The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  The first thing he’d jotted down on the block of Post-its beside the computer were the twins’ names, Toke and Astrid Bering, as well as their ID numbers, but otherwise the report wasn’t very informative about their background. A memo from a social worker said that they’d been found abandoned in a stairwell at a maternity hospital in Aarhus in 1979, no more than a few weeks old, and had been named by the midwives. Without going into detail, the memo noted that the twins had lived with other foster families before being transferred to Chestnut Farm – this being the name of Ørum’s farm – two years before the bloodbath. With every line he read, Hess felt as though he was coming closer to an explanation, but then he looked up the twins’ ID numbers in the police register to find out where they were today.

  ‘You are number – three – in the queue.’

  The extended police register, which cross-references various databases potentially relevant to policework, shows where a particular person has lived and when. Each entry includes a chronological list of a person’s residences and moving dates, as well as information on whether the individual has been married, divorced, charged with a crime, convicted, deported or in any other way been involved in activities of interest to the police.

  But what should have been a routine search turned out to be a new mystery.

  According to the database, after staying at a state institution for deprived children, twelve-year-old Toke Bering had been rehomed with a foster family in Langeland. Then one in Als, then another three foster families before the trail went cold shortly after his seventeenth birthday. There were simply no other addresses or events connected to his ID number.

  If Toke Bering was dead, it ought to say so, but he had merely ceased to be tracked in the system, so Hess phoned the national database for an explanation. The woman who answered the phone was able to glean no more than Hess, however, and her best guess was that Toke Bering had left the country.

  He’d taken the opportunity to ask about the sister, but again she was able to offer no more information than what he’d already found. Astrid Bering was sent to several foster families after her stay at Chestnut Farm, but the social workers and child psychologists had obviously changed their strategy with the girl, because they’d transferred her out of the foster system and into various homes for mentally ill young people. From the age of eighteen to twenty-seven her address was unregistered, which could mean she’d been abroad, but after that one home for the mentally ill had followed another. Until just under a year ago, when, at the age of thirty-eight, she’d vanished into thin air. Hess had contacted her most recent address, but the place had got a new manager since then, and he had no idea where Astrid Bering might have gone after being discharged.

  ‘You are number – two – in the queue.’

  So Hess had chosen the hard way: phoning all the twins’ former foster families to find out whether they’d heard from either of them over the years, and whether they knew where to find them. Hess started chronologically – before the stay at Chestnut Farm – but two calls had got him nowhere. The foster parents had seemed obliging, but they’d had no contact with the twins, so now Hess has moved on to foster family number three.

  ‘Odsherred Council, Department for Families, how can I help you?’

  The old landline for the Petersen foster family from Odsherred was disconnected, so instead Hess is turning to the council. He explains who he is and that he is looking for Poul and Kirsten Petersen, resident at Kirkevej 35 in Odsherred – he hopes they will be able to give him some information about twins who were in their care in 1987.

  ‘Not unless you’ve got a direct line to the Lord. According to what it says on my screen, Poul and Kirsten Petersen are both dead. The husband died seven years ago, the wife two years later.’

  ‘How did they die?’

  He enquires out of habit, but the tired voice on the phone doesn’t have that information on her screen. Since the husband and wife were seventy-four and seventy-nine, respectively, and died a few years apart, it doesn’t seem of interest anyway.

  ‘What about children? Did they have any children living there at the time?’

  Hess asks because it’s possible siblings or foster-siblings might have stayed in touch, even if the parents were no longer alive.

  ‘Nope, not as far as I can see.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. Bye.’

  ‘Oh wait, hang on. They’d already fostered a child, and it looks like they adopted her. Rosa Petersen.’

  Hess is about to hang up when he registers what the voice has said. It could be a coincidence, and his instincts tell him there are thousands of people with that first name. But still.

  ‘Do you have an ID number for Rosa Petersen?’

  She gives him the number, and he asks her to hang on while he turns back to the computer. A moment later he’s checked the database and found that Rosa Petersen married fifteen years ago, changing her name to her husband’s, and he is no longer in any doubt: Rosa Petersen is Rosa Hartung. Hess fidgets in his seat.

  ‘What exactly does it say about the twins’ stay with the Petersen family?’

  ‘Nothing. All I can see is that the Petersens fostered them for about three months.’

  ‘Why not longer?’

  ‘Doesn’t say. And it’s about time I clocked off.’

  When the caseworker hangs up, Hess still has his phone to his ear. The twins had only spent three months in Odsherred with the Petersens and their adopted daughter, Rosa. Afterwards they’d been sent to the Ørum family on Møn. Hess knows no more than that, but he is certain this is the connection: the Petersens, the boy in the basement at Chestnut Farm, the chestnut men left with the victims, the victims mutilated to look like the dolls – a killer making his own chestnut man out of human body parts.

  Hess’s fingers quiver as the images whirl around in his head, trying to fall into place. It has all been about Rosa Hartung, right from the start. Again and again the fingerprints have led them in her direction, even though he hadn’t understood why, but this is what he’s been looking for. The insight jolts him to his feet, but then everything darkens when it suddenly dawns on him what is going to happen next.

  Immediately he phones Rosa Hartung. The dial tone is replaced by her voicemail, and Hess hangs up. He’s about to try again when he receives a call from an unknown number.

  ‘It’s Brink. Sorry if I’m interrupting. I’ve asked around, but no one really knows what became of the twins.’

  ‘That’s fine, Brink, I don’t have time right now.’

  Brink had offered to help Hess call around the community, and Hess had only agreed to get him out of the way, so it’s irritating that he’s calling back to report.

  ‘And there’s a dearth of information in the system, particularly when it comes to the boy. I just asked my sister’s youngest girl, who was at school with the twins, but she couldn’t get hold of them when the class held a school reunion a few years back.’

  ‘Brink, I need to run!’

  Hess hangs up and makes another call, standing impatiently by the computer, but Rosa Hartung still isn’t picking up. He leaves a message and decides to call her husband, but then he receives a text. At first he thinks it’s Rosa Hartung, but the text is from Brink.

  ‘Class photo of 5A from 1989. Don’t know if it’s of use. My niece says the girl must have been sick the day the picture was taken, but the boy’s the one on the far left.’

  Hess immediately clicks on the attached photo and surveys it. There are fewer than twenty students in the faded photograph, presumably because it’s a rural school. One row of pupils are standing up, another sit on chairs in front. They wear pastel colours; some of the girls have permed hair and shoulder pads, while the boys are in Reebok shoes and Kappa or Lacoste sweaters. In the front row sits a girl with large earrings, a sunbed tan and a small sign that reads ‘5A’, and most of the students are smiling at the camera as though someone, maybe the photographer, has just said something hilarious.

 
But once you catch sight of him, it’s the boy on the far left who grabs the viewer’s attention. He isn’t tall for his age. Not as developed as the other boys, in fact, and his clothes are scruffy and down-at-heel. But his eyes are piercing. He’s staring straight into the camera with an expressionless face, and it’s as though he’s the only one who hasn’t heard the joke.

  Hess stares at him. Hair, cheekbones, nose, chin, lips. All the features that change so radically during adolescence. Hess recognizes him, yet at the same time he doesn’t; and it is only when he zooms in and covers the boy’s face so only his eyes are visible that he can see who it is. He can see it, but it is as impossible as it is obvious. When comprehension dawns, his first thought is that it’s too late to fight back.

  108

  Her ankles are slender and delicate, perfectly suited to her high-heeled shoes, which he loves to watch at moments like this, when he lets her leave the press room first and walk ahead of him down the corridor. She turns and says something to him, and Nylander nods in acknowledgement, while in reality he is thinking how to begin the affair he’s already decided to have with her. The kick-off could easily be later today. Maybe he’ll offer her a coffee at one of the nearby hotel bars around the train station, so they can discuss the future. He’ll thank her for her efforts and waffle about her options as a communications consultant with the police, but if he’s taken the temperature correctly it won’t take much foreplay to get her up to one of the rooms for an hour or two before he has to go home and mix drinks for the usual Friday get-together his wife has organized. Nylander long ago made up his mind that he still loved his wife – at least, loved the idea of family life – but that his wife had plenty to do with the kids, the school council and the general façade, so he didn’t see anything amiss with secretly enjoying his freedom. And today, in particular, he can’t shake the feeling that he deserves a reward after the week he’s had.

  The final press conference is over, and they’ve at last finished presenting the case to the public – with the result Nylander wanted. Few people understand how fine a balancing act it is to come across as serious and credible in the media, but Nylander realized long ago how a well-judged public statement can be used to pave the way for other agendas, whether at the station, the prosecutor’s office or the Justice Ministry. He’d also sensed that his status internally grew with every passing minute he appeared on screens and media platforms. His critics have been put in their place, and he couldn’t care less if people think he’s pushed himself too far into the limelight. Personally he thinks he’s been generous with his praise for his team, especially Tim Jansen, although it wasn’t necessary to draw any attention to Hess or Thulin. Thulin found the severed limbs, of course, but on the other hand she’d defied him by going to see Linus Bekker, and this very morning he’d been thinking it would be nice to get her off his hands. Even to NC3. His department will soon be flooded with new resources, and he’ll probably be up to his ears in types like her – even if the odd little thing does have something special about her.

  Hess, on the other hand, he doesn’t have a good word to say about. He’s praised him to the skies, of course, in his conversation with some boss at Europol, but only to be rid of him. Hess hasn’t shown up at the station even once since the case was solved, and Nylander has had to ask Thulin and the others to write reports that were strictly Hess’s responsibility, so it’s good news the man is on his way out of the country. It’s a surprise, therefore, to find that Hess is calling his mobile phone.

  His first thought, obviously, is to reject the call, but then he realizes why Hess is calling, and suddenly he finds himself looking forward to the conversation. A few minutes earlier, a colleague informed him that a French man from Europol had called and asked whether anybody knew why Hess hadn’t shown up as agreed, but Nylander was barely listening. He didn’t care. Now, however, he imagines Hess explaining how he missed his flight to Bucharest, pleading with Nylander to call the Hague with some excuse and save his bacon. But Hess deserves to get the sack, and as Nylander picks up the phone he is merely wondering how he can make sure the guy doesn’t end up getting knocked back into his court.

  Three minutes and thirty-eight seconds later, the conversation is over. Its precise duration appears on the display, and Nylander stares at it apathetically. A yawning hole has opened beneath his feet. His brain is still protesting against the revelations Hess shared before he hung up, but deep down he knows they could be true. He becomes aware that the communications consultant with her sweet little mouth is still talking to him, but he breaks into a jog. Reaching the department, he grabs the nearest detective. Get the task force together. Get hold of Rosa Hartung. Now!

  109

  Steen Hartung is soaked with the snow that has again begun to fall in the suburban neighbourhood he is canvassing. The alcohol in the little bottles is the only thing keeping him warm, but he’s running out, and he reminds himself to stop by the petrol station on Bernstorffsvej. He trudges up yet another snow-smothered garden path, past yet another parade of snow-smothered Halloween pumpkins, and rings yet another doorbell. As he waits, he casts a brief glance over his shoulder at his footprints in the snow, and at the heavy white flakes swirling around the neighbourhood as though inside a snow globe. Some doors open, others don’t; judging by the wait, this would be a door that stayed shut. Yet just as he has turned and is beginning to walk down the steps, he hears the door behind him open. The eyes that meet his are familiar. Though it’s a stranger, Steen feels he recognizes the man. But he’s tired, he’s been trudging for hours without result, and exhaustion makes him doubt himself. Somewhere inside he has become aware the sole purpose of his search is to alleviate the pain he feels. He studies maps and plans and knocks on doors, but in his heart of hearts he’s begun to grasp that it’s all for nothing.

  To the eyes in the doorway he begins to stammer out why he’s come. First he outlines the situation, then explains his hope that the man might be able to remember anything, anything at all, from the afternoon of 18 October last year, when his daughter might have cycled through the neighbourhood down exactly this street. Steen accompanies his words with a photo of his daughter, whose face by now is damp with snowflakes, her colours running like smeared mascara. Yet before Steen can finish, the man at the door shakes his head. Steen hesitates a moment and tries again, but the man shakes his head a second time, making to shut the door, and suddenly Steen loses control.

  ‘I remember seeing you before. Who are you? I know I’ve seen you!’

  There is mistrust in Steen’s voice, almost as though he’s recognized a suspect, and he puts his foot in the door so the man can’t close it.

  ‘I remember you too. It’s not that strange. You rang my doorbell on Monday and asked exactly the same questions.’

  It takes Steen a moment to realize the man is right. Mortified, he hears himself apologizing as he backs away from the doorstep and towards the road. Behind him he hears the man asking if he’s all right, but Steen doesn’t reply. He runs through the white maelstrom of snow and doesn’t stop until he reaches the car at the end of the street, where he slips and has to grab the bonnet so as not to fall. He wedges himself into the front seat and bursts into tears, sitting in the gloom of the blanketed car, sobbing like a child. His phone starts to vibrate in his inside pocket, but he ignores it. Only when it crosses his mind that it might be Gustav does he force his hand to find the phone and realizes he has numerous missed calls. Instantly he is afraid. He picks up, but it isn’t Gustav calling. It’s the au-pair, and Steen’s first instinct is to hang up without a word. But Alice is saying something about needing to find Rosa straight away – something is wrong. It isn’t clear what she means, but the words ‘chestnut men’ and ‘police’ thrust him out of one nightmare on that suburban street and into another.

  110

  The three police vans, sirens blaring, clear the road of traffic. Nylander is sitting in the convoy of cars behind them, and the whole way out of the cit
y he racks his brains for another connection besides the one Hess has put forward on the phone. He returns his gaze again and again to the picture of the school class Hess has texted him, and although he recognizes the childish face on the far left, he can’t quite believe it.

  Just before they arrive, the sirens are switched off to avoid alerting the suspect, and when the vans draw up outside the building of the Forensics Department, they split up as agreed. Within forty-five seconds the place is surrounded, and as the first curious people start watching from the windows in the cube-like building, Nylander wades through the snow towards the main entrance, where nothing appears out of the ordinary. There is soft muzak playing in the reception area, and people are exchanging weekend plans with colleagues over the fruit basket on the desk. When the accommodating, lemon-perfumed receptionist tells them Genz is in a hurriedly arranged meeting in his lab, Nylander begins inwardly cursing himself for having listened to Hess and raised the alarm.

  Ignoring the blue plastic overshoes on offer because of the weather, and as lab coat-wearing techs glance up curiously from their glass-walled workstations, Nylander and three detectives march towards the laboratory, which he so often visited whenever he wanted to reassure himself that evidence was in fact as described in reports or telephone conversations.