Styx (23 page)

Now that the time had come, he realized that making a break from his original style meant making a break from sand as well.

What else, then? What would be his new medium?

Ah, of course.

Clay.

That would show the world his creative spark flamed more brightly now than ever before.

He approached the girl's body, the curved dagger in his hand. He would unburden her of her useless old soul and deliver unto her a new one, a soul he would design purely and only for her.

No imitation, this time, but a completely original work.

She would be his finest creation, a demonstration of his undeniable artistic authenticity.

“I am reborn,” he said.

It was the flies that woke Raphael Styx late the next morning, hundreds of them, thousands of them, skittering all over him, in his eyes, in his mouth, burrowing into his ears and nostrils.

He bolted upright, screaming.

The metal shutters were closed, so the room was pitch dark. He fumbled for the table lamp and felt insects crawling up and down the lengths of his fingers.

When the light winked on, he saw that they weren't flies after all.

They were maggots, not thousands but dozens of them, little white grubs wriggling in and out of a ragged tear in his left arm. He was rotting, and his hand was barely recognizable. The tips of his fingers tingled and he jumped in disgust when he saw that there were only four of them. His index finger was gone. The realization shocked
him less than he would have expected. This was just a part of the process of decay. Something he'd have to learn to, well, “live” with.

He'd known this next step was coming, and in fact it had taken longer than he would have guessed. Slowly, he stuck his head beneath the blanket. There, where it was still dark, his four surviving fingers searched for their wayward brother. They found blood and slime and more maggots, but the finger was gone.

“Goddammit!”

He finally threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the sofa. His index finger was on the floor, half-hidden beneath the end table. It looked like one of Shelley's turds. He bent down, cursing his hip, and picked it up. It had shriveled to half its usual size.

He tried to stick it back where it belonged, but the stump was black and crusty and the finger wouldn't stay put. He stuck it in the pocket of his father-in-law's pajama pants and was brushing off the top layer of bugs when the shutters rattled noisily.

There was someone outside who wanted in.

“Delacroix,” Styx tried to call, because who else in Ostend knew where he was? But his voice caught in his throat, blocked by clotted blood and his blistered gums.

He hobbled to the front door and opened it.

“Ta-da!” said Delacroix. He held up a blindingly colorful suit on a hanger. “Good morning, Chief Inspector. This'll be a lot more comfortable than those rags you were wearing yesterday.”

He bustled inside like a Meals on Wheels deliveryman.

“Sure,” said Styx, limping along behind him. “Give me five minutes to change. We can go parade up and down the dike like a couple of pimps. Why do you wear this shit?”

“I'm not a pimp,” said Delacroix.
“I'm a sapeur.”

“I've heard you say that before, but I have no fucking idea what it means.”

“I'm a member of La Sape. The Society for Ambiance and Personal Elegance.”

Styx looked him up and down. “You just made that up,” he decided.

“Why would I? It's a real thing, started in Brazzaville, where my father came from, and it spread from there to Brussels. Look it up, if you don't believe me.”

Delacroix crossed to the couch and bent over to lay out the suit, then jumped back when he saw the pillow infested with grubs. “What the fuck?”

“Never mind,” said Styx.

“Jesus, it's getting worse.”

“You think death is the end of the road?” said Styx. “It's just the start of a whole new level of misery. Set it down over there.”

But, afraid of what he might find inhabiting the table Styx was pointing to, Delacroix held on to the hanger and launched into a commentary:

“Today's special is the uniform of the true sapeur. A gray-green houndstooth blazer by Boss, paired with beige flannel trousers with a light-brown stripe by Lagerfeld and a wine-red vest by Hilfiger. Some people talk about a sound mind in a sound body, but we prefer a sound body in a sound suit. The shoes are by J.M. Weston, and they retail for about two thousand euros, so I want them back and please try not to mess them up.”

Styx examined the outfit. He hadn't understood half of what Delacroix had said, and couldn't see himself wearing any of it, truly not.

“Well?” said Delacroix.

“You don't actually expect me to put that shit on?”

“Why not?” The rookie snapped his fingers. “Oh, of course, sorry. I forgot the pièces de résistance: silver cuff links by Armani and a gold tie clip by Gaultier.”

Styx allowed himself to be nagged into trying the clothes on, and,
while he changed, Delacroix found a whisk broom and dust pan under the kitchen sink and cleared the maggots from the couch. “Much better,” he said proudly, when the transformation was complete. “You may be dead, but at least you're dressed well.”

They got down to cases. Styx explained that he'd stayed awake most of the night. He'd gotten his father-in-law's old computer up and running, and had done some research into Surrealism in old Ostend. By doing a search on the names Spilliaert, Ensor, Magritte, and Delvaux, he'd come across some interesting information—special exhibits at the Mu.ZEE on local Surrealist filmmaker Henri Storck and the sponsor of the first Surrealist expositions in Ostend, but nothing that seemed particularly relevant to the current investigation.

“The city's pretty much forgotten the grand old masters, except for those crazy Ensor masks,” he said.

“You think the Stuffer might be upset about that?”

“It could be a motive. Maybe he's making some kind of statement. A protest.”

“Couldn't he just carry a picket sign?” said Delacroix. “Less deadly.”

“Maybe we're overthinking things,” said Styx, gently stroking the index finger he'd transferred from his pajamas to his jacket pocket for luck. “Maybe Surrealism's not the point, or just
one
point.”

“You're the one who met Paul Delvaux.”

Styx thought about it.

“I'm betting it
does
have something to do with art,” said Delacroix.

“What makes you so sure?”

“We found a fourth victim this morning.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. Found her in an art school. He cut her throat. But here's
the weird part. There was plenty of sand there on the premises—they use it in their kilns—but he didn't touch it. He tried to stuff her with potter's clay instead. Total fail.”

“You sure it was the Stuffer and not a copycat?”

“Almost everything else matched. Concierge found the body early this morning and called it in. You can imagine what would have happened if the first class of the day had walked into that studio with her still there. Twelve-year-olds.”

Styx shuddered. “Okay, but why clay?”

“That's what I want to know. Maybe he's branching out, but maybe he's starting to make mistakes.”

“Everybody makes mistakes,” said Styx, thinking immediately of his life with Isabelle. Man, the mistakes he'd made in his marriage. You couldn't count them on the fingers of both hands—not even if you included the one in his pocket.

“Something else,” said Delacroix. “I guess we can let Tobias Ornelis go. He was in a cell at the time of the murder. The perfect alibi.”

“I've been saying it all along: Ornelis is strange, but he's not a killer. He'll be glad to get back to his bodies. He'll have a lot to tell them.” Styx frowned. “Wait a second. You said
almost
everything matched.”

“Right. There was one other difference. He didn't leave a greeting card this time. Instead, he painted a message directly onto the girl's body.”

“ ‘Number four in a series'?”

“Right,” Delacroix said. “Then, after that, ‘Art for art's sake.' ”

“Jesus.”

“And this time he signed it.”

Styx looked up hopefully. “He
signed
it?”

“Not with a real name. With the name the newspapers gave him. The Stuffer.”

Styx stared down at his €2000 shoes. He wiped up a splash of zombie slime that had already dripped onto the light-brown leather.

“So where are we?” he asked.

“Pretty much nowhere. The girl's name was Heloise Pignot. She was twenty, in nursing school. No apparent connection to the other victims—at least, nothing we've found so far.”

Styx tried to imagine what it must have been like to look the serial killer straight in the eyes. He was almost jealous of Heloise Pignot. Had the Stuffer worn the Ensor mask? Styx would give his life to unmask that scumbag. What was he thinking: he
had
given his life. His helplessness ate away at him, more ravenous than the post-death decay he was already undergoing.

“I've made a few notes,” said Styx, handing over a sheet of blood-smeared paper. “Things you might be able to track down. I think the last item on the list might be the most promising.”

“Paul Delvaux? Didn't he die like twenty years ago? You're not telling me he's another—”

“No, this is a different Paul Delvaux, still living. He's fifty-five, has an apartment right here in Ostend, took early retirement a couple years ago. He worked in banking and got out with a golden parachute right before the downturn. Severance package, big bonus, and he sank a lot of it into art. He wound up getting named chairman of this fancy association, the SOB.”

“You've met him?”

“No, no. The Surrealists of Ostend, Belgium. I think the name was their idea of a surrealistic joke.”

“Where did you get all this?” asked Delacroix.

“The association has a website, and Delvaux has a Facebook page. Open profile, so anyone can check him out. Mr. Delvaux seems eager to reawaken local interest in Surrealism. He's trying to raise funds for a museum, permanent exhibitions, you name it. He's applying for
government subsidies, and he's hitting up his high-class friends to put the SOB in their wills. He says his mission is to keep Surrealism alive.”

“By killing half the women in Ostend?”

“I'm not sure I'd go that far. But I think he's worth a closer look. What's especially intriguing is that Paul Delvaux's not his original name. His wife, her name's Justine Delvaux, but he was born Paul Nollet. He took her name when they got married, to make the connection to Surrealism.”

“That was convenient,” said Delacroix. “You think it's possible Mr. Nollet's declared war to defend Belgian Surrealism?”

“I don't know,” said Styx thoughtfully. “I just know he's become a pretty controversial figure. You should read his speeches and manifestos and Facebook posts. He passes himself off as a sort of guerilla fighter. I mean, he puts up selfies with a knife clenched between his teeth.”

“Come on.”

“No, really, take a look. It's pretty creepy.”

“It doesn't make him the Stuffer, though. Might just be a coincidence.”

“Sure, and he's not the only Paul Delvaux you can find online. But this one is the most promising. He claims to be a direct descendant of the painter. Everybody knows it's his wife's name, not his, but he sticks to his story.”

“Maybe he wants it so much he's begun to believe it.”

“Possible,” Styx said. “The Surrealists said that dreams become reality and reality is a dream.”

“I'll check it out,” said Delacroix. “I'll be busy with the Pignot murder today, canvassing the neighborhood, the autopsy report, you know the drill. I might be able to make time to see Delvaux this afternoon. You don't happen to know his address?”

Delacroix stood up and took a good look at Styx. In his sapeur
outfit, his hands clasped on the head of his walking stick, he looked like a ghoulish Oscar Wilde.

“I do. It's a penthouse apartment overlooking the city. I wrote it down for you.”

“Shit, you
have
been busy. How did you find it?”

“Never underestimate the power of the internet.”

Styx returned his protégé's intense gaze.

“So now it's
your
turn to meet Paul Delvaux,” he said.