
Versavel stretched his neck and shoulders and swiveled on his axis like a Russian ballet dancer. “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan, mon ami?”
“Jesus H. Christ, Guido. Which do you prefer—a psychiatrist or a straitjacket?”
Versavel wasn’t intimidated. He recited a couple of strophes from François Villon’s ballad and then flopped into a chair. “Problems, Commissioner?”
“Spare me the funnies, Guido. I’m not in the mood. If you keep this up, half the office will be at the door trying to catch a front-row seat. What kind of demon’s gotten into you? You look like an ageing crooner, and you’re acting like a third-rate clown.”
“Is that a pleonasm or a tautology, Commissioner?”
Van In got up from his chair, marched across the office, and stopped in front of Versavel’s desk, legs apart. “Dearest Guido, would you mind telling me what the fuck is going on?”
“Good news, Pieter. Nothing but good news. Jonathan called me yesterday. He’s coming over for dinner tonight, and Frank has promised to make my favorite guinea fowl recipe with gooseberries.”
Van In rolled his eyes upward. He had plenty of experience when it came to relationships with the opposite sex, of course, but he had learned by trial and error over the last twenty-five years that there were some things a woman wasn’t likely to accept—like inviting your mistress for dinner and asking your wife to cook.
“And Frank’s happy to oblige?”
“Frank thinks the world of Jonathan.”
Versavel leaned back in his chair, stretching and yawning at once. His eyes glistened like polished jet.
Dirk Baert knocked first before coming in, proof that he had been eavesdropping.
“Good morning, Commissioner.”
“Good morning, Chief Inspector.”
Baert greeted Versavel with an almost imperceptible nod of the head. The sergeant didn’t bother responding.
Van In returned to his desk, grabbed some paper from the drawer, and started to scribble furiously, a trick he usually reserved for unexpected visits from the big boss. Most of the police reports Van In was working on were years old. Versavel frowned, not quite sure why Van In would put on such a performance for a subordinate like Dirk Baert.
“So what’s the story, Baert?” said Van In.
Baert was still standing at attention.
“Jeez … take a seat, man.”
Baert crumpled like a puppet cut free from its strings. “I’d like to report back on the accident outside the Bremwegel in 1979,” said Baert in a formal tone.
“The Bremwegel, Baert?”
“Lodewijk Vandaele’s country residence,” the chief inspector obliged, nodding. “You asked me to check if a report had been filed in 1979 on an accident involving Lodewijk Vandaele and an unidentified motorcyclist.” Dirk Baert spoke the same way he wrote his police reports: in serious officialese.
Versavel mimicked his boss by grabbing a sheet of paper and scribbling a few notes. Van In pretended he wasn’t listening to Baert and concentrated on a yellowed police report from the impressive pile on his desk. Versavel’s penny dropped. Any normal person would ask to be transferred to a different department after a week of Van In’s games. He hoped Dirk Baert was a normal person.
“And the rest, Chief Inspector?” said Van In, irked.
Baert gulped, his bouncing Adam’s apple clearly betraying his mood. “Mr. Vandaele reported the incident in person. The motorcyclist, a certain John Catrysse, suffered a concussion. The entire business was settled out of court. Vandaele took care of the costs.”
“Address?” asked Van In dryly.
Baert was taken aback. “Bremwegel 38, Commissioner.”
Van In made a face that would have been enough to make a bored MP jealous. “Catrysse’s address, Chief Inspector.”
Baert flushed hot and cold in rapid succession. “I’ll have to check, Commis
sioner. I thought—”
“Leave the thinking to us, Baert.”
Versavel coughed conspicuously. Baert swallowed his indignation and beat a wounded retreat.
“That’s him sorted.” Van In grinned as he returned the pile of reports to the drawer.
“So Vandaele was telling the truth,” said Versavel. “What do we do now?”
“I trust Dirk Baert as far as I can spit,” Van In grunted. “Ferret that address out for me, would you? Catrysse’s address.”
Versavel stared at his boss in surprise. Baert might have been incompetent, but he wasn’t a fool.
“And I want to know how much Vandaele paid him. According to the letter of the law, he was in the right. Catrysse crashed into a parked vehicle. His insurance should have covered any damage to the Mercedes, in principle at least.”
Versavel nodded. Van In’s explanation added logic to his request.
Van In ran through the few details they had at their disposal. According to Jonathan, the Love functioned as a love nest for Vandaele’s business associates. His contact was a certain William Aerts, proprietor of a renovated café on the road to Male. Herbert was buried on the grounds of the Love in the mid-1980s, and in 1986 Vandaele handed the farm over to an obscure charity. Van In scribbled a short note to himself: Did Vandaele close down the brothel or relocate it?
“I think we should have a word with Mr. Aerts. Perhaps he can tell us who used to hang out at the Love.”
Bruges’ courthouse has to be the most modern in Belgium—it’s the only one to have its own bar. In contrast to the usual gravity that tends to prevail in such places, the atmosphere in Bruges is relaxed most of the time and even prone to merriment on occasion. Today happened to be one of those high-spirited days. More than fifty cheerful lawyers had assembled to celebrate the opening of the new judicial year. The beer flowed, and the anecdotes became more suggestive by the hour. Hannelore was welcomed with a resounding cheer and inundated with compliments. She shook them off like a pet rabbit scuttling into the living room after a rain shower. She ordered a cup of tea and installed herself on the outside terrace, another feature of the building, which offered a romantic view of the city’s windmills. The warmth of the autumn sun felt good. She stretched out her legs and closed her eyes for a moment or two.
