Black Widow. Isadora Bryan

      She drew the curtains. Her hand was shaking, and that was odd; she had never felt so in control.

      It was all relative, she supposed. She was pleased at the progress she was making.

      She treated herself to a biscuit, and afterwards retired to a somewhat smaller room. Save for a set of apothecary’s jars, purchased that very morning from a local antique dealer, it was completely devoid of furnishings.

      Three of the jars were quite empty. The fourth was less so.

       Chapter 4

      On the simplest, most instinctive level, Pieter was fairly sure that Maria Berger was telling the truth, that she’d had nothing to do with Mikael Ruben’s death. The catch in her voice, the slow unfurling of her limbs, the sense that her body’s internal rhythms had been halted, that they might never start up again – each spoke of her shock, and therefore innocence.

      The interview had dragged on for two hours, and they didn’t seem to be making any progress. Maria had sunk back into her grief, her eyes glazed over, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. More often than not she didn’t seem to hear Tanja’s questions; or if she did, her typical response was to start crying again, albeit it in a quiet, low-key fashion. True, Pieter knew that she had a theatrical side, that she might conceivably be putting on a show – but the thing about acting, as he saw it, was that it was necessarily exaggerated.

      ‘Must we carry on?’ the other occupant of the room said. ‘Maria obviously had nothing to do with this.’

      Tanja turned her unblinking gaze towards Maria’s mother. ‘No one said that she did, Mrs Berger.’

      ‘Then what is she doing here? She should be at home.’

      ‘And soon she will be,’ said Tanja. ‘But she may have some piece of information that helps with the apprehension of the culprit.’

      ‘You don’t have children, do you detective?’ said Anita.

      Tanja paused a moment. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’

      Anita Berger leant back in her chair. The air-conditioning was broken again, and the sweat leaked from the margin of her blonde hair, to merge in unsympathetic fashion with distinct layers of makeup. She might once have been very pretty, perhaps even a match for her daughter, but whereas there was a delicacy to Maria’s appearance, Anita had abandoned all notion of subtlety. Her skirt was cut on the well-ventilated side of daring, whilst her breasts seemed to be considering an escape for freedom. A crucifix jiggled provocatively on a chain of silver links, as if intent on humping her cleavage. Her skin was tanned, but more in the sense of leather than anything. When Pieter looked at her, one word came into his mind: melanoma.

      There was a knock at the door. Pieter came to with a little start. He hadn’t realised, but he’d been slouching. He eased himself aloft, recalling a seminar on bio-mechanics at the Academy. The way a person sat could alter blood flow to the brain, impeding mental capacity by anything up to five per cent. He took a few sips of water: dehydration could be even more disruptive.

      ‘Come in,’ said Tanja.

      Harald Janssen appeared, and handed Tanja a note. She studied it for a moment, then passed it to Pieter.

      It seemed that Maria’s story checked out. She’d been at the Universiteitstheater on Nieuwe Doelenstraat from four in the afternoon, and had been in the company of at least one witness from that point until three the following morning, when she’d left the party at the director’s house in Jordaan. Pieter was pleased that his initial judgment had been corroborated. They already knew that Mikael Ruben and Hester Goldberg had booked into the hotel at nine-thirty; whilst Erik Polderhuis had estimated the time of death as between eight-thirty and midnight. It couldn’t have been Maria.

      Then Pieter noticed that Tanja was looking at him. And not with any great enthusiasm. She frowned, and blinked once, slowly. Maybe Pieter was reading too much into her expression, but there seemed to be a warning there. He looked away, wondering what he might have done now.

      And then he saw that Anita Berger was looking at him closely, too, and licking her lips whilst she did so. Christ! What was that about?

      Maria wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I want to go,’ she said.

      ‘To your flat?’ Tanja asked.

      ‘No,’ her mother answered for her. ‘Home. My home. Our home.’

      Tanja nodded. ‘Of course. I think we are done here.’ She checked her watch. ‘Interview concluded at three-fifteen pm.’ There was a snap, as she switched off the tape recorder.

      ‘You will look after Maria, Mrs Berger?’ Tanja asked.

      Anita nodded, gently at first, then with greater vigour. ‘Of course. Always.’

      ‘Well, I will make a call to the Bureau Slachtofferhulp, anyway.’

      Anita shook her head a fraction. ‘Victim Support? No, really, there’s no need. Maria has me. She doesn’t need anyone else.’

      *

      Outside in the car park, Pieter watched as Tanja tugged open the Opel’s door and thumped down into the driver’s seat – only to yelp as the bare skin of her legs came into contact with hot black plastic. She did a funny little buttock dance, which reminded him a little of mothers trying to get funky at wedding discos.

      ‘Maybe you should leave the window open a bit,’ Pieter suggested. ‘Or wear trousers.’

      ‘Shut up, boy.’

      ‘Boy?’

      ‘Sorry, did I get the gender wrong?’

      Tanja jammed the key into the ignition, rattling it this way and that to disengage the steering lock. Pieter tactfully looked elsewhere as she struggled to get the car running. Her curses were delivered in some southern dialect, he noted with interest; Limburgish, maybe?

      The car fired up with a cough of blue smoke. Pieter barely had time to drop into his seat – still hot – before Tanja was off along Elandsgracht.

      ‘Where are we going?’ Pieter asked. ‘Ruben’s place?’

      Tanja grunted. ‘You think he might have left us a little black book of names and addresses?’

      ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be black, I suppose.’

      ‘It’s possible,’ Tanja conceded. ‘But a detective would need to be spectacularly lucky to unearth something like that.’

      ‘So –?’

      ‘I’ve already asked Harald Janssen to take a look at it.’

      Pieter nodded. ‘So what about us?’

      ‘Well, we’re off to that bar. The Den, on Enge Lombardsteeg.’

      ‘Ruben had a receipt for there,’ Pieter recalled.

      ‘So, if the time on the receipt is anything to go by, it seems quite likely that he went straight from there to the hotel. Perhaps our friend Hester was with him.’

      ‘He might have arranged to meet her at the hotel, though,’ Pieter pointed out.

      Tanja didn’t answer and Pieter could tell by the set of his partner’s jaw that she was in no mood for idle speculation. And maybe he’d gone a bit far, teasing her like that. But it had always been his way: whenever he was nervous, something in his unconscious mind determined that the best course of action was to laugh at the source of his fear. He would have to keep a check on it.

      So instead he looked through the window, taking in the sights and sounds of his new home. He knew a little of Jordaan’s history, of the incendiary class riots which had flared amidst its gentle gardens during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries;