Black Widow. Isadora Bryan

Pieter.

      ‘Hey, relax,’ Visser said. ‘He’s not going anywhere. Not without his guide dog, at any rate.’

      ‘What does that mean?’ Pieter said.

      ‘You tell me. You’re the detective. Or so I’m led to believe.’

      Tanja held up a hand to forestall further bickering. ‘How’s that picture coming along?’ she asked Pieter. ‘I’m expecting something in the Rembrandt envelope, at least.’

      ‘Or perhaps we could simply wait for the photographer?’

      ‘I want both. Do it.’

      Tanja moved slowly around the wall, Pieter beside her, sketching all the while. Tanja noticed that he was working in 3D, rather than the usual plan. So, he was either being facetious, or stupid. On balance, she hoped it was the former. A stupid cop had nothing to fall back on save luck. And Harald Janssen had already cornered that market.

      The room was fairly grubby, and gave the impression that it hadn’t been decorated in thirty years or more. The walls were magnolia, whilst the carpet was beige. There was an interior door, closed, which presumably led into the bathroom.

      The floor was covered in a loose pile of male clothing, suggesting that the dead man had been in a hurry to get naked. Well, no mystery there; men were like children in that regard.

      A low-def TV sat in one corner, a coat-hanger aerial arranged above it. The plug was missing. Tanja didn’t suppose that most guests had cause to notice. There was a kettle and accompanying tea service. The cups were face down.

      Kissin’s impatience aside, there was value to be had in dealing with the mundane details first. But only to a point.

      ‘Let’s have a look at him then, shall we,’ Tanja said.

      She stepped around the corner of the L, Pieter right beside her.

      There was a sound. It seemed to come from somewhere deep within Pieter’s throat.

      ‘Oh, shit,’ he groaned.

      He staggered away – sticking to the safe route, Tanja noted – and dropped to his knees over the cleaner’s bucket in the hall outside. One or two of the forensics boys cheered as he hurled up his breakfast; van Wyk cursed. Tanja was better able to control herself, but her stomach still gave a queasy lurch. A person never got entirely used to it.

      She gazed down at the body, letting her sense of outrage run its brief, if heated course. As ever, she fought against the feelings of sympathy, of empathy; as ever, she lost. Her old boss had told her that a sense of detachment was vital to a cop, but it was a skill she’d never been able to master. All she could do was fake it.

      Her practised eye took in the significant details in an instant. The victim was a youngish man, maybe thirty years old. There was blood on his wrists, and ligature marks about his neck, suggesting that he’d been tied up, and strangled. He was still semi-hard: funny the way that happened, sometimes.

      There was a little blood on his bloated face, too. One of the eyes had been pressed back into its socket. The other was missing, the optic nerve dangling free like some parasitical worm. She got down on her knees, to see if the eyeball had fallen beneath the bed, but there was nothing there save dust.

      There was a knock at the door. An oversized head appeared, followed soon after by a less imposing body. ‘Ah, if it isn’t my second or third favourite detective inspector. Looking good, Tanja!’

      It was Erik Polderhuis, the medical examiner. He was pushing sixty, but didn’t look, or act, it. Outside of work, he was known for his determination to form romantic attachments with girls who were precisely half his age. But the maths never held true for long, and so it was that he’d never been able to settle down. His hair was blonde, whilst his blue-grey eyes, so cold, might have been scooped directly from the North Sea. Somewhat paradoxically, there was a great warmth in his smile. He had various faults, most of them founded in a sense of mischief, but it was also true that he had an eye for detail. Tanja was actually rather fond of him, although she would never admit to it.

      ‘Erik,’ she acknowledged. And then, as a green-faced Pieter reappeared, ‘This is Detective Kissin. He’s from the Vecht.’

      ‘Shit,’ Erik sympathised. ‘Tough break.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      ‘Was that you I saw just now, losing your breakfast?’

      Pieter nodded unhappily. ‘Yes. But it won’t happen again.’

      Erik didn’t seem to hear this promise. ‘Well, try not to throw up on the victim, please. Or fart unnecessarily.’ He knelt down beside the bed. ‘So what’s going on with this poor bastard?’

      Whilst Erik went to work, Tanja carefully picked her way through the pile of clothes. The trousers were grey, skinny-fit Girbaud; whilst the shirt was from Turnbull & Asser. Not necessarily an indication of wealth in themselves (maybe these were his pulling clothes; maybe he wore supermarket fashions, mostly), but the contrast with the cheap surroundings was marked.

      She went through his pockets, finding a packet of cigarettes (Marlboro Lights – the equivalent of shooting yourself in the head with a low calibre bullet, she supposed), a packet of condoms (Cardinals, a Dutch brand, rumoured to be the best available), a Zippo lighter, and a wallet (croc skin?).

      She opened the wallet. She found an ID card, complete with a photo: Mikael Ruben, North Holland IT Solutions. It matched the name on a selection of bank cards. The colour was gold in each case, but again, that was hardly an indication of superior status nowadays. Tanja had a gold card herself, and she was far from rich.

      There was also a receipt, from a bar, timed and dated to the night before. The Den on Enge Lombardsteeg. It didn’t ring any bells, which was odd, as she was sure she’d visited all the places on that street, at one time or another. Anyway, Ruben had ordered two lagers, by the look of things. Hardly a skinful; he would have known what he was doing.

      ‘Well, I think it’s safe to say he was tied up,’ Erik declaimed. ‘Cuffed, in all probability. See? Around the back of the bedpost? The wood is a little splintered, doubtless where he struggled to free himself. It would take metal, or something similarly hard, to do that.’

      ‘If it weren’t for the business with his eyes,’ Tanja noted, ‘I might be tempted to suggest that he was caught up in a sex game, that his death was an accident.’ She shrugged. ‘But as it is –’

      Erik nodded. ‘Yes, you’re probably right. Throttling a man to within a centimetre of his life in pursuit of the ultimate ejaculatory high is not in itself indicative of murderous intent. But running off with his eyeball probably is.’

      ‘Christ,’ Pieter groaned.

      ‘Would you rather wait outside?’ Tanja asked, her impatience rising.

      Pieter shook his head determinedly, and dropped down on his haunches, that he might further examine the pile of clothing.

      ‘This sort of excision,’ Tanja asked Erik. ‘Is it a tricky procedure?’

      ‘Not really,’ Polderhuis answered. ‘The rectus muscles which surround the eye aren’t noted for their tenacity. And it’s fairly obvious which bits need to be cut. It certainly wouldn’t require any specialist knowledge.’

      ‘Any idea as to time of death then? I presume the rigor indicates that it’s been at least three hours?’

      ‘Indeed,’ Polderhuis confirmed. ‘We have some nice hypostasis, too. Very neat.’ He pointed at the darker patches of blood that had gathered in the victim’s back and buttocks. ‘He’s been dead at least ten hours, I’d say. From the lack of gouging and the relatively small blood loss, I’d venture that the eyes were done post mortem.’

      ‘Right,’ Tanja said. ‘So that would take us back to sometime before midnight.’

      ‘Sounds