The son stared into his bowl.
‘He’s a ghost,’ Monika Schmidt declared.
Henrik Schmidt looked from one to the other and smiled to Michael: ‘We played at Scarlet Pimpernel all the time when we were boys. Jakob was the Scarlet Pimpernel, of course. He was older and he could beat me, so he was in charge. I was either an aristocratic oppressor who must be guillotined or a revolutionary trying to catch him. Do you remember, Mum?’
Henrik Schmidt was the family peacemaker, Michael thought. Wedged in like an airbag between his father and big brother’s unyielding, potentially explosive egos.
Monika Schmidt moistened her lips.
‘You bet I do, darling. They seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? That damned, elusive Pimpernel!’ she quoted, while gazing lovingly at her older son.
‘And he still is,’ Victor Schmidt said. ‘A quite useless ghost.’
‘Jakob has never been interested in business, Victor,’ his wife said, to mollify him. ‘You have Henrik and you should count yourself lucky. Jakob would hate every minute in the boardroom. He can’t stand being indoors. You know that.’
‘And of course I am – grateful for Henrik, I mean,’ Victor Schmidt said. ‘I think we all are.’
‘And, anyway, you have a new heir now,’ Elizabeth Caspersen quipped sweetly.
‘And so close to Wall Street,’ Jakob Schmidt said with a smile.
‘Have you seen her, Henrik?’ his father asked. ‘She said that she used to visit Flemming in the apartment on 3rd Avenue. You practically lived there. Did you ever meet her?’
‘It’s a big apartment,’ Henrik Schmidt pointed out.
‘Surely it’s not so big that you wouldn’t notice a frantically copulating couple? Not to mention the pallet-loads of Viagra?’ He looked at Elizabeth Caspersen. ‘I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but really …’
‘It’s all right, Victor,’ she said with a sigh, as she, too, turned her attention to the younger son.
‘Have you met her, Henrik?’
‘Of course not. Flemming was always out, usually with me. We had meetings all the time. We did work when we were there, just so you know. I find it hard to believe that he could have had an affair without my knowledge. And, no, I’ve never seen her in the apartment or anywhere else.’
And you’re right, Michael thought. He almost felt sorry for Henrik Schmidt.
‘She writes that they met at an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum,’ Victor Schmidt said. ‘The Guggenheim? Since when was Flemming interested in modern art? Unless someone had painted a dead animal, he would never –’
‘I think there was a Congress Defense Committee event the summer before last,’ Henrik Schmidt said. ‘We weren’t the only ones to seize the opportunity to do some lobbying. Flemming was there.’
Michael looked at Elizabeth Caspersen. It was an excellent detail she had included in her letter. Highly plausible. He was impressed.
‘So what does she want?’ Victor Schmidt said to no one in particular while the soup bowls were cleared away and a dish of roast pigeons was placed on the table.
‘She wants a secure future for herself and her son,’ Elizabeth said. ‘And if my father really got her pregnant with … with Charles, if he really is the child’s father, then I can see her point. She writes that she’s not going to be unreasonable.’
‘Unreasonable? A New Yorker? What the hell does that mean? A couple of billion dollars?’
‘At least,’ Henrik said. ‘Her father is a judge. Oh, what fun.’
Victor Schmidt exploded.
‘This is no joke! It has taken thirty years of bloody hard graft to build Sonartek, and now Flemming is dead, and then some … some …’
‘Calm down, Dad,’ Jakob said. ‘Perhaps it won’t be so bad.’
His father pulled himself together with considerable effort and turned his attention to his older son.
‘Tell me, for how long do we have the pleasure of your company this time?’
Jakob Schmidt pushed the sleeve of his jacket away from his wristwatch with a twisting motion, as if he wanted to strangle his own wrist or didn’t quite trust it. A scratched Rolex on a steel strap slipped up his wrist and Michael noticed white skin underneath.
‘I’m leaving around eight thirty.’
‘Eight thirty?’ His father scowled at him. ‘Listen, boy. Flemming, my business partner, whom you may vaguely remember, has screwed around and fathered a child – not in the hereafter, but in New York. Now. “Charles”. We’re facing a massive crisis here. His mother could sue us for millions. She’s an American, Jakob! Her father is a judge. Do you have any idea what that means?’
Jakob Schmidt calmly returned his father’s gaze and shrugged his shoulders.
There didn’t seem to be much love lost between them, thought Michael, who was following the exchange. In fact, there was a strange alienation in Jakob’s eyes when he looked at his father. Perhaps he just didn’t like him; after all, his father beat his mother. Or maybe it was something else. Michael had seen it before: one child plays by the rules, while the other, usually the more loved, can’t or won’t, and recklessly breaks away so as not to go under. Elizabeth Caspersen had done it as well. The two of them seemed to understand each other.
‘Define “us”,’ the son responded flatly.
Victor Schmidt drained his glass and filled it up again. The wine spilled across the table. Mrs Nielsen got busy with a cloth, but the financier didn’t even sense her presence.
‘Us, God damn you! Your family. Your mother, brother and me. And Elizabeth. What could you possibly be doing tonight that’s more important than this?’
‘Meeting someone,’ the son said.
‘Could you give me a lift to Copenhagen?’ his brother asked.
‘Sure.’
Victor Schmidt looked exasperatedly from one to the other. Betrayed.
‘As for Flemming’s American offspring, surely it’s only fair that the mother receives some form of maintenance?’ Jakob said.
He looked at Michael. ‘Are you going to talk to her?’
‘I believe that’s the plan.’
‘But Jakob, you’ll be back later, won’t you?’ his mother asked.
‘Of course, I’ll be back before you know it.’
‘Promise?’
He reached out a big hand and squeezed one of his mother’s small ones.
But his father hadn’t finished.
‘Fair? You think so? And what does that entail? A seat on the board? Just what exactly do you mean by “fair”?’
The son smiled.
‘Isn’t there some sort of lower-age limit, Elizabeth? When it comes to board members of a quoted company, I mean. You’re the corporate lawyer.’
‘It’s seventy, I believe,’ she said. ‘But you also have to be a member of Club 300, the Danish branch, and be the CEO of a company where every board member is one of the boys. Or that’s how it seems. Inbred. After all, Victor is also on the board of TDC, Carlsberg and Brødrene Hartmann. They make a living out of telling each other how brilliant and clever they are, and how they would have been headhunted as CEOs of Pfizer or Morgan Stanley long ago if they hadn’t been so damned patriotic.’
Her cheekbones were glowing.
Monika Schmidt placed a calming hand on her husband’s forearm, but he snatched it back angrily. He seemed to jump at the chance to vent his fury on his son and Elizabeth Caspersen – as if anyone had any doubts – but then his glance swept across Michael, the outsider, and he shut his mouth hard as if an insect had flown into it.
‘Come on, Dad,’ Jakob Schmidt said, trying to appease him. ‘Let’s wait and see how bad it is. Send Michael to New York. Find out what the woman really wants. May I see the letter?’
Elizabeth Caspersen passed it across the table.
Jakob Schmidt began by looking at the little photograph. He smiled and put it to one side. His dark eyes jumped from line to line. Then
he carefully put the letter back in the envelope, slipped in the photograph and handed it to her.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he asked.
The housekeeper didn’t wait for him to be granted permission, but pushed a silver ashtray across to his elbow. Jakob Schmidt lit a long, brown cheroot, blew the smoke up to the ceiling and watched it drift towards the doorway.
‘Henrik said that Miss Simpson is an editor,’ he said.
‘Michael has already found that out,’ Elizabeth Caspersen said. ‘Why?’
The older son gave her an inscrutable look.
‘Nothing. She’s probably okay. Seventh-generation New Yorker? Give her our best wishes.’
‘I will,’ Michael said.
‘Don’t include me,’ Victor Schmidt said in a thick voice.
‘I can have a DNA test analysed by a forensic laboratory in Berne,’ Michael said. ‘I understand from Elizabeth that Miss Simpson is willing to supply a sample of the child’s DNA. Perhaps we should await the result of the DNA test before we get ahead of ourselves.’
Monika Schmidt smiled warmly around the whole table.
‘Listen to what Michael is saying, Victor, before you blow a gasket,’ she said. ‘That seems reasonable, doesn’t it, Elizabeth? The whole thing might turn out to be a storm in a teacup.’
‘Good advice,’ she replied. ‘I suggest we send Michael to New York for an initial interview with Miss Simpson. He can form an opinion of her, see the child and gain a sense of where we stand. And get a DNA sample.’
Victor Schmidt stared at Michael with his working eye while the false one randomly looked at a plate of grapes. He ran both palms across his face.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Even though Flemming was cremated and I haven’t got a clue how you intend to get his DNA.’
‘We’ll find a way.’ Michael turned to the housekeeper: ‘What delicious grapes.’
‘Mrs Nielsen always prepares enough to feed a whole army,’ Henrik Schmidt said. ‘If it was up to her, we would be waddling rather than walking.’
Michael forced a smile, eased his chair over a groove in the floor and got up. ‘Where’s the lavatory, please?’
Henrik Schmidt rose as well. ‘Upstairs, third door on the left. Do you want me to show you?’
‘Thank you, I’ll manage,’ Michael said.
He walked quickly up the stairs and opened the door to the corridor on the left. It was like walking through a luxury hotel. There were tall, white-painted panels, green silk wallpaper and matching doors to either side. Michael opened the first door and found a guest bedroom with an untouched but made-up bed. The next door revealed an enormous bathroom with a sunken tub with steps, golden taps and murals. Roman scenes of bathing women in flimsy, damp clothes, and naked young men holding out amphorae suggestively spurting water. Colourful birds courted each other in the mosaic border. Michael opened every cupboard, but found only a pile of exclusive, fragrant towels, dressing gowns, various oils, lotions and soaps.
He closed the door to the bathroom and tried the other doors down the corridor without finding anything other than linen cupboards, a sewing room and several identical guest bedrooms.
The last door to the left was the only one that was locked. On the doorframe someone had put up an enamelled Royal Life Guards crest with the motto Dominus Providebit.
*
The others were drinking coffee by the time he returned. Michael smiled at the women and sat down.
‘Coffee?’ Mrs Nielsen asked.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Coffee for the detective,’ Victor Schmidt intoned, but apparently without resentment. He winked humorously to Michael.
Maybe someone had defended him in his absence. Even Jakob Schmidt received him with a small, if still sceptical smile. It was almost like an ordinary dinner in an ordinary house with an ordinary family.
Chapter 24
There was a light tap on his bedroom door. Michael looked at his watch and frowned. It was two fifteen in the morning and the house was as quiet as a mausoleum. Jakob Schmidt had left Pederslund at eight thirty with his brother.
They had discussed the legal implications of Flemming Caspersen’s fruitful, albeit imaginary infidelity until Victor Schmidt became too drunk and incoherent and his wife had helped him upstairs to bed. Michael had said good night to Elizabeth Caspersen outside her bedroom, which was opposite to his. Even she was slightly tipsy and, frankly, he couldn’t blame her.
Michael had drunk nothing. He was very proud of himself.
He flicked that evening’s first cigarette out of the open window. The glowing tip trailed an arc in the darkness over Jungshoved. Then he opened the door to Monika Schmidt, but blocked her path. She was now wearing some kind of negligee, one transparent layer upon another, which reached down to her bare feet. It was like butterfly wings. Michael could see the contours of her slim, petite body against the light from the lamps in the corridor.
She had changed her perfume to something lighter, more floral – and anaesthetizing. She looked gravely up at him, but he didn’t remove his hand. A small, fearful smile played on her lips while the rest of her face was calm and expectant.
‘Are you just going to leave me standing here?’ she asked.
Michael scratched the back of his head. He had freed himself from the stiff new shirt, jacket, shoes and socks, and was standing in the cool evening air wearing only his trousers.
He tried to smile.
‘Monika, listen … I think you are … you’re a very beautiful … attractive … but …’
She performed an ironic curtsy, fluttered her long eyelashes at him and held up a bottle of Talisker and two crystal tumblers. Her thin bracelets jingled.
‘A whisky, Michael? Snälla, snälla, Michael. You can’t send me away now. It just wouldn’t do.’
She ducked under his outstretched arm and continued into the darkness, where her contours dissolved. Michael popped his head out and glanced up and down the dim corridor. The gap under Elizabeth Caspersen’s door was dark. There was no key in his door.
‘Doesn’t anybody ever lock their doors around here?’ he grumbled.
‘Jakob usually does,’ Monika Schmidt said behind him.
She turned on the bedside lamp, climbed up on his bed and stretched out her legs on the bedspread. She smiled and poured a whisky with a steady hand.
Michael closed the window and sat down in an armchair a safe distance from his hostess. Then he crossed his legs as if to signal that perhaps she ought to do the same. She didn’t. Instead, Monika Schmidt watched him with a little smile. She held out a glass to him, and he got up and took it.
Then she leaned back against the headboard, sighed and pulled up one leg. Michael kept his eyes on his glass. He suspected that her studied movement had caused the negligee to slide up her thigh.
‘Please don’t get me wrong, Michael,’ she said.
‘What on earth is there to get wrong, Monika?’ he asked.
He sipped his whisky without looking up. He noticed that she had pulled down the negligee so it covered her crotch.
‘Are you married?’ she asked.
Michael muttered something affirmative.
‘Happily?’
‘I think so.’
‘So there’s still such a thing as true love?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Like in the fairy tales. Children?’
Michael held up two fingers. ‘Two.’
Monika Schmidt nodded and folded her arms across her breasts.
‘Lucky woman, your wife,’ she said.
‘I’m not so sure. I know I’m the lucky one, but I don’t suppose that she is.’
She smiled, but said nothing.
‘Cheers,’ he said.
She raised her glass and took a sip. This was a different version of Monika Schmidt, he thought. Serious, balanced. Her hectic quality had gone.
‘The whole thing is insane, isn’t it, Michael?’ she said, and let her gaze glide acros
s his naked torso with an expression of some alarm.
‘The baby in New York?’
‘Yes. Do you believe it?’ she asked.
‘I think I do. It wouldn’t be the first time a married man fathered a love child.’
‘Not Flemming.’
‘I guess he had balls and urges just like everybody else,’ Michael mumbled. ‘What more does it take?’
She looked at him gravely. ‘He wasn’t like that. He really wasn’t.’
‘If you say so.’
She nodded, emptied her glass, and refilled it immediately.
‘Michael, please don’t think ill of us.’
‘Of course not, Monika. Why would I?’
‘Asch! Because … we always clash. Victor … me … Victor and me, Victor and Elizabeth, Victor and Jakob. It’s not as bad as it looks. Victor is a good man, really. He’s a product of his upbringing, we all are. His father beat him and his mother didn’t care. Do you know how he lost his eye?’
‘No.’
‘One day his father picked him up, put him on the kitchen table, told him to jump and promised to catch him. He was five years old. Victor jumped, but his father didn’t catch him and he lost his eye. His father said that would teach him never to trust anyone. And he learned that lesson all right. They were very poor. No matter how rich, powerful and comfortable Victor is now, in his head he’ll only ever be one tiny step from the abyss. He really believes that. He despises impotence, dependency and weakness because he has always had to be so strong himself. I guess that’s typical for … what’s the word? Mould breakers. Flemming was both father and brother to him, and without Flemming, he’s vulnerable and exposed. He’ll do anything to safeguard himself and Sonartek.’
‘Anything?’
She looked at him. Apparently unaware, she pulled up her leg again and Michael could see her beautiful, well-trimmed sex. He averted his eyes. Monika Schmidt frowned at him, then the penny dropped and she wrapped the bedspread around her legs.
‘Right! Now we can talk without you getting distracted. And without me getting distracted. My apologies, Michael.’
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