Early in the morning I get into my rubber boots and go for a walk in the woods near Brasschaat. A little relaxation while waiting for the lab results will do me good.
While walking I try to compare the profiles of the four women. The cheated wife, the injured daughter, the protective granddaughter, the overconfident mistress.
Ahead, among the pine trees, a man in a camouflage suit stands next to a well-trained dog. Without realizing it, I may have walked into a hunting ground. They are working on something at the man’s feet. A hedgehog, I see as I approach. The dog wants to play with the hedgehog. He puts a paw on the pincushion. The hedgehog curls into a ball but the dog snaps and bites at him like a toy. The hunter finally calls him to order, but it is too late for the hedgehog, red jam comes out of his belly. The dog is also not unharmed. Whining, he rubs his snout through the humus.
Boss and dog both freeze when they see me. I salute and walk on.
If a dog commits a murder because it has been trained in this way by its owner, who is legally liable?
I trudge on through the gray forest with no sun and think of the victim Paul, the introverted man who had his secrets. Under the skin you feel what type he was, a Flemish insider, a much too proud man who suffered from emotional poverty. Hedgehogs don’t let themselves be petted. Alessandra told me that the women liked to laugh with him, like that time years ago. He had a problem with his prostate and had to stay in the hospital for a day for tests. He was so ashamed that he hid it from the women, but they found out anyway. The nurse came to tell him that his wife’s phone was for him. He was so ashamed that he knocked out the nurse’s false teeth, pulled the IVs from his own body and left. So proud. I increasingly suspect a double life that his environment knew nothing about, except perhaps his daughter Anne.
Just as my boot sinks deep into a mud puddle, someone without an identity calls. The kind of phone call I definitely answer.
“I have a hypothesis,” Alessandra invades as I pry off my boot. After all those sleepless nights, she decided to help. Paul had been wandering lately. He’d asked Billie why she wasn’t answering her phone anymore and he said he’d taken care of everything, it would be all right but it was their secret for a while. Billie had no idea what her grandfather was talking about. He had also stopped replying to Billie’s messages for a month. Billie had confided in Alessandra about it, just like when her mom Anne was in trouble.
“I want to help,” says Alessandra, the mistress, “because I suspect he led a double life, besides that with Ria, Billie and me.”
Next week: The explanation.
#hedgehog #petted