The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  At long last the nurse emerges from the boy’s room and, ignoring Hess, looks directly at Thulin.

  ‘I’ve told him you have five minutes. But he’s not saying much, and hasn’t since he arrived. Don’t force him to. Agreed?’

  ‘Thanks, that’s fine.’

  ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on my watch.’

  The nurse taps her wrist and shoots a disgruntled glance at Hess, who already has his hand on the doorknob.

  Magnus Kjær doesn’t look up as they enter. He’s sitting in bed underneath the duvet with the headboard raised, and in his hands is a laptop with a large hospital logo on the back. It’s a private room. The curtains are drawn and a single lamp glows on the bedside table, but it’s the computer screen that lights the boy’s face.

  ‘Hi, Magnus. Sorry to disturb you. My name’s Mark, and this is …’

  Hess glances at Thulin, who is trying to get her head round the concept of Hess having a first name.

  ‘Naia.’

  The boy doesn’t respond, and Hess walks up to the bed.

  ‘What are you doing? Mind if I sit down for a minute?’

  Hess sits down on the chair beside the bed while Thulin lingers in the background. Something makes her want to keep her distance. She can’t put it into words, but she senses it’s the right thing to do.

  ‘Magnus, I’d really like to ask you something. If I may. Is that all right, Magnus?’

  Hess looks at the boy, who doesn’t react, and Thulin decides they’re wasting their time. Magnus is entirely focused on the screen, his fingers eagerly tapping across the keyboard. It’s as though he’s created a bubble around himself, and Hess could ask questions until he was blue in the face without receiving any answer.

  ‘What are you playing? Is it going well?’

  The boy still doesn’t reply, but Thulin has instantly recognized League of Legends, familiar from her daughter’s screen.

  ‘It’s a computer game. You have to –’

  Hess raises his hand to silence Thulin, while he keeps his eyes fixed on the boy’s screen.

  ‘You’re playing on Summoner’s Rift. I like that map the best too. Is it Lucian the Purifier who’s your champion?’

  The boy doesn’t answer, and Hess points at one of the symbols at the bottom of the screen.

  ‘If you’re Lucian, then you’ll soon have enough for an upgrade.’

  ‘Already do. Waiting for the next level.’

  The boy’s voice is mechanical and monotone, but Hess points at the screen again, undeterred.

  ‘Watch out, there are minions coming. Nexus’s going to be captured if you don’t do something. Press magic or you’ll fail.’

  ‘I’m not failing – I have pressed magic.’

  Thulin hides her astonishment. The other colleagues she’s met at the station view computer games much as they view Cantonese – but evidently not Hess. She senses instinctively that this is the best conversation Magnus has had all day. It strikes her that the same might be true of the man sitting on the chair beside him, who appears genuinely engrossed.

  ‘You’re good at that. When you take a break, I’d like to give you another mission. It’s a bit different from in LoL. You’ll need all your skills.’

  Immediately Magnus puts down the laptop and waits for Hess without meeting his eye. Hess takes three photos from his inside pocket and places them face-down on the duvet in front of the boy. Thulin steps closer.

  ‘That wasn’t what we agreed. You didn’t say anything about photos.’

  Hess ignores her and looks at the boy.

  ‘Magnus, in a moment I’m going to turn over the photos one by one. You’ll have ten seconds to look at each picture and tell me whether anything is out of place. Something that shouldn’t be there. Something weird, something that doesn’t belong. Kind of like you’re looking for a Trojan horse that’s snuck into your compound. Okay?’

  The nine-year-old boy nods, gazing resolutely at the back of the photographs lying on the duvet. Hess turns over the first picture. It’s a section of the kitchen at Cedervænget, revealing a few shelves of spices and the boy’s anti-anxiety medication. Taken by Genz and the Forensics guys, presumably. It suddenly occurs to Thulin that Hess must have dropped by the police station to pick up the photos before he got to the hospital, and the realization puts her further on her guard.

  Magnus’s eyes flick from detail to detail, mechanically analysing the image, but then the boy shakes his head. Hess smiles approvingly and turns over a new picture. It’s another random photo, this time of a corner in the living room, focused on a few women’s magazines and a folded blanket on the sofa. In the background is a windowsill with a digital photo frame, frozen on a picture of the boy himself. Magnus repeats the process and again shakes his head. Hess turns over the final image. It’s a section of the playhouse, and Thulin’s stomach churns as she scans the photograph, making sure there’s no trace of Laura Kjær. The picture has been taken from an angle that primarily shows the swings and the bronze-coloured trees in the background, but no more than a second passes before the boy’s finger is tapping the little chestnut man hanging from the beam in the top right corner of the photo. Thulin looks at his finger, and feels the silence knot in her belly until Hess speaks up.

  ‘You’re sure? You’ve never seen that before?’

  Magnus Kjær shakes his head.

  ‘Went to the playground with Mum yesterday before tea. No chestnut man.’

  ‘Great … you’re brilliant. Do you also know who put it there?’

  ‘No. Is the mission complete?’

  Hess looks at the boy and straightens up again.

  ‘Yes. Thank you … you’ve been a huge help, Magnus.’

  ‘Isn’t Mum coming back?’

  For a moment Hess clearly doesn’t know what to say. The boy still isn’t looking at them, and the question hangs in the air too long before Hess takes the boy’s hand, which is lying on the duvet, and gazes at him.

  ‘No, she isn’t. Your mum’s in another place now.’

  ‘In Heaven?’

  ‘Yes. She’s in Heaven now. A good place.’

  ‘Will you come back and play with me?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. Another day.’

  The boy opens his computer again, and Hess has to release his hand.

  27

  Hess stands with his back to the exit, smoking, while the wind swirls the smoke among the buildings and the trees. In front of him is the gloomy carpark and the old black trees, their roots twisting and bulging beneath the asphalt. Thulin glimpses an ambulance bump across the tarmac and down into the underground garage as the automatic glass doors open for her.

  Thulin had needed to wrap things up with the nurse afterwards, and to reassure herself that the boy would be given the best possible care. By the time they’d finished talking Hess was gone, and as she steps out into the carpark she realizes she’s glad he waited for her.

  ‘What’s going to happen to him?’

  The question feels strangely intimate, given that she’s known Hess for less than twenty-four hours, but there’s no doubt what he means.

  ‘It’s up to the social workers now. He doesn’t have any other relatives, unfortunately, so they’ll probably figure out a solution with the stepfather. Unless the stepfather’s guilty, of course.’

  Hess looks at Thulin. ‘Do you think he is?’

  ‘He doesn’t have an alibi. And in ninety-nine per cent of cases it’s the husband who did it. We didn’t get anything new in there.’

  ‘Didn’t we?’ Hess holds her gaze as he continues. ‘If the boy’s telling the truth, then the doll with the fingerprint was probably brought to the crime scene the same night the killing took place. That’s odd, to put it mildly, and I don’t think we can explain it away by saying someone just happened to buy the doll at a roadside stall a year ago, do you?’

  ‘Things don’t necessarily have to be connected. The partner could easily have killed the woman, and the boy could be
mistaken about the doll. I mean, nothing else makes much sense.’

  Hess is about to say something, but then he thinks better of it and stamps out the cigarette beneath his foot. ‘No. Perhaps not.’

  He nods an abrupt goodbye, and Thulin watches him trudge across the carpark. She opens her mouth to ask whether he wants a lift back into town, but as she does so a gust of wind kicks up and something drops to the paving slabs behind her. Turning around, Thulin sees a prickly, greenish-brown ball roll down into the hollow by the cigarette bin, where others like it have collected. She realizes what it is. Peering up into the chestnut tree, she contemplates its swaying branches and all the other prickly, greenish-brown balls waiting to hatch, and for a moment she sees Kristine Hartung making chestnut men at the table in her living room. Or somewhere else entirely.

  MONDAY 12 OCTOBER

  * * *

  28

  ‘I’m sick of saying it. I drove back to the motel and went to bed, and now I want to know when I can go home with Magnus!’

  The small room at the end of the Homicide department’s long corridor is over-bright and stuffy, and Hans Henrik Hauge is sobbing and kneading his hands. His clothes are crumpled and he reeks of sweat and urine. Six days have passed since the discovery of Laura Kjær’s body, and for nearly two days Thulin has kept him in custody. The judge has given the department forty-eight hours to find enough evidence to charge him – thus far with no luck. Thulin is convinced Hauge knows more than he’s letting on, but the man is no fool. A computer scientist trained at the University of Southern Denmark, he’s old-fashioned and predictable in his work, but not unskilled. He’s moved around a lot and claims to have been a freelance IT developer until he met Laura Kjær and found a permanent job at a medium-sized IT company on the waterfront at Kalvebod Quay.

  ‘Nobody can confirm you stayed at the motel Monday evening, and nobody noticed your car in the motel carpark until seven the next morning. Where were you?’

  When Hauge was taken into custody he’d exercised his right to an appointed attorney. A young woman, sharp and fragrant, wearing clothes Thulin will never be able to afford. She’s the one to speak up.

  ‘My client maintains that he was at the motel all night. He has patiently repeated that he had nothing to do with the crime, so unless you have new information I’d like him released as soon as possible.’

  Thulin looks only at Hauge.

  ‘The fact is you have no alibi, and the day you left for the trade fair, Laura Kjær had the locks changed without your consent. Why?’

  ‘I told you. Magnus threw a set of keys away –’

  ‘Was it because she’d found somebody else?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But you got angry when she told you on the phone that she’d changed the locks –’

  ‘She didn’t say she’d changed the locks –’

  ‘And Magnus’s disorder must have put a strain on your relationship. I can easily understand why you’d be angry if she suddenly told you she was turning elsewhere for comfort.’

  ‘I know nothing about anyone else, and I’ve never been angry with Magnus.’

  ‘So you were angry with Laura?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t angry with –’

  ‘But she changed the locks because she didn’t want you any more, and that was what she told you on the phone. You felt let down, you’d done so much for her and the boy, so you went back to the house –’

  ‘I didn’t go back to the house –’

  ‘You knocked on the door or the window, and she opened up because she didn’t want you waking the boy. You tried to talk to her. You reminded her of the ring on her finger –’

  ‘That’s not true –’

  ‘– the ring you’d given her, but she was cold and indifferent. You took her outside, but she kept telling you to go to hell. It was over between you – you had no right to anything – you weren’t allowed to see the boy, because you meant nothing, and finally –’

  ‘It’s not true, I’m telling you!’

  Thulin can feel the lawyer’s peevish gaze, but she’s looking only at Hauge, who is once more wringing his hands and fiddling with his ring.

  ‘This isn’t going anywhere. My client has lost his fiancée, and there’s also the boy to think of, so it seems inhumane to keep him here any longer. My client would like to return to his house as soon as possible so that he can provide the boy with a sense of security and routine, just as soon as he’s discharged from –’

  ‘We just want to go home, for Christ’s sake! How long are you going to be in our house? Surely you must be finished with us by now!’

  There’s something about Hauge’s outburst that baffles Thulin. It isn’t the first time the forty-three-year-old IT developer has expressed impatience at their continued examination of the house and their refusal to permit him entry, although logically Hauge ought to be interested in the police taking their time to secure all the evidence there. On the other hand, every nook and cranny of the house has already been checked so many times that if Hauge were trying to hide something they would already have found it, so she has to resign herself to the idea that he’s simply thinking of the boy’s welfare.

  ‘My client shall of course be accommodating of your investigation. But is he free to go?’

  Hans Henrik Hauge gazes tensely at Thulin. She knows she has to let him go, and soon she will have to inform Nylander that they’re still treading water in the Laura Kjær murder case. Nylander will doubtless be waspish, asking her to pull her finger out and avoid wasting more time and resources, and he’ll probably ask her where the hell Hess has got to. Thulin has no answer to that, for good reason. Since they went their separate ways at Glostrup Hospital last Tuesday evening, he’s done the bare minimum and has largely come and gone as he pleases. At the weekend he called and asked about the case from somewhere that sounded like a DIY store; someone was prattling about paint and colour codes in the background. After the call she’d got the sense he had simply clocked in to give the impression that he was still on the case. She has no intention of telling Nylander that, of course, but the man’s absence will probably annoy him almost as much as her abortive detention of Hauge, and none of it will do Thulin any favours when she finishes the conversation by jogging his memory about the recommendation to NC3, which he didn’t have time to discuss on Friday as they’d agreed.

  ‘He’s free to go, but the house is out of bounds until our examination has concluded, so your client will have to find another solution.’

  The lawyer shuts her briefcase with a satisfied expression and rises to her feet. For a brief moment Thulin can tell Hauge wants to protest, but a glance from his solicitor keeps him quiet.

  29

  The tall, yellow-leafed birch trees sway menacingly in the wind as Hess pulls up and parks his squad car directly outside the main entrance to the Forensics Department. Reaching the reception on the first floor, he forestalls any protests by flashing his badge and declaring that he has an appointment. When Genz appears a moment later, clad in a white coat, he stares at Hess in surprise.

  ‘I need your help with a little experiment. It won’t take long, but I need a reasonably sterile room and a tech who can use a microscope.’

  ‘That’s most of us. What’s this about?’

  ‘First I need to know whether I can trust you. It’s most likely a fool’s errand, and not worth spending time on, but I don’t want to risk the information getting out.’

  Genz, who so far has been eying Hess sceptically, grins.

  ‘If you’re alluding to what I said the other day, I hope you understand I had to be careful.’

  ‘Well, now I’m the one who has to be careful.’

  ‘You mean it?’

  ‘I mean it.’

  Genz glances swiftly over his shoulder, as though remembering the mound of work on his desk.

  ‘If it’s relevant, and if it’s within the bounds of the law.’

  ‘I believe so. Unless you’re a vegetar
ian. Now, where can I drive the car inside?’

  The last of the electronic gates alongside the building slides open, and once Hess has backed the car inside, Genz presses a button and the gate slides shut before the fallen leaves can follow. The room is about the size of a mechanic’s workshop. It’s one of the department’s vehicle examination rooms, and although the car isn’t what Hess wants to examine, it suits him just fine. It has powerful neon ceiling lights and a drain in the floor.

  ‘What is it you want to test?’

  ‘If you could grab that end.’

  Hess opens the boot and Genz gasps in shock as he finds himself staring down at a pale body swathed in thick, transparent plastic.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘A pig. About three months old. Bought it at the meat market, where it was hanging in a cold store until an hour ago. Let’s put it on the table over there.’

  Hess takes the pig’s hind legs while Genz hesitantly lifts its front trotters. Together they manhandle the pig on to the steel table along one side of the room. The belly has been opened and all the organs removed; its eyes stare lifelessly at the wall.

  ‘I don’t think I understand. This can’t be relevant, and if it’s a joke I simply don’t have time.’

  ‘It’s not a joke. This guy weighs forty-five kilograms – roughly the same as a pre-teen, in other words. It has a head and four limbs, and although its cartilage, muscles and bones are slightly different from those of a human being, it’ll do a decent enough job for comparing tools. After the dismemberment.’

  ‘The dismemberment?’

  Genz gawps in disbelief at Hess, who has returned to the car and is removing a case file and a long, wrapped object from the back seat. Tucking the file under his arm, he tears the thick packaging off the long object to reveal a machete nearly a metre in length.

  ‘This is what we’ve got to examine once we’re done. The machete is virtually identical to the one found at the perpetrator’s home in the Hartung case, and as far as possible I’d like us to dismember the pig using the description he gave during the interrogation. I’ll just borrow an apron.’