His conversation with Mo lasted a whole ten seconds. "Swing by the office as fast as you can. The body dumped at the Great Market Square—looks like a case, Wolfie," he said.

So a minute after six-thirty in the evening, Vidar put the shutters down and locked the door. He crossed the street as two skaters soared through the sky, high above the half-pipe, twisting and turning before landing and making another sharp turn.

"There are twenty people on the live stream," shouted a lanky boy with spiky hair. The rest of the group sitting by the bench glanced up from their phones, but not for long. "It's going up quickly—twenty-three, wham, straight to twenty-six."

 The girl with the blue hair wasn't with them. Hopefully, she would be back tomorrow.

Vidar strolled towards the Velo station where two rows of red-and-white bikes were waiting for him. Of thirty-five, only a handful remained. The Velo Project was the mayor's pride, announced as an initiative to ban motorised vehicles out of the city, but mostly used by those who already didn't own a car.

Still, everyone considered the project a success. The bikes were everywhere. Even for the technically challenged, like him, they were easy to rent. No human interaction required.

Vidar fished his Velo card out of his wallet, peered at the code written in thick blue marker while simultaneously entering the numbers in the console, then pushed the buttons 1-2-3-4, his pin code. Seconds later, he took bike 3254 out of its dock and rode off.

Sunna's bright rays crawled from behind a cloud, soothing the nagging ache in his muscles. Life was good. 

High-pitched shrieking and laughter erupted from the playground where children slid down the long tube slide and climbed the racks, only to jump down as they reached the top.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a little girl with black curly hair crossed the path. He hit the coaster brake, the wheel slipping on the gravel as he squeezed the front brake too. 

The child ran on. A woman with the same curly hair stood up from the foldable lounge chairs by the shallow pond, a cocktail glass still in her hand. "Miri, watch where you're going! That man could have run you over!"

"It's alright." Vidar signalled.

The woman gave the girl a scolding, anyway.

Vidar cycled on, passing a group of students sitting in the grass, raising cans of cheap beer. In the middle lay a large cone of fries, topped with a light orange sauce, a hint of spice not far away. His stomach rumbled.

After exiting the park, he turned towards the Lange Dijk-street, where every other house was wrapped in scaffolding. At least, the owners here had the money for the long-overdue renovations, and the buildings would be restored to their original late-nineteenth-century glory. Half a block further, the rich-man townhouses of the past had been reduced to crash pads for those existing outside the law. The pompous gentlemen of yore would turn in their graves if they knew.

Time had the least mercy of them all.

The trees of Saint John's Square were in bloom, the white flowers subtle yet present. Vidar took a moment to appreciate their beauty before continuing towards Rotterdam Street, where he zigzagged around the potholes that had formed weeks after men in orange overalls had fixed the tarmac.

On the bike, he was still faster than those in their fat, blinking cars shuffling towards the traffic light.

At Central Station, he had the opportunity to park the bike and take bus 17 to the University Hospital. But, unlike Mo, Vidar wasn't in a rush. When the office you had to go to was a morgue, the work remained just as dead, even if you were late. Mo wanted action and quick resolutions, and patience was not in his dictionary.

Never had been. 

At least, not in the decade and a half since they had bumped into each other while investigating the source behind the sudden influx of unlikely success stories. The first had been about a woman becoming CEO of a known supermarket chain after throwing a tantrum that her favourite brand of apples were out of stock. The second about a young academic who received the Flemish master thesis award of the year for a dissertation he had finished in a week, and, lastly, a man in his seventies who won a lifetime of meals after finding the winning candy wrapper washed up on the beach of Saint Anneke. A month later, the lifeless body of the female CEO had been found in a truck full of apples, the young academic had suffered a heart attack after playing video games for 48 hours, and the white-haired grandpa had died from severe indigestion.

Vidar had believed the culprit to be an alverman, a pesky little creature the size of a children's shoe, known for aiding humans in exchange for clothes—as long as nobody bothered them—whereas Mo had assumed a djinn was behind the chaos. 

Fate had led them to the same wishing well that had been unearthed during the construction of the park. Before Vidar had managed to research the old coin they had found at the bottom of the well, Mo had tampered with the security cameras and breathed fire into the pit. 

That night had seen the beginning of a partnership. As a mortician, Mo was usually the first to know trouble was brewing. Vidar, in return, knew the city as well as its tales and its creatures.

Trains thundered above him as he cycled alongside the railroad track, the road leading him out of the centre and into the district of Berchem, supposedly founded on one of the seven mountains of Antwerp. By Lowlands standard, everything above sea level was considered a mountain.

In reality, Berchem was a hill with a superiority complex.

Just before crossing the bridge over the highway, he exchanged bikes. Fifty-five euros per year was enough money for him to avoid paying for any ride beyond thirty minutes. He cycled for seven more minutes, then walked the last kilometre. 

Despite its name, the University Hospital of Antwerp wasn't situated in the city but in the neighbouring village of Edegem. 

Until a few centuries ago, Edegem had been a forest where Vidar had often spent the nights of the full moon, hunting deer, rabbits, and the occasional alverman. Not all trees had disappeared since then, but most hadn't survived modernity.

All roads led to the flat, long-stretched concrete building, almost braggingly in celebration of humanity's triumph over nature. As if to say, This is where we conquer illnesses and beat death.

Except in the basement of the north-west wing, at the end of route one-hundred and two, tucked away, out of sight.

Still, the humans had come far since leeching their kind and praying to a god who rarely answered. They no longer burned clever women with a knack for herbal remedies and rather photographed black cats instead of throwing them from towers.

Humanity had grown kinder.

Even their technology showed compassion. Sliding doors opened as Vidar approached the building. They closed behind him before the next pair of doors brought him to the warm purplish-blue lobby. Visiting hours were almost over. The middle-aged lady with the polka-dot dress rolled the balloon stand into her store while in the mini-supermarket, the young man with a birthmark under his left eye was counting money.

As inviting as the hospital's interior may seem after sunset, a harsh, bitter scent overwhelmed him. Holding his breath, Vidar moved around the pock-faced man in a green tracksuit cruising on the cleaning scooter. 

At the registry sat a blonde, short-haired woman with grey spectacles, her stern gaze focused on the screen at her right.

"Evening, I have an appointment with Mohammed Izri," Vidar said to her.

Without looking up, she asked. "Did you take a ticket?"

Vidar looked around. "There isn't anyone else. I didn't thi—"

"Next time, take a ticket." She pushed her glasses up her nose, typing away on the keyboard. After a while, she said, "Mohammed Izri, eh, I see no appointments in his calendar anymore."

"The name's Vidar Odinsen," he added, out of habit, "spelt S-E-N. I might be late."

"Odinsen," she muttered. Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Ah, here, you should have been here five hours ago."

He shrugged. "I'm here now."

"Can I see your identification?"

Vidar knew the drill. To keep the bodies involved in criminal investigation away from prying eyes, the hospital employees had to ask and verify the police card, which he didn't have. She, however, wore her badge clipped on her breast pocket.

Her name was Katrien.

"Katrien, you saw and verified me," he said in a monotonous tone. Behind her glasses, her pupils widened. Her mouth slacked open as he continued, "You'll inform Mo of my imminent arrival, then wish me a good evening."

Seconds later, the cranky lady chirped. "All clear, Mister Odinsen. I'll give Mo a call, let him know you've arrived. Have a good evening."

"You too." Vidar grinned.

He followed the arrows of Route 102, then went down the stairs. 

The morgue was not so different from the rest of the hospital. White walls, and the same grey vinyl floor that echoed even when you tiptoed. Only the patients stayed in fridges instead of rooms, and they no longer breathed.

Usually even the scent was the same, but not tonight; a strange smell hung in the air. Something peculiar, out of place...

He sniffed. Crispy fried chicken, and cheese... definitely... loads of cheese.

"Ewa, Wolfie." 

A plump olive-skinned man in a white hospital uniform rolled from behind the wall where his desk was. He was munching, in his hand a large, bitten chunk of pizza. That explained the smell.

"Hey, Mo."

"Finally, you're here. You wanna slice?"

Vidar scratched his beard. "Perhaps after seeing the body."

"Good call—it's a real stinker," Mo said, unfazed. He took another bite while saying, "Several policemen tossed their cookies out this morning. Big Boss Lady almost didn't assign me the case, but nobody has a stomach like Mo has." He patted his bulging belly.

"That bad?"

"I guess Antigone ran away from the stink. Makes you wonder why Brabo didn't."

"He's made out of bronze."

"So's the giant." Mo got up to wash his hands at the sink. He sprinkled them dry before opening a drawer, taking out a small blue container. Vaporub. "It was a full moon, wasn't it?"

Vidar nodded. He dabbed a finger into the goo and rubbed the minty salve on his upper lip and around his nostrils. His nose wouldn't be fooled entirely—he still caught a whiff of bad alcohol as Mo held his hands underneath the machine that spewed out disinfectant—but at least he would be able to concentrate on the body's wounds instead of its smell.

"You once had me taste that fermented herring the Swedes call a delicacy," Mo said as he opened the fridge and rolled out the body. "You'll see what I mean."

Memories of surströmming sprung to mind as a sour, salt-like fish smell spread throughout the room. The victim was a woman, long silver hair covering her torso as her bright green eyes stared into nowhere. Her skin showed no sign of discolouring. She had four jagged cut wounds in her neck and... missed everything from the hip down.

"Where's the other half?" Vidar asked.

"There is none," Mo said.

"Someone cut her up."

"They wanted to hide who she was." Mo showed him a container, at the bottom, a minuscule turquoise scale. "Told you this was a case for us."

Vidar crouched to the level of the woman's neck and narrowed his eyes. No cuts but gill-slits that had been botched up to look like wounds. He assumed she had no lungs either.

"Mermaid," he said.

"Was thinking about a siren, or a lorelei perhaps."

Vidar shook his head. "Can't be, unless she..." He beckoned Mo to turn the body, but her back was as smooth as a human's, showing no patches of rigor mortis either. "See, a lorelei has wings, much like her Greek sisters, the sirens. She doesn't."

"You learn something new every day."

"And they don't usually venture into these waters."

"That's no longer an argument, Wolfie. Nowadays, you'll find Ifrits in Antwerp and leprechauns in the Atlas mountains." Mo winked. "Anyway, despite missing everything from the waist down, I found the body to be too clean, like she's high instead of dead. But, I retrieved grains of sand from beneath her nails. Took a sample, then ran it through a program that tells us the sand's origin and estimates the age... Basically, they measure the zircon values, then—"

"I believe you, Mo. You might as well switch to Arabic, and I would understand just as much. Why would we be interested in how old the sand is?"

"Because the sand is rather dark like it hasn't been exposed to the sun for quite a while."

"She's a mermaid."

"Wolfie, the river Schelde is not that deep. Besides, I didn't start investigating the sand until I discovered traces of perished fabric on her shoulder."

"Hmm, that's no surprise. Paranormals don't decay as fast as humans do. The clothes in which our kind is buried are usually the first to go."

"Wanna take a guess how old she is?" Mo had an impish smile on his face, which meant he had uncovered something big.

"Do me the honour."

"Three hundred years, give or take a decade."

Vidar blinked, his mind racing through the centuries. "I know who she is... she's the mermaid who drowned."

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