The Last Temptation. Val McDermid

their failure in this respect as a demonstration of support for his own estimation of his standing in the community.

      The patient lacks insight into his own condition.

      Therapeutic Action: Altered state therapy initiated.

8

      The laden Rhineship ploughed on towards Rotterdam, its glassy bow wave barely altering as the brown river widened, the Nederrijn imperceptibly becoming the Lek, then taking in the broad flow of the Nieuwe Maas. For most of the morning, he’d been blind to the passing scenery. They’d drifted through small, prosperous towns, with their mixture of tall townhouses and squat industrial buildings, church spires stabbing the flat grey skies, but he couldn’t have described a single one of them, save from memory of previous trips. He’d registered neither the grassy dykes that obscured the lengthy stretches of flat countryside nor the graceful sweeps of road and rail bridges that broke up the long reaches of river.

      The pictures he kept seeing were very different. The way Pieter de Groot had crumpled to the floor when he’d hit him on the back of his head with the sap he’d made himself, sewing the soft chamois leather with tight stitches then stuffing it with bird-shot. He couldn’t imagine himself ever doing what de Groot had done, trusting a stranger enough to turn his back on him within five minutes of meeting. Anyone that careless of his safety deserved what was coming to him.

      More thrilling pictures. The panic in the heartless bastard’s eyes when he’d come round to find himself bound naked to the top of his own desk. Curiously, his terror had subsided when the bargee had spoken. ‘You’re going to die here,’ he’d said. ‘You deserve it. You’ve played at being God. Well, now I’m going to teach you what happens when somebody plays God with you. You’ve fucked up people’s heads for too long, and now it’s your turn to get fucked up. I can make it fast because, believe me, you don’t want it to be slow. But if you scream when I take the gag out of your mouth, I’m going to hurt you so much you’ll be begging to die.’ He’d been surprised by the reaction. His first victim had struggled, refusing to accept it was pointless. That, it seemed to him, was a natural response. It had irritated him, because it had made his work more difficult. But he’d respected it. It was how a man should behave.

      The professor in Leiden, though. He’d been different. It was as if he instantly recognized that the person staring down at him was beyond the reach of any argument he could raise against his fate. He’d given up the ghost there and then, his eyes dull with defeat.

      Cautiously, he’d taken the gag from the man’s mouth. The psychologist hadn’t even tried to plead. In that moment, he’d felt a terrible kinship with his victim. He didn’t know what had happened in the man’s life to give him this capacity for resignation, but he identifed an echo of his own learned behaviour and hated de Groot all the more for it. ‘Very fucking sensible decision,’ he’d said gruffly, turning away to hide his unease.

      He didn’t want to think about that moment.

      More beautiful pictures. The heaving chest, the convulsive jerking and twitching of a body fighting to stay on the right side of eternity. It made him feel better to replay his newly minted memories like this. He couldn’t remember anything else that had ever made him feel so light-hearted.

      And afterwards, the other pleasure he’d discovered, an unforeseen. Now at last he was able to show those whores who was boss. After he’d killed the professor in Heidelberg, he’d been astonished to find, driving back to the boat, that he wanted a woman. He was mistrustful of the urge that had so humiliated him in the past, but he told himself that he was a different man now, he could do what the hell he wanted.

      So he’d made a detour to the back streets near the harbour and picked up a whore. She’d had a place to take him to, and he’d paid extra for the privilege of tying her up, spread-eagling her over the stained bed as he’d spread-eagled his victim over his desk. And this time, there had been no mortification. He’d been hard as a rock, he’d fucked her with brutal speed, he’d made her groan and beg for more, but it hadn’t been her he’d seen, it had been the mutilated body he’d left behind. He felt like a god. When he’d finished, he’d untied her and forced her on to her stomach so he could celebrate his new potency by sodomizing her too. Then he’d left, throwing her a handful of coins to demonstrate his contempt.

      He’d driven back to the boat on a high such as he’d never known, not even after he’d killed the old man.

      It wasn’t what he’d learned from Heinrich Holtz after the funeral that had lifted the curtain of darkness inside him or helped him to forgive his grandfather. Sometimes he wondered if he possessed the ability to forgive; so many responses that other people took for granted had been squeezed out of him. If they’d ever been there in the first place.

      But what he had understood was who he could use to make a new library of memories that would bring him joy and light. For a long time, he had brooded, wondering how he could make his torturers pay. What had finally illuminated the road to his release was the terrible humiliation he’d suffered at the hands of that bitch of a Hungarian whore. It wasn’t the first time he’d been taunted, but it was the first time someone had sounded just like his grandfather. A dizzying blackness had engulfed him, blocking out everything except an insatiable rage. In an instant, he’d had his hands round her throat, so tight her face had turned purple, her tongue poking out like a gargoyle. But in that moment when he had literally held her life in his hands, he’d suddenly realized it wasn’t her he wanted to kill.

      He’d fallen away from her, gasping and sweating, but simultaneously clear-headed, his feet set on a new path. He’d staggered into the night, an altered man. Now, he had a mission.

      His pleasure in the remembrance of things past was broken by the arrival of Manfred with a steaming mug of coffee. He didn’t begrudge the interruption, however. It was time something brought him back to earth. He’d been steering all morning on automatic pilot, which wasn’t good enough for the stretch of river that lay ahead. The congested waters of Rotterdam were a deathtrap for the inattentive skipper. As the Nieuwe Maas swept through its wide bends towards the various side channels leading to wharves and moorings, tugs and barges and launches were constantly on the move. They could shoot out insouciantly from blind corners at outrageous speed. Avoiding collisions required all his attention to the radar screen as well as to the waters around him. Up in the bows, Gunther scanned the waterway, a second pair of eyes for what lay ahead, where the skipper’s view was often obscured.

      For now, he had to concentrate on getting them to safe harbour. The boat was all that mattered, for without the boat he was nothing; his mission would be scuppered. Besides, he was proud of his skills as a Rhine skipper. He had no intention of becoming the butt of dockside laughter.

      Later, there would be plenty of time to indulge himself, to let the darkness fold back and bask in the light. While they were unloading, he could return to his memories. And perhaps plan how he would add to his store.

      Brigadier Marijke van Hasselt wrinkled her nose. Not minding the dead was one thing; enduring the assorted stenches and sights of a postmortem was something that required rather more fortitude. The early stages had been fine. Nothing bothered her about the weighing and measuring, the freeing of head and hands from their plastic coverings, the scraping from under each individual fingernail, all meticulously recorded on audio and video tape by Wim de Vries, the pathologist. But she knew what lay ahead, and it wasn’t a prospect for the delicate of stomach.

      At least de Vries wasn’t one of those who relished the humiliation of the police officers who had to attend postmortems. He never brandished organs like a gleeful offal butcher. Rather, he was calm and efficient, as respectful of the dead as the disassembling of their physical secrets allowed him to be. And he spoke plainly when he found something the attending officer needed to know. All of which was a relief to Marijke.

      Delicately, he continued his external examination. ‘Some traces of froth in the nostrils,’ he said. ‘Consistent with drowning. But none in