by Chris Ould
“Oh yeh, no doubt about that.”
“Okay, I’ll come out. Just leave everything as it is and try to keep the damn firemen from doing anything they don’t need to. I’ll be with you— I don’t know, as soon as I can. Okay?”
“Okay, thanks, Hjalti.”
Hentze rang off and stood for a moment to gather himself. He needed to wake up and he contemplated taking a shower, but he knew the noise of the pump would disturb Sóleyg. He settled instead for scrubbing tepid water on his face in the basin and brushing his teeth. Afterwards he crept back to the bedroom. It was harder to see in the dark now that he’d been in the light, but he managed to locate his clothes on the chair. He didn’t dress but made for the door again.
“Are you going out?” Sóleyg asked, voice blurred from sleep.
“Yeh, to a fire. Go back to sleep. I’ll call you at breakfast time if I’m not back.”
“Is anyone hurt?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He leaned down and kissed her on the soft warmness of her upturned cheek. “Go back to sleep.”
* * *
The only other vehicles on the road were a few Samskip and Blue Water trucks moving containers between Tórshavn and Klaksvík. The previous day’s mist had been cleared by the rain and a westerly breeze in the evening, but now it was still and clear again and occasionally Hentze got a view of the moon between the dark peaks of the mountain valleys. Not a bad time of the day to be out and about, although it was a long time since he’d worked shifts. Except for Fridays and Saturdays this time of the night was generally peaceful.
He had the radio on but turned low. He sipped from a Thermos mug of coffee and thought back over yesterday and whether he’d lost more than he’d gained by getting himself thrown off the Sivertsen case.
He’d known it was a provocative strategy to try and show that Erla had been involved with the security services, but in some ways he supposed he could count the move as a success. There was no longer any doubt that Erla Sivertsen had been involved in some sort of clandestine activity, but whether that proved it was related to her murder was another matter.
At least Remi Syderbø now knew that there should be a new light on the case, but if the man Munk was able to call the shots and effectively ban any further investigation of the Alliance, what then? If Remi’s hands were tied, what good did it do?
It stank. National security or not, in Hentze’s view the interference of people with the apparent authority to suppress the truth – or at least, the seeking of truth – couldn’t be right. Without transparency how was anyone to know that the interference was justified? And besides, who were the Danes to say that their concerns trumped those of the Faroes? Such attitudes put wind in the sails of the independence movement, of which Hentze didn’t count himself a member, but still…
All of which was why he’d asked Annika to check on the car used by the man at Hoyvík. Not so much in the expectation of learning anything of merit, but in order to show – if only to himself – that he hadn’t been entirely cowed by the order to leave things alone.
Of course, Annika being Annika, she had gone further than he’d wanted; not only finding out that the car was a rental, but also getting details of the hirer. Hentze hoped there’d be no comeback from that, especially as the information took him no further. The car had been rented to a Dane called Lund with a Copenhagen address but there was no way to check beyond that without alerting Munk to the fact that he was checking. And in any event, he knew Lund’s details were probably false.
So there it was. He had been stopped and he could see no way, short of direct and certainly futile disobedience, to go forward. Leave it to others, he told himself; leave it to Remi and Berg to fight it out – or not. It had been taken out of his hands, but it still stank.
It took him just over an hour to reach the turn-off from route 70 for Múli and then he drove more cautiously because the track was uneven and full of potholes, and because the road edges were unmarked. It wasn’t until he had passed the halfway point and rounded an outcrop of land that he finally saw the lights from the fire trucks in the distance: points of brilliance, but still small and some way below.
When the rough gravel track finally gave out and became nothing but a pair of ruts Hentze drove until he found a flat patch of ground, then pulled the car on to it, out of the way. From the passenger seat he picked up a long Maglite torch, then took a pair of surgical gloves from the box in the glove compartment. He didn’t bother with anything else. There’d be time enough for evidence-gathering later, once he’d assessed the scene.
Using the Maglite he followed the track until the torch became unnecessary in the lights of the emergency vehicles. He passed a police patrol car, pulled on to the verge, and then the line of fire trucks – three of them, nose to tail – brought up short of the buildings by the narrowness of the path.
The burned house was on the higher side of the track. There were no living flames in what remained of the building by now. The semi-acrid smell of damp smoke mixed with burned plastic infused the air, and grey wisps of smoke caught the spotlights as they rose from charred wood, waiting to be doused by the last two firefighters still damping the structure down.
Hentze navigated carefully over the red hoses that snaked underfoot until he had passed all the vehicles and found Officer Karl Atli Árting with the chief fire officer – a large man called Jónas Simonsen, the only professional amongst the volunteer firefighters. They exchanged greetings, then turned to look at the house.
“Is there any indication of how it started?” Hentze asked.
“No, there’s no way to tell at the moment,” Simonsen said. “It’ll have to wait for daylight. The victim’s on the first floor, the room to the left.”
“Can I have a look?”
“From a ladder, yeh, I think so. I’ll get someone to fix one up for you.”
“Thanks.”
Simonsen trudged off and Hentze looked to Karl Atli, a wiry little man, despite the bulk of his police uniform. “Who called it in, do you know?”
“Someone from Viðareiði, I think,” Karl Atli said. “They saw the flames across the sound.” He gestured along the track. “There’s a car parked back there, beyond the last shed. I’ve checked on the owner. It’s a Boas Eli Justesen from Fuglafjørður.”
The name surprised Hentze. “Justesen? Are you sure?”
“Yes. Why?”
Hentze shook his head. “No, nothing. Someone mentioned his name the other day regarding something else, that’s all. I think he owns this property.”
“Yeh? Well the body could be him then: his car, his house. That’d make sense.”
Hentze nodded. “Could you do me a favour and ask a patrol car to check on Justesen’s home and see if he’s there?”
While Karl Atli went off to do that Simonsen came back to say that a ladder was in place, and he and Hentze made their way towards the house. Against the darkness and with the stark shadows cast by the floodlights there was an illusion that the upper storeys might still be there, just not illuminated. It wasn’t until Hentze looked more carefully that he realised that between the stone gable ends where the upper floors would have been there was, in fact, a void. On the right-hand side a blackened chimneystack and a few vertical timbers remained; to the left a single sheet of roofing tin clung to a gable end. The rest of the roof had collapsed and now its sheets lay scattered and overleafed with each other, sometimes caught on beams or masonry.
The ladder was propped against the stone wall of the undercroft with a firefighter to steady it. Hentze unfastened his coat, gripped the Maglite and climbed the rungs carefully until his head was about a metre above the lower wall. He paused for a moment to change his grip, then shone the torch in, illuminating the charred remains of the floorboards.
“It’s over to the right,” Simonsen called up. “About halfway back.”
Hentze shifted the torch and then saw the shape of a head and shoulders, an arched back and the rigid angle of a
n arm. For the moment he was glad the body was facing away from him, though the cindered remains of hair adhering to the browned skin over the skull were enough to forewarn him of what the body would look like.
He adjusted his stance on the ladder, prompting an immediate call from Simonsen below. “Don’t go any further.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t intend to.”
Hentze swept the torch beam across the space for a last look, then started down the ladder. “What can we do about examination and recovery of the body?” he asked Simonsen when he was on the ground again.
“Nothing until we’ve done a proper assessment of the structure and decided what we need to make safe. The floor’s not so good and the gable walls could collapse.”
“So, the morning at the earliest?”
“At the earliest.”
Which meant that there was nothing Hentze or anyone else could usefully do now, so after instructing Karl Atli to stay at the scene until someone from the day shift took over, Hentze turned his car round on the narrow track and set off for home.
Halfway there he got a call from Rúni Jensen to say that Boas Justesen wasn’t at home, but had been seen by his tenants leaving the house in his car at about nine o’clock the previous evening. Hentze thanked Rúni and decided that on the balance of probabilities, it was likely to be Boas Justesen’s body in the ruins of the house. Which meant that tomorrow – today – things might be simpler when it came to identification. Simpler was good.
41
HENTZE AWOKE TO SÓLEYG’S HAND ON HIS SHOULDER. IT WAS just after seven – already late by his standards – so he didn’t bother to rush. Instead he showered, dressed in a better selection of clothes than he’d grabbed in the dark, then ate breakfast with Sóleyg. It wasn’t something they usually did during the week, which made it a pleasant change.
He’d arrived back in Hvítanes just as the faintest light was starting to show in the sky: too early to start the day, too late to get a good night’s sleep. He let himself into the house quietly, found a blanket in the linen cupboard and wrapped himself in it, still clothed, to try and catch at least a little more sleep on the sofa. But his brain had refused to shut down and he was plagued by images and disconnected thoughts to the point where he was ready to admit defeat and get up again. The next thing he knew, Sóleyg was gently shaking him.
After breakfast he drove to the station. It was eight thirty by then and he was aware that there was still a certain wilfulness in refusing to hurry. In fact, he wondered if his deliberate break from routine was really a way of thumbing his nose at Andrias Berg. Not that Berg would even notice. Still, to Hentze it seemed as if he’d crossed some kind of Rubicon in the last twenty-four hours. The only question now was where did he go from here?
On Thursdays it was usual for CID to have a morning meeting, but when Hentze strolled down the third-floor corridor the conference room was empty. He doubted that he’d missed the whole thing, so he guessed that it had been cancelled or postponed, which probably meant that Remi Syderbø and Ári Niclasen were otherwise engaged. This turned out to be the case when he got to his office – after a diversion to make coffee – and checked his email inbox. There was a round-robin email from Ári saying the usual meeting had been postponed until tomorrow. No explanation.
For ten minutes or so, Hentze occupied himself with the routine housekeeping tasks presented by the overnight and early morning emails and then he called Jónas Simonsen to ask about the state of the building at Múli.
“I know you need to get in there to remove the body,” Simonsen said. “So I’ve got the boys to support the floor as best we can. To be honest, though, the whole structure’s pretty unstable. I wouldn’t want to vouch for the walls in a strong wind.”
“Is it windy there at the moment?”
“No, it’s quite calm.”
“Okay, in that case I’ll come out as soon as I’ve got the equipment I’ll need. I’ll see you in about an hour.”
During the call Remi Syderbø had opened the door. He had a manila folder tucked under one arm and Hentze could guess what it might contain.
“You’re going out?” Remi asked as Hentze hung up the phone.
“There was a fire at Múli last night. One dead. The building was too unsafe to recover the body but it should be okay now.”
“Yeh, I saw the log,” Remi said. Clearly this wasn’t the reason for his visit. He took a step further in and half closed the door.
“We have the first set of results from the technical lab,” he said, touching the folder under his arm.
“Good, it’s about time.” Hentze drank the last of his coffee: just the dregs, more or less cold.
“Would you like to know what they said?”
Hentze shook his head. “It’s not my concern.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Hjalti, don’t sulk,” Remi said irritably. “I’m not— Don’t tell me you aren’t interested.”
“Of course I’m interested,” Hentze acknowledged. He put his mug down. “Can I speak freely?”
“I thought you already were.”
Hentze ignored the tone. “Yesterday Andrias Berg made it very clear that I’m not to be involved with the Erla Sivertsen investigation, which is fine. But in that case you shouldn’t come in here like a quay hen, flashing your legs and asking if I’m interested. The security services man, Munk, said there had been enough silly games. I agree. So, if you don’t mind I’ll stick to investigating the fire and the body at Múli. Unless you’d like me to leave that alone, too; which would also be fine, and in that case I’ll go back to the burglaries in Klaksvík because God knows I’ve seen enough bodies recently.”
For a second or two Remi Syderbø’s eyes hardened behind the lenses of his glasses and it seemed as if he might finally react to this uncharacteristic diatribe. In the end, though, he opted for a stiff nod.
“All right, then,” he said. “You’d better carry on with the fire investigation and let me know what you’ve got at the end of the day. In the meantime it will be common knowledge soon anyway, so you might as well know now that Ári’s on his way to Sandoy to re-arrest Finn Sólsker. When he gets back Finn will be charged with Erla Sivertsen’s murder, based on the forensic results.”
Hentze considered that for a moment, then said, “I see. Thank you for telling me.”
“Believe me, it was no pleasure,” Remi Syderbø said, then he turned and left Hentze’s office. The manila file stayed under his arm.
Had he gone too far, Hentze wondered. Probably. Still, it was another mark of the line he had crossed that he felt no regret. Some things should be said. Some things should not be left to pass. Maybe he had caught Jan Reyná’s disease.
* * *
On the ferry from Gamlarætt, Dánjal Michelsen watched the most southerly point of the island of Hestur go past the window. Wisps of grey cloud licked down the slope towards Skútin, and Dánjal ran through a mental list of the birdlife it was possible to see there. Bird watching was something he greatly enjoyed. He was not enjoying anything else about this trip: not the reason for it, and certainly not Ári Niclasen’s company. The only thing to be grateful for was the fact that Ári seemed to have more than enough tasks to occupy himself on his iPhone.
Dánjal knew that ever since they’d brought Høgni Joensen in for questioning, Ári had come to view him with some mistrust. Rightly so. Dánjal had had no great faith in Ári’s judgement since the Tummas Gramm case, but after seeing him bully Høgni as he had, Dánjal had lost what little respect he’d had left for his boss. If Hjalti hadn’t warned him against it he would have taken it further – to Remi – and now that Hjalti had been dumped off the case Dánjal was left feeling isolated and uncertain.
Because of this he’d said little during the case conference in the incident room when Remi and Ári discussed the forensic reports. DNA sequencing had matched the semen found during Erla Sivertsen’s post-mortem to Finn Sólsker, so there was no doubt that Finn had had sexual relations with Erla
shortly before her death. In light of his constant denials of this, Finn must now be viewed as an even more likely suspect in her death. That was Ári’s strongly made contention – why else would Finn lie so persistently? And in the absence of any contradictory evidence, Remi Syderbø had concurred, so now Dánjal and Ári were on their way to re-arrest Finn.
But Dánjal wasn’t happy. It wasn’t that he disagreed with the evidence, but he had doubts about Ári’s conclusion. Sure, Finn must have been having an affair with Erla, but did that mean he’d killed her? Dánjal didn’t think so and he wondered if either Remi or Ári had ever cheated on their wives. He thought not. Ári wasn’t imaginative enough and Remi was too cold a fish. But Dánjal had, and it was something that still filled him with shame.
It had happened three years ago, on two consecutive nights while he’d been in Denmark for training. Thank God the woman he’d shared those nights with had not turned out to be a home wrecker. He hadn’t heard from her since, but when he thought of what might have happened, Dánjal still got cold sweats. He could have lost his wife, kids and home for the sake of a couple of fucks.
So his unfaithfulness was a secret he’d take to his grave. Even if he was accused of murder he wasn’t sure he would admit to an alibi of adulterous sex. All of which meant that Dánjal understood why Finn Sólsker might deny an affair with Erla Sivertsen, even when told he was suspected of killing her. And in Dánjal’s estimation what that denial didn’t do was place Finn’s guilt beyond doubt as Ári Niclasen seemed to think that it did.
Once the ferry docked at Skopun it took less than ten minutes to drive to Sandur, slowing down on the narrow streets through the village, avoiding a couple of wandering dogs as they descended the concrete ramp to the harbourside.
Finn Sólsker’s boat, the Kári Edith, was moored beyond the fish-processing building at the far end of the quay, between a larger steel vessel and the ferry Sildberin, which made the infrequent journey to Skúgvoy. Dánjal brought the car to a halt a few metres from the edge of the quay and almost before he’d switched off the ignition Ári Niclasen was opening his door.
