Styx (12 page)

“What happened with that guy yesterday? Guy who found the third victim? Styx was waiting for word about him—what was his name again, Spilliaert?”

Delacroix shook his head. “We haven't caught up with him yet.”

He followed Breton out of the cabana. They were momentarily blinded by the sunshine. Before them, the beach was already crowded with day trippers.

“We finally had the owner let us into the apartment,” Delacroix continued, “but there was nothing there. We've got a team watching the place around the clock, but he hasn't shown up.”

“What else is happening?” asked Breton, who seemed more interested in the case than the usual civil servant.

“We're questioning the owner, Sam Borremans. We checked him out, and he's clean. No record.”

“And?”

“He says Spilliaert's been living there for a year, but he only saw him one time, the day they signed the lease. Their only contact since then is the monthly rent payment.”

“Automatic bill pay? Then we can find out more from the bank, can't we?”

“No, Styx already looked into that. Spilliaert paid in cash; stuck a wad of bills in an envelope once a month and pushed it through Borremans's mail slot. Always paid on time, never complained about the plumbing, so Borremans never had any reason to see him again.

“The whole thing sounds fishy to me.”

“Indeed,” Delacroix nodded.

“Would Borremans recognize him if he
did
see him again?”

“He's not sure. And we've tried to check into Spilliaert's background, but there's nothing. He's not registered with the city. No
passport, no identity card, no driver's license, no health insurance. He's a ghost.”

“What kind of country is this when any asshole without ID can rent an apartment on the Belgian coast?” Breton asked.

Despite himself, Delacroix thought of the many immigrants he'd met over the year since he'd arrived in Ostend, a shocking number of them smuggled in illegally in shipboard containers. He was one of the fortunate ones: thanks to his parents, he was a Belgian citizen, complete with passport and papers.

“Anyway,” he went on, “we put Borremans with a police artist and got a sketch. It's not much, but it's not nothing. We've sent copies around to every police department in the country. And by this afternoon they'll start running be-on-the-lookout announcements on TV and radio.”

“Any other leads?”

“We know Styx was tight with Gino Tersago, so we'll pull him in for questioning, but I don't expect he'll have anything useful to tell us. Tersago and Karel Rotiers are all we've really got. We're looking for Rotiers, see if he's got an alibi for the third murder and for last night.”

“You think Spilliaert may have some connection to the Stuffer?”

Delacroix suddenly realized that the man from the public prosecutor's office was grilling him. But this was
his
case now. He had to prove himself. He didn't want to give too much away.

“Well?” Breton said with a hint of impatience.

“You figure Spilliaert is the Stuffer, then?”

“I'm wondering what
your
thoughts are.”

Delacroix shrugged.

“Goddammit, you're going to have to do a lot more than shrug your shoulders to solve this case, Delacroix.”

The man from the PPS stalked away across the sand and clambered up the first stairway to the dike. Delacroix followed behind him.

He wasn't really dressed for the beach. His Italian loafers, crafted from fine camel-colored leather, filled with sand, and before he reached the stairs he was mopping sweat from his forehead with the white silk pocket square from the breast pocket of his azure suit coat.

Despite the uncomfortable perspiration, Joachim Delacroix felt truly excited for the first time since he'd landed in Ostend a year ago.

His own case.

A chance to prove himself.

This was what he'd been waiting for.

His new life was beginning at last.

Styx wasn't just suffering a midlife crisis. This was a
life
crisis: he was dead. After the shock he'd received outside the H&M, he'd drifted out into the streets, lost in his own thoughts and eventually in the city, which was as decayed as he was.

He tried to return to the Hofstraat, where the Stuffer maintained his pied-à-terre under the name Spilliaert, but on arrival saw that another detective had the place staked out. Stany Allaert, an honest cop he'd known for almost the entirety of Allaert's career, was fairly well concealed in a doorway across the street from the building, and Styx had sniffed him out in time to back away unseen. He didn't go far, though.

Concealed in a doorway only three doors down from Stany Allaert, Styx kept a close watch on the fifth-floor window across the street.

You in there, Stuffer? Is anybody home?

There was no hint of movement behind the curtains.

Or are you out here on the streets, looking for me?

He would have loved to see the expression on the serial killer's face when he realized Victim #4 had gone for a little stroll.

How do you like me now, you fuck?

He could have waited all day and all night, if he had to. But it was too risky for him to stay where he was. Allaert wasn't the only cop who had the Hofstraat building under surveillance. One by one, Styx spotted a whole team stationed around the neighborhood.

What he
wanted
to do was go home and see his family, but that was impossible. And trying to talk with John Crevits was also out of the question. To Isabelle and Victor and John, he was dead, and he had to go on
being
dead, at least for now.

So he roamed through the city, along the Visserskaai and up the Vindictivelaan, keeping to the shadows as best he could, until at last he found himself in the Hippodroomwijk, where the annual Belle Époque festival was in full swing.

“Of course,” Styx muttered, remembering the tableau he'd witnessed that morning in the station hall.

Styx lost himself in the masses of people milling through the streets. He felt comfortably anonymous in the crowd; if he had a heart rate anymore, it would have slowed to normal. He shuffled past stands selling old costume jewelry, watches, toys, postcards from the time of James Ensor, and other trinkets. Many of the vendors were decked out in period costumes.

He pulled up before one of the stands, this one offering a panoply of books and vinyl records. Propped up in the center of the display was a signed copy of Marvin Gaye's
In Our Lifetime
. He remembered that album, released just before Gaye moved into promoter Freddy Cousaert's apartment in the Kemmelbergstraat, right here in Ostend, in 1981. Cousaert had helped the American soul singer kick his
cocaine addiction, and urban legend had it that the rhythm on Gaye's comeback single, “Sexual Healing,” had been inspired by the sound of the waves on the Ostend beach.

Styx picked up the record, turning it over. The woman running the stand, who was dressed as a fisherman's wife for the occasion, launched into a sales pitch: “That's Marv's last album for Motown. It's worth a lot of money, the autograph's guaranteed authentic.”

He examined the singer's elegant photo on the back cover, avoiding the woman's eyes.

“It's thirty-some years ago he washed up here,” she went on. “Yeah, he was pretty far gone, but our Freddy helped him get back on his feet. They made a movie about it in the States, shot it right here. Freddy's wife used to cook for him. He was crazy about her chicken and applesauce. He was reborn here.”

Reborn
, Styx thought.

He paid what she asked for the record and stuck it under his arm.

“You know nobody in Ostend except Freddy and his wife had any idea who he was? He'd walk into the cafés and shoot a game of darts with the locals, and no one knew he was this big American star.”

Styx walked on, fiddling with Marc Gerard's pocket watch. There were people everywhere, a hundred lively conversations blurring together all around him, enveloping him in a sea of conversation.

He came to a sudden stop. This was the Flemish part of Belgium, the north, not the Wallonian south, and the Ostenders spoke almost exclusively Dutch.

Then why had those costumed people in the station hall been speaking French? That was strange, now that he thought about it.

He forced himself to shake off the thought. After all, what difference did it make?

He realized he was still holding the pocket watch and slipped it, unopened, back in his pocket.

Where are you scurrying off to, Styx?

He spun around. There was no sign of trouble, just one big happy party.

He continued on his way, bumping into arms and elbows as he pushed through the throngs.

He had to get out of there. His world was turned completely upside down: twenty-four hours ago, he'd been after the Stuffer, but now their roles were reversed.

There's no escape, Styx. I'll find you.

He looked back over his shoulder and for just a moment saw the Stuffer almost hidden in the crowd. A man in a yellow oilskin jacket with hard, deep eyes beneath a sou'wester. Styx could feel those eyes boring into him. How long had the oilskin been following him?

He moved on more quickly, dragging his right leg behind him. When he looked back again, the sou'wester was still there. A hat and rain slicker on a sunny day! Styx felt the sweat and foundation trickling down his face, running like Isabelle's mascara ran when she cried.

He heard a burst of laughter behind him and whirled around.

The man in the jacket and hat had stopped at the last of the market stalls and was chatting animatedly with one of the fisherman's wives.

Styx drew a deep breath and sighed it out slowly.

Styx sat in the living
room of his father-in-law's house, the only place in Ostend he could think of to hide.

How many times in the weeks since Marc Gerard's death had Isabelle asked him to clear out her father's place, haul all his unwanted junk to the dump? Her only surviving family was an older sister who'd moved to the south of France years ago. They'd each selected a couple
of mementos after the funeral, but neither of them had any interest in their father's furniture or old clothes.

Styx considered the house-cleaning job a punishment, a penance for his many sins, and had found excuses to avoid it. At least now he had a furnished apartment in which to fester.

He tried to get out of the chair, but couldn't do it without the support of his father-in-law's old walking stick. It was a classic piece of woodworking, hand carved from beautiful birch, with a copper grip in the shape of a fish.

“You crippled bastard,” Styx said aloud, not sure if he was talking to himself or Marc Gerard, a crotchety devil he'd always hated.

He hobbled back and forth across the living room, testing out the cane. It really did take a lot of the strain off his hip.

There was a sudden noise outside the window and he whirled, half expecting to see the Stuffer lurking there, stalking him. But there was nothing but a tree branch rattling against the window.

Styx asked himself the same question that was probably also on the Stuffer's lips right now:

Where are you? Where the fuck are you hiding?

Half a day earlier, in
the middle of the night, the Stuffer had parked his car along the dike, close to the cabana. His equipment was neatly packed into the trailer: sica, scalpel, butcher's knife, fishing line, a miner's lantern, a few other necessities.

There was nothing to be heard but the murmuring of the waves and a loosely tied piece of canvas that fluttered in the breeze. He crept along the line of cabanas, looking for the one where he'd left Raphael Styx. He slowed when he saw that one of the shack doors stood half-open. The silly huts all looked the same, but . . . wasn't that the one
he'd selected? He thought he recognized the stone, but beach stones were as alike as beach cabanas, and it was lying now a few inches away, not propped against a closed door as he'd left it.

“Hello?”

He approached cautiously, preparing an explanation for his own presence in case someone had already discovered the body.

“Anyone there?”

No answer.

The Stuffer swung the door wide and held up his lantern.

“Fuck!”

There was nothing in there. No body, no Styx, nothing but bloodstains.

Where the—?

He stood in the middle of the small space, completely dumbfounded.

He'd shot the bastard. Three times! He'd felt for a heartbeat. He'd even taken pictures of the bloody body. Nobody could have faked being dead like that.

He couldn't understand it.

It couldn't be the cops. If they'd found the corpse already, they'd be here waiting for his return. There'd be police tape cordoning off the area. There'd be searchlights. There'd be patrol cars and emergency vehicles on the dike.