Rosa

The woman insisted, “You wouldn’t be tying up-”

“Let’s just wait for the call, shall we?” Hoffner checked his watch. It was coming up on one o’clock. At eight seconds to, the international line began to flash. Hoffner nodded and the operator made the connection. She confirmed the caller and then handed the earpiece to Hoffner. Without any hesitation, she retrieved a second earpiece and sat back.

“Could you wait outside, Frulein?” said Hoffner.

The woman looked up in disbelief “Excuse me, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar?”

“This won’t take more than a few minutes, Frulein.”

The woman spoke as if to a child. “I can’t leave my post, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar. All of these calls-”

“Can wait.” Hoffner’s tone made sure she understood. “Time for a coffee break, wouldn’t you say, Frulein?” Hoffner nodded to Fichte to open the door. The woman’s gaze grew more hostile until, with a practiced civility, she slowly stood, nodded to both men, and headed for the door.

At the door, she turned back to Hoffner bitterly. “This will be reflected in my report to the Kriminaldirektor, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar.”

“Yes, I’m sure it will, Frulein Telephonistin.”

Fichte shut the door, and Hoffner brought the receiver up to his ear. “Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner here,” he said in French.

“One moment, Monsieur.” Hoffner waited through the silence. He nodded to Fichte to stay by the door.

“Inspector Hoffner?” The voice was distant but audible. “This is Chief Inspector van Acker, Bruges police.”

“Chief Inspector. I appreciate the speed of your response.”

“Not at all,” said van Acker. “I do need to ask, is this the same Inspector Hoffner who published a piece titled “The Odor of Death” in Die Polizei, eight, maybe nine years ago?”

For a moment, Hoffner thought he had misheard; he had a hard time believing that anyone still remembered the article, less so that it’s “fame” had ever extended beyond a five-block radius of the Alex. “Yes,” said Hoffner, not quite convinced. “You know it?”

“Of course,” said van Acker. “Pretty standard reading here, Inspector. In Brussels, as well.”

“Really?”

“Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have set up the telephone call except, well, I thought it might be my only chance to talk with you in person.”

“Really, I’m-flattered,” said Hoffner. Fichte looked over. Hoffner shook him off.

“Nice little feather in my cap,” said van Acker. “Anyway, about your wire, Inspector. I’m not sure how helpful we can be, but we might have a little something.”

“You’ve got a missing girl, then?”

“Your description was a bit vague, but the time frame is about right for a case we’ve been looking into. May I ask how you knew to contact us?”

Hoffner told him about the gloves.

“It might also be Brussels,” said van Acker.

“Yes. I’ve got a call in.”

“Of course. The problem is, I’m not sure the girl we’ve got in mind could have afforded a pair of Troimpel gloves.”

“And why is that?”

“She was an attendant at one of the area hospitals. A scrub girl.”

That seemed a poor excuse. “And Belgian scrub girls aren’t capable of saving their money, Chief Inspector? I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, not for gloves, no. And especially not for these gloves, Inspector.”

“And no well-off boyfriends?” said Hoffner.

“Not this girl,” said van Acker. “There’s something of a stigma attached to-” He stopped. “Look, to be honest, it’s more of an asylum than a hospital. These are girls who can’t get work elsewhere. They also don’t usually spend much time away from home, for rather obvious reasons. And this girl had no family. You understand.”

Sadly, Hoffner did. Insanity as infection, he thought, with its equally despicable maxim: that only the most pitiful, vile, and unprepossessing would be willing to risk contamination by cleaning up the filth produced by a group of lunatics. Berlin’s own Herzberge Asylum was proof that such idiocy was still thriving well beyond the narrow minds of the provinces. Hoffner had often walked along its dingy halls not sure which of the two groups-the patients or the menial staff-deserved to be under lock and key, although with the latter, he did recognize that malice, and not madness, was more often the dominant pathology.

“I see,” said Hoffner. “Then perhaps this isn’t the girl.”

“Not to be blunt, but did she have the look of a-” At least van Acker was trying to be delicate. “-well, of one of these types.”

“Hard to tell, Chief Inspector. The face was. . gnawed away at.”

“Of course,” said van Acker. “To be expected, I suppose. Any other distinguishing features?” He was doing his best to go through the motions, making sure to touch on everything. “Your wire didn’t specify anything beyond height, weight, coloring. We do have a description of a marking on the left leg and another on the back. Anything there?”

The mention of the leg gave Hoffner a moment’s hope. “Where on the leg?” he said.

“Mid-shin, according to her application file. A scar from childhood.”

Somehow, Hoffner had known it would be too low. “There wasn’t enough of it left to check.”

“Naturally,” said van Acker, moving on. “And nothing on the upper back? There’s supposed to be a very recognizable birthmark there. A strawberry-colored splatter, as if someone threw a bit of paint at her. You’d have seen it immediately.”

Van Acker was picking all the most interesting spots. “The back is more problematic,” said Hoffner. “It’s been”-he did his best to find the least troubling word-“disfigured. The entire area between the shoulder blades. It’s impossible to tell what would have been there.”

Hoffner expected to hear a summary “oh well” and then an equally quick wrap-up to the conversation, but the line remained strangely quiet. When van Acker did speak, his tone was far more pointed: “Disfigured?” he said. “What kind of disfigurement?”

The change in tone momentarily threw Hoffner: for the first time in the conversation, van Acker sounded as if he was actually investigating something. Hoffner chose his words carefully. “Just some knife work, Chief Inspector. We’re dealing with something of an artist here.”

Van Acker continued to press. “How do you mean?”

Hoffner remained cautious. “We didn’t find a birthmark.”

When van Acker next spoke, the hesitation in his voice was undeniable: “It’s-not a pattern, is it?”

The word jumped at Hoffner. He took his time in answering. “Yes,” he said. “A pattern.”

Van Acker was now fully committed. “Could you describe it, Inspector?”

Again Hoffner waited. He gazed over at Fichte. These were rare moments: the possibility of a piece falling into place, no matter how disturbing its implications. And, as always, Hoffner forced himself not to look beyond it. He also knew not to give anything away. The information had to come to him. “A few lines, Chief Inspector,” he said. “Not much more.” When the line remained quiet, Hoffner continued, “Suffice it to say someone decided to make a pretty nice mess of it.”

“I see.” Van Acker’s voice was strangely cold; what he said next was no less chilling. “These wouldn’t be ruts, would they, Inspector, with a central strip running down the middle? That’s not the pattern you’re describing, is it?”

Fichte moved closer in when he saw the sudden reaction on Hoffner’s face. Hoffner shook his head as he put up a hand to stop him. With great reserve, Hoffner said, “And why do you ask that, Chief Inspector?”

There was a long silence before van Acker answered: “You wouldn’t need to ask if you’d seen them.”

Fichte was having trouble keeping up as the two men mounted the stairs back to Hoffner’s office: he had yet to hear a word about the conversation with the man from Bruges. Instead he had been told to stand by the door for nearly ten minutes while Hoffner had sat at the switchboard taking notes and asking