LITMIR.BIZ

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his leather jacket.

      ‘And?’

      Closing his eyes, the Head pushed the photographs away. ‘Floris started working here three years ago. He is …’ His brow furrowed. ‘… was always impeccably polite, got great results from his pupils. Popular among parents. He was a model teacher.’

      ‘What kind of man was he?’ Elvis asked, wishing the Head would make eye contact with him. It irked him that he kept looking over at Van den Bergen even though it was he who was asking the questions.

      The Head shrugged. ‘I told you. Polite. Hard-working. Bright.’

      ‘No,’ Van den Bergen said, doodling absently in his notebook. ‘That tells us what kind of employee he was.’ Scratching away with his biro at a miniature sketch of his granddaughter. Finally he looked up at the Head. Put his glasses on the end of his nose and peered at the brass-embossed name plate on the desk that marked him out as Prof. Roeland Hendrix. ‘Who was Floris the man, Roeland? Did you see him socially? What was his home life like? I can see from public records that he hasn’t been married and that his parents are both dead. Did he have a girlfriend? Kids somewhere?’

      Elvis checked his watch. Wondered if the carer was making his mother the right sort of lunch. Carby snack with the meds. Carby snack with the meds, he intoned, wishing his thoughts would somehow travel across town to his mother’s dingy little house. He’d left all the ingredients out on the side in the kitchen. Mum kept gunning for the shitty cheap ham the carer had snuck into the fridge at her request. But he had prepared her a chickpea and bean pasta salad with rocket. Meds three-quarters of an hour before meal.

      ‘Come on, Professor Hendrix,’ Elvis said. ‘I bet an intelligent man like you has got the measure of all his employees.’

      The Head shrugged. Toyed with the silk handkerchief in his top pocket. His nails had been varnished.

      Elvis touched the stiff gel of his quiff and wondered if it made him hypocritical to think ill of the Head’s immaculate ponce-hands. Hid his own nicotine-stained fingers inside his pockets.

      ‘Honestly? I know nothing about Floris at all,’ the Head said. ‘He was a completely private man. Kept himself to himself. An enigma, you might say. I invited him, along with other teachers, to dinner parties and soirées, but he would never come and always managed to sidestep any digging into his life outside work. And I did try. To dig, I mean.’

      Van den Bergen rearranged himself in the leather armchair. His bones cracked audibly as he did so. Jesus. Is that what a lifetime of supervising door-to-doors in the rain did for a man? Elvis shuddered.

      ‘Where did he work before here?’ he asked.

      ‘He came from the Couperus International Lyceum in Utrecht. Glowing references. He’d been there for ten years.’

      The Head glanced at the grandfather clock that struck in the corner of the room. Stood abruptly. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, gentlemen.’

      All the way to the unprepossessing apartment in Amstelveen’s Brandwijk, Van den Bergen imagined himself shaking and shuddering his way to a premature end with Parkinson’s like Elvis’ mother. The bullet hole in his hip had been causing him great pain, of late, with all the damp. Were there any signs of tremors in his movement? George would be able to tell him. By the end of the week, she would be back in Amsterdam. In the meantime, he made a mental note to visit the doctor’s to rule out some debilitating degenerative disease.

      Curtains twitched as he parked up outside the three-storey block, with its garden view and balcony. This was perhaps the most suburban, nondescript place in the world, Van den Bergen mused. A place where nothing ever happened. Except something had happened to one of its residents.

      ‘What do you make of this, boss?’ Elvis said, running a latex-clad finger along the spines of the books on the bookshelves. Five boring-looking academic tomes about physics. Fall of Man in Wilmslow – a book Van den Bergen vaguely recognised as being about Alan Turing. The rest were interior design and architecture textbooks. Several British fiction titles among them that Van den Bergen had never heard of.

      ‘He was a maths teacher, so the physics stuff fits,’ he said. Casting an eye over the mid-century-style furniture in the apartment, he realised it was more Ikea repro than genuine Danish antiques. But there was a strong design element to it. That much he could see. Nothing like his thrift-shop dump, which was still reminiscent of a garage sale no matter how many times George scrubbed through. ‘Somebody here knows their décor onions. No photos of women anywhere apart from this.’ Using a latex-gloved hand, he picked up the portrait of a woman who was roughly in her sixties. Perhaps Engels’ mother. She had the same hazel eyes, judging by the school’s online profile picture of him.

      Movement suddenly caught the Chief Inspector’s attention. Or was it a shadow? With his heartbeat picking up pace and his policeman’s instincts sharpening, he turned towards the doorway, beyond which lay the bedroom.

      ‘Is somebody in here with us?’ he whispered to Elvis. Mouthed, ‘In there.’ Pointed to the bedroom.

      Elvis shook his head. Continued to look at the books.

      Van den Bergen strode briskly into the bedroom, his plastic overshoes rustling as he crunched on the shag pile rug underfoot. Held his breath. Scanned the neat, masculine room for intruders. There was nobody there but a whiff of aftershave hung in the air. Or was he imagining things?

      ‘I need to drink less coffee,’ he muttered, running his fingers over the pistol in its holster, strapped to his torso.

      He flung open the wardrobe doors to reveal immaculately presented suiting; ties, pants and socks stowed in colour co-ordinated compartments, perhaps specifically designed for ties, pants and socks. Jumpers and tops stacked in neat piles on shelving. One set of shelves containing sombre colours. The other, less conservative combinations of teal, pink, yellow …

      ‘Different sizes on the right side of the wardrobes to the left,’ he said. ‘Two men. Our victim and a lover.’

      Elvis pulled open the drawer to the bedside cabinet. ‘This is always the most revealing place in anyone’s bedroom,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an asthma inhaler, hair putty and a men’s health magazine from 2002. What about you?’ He smirked.

      ‘Proton pump inhibitors, floss and Tiger Balm,’ Van den Bergen said, grimacing at the contents Elvis had revealed. ‘Jesus. It’s like the storeroom in a sex shop. Look of the size of those bloody dildos. And what the hell is that?’ He pointed to a black rubber string of balls, growing progressively larger in size.

      ‘Anal beads, boss.’ Elvis guffawed with laughter.

      ‘And that fucking thing?’ He pointed to what appeared to be a stainless-steel egg.

      ‘You jam it up your—’

      Van den Bergen held his hand high. Thought of George’s middle finger inside him and blushed. A world away from this little haul in terms of adventurousness. ‘Stop. You’re making my prostate twitch.’ He considered his intermittent suffering with haemorrhoids and snorted with derision at the anal beads. Appraised the carefully made bed and the dust that was beginning to settle on the bedroom furniture. ‘Any sign of post addressed to somebody else? Check the kitchen. Everybody puts post in there.’

      Elvis left the bedroom. Nobody had reported Floris Engels missing. There had been no evidence of a suicide note in the man’s clothing. Who and where was his partner?

      ‘Nothing,’ Elvis said. ‘Weird.’

      ‘Unless he’s left in a hurry and taken any documentation with him.’ Van den Bergen thumbed at the jowls that were beginning to burgeon on his previously taut jawline, deep in thought. Jumped when a door slammed shut within the apartment.

      ‘There is someone in here with us!’ he shouted. He ran into the living room, gun in hand, trying to glimpse whoever the visitor was. ‘Hello?!’

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