Authors: Isadora Bryan
Black Widow
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…
Someone is killing and mutilating young men in Amsterdam – the murders are brutal, sexual, and ritualized. For detective Joyce Pino, after a succession of failures, this is the perfect case to get her back on track.
But as it becomes clear the murderer is a middle-aged woman, the case shifts uncomfortably close to home. Some of the victims are associates, and a criminal profiler and external agencies are beginning to point the finger at Joyce herself. Added to this, she has a new rookie partner who’s far too handsome and clever for his own good.
Detective Pino needs to keep a grip on the investigation long enough to find the killer.
Black Widow
Isadora Bryan
ISADORA BRYAN
worked as a teacher in several European countries before settling in Spain with her partner.
Contents
Wednesday Evening
She’d been watching him since he entered five minutes before. He was a youngish man, maybe late twenties. Perfect.
At the bar, he put a cigarette to his mouth, then made a show of looking for his lighter. She missed nothing; she’d already seen him put a Zippo in his top pocket, but didn’t pass comment as he strode over to her table.
She offered him her lighter. He lit his cigarette without a word of thanks, then sat down beside her. His cheekbones were sharp beneath a layer of stubble. She wondered if this was a stylistic affectation, or just a consequence of laziness. She didn’t pay it much heed; she was more taken with his eyes, which were unequivocally blue.
‘My name is Mikael,’ he said.
‘Hester.’
‘You have been watching me.’
‘Have I?’
‘You know it.’
‘Maybe it was more that I was staring into space,’ she suggested languidly, ‘and you just happened to be occupying the space I was staring into.’
Mikael took a deeper drag on his cigarette. He made as if to stand. ‘Hey, you know what? I don’t much like playing games.’
The woman placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. She felt the strength in him, that uniquely masculine hardness. He was no different to his hunter-gatherer forefathers, genetically speaking: built to kill, and impregnate, and not much else. It made her feel sick.
She refocused. ‘I
love
playing games.’
Her fingers traced the line of his arm, to his belt, then his thigh. ‘How old are you, Mikael?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
The woman who called herself Hester was twenty years older, roughly. But that was all right; that was what they came here for, the young ones.
She could feel the thump of blood in her temple, which desperately needed letting. ‘So where’s your girlfriend this evening?’
He shrugged and, to his credit, made no attempt to deny that such a person existed. ‘On stage, would you believe.
A Doll’s House
, I think it’s called. You heard of it?’
‘Yes,’ the woman answered. ‘The first feminist play, as it is sometimes known. Of course, Ibsen always denied it.’
‘Well, aren’t you the clever one!’
The woman looked at him for a long moment, and in that moment, they both understood there was no need for further manoeuvring. She swept a strand of blonde hair from her brow and leant closer. Her heart was racing, but she was in control.
‘Then perhaps we should find a room,’ she said. ‘And I will show you just how clever I am.’
He thought this was an excellent idea, particularly when she revealed that she already had a place in mind. And so it was they climbed the wrought iron stairs to a semi-secret door, which in turn opened onto the smoky prospect of a
gedoogbeleid
coffee shop. The woman saw the usual mix of tourists, the drop-outs and the off-duty whores, looking for something to take the edge off their self-loathing.
She held her breath until they were safely outside on the Enge Lombardsteeg, hoping that her companion would do likewise. Pot, even the second-hand variety, robbed a man of his vitality, his virility. That wouldn’t do at all.
It was dark, but the September night was unseasonably warm, and the narrow street was a mass of shirt-sleeves and summer dresses. It hadn’t rained in a fortnight, and everywhere in the city that wasn’t a canal was coated in a fine layer of dust, as if Amsterdam were slowly being scoured of life.
The Enge Lombardsteeg soon gave way to the grand thoroughfare of Rokin, which they followed, in silence, to its terminus at Dam Square. Mikael, impatient, suggested that they might take one of the white and blue trams to wherever it was they were going, but the woman said no. Drawing the moment out, torturing herself a little, was part of the process. A necessary part.
Dam could be pretty, but seldom at night, when the uglier mutants came out of their sewers. She saw a kid busking a Beatles medley on a sitar. Another offering the hand of friendship, or maybe it was drugs, to a black kid with gold teeth and big feet. And a girl of indeterminate age, her face a mass of splotches and scars, staring vacantly into the afterglow of light pollution that gently cooked the sky. She saw all this and more, and each encounter left her feeling a little sicker, a little more in need of Mikael’s attention.
She turned on her heel, her face pinched. Someone was watching –
No, she was being silly. There was no one there. At least, no one who mattered. She saw a tramp pissing himself in a gutter. That was all.
‘All right?’ Mikael enquired. ‘Not having second thoughts?’
‘I never do,’ the woman answered.
From the square it was no more than a five minute walk to Sint Luciensteeg, named for an eponymous sixteenth-century convent-turned-orphanage, now home to the
Amsterdams Historisch Museum
.
There were hotels, too, if a person knew where to look.
‘We could have got here a lot quicker, you know,’ Mikael said. ‘We
could
have taken the Duifjessteeg from Rokin. We’d have been here in half the time!’
‘Oh, I have a terrible sense of direction,’ she answered. ‘You know what women are like.’
‘Maybe I do!’
They signed it at the desk, brightly lit in relation to the dark atrium, so that the attendant had to squint in order to pick out their faces from the gloom. A flickering uplighter illuminated nothing more decorative than an assemblage of spiders’ webs, thickened with dust. Rubber plants perished in undersized pots, and earthy stains streaked the carpet. There was a photograph of Queen Beatrix, looking serene and regal yet somehow exactly like the sort of woman who worked in a laundrette.
It was, she considered, absolutely perfect.
Mikael insisted on paying. The woman didn’t object. Men
should
pay for the gifts they were about to receive. And if that was a contradiction in terms, then so be it.
There was a lift, an old-fashioned caged job, all gears and cables, dried oil and rust. Where metal met metal, there was a screech of bitter protest. As the door shut behind them, Mikael shook his head and looked at the woman bemusedly. His hand reached out, as if to touch her hair, but at the last moment she grabbed it, to reposition it against her breast.
‘I don’t want tenderness,’ she said. She squeezed her fingers over his until the sickness rose in her throat.
He led the way along the corridor to the room, the key fob swinging confidently in his hand.
And then they were in a despondent space of brown and beige, all hangdog drapes of curtain and cigarette burns on the carpet.
Again, it was perfect.
Because Mikael
shone
against this backdrop. Mikael, glistening, already naked. Mikael, cock-hard and blue-eyed and everything else she needed him to be.
She drew closer, circling him all the while with her arm outstretched, her palm pressed to his heart. She felt a pulse.
Still alive.
She pushed him backwards onto the bed. He didn’t resist. She placed her bag carefully on the bedside table. The room was hot, but she didn’t want to take off her clothes. Not for him. Instead, she hoisted her dress to her waist, climbed over his thighs, and lowered herself onto him.
He grinned, chuckling to himself all the while. Perhaps he hadn’t expected it to be this easy. She echoed the sound, but it was mimicry.
At least her fingers still had sense. She reached down, taking a set of handcuffs from her bag. She had them around his wrists, and the bedpost, before he could object. But there was no fear in him; and when she trailed her stocking across his chest (barbed wire would have been better), she only felt him grow harder.
She wrapped the stocking around the back of his neck, then crossed the two ends in front, beneath his chin. She tightened the knot a little. Still his lips, his eyes, were moist with excitement.
His ignorance was starting to grate.
She pulled the ends tighter. She saw the pulses of blood gather in his jugular, growing plump and sluggish as they drew closer to the silken barrier.
Tighter. She felt him start to struggle. At last! He tried to speak, perhaps to call out, but the words were throttled in his throat before they’d even been given a chance at life.
‘Shush,’ she murmured. ‘I will make it better. I promise. I have a gift for you.’
From that moment on there was nothing but pleasure. The world stopped spinning, and the only orbit was the movement of her hips about his thrashing. And then there were stars, actually stars.
Minutes passed. When her vision cleared, she saw that Mikael’s tongue was fat through his lips and there was blood around his eyes. The semen that leaked out from their junction had already gone cold.
She climbed off him. She took a shower. Then, pausing only to disentangle and tear a suitable keepsake from the body – a last second impulse – she headed out into the night.
Thursday
The Jordaan district of Amsterdam was first developed in the seventeenth century, to house a growing population of artisans and labourers. The name was said to derive from the French word,
jardin
, in reference to the numerous gardens that were to be found between the canals and tight-packed rows of colourful buildings. The working classes had long since departed, but the gardens remained, layered in a late summer scent of rose, clematis and honeysuckle.
But the area wasn’t uniformly pretty. Detective Inspector Tanja Pino exited her car, eyes shaded against the sun, frowning up at her place of work as if seeing its ugliness for the first time. The modernist police headquarters on Elandsgracht was built in a stubborn, functional style, each of its five storeys defined by the absolute absence of whatever it was that made the wider Jordaan such a joy to behold.
Tanja smoothed her skirt, and strode over to the
Politie
building.