The road became a dirt track, and a few kilometers later they passed a large parking lot and then came upon a modern-looking building that made Flynn think of a museum.
“This is the GeoCenter Møns Klint,” said Schmidt. She stopped the car by the side of the road near the entrance to the building. “Come on,” she said.
She led Flynn around the GeoCenter. There were fossil-like objects all around and what appeared to be a trailhead. Schmidt strode past the trailhead and down some wooden stairs. Flynn followed.
The stairs went on forever. As they moved out from the trees, the sun broke from the clouds, and Flynn was met with a stunning ocean view. White caps gently rolled in onto the pebble beach below, and to his left, bare limestone cliffs suddenly glowed in the sunshine, almost too bright to look at.
They followed the wooden staircase, cutting back and forth down the cliff face and finally winding down to the water. A handful of people passed them going up. When they reached the bottom, Schmidt took a long gulp of fresh sea air.
“Is this the Baltic?” Flynn asked.
“Yes.”
“Not much out there.”
“The island of Bornholm, and then Poland and Lithuania.”
Flynn stepped slowly over the rocks that constituted the beach. It was a prehistoric place, moss and trees and cliffs echoing and swallowing the sounds of the sea at the same time. He turned and looked back up the stairs cutting in and out of the foliage. They gave him a false sense that people belonged here. There were a handful of tourists walking the beach, but none were talking. There was no laughter, no play. The mood was reverential.
“So this is where she jumped?” he asked.
“No,” said Schmidt. “This is where she was found. By a tourist from the campgrounds, taking an early morning hike. She jumped from farther around the cliffs, we think the previous night. The tide pulled her here.”
Flynn looked up at the cliffs. It was a hell of a drop onto unforgiving terrain. “Was an autopsy done?”
“Yes.”
“Cause of death?”
“I don’t think I can talk about that.”
“Why?”
She looked at him with eyes the same color as the water. They were limitless and cold.
“I don’t know who you are, but you’re not family of the deceased.”
“What would be my motivation for asking about this?”
“You could be sick. You could be planning to copy it.”
“If I wanted to copy it, I could have gotten the information I needed without walking down all those stairs.”
“Still. It’s not procedure.”
“What is the procedure?”
She frowned again. It was stunning. “I don’t know.”
“Me neither,” said Flynn. “I know you have to consider Luna’s privacy, and that of her family. But Begitte just wants some kind of closure, and you can give it to her.”
“Who is Begitte?”
“The deceased’s sister.”
Schmidt looked at Flynn, perhaps searching his face for a tell, something to give her a hint if he was legit or just a bona fide weirdo.
“The cause of death was massive trauma from the fall.”
“So she didn’t drown.”
“No. There was water in her lungs but not much. She was dead before that.”
Flynn looked again out at the water, and his vision drifted across to the white cliffs to the north. They towered above him, bright and majestic.
“Do you want to see where she jumped from?” asked Schmidt.
Flynn was drawn back to her, and he took a moment to process her direct question. He nodded without speaking, and Schmidt led him back to the stairs that led up the cliffs.
They hiked up without stopping. Flynn noted that Schmidt was lean and carried no extra weight at all, but she wore a utility belt that held all manner of heavy equipment and gadgets. None of it held her back as she pushed up each step and occasionally glanced back to see if he was keeping up. He was. He walked more than most people. Even Olympic marathoners didn’t do the kilometers that Flynn did. The Legion had drummed marching into him so hard it had become part of his DNA. It didn’t work that way for everyone. Some guys left the Legion and never wanted to march anywhere again. But Flynn liked the feeling of hitting a cadence, the slow pace compared to every other mode of transport that allowed him to observe his surroundings, to see things that people flying by in cars or trains or even walking while staring at a phone didn’t see.
When they reached the top, Schmidt led him back to her vehicle. She wasn’t huffing in the slightest. She pulled a long, slow U-turn and then eased away from the GeoCenter and back out toward the campsite they passed on the way in. But instead of following the road out, she cut right. About two hundred meters later, they passed a building that Flynn guessed was some kind of hostel, with a group of children standing in a ring on the front lawn, doing an activity he didn’t have time to decipher.
A few seconds later, Schmidt pulled across the road at a trailhead and stopped in front of a gate.
“I don’t have a key for the gate, so we will walk from here,” she said, getting out of the police car.
Flynn uncurled himself from the vehicle and followed her around the gate. The road beyond became a dirt track, suitable for hikers and emergency vehicles. They walked through an open field into a line of trees, and then without notice the trees ended and Flynn found himself staring off into the open expanse of the Baltic Sea.
The water was breaking against the chalk cliffs that dropped away from Flynn’s feet. It had to be roughly a hundred and fifty meters, and the azure of the water closer to the cliffs told him it was not deep enough to provide any cushion for such a fall, as if the impact with the surface wasn’t deadly enough.
They stood quietly and looked out at the vast sea before them. Flynn noted the silence of everything around. The breeze that came in off the water was absorbed by the trees. There was no rustling of leaves, and the sound of the waves crashing against the base of the cliffs wasn’t audible from their height. It was, without a doubt, a lonely place. A contemplative place. The kind of place that a person would choose to take their final breath. There was no sense of humanity to the scene, just an ancient landscape that made Flynn feel like nothing more than a blip on the unimaginably long continuum of time.
He felt the sensation swelling inside, the fear usually brought on by the sight of flames, the flames that had marked the breakneck turns that his life had taken. But there were no flames, only water and air and emptiness, and he took a step back from the cliff without understanding why. He looked at Schmidt, her chin held high, her expression stoic.
“Why here?” he asked.
She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “Why not?”
“I mean, I get why a spot like this, but why exactly here? How do you know she was right here?”
“The car was left at the gate right where we parked. This would be the most logical point along the trail. It makes no sense to walk through the woods, and the tidal patterns work. From this place, it would be most likely she would end up on the beach below the GeoCenter.”
“She came in a car?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think she had a car.”
“She didn’t. She stole it.”
“She stole a car? Where?”
“Outside of Copenhagen, from a street near a train station.”
“Why would she steal a car?”
Schmidt turned to him. “To get here. How did you get here?”
“Train, bus, walking.”
“Not easy, right?”
“No.”
“And you only got to Stege. I drove you the rest of the way. Getting out to Møns Klint is hard without a car. There’s a bus, but it stops back in Magleby, and she would have to walk from there, in the dark.”
“Assuming it was dark. What happened to the car?” Flynn asked.
“She abandoned it.”
&n
bsp; “I mean after. What did you do with it?”
“Copenhagen police returned it to the owner.”
“It’s not evidence?”
“Evidence of what?”
Flynn said nothing. He watched Schmidt’s eyes. They were serious and endless.
“What do you think happened here?” she asked him.
“I think a girl took her life,” he said. “But I’m trying to piece together her final moments for her family, and the pieces don’t quite fit.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. How do you know she came here at night?”
“No one found the body the day before, so it was washed up during the night,” she said. “You saw the hostel back there? They led a hike out here the evening before, and the car wasn’t there, so we know it arrived after nine. Sunset was at nine forty-three, so she came sometime after that.”
“How do you know she was the one who arrived in the car?”
“She left her purse in the car. Her ID was in it. That’s how we identified her initially.”
“Did the people at the hostel hear anything?”
“No. Once they are in for the night, they are either singing camp songs or sleeping. No one heard anything.”
Flynn turned back to the view. He could see this as a place to end a life. He could see a desperate person who had hit rock bottom stealing a car to get here. To get far away from all she knew in order to be truly alone for her final desperate moments. He felt the sun getting lower behind him, the high cliffs throwing deep shadows over the water which grew gray and foreboding.
When he looked back at Schmidt, she was watching him, and she raised an eyebrow. He nodded in return.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Chapter Seventeen
Hans Lund was sitting on his back patio smoking a French cigarette when his phone rang. He looked at the screen and grunted and then took the call.
“Go,” he said.
“The American is on Møn,” said the caller.
“What is he doing on Møn?”
“He went to the police in Stege, and an officer drove him out toward Møns Klint.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know. We stopped at a campsite. There’s only one way in and out. They were out there for maybe an hour, and now they’ve stopped at a trailhead and gone out on foot.”
“Gone where?”
“Out to the cliffs, I assume.”
“You assume?”
“If we follow, they will see us. But we can see the police car.”
“Keep on it, then. I want to know what he’s doing out there.”
“Yes, boss.”
Lund hung up and rubbed one end of his mustache between his fingers, then he inhaled deeply on his cigarette. He didn’t like not knowing things, and he didn’t know anything about this American or why he was at the commune or on the island of Møn. But he paid a good sum to certain people to know these things, so he picked up his phone again and dialed.
“Ja,” said Berg with a strain in his voice, as if he had better things to do than talk to Lund but lacked the balls to ignore his call.
“The American is on Møn,” said Lund.
“Møn?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t stay in Copenhagen?”
“What’s in Copenhagen?” asked Lund.
“Nothing of consequence.” A pause, then, “So, Møn?”
“Why is he there? Is he now playing tourist?”
“Perhaps he is,” said Berg.
“Do tourists usually get a ride from the police when they visit Møns Klint?”
Another pause. “No, they do not. But it makes sense.”
“How does it make sense, Berg?”
“Don’t you read the papers? The sister of one of the residents of the commune committed suicide out there.”
“Suicide?”
“Apparently. The paper said she was a drug addict with mental issues.”
“Whose paper? Madsen’s?”
“All of them.”
Lund snorted. “So why is he out where this sister killed herself?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s getting information on her last hours, for the family.”
“They can’t get that themselves?”
“Some people grieve, Lund.”
“Do they, Berg? Do they really?” Lund took a drag on his cigarette. “I don’t like this guy. If he’s sticking his nose into this thing with the sister, he might start sticking it into my business.”
“I agree he is bad news.”
“Bad news? He took out three of my men.”
“You said he had help.”
“He did. He has a partner.”
“Where’s the partner?”
“Still in Østvand, at the commune.”
“And you have guys following the American on Møn?”
“Of course.”
“How many?”
“Four.”
Berg breathed deeply. “Then maybe it’s time to take him out.”
“You heard what I said about my men.”
“That was three on two, and it sounds like your men got caught napping. Are you saying with four on one and the advantage of surprise they can’t get it done?”
Lund pursed his lips. He didn’t like the tone in Berg’s voice, implying that his men weren’t up to the task. It wasn’t just a comment on the men; it was a comment on Lund himself. And he didn’t care for the show-pony politician talking down to him. Berg might be developing powerful connections, but he didn’t know what Lund was capable of. The construction business was ruthless, and Lund was at the top of the tree for a reason.
“My boys can get it done. But you need to take care of things on your end. This court decision cannot stand.”
“Don’t worry about the court. We’ll win this thing in the court of public opinion once they know that foreigners are in the commune, causing trouble, assaulting workers. I’ll make that place look like it’s a ghetto by the time I’m done. The locals will be turning up with pitchforks and torches.”
“Make it happen, then.”
“And you.”
“I will,” said Lund, and he ended the call before Berg could get another word in. The door to the house opened behind him.
His wife stepped out and put her hand on his shoulder. “Time for dinner, Hans. Sarah has prepared game stew, just the way you like it.”
He looked up at his wife of forty years. She wasn’t the stunner she had been when they had met, but he had to admit that neither was he. His body would give out sooner or later from the sheer weight he carried, but he didn’t care. He did what he wanted to do and ate what he wanted to eat when it suited him. He was a rich and successful man, and no one could tell him different. Not the media, not his cardiologist, not his wife. Everyone died, but some people did it after a miserable life of eating like a rabbit. Hans Lund was no rabbit. He ate like a king.
He told his wife he would be in directly and then took a final puff on his cigarette. He crushed the butt into an ashtray and then worked himself up out of the chair. The sun was falling into the trees at the far end of the field that marked the boundary of his estate, sending pink and red spears across the sky. He turned from the sunset to the scent of game stew, and he smiled.
* * *
Victor Berg wasn’t smiling, and he wasn’t watching any sunset. He was no fan of the outdoors. Berg hated the bugs in summer and the cold in winter. He preferred indoor pursuits and had learned early on that such things required access to money. Not necessarily his money. He didn’t have the tolerance for business. Worrying about getting clients and cutting costs and making payroll. Government was much better for him. The state always made payroll, and if they needed to trim the budget, there was always some faceless minority that could be depended on to take one for Denmark.
But this American worried him. He and his partner ha
d appeared out of nowhere, exactly at the wrong time. Things were delicately poised, and public opinion was malleable but fickle. Berg knew that Lund had history—he hadn’t become one of the top builders in Europe by blindly following the rules—but he was also crude and blunt. His methods were old-school. There was no nuance about the man. He was useful to a point, and that point positively affected Berg’s Swiss bank account.
Money, though, wasn’t everything. Power was its own reward, and Lund offered little to Berg’s ambition. Other parties had to be tended to in order to cultivate his rise to power. People with a lot more sophistication than Hans Lund. People with their own means of getting things done, their own connections, their own power bases to hold.
People who needed to know.
Berg sat in his leather chair and picked up his desk phone. He looked at the wood-paneled walls as the call traveled through wires and cables and left the building and then returned via cables and wires to another office in the same building, not as grandly decorated as his—beige and dull—but all the more powerful for it.
“Berg,” said the voice at the other end. It was a deep, resonant voice. It was a voice that was never loud, for it carried the gravitas that made shouting unnecessary, as if every statement was a command.
“The American from the commune,” said Berg. “He’s at Møns Klint.”
“Doing what?”
“Talking to the police, visiting the spot.”
“For the family?”
“I don’t know.”
“No matter. There’s nothing to know.”
“Are you sure?”
“A girl took her own life there. The police know that, the people know that. It was in the newspaper.”
“I don’t like not knowing who this guy is.”
“I don’t like that either.”
Berg hesitated. He could ask for it to be handled. This man was capable of such things. But that kind of request came with a price: a favor owed, a debt to be repaid. It was better to rack up those debts only when absolutely necessary. Berg had the blunt instrument in Lund, and he owed no further debt to Lund for taking care of the American because it would be to Lund’s benefit to do so. Not so much this man.
The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller Page 10
