Chapter 12 #2
Diavola whispers in my ear, her voice a caress: He never loved you.
“I’m going for a walk,” I say, standing. Mama tries to keep hold of my hands but I pull them away. It’s cruel of me. She can’t follow, but I need space. I need to think.
No. I don’t want to think. I want to work.
Work is my salvation. Work is the only thing keeping me from losing my mind, too.
How can Mama claim my father wasn’t mad?
He was obsessed with a vampire, for God’s sake.
He had convinced himself that the undead walked among us, that regional stories meant to scare small children were actual accounts of events.
He’d even given this supposed vampire a name and a history, created an entire narrative out of his delusions.
I walk as I stew. The smell of flowers in window boxes hangs lazy on the summer heat, competing with the damp green scent ever-present near the canals, a perfume that makes my head spin. Without realizing it, I’ve arrived at the police headquarters. Work. Always work.
Berend, the unwitting courier of one of Diavola’s first letters, is at the front desk. He stands upon seeing me, hazel eyes lighting up. His ears are at last balanced by a beard, giving his jaw a firmer line. I was right that he’d be handsome once he grew into himself a little more.
“Anne—Miss Van Helsing!” Berend says. “You haven’t been here in so long.”
I don’t have much reason to visit the actual building. Though de Haas is in regular communication with us, we usually meet elsewhere over coffee. The dark and imposing interior of the police headquarters isn’t much to my taste.
Now that I’m here, I realize I have no reason to be. Why did I come? I have nothing to speak with de Haas about. I want to be…
I want to be in the basement. I want to spend time with an older man who has always seen my potential, who has pushed and encouraged me, who has taken care of his own daughter the way I wish my father had taken care of me.
I haven’t seen Joren in months, and I miss him, and I need him to look at me and make me feel like I matter.
“Is Mister Van Engelenhoven in?” I ask.
“Down the stairs,” Berend says. “Will you be home for long?”
Not if I can help it, I think. I don’t want to be trapped in that house with truths I have no interest in facing and a mother who won’t let me avoid them any longer.
Did she know what Dávid and Maher were going to propose?
Is she in on the conspiracy to derail my investigation?
She’s never been enthusiastic about my work, but she’s always helped where she could. Or at least I thought she did.
“I’m not certain.” I start to walk past Berend, but he wants to keep chatting.
“Right! Of course. I love hearing where you’re off to next. It feels a little like traveling myself, even if I never leave this desk.”
Wary of the intensity of Berend’s interest, I give him a tight smile that isn’t unkind but also isn’t encouraging, then set off down the narrow, circular stairs to the chilly room where Joren works.
It’s not an ideal space. It maintains a lower temperature no matter the season, which is essential to Joren’s work, but he wages a constant battle against seeping damp.
At least de Haas had the building wired for electric lights so the dark is no longer an issue.
“Anneke,” Joren says, barely looking up from a corpse’s shattered leg. The skin is mottled in shades of vivid purple to violent green. “I wasn’t expecting you. Is Inge here, too?”
“She said she needed to get to her maps.”
“Ah.” Joren carefully lowers the leg onto the table and cleans his hands.
“She’s taken over an entire floor of our home.
Stacks of papers, records, and newspapers from all over Europe, dating back decades.
I spent ages picking out wallpaper, and I can’t even see it behind the layers and layers of maps Inge has pasted everywhere so she can walk back and forth in front of them, talking to herself. ”
I lean against the wall, feeling the cool of the brick against my back.
Most of the police officers and detectives think the basement is creepy, but I find it soothing.
It’s a quiet, safe place for bodies to undergo their last necessary indignities before being laid to rest. I spent countless hours in here, watching over Joren’s shoulder, learning all the ways corpses tell the stories of what’s happened to them.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I never meant to take over Inge’s life.”
Joren removes his apron. “Don’t apologize. She was always going to do something remarkable. Just like you.”
My heart lurches with gratitude and pain.
I came here for this exact reason. I want him to talk more about me.
To tell me what he sees in me that’s remarkable.
I wish, not for the first time, that I’d grown up with Joren as my father.
And then, as always, I feel wretched with guilt.
I had a father. Just because he never found me worthwhile doesn’t mean I should wish to erase what time I had with him.
Remembering Papa’s eyes glancing right over me whenever I tried to show him what I was studying, I wonder: Is what we’re doing remarkable? Or are we just being tugged along in the wake of tragedy after tragedy, too late to help?
How does it feel, knowing that doing your job means you have already failed?
Inge’s undeniably brilliant. If she applied her mind and talents to medicine or science, surely she could impact the world.
Instead, she’s poring over ancient newspapers, using maps to plot the deaths we’re too late to prevent.
All the while looking for small moments of normalcy and comfort as I drag her from horror to horror.
Perhaps Mama, Dávid, and Maher are right.
If my team thinks we should move on after this newest branch of investigation, I should trust their judgment.
It’s time to declare these murders beyond us and turn it all over to someone else.
Maybe then Inge could be the girl she still is and explore other options.
Maybe then Dávid and Maher could decide if they want to permanently be more than friends instead of this perpetual dance they’re locked into by virtue of working together.
Maybe then I could find steady, stable work.
Sleep at night without dreaming. Solve the solvable instead of chasing vengeance.
I don’t want to do this without you, Diavola wrote. What if, through the very act of pursuing her, we’re spurring her on? What if the last three years of deaths are my fault?
“Are you well?” Joren’s kind face wrinkles in concern.
“Yes,” I say, flashing him my brightest smile. “I just wanted to let you know we’ll be staying in Amsterdam for a while. Mama wants to have you for supper one of these nights. Perhaps we can talk wallpaper that isn’t maps of murder. I’ve been thinking of redoing my room.”
Joren laughs, but it sounds sad. “That sounds nice. I’ll visit her soon.”
With that, I have nothing else to do. My trip here was to assuage my own bruised feelings, but I’ve found no comfort, only more doubt. I walk back up the stairs but pause at the desk. Berend was so interested in where I’m going. I know he fancies me, but…
“Berend.” I tap my fingers against a neat stack of papers in front of him. “You said you like following along on my travels. How do you know where I go?”
His cheeks flush. “I get all the telegraphs. Send them, too. So, when cities request you—”
“You see it before it goes to de Haas.”
He nods. There’s hesitation in his brows, like he isn’t sure whether I’m pleased with this information, so I set my face in a friendlier expression. “What if someone requests us when we’re already out on an investigation?”
“In that case, I give them the information of where to reach you, so you can decide whether to go directly there.”
My smile freezes. Diavola has been using Berend as her own personal spy.
She pretends to have a case, and he lets her know exactly how to locate us.
It’s so simple it’s almost humiliating. We never once considered that she’d be interested in our movements.
She always felt one—or two, or a dozen—steps ahead of us. Why all this effort to shadow us, then?
Still, I feel a rush of triumph. I know how she’s tracking us, which means I know how to get her exactly where I’m expecting her to be for once.
“Miss Van Helsing?” de Haas’s deep voice calls. I turn to find him leaning out of his office. “Do you have a moment?”
“Yes. Thank you,” I say to Berend, then pause. “Have any requests come in recently?”
“Just this morning.” Berend grabs a slip of paper from his stack. “I haven’t responded yet because I wasn’t sure where you were, and Inspector de Haas has been busy.”
“Hold off, would you? I’ll have more information for you to send soon.”
He nods with a smile brighter than spring tulips, and despite everything I feel a fondness for him. Most men stop being attracted to me as soon as they get to know me. Berend, to his credit, appears to like competent, albeit morbid, women.
De Haas’s office smells like paper, ink, and pipe smoke. I sit across from his desk, eager for his approval, the scents of my father’s study like a ghost lingering here, too.
The last couple of years haven’t been kind to de Haas. His nose is misshapen from being broken again, and the wrinkles around his mouth are deeper than ever. But his dark blue eyes are still lively as he leans back and considers me.
“I’ve gotten a request from München.”
“Does it fit our pattern?”
He shakes his head, tapping his pipe. The cork in the center of his ashtray is how I recognized the same in that poor girl’s apartment. I should tell de Haas he helped me solve a murder. But I think it would bring him no joy. He understands it’s never a triumph, only a desperate necessity.
“No,” he says. “It’s not your woman. They’ve heard of your reputation for looking into strange cases, though. They hoped you might be available.”
I frown, confused. “Why did you call me in here if it’s not one of mine?”
“If you’ll recall, we started working with you despite your lack of official qualifications and your unconventional—”
“Gender?”
He at last cracks a smile at that. “I was going to say ‘methods,’ but yes, that, too. But we overlooked all that because you have an eye for details that no one else sees.”
He says “we,” but he’s the one who let me wriggle my way into investigations.
He’s the reason I’ve been able to do anything I have, for what it’s worth.
Which may not be much. But I know I owe him, and I find myself not flattered, exactly, but definitely pleased that de Haas appreciates what I do and finds value in it.
See? I think to the specter of my father lingering in the pipe smoke.
De Haas shrugs, repacking his pipe bowl. “I told them I’d see if you were interested. They’re desperate. And I thought you might like a break from chasing this phantom of yours.”
“She’s real,” I snap, feeling defensive. Between de Haas, Mama, and my partners, does everyone think I should give up?
“I don’t doubt that. Not anymore. You’ve built up enough evidence that even I have to admit she’s out there.” He fixes his eyes on me. “But it sounds like München has a real monster on their hands. Might feel good to solve another one.”
“We just solved a murder in Brussels.”
“Oh, well, in that case you should retire.” He gives me a flat, annoyed look.
But he’s right. I do want to solve something else. And, even better, I want to do it without my team, in a location conveniently delivered to Diavola. This is exactly the trap I need. If I catch Diavola, everything is solved. Everyone is set free.
“I’m willing, but Dávid and Maher are chasing down leads,” I say, “and Inge needs a break.”
De Haas nods, passing over the file from München. “I can send van Zijl with you.”
“Who?”
“Berend.”
“Ah.” This is a problem. De Haas doesn’t know I already have plans for Berend that require him staying here and passing information. “I’m quite capable of navigating this alone.”
“I know you are, but he needs more experience. And it might help with officers who aren’t quite so willing to listen to a woman as I am. Van Zijl is solid and trustworthy.”
“He has a schoolboy crush me.”
De Haas takes a few quick breaths as he relights his pipe and waits for it to catch. “I amend my statement. Van Zijl is solid and trustworthy but has questionable romantic taste. I want to train him up as a detective, though. Do it as a favor to me.”
I think of Berend’s hazel eyes, so open and painfully earnest. Will I corrupt him?
Ruin his life the way I have Inge’s? Diavola’s words about evil infecting everyone who touches it tug at me.
The same concept as every contact leaving a trace, but far bleaker.
I might infect Berend just by proximity.
But he never needs to know about Diavola. I’ll go, solve this case, send him back here to set my trap, and then kill the woman who killed my father. It’s the kindest thing I can do for everyone I love.
What will you do when you catch me?
We’re going to find out at last.