The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  For a moment Hess wonders whether Bekker’s interest might have been piqued by something he read in the case files about the crimes on Møn Island in 1989. A police report on the case could perhaps explain the appeal – he might, for example, have realized he knew the victims or the crime scene, or stumbled across some other relevant piece of information that had made him check and recheck the image of the murdered policeman and the dolls. But there were no case files in the material Bekker hacked. Not for the Møn case or any other. It was an archive of photographs taken at crime scenes, pure and simple. Nothing else. The reports were located in another digital archive, and if Hess’s memory served, Bekker didn’t access anything besides the specific archive that provided an outlet for his sexual proclivities.

  Hess is none the wiser. His hangover is back, and he is starting to regret hammering on the door of the cockpit like a nutjob and forcing the German-speaking pilot to let him off the plane. It would have taken him to Bucharest. It was even leaving on time. His eyes flick to the departure board, but instead he sees Linus Bekker’s face and hears his laughter. Hess decides to run through the images again. Starting from the top, he scrolls back down through the hideous litany of gruesome crimes. One picture is followed by the next, each crueller than the last, without offering any explanation of why these specific images gave Bekker such immense enjoyment. Hess presumes it has to be something sick, something that only a pervert like Bekker would notice, and suddenly it strikes him what it might be. He understands it before he sees it – he understands it because it is the most terrifying thing he can imagine, and at the same time so inconceivable that it might make Linus Bekker excited.

  He goes back to the start, skimming over the images he already knows, but this time scanning for one thing: he is no longer looking at the subject of the pictures, but at everything else – foreground, background, objects, anything that is apparently without significance. In the ninth picture he finds what he is seeking. It is from another crime scene, labelled ‘Risskov, 22 Sept. 2001’. No different at first glance from the rest. A blonde woman, approximately thirty-five years old, lies dead on a floor in something that looks like the front room of a house or apartment. She wears a dark brown skirt, a torn white chemise and high-heeled shoes, one heel of which has snapped off. In the background he can make out toys and a play-pen, while the table to the left is neatly laid for two – but the meal had never been eaten. The killing had been frenzied, uncontrolled, presumably committed on the right side of the image, where everything is overturned and spattered with blood. But it is the play-pen that catches Hess’s eye. The play-pen, and the shy little chestnut man hanging from the rail beside a rattle.

  The blood begins to whistle in Hess’s ears. He continues the hunt, and it’s as though his eyes adjust, drawn only to the pattern they are seeking. All else is extraneous; nothing exists in the world but the small doll, and at the twenty-third image he pauses again.

  ‘Nyborg, 2 Oct. 2015’. This time a young woman in a little black car. Taken through the windscreen. She sits in the driver’s seat, her upper body resting against a child’s car seat on the passenger’s side. Smartly dressed, as though she were on her way to or from an appointment or a date. One eye is smashed in, but there is virtually no blood in the picture, and the killing seems more controlled than the one in Risskov. From the rear-view mirror in the foreground hangs a little chestnut man. Only visible in silhouette; but it is there.

  There are nearly forty images left, but Hess logs off and gets to his feet. On his way down the escalator to the ground floor it crosses his mind that murders spread across nearly thirty years can’t have the same killer. It’s impossible. Somebody would have noticed. Somebody would have done something. There’s nothing remarkable about chestnut men, necessarily, certainly not in autumn. Maybe Hess is simply seeing what he wants to see?

  Even so, he can’t stop picturing Linus Bekker’s face as he fills out the paperwork at the car rental desk and waits to be handed the keys. This is the connection Bekker made. The chestnut doll is the signature of a murderer who’s struck again and again. By the time he gets the keys and runs to the carpark, the snow is falling more thickly than before.

  101

  Thulin avoids eye contact with the two detectives who look up from their screens as she empties her locker and slams the metal door a little too hard. She has deliberately avoided drawing attention to the fact that this is her last day at the department, and she doesn’t want to change that now. Not that it would make a difference. There’s nobody she will miss, and probably nobody will miss her. She preferred it that way from day one, and it suits her just fine to stay as invisible as possible until she’s out of the building. She happened to bump into Nylander a few minutes ago, passing her in the corridor with his bevy of assistants as he made for the latest press conference, of which there have already been plenty. Today the excuse is that the results of the coroner’s final examination and the DNA analyses are now available. Thulin wonders whether the real reason is simply that Nylander enjoys the spotlight. That’s how it looks, anyhow, as he stands posing beside the Justice Minister in his slightly-too-shiny suit, or when, in an attempt at a generous gesture, he emphasizes his detectives’ search in Sydhavnen as the crucial turning point in the investigation.

  Nylander stopped to wish her good luck.

  ‘Bye, Thulin. Say hello to Wenger for me.’

  He meant Isak Wenger, Thulin’s new superior officer at NC3, and she took his comment to mean that Nylander now felt the balance of power between the departments had shifted, and that Thulin ought to be regretting her choice. She’d nearly forgotten the career change she herself had set in motion until the NC3 boss had called her personally that Monday and congratulated her on closing the murder case.

  ‘But that’s not why I’m ringing. I hope you’re still interested in a job with us?’

  Wenger had offered her the position, although in the end she’d neither applied nor been given a recommendation from Nylander. If she accepted the job, Wenger would sort out the practical side of things with Nylander, and she could start at NC3 after a late autumn holiday. That is now the prospect before Thulin: a whole week for Le and herself, and although in a way things had worked out like they were supposed to, irritatingly enough Thulin had spent the last few days reassuring herself that the case had been properly wrapped up.

  The discovery of Anne Sejer-Lassen’s and Jessie Kvium’s severed hands as well as Jessie’s foot in the mini-fridge at the former abattoir had been so irrefutable that Thulin could see no logical option but to side with Nylander’s interpretation. Hess had raised some unanswered questions, certainly, but the overwhelming likelihood remained that his personal issues had made him fixate on them.

  That was Nylander’s unsentimental view, in any case, and he’d confided to Thulin that Hess’s original exit from the department and from Copenhagen had been motivated by a personal tragedy. Not that he knew much about it, because in those days Nylander hadn’t been involved in the department himself, but the gist was that one May night just over five years earlier, Hess’s twenty-nine-year-old wife had died in a fire that broke out in their Valby apartment.

  The information had made an impression on Thulin. In the police report, which she’d looked up on the database, it said that the fire had started around three in the morning and had spread with astonishing speed. The building had been evacuated, but the fierceness of the flames made it impossible for the firefighters to reach the apartment on the top storey. When the fire was put out, the young woman’s charred body was found in the bedroom, and her husband, ‘a detective at the Major Crimes Division, Mark M. Hess’, in Stockholm on a case, was informed by telephone. The cause of the fire remained undetermined. Faulty wiring, oil lamps and arson had all been investigated, but no definitive conclusions reached. The woman had been seven months pregnant, and the couple had got married just one month earlier.

  The report turned Thulin’s stomach. Suddenly so much about Hess
’s character fell into place, yet on the other hand it was impossible to comprehend. In any case, it no longer made any sense to think about the questions Hess had raised, and perhaps that was why she felt relieved when she heard the deputy commissioner telling Nylander earlier that day that Hess had been restored to favour at the Hague and was on his way to an assignment in Bucharest. Hess was leaving the country, then, and it was definitely for the best. She tried to reach him several times that week, but he did not call back, and it disconcerted her when Le asked when ‘the guy with the eyes’ was coming over to see how far she’d got in League of Legends. The same thing happened when she called to ask after Magnus Kjær, who’d been transferred to a children’s home while the authorities tried to find a suitable foster family. An administrator said the boy was improving, but also that he’d asked several times about ‘the policeman’. Thulin wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She decided to dismiss Hess from her mind, and usually she found it easy to disregard people like that. Sebastian, for instance; although he still left messages on her voicemail, she felt no urge to contact him again.

  ‘Naia Thulin?’

  Turning back to her empty desk, she finds a bike messenger looking at her and, in spite of what she’s promised herself, Hess is the first person who enters her mind when she sees the bouquet. Yellow, orange and red autumn flowers, the names of which she doesn’t know. Flowers have never meant much to her. She signs for the delivery with the digital pen the courier hands her, and then he waddles swiftly out again in his cycling shoes. Thulin opens the card, counting herself lucky that her colleagues are gathered around the flatscreen in the cafeteria, where Nylander’s press conference is being broadcast live.

  ‘Thanks for the run. Good luck at NC3. Step away from that desk ☺’

  Thulin smiles to herself for a moment, but throws Genz’s card into the wastepaper basket. By the time she’s vanished down the stairs, heading for freedom and Le’s school Halloween party, she’s left the bouquet on the desk in the admin office, where she knows it will be appreciated.

  Outside the station the snow is still falling, and Thulin is annoyed she didn’t think to arrange for a car before she starts at NC3. Her sneakers are soon soaked through, and she hurries up Bernstorffsgade towards the main station, where she will take the metro to the Dybbølsbro stop.

  The snow hadn’t yet begun to fall when she met Genz that morning – she’d chosen to mark her last day on the murder squad by finally accepting his invitation to go for a run. Now that they were no longer going to be colleagues, it seemed like a nice way to conclude their relationship. Plus, she had her own agenda. They’d agreed to run along Strandvejen, so at half six she met Genz outside his building at one of the attractive new complexes in Nordhavn. It surprised her that Genz had the money for a place like that, but on the other hand it made sense he’d be good with his finances, given how meticulous he was.

  The first part of the run was a good experience, especially watching the sun rise above Øresund, and they spent some time discussing the investigation. How Benedikte Skans’ and Asger Neergaard’s desire for revenge must have developed in the aftermath of their tragedy; how the nurse must have gathered information on the abused children and the mothers they’d selected as victims; how the couple must have used an internet café with access to a Ukrainian email server to send the anonymous tip-offs instead of their own computers, and how the contents of the mini-fridge must have been overlooked during the preliminary forensic search. The bludgeon and saw used to kill and maim the victims still hadn’t been found, but as a nurse Benedikte Skans had access to instruments from the operating theatre, which were in the process of being examined and tested.

  Genz didn’t think there was any reason to doubt the conclusions of the investigation, although Thulin suspected he was more engrossed in the run than in their conversation. She regretted having told him about her love of long runs, because it soon became clear he had to hold back so as not to outstrip her. After eight kilometres they turned around and she fell behind him like a Sunday jogger in the tow of a Kenyan athlete; only when he noticed she was several metres behind did he ease up and allow the conversation to continue. If she’d thought Genz’s invitation was an excuse to get cosy with her, she was very much mistaken: he was as passionate about his running as he was about his lab work.

  Thulin barely had enough breath to speak for the remainder of the run, but when they stopped at a red light at Charlottenlund Fort she’d aired her frustration that they were still unable to explain why chestnut men with the Hartung girl’s fingerprints had been left at the crime scenes. There had been no sign of chestnut men at the young couple’s property, and how Neergaard and Skans could have got hold of them was a mystery.

  ‘Unless Nylander’s right, and for some reason the couple bought them at the stall Kristine Hartung and her friend set up before she went missing,’ Genz had suggested.

  ‘But how likely is that? Steen Hartung doesn’t even think the girls made chestnut men that year.’

  ‘Maybe he’s misremembering? Skans was a patient at Roskilde at that point, but Neergaard could easily have driven round the neighbourhood and started laying the groundwork even then.’

  ‘And then he just so happened to be pipped to the post by Linus Bekker, you think? Coincidentally at nearly the same moment?’

  Genz shrugged and gave her a smile.

  ‘It’s not my theory. I’m just a tech.’

  They’d probably never get a conclusive answer, but there was something about the chestnut men that continued to niggle. Almost as though there were something they’d forgotten to check or forgotten to take into account. But then she and Genz finally reached Svanemøllen Station, the snow began to fall, and Thulin staggered into the shelter of the platform while Genz continued his run, taking a quick little detour around the park.

  ‘I’m looking for 3A?’

  ‘Try the classroom. Just follow the noise.’

  Shaking off the snow, Thulin walks past the two teachers in the common room, which is decorated for Halloween. She has arrived at the school, which is located on a side street not far from Dybbølsbro Station, precisely on time, and she promises herself that from now on it will always be that way. Far too many times she’s arrived late or not at all to the various school get-togethers, and she can see a flash of surprise on a few of the parents’ faces when she enters the classroom. They are standing by the row of carved pumpkins along the walls, while the children scamper merrily around in their Halloween costumes. It isn’t Halloween until tomorrow, but because it’s the weekend the school has decided to throw the party today. The girls are dressed up as witches and the boys as monsters, many of them in macabre masks. Each one is gorier than the last, and some of the parents ooh and ahh in mock terror as the kids race past. The teacher, a woman Thulin’s age, is also dressed as a witch, in a low-cut black dress, black fishnet stockings and black pumps, the whole thing crowned with chalk-white make-up, red lipstick and a pointy black hat. She looks like a character from a Tim Burton film, and it isn’t hard to imagine why the fathers, especially, are in a better mood than usual this Friday afternoon.

  For a moment Thulin can’t see Le or her grandad among the parents and small, blood-thirsty monsters, but then she notices the rubber zombie mask with its split skull and yellow brains spilling down its forehead. The rubber mask is from a game called ‘Plants vs Zombies’, and it was the only costume Le wanted when she dragged Thulin to the comic-book store in Skindergade yesterday. Now she is standing with her grandad, who is adjusting the skull so the brains don’t slip down around her neck.

  ‘Hi, Mum. Can you tell it’s me?’

  ‘No, where are you?’

  She glances around, and when she turns back Le has lifted the rubber mask to reveal her sweaty, triumphant face.

  ‘I’m the one carrying the pumpkin into the party ahead of everyone else.’

  ‘Cool. I’m looking forward to seeing that.’

  ‘Are you going t
o stay and watch?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you want me to hold the brain for a bit so you don’t die of heatstroke?’ asks Aksel, wiping Le’s forehead.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Grandad.’

  With the zombie mask hanging from her neck, Le tears across the room towards Ramazan, who is dressed as a skeleton.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  Aksel looks at her, and she knows he means her last day at the station.

  ‘Yeah, fine. All done and dusted.’

  Aksel is about to say something, but then the teacher claps her hands to get everybody’s attention. ‘Right, we’re going to get started! Children, you come over here to me,’ she says in a brisk tone before turning to the parents.

  ‘Before we head over to the common room for the party, we just need to wrap up the project week about autumn. The children have prepared three presentations they’re looking forward to showing you!’

  The decorations are still up, ready for the party, and so are the posters of the family trees. She was only once present at an event where the children performed – something about a circus, where one of the skits had involved the children crawling three times through a hula-hoop dressed as lions. The parents’ hysterical applause made Thulin’s toes curl.

  This time isn’t much different. The first group of kids present posters featuring twigs and reddish-yellow leaves from the forest, while the parents smile and watch the whole thing through the cameras on their phones. Thulin realizes it will be a long time before she stops associating red and yellow leaves with the eerie sight of Laura Kjær, Anne Sejer-Lassen and Jessie Kvium, and the next group’s presentation – the class collection of chestnut dolls – doesn’t improve her mood.