by David Hewson
He started to walk to the doors. They followed.
‘You’re a Muslim yourself,’ Strange said.
‘So what?’ He wasn’t worried. ‘I was ordered to buy those books. Ask Colonel Jarnvig. The army paid.’
He stopped by a group of soldiers near the sliding doors. There were weapons on the ground, mostly disassembled. Heavy mortars. Night scopes. Armaments she could only guess at.
Bilal bent down, looked at some of the men working.
‘If that’s all, I’m busy.’
Lund walked up, pointed to the knee of his camouflage uniform.
It was wet. Red.
‘I think you’re bleeding,’ she said. ‘Where were you last night?’
‘Here. OK?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lund answered. ‘Did anyone see you? That would be OK.’
‘We’re flying out next week!’ he yelled. ‘How can you come in here, wasting our time?’
‘I want a blood sample,’ Lund said. ‘Do you consent to it? Or do we have to go about this the long way?’
For the first time he looked worried.
‘I want to see the colonel. I’m not saying anything until he’s back.’
Strange walked up, stood close to him, looked into his dark eyes.
‘This isn’t about Colonel Jarnvig. It’s about you.’
A call from Herstedvester. The meeting with the lawyer and her husband was back on.
Now they sat in the same small room, with the little sofa and its crumpled cover, listening to the solicitor spell out what they already knew. Nothing could be done until another six months had passed.
‘Do as they say,’ the lawyer insisted. ‘Take the medication. Follow the programme.’
‘He’s been doing that all along,’ Louise said with a sigh.
‘If there’s a repetition of last night you’re talking a year or more. That’s before they even consider you.’
‘It won’t happen again.’ He took her hand, squeezed it, made sure the man saw. ‘I promise. I want to go home. I’ll do whatever they want.’
The lawyer was getting sick of this case, she thought. Too much work. Not enough money.
‘Can we have some time alone, please?’
When the man was gone she held Jens’s arm, looked into his clear, intelligent eyes.
‘I’m really sorry about Myg. But I need you now. Jonas too. Let’s not forget—’
‘How is he?’
‘He’s fine. He wants to see you again.’
Raben was smiling. He looked so very normal most of the time.
‘You have to focus on this, Jens. It’s the most important thing there is. We’ve got six months. Let’s use them. Should I find a different lawyer?’
He’d drifted already. His eyes, his thoughts were somewhere else.
‘Jens? Do we file a complaint about the Prison Service? What are we going to do?’
He shrugged.
‘We wait. What else can we do? I’ve got to see the medics. Toft said so.’
‘But . . .’
He looked as if he was getting bored with this.
‘They’ll only let me out of here when they want to, Louise. It’s their decision. Not ours.’
She had to fight to keep her temper.
‘You have to convince them you’re well!’
‘I’m doing the best I—’
‘It’s not enough!’ That hurt him and a part of her didn’t mind. ‘I’ve had two years of this. All these decisions. Where’s Jonas going to go to school? Where do we live? How do I pay for things? I can’t . . .’
He reached out and touched her dark hair. Didn’t notice it was different at all, she thought.
‘I know I screwed up,’ he said. ‘I’ll make it right for you. For Jonas. I promise.’
Then he kissed her once on the cheek, hand briefly at the nape of her neck.
‘Toft wants to see me. I have to go.’
‘What is this? Jens? Jens?’
Raben got up, went to the door, walked out, didn’t look at her again.
A short walk down the prison corridor to the medical office at the end.
A blue-uniformed guard. A male nurse in white who checked his name then got two red capsules from a jar.
Raben didn’t hesitate. Took them and the offered plastic cup of water. Put the pills in his mouth, drank.
The guard marched him back towards the cells.
It was time to leave the prison quarters to see Toft in the psychiatric wing.
Almost.
‘Can I get a shower?’ he asked.
‘You want to look good for the ice queen? Too classy for you.’
He sighed.
‘Two minutes,’ the guard said.
Raben gave him a wry salute, went to his room, got his washbag, walked to the communal shower.
It was empty. He closed the door, went to the basin, spat out the two tablets he’d kept under his tongue, rinsed his mouth with water from the tap.
The door wouldn’t lock. So he got the mop from the corner, jammed it as hard as he could against the handle, turned on the shower to make some noise, put his head under the lukewarm water.
Months before he’d secreted the tools under a drain cover, wondering if he’d ever need to use them. A wrench and a heavy spanner stolen from the workshop. A torch he’d taken when a guard wasn’t looking. All wrapped in greasy oilcloth to keep out the moisture.
Raben got on his knees and ripped up the grimy metal cover. They were still there, still in good condition.
The guard banged on the door. Yelled, ‘Raben?’
‘Two minutes you said.’
‘Get on with it.’
He ran to the door, got the mop out of the way. Just in time. The guard was testing the handle. When he opened it Raben was there, damp hair, damp towel, the tools and the torch inside his washbag.
The guard barked at him to get his jacket. It was raining outside. Then he got on his radio, announced Raben was leaving the prison block, headed for the short walk across the grass.
From one locked door to another, behind the high walls, the electric fences of Herstedvester. Cameras watching him all the way.
They were so sure of themselves, of their security, they’d let ordinary prisoners – and Raben was one – walk across on their own. Where was there to run? How?
‘Thanks,’ Raben said as the guard let him out.
The rain was cold and icy. The night black.
Ordinary.
No one called him that in Afghanistan. He was a leader, someone who’d been through jaeger training. A hunter. A lone wolf when he wanted to be.
The tools were under his jacket now. He stepped out into the dark.
Anywhere else and Lund would have bundled Bilal straight into the car and taken him down to the Politigården. But this wasn’t her territory. They were inside the army barracks, possibly beyond their jurisdiction. Strange didn’t seem to know either.
Hierarchies.
No one was moving until the surly, silent company commander had seen his superior. So twenty minutes after they confronted him in the depot, Lund and Strange found themselves facing a furious Major Søgaard.
‘Bilal has nothing to do with the killing,’ Søgaard insisted, as the young officer stood rigid to attention in the corner of Jarnvig’s office. ‘I can assure you—’
‘We’re not asking for character references,’ Strange broke in. ‘If he doesn’t start talking we’re booking him . . .’
‘We have to wait?’ Lund wondered.
At that moment Jarnvig stormed in. He looked even angrier than Søgaard.
‘I told you,’ the colonel bellowed, ‘that all communication had to go through me or Søgaard here. How dare you—?’
‘What’s wrong here?’ Lund asked. ‘Two people dead. One of them’s your own soldier. Bilal’s been buying fundamentalist literature from a website connected with their murders. He’s got blood on his clothes . . .’
‘There’s an explanat
ion,’ Jarnvig began.
‘Let me hear it from him. He can talk, can’t he?’
Jarnvig glared at her. Women didn’t answer back much in his world.
‘OK,’ she went on. ‘I’m starting to get this now. He . . .’ she nodded at Bilal ‘. . . can’t talk until you let him. So tell him to speak. Let’s hear it.’
He thought about this for a long moment, stared at the man in the corner, stiff to attention, hands behind his back, then nodded.
Eyes straight forward, focused on nothing, Bilal spoke in a bored, plain monotone.
‘Lance Corporal Myg Poulsen was under my command. I was concerned about his state of mind. I went to see him in the veterans’ club to see if we could sort things out.’
Then he looked at Lund and Strange.
‘I could see someone had broken in before me. The door was open. So I walked in. The place seemed empty. Then I saw him hanging from the ceiling. There was blood everywhere.’
‘And then you ran?’ Lund asked.
‘I heard you arrive. I didn’t know who you were.’
‘You didn’t think of calling the police?’
He glanced at Jarnvig.
‘My first duty’s to the barracks. To the men here.’
Strange laughed.
‘That’s a hell of an explanation.’
‘What had Myg done?’ Lund asked. ‘His . . . state of mind . . .’
Bilal went quiet again. Looked at Jarnvig. The colonel nodded. And Lund swore under her breath, none too quietly.
‘We had a serious security breach,’ Bilal said. ‘It’s possible . . .’
He stopped.
‘I’m one minute from dragging you into the Politigården,’ Lund told him.
‘Our chief of security had reported an illegal entry into our network. The log files showed Myg Poulsen had accessed confidential data from the operations database . . .’
Lund stared at Jarnvig.
‘About what?’
‘He’d downloaded a document.’
‘And?’ she asked.
‘It was a list of soldiers in a team. The men he’d served with the last time he was in Afghanistan. Two years ago.’
Lund folded her arms, looked at Strange, waited for a question. She was starting to like this man but he wasn’t much help here.
‘Poulsen probably needed the list for the veterans’ club,’ Bilal suggested.
‘Couldn’t he have just asked for it?’ Lund wondered.
He stared at the floor.
‘We’ll need DNA,’ Strange said. ‘If you’d come out with that fairy story yesterday we might have believed it.’
Lund swore again and wandered over to the wall of Jarnvig’s office. It was covered in photos. Afghanistan she guessed. Men in a dry, sparse country, with weapons and military vehicles.
‘I’m telling the truth,’ Bilal said behind her back.
‘I can vouch for that,’ Jarnvig intervened.
‘There’s a surprise,’ Lund murmured.
She liked looking at photographs. They told stories. Complex ones sometimes. There were scores here, overlapping, held in place by pins.
‘After you left last night Bilal came and told me all about this,’ Jarnvig added. ‘I immediately contacted PET and gave them a full explanation. They accepted it absolutely. You can’t march in here and threaten my men. I won’t . . .’
Lund closed her eyes, wondered if she could believe what she was hearing. Turned slowly round and stared at these men, colonel, major, lieutenant. A tidy little trinity of power who had no intention of talking to lowly civilian cops like her and Strange.
‘PET,’ she said, ‘deal with security. We investigate murders. That man . . .’
Strange was on the phone already.
Jarnvig strode over.
‘If you’d done as we agreed and come through me or Søgaard you’d have known all about this. You’re at fault. Not us.’ He smiled, not pleasantly. ‘As I think you’ll soon appreciate. Goodnight. See yourselves out.’
The three soldiers strode from the room, in strict, hierarchical order.
Strange came off the line.
‘So what does Brix say?’ Lund asked.
‘Special Branch have arrested three people connected to Kodmani. He wants us back. He’s not sure why we’re here in the first place.’
‘Really?’
Ulrik Strange shrugged and went to the door looking a touch bemused. Lund followed, but not before she’d carefully removed the photograph she wanted and moved another into its place.
Raining again outside.
‘I’ve never worked with PET before,’ Strange said. ‘Is it always like this?’
‘Like what?’ she asked, pulling out her phone when they were clear of the building and any nearby soldiers.
‘One-sided.’
‘No. It isn’t.’
She got through.
‘Send two officers to Herstedvester,’ Lund told control.
She retrieved the photograph, handed it to Strange and said, ‘Bottom left corner.’
There was frost on the car. They weren’t far from the depot where Bilal was working. He was back there now. Watching men work on the mortars.
‘What exactly am I supposed to see?’
He wasn’t slow, she thought. Just unobservant at times like most of them.
‘Next to Myg Poulsen,’ Lund said, pointing a finger at the photo. ‘That’s Jens Peter Raben. His friend. The one I visited today in Herstedvester.’
‘So what?’
Control were taking for ever. She wondered why.
‘Anne Dragsholm?’ Strange asked.
‘Looks like her to me. But Raben said he never knew her. I didn’t believe him then . . .’
Control came back.
‘Yeah,’ Lund said. ‘There’s a detainee there. Jens Peter Raben. I want him brought in for questioning immediately.’
She tried the car door. Locked.
‘Bring him straight to an interview room. Strange?’
He was staring at the photo as if he was still struggling to understand.
‘Strange?’ she said again.
‘The door?’
‘Oh.’
He got out the remote, unlocked it, handed her the photo. They got in.
Lund was still on the phone. Control wouldn’t let go. She listened, cut the call, took a deep breath, performed the childish faux head butt of the dashboard that Mark liked to do when she said something stupid.
Strange was staring at her.
‘We’re not going back to the Politigården,’ Lund said.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Herstedvester. You know? The high-security psychiatric prison that no one’s ever escaped from?’ He looked at her, face blank, truly a touch out of his depth, she thought. ‘Well Jens Peter Raben just broke that record. He’s gone.’
Four
Tuesday 15th November
7.52 p.m. It took them thirty minutes to get there. Strange drove carefully even when he was in a hurry.
The place was lit up like an ocean liner travelling through the night. Sirens wailed. Dogs barked. Prison officers and police were combing the areas inside and out, hunting for the missing Jens Peter Raben.
Lund found the head of security, watched some of the CCTV sweeps from his office by the gate.
‘He was supposed to see the clinical director. We let them walk from the block to the medical wing. It’s not far.’
The man tapped the screen.
‘It’s secure. We’ve never had a break before.’
Lund folded her arms and looked at him.
‘Raben’s no normal squaddie, you know,’ he said as if it were an excuse. ‘If anyone could get out . . .’
‘What’s so special about him?’
‘You work it out. He climbed into a sewer. Opened the manhole.’
They went outside. It was freezing now. Mist on their breath, on that of the dogs working the grounds.
‘Do
you know how far he’s got?’ Strange asked.
‘He’s on foot. We knew he was gone straight away. It’s as dark as hell out there and he’s on his own. No sign of a car outside. He must be nearby.’
Three officers stood around an open manhole cover. One was going down it. Hesitantly. She wondered whether to join him.
She bent down and, with her gloved fingers, picked up the wrench that was next to the manhole.
‘Yours or his?’
No answer.
‘I want to see his cell,’ Lund announced and walked back to the prison block.
They had a lockdown. Men were banging on their cell doors, shouting happily. Someone was finally free.
She got a guard to show her Raben’s tiny room. It was more human than she expected. The walls were covered with drawings, childish, those of his son she guessed. One subject only: soldiers and war. Men in green, smiling, raising weapons. Dark helicopters with the Danish flag dropping men from a plain blue sky. A camouflaged fighter raining bombs on screaming villagers in turbans, waving weapons as their world exploded in blood.
A photo of Raben with a boy of two or three, blond-haired, fetching, staring up at him adoringly. Taken in the interview room here, she thought. Another, older picture: Raben and his wife. She looked so much younger, beautiful, not careworn at all. There was a date on the back. Five years before. Raben looked drawn and difficult even then.
Lund sifted through the drawers, opened the three paperback books he owned, all military thrillers, flipped the pages. Went to the wardrobe. Another picture there. Black and white. Raben with his wife maybe ten years ago. Both of them young, happy, her head on his shoulder, his cheek to her hair. In love. The photo shouted it.
A noise. Lund looked. Strange was at the door.
‘They’re still searching the sewers,’ he said. ‘This one’s smarter than they think.’
‘ “No normal squaddie”. What does that mean?’
‘I checked his record. He’d done some training with the Jægerkorpset.’
Jæger. Hunter. Lund had heard the term. It was shorthand for a shadowy kind of hero. Special forces. She didn’t really take much interest in military matters. Never found the need.
‘So?’ she asked.
‘You could drop those guys anywhere and they’d get through. That’s what they’re taught. Ultimate survival. Never stop. Never give up. He’s going to be a bastard to catch.’
