by Chris Ould
“Someone kills her because of that?” He shook his head. “These people are vegetarians.”
I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did.
“Yeh, well, you know what I mean,” he said, slightly embarrassed. “But okay, for the moment, let’s say Oddur is correct and Erla Sivertsen is an informant for the Danes. Someone in the Alliance finds this out and she is killed. Okay. But if that is true it would mean that the person who knows most would be the person she works for – her controller. So why has he not made himself known to us? Even in private, why not say this is what I know?”
I shrugged. “I’ve only known a couple of people who worked undercover. They were pretty close-mouthed about it, even afterwards. Have you asked anyone higher up about it?”
“Yeh, I asked Remi Syderbø. He says he doesn’t know of anything like that.”
“So you’re stuck between a conspiracy theory you can’t prove and a suspect you don’t think is guilty.”
“Yeh, it looks like it.” He sounded unhappy.
I sat down again. “What’s your main worry?” I asked. “That Finn will be charged with something he didn’t do, or that the real culprit gets away?”
“Both, of course,” he said without hesitation. “But also that we won’t find the truth because we are not looking in the right places. I don’t say that Oddur is correct with his conspiracy theories, but I know – it’s my feeling – that something is hidden, and if that is true we cannot wait a long time to find out. In a month, maybe, when the Alliance have left and the Danes also go, then how are we left?”
He was right, I knew that. If Erla’s death was tied to some kind of undercover work then the chances of resolving it would disappear as soon as the Danes pulled out, maybe even before. If an undercover operation goes wrong you don’t want to shout about it; instead you clean house, remove the evidence and depart as quietly as you can. It wouldn’t be their problem if they left the Faroese police with an unsolved or unsolvable case. That’s what Hentze was worried about; that and the possibility that, without any other suspect, Finn Sólsker might be left to carry the can.
We sat there in silence for a minute or so. My beer bottle was empty and so was his coffee mug. I stood up.
“Another?”
“Nei, takk.”
I headed for the kitchen. “You know, there is one way to set the cat amongst the pigeons – to stir things up,” I called into the other room as I flipped the cap off another beer.
“Yeh? What’s that?”
“Send another text message – another meeting code – as if it’s from Erla.”
There was no reply so I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, but when I went back to the sitting room he was frowning. “What would that do?” he asked. “They know she’s dead, so it can’t be from her.”
“No, of course not. That’s not the point. You’d be sending a signal. You’d be saying, ‘I know what you’re up to.’ And if you send it from a number they can’t trace or they don’t know, then they’re going to worry about who’s sniffing around and why. That might flush somebody out.”
“To come to a meeting?”
“Why not? You said you knew one of the locations she used, right?”
“Yeh, Hoyvík, we think.”
“Okay, so you send a text, then set up an obbo – surveillance – and keep watch. If no one turns up you’re no worse off, but if they do come maybe you’ll find out what you’re dealing with.” I gestured with my bottle, then took a pull. “In fact, if you want, I’ll send the text and go to Hoyvík to see who shows up. All you have to do is watch.”
He gave a dry laugh. “You want to be there for bait?”
“Nah, I’d just be an innocent tourist doing a bit of sightseeing. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”
He gave me the vaguely troubled look he reserved for moments when he realised we weren’t so much alike. Even so, he didn’t dismiss the suggestion out of hand, and now I realised I was hoping he wouldn’t. In my head I’d latched on to the idea with the same infatuation you get for some notions after five or six drinks. The fact I was only on my second beer didn’t seem relevant.
“Let me think about it,” Hentze said, then scrubbed at the side of his head in vexation. “This secret stuff – all whispers and closed doors – I don’t like it. I wish for straightforward crime, so you know where you are.”
“So make it straightforward.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “Yeh, maybe you’re right to say it,” he said. “Maybe that’s what we need.”
He considered that conclusion for a moment longer then slapped his hands on his knees in a decisive manner. “I should be going,” he said, as if he’d reached the end of the road. “Thank you for your ideas.”
He pushed himself out of the chair and I walked him to the door. I wasn’t sure anything I’d said had been much use. Sometimes it doesn’t matter, though; all you need is a sounding board and Hentze did seem a little less burdened as he went up the steps. If he was I’d at least done one useful thing that day.
* * *
I’d lost the impetus to cook, so I made a sandwich to go with the second beer. I ate in front of the TV and an impenetrable Danish current affairs programme about wind farms, and let my thoughts wander until it was either have another drink or do something else. I chose something else: the grown-up alternative.
It was pretty dark and the chilly wind hadn’t eased off as I crossed the paved yard to Fríða’s door. I was in the habit of knocking and walking in, so that’s what I did. I called out, though, and I heard Fríða’s voice from beyond the kitchen.
She was working in the small room that served as her study, off the sitting room with a window that – in daylight – had a view over the beach. The room was barely eight feet by eight: one wall of books, a desk and a laptop illuminated by an expensive-looking Anglepoise. The only thing not scrupulously tidied away was the pad of paper she was referring to as she typed. Upstairs I could hear the faint sound of bass from Matteus’s room.
I stood in the open doorway because there wasn’t space for two in the room.
“Hey,” she said with a slightly distracted smile. Her head wasn’t fully out of what she’d been doing. “Was that Hjalti Hentze’s car I saw by the road?”
“Yeah, he came for coffee.”
“Just coffee?”
“He likes someone to tell him he’s wrong, just so he knows he isn’t,” I said. Then, “You know they released Finn?”
“Yeh, Hjalti called me. I think he was afraid Finn wouldn’t let me know.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he’s proud.” She shrugged, still upbeat. “Anyway, I called him and he sounded okay. He was going home. He said all he wanted was a shower and some sleep now it was over.”
I couldn’t tell whether she knew that Finn had only been released because the forensic samples had gone missing and not because he’d been ruled out as a suspect, but I didn’t think so. Telling her would have been the honest thing to do, but I didn’t particularly want to be the one to put a dampener on her mood at this point. If Finn hadn’t told her I didn’t see that it was my place to speak up.
“What?” she asked then, because I’d gone quiet.
“No, nothing,” I said and shifted in the doorway. “If you’re working I’ll leave you alone. I just thought I’d say hey.”
“No, that’s okay. I would have called to see you anyway. Do you feel like going out?”
“Now?”
She shook her head. “Tomorrow evening. I have an invitation for a charity event.” She searched for a word. “An auction of art. It’s at the Nordic House, with drinks and canapés. I thought you might like to go with me.”
“Sounds a bit upmarket,” I said. “I’m not sure I’ve got the wardrobe for it – not here, anyway. I had to borrow a jacket from Hjalti for the funeral, remember?”
“Yeh, but this will be casual – perhaps not so casual,” she amended with a glance a
t my sweater. “Jeans and a jacket would be fine, though.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then. I’d like that. What time?”
“We can leave here at seven.”
“Okay, I’ll be ready.”
It seemed a good point to leave her in peace, but I remembered the thing I’d come over to ask.
I said, “Before I forget, do you know anyone I could pay to do some research and translation for me?”
“I can translate something if you have it.”
“I don’t know if there is anything yet. I wanted someone to trawl through the newspaper archives to see if there are any articles about a commune at Múli. Someone who can think for themselves would be good: follow up a lead if they find one.”
She didn’t ask why, but maybe she’d guessed. “This is the Faroese newspapers you mean?”
“Yeah, although I suppose there might be some Danish, too.”
Fríða thought for a moment, then said, “Yeh, I might know someone who could do that. Her name is Tove Hald, but I’m not sure if she’s still on the Faroes or has gone back to Denmark. She’s a student in Copenhagen: very bright. I know her parents from when I was there: Ralf is Danish, Maibritt is Faroese.”
“Sounds as if she’d be ideal,” I said. “Could you find out if she’d be interested? I don’t think it would take her too long – a few hours. Would a hundred and twenty krónur an hour be fair?”
“Yeh, I think so. Let me find out if she’s here.”
“Okay, takk.”
I said goodnight then and left her to work, but about twenty minutes later she sent me an email to say Tove Hald was in the Faroes for a few more days and would be happy to do the research I wanted. She’d given her my number and she would call me tomorrow.
I sent back a takk fyri and went to weigh up my wardrobe, such as it was. I already suspected it would come up wanting on the smart-casual front, and so it proved. I ought to do better, if only for Fríða’s sake, I decided. Why not?
34
Wednesday/mikudagur
MAKE IT STRAIGHTFORWARD, AS REYNÁ HAD SAID; THAT’S what he’d decided to do. Cut away all the entanglements and unnecessary complications and go back to the beginning with a cold eye.
Alone in the office next to the incident room, Hentze had his head propped on his hand as he read through the transcribed interviews with the AWCA personnel. These were the actual statements as noted down by the interviewing officers, rather than the bare, collated details. If there was something they’d missed, it would be here: something that had not been abstracted because it had seemed unnecessary or spurious; something overlooked in the pressure of the moment, but which would stand out when he saw it: a coincidence of names, times, locations or activity; perhaps just an off-kilter remark.
That was what he hoped, but it was still a tedious task after three cups of coffee and most of the statements were repetitious in their vagueness. “I was with X, Y or Z… I think we left about six thirty… I don’t think I’d seen her since Thursday…”
It was to be expected because people have less than perfect recall, but still, Hentze read with attention. So far there was nothing. He occasionally made a note of a name or a place, but mostly he just read.
Not long after nine he reached the end of the statements, just as Remi Syderbø came looking for him.
“There’s good news,” Remi said. “The original forensic samples have been tracked down at Kastrup. Apparently they’d been wrongly directed to a cargo handling area – something like that. Anyway, the important thing is that they’re now on their way to the technical lab and I’ve requested that they be dealt with as a matter of urgency, so perhaps later today we’ll at least have something to move things forward.”
“That would be nice.”
Perhaps because his response didn’t seem sufficiently enthused, Remi cocked an eyebrow and gestured at the desk. “What are you working on?”
“The statements from the Alliance people.”
That got a deeper frown. “I thought we’d been through them.”
“I didn’t think it would hurt to look again. They were the people Erla had most contact with. In fact, she doesn’t seem to have spent much time away from them, which I think is a bit strange given that she had friends and family here. She hadn’t been to see her parents for three weeks, for example.”
“Well, if she was working… And they do live on Suðuroy.”
“Yes, that’s true, but I also keep wondering why she chose to live at the Alliance house when she could have used her own flat. The tenant, Ruth Guttesen, works away half the time and she told me she’d suggested that they share the place, but Erla wanted to stay at the house on Fjalsgøta. I just think that’s strange, unless she had some particular reason to do so.”
“Like what?”
Hentze hesitated, but only briefly before deciding to take the bull by the horns. “Oddur has a theory that Erla may have had some role with the intelligence service.”
“Really?” Remi did a good job of looking surprised and dubious at the same time. “Why?”
“Because there are some strange text messages on the phone card we found in her car. He thinks they’re a code of some sort.”
“Didn’t Oddur also have a theory about CIA involvement in 9/11?”
“Yeh, he probably spends too much time on the internet,” Hentze acknowledged. “But even so, this does look odd. And there’s still the matter of the unknown man Erla met with at Kaldbak the day she died. When you consider that, together with the attempt to make her death seem sexually motivated or even related to the anti-whaling protest…”
“It still seems a little fanciful to me,” Remi said. “Although maybe not for Oddur.” He clearly meant this to be enough to write off the idea, but Hentze didn’t choose to take it that way.
“Do you know if there is a security service presence with the Danish contingent?” he asked. “It might only be one man.”
Remi made a moue. “To do what? I can’t imagine that an organisation like the Alliance is seen as much of a threat to national security, especially when they’re all the way out here. They’re a pain in our arse, but why would the Danes care about that? If it was a G20 summit meeting in Copenhagen they were disrupting, then the security services would take an interest, but over a few whales? I doubt it very much.”
“Even though we originally thought there could be mass protests – hundreds of people on the beaches?”
“Which clearly hasn’t happened.” Remi shook his head. “Listen, I’m not saying some people weren’t jumpy when we first heard about all this, but it’s been pretty clear for some time that the Alliance talk big but deliver very little. How many volunteers and members have they got here – about forty? Hardly an army. So if there had been any covert interest in them I think it would have evaporated by now.”
He shifted and looked at the whiteboards, as if he’d tired of the subject and was ready to get things back on track.
“Listen, Oddur can amuse himself with his theories, but in his free time. It’s okay to be thorough, but I think he’s chasing a barren cow, especially as it’s agreed that – pending the Technical reports – Finn Sólsker is still the prime suspect.”
“Agreed?” Hentze asked. “By who? When?”
“Hjalti…” Remi said with a mildly reproachful air.
“You know what I mean,” Hentze said, discovering that he was suddenly unwilling to give ground. “If Finn is the prime suspect – and I’m not saying he shouldn’t be – but if he is, then why is Ári giving people like Høgni Joensen a grilling? Was it just to fill the time? It can’t be both ways. If we’re convinced Finn is guilty, why pursue anyone else? And if we’re not, then surely we should be looking at all possibilities, even Oddur’s.”
As much as this was an indictment of Ári Niclasen, Hentze knew it could also be taken as one of Remi Syderbø for failing to keep Ári in check. He waited to see how Remi would take it,
not caring much either way. He was spoiling for a fight, he realised.
For a moment Syderbø seemed troubled by Hentze’s uncharacteristic intransigence. Not that Hentze couldn’t be stubborn, but usually he was far more subtle about it.
“Listen,” Remi said in a conciliatory tone. “We both know that we need the Technical reports, either to confirm that we’re going in the right direction, or to show us that we’re not. Until we get them I don’t think there’s much to be gained by anyone chasing shadows.” He made a gesture to show he was including the absent Ári in this. “We should have something from the lab soon, but until then I’m scaling back on the incident room staff. Ári, Dánjal and Sonja can handle it for the moment. Meanwhile we have the Alliance arrests from yesterday to finish processing and I’d like you to make sure we haven’t been overlooking the more normal cases in the midst of all this. Those burglaries in Klaksvík you were talking about, for example.”
The same burglaries Remi had been quick to dismiss the other day, Hentze remembered, but he nodded as if Remi had made a valid point and he’d accepted it. “Okay, if that’s what you think best. I’ll go through the log and make sure we’re not falling behind.”
“Thanks. It would help.”
* * *
“Want to hear something strange?” Jósef Dimon asked, coming in from the fire escape after a smoke and finding Hentze in the kitchen stirring his fourth coffee.
“Strange how?”
“Peculiar,” Dimon said. “You know that operation I was talking about yesterday – the one that got cancelled? Well, I got annoyed about it, so I called a guy from the Copenhagen drugs squad. His lead set the whole thing up, so I thought he might know what had happened. Anyway, long story short, they were told to lay off.”
“By who?”
“Yeh, well that’s it. Officially, the drugs squad commander decided that they didn’t have enough information to justify the operation. This is after at least two weeks’ preparation, remember. Unofficially, the word is that the security services told them to close it down because it crossed with something they already had in place. And security always takes precedence, of course.” He pulled a face. “Anyway, this is bullshit because Eric knows the guys we were targeting went right ahead and did what we expected them to do. They sent a shipment through, but because we’d been stood down, there was no one to drop the net when they did.”
