Styx (22 page)

“You're a poet yourself, Styx.”

“Yeah, maybe
that'll
be my new career: Raphael Styx, Zombie Poet.”

Delacroix tucked the note away in the inside pocket of the English overcoat he had draped over his shoulders like a boxer's robe. Ready for a fight.

With the lights of the house behind him, Styx's silhouette looked perfectly normal. No one passing by on the street would have realized what he really was.

“I'll keep you posted,” said Delacroix.

“You know where to find me. And bring my phone, next time. Then we can stay in closer contact.”

“Will do. Good luck.”

“You're the one who's gonna need it,” said Styx, and he watched the young inspector dash across the street through the pelting rain to his car.

He carried Styx's letter in his pocket, next to his heart.

I used to have a heart
, Styx thought.

The atelier was an art school during the daylight hours and hosted an assortment of classes for adult learners from seven to ten
PM
. It was now a little after midnight, so the place was empty except for Heloise Pignot and the dark man who let her into the building.

Heloise was twenty years old and a student, though not here. She was studying nursing at the university in Kortrijk and had spotted the
MODEL WANTED
poster on a bulletin board there. As a teenager, she'd competed in several beauty pageants, so she had experience posing, and she'd called the number listed on the flyer. To her surprise, she'd been offered the job over the phone, without a face-to-face interview, without even e-mailing the artist any of the publicity shots that had been taken of her during her short-lived pageant career. That seemed a little strange, but for €50 an hour she could live with strange.

The only request she'd made during their conversation was simple: “I've never posed nude before, so I don't want anyone else around.”

“Of course,” the painter had told her, “that's perfectly understandable. The important thing is for you to feel comfortable.”

They'd agreed to meet at the front entrance of the academy in the Dr. Verhaeghestraat at eleven, because the artist worked mainly during the night. Heloise was right on time, and when the painter didn't show, she wondered if someone had been playing a joke on her. Or maybe she'd ruined it saying she didn't want anyone else around, and he'd found another model. But, I mean, there were limits, weren't there?

She knew a couple of girls at school who stripped in front of a webcam to pick up a bit of extra spending money, and even one who worked weekends in what she called a “gentleman's club”—although, according to her, the men who patronized the place were anything but gentlemen.

But then the man from the flyer showed up and apologized for being late and—now
he
was a gentleman!—opened the door for her.

The smells of oil paint and turpentine were almost overpowering, and there were sketchbooks and canvases and easels and palettes everywhere. A dozen drawing tables were ringed around a small platform that held an armchair and, on a side table, a bowl of fruit that was beginning to go bad.

Heloise took off her coat, and the painter slid a CD into an old player against the far wall.

“I hope you like Debussy,” he said. “I find he helps me concentrate.”

“I don't mind,” said Heloise. “Anything's better than nothing.”

“Make yourself at home,” said the artist.

Heloise stepped onto the platform and took a seat in the armchair. She kept her clothes on for now.

“You don't really look like a painter,” she observed.

“No?”

“In a suit, I mean.”

“Many artists wear suits while they work. Borremans, Tuymans. It's nothing new. The great James Ensor—may I assume you know Ensor's work?—he never left his house dressed any other way. He—”

He stopped abruptly.

“Oh, who am I trying to kid? Listen, my dear, I'm not really a painter.”

Heloise looked up sharply. For just a moment, she was terrified she'd fallen into some sick rapist's trap. These days, you had to be so careful. What had she been thinking, agreeing to meet a stranger, alone, at midnight?

“I'm just an amateur,” he confessed. “If all I ever do is
talk
about art, without rolling up my sleeves and trying to
make
some, then something's seriously wrong with me.”

Debussy filled the atelier, and Heloise Pignot felt herself transported to another world.

“I don't want to hurry you,” he assured her. “Take your time. Allow yourself to get in the proper mood. Meanwhile, I have a few things to prepare.”

She sat there in the armchair, beginning to feel comfortable, her feet tucked beneath her, watching as he slowly, in time to the music, as if enacting some ancient ritual, removed the lid from a large container he set atop one of the drawing tables. He dipped his hand into the pot and scooped out a clump of some gray substance.

“What's that?” said Heloise dreamily.

“Clay,” he replied. “I like to work with my hands.”

“I thought you said you were a painter?”

“I am, but I've decided to branch out, try something different. Tonight, I haven't made up my mind between painting and sculpting.
It may sound crazy, but I like getting my hands dirty. I'm like a child: the more dirt under my fingernails, the better.”

He laughed. She saw the emotion in his eyes and was herself moved by it. This was a man who knew how to give himself over to passion. She was intrigued. “Have you done sculpted figures before?”

“Yes,” came his response. “A few times.”

“How did they turn out?”

“Let's just say I'm still searching for my own style. My voice. Like every artist.”

“I can't wait to see what it looks like,” said Heloise.

To be honest, she couldn't wait to get out of her clothes. She saw the sparkle in the artist's eyes. She could tell from the way he considered the mass of clay on the table that he was ready to begin.

“You don't want to put on a smock?”

“No, we'll just see what happens. Sometimes I go into a sort of trance, and I don't even notice till it's all over that my clothes are covered in . . . clay.”

“Well, I'm not going to make you wait any longer.”

“Yes, let's get started,” he said.

She unbuttoned her blouse and removed it slowly, stepped out of her skirt, folded them both neatly and laid them beside her on the platform. She untied her sneakers, unhooked her bra, pulled off her panties. It happened almost automatically, felt completely natural. She didn't think she could have done it in front of any other man.

“Okay,” she said enthusiastically. “Now what?”

“Now we need to find the perfect pose,” he said.

He turned away from the block of clay and took a pencil from a leather case, held it point up before him, and used it as a sort of measuring stick, moving it from side to side to estimate the proper proportions.

“What should I do?” asked Heloise.

“I don't know. Just move. We'll see.”

“I really don't have much experience.”

“That's the beauty of it. Just be yourself. That's what I need.”

Heloise tried an array of poses. Heloise Pignot resting her cheek on the back of her hand and gazing out into space. Heloise Pignot sprawled across the chair, one hand cupping the back of her head. Heloise Pignot in lotus position.

“Nice,” he said. “Yes, lovely. We're almost there.”

“I'll have to sit still for a long time, right?”

“As long as possible,” the man said. “It's going to take us quite a while.”

“But I can have a break if I need one? If I get a cramp or something?”

“Oh, you won't,” he said. “We'll make sure of that.”

“How about this?” She was lying on her side, one hand resting on her thigh, the other stretched above her head, as if she was swimming.

“Beautiful. That's perfect!”

“I don't know how long I can hold it, but—”

“It's exactly what I want,” he said. “Just relax and lie there, and I'll get started.”

Heloise breathed deeply, like her doctor had her do when he was checking her lungs. She closed her eyes and let Debussy's piano music carry her off.

When she opened her eyes again, he was standing right beside her. She almost jumped to see him so close. He was still holding the pencil.

“Can you put your other arm next to your body, too? That'll look more natural. Like you washed up on some deserted island.”

Heloise did what he asked. “Like this?”

“Yes, terrific,” he said.

She watched him return to the drawing table, his head half-hidden behind the easel. The clay was ready for him. He took a few more
items from his leather case: a box cutter, a pocket knife, a scalpel, and a sort of dagger with a long curved blade.

“What is all that?”

“Tools, for shaping the clay.”

He selected the scalpel, bent over the table, and began carving. With short, quick movements, he shaved the sides of the brick, smoothing them, bringing form out of formlessness. He seemed to be creating a cube.

“You're good with that knife.”

“This is just the rough work,” he said, not looking up. “The details come later.”

He dropped to his knees, so his chin rested on the edge of the table, and began shaping the cube into a suggestion of something more human. And now he began pricking holes in the clay with the point of the scalpel. He poked, prodded, punched the blade into the yielding earthy flesh. From her vantage on the platform, Heloise watched bits of clay fly in all directions as he worked.

“You really know what you're doing, don't you?”

He didn't answer her. Soon there was more clay on the floor than on the table. Heloise saw that he was unsatisfied. Frustrated.

“Should we take a break?”

“Stay where you are,” he snapped.

He stepped away and looked back and forth between his sculpture and the girl. For the first time, Heloise felt he saw her more as an object than a person, and she didn't like the feeling. Sculpting didn't seem to be working for him. Maybe he should go back to painting, although she had no idea if he was any better in that medium than this one.

“What's the problem?” she asked. “Is it me?”

“Don't be silly,” he said.

He came out from behind the drawing table, the scalpel held
loosely in his hand. He let it tremble between his fingers. He was thinking. Heloise knew she should be quiet, not upset him, but the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them: “I can try another pose, if you'd rather.”

“No,” the man said, still deep in thought.

Then he came to a decision. He nodded, strode up to Heloise Pignot, and slit her throat with one fluid swipe of the blade. Hot blood spurted from her neck, painted her naked body, soaked the platform. She twitched convulsively, and, as she lay there dying, not understanding what had happened and how quickly the world could change, the Stuffer said, “It's better if you lie completely still. Just a few minutes more. We're almost finished.”

When she was dead, lying there with open eyes staring blindly at the misted windows, he wiped the scalpel clean on his trouser leg.

He said, “I like you better when you're quiet.”

He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and moved her into a slightly different position. He had no intention of sculpting her in clay. She herself was now ready to be molded into art. Her death was a necessary step along that path. He adjusted her arms and legs a bit more, until she was exactly the way he wanted her. Then he backed away and eyed her contemplatively.

Now what?

He could cut her open with the sica. He could excise her organs and dump them in the sink. He could fill her empty shell with the silica sand the ceramics classes used on their kiln shelves and sew her back together.

It was almost one
AM
, and he was the only living soul in the atelier. He would have plenty of time.

Or perhaps he should show everyone how angry their mistake had made him.

The article in the newspaper, announcing that a suspect had been
detained in connection with the serial killings, had made him sick to his stomach. The fools!

Tobias Ornelis? Who the hell was that? Some ridiculous morgue attendant? How could they insult him like this?

“I'll show them,” he said aloud. “I've got to make a statement, move my work in a whole new direction.”

That was why he had decided to present his newest piece indoors. He'd broken in through the back door a little after eleven, after the last of the students and instructors had gone, and unlocked the front door from the inside, so that at midnight he could pretend to let himself and the unwitting Heloise Pignot in.