by Chris Ould
Giving the news of Boas Justesen’s death over the phone wasn’t ideal, but as it turned out there was no great emotion from the woman. She was Justesen’s great-niece, it transpired, and she’d had no contact with him since she was a little girl. Her greatest concern was whether she would be required to pay for the funeral, on which matter Hentze couldn’t help. When he rang off it felt to him that Boas Justesen had been even more alone in the world than he’d imagined before.
He drove back to Tórshavn under a prematurely dark sky and by the time he pulled in to the hospital car park it reflected his mood.
“I haven’t got anything for you,” Elisabet Hovgaard said when she saw him coming along the corridor. She meant regarding Justesen, Hentze guessed. “I’ll X-ray his teeth for an ID and circulate the pictures, but at this time of day I wouldn’t expect any of the dental community to respond till tomorrow.”
“Is someone coming out to do the forensic PM?”
“Yeh, it’ll be Eric this time. Anders has gone off us, I think.”
“Oh? Why?”
“He seems to think he’s being blamed for misplacing the samples from the Sivertsen autopsy.”
“Not by me.”
“No, well, you know what he’s like.”
By now they were at Elisabet’s office and Hentze followed her inside. It was as any normal hospital office, save for a rocking chair in the corner containing more than a dozen stuffed toys.
“Are you in a hurry? For the PM, I mean,” Elisabet asked.
“Have I any need to be?”
Elisabet shrugged. “I haven’t given him more than a cursory look. I can tell you he’s dead and there’s a rope around his neck. That’s about it. Are you treating it as suspicious?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Haven’t you got enough on your plate already?”
Hentze chose to leave it as a rhetorical question. Instead of replying he fished out the bag of drugs he’d taken from Boas Justesen’s house. “Can you tell me what these are for?” he asked. “They were in Justesen’s bathroom, plus a lot more.” He handed her the bag and she examined the labels through the plastic.
“Well, oxocodone is a very strong pain killer and heparin is to prevent DVT… With the rest I’d say he may have had cancer.”
“Can you check his records?”
Elisabet Hovgaard hesitated for a second, but seemed to intuit that Hentze was not having the best of days. “Hold on,” she said.
After a little faffing around to enter the hospital database and then find the appropriate records she examined the results, chewing on the cap of a pen.
“Well, assuming that your body is Boas Justesen then yes, he was being treated for inoperable cancer of the liver. Terminal.”
“Any idea how long he had?”
“You can never be sure. At a guess, six months.”
“That might explain why he strung himself up then,” Hentze reflected. “Better that than six months just getting worse on your own.”
Hovgaard gave him a look under the angle of her fringe. “Are you feeling sorry for him or yourself?”
“For myself? I haven’t got cancer, unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“So why the face like a cod on the line?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Well, there’s one thing that might cheer you up. Your body in there is Boas Eli Justesen.” She tapped the screen. “It says in his record that he’s missing the lower joint of two fingers on his left hand and all his little finger. So is your corpse. Accident at sea twenty-two years ago.”
“Really? I never noticed.”
“That’s not like you. Anyway, it means we can dispense with the dental X-rays for identification. Doesn’t that make you feel better?”
“Not much, but thanks.”
* * *
As Hentze was on his way back to the station – having run out of reasons to stay away, he realised – Sóleyg called him to say that she was going to see Martha and the kids. She was on her way to catch the five fifteen ferry.
“Oh, okay,” Hentze said, trying to sound casual. “Any reason?”
“Of course there’s a reason,” Sóleyg said. “Haven’t you heard about Finn? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you. I don’t think—” What didn’t he think? That it was serious? That Finn was guilty? Neither of these would stand up to scrutiny. “I don’t think you should stay too long,” he said, knowing it was feeble.
“I’ll see when I get there,” Sóleyg replied. In her voice there was something of the determined streak she’d once been known for – something Hentze hadn’t heard for a long time. “Mar will need help with the kids anyway. I’ll stay as long as she wants me to.”
“Sure, okay,” Hentze said. “Will you let me know when you’re coming back, though?”
“Of course.”
“Give Martha my love, then.”
“I will.”
He rang off and wondered for a moment if he shouldn’t divert to the ferry. But maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after last time. Maybe Sóleyg’s presence would moderate things in a way in which his could not.
No, he decided, he wouldn’t go to the ferry. He wouldn’t follow his instinct to jump in and protect. You can’t guard against everything, even if you’d like to. He thought of Boas Justesen. You can’t guard against cancer or dying alone.
* * *
On his desk he found a sealed envelope, propped against the computer. There was no writing on it, so Hentze slit it open and pulled out the contents. The first page was a printout of an email from Sophie Krogh at the technical lab in Copenhagen, addressed to Remi Syderbø. Hentze scanned it for a moment before going back to look at the time the email had been sent. Two hours ago.
The rest of the pages were a forensic examination report on fibres, fluids and other trace evidence from a number of locations, including Erla Sivertsen’s car. Hentze patted himself down to locate his reading glasses, then he read on.
* * *
Maybe it says something about your connection to a place when it’s familiar enough that you know where you can park and where to suggest meeting someone for coffee without thinking too hard. Learning your way around places is easier than navigating people, though. You think they’re becoming familiar and then you find out that the landmarks and road junctions aren’t where you thought they were after all.
I hadn’t seen Fríða that morning, but I’d have liked to have done. Something about the way things had been left last night still bothered me. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was: just a generalised feeling that I’d said either too much or too little and it had changed something between us. But her car was gone by the time I got up.
Telling Fríða about Kirkland’s phone call had brought the whole thing into sharper focus for me, though. I’d put off doing anything about it until now, but I knew I couldn’t let it go any longer. If nothing else I needed flights – from Vágar to Copenhagen, and then on to the UK – and having left it this late I knew I’d have to take whatever was available.
As it turned out a helpful man at Atlantic Airways gave me a choice: leave tomorrow on the afternoon flight, or on Monday morning at eight. I opted for Monday, as reluctant to make hurried farewells as I was to get home any earlier. There would be little joy in sitting around over the weekend just waiting to see Kirkland on Tuesday. Better to cut it fine.
Online there was a greater number of flights between Kastrup and Heathrow and while I was still being decisive I did the necessary entering of credit card details and then it was done: I was going back.
There’d never really been an alternative, of course. Occasionally it might have felt like there was, but in reality I’d never been under any illusion that I belonged here. True, I knew places to park and where to get coffee, and over the last three weeks I’d entangled myself in the place and with some of its people. I d
idn’t know if any of that had given me a greater insight, but I was sure of one thing: whatever my roots, I didn’t belong here.
I thought about that while I was walking to Válur, skirting the mountains and pushing myself hard. It was a five-hour walk but I did it in four; not exactly punishing myself, but conscious that I might have been trying to sweat the Faroes out of my system, ready to go home.
* * *
When I got back to Leynar I had a call from Tove Hald as I took off my boots. Brisk and straight to the point, she told me she’d finished the translated research I wanted and if I was free to meet her in two hours’ time I could have it. I said that I was and that would be fine, and when she rang off I called Fríða. On Thursdays she often had late afternoon consultations and I thought she might like to meet up when she’d finished. Her phone went to voicemail, though, so I left a brief message and then went to shower and change.
Because I had time in hand I took the slightly longer, alternative road to Tórshavn; route 10, undulating and winding round the mountains down the spine of the island. There were massing grey clouds to the south-west and the light had a strangely luminous quality as I left the car in the quayside car park at Tinganes.
I’d arranged to meet Tove Hald at Kaffihúsið, a café beside the west harbour, and despite the threatening clouds and chill breeze she was sitting at a table outside. She was talking to a young man of about her own age across the barrier which separated the café’s seats from the quay, but when she saw me approaching she said something briefly and he moved on with a wave.
“Hey,” I said, navigating to her table as she stood up.
“Hey hey, are you okay?”
“Good, yeh. Coffee?”
“Sure, takk. Shall we go inside? It’s going to rain.”
Inside we got drinks and went to sit at a table by the window. Tove took a stiff manila envelope and a USB stick from her bag.
“Okay, the good news is that I have found several things about the Colony,” she said, dropping into her abrupt business manner. “I didn’t make any discretions about what you would want to see, so it is all here: photocopies of the originals and my translations.”
I slid out the contents of the envelope – at least two dozen pages.
“You translated all this?” I asked.
“Sure. I’m a fast typist. It wasn’t so hard. In 1973 and 1974 there are seventeen letters to the editors of the three newspapers, Dimmalætting, Norðlýsið and Sosialurin, plus eight news reports. I also did a little research about the man Rasmus Matzen, who ran the group. I discovered an article about him in a Danish magazine, Provokation, from 1976. I thought you might want to read it, so it is also translated.”
“Takk fyri,” I said, still slightly surprised by the amount she’d managed to do. “How long did it take you?”
“I will say twelve hours,” she said without needing to work it out. “That includes time at the library, travel to and from there, online research and then the translation. It may have been longer but I was interested in something I found while I was looking at the old papers, so I think that’s fair. Do you agree?”
I laughed. “Sure. I think I got a good deal.”
“Good. So it is one thousand four hundred and forty krónur,” she said, still in business mode.
I got out my wallet. “Did you find any references to Lýdia anywhere?”
“No, I didn’t see her name, but I was only scanning for articles about the commune, so if she was mentioned in another context I might not have seen.”
“No, I’d have been surprised if she was,” I said. “I just wondered.”
I handed her the hundred-krónur notes, which she looked at briefly, then said, “Okay, you will need sixty krónur change.”
She started to look in her bag but I waved it away. “Don’t worry about it.”
That seemed to surprise her, but then she nodded. “Okay. Takk fyri.” She folded the notes and pushed them into her jacket pocket, smiling again now that business was all over. “It was a fun project. I enjoyed it.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t a chore,” I said. “When do you go back to Denmark?”
“Tomorrow morning, the first flight.” Then she pushed back her chair and stood up. “So, good luck with your research, Jan. It was good to see you again.”
“You, too. And thanks,” I said, just about getting it in before she strode away. She was a strange creature, that was for sure.
* * *
“You read it?” Remi asked. They were in his office and the door was closed.
“Yeh.” Hentze had the envelope in his hand. “Do you want it back?”
Remi shook his head, then leaned back a little in his chair.
“We didn’t— I wasn’t given any choice about charging Finn,” he said, then raised his eyes towards the ceiling, indicating upstairs. “And maybe that’s the right decision. But from what Finn has told us – finally told us – Dánjal and I both think there’s at least a possibility that Erla wasn’t killed on Sandoy. And if Sophie Krogh’s report is correct in saying that Erla’s body was in the boot of her car for some time after death, that could support the possibility. It certainly doesn’t tally with the theory that Finn killed her and then dumped her body as quickly as possible. So, as of tomorrow, we’re going to start re-interviewing all the AWCA people Erla was closest to, concentrating on where they were and what they were doing between nine thirty and midnight on Saturday. I’m also going to put out an appeal for anyone who was on the Teistin from Skopun to Gamlarætt between the same times.” He paused and gestured upwards again. “For obvious reasons I can’t involve you in any of that. It would be going too far and draw too much attention, but I’ll keep you up to date on the side, okay?”
Hentze considered that for a moment. Then he said, “Unless I miss my guess, I’m pretty sure you’ll get attention as soon as you start talking to the Alliance again. I was told to leave them alone.”
“No one’s said that to me.”
“Even so, wouldn’t it be better if I were to do it? I’m already in the doghouse and that way it’ll be me Andrias Berg comes after rather than you.”
Remi thought about it, but only briefly, then shook his head. “No, I think this needs to come from someone they can’t just reassign – at least, not without creating a stink. They’ll realise how it will look if they try, so maybe they’ll decide it’s less damaging to let things run their course.”
“You can hope.”
“Well the worst-case scenario is that they do take me off the investigation, in which case they’d have to pass it to you in terms of seniority.”
“What about Ári?”
“He’s been signed off sick for a week. Hairline fracture of his elbow and a severe dent in his pride. I imagine his suit will need cleaning as well.” Remi leaned forward again, shifting the subject. “What about the fire death?”
Acknowledging that Remi had made his decision, Hentze said, “Boas Justesen. At the moment it looks as if he committed suicide by hanging himself and the fire was started accidentally. That’s Mikkjal’s opinion, and according to his medical records Justesen was terminally ill. Anyway, there’s nothing suspicious so far.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Yeh,” Hentze agreed. “So I’ll make a start on the preliminary report, then wait for the PM to firm it up.”
“Okay. And regarding Erla Sivertsen, just keep your head down,” Remi said.
“Thanks. But I don’t think it’s me they’ll be shooting at once you start talking to the Alliance.”
46
I HEADED BACK TOWARDS THE TOWN CENTRE AFTER AN unproductive hour in the SMS mall, waiting to see if Fríða would call and vaguely hoping to find something I could take back to England for Ketty. But neither one had happened, and I’d given it up as the stores started to pull down the shutters. I was getting hungry and I decided that if Fríða hadn’t rung by the time I reached Vaglið square I’d better eat alone.
I’d w
alked to the mall after leaving Kaffihúsið, which might have been a mistake because now, as I crossed Bøkjarabrekka, it started to rain. There were just a few seconds of forewarning drops, and then a cold, heavy downpour: the sort that bounces off tarmac. I sheltered in a shop doorway, but the street was already perceptibly darker and I knew this wasn’t just a shower you could wait out. Instead I dashed a hundred yards or so to the Marco Polo restaurant on Sverrisgøta.
It was the first time I’d been back there since the day I arrived and now, as before, I was the only customer in the place. The waiter didn’t seem to mind me dripping on the carpet, though, or the fact that he had to put his book down. “Any place you like,” he said with a gesture.
I ordered, then ate undisturbed, straining to read some of Tove’s translations in the weak light of the wall lamps. I was just finishing my pasta when Hentze called.
“The other day you told me you’d been to see a man called Boas Justesen,” he said. “About the commune at Múli, do you remember?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, one of the houses there – at Múli – burned down last night. Boas Justesen was inside.”
“You’re serious?” I asked, although I knew he was. “Is he dead?”
“Yeh, I’m sorry to say it. So if you have time I need to ask you a few questions – just about how he appeared to you, his mood. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, no problem,” I said. “Now?”
A pause. “Would you like to go for a drink? Are you at Leynar?”
“No, I’m in Tórshavn: at the Marco Polo. But a drink would be good.”
I guessed he wanted a chance to talk face to face, and perhaps not just about Boas Justesen.
“Okay, takk,” he said. “If you stay there I can pick you up. Is twenty minutes too long to wait?”
“No, that’s fine. I’ll see you then.”
* * *
Beyond the forecourt lights it was dark now, and the rain hammered on the steel awning over the pumps of the Magn petrol station. Annika Mortensen had to put a finger in her free ear to hear the voice on the phone above the din.
