The Square of Revenge (16 page)

“But the case is closed,” Van In objected. “And I’m on non-active for the next two months.”

Hannelore looked up in desperation.

“It was all crystal-clear in the report you sent to me yesterday. Your analysis of the perpetrators was spot on, by the way.”

“Jesus H.,” Van In snorted. “I had a feeling they
might
strike again, but it was just a hypothesis, nothing more, not a foundation to build on.”

“Oh, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “But if something happens to the Degroofs in the coming weeks and we’re ready for it, God knows what might bubble to the surface. If we can scrape together enough muck by then, it won’t be hard to convince the press that the attacks on the Degroof family are part of something bigger. Am I right?”

“So our Van der Eyck went to school with Machiavelli?”

“Didn’t everyone?” she laughed.

“And she calls herself a magistrate,” he said reproachfully. “I was always led to believe that the judiciary were expected to steer clear of politics, if you can call this sort of intrigue politics.”

She didn’t appear to find his remark insulting in the slightest.

“Let me tell you something, Pieter Van In. I’m a woman. I worked hard for my degree. My parents worked themselves to the bone to pay for my education. They had no money and no connections. If I’d opted for court work I’d be grubbing for clients and I’d be up to my neck in debt. The public prosecutor’s office needs new blood, urgently. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s steady work. If you want to build a career in this man’s world, you need political support. It’s the only way. Without it I’d still be making the coffee when I’m fifty for some lenient public prosecutor.”

Rage and bitterness seethed in her voice. Van In was taken aback by her candor. The younger generation’s relentless will to survive astonished him, as it had so many times before.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Van In. “Fly with the eagles or scratch with the chickens.”

“Thanks for understanding,” she said.

“And I genuinely appreciate your honesty, but aren’t you forgetting one little detail?”

“Shoot,” she said dryly.

“De Kee. If I understand it right, he’s in Degroof’s pocket. If anything should happen that might turn the spotlights on the Degroofs, I don’t think he’s likely to entrust the case to me.”

“A minor detail, indeed,” she concurred. “But De Kee retires in three years and it’s a public secret that his son-in-law … What’s his name again?”

“Deleu,” said Van In spontaneously.

“Deleu, that’s the one,” she said. “Well, commissioner De Kee wants his son-in-law to succeed him. Not right away, of course. That would be too obvious. Van der Eyck put forward a scenario yesterday. De Kee retires in 1997 and is succeeded by Commissioner Carton.”

“But Carton’s fifty-nine,” said Van In, surprised. If she was right, this was primed to be explosive news.

“Exactly. He keeps the chair warm until 2001, and then Deleu takes over. Get it? Carton is the Socialist candidate, and from 2000 Van der Eyck is no longer bound to his promise to approve every Socialist appointment.”

“And De Kee knows about all this?” asked Van In vacantly.

“Of course he does. He was there yesterday when the deal was clinched chez Van der Eyck.”

“God almighty.” Van In gritted his teeth.

“What? No ‘Jesus H. Christ’?” she jested.

“I said ‘God almighty’ because I’d rather sell my house than have to work a single day under Deleu.”

“Not your favorite person, I gather. Done the dirty on you a couple of times?”

Van In didn’t answer. Hannelore Martens had a little too much information.

“Don’t worry Pieter. If you sort this out for us, the doors will be wide open for you at the judicial police, and that’s a promise,” she said softly. “Approved by Van der Eyck in person.”

Benedicta Degroof was kneeling by her bed, trying to pray. Prayer was ordinarily never a problem, but tonight for one reason or another every sound made her jump. She heard Daniel’s shoes creak as he bent down at her door. The rustle of paper made her cringe.

She knew who he was. The night before, she had had a dreadful dream in which her fate had been revealed. She concentrated on her prayers. God had never let her down. A door clicked shut not far from her cell.

Benedicta resisted the curiosity that tormented her for more than an hour. She then got to her feet, picked up the letter, and tore it open.

Sister,

Didn’t Jesus say: First make peace with your brother or sister and then come to Me in prayer?

Didn’t He say in the Sermon on the Mount: Visit the sick?

Didn’t He accuse the Pharisees of being hypocrites and whitewashing tombs?

Didn’t He say that sins against the Spirit can never be forgiven?

Well, dear sister, what kind of life do you live in this place?

Pride has made you blind. And pride is your inheritance, the inheritance of your accursed family.

Do you think of her from time to time? The one you helped to condemn?

Didn’t she defend you when the beast wanted to take possession of you?

Didn’t she freely offer to take your place?

These are the questions, sister, questions that are going to haunt you from today onward, questions to which you know the answer.

Sleep tight, sister.

Daniel

Benedicta’s hands trembled as she read each word. If they had been slanderous words, she would have set the letter aside and prayed for the man who was responsible.

But what he had written was true.

Sixteen years inside the walls of Bethlehem had salved the wounds, but now a tidal wave of pain engulfed her heart.

She sobbed as she fell to her knees by her bed and spent the best part of the night in prayer.

O
N THURSDAY MORNING, LAURENT DE BOCK
bought a powerful pair of binoculars at Priem’s, a store devoted to hunting gear on Simon Stevin Square.

Van In sauntered across Market Square and they missed bumping into one another by a hair’s breadth. But even if Van In had had a photo of De Bock at his disposal, he would probably never have noticed the amiable gentleman in the chaotic masses. In spite of the recession, city center Bruges was crawling with tourists.

With the patience of a saint, Van In wriggled through the dense crowd as it expanded at the speed of a glacier.

The conversation with Hannelore from the day before still preoccupied him. He was in the mood for a little undercover work, and he had a strange hunch about the Degroof case that refused to let go. He had also made up his mind to check Degroof’s closet for skeletons.

He was determined to get to the bottom of the case. He had confided in Leo early that morning, and Leo had promised to initiate a discreet investigation within the judicial police. The archivist at the public prosecutor’s office was an old friend and Leo had agreed to put him through the mill later in the day. If there was a file on Degroof or any of his children, it would surface. It was only a matter of time.

Pending further news, Van In first made some inquiries at the Records Office. He planned to contact Versavel and have him bring him up to speed on potential new developments.

The Records Office had been moved from the halls beneath the Belfort to the former courthouse on Burg Square a couple of years earlier. The Tourist Office was housed on the ground floor. Van In resigned himself to the pushing and shoving. After all, he had nothing to be nervous about.

When he showed his police ID to the Records Office clerk, he was allowed behind the counter. A girl in her early twenties wandering around with a tray even offered him a cup of watery coffee.

Laurent De Bock slowed the VW Golf he had hired the previous day in Blankenberge on Bishop Avenue and pulled over onto the grass verge. He opened his newspaper and looked up at regular intervals, focusing his binoculars on a whitewashed bungalow a couple of hundred yards down the street.

He waited a full forty-five minutes and was about to drive off for fear that people might get suspicious when a boy appeared on his bicycle coming from the opposite direction.

Laurent carefully folded his newspaper and kept a close eye on the lad. He must have been thirteen or thereabouts. He slowed down at the bungalow and cycled around the back of the house via a gravel path. Less than five minutes later, two boys cycled onto the road via the same gravel path. Laurent started the car and drove toward them.

Beside him on the passenger seat there was a photo of Bertrand, the only son of Patrick Delahaye and Charlotte Degroof.

He recognized the blond athletic boy as he drove past.

Bertrand was on a brown mountain bike. He had a linen rucksack with leather straps on his back. His friend had attached his roller-skates underneath with one of the straps.

Laurent heaved a sigh of relief. His information was correct. Bertrand still went skating every Thursday and Saturday. He drove to the end of Bishop Avenue, turned the car, and followed the boys as far as Boudewijn Park.

After they disappeared inside, he waited for five minutes and then installed himself with a cup of coffee in the cafeteria next to the ice rink that served as a roller-skating rink in the summer months.

Van In was back home and in the garden, poring over the information he had picked up from the Records Office.

Ludovic Degroof had married Elisa, baroness Heytens de Puyenbroucke, in 1942. They had five children: Aurelie, Ghislain, Charlotte, Benedicta, and Nathalie. Their address in all those years hadn’t changed: Spinola Street 58 in Bruges.

Ludovic had a doctorate in law and a master’s in economics. The baroness had studied history.

Nothing unusual at first sight
, Van In thought, scratching the back of his ear. He read the information for a second time. He hadn’t really been expecting much. If the Degroof family had something to hide, data from the Records Office wasn’t going to be a great deal of help.

The first child, Aurelie, was born less than a year after they married. The other children were born after the war: Ghislain in 1948, Charlotte in 1950, Benedicta in 1951, and Nathalie in 1960. Nathalie had probably been an accident. Elisa de Puyenbroucke was already forty years old in 1960, and in those days that was far too old to be having children. Only Ghislain and Charlotte still lived in Bruges. Aurelie was domiciled in Loppem, Benedicta in Marche-les-Dames, and Nathalie in De Panne.

Van In decided to concentrate first on Aurelie. Loppem wasn’t far, but it was difficult to reach by bus or train so he needed a car. He called Hannelore. This was an opportunity to find out how far she was willing to go.

“Hello, Hannelore, Pieter Van In here.”

“Hoi, Pieter. What can I do for you?”

He brought her up to speed and quickly explained his plan. To his surprise, she didn’t hesitate for a second.

“I’ll be with you in ten.”

She sounded enthusiastic, but Van In only realized the risk he was taking when he put the phone down. If Degroof got wind of this, he’d be pounding a beat before the year was out.

The same was true for Hannelore, of course. If the public prosecutor tumbled to her insubordination, she could bury her career under six feet of sand.

Or was she naïve enough to believe that politicians always kept their promises?
Someone must have promised her something
, he figured,
otherwise she wouldn’t be sticking her neck out like this
.

And why was he going along with it all? Was he trying to impress her, or was he fed up being kicked around? If the women’s magazines were anything to go by, men were capable of the strangest things when they reached forty.

He turned everything over in his head as he closed the door behind him and walked under the Vette Vispoort into Moer Street. He only had to wait a couple of minutes.

“You don’t let the grass grow, do you?” she said as he got into the car.

“And you aren’t afraid of risks,” he answered in a reasonably relaxed tone.

Van In inspected her with an approving eye. He had never seen a Deputy in a miniskirt before.
That must have slowed down traffic in the courthouse
, he thought. He wanted to give her a compliment, but kept it to himself on second thought. They had only met a couple of days ago, and God alone knew how the case was going to evolve.

“Loppem, Commissioner?” she grinned.

“Loppem, ma’am.”

The atmosphere was excellent from the get-go. She steered the Twingo like the captain of a ferryboat: practiced, no frills.

“So we’re journalists,” she laughed. “I hope you have a camera. You know what women are like.”

When she noticed Van In turn to her with surprise all over his face, she shrugged her shoulders and said: “Okay. No camera. You do the talking and I’ll take notes.”

She navigated the car through a series of traffic hold-ups without losing a minute.

She stopped by the church in Loppem and asked directions from the obligatory old-man-on-the-village-square. It wasn’t far. The man shook his head at her stupidity. The Twingo’s front wheels were already in the street she was looking for.
I’ll never understand those city folks
, he muttered under his breath.

Number eleven was a typical example of a nineteenth-century country house. It was a mixture of rural and urban building styles, and was surrounded by an overgrown and neglected walled garden. Hannelore parked her car in front of a rusty wrought-iron gate.

“Magnificent house, don’t you think?”

“Not bad,” Van In admitted. “But why are the rich so bad at looking after their property?”

The gate squeaked and was stiff. Van In had to put his shoulder to it to open it. They walked up the drive. The enormous country house was shrouded in silence.

“No one around,” said Hannelore. She walked ahead, certain she would distract Pieter’s attention. There wasn’t a man in the world who could ignore her legs.

“Apparently,” Van In muttered in his confusion.

They made their way to the front door. The lace curtains behind the window frames were gray with dust and the paint was flaking from the shutters and sills. Van In pulled the bell, which clattered like a tin can full of pebbles.