The Fire Pit

by Chris Ould

  “I think it would be a good start,” Hentze said. “Any background on his history and lifestyle may be useful, and you’ll also need to keep track of the various lab reports I’ve asked for. It’s too soon for any results to be in yet, but don’t let them drag their feet just because she’s been dead for a long time.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Good.” He pushed back his chair. “Find Oddur or Dánjal and tell them you need a desk. I have a planning and strategy meeting with Remi and the drugs team.”

  “Planning and strategy? You’re starting to sound like an inspector already.”

  Hentze gave her a pained look and stood up. “Don’t say that, even as a joke. I’m doing this for a couple of months at the most.”

  7

  WE SAT IN AN INTERVIEW ROOM, LIKE TWO OLD FRIENDS OVER coffee. But there was no coffee, we weren’t friends and everything we said was being recorded. As these things go it was relaxed enough, though. We all do our job.

  “Detective Inspector Reyna, I’m DCI Jane Shannon attached to the Directorate of Professional Standards at Warwick Road police station. I am conducting an internal inquiry in relation to the arrest and charge of Paul Edward Carney for the rape and assault of Claire Victoria Tilman in April this year. You are not under arrest and you are free to leave if you wish. You may also seek free independent legal advice and have a solicitor or legal representative present during this interview if you’d like to. Do you wish to obtain legal advice?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “In that case I must tell you that you don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand the caution?”

  “Yes.”

  And so it began.

  Fifty minutes later it was over and I didn’t linger. There was no point.

  Outside the nick I picked up a message on my mobile from Peter and called him back from the car. He was in town running errands, he said, and he’d brought Lýdia’s things with him. If I’d be at home he could drop them off in an hour or so. I told him I’d see him then.

  * * *

  Now that I’d said my piece to DCI Shannon there was nothing else to do, so I took stock while I waited for Peter. I put clothes in the washing machine, cleared out expired food from the fridge and applied myself to the utility bills that had come in while I was away. I spent twenty minutes on the phone to the bank, shuffling money, paying off my credit-card balance and getting stung by the exchange rate with the Danish krone. It wasn’t quite as bad as I’d feared, but not as good as I’d hoped. The one saving grace was that I was still being paid. Kirkland hadn’t been able to stop that while I was suspended.

  None of these tasks was enough, though. I still felt the urge to clear away even more crap, so I opened my laptop and went through my emails, deleting ninety per cent until I came to a message, sent an hour ago, with a Københavns Politi logo at the bottom. It was from Vicekriminalkommissær Christine Lynge, who said in stiff English that she was responding to my request via Hjalti Hentze to look at documents. These were now in her hands and if I would contact her by email or phone she would make them available to me at Station City, Halmtorvet.

  I wasn’t surprised that Hentze had been as good as his word, only that it had yielded a result so quickly. Even in Denmark I didn’t believe it was normal for detective chief inspectors to bother themselves with requests like that, so I just hoped that Christine Lynge’s stiff email tone was more to do with language translation than a general indication that she resented Hentze asking for a favour. Whatever the case, I sent a reply thanking her and saying I’d be in touch again within the next couple of days. I’d just finished typing when Peter buzzed the intercom.

  He came in carrying a brown filing box and took stock of the place while I made us coffee. “Have you been in to work yet?” he asked. I’d changed back into jeans and a sweater, but the fact that I’d shaved might have prompted the question.

  “Briefly,” I said. “Just to sort out a few things.”

  I hadn’t told him about the suspension, mostly so he wouldn’t have to keep it from Ketty, but also because he’d be concerned.

  To change the subject I looked at the box he’d brought in. It was taped closed and wasn’t particularly large. Typical of Peter, there was a label on one side: Lýdia Reyná.

  “You found her things.”

  Peter nodded. “We weren’t able to bring much back to England. I just took the things from the flat that I thought might have sentimental value.”

  I resisted the impulse to draw the box closer and open it. Instead I said, “You did that on your own – collecting her belongings?”

  “We thought it was better that Ketty spent as much time as possible with you and I’d look after the formalities: the funeral, her possessions, travel arrangements.”

  “So run me through what happened,” I said. Since the previous evening I’d been able to gain some objectivity. “Last night you said that the Copenhagen police called to say Lýdia was dead and you went out there. Then what?”

  He sipped his coffee and I could sense his reluctance. But he knew me and in the end he didn’t bother to voice whatever reservations he had.

  “We had a meeting with two police officers the morning after we arrived,” he told me then. “They took us to the hospital and Ketty made a formal identification of Lýdia’s body. Later, we went to see you at the foster home. You wouldn’t speak at all. A Danish doctor we talked to afterwards said he thought it was elective mutism, but I don’t think he was sure. No one knew how much Danish or English you understood, so Ketty talked to you in Faroese. It was better, but not much.”

  I had no recollection of any of this: never had. I was only three when Lýdia and I left the Faroes and my memories went no further back than the age of six, maybe seven. It was as if I’d wiped the slate clean of everything that had happened before I’d started living with Ketty and Peter and had only allowed myself to begin storing memories away once I was sure that I wouldn’t be going anywhere else. Sometimes I thought the dark, formless things that woke me in the night might come from further back in my childhood because they seemed instinctive and primal, but I had no way to tell.

  “Where were we living in Copenhagen?” I asked, to bring myself back to more neutral ground.

  Peter couldn’t quite prevent a look of distaste crossing his face. “It was a flat in the Christiania area. I remember I never felt very safe when I went there. It wasn’t the sort of place you wanted to go after dark.”

  “So it was rough?”

  He nodded. “I don’t think you’d been living there – in the flat – very long. I collected up your clothes and toys and Lýdia’s personal possessions but there wasn’t very much.” He nodded at the box. “Well, you can see. There was no point in taking away clothes and so on, so I told the girl who was sharing the flat to keep them herself or give them to charity. I don’t know how much she understood, though: her English wasn’t very good.”

  “Who was she, do you know?” The idea that someone else could have been around before Lýdia’s death opened up a new possibility.

  “I don’t remember her name. I’m not sure she even told me. She was Danish, I think, but I only saw her once. I was sorting some things out for you at the flat and she let herself in and got a surprise when she saw me. I don’t think she expected anyone else to be there.”

  “But she was definitely living in the flat?” I asked to confirm it.

  “Yes, she had her own room. There were two I think. I remember the whole place was pretty makeshift: it was probably a squat.”

  “Do you know the address?”

  “No. Sorry, I don’t remember. It might be in the official documents, though. Everything we were given at the time is in there.”

  I looked at the box but knew I wouldn’t open it until later. Instead I stood up and went as far as the window, looking out
but not really seeing. Peter said nothing.

  “So what about Signar?” I said in the end, turning away from the window. “Where was he in all this? Did anyone speak to him – I mean, as my father?”

  Peter drew a breath. “Yes, I did.”

  “And?”

  He looked as ill at ease as I had ever seen him; as if this, more than any other, was a subject he’d hoped not to revisit. “It was complicated – difficult,” he said. “Ketty sent him a telegram when we arrived in Copenhagen, but he was working at sea and didn’t get the message until three or four days later. Eventually he called the hotel and I spoke to him and told him what had happened. The funeral was already arranged for the next day – a cremation – and I’m not sure if he’d have come even if we’d delayed it, so we went ahead.”

  “And he didn’t have anything to say about me going to England with you? He had no problem with that?”

  “Like I said, it was difficult over the phone. There were several calls. In the end Ketty told him that unless he could come to Copenhagen before we left, we were going to take you home with us and we could sort things out from there.”

  I could imagine Ketty making that decision and then standing steadfastly by it. Even Signar, the bull of a man, wouldn’t have been able to shake her once she’d made up her mind.

  “And he didn’t come.”

  I made it a statement, because it was, but maybe the fact that I said it so bluntly stirred Peter’s instinct that every case has two sides.

  “To be fair, I don’t think it could have been an easy situation for him,” Peter said. “He was out fishing for days at a time and to bring up a child on his own… Maybe he thought—” He broke off. “I don’t know. I can’t speak for him.”

  “No, of course not,” I said, because it was true. He couldn’t, and neither could I.

  But it was no resolution, and now that Signar was dead there would never be one. I was free to choose how I interpreted his actions: as indifference to his son, or as a decision forced on him by circumstances he couldn’t change.

  Peter put his coffee mug aside. “I should be going.”

  “Yeah, of course. Thanks,” I said.

  I saw him to the door and when he’d gone I moved the box of Lýdia’s things to the desk and opened it up.

  The contents didn’t fill it. A leather purse, handsewn and empty; a marbled fountain pen; a carved jewellery box holding inexpensive necklaces and earrings; and a small, gilt-framed, black-and-white photograph of a family group, stiffly posed in traditional costume. Flanking the two central figures in the picture I recognised Lýdia and Ketty, both smiling. Lýdia looked no more than thirteen, I thought, and I studied her closely for a few seconds before putting the frame to one side and picking up a couple of notebooks that had lain beneath it.

  The first of these was a sketchbook and in it Lýdia had drawn things as disparate as flowers and plants, buildings, and a few landscapes. It seemed to me that she’d had a deft hand and a good eye, but none of the sketches looked finished, as if she’d only wanted to capture a moment and had simply stopped drawing when it had passed.

  The other notebook was less well filled and from the way the handwritten entries were laid out I guessed they were poems, with crossings out and adjustments. As far as I could tell they were all in Faroese, which made them impenetrable to me, so I put them aside and picked up the last thing in the box: a solid, black camera.

  It was a Leica, I saw from its embossed logo, but given that there were no photographs with it – no album or packet or envelope of loose snapshots – it struck me as odd. I couldn’t imagine that Peter would have overlooked any photos when he collected Lýdia’s possessions, so it seemed a strange thing for her to have owned if she didn’t use it.

  I turned it in my hand and when I looked at the counter on the top I saw it had reached twenty-one, so it looked as if there was film still inside. I didn’t know much about film cameras – only that failing to rewind or open them properly would ruin the pictures – but after a moment of thinking I dug out my phone and pulled up the number for a guy called Ben Skinner who worked in the analysis branch.

  “Listen, who do you know who could get a film out of a forty-year-old camera?” I said when he answered.

  “What sort of camera?”

  “It says Leicaflex SL2 on the front.”

  “Car boot?”

  “No. Family heirloom. I only just found it and if there is a film in it I’d like to get it out and have it processed. Is that possible?”

  “It’s possible,” Ben said. “Depends how well the film’s kept. Are you working?”

  “No. Day off.”

  “Okay. Bring it down if you want then. I’ll have a look.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, I’m not busy. I can get the film out, at least, but if it is forty years old it may not be up to much.”

  “Thanks, Ben. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  It was a distraction, I knew that. But better than being reduced to cleaning the flat, or just sitting and listening to the washing machine going round.

  * * *

  I drove the twenty miles down the motorway, turning off after four junctions and navigating my way round the anonymous industrial estate a mile further on until I came to an equally anonymous grey steel building. The analysis branch did various jobs and kept sensitive material of different types in this place, none of which were accessible or on view to the general public. To make sure of that the only windows were on the first floor and the gated reception desk was manned by a burly ex-copper called Dave, who knew me but still made me sign in while he called Ben Skinner to confirm that I was expected.

  Ben met me at the head of the stairs to the first floor and led me the short distance to his office. He was a large man about my own age, with a rugby player’s broken nose and the look of someone who wasn’t afraid of a scrum: an odd type to be confined in a small, high-tech office. A sign over his desk summed him up: Inefficiency on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on mine.

  “Decent camera,” he said when I was seated and passed it over to him. “Expensive when they were made.”

  “Very?”

  “I don’t know how much, but more than the Japanese jobs like Pentax and Minolta. Leica’s German,” he added, just so I’d know.

  He handled the camera with the facility of someone who was familiar with that sort of equipment, checking it over, then flipping out a little crank handle I hadn’t been aware of.

  “Thing is, if it’s been like this for forty years like you said, the film’ll probably break as soon as I try and rewind it.”

  “So it’ll be screwed?” I asked.

  “No, not necessarily, but you might lose the last couple of frames. Still want me to try?”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “You could just put it on your mantelpiece.”

  “Go ahead,” I told him.

  Ben applied a gentle pressure to the crank, increasing it slowly until it started to turn and I could hear something moving inside. He kept on going, his large fingers incongruous against the delicate mechanism, until finally the handle spun more rapidly without any tension.

  “That’s it,” he said, glancing at the counter. “Better than I thought.”

  He sprang a catch and the back plate popped open. He prised out a yellow roll of Kodak film and looked it over.

  “Colour stock,” he said.

  “So I can take it to Boots?”

  He gave me a withering look. “Leave it with me.”

  “Sure?”

  He nodded. “You won’t get prints, but if there’s anything on the negative I’ll scan it and you can print it off from a flash drive.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I told him. “What’s your poison?”

  “Single malt. Glenfiddich for preference.”

  “Done.”

  “I’ll call you,” he said, looking at the roll of film again with a speculative expression that said it might be t
he most interesting part of his day. If so I was happy to share my distractions.

  8

  ACCORDING TO HENTZE’S NOTES, BOAS JUSTESEN HAD ONLY one known relative: a great-niece from Eiði called Selma Lützen, so Annika started there.

  “I hardly knew him,” the woman said, pegging clothes to the drying lines in the undercroft. She had a put-upon air, Annika thought, as if – what with the daily chores and everything else – talking to a police officer was yet another trial.

  “I don’t know anything about him, not really,” Selma Lützen went on. “Only what I’ve heard, and I can’t say that was good. Drank a lot, lived like a pig – so I’m told.”

  “Do you know if he had any close friends? I’m specifically interested in anyone who might have known him in the 1970s.”

  “No, I’ve no idea.”

  “Did he have any other relatives?” Annika asked. She picked up the peg basket and held it out, which earned her a faint warming.

  “Well, now that you mention it, yes,” Frú Lützen said. “I never knew till all this. There’s a cousin – his name’s Mikkjal Tausen. He’s lived away for years – in America,” she added as if that explained a lot. “But he’s here now, on a visit. He’s renting a house at Rituvík – a new one on Rituvíkarvegur. It’s very nice.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “He’s done very well for himself.”

  Annika nodded to show she understood she was being trusted with this information. “How old is he?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure,” Selma Lützen said. “No youngster. Mid-sixties, maybe. About the same age as Boas.”

  She hung up the last shirt from the laundry basket and then she and Annika moved out of the undercroft to stand on the concrete path while Annika made a couple of notes.

  “So apart from Mikkjal Tausen, is there anyone else you can think of who might be able to tell me about Boas?” Annika asked.

  “No. I hadn’t seen him since I was little and I hadn’t given him a thought till that other officer rang me to say he was dead. I’ll go to the funeral, though. You have to, don’t you?”