The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  ‘A woman,’ Toftlund and Bastrup burst out at the same time.

  ‘Would you like a print of those?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Svendsen printed out the three pictures and then repeated the process for the return journey which Irma had also paid for with her Dankort debit card. The record of the transaction showed that she had driven back across the bridge to Zealand the following day, March 13th. Her face was not visible on this set of video images, but unless someone was deliberately hiding in the car then she was alone. She had passed through the toll plaza at 20.32. With the aid of Bastrup’s notes Svendsen was able to retrieve other pictures, all of which showed Irma alone in the car. Or at least, it was not possible to say for sure whether she was carrying a passenger. But that accorded with the other card transactions they had accessed. Irma had bought petrol and paid with a fuel card just south of the Danish-German border. That too had been on March 12th. The following morning she had used her Eurocard to withdraw 300 Deutschmarks from an ATM at Hamburg Airport. Who had that money been for? There had been no receipt in her purse. She had filled up again in Kolding in Jutland on March 13th on the way to Copenhagen. On March 14th she had purchased an air ticket to Zurich, an expensive Business Class seat on a flight departing two days later, returning via Brussels. She had made the booking by phone and given her Eurocard number. She had flown back to Denmark on March 27th. There were no electronic traces from her visit to Zurich. By March 20th they had had her under scrutiny. They had come up with her name a week earlier and linked her to Edelweiss. She was arrested on landing at Copenhagen Airport. Since then Irma had, by and large, invoked her statutory right to remain silent and had either refused to answer their questions or dismissed their accusations with a scornful laugh. But her spell in solitary was starting to get to her. She was slowly cracking. You could tell by looking at her. And by reading what she wrote. She wouldn’t be human if it didn’t, Toftlund thought to himself as they headed back to Copenhagen.

  They drove in silence for the first five minutes, then Charlotte said: ‘It’s frightening to think what the authorities can find out about you.’ ‘We think no one knows our movements and all the while we’re leaving one electronic trace after another. We think that because there are so many of us we are just lost in the crowd. When in fact the exact opposite is the case. Although, of course, people like us should be glad of that.’

  ‘That was a fine piece of detective work,’ Toftlund said. ‘You remind me of Hawkeye.’

  ‘Thanks for the compliment,’ came the dry retort.

  ‘Do you know who Hawkeye was?’

  ‘I have an older brother, you know. A trapper in some Western, wasn’t he.’

  Toftlund laughed.

  ‘Close. A pathfinder. A tracker. He could read the forest floor and tell you how many animals or people had gone along a path and when. Run his fingers over a piece of charred wood and say when a fire had been put out. Tell from the sap from a leaf when a man’s shoulder had brushed against it. You’re a modern-day pathfinder. Only you use your computer. That was an excellent piece of work.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ she said with a smile of satisfaction. Knowing full well that he was right. She could tell that he understood her: obviously the whole point was to obtain the proof necessary to convict the guilty party, but it was the hunt that was the truly exciting thing about the job – the actual solving of a case was really just a bonus. Wisely, though, she kept such thoughts to herself.

  Just after Slagelse Toftlund pulled onto the hard shoulder and switched on the hazard warning lights.

  ‘Would you mind driving?’ he said, getting out and walking round to the passenger side. He took out his mobile – he wasn’t happy about using it, but he didn’t intend to mention any names. Vuldom answered right away and Toftlund filled her in on what they could see in the pictures and what they could not see, and told her it was unlikely that their technicians could improve much on the quality of them. They’d drawn a blank. There was certainly little chance of them being able to identify the woman in them.

  ‘Not a complete blank,’ Vuldom said. ‘Something tells me the woman in the passenger seat is her step-sister, and that she arrived in Copenhagen on a plane landing somewhere between eleven a.m. and noon on March 12th. I’ll have that checked. She’s then taken a taxi to the Karslunde lay-by. That’s a fair drive. The sort a taxi driver would remember. I’ll have that checked too. Irma has picked her up at the lay-by and taken her to meet E– at the Haderselv services. My feeling is that whatever these three had to talk about was so important that the woman from Bratislava insisted on doing it face to face. This was the big one, for E– and for her. In some way. It was very big. And the only person who could orchestrate and arrange such a meeting was Irma, who knew Mira Majola had something to sell, or was willing to buy something.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow,’ Toftlund said.

  ‘This is an open line, so we’ll discuss it later. But we’ve been looking at it all back to front,’ Vuldom said. ‘We thought it was E– who was doing the wooing, but it was Mira. Mira, or Maria, holds the key. And Irma, of course. She knows everything, but that doesn’t help us.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Exactly. So do me a favour, Toftlund – find the mysterious Mira for me. We know from Teddy that she was spotted in Albania. I had pretty much decided that it wasn’t worth the bother, but we’ll have to give it a try. You could do that, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, with no great conviction. Because he knew this would mean leaving the country again and he did not know how he was going to explain to Lise that he had to go.

  23

  TOFTLUND PRESSED THE RECORD BUTTON on the cassette player and said: ‘April 21st, 1999. The time is 16.32. Interview with Irma Pedersen. Conducted by myself, DCI Per Toftlund. Also present, DI Charlotte Bastrup.’

  It was warm in the bare little room. Bastrup was leaning against the painted wall. She was wearing a pair of tight, black trousers and a white shirt beneath which he could see the edging of the bra covering her small, round breasts. She stood there watching with her cool, clear eyes, had not greeted Irma. Unlike Toftlund who, as usual, had thanked the accused for coming – as if she had any choice – and explained that there were a couple of minor details which needed clarification. This was the usual opening gambit used by Toftlund and countless other investigators. In her hand Bastrup held a manila folder, unopened. Toftlund sat opposite Irma in the same sort of rigid, straight-backed chair as she. Before him lay another manila folder. The only other items on the laminated table were a blue plastic disposable lighter and a freshly opened pack of filter cigarettes lying next to a heavy ceramic ashtray, its base grey and greasy, smeared by countless fidgety arrestees. Toftlund hated cigarette smoke but he was as pleased to see that Irma was smoking as he was that Lise had given it up. It was yet another sign that she was not quite as calm and self-assured as those green eyes, the faint smile and the straight back would have it. Today she was dressed in a workmanlike shirt and a pair of light-blue denims – a young person’s attire, but then her generation had never outgrown jeans and that whole functional style of dress. She had made an effort, applied a light coating of discreet pink lipstick and accentuated her eyes with black liner and a touch of green shadow that brought out the colour of her irises and went well with her pale skin. The lines on her face were actually very becoming to her well-shaped, almost classical features. She was undeniably an attractive woman, even if she was pushing sixty, Toftlund thought. She was naturally slim, which may have been why her figure had retained a certain litheness in its curves which rendered it still sensual and appealing. Nonetheless, her complexion was starting to acquire a greyish pallor. Prison did that to people. And behind those cool, intelligent eyes he sensed an uncertainty and a tiredness. As if she was not getting enough sleep. As if solitary was finally starting to get to her. Denmark’s widespread practice of holding detainees in solitary confinement was often criti
cised in the media and by other countries, but Toftlund found it an effective means of breaking down an individual’s defence mechanisms. Luckily they were not expected to beat confessions out of suspects and for that Toftlund was thankful. He had nothing but contempt for those of his colleagues who occasionally resorted to the wet towel approach. But the aim was, of course, the same: if a criminal was not prepared to own up right away, thus saving everyone a lot of time, then you had to make use of whatever methods the law allowed. Because he did not doubt for one second that Irma was guilty.

  She looked up as she lit her cigarette, deliberately blew the smoke in his face. It might be that he was gradually learning to read her, but she knew just how to get his back up.

  ‘Well, well. I’m being honoured by both Donald and Daisy today,’ she said and drew on her cig with her eyes half-shut. Her voice was light and melodious.

  ‘Why don’t we just cut the crap, Irma,’ Toftlund replied. ‘Let’s save ourselves a lot of trouble, put our cards on the table. Why bother going over the same old ground again and again?’

  ‘I thought that’s what you were paid to do.’

  ‘I’m paid to work on society’s behalf to bring people like you to court, to receive the sentence that society sees fit to pass on them.’

  ‘They can’t be paying you much then.’

  ‘Look, we’ve been through all this. We’ve established that you have passed top-secret information to foreign powers. We’ve shown that you have harmed your country. We’ve linked you with your cover name in the Stasi files. We’ve presented you with the proof, set down in black and white, of how it all fits together. As I said, you could save a lot of time by filling in the few remaining gaps. I know you see it differently, and I know your lawyer says differently, but there’s no denying the facts.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing.’

  ‘Okay – you’re obviously still not prepared to see sense, so maybe I should show you something,’ he said, undaunted, although she had elicited a wry little grin from him for that comment about his low pay. It was going to be a long afternoon. She knew she had to appear in the High Court within eight days, and if they had no new and significant evidence to present at that point then she would go free. That, certainly, was the prospect outlined to her by her lawyer. Or at least, that was what he had told the press. Among the left-wing parties at Christiansborg, and even within the government, more and more voices were being raised, protesting that the state was going too far. Either the authorities had to show their hand, present whatever evidence they had, or they had to release the accused, who was referred to only as Edelweiss. The whole affair was starting to become rather embarrassing. The media knew nothing of the Serbian lead: that relating to the NATO aircraft flight paths. They thought it was simply a matter of crimes committed more than ten years ago during the cold war in the name of a country known by the acronym GDR – which the majority of young people today would probably think was the name of a new TV channel rather than a communist state which died as abruptly as it came into being. Most people felt that the whole business was something of an anachronism. Let all that old rubbish rest in peace, as one paper had put it.

  Toftlund produced the printout of the three pictures from the Storebælt Bridge.

  ‘Is this your car?’

  ‘It could be,’ she said. ‘It’s certainly blue and it’s Japanese.’

  ‘Do you know where and when these photographs were taken?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At Storebælt on March 12th this year, around one p.m.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do. And you’re not alone in the car, Irma.’

  ‘Dear me, that must be worth at least ten years in the clink. Illegal presence of passenger while crossing the new bridge over Storebælt. And here was I thinking the toll fee covered the car, the driver and any eventual passengers.’

  ‘You’re a right pain in the ass, Irma, do you know that?’

  ‘Ah, so the feeling’s mutual, then.’

  ‘Who’s your passenger?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. A colleague maybe. Or a hitchhiker. I really can’t remember, but something tells me you have your own ideas about this too.’

  ‘It was your dear little sister,’ Toftlund said, fixing his eyes on her. Behind him he was conscious of Bastrup pulling away from the wall slightly so that she too could study Irma’s expression. She surprised them by laughing out loud:

  ‘God, you’re as easy to read as some hyped-up children’s book,’ she sighed as she stubbed out her cigarette, lit another and puffed the smoke in Toftlund’s face. This time he instinctively, and much against his will, wafted away the acrid grey cloud.

  ‘I don’t know who it is. I’m back and forth across the bridge all the time. I have a brother and a mother living on the other side of Storebælt. I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve with this, but it sounds to me as if you’re getting a bit desperate. Am I right?’

  She looked Toftlund in the eye:

  ‘I am right,’ was all she said.

  Toftlund leaned right across the table, holding her gaze:

  ‘You wrote a long letter to your dear sister.’

  ‘It’s not polite to read other people’s letters or diaries.’

  She puffed indignantly on her cigarette, but he could tell that she was not the slightest bit surprised. Vuldom had been right. She had written that account assuming that they would read it. She had thrown them some clues, but they might just as easily be fiction as recollections. Everything she did was done with manipulation in mind. Toftlund suddenly remembered someone saying once – he could not remember where – that the world of espionage was like a hall of mirrors: what you saw was not what was actually there.

  ‘As far as you’re concerned I can do whatever I like. Leave no stone in your life unturned. For someone in your situation there’s no longer any such thing as a private life.’

  ‘Are we about to start the third degree?’

  ‘That I’m not allowed to do.’

  ‘Do I detect an unspoken “unfortunately”?’

  ‘No. The systems you worked for are the ones who use such methods. That’s only one of many differences between them and us. Who’s this sister you’ve been writing to, Irma?’

  Irma glanced over at Charlotte, who idly opened the file she was holding. Then she said:

  ‘A sister is a sister. It could be Daisy there. It’s all women. The other half of the population. The downtrodden half of the population. Right? That’s what we called one another in the women’s movement. Sister. Do you see.’

  Charlotte said:

  ‘You sound every bit as pathetic as my mother. Don’t try to lecture me. Or drag me into it. You’re the one who wrote, and I quote: “In the Peasant and Worker State of the GDR they have succeeded, despite the machinations of Imperialism, in producing both an industrial miracle and an equality between the sexes and the classes which does not exist in late-capitalist West Germany.” Let’s just think about that for a moment.’

  Irma said nothing. They waited, then Charlotte continued:

  ‘Here’s another little titbit from your totalitarian past: “Although the armed conflict being waged by the Baader-Meinhof group may not be readily defensible within a Danish context it is not the function of the new left to blindly join in the bourgeois press’s hue-and-cry against the righteous struggle of the anti-Imperialist powers, a struggle to which they have been driven by the repressive tolerance of late-capitalist society.” How in hell’s name does a woman like you get to be a university professor with responsibility for educating future generations?’

  Irma still said nothing, merely stubbed out her cigarette and promptly lit another.

  Charlotte stepped up to the table, waving the documents in her hand:

  ‘There’s a whole lot more in the same vein. Going all the way back to your teens. Your smooth and apparently effortless progress through totalitarianism from the fifties to the eighties ended well and at no tim
e entailed any real risk for you, although of course you were never caught – unlike your German comrades.’

  ‘Or your father,’ Toftlund added, and finally he got a response:

  ‘You keep him out of this,’ she all but shouted, her neck flushing an angry red. ‘He’s dead. This has nothing to do with him.’

  ‘It has everything to do with him, Irma,’ Toftlund rejoined. ‘He is your pain, his fate is what drives you, his betrayal the burden you feel you must bear. Because his betrayal hurt you, you felt bound to hurt the democratic society which hounded him.’

  ‘Why does every cop fancy himself as a psychologist?’ Her voice was steady again, but the hectic flush spread from her throat down to the opening of her shirt.

  ‘Your father was a son of a bitch.’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘A traitor, in the pay of the Germans, a war criminal like the rest of those dirty SS bastards, a Nazi …’

  ‘Are you about finished?’

  ‘A bad father, a bad husband, an imposter, a liar, a bigamist. A whoremaster. Your sister is a bastard, your mother’s present marriage invalid. And all because of that son of a bitch you call your father!’

  Toftlund managed to duck and barely missed being hit by the ashtray which Irma had picked up and hurled at him with an astonishingly powerful underhand throw – but only because he had been expecting her to erupt. Charlotte Bastrup was not so lucky. The heavy ashtray sailed past her nose, but some of the ash and one butt flew up in her face. She started coughing and rubbing one of her eyes. Irma got to her feet and pushed back her chair. Toftlund sat where he was, ignoring Charlotte’s coughing. Irma moved back to the far wall and pressed herself against it, as if she could break down the wall by sheer physical force. Her fists were clenched, her face strained and chalk-white. She was having trouble breathing. A sidelong glance told Toftlund that Charlotte was still rubbing her eye. She ought to stop that, but it was her funeral. Toftlund kept his eyes pinned on Irma. The tape turned steadily. Her lawyer was going to give them grief. Especially if, as it seemed, she was starting to hyperventilate. The lawyer would definitely be of the opinion that he had overstepped the mark, but Toftlund didn’t care. A big crack had finally appeared in her defences. She had sat there coolly and calmly while he had presented her with a whole stack of documents testifying to the fact that Irma was Edelweiss and Edelweiss was Irma. Not even when he informed her that her acts of treachery had led to lives being lost in the Baltic region had she made any response. Except to say the same things over and over again: secret files are works of fiction written by insignificant little men who always wanted to make themselves seem more important than they were. A newspaper article was made out to be a confidential report. An innocent lunch became a rendezvous with an informant. As a researcher she wouldn’t trust those so-called intelligence files any further than she could throw them. You could not believe a word of them. That had been her constant mantra, but now a chink had appeared and so he kept up the pressure :