The girl would be unconscious for at least half an hour, and should it become necessary, he could top up the injection.
He signalled, left the car park and drove east down Allégade. To the casual observer, he would simply be a well-dressed, young man in an expensive car with a sleeping girl in the seat next to him.
*
His mobile rang and he glanced at the display with dismay. Allan Lundkvist.
The beekeeper was hysterical. ‘What are you going about it?’ he demanded to know. ‘Just what the hell are you going to do? That superintendent has just rung me again. She has called me ten times today, at least. And yesterday. She’s not going to go away and she’s never off duty. What the fuck do I tell her? And what are you doing about it?’
‘Have you talked to her?’ he asked.
‘Of course I haven’t! We agreed that I wouldn’t. But if I don’t call her back soon, she’s bound to turn up.’
He looked down the girl’s long thighs in the tight jeans and at the point where they met. He started humming a tune. A song by Bruce. The Boss himself. ‘Call her and say that you’ll meet her tomorrow morning, nine o’clock, okay?’ he said.
‘Nine o’clock! Tell me, do you have a paper round?’
‘No. Or nine thirty. What time do you get up?’
‘Seven o’clock.’
‘Are you alone?’ he asked.
‘Yes! What do I tell her? What does she want?’
He beat out the rhythm on the steering wheel and tried to remember the lyrics. He wished the other man would shut up for a moment.
‘She wants to talk to you about Kim, obviously,’ he said. ‘She wants to find out how well you knew him and learn something about the rest of us.’
‘Then that’s what I’m going to tell her. Thanks a lot. We’re gonna have a great time.’
‘It’s no harder than some of the other stuff we’ve done, Allan. It’s nothing. This is the Kim you knew: he helped you with odd jobs on the farm and you gave him some honey from your busy little bees. You served together at Camp Viking, but not in the same unit. And he didn’t invite you to his wedding.’
‘But I’m in the pictures. In the videos. From Qala. We all are.’
‘That could be anyone. We all looked the same back then.’
‘And everyone is dead.’
He laughed to calm him down. ‘You’re not dead, Allan, and neither am I. Nor is the photographer.’
‘So what really happened?’ the beekeeper asked.
‘When?’
‘To Kim, damn you.’
‘He hanged himself.’
‘And what am I supposed to do? Stick my head in a gas oven?’
‘Of course not. Why would you want to do that, Allan? And do you even have a gas oven?’
The other voice sounded more distant – reassured, but still distant, as if he were walking away from the telephone and had no intention of coming back.
‘Nine o’clock, did you say?’
‘For example,’ he said.
‘And where will you be?’
‘Nearby, I expect.’
‘You’re not thinking of … of taking her, hurting her while she’s at my place, are you? You’re not going to do that, eh? You don’t work for those crazy companies any more, remember that.’
He took another look at the unconscious girl. ‘Of course I won’t. We’re in Denmark now.’
‘Just remember that. Sometimes I have my doubts.’
The other man grunted. He sounded far from convinced.
‘I know where I am, Allan,’ he said, and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
‘I bloody well hope so. Are you going to talk to her yourself?’
‘I was planning to. At some point.’
‘So, nine or nine thirty tomorrow morning.’ Allan Lundkvist sounded more remote than ever.
‘Call her now and set up a meeting,’ he said, and hung up.
He pulled the glove off his right hand with his teeth and let the back of his fingers glide across her face. The flesh had started to swell around her jaw and her left eye. In a few minutes her eye would close up. The skin above the eye and the fractured lower jaw was warm, but cooler where her face was still intact. His fingertips brushed her breast. Young. Fine. Such a shame.
He lifted his hand, drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, smiled to himself in the rear-view mirror, and suddenly remembered the song as if it had never left his mind. He sang Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m on Fire’ at the top of his voice and beat his palms steadily against the steering wheel. He reached out and turned her head forwards, so her eyes were no longer staring at him. Her head rolled back. He tried a second time with the same result. It was as if there were no bones in her neck.
‘Bitch,’ he muttered, and gave up.
Great song. Boring girl.
Chapter 27
He parked in front of a low, grey concrete building in Sydhavnen, not far from the sea and the mighty, humming H.C. Ørstedsværk power station. Black bin liners had been nailed across the windows of the warehouse so it was completely blacked out. He crossed the forecourt, locked the barred gates with a chain and padlock, stood for a moment between the overflowing rubbish containers and stacks of damaged Euro-pallets, and looked about him.
The nearest residential properties were a long way away and the only people who ever came here were graffiti artists and vagrants. He opened the car door and pulled out the girl, threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, kicked the car door shut and carried her up the loading ramp. He knocked three times on a metal door while he glanced around once more.
The door was rolled up. The man inside looked at the girl over his shoulder and smiled. Then he gestured him inside the harshly lit hall behind him.
‘Problems?’
‘No.’
‘Ski masks,’ his boss said.
‘She’s unconscious.’
‘Don’t care.’
He put the girl down on a battered sofa they had found behind a container. Josefine Jensen’s head lolled to one side and her hand hit the floor. His boss had rigged up photographic lamps around the sofa and under one of the loading beams. An old, but still working winch, with a chain that reached the floor, was hanging from the beam.
‘How much did you give her?’
‘Five millilitres. She’ll wake up soon.’
He turned his coat inside out, folded it and placed it on the floor. His boss handed him a ski mask and he adjusted the holes over his eyes and mouth.
The man looked at him.
‘And Allan?’
‘I’ve spoken to him. He’ll call the superintendent and arrange a meeting tomorrow morning.’
‘Good. We don’t need any more people developing a guilty conscience or getting depressed, starting to spend money or making phone calls. Like Kim.’
They helped each other undress the girl. Her slim limbs were floppy. They looked at her naked body on the sofa, but said nothing. His boss grabbed her under her arms and pulled her further up on the sofa. The uninjured eyelid twitched and she started muttering incoherently. Her lower jaw was askew and her left eye black and closed.
The man straightened up.
‘She’s waking up,’ he said, and crossed the floor to adjust the floodlights. ‘Good-looking girl.’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean, she’s too good-looking. Hit her.’
He didn’t move and the other man watched him. His eyes were clear and blue.
‘You want to make an impression, don’t you? Isn’t that why we’re here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then hit her.’
He went over to the sofa, put the leather glove on his right hand again and punched the girl in the middle of her face. Her nose broke to the right and blood poured from her nostrils.
He rubbed his knuckles. It was no longer so easy.
‘Again,’ the other said.
‘That’s enough.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’
His boss found a short iron bar on the floor and bent over the girl.
He turned away, but heard the blow land with a moist smack, and something give.
The man pointed to the chain hanging from the loading beam and passed him the handcuffs.
‘Hoist her up so she doesn’t choke.’
The girl’s slender chest pumped oxygen to her lungs and her body glistened with sweat. The blood from her nose and mouth flowed between her breasts and gathered in her belly-button, along with her broken teeth. He slipped the handcuffs around her wrists, attached the hook at the end of the chain between them and raised her up slightly. Her arms grew unnaturally long, before her long, slim body started rising from the sofa. Her head slumped forwards between her shoulders and down on her heaving chest, her ponytail loosened and her hair swung forwards and covered her face. He tied the chain around a concrete pillar to secure it.
His boss lifted up a heavy, professional video camera on a tripod, slotted it in place, looked in the viewfinder and nodded. Then he kneeled down in front of a laptop on the floor and clicked until the picture from the camera appeared on the screen.
‘I have an idea for the soundtrack,’ he said, and told his boss about the song.
The other nodded happily. ‘We’ll take it from YouTube. It’ll be brilliant. Irresistible, I think we could say.’
He found the girl’s mobile in her jacket, opened the sent box and read the last dozen messages to get an idea of her texting style. He smiled when he read the message that described him – favourably and with a hint of irony – to someone called Laura. Then he sent a text to her mother, dropped the mobile on the concrete floor and crushed it under his heel.
‘There’s coffee in the pot,’ he said, pointing to a makeshift office behind a partition wall.
He looked at the girl who was half lying, half hanging, over the filthy, green sofa.
‘She’s shivering,’ he said.
‘I have some blankets somewhere.’
They wrapped her in grey, stiff blankets.
He inserted a cannula into the girl’s wrist, rigged up a saline drip and pushed a small dose of diazepam through the tube. The liquid turned milky and then clear and the girl’s whimpering stopped.
His boss held up his hand.
‘Easy now. We want her to feel something, don’t we?’
‘Of course.’
*
Lene tried concentrating on her book, but discovered she had read the same page at least three times without the words making it past her eyes.
The telephone rang.
‘Lene.’
‘Allan Lundkvist. You’ve called. And called.’
The man’s voice sounded faint and distant, as if he were on another continent.
‘Allan? Thank you. Sorry … are you here? In Denmark, I mean?’
She put her book aside and sat up in bed. Her ankle was itchy so she stuck her leg out from under the duvet and scratched it.
Nervously.
‘Is it too late? Did I wake you? I’ve just come back from Jylland,’ he said. ‘I thought I had better ring straight away.’
‘It’s not too late. I’m glad you called. Very much so. I’m sorry if I’ve been a pest.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘It’s about Kim Andersen,’ she said.
‘Kim Andersen?’
‘Private. The Royal Life Guards. Holbæk. Camp Viking. Helmand.’
‘Kim, yes, I just needed … Yeah, sure … What about him?’
‘He hanged himself the day after his wedding.’
‘Hanged himself?’ A long, airy pause followed. ‘Louise. He married Louise, didn’t he?’
‘That’s correct. It sounds as if you didn’t go to the wedding?’
‘No, Jesus Christ … The day after, you say? That makes no sense.’
‘No.’
Allan Lundkvist sounded genuinely shocked, baffled and a little tired. He searched for the words in just the right fumbling manner.
‘Why the hell would he do that?’ he then said. ‘He was crazy about her. And the kids. He was always talking about those kids.’
‘I don’t know. But I’m in possession of a photograph from Afghanistan, Allan. There are five men in the picture. Robert Olsen is dead, Kenneth Enderlein is dead, Kim Andersen also, as I’ve just explained, and then there’s you and a fifth man, whose name is … what, exactly? It would seem to be very bad for your health to belong to that group, Allan.’
His breathing sounded steady, but shallow. She was scared that he might hang up.
‘Musa Qala,’ he then said. ‘The picture is taken outside Musa Qala.’
‘Which is?’
‘A kind of town. More dead inhabitants than live ones. The only reason anyone still lives there is because the Taliban have moved back in. We’ve taken it from them five times, but every time they come back. They killed Amir, the district governor, and Abdul Quddus, the district chief, in March 2006. Then the Brits moved in and threw out the Taliban, then the guys from Bornholm – we call them the Boy Scouts – arrived to bail out the Brits and so it went on. The Americans droned Mullah Gafoor just outside the town recently. It just drags on.’
‘Is that right?’
‘It’s been like that since Alexander the Great. Afghanistan isn’t a country; it’s a piece of fossilized, medieval shit.’
‘So why go there?’
‘Because it’s fun!’ He laughed. ‘I’m going back again for six months come January and I can’t wait.’
‘Who is the fifth man, Allan, the one with the scorpion on his neck?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Loads of people came and went. I guess he was just someone who was there that day. I can’t remember. Can we meet tomorrow? I’m knackered.’
Lene looked out of her dark living-room window and thought about Josefine.
‘Yes, of course, but all five of you have long hair and beards. It looks as if you’ve been in the same place for a while with no access to a razor.’
‘Yeah … I guess you’re right. Sure. We probably visited bazaars or attended tribal meetings. And they told us a lot of crap. They don’t have clocks out there, Lene. They rely on their memory. And they’ve got a bloody long memory, let me tell you. They talk about things that happened two thousand years ago as if it was yesterday. They have all the time in the world. They still talk about Sikander and Macedonia and Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus, as if Alexander himself might come riding over the mountains with his elephants any minute now.’
‘The picture was taken in the summer of 2006,’ she interjected quickly, before the private lost himself in his musing about the passing of the centuries and the futility of it all.
Lene heard a faint rasping of a hand across stubble and the clattering sound of a bottle, hitting a rubbish bin. Or missing it.
And surely it was Hannibal who used elephants to cross the Alps, she thought. Small, hairy ones. Her mother would have known.
‘Right … yeah,’ Allan Lundkvist mumbled. ‘We were probably gone for a few months. I don’t remember. Why don’t you come over tomorrow, Lene? I’ll check my diary. I try to write something every day, even when I’m out in some crappy desert.’
‘Okay,’ she sighed. ‘When?’
‘Nine or nine thirty,’ he said. ‘I need to be somewhere by half-eleven.’
He gave her his address.
‘How is the honey business?’ she asked.
‘The honey business is great, Lene, just great. So I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?’
She looked at her watch.
It was midnight. Josefine had left work two hours ago and Lene had heard nothing from her.
‘Good night,’ she said.
‘Pleasant dreams,’ he said.
‘Allan …?’
‘What?’
‘Who took the picture?’
‘No one. Self-timer.’
*
Lene leaned back against the headboard and switched off the lamp on he
r bedside table. She was busy staring up at the ceiling when her mobile buzzed with a text message.
Hey, Mutti. Got lucky!
Staying over. Having a lovely, lovely time.
Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.
Jose
It was followed by the usual two smileys.
Lene put down the mobile and drank a mouthful of water from the glass on her bedside table. She fluffed up her pillows, lay down and pulled her duvet up to her chin.
‘Got lucky’?!
Would she sleep tight? She highly doubted it. In her mind she went over the conversation with Allan Lundkvist. He had sounded tired but otherwise normal, so why was every alarm bell going off at the back of her head? She should have insisted on the name of the fifth man, but she had been scared of alienating him.
She tried finding some nice, peaceful places for her thoughts to go to, but the usual safe havens fled in every direction whenever she came near them. For the umpteenth time she thought about Kim Andersen’s little cottage in the forest and suddenly she knew what was wrong. At last she had nailed the discrepancy she had been struggling with in the last few days.
The chimney. The log pile. The neat and tidy log pile under the lean-to. But no fireplace.
She smiled into the darkness.
She still had it.
Chapter 28
The farm looked like thousands of other traditional Danish farms, with four wings round a yard. It had a sagging thatched roof and crumbling white walls in between the black-painted timbers. Lene had passed a smart new sign advertising organic honey when she turned off the main road.
She wondered how bees could tell the difference between flowers that had been sprayed with pesticides and those that hadn’t. And could they be trained to only gather nectar from ‘clean’ flowers?
The lane leading to the farm hadn’t been tarmacked. It was little more than a cart track between the fields, and the grass brushed the underside of the car. She slowed down when she spotted a white figure walking between dozens of small, white beehives on a meadow behind the farmhouse. The figure was wearing a loose-fitting canvas suit and wore a broad-brimmed hat with a protective veil on his head. She sounded the horn and he looked up, waved and disappeared behind the house. Allan Lundkvist was taller than he had appeared on the desert photograph.
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