Lise sighed and made little snoring sounds. She lay with her mouth half-open in the faint, grey April light and he was overcome by a great sense of love and a rush of old-fashioned protectiveness. He knew himself well enough, though, not to lie there in the semidarkness making promises he could not keep, either to Lise or to himself. He was the way he was. From Lise’s point of view he could probably shape up a bit, but deep down there was no changing him. Or so he felt, at any rate, although he was certain that women always believed they could alter a man to fit their image of him. Make him the man they wanted him to be. There was something missionary-like about this constant urge women had to transform and improve upon their men. Was the same true of Lise?
Toftlund did what he always did whenever he found himself thinking too much. He resorted to physical activity. He stroked Lise’s stomach gently and kissed her on the cheek, making her sigh luxuriously. He went for his morning run in the misty dawn which, with its light and its delicate tones held the promise of spring. After his shower he went through to the kitchen and gave Lise a nice, big morning kiss. She was standing with one hand in the small of her back, her big belly bulging under her blue dressing gown. In her other hand she held a mug of tea, resting it on the flat top of the hump under her heavy breasts.
‘Won’t be long now,’ he said.
‘Oh, I can’t wait. Everything’s ready.’
‘You’ve been a proper little nest-builder.’
‘Who would have thought it – a career woman like me,’ she said with laughter in her voice, and he was happy because she was in a good mood this morning. The house smelled fresh and clean. The baby clothes – those they had bought and those passed on by friends and family – were all freshly washed and ironed and arranged in neat piles in cupboards and drawers; the crib was made up, the linen and the lovely little duvet smelling faintly of soap. And out in the carport the pram waited as eagerly as them. Lise had spent the past eight days cleaning and making everything ready, as if driven by her biological clock. The cleaner had been asked to come in for an extra day and the two women had scrubbed the house from top to bottom, until there was not a speck of dust or fluff to be found even in the remotest corner. Women were in so many ways a mystery to Toftlund.
They had breakfast together, read the paper, listened to the radio news. NATO was still conducting daily bombing raids, weather permitting, on Yugoslavia and Kosovo, both of which were still sending thousands of refugees to the neighbouring countries of Macedonia and Albania. The refugees arrived there wet, cold and hungry with appalling tales of murder, arson, torture and mass rape. The newsreader announced that despite being the poorest country in Europe, Albania had now taken in over half a million refugees. The situation there was chaotic. Meanwhile, in Denmark, there was fierce debate concerning the government’s proposal to grant asylum to two thousand Kosovo Albanian refugees. Per noticed the old light of battle flicker in Lise’s eyes, but instead she asked:
‘How’s it actually going with that case of yours?’
He looked up. She rarely asked him about his work. She knew there were so many things he could not talk about.
‘So-so.’
‘It says here that you’ve got nothing on this woman you’ve arrested. That you’ll have to let her go.’
‘That’s not altogether untrue.’
‘And what then?’
‘She’ll get a nice fat sum in compensation.’
‘That’s fair enough, don’t you think.’
‘Yeah, but she’s mixed up in it somehow. I’m sure of it’
‘But you can’t prove it?’
‘Not as things stand at the moment. The lead isn’t strong enough.’
‘Well, then it’s only fair that she should be released. I mean, as far as I know in this country one is still innocent until proven otherwise.’
‘Of course.’
‘And that being so it’s only fair that she should receive compensation, right?’
He looked up again:
‘Are you trying to pick a fight?’
‘Not at all. I’m just asking.’
‘It doesn’t matter what I think. By law she has a right to compensation. That’s just how it is.’
‘Fine,’ she said a mite snippily and turned back to her newspaper.
‘There’s something about her. I know it. She’s betrayed her country. She’s indirectly responsible for the deaths of a lot of people. She should be behind bars,’ he said.
She glanced up from the paper. She had simply pulled her hair back into an elastic band, but he thought he had never seen her look lovelier, even if her eyes did look dull and a little tired. She wasn’t getting enough sleep, he told himself.
‘So what’s the next move, Per?’
‘Well, we’ll just have to see what else this line of inquiry turns up. But I haven’t given up yet.’
‘More overtime?’
‘It’s all part of the job. That’s what you get for marrying a policeman.’
‘Bullshit. I know all about irregular working hours. I used to be a journalist – remember?’
‘You’re still a journalist.’
‘I’m a pregnant cow,’ she said and went back to the article she had been reading, although he had a feeling her mind was not really on it. She looked up again.
‘You promised, Per …’
‘I’ll be there, don’t worry.’
‘It’s due in less than a fortnight.’
‘I’ll be there, Lise. Trust me!’
‘It’s our baby, Per. Our own little miracle. It’s ours. Ours. I didn’t think I could have children. But I could. With you. It’s ours, Per.’
Now he saw the tears in the corners of her eyes, he got up, went round behind her chair and wrapped his arms round her, kissed her on the back of the neck, little pecks, while gently stroking her breast and her stomach. He felt movement and kicking feet beneath the skin, as if the unborn baby was playing football with his hand. Lise winced, both laughing and crying.
‘She’s got a helluva kick,’ she said. ‘Per, for God’s sake. Hand me a Kleenex. I can’t bear to see myself like this.’
He let go of her and fetched her a tissue. She dried her eyes and blew her nose. He handed her a fresh tissue and she repeated this sniffling process. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face a little swollen too.
‘I love you, Lise,’ he said.
‘How can you possibly love me when I look like this and act like a stupid cow.’
‘Goose.’
‘Cow!’
‘Moo.’
‘Oh, Per, you big idiot. Or no, it’s me – I’m an even bigger idiot. I’m looking forward to it so much, but obviously I’m dreading it too.’
‘I’m here for you, Lise.’
‘It’s okay. I’m okay now. It’s just these mornings, with you running out the door and being gone all day. But I know – it’s your job. So off you go and catch your spies.’
‘My paternity leave is all arranged. I’ve told Vuldom about it.’
‘Even if you have to let her go? Because then you’re really going to be kept busy, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. That’s probably true.’
Lise pointed to the newspaper.
‘This mate of mine says you’ve got fuck all.’
‘It says that in the paper?’ he said, genuinely surprised, although very little of what appeared in the papers surprised him any more.
‘Not in so many words, but that’s the drift of it.’
But those were exactly the words Jytte Vuldom used an hour later, announcing through a blue haze of cigarette smoke:
‘The newspapers are right. You’ve got fuck all, Toftlund. I doubt very much if we’ll get an extension. And our Irma is a sly little devil. She’s spelled it out for you loud and clear: she won’t talk. She knew we couldn’t prove anything, and the fact that we can’t establish that she had access, means – DCI Toftlund – that we have a very flimsy case. But do, please, give me a rundown and we’ll
take it from there.’
Vuldom had been sympathetic when he got back from Prague with his terrible story, but she had not got where she was on the strength of her maternal instincts. After he refused to take a couple of days off to digest the experience and laughed off her only half-serious offer of counselling, Vuldom wasted no more time on what she referred to as the ‘personal aspects’. The information from Prague was written up in a report and added to the steadily growing case file in which Irma’s outward and secret lives were charted and uncovered. Search warrants enabled them to delve into the most private and intimate sides of a person’s life with the full blessing of the court, in order to find the proof, or a body of circumstantial evidence, which would lead first to an extension of the isolation warrant and later to a conviction. That was pretty much the whole point of the exercise. Society’s reckoning. Society’s revenge. Often in the course of an inquiry innocent individuals would also disclose aspects of their lives which they would have preferred to remain secret until the day they died. But in a criminal investigation there are always other victims besides those directly involved. In this case, however, it looked as if the perpetrator was going to cheat society of its revenge, even though, by detaining her in custody for so long the state had already let the general public know, through the offices of the press, that this particular citizen was, in all probability, guilty as sin.
The core investigation team had gathered for a status meeting in Vuldom’s spacious office. Outside the sun was providing more assurance that spring was just around the corner, and Toftlund found himself looking forward to the holidays he still had coming to him and the paternity leave for which he had applied, even though his older male colleagues had sniggered at the notion. The younger men simply took it for granted. He rose, stepped up to the front and looked around him. He could not sit still when he had to speak. Present in the room, besides Vuldom and her trusty secretary Lene Nielsen, were the middle-aged Bjergager, who coordinated and collected their reports, and Toftlund’s second-in-command Charlotte Bastrup, whom he had come to respect and, he feared, to fancy. She was small and slim: at the time when she applied to join the force she must only just have managed to fulfil the then height requirement of 165 centimetres. She had very short, sleek, black hair and took great care over her appearance, from her discreet make-up and little pierced earrings to the practical, but stylish clothes she always wore. Her face was on the round side, her lips straight, narrow and unexceptional, but her eyes were fabulous: a bright, subtly shifting greyish-brown. Her Polish forebears had settled down south in the flatlands of Lolland, where she hailed from. She carried herself with seductive self-assurance, confident of her sexual allure and the analytical gifts which had helped take her well up the career ladder. Most of the others from her year had been left far behind. She lived alone. Somewhere in Østerbro. She cycled to work, that much he knew, but she never said much about her private life. He also knew that she was thirty-two and a hell of a good detective, conscientious and thorough, and it was a privilege to work with her. Toftlund had not the slightest thing against female police officers. But he did not like the thought that he might have fallen for one of them. He tried to concentrate and keep his eyes off her. He was afraid that Vuldom would see through him. She had a knack for reading people’s minds. He was a married man, for Christ’s sake, with a heavily pregnant wife. But he was also a normal man and it was weeks since sex had been possible for Lise and him. The last time they had done it she had bled afterwards. It had stopped by the time they got to the casualty department, frantic with worry, but the doctor had advised them against having intercourse. There was no point in taking any chances. It had sounded so simple and straightforward, but they both missed the physical closeness. There it was again. That sudden, fleeting state in which he was lost to the world, his surroundings seeming to fade away until some outside element roused him and brought him slap-bang back to reality.
In this instance, Vuldom’s wry tones:
‘Toftlund …? Shall we get on with it? Or do you need more time to think?’
‘No, I’m ready now.’
‘Excellent. The rest of us have been ready for some time.’
Toftlund collected his thoughts and began, trying as he did so to find his way to that nucleus of self-confidence which he knew he possessed:
‘We’ve made the link between the various individuals concerned, and everything points in the same direction. Their stories tie up all the way down the line. Irma was born in 1940, her parents were Nazis – they’re both listed in the Bovrup Files. Her father was among the first to enlist when the Danish Legion was formed in ’41. He served on the Russian Front, then in Yugoslavia and, later, in Russia again. He appears to have deserted, but we now know that he was living illegally in Yugoslavia. Fritz was born in 1943, nine months after his father had been home in Denmark on furlough. He’s led a pretty undramatic life: trained as a baker, national service, married, children, comfortably off, runs a big business, solid citizen. The only slightly unusual thing about him is that he’s a regular donor to the Danish Legion Veterans’ Association. But that’s because of his father, obviously. Fritz himself has been a member of the Conservative Party since 1982. Teddy was born in 1948. A somewhat erratic career, finances in a terrible mess, more wives and girlfriends that I can count, but nothing criminal on record. Adopted by his step-father. I’m sure it came as a complete surprise to him to hear that he had a half-sister and that his father didn’t die when he was a baby. Both Teddy and Fritz have been extremely cooperative. Same goes for Irma’s friends and other family members. The mother has forgotten her past. She’s in a nursing home on Fünen. Advanced Alzheimer’s. Impossible to get any sense out of her.’
Toftlund crossed to the table and took a swig of his mineral water before continuing:
‘The Nazi father returned home after the worst of the Danes’ thirst for revenge had been satisfied. After a couple of months in Faarhus prison camp his sentence was suspended. No public mention of this. No one seems to have paid much attention to him until 1952, when he was recognised at a shooting party. He ran off back to Yugoslavia. We think he appropriated the papers of a Norwegian sailor who was reported missing around then by the Norwegian Seamen’s Mission. Later, a badly decomposed body was found in the harbour with the father’s papers on it. The German police believe the Norwegian was murdered. But they didn’t pursue the case at the time and now it’s just some yellowing papers in a file. Then there’s Mira, or Maria. Born around 1944 in what is now Croatia. The joker in the pack, if you like. Definitely an intelligence agent. According to my Slovakian contact possibly a double or even triple agent. All in all a woman of many talents.’
He paused again.
‘It began during the war. The Second World War and the occupation, but forget all thought of neo-Nazi conspiracies. It’s got nothing to do with that. Charlotte has been following up that line of inquiry …’
‘Keep it brief, Charlotte,’ Vuldom said.
Charlotte Bastrup drew herself up in her chair. Her grey blouse suited her slim form, Toftlund thought, and forced himself to concentrate on anything other than her lips, her eyes, her little ears and the body under the thin fabric, through which he could just discern her bra. Bastrup kept it short and to the point:
‘Twelve thousand young men joined the Waffen SS between 1940 and 1945. Six thousand of these served with the Danish Legion on the Eastern Front, and later with various SS units. Around three thousand of them were killed. The figures are a bit vague. These troops were dispatched with the blessing of the Danish government. Officers were allowed to keep their pension entitlements and so on. Their commander-in-chief made recruitment speeches on national radio. They were given a rousing send-off with a parade, brass band and all. When their great hero, a Commander von Schalburg, was killed on the Eastern Front, members of the royal family and the government attended the memorial service for him. After the war, most of the survivors were sentenced to between two and fou
r years in prison for having joined the other side. None of them were convicted of war crimes on the Eastern Front, even though the SS as a whole was condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal for crimes against humanity. While some veterans of the Eastern Front were executed by the Danish police, this was for crimes committed on Danish soil. After the war people tried to forget that most of the Danes who fell during those ‘five black years’, as they are called, died fighting for the Germans. Not against the occupying power. Few, if any, history books mention that fact. And I certainly didn’t learn about it at school.’
‘No, we’re good at sweeping the muck under the carpet,’ Vuldom put in. ‘As a nation we’re good at suppressing the darker chapters of our common history.’
‘That’s what Huey, Dewey and Uni said too,’ Bastrup said.
‘Who?’
Charlotte’s ear lobes reddened slightly, Toflund noted, but her voice was steady enough when she went on:
‘The three researchers at Roskilde University whom I’ve spoken to about this. Like just about every young person nowadays they all have these awfully long names – you know the sort of thing: Oliver Munck-Halle Ebbesen or whatever, so for simplicity’s sake I’ve christened them Huey, Dewey and Uni. They have a book about the whole affair coming out soon. Their research project. They also tell me that there’s a network of old front-liners and their descendants which is quietly working to have the Legion volunteers rehabilitated, bearing in mind that they went off to war with the government’s blessing – in other words were almost encouraged to go. They were only acting in the spirit of collaboration. So they say.’
Charlotte shrugged, as if to say that this was all history, part of the background, but not necessarily a line that would lead them anywhere. In any case this had all happened long before she was born and in many ways she found it hard to understand why it should be of such interest.
The Woman from Bratislava Page 31
