Black Widow. Isadora Bryan

       Prologue

      Wednesday Evening

      She’d been watching him since he entered five minutes before. He was a youngish man, maybe late twenties. Perfect.

      At the bar, he put a cigarette to his mouth, then made a show of looking for his lighter. She missed nothing; she’d already seen him put a Zippo in his top pocket, but didn’t pass comment as he strode over to her table.

      She offered him her lighter. He lit his cigarette without a word of thanks, then sat down beside her. His cheekbones were sharp beneath a layer of stubble. She wondered if this was a stylistic affectation, or just a consequence of laziness. She didn’t pay it much heed; she was more taken with his eyes, which were unequivocally blue.

      ‘My name is Mikael,’ he said.

      ‘Hester.’

      ‘You have been watching me.’

      ‘Have I?’

      ‘You know it.’

      ‘Maybe it was more that I was staring into space,’ she suggested languidly, ‘and you just happened to be occupying the space I was staring into.’

      Mikael took a deeper drag on his cigarette. He made as if to stand. ‘Hey, you know what? I don’t much like playing games.’

      The woman placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. She felt the strength in him, that uniquely masculine hardness. He was no different to his hunter-gatherer forefathers, genetically speaking: built to kill, and impregnate, and not much else. It made her feel sick.

      She refocused. ‘I love playing games.’

      Her fingers traced the line of his arm, to his belt, then his thigh. ‘How old are you, Mikael?’

      ‘Twenty-seven.’

      The woman who called herself Hester was twenty years older, roughly. But that was all right; that was what they came here for, the young ones.

      She could feel the thump of blood in her temple, which desperately needed letting. ‘So where’s your girlfriend this evening?’

      He shrugged and, to his credit, made no attempt to deny that such a person existed. ‘On stage, would you believe. A Doll’s House, I think it’s called. You heard of it?’

      ‘Yes,’ the woman answered. ‘The first feminist play, as it is sometimes known. Of course, Ibsen always denied it.’

      ‘Well, aren’t you the clever one!’

      The woman looked at him for a long moment, and in that moment, they both understood there was no need for further manoeuvring. She swept a strand of blonde hair from her brow and leant closer. Her heart was racing, but she was in control.

      ‘Then perhaps we should find a room,’ she said. ‘And I will show you just how clever I am.’

      He thought this was an excellent idea, particularly when she revealed that she already had a place in mind. And so it was they climbed the wrought iron stairs to a semi-secret door, which in turn opened onto the smoky prospect of a gedoogbeleid coffee shop. The woman saw the usual mix of tourists, the drop-outs and the off-duty whores, looking for something to take the edge off their self-loathing.

      She held her breath until they were safely outside on the Enge Lombardsteeg, hoping that her companion would do likewise. Pot, even the second-hand variety, robbed a man of his vitality, his virility. That wouldn’t do at all.

      It was dark, but the September night was unseasonably warm, and the narrow street was a mass of shirt-sleeves and summer dresses. It hadn’t rained in a fortnight, and everywhere in the city that wasn’t a canal was coated in a fine layer of dust, as if Amsterdam were slowly being scoured of life.

      The Enge Lombardsteeg soon gave way to the grand thoroughfare of Rokin, which they followed, in silence, to its terminus at Dam Square. Mikael, impatient, suggested that they might take one of the white and blue trams to wherever it was they were going, but the woman said no. Drawing the moment out, torturing herself a little, was part of the process. A necessary part.

      Dam could be pretty, but seldom at night, when the uglier mutants came out of their sewers. She saw a kid busking a Beatles medley on a sitar. Another offering the hand of friendship, or maybe it was drugs, to a black kid with gold teeth and big feet. And a girl of indeterminate age, her face a mass of splotches and scars, staring vacantly into the afterglow of light pollution that gently cooked the sky. She saw all this and more, and each encounter left her feeling a little sicker, a little more in need of Mikael’s attention.

      She turned on her heel, her face pinched. Someone was watching –

      No, she was being silly. There was no one there. At least, no one who mattered. She saw a tramp pissing himself in a gutter. That was all.

      ‘All right?’ Mikael enquired. ‘Not having second thoughts?’

      ‘I never do,’ the woman answered.

      From the square it was no more than a five minute walk to Sint Luciensteeg, named for an eponymous sixteenth-century convent-turned-orphanage, now home to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum.

      There were hotels, too, if a person knew where to look.

      ‘We could have got here a lot quicker, you know,’ Mikael said. ‘We could have taken the Duifjessteeg from Rokin. We’d have been here in half the time!’

      ‘Oh, I have a terrible sense of direction,’ she answered. ‘You know what women are like.’

      ‘Maybe I do!’

      They signed it at the desk, brightly lit in relation to the dark atrium, so that the attendant had to squint in order to pick out their faces from the gloom. A flickering uplighter illuminated nothing more decorative than an assemblage of spiders’ webs, thickened with dust. Rubber plants perished in undersized pots, and earthy stains streaked the carpet. There was a photograph of Queen Beatrix, looking serene and regal yet somehow exactly like the sort of woman who worked in a laundrette.

      It was, she considered, absolutely perfect.

      Mikael insisted on paying. The woman didn’t object. Men should pay for the gifts they were about to receive. And if that was a contradiction in terms, then so be it.

      There was a lift, an old-fashioned caged job, all gears and cables, dried oil and rust. Where metal met metal, there was a screech of bitter protest. As the door shut behind them, Mikael shook his head and looked at the woman bemusedly. His hand reached out, as if to touch her hair, but at the last moment she grabbed it, to reposition it against her breast.

      ‘I don’t want tenderness,’ she said. She squeezed her fingers over his until the sickness rose in her throat.

      He led the way along the corridor to the room, the key fob swinging confidently in his hand.

      And then they were in a despondent space of brown and beige, all hangdog drapes of curtain and cigarette burns on the carpet.

      Again, it was perfect.

      Because Mikael shone against this backdrop. Mikael, glistening, already naked. Mikael, cock-hard and blue-eyed and everything else she needed him to be.

      She drew closer, circling him all the while with her arm outstretched, her