by David Hewson
‘Jens Peter Raben?’
‘No.’
They came close to the next funeral. Someone was weeping very noisily by the grave.
‘I wanted her to find another job. Anne enjoyed the army. I think she liked the idea she was doing something confidential. Something she couldn’t talk about to me.’
‘Even with you being a lawyer?’
A glint of resentment in his bleary blue eyes.
‘A boring commercial lawyer. I earned ten times what she did. But she always said she got ten times the satisfaction. And then she got fired.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘That’s what she told me.’
‘Why would they fire her?’
‘She had an argument. There was a row over an investigation she conducted. She wouldn’t talk about it. Not in any detail. I think she crossed the wrong people.’
He stopped, looked back at the car. Was getting a grip on himself, Lund thought. He’d be gone soon. This part of his life would start to slip away into the hazy, distant place that was the past.
‘Anne could be a real tiger. Once she got her teeth into something she never let go.’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘There was an incident in Afghanistan. Two years ago. She wouldn’t say any more than that. I have to leave now—’
‘So the army asked her to investigate?’
Dragsholm shook his head emphatically.
‘No. That was the problem. Anne heard something. She looked into it on her own initiative. She wasn’t supposed to go there. She was very keen on . . . human rights. That’s where I wanted her to work. She really cared.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t so much. It’s a job. But she had this sense of justice.’
‘What did she find out?’
‘There was an ambush. The army had an inquiry when it was over. They didn’t believe the story the soldiers told them.’
‘Anne looked into that?’
‘She represented the men who survived. Conducted their case. Lost it, and she never liked that. So she kept on asking questions.’
Lund felt stupid, and deceived.
‘Let me get this straight. She was the lawyer who represented the men who came back from Team Ægir?’
‘Ægir.’ He nodded. ‘That’s right. She thought they’d been badly treated. Anne hated anything she saw as a miscarriage of justice. In the army. Out of it.’
‘I’m sorry we made it so much worse for you,’ Lund said and held out her hand.
He didn’t take it.
‘I made it worse, didn’t I? Running away like that. Getting in the car.’
‘Why did you?’
‘I was terrified. I’d been drinking. Didn’t think straight. There was so much blood. I thought maybe it would be me next.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘I’m not like her,’ Dragsholm muttered. ‘Anne had courage. She’d stare down anything. I’m just a coward and I know it.’ Briefly he shook her hand. ‘Was it these terrorists the papers are talking about?’
‘I can’t talk about the case.’
Dragsholm stared at her. A smart man, she thought.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t believe that story either.’
He walked off to his car. Lund phoned Strange.
‘I asked around at the Operational Command,’ he said. ‘They’re looking at what happened in Helmand.’
‘Forget about that for now. Have you got the list of men from Ægir?’
He took a second or two.
‘In front of me.’
‘Does it break down who was in Raben’s group?’
‘I can work that out.’
‘Good. We need to talk to them.’
‘Kodmani—’
‘PET can waste their time on him. I want to see one of those soldiers.’
The Joint Council met at short notice in a small committee room in the Folketinget. All the party leaders with their advisers, a hand-picked number of journalists in attendance. Agger was at Buch’s throat from the off, demanding an explanation for the apparent slipup over the terrorist threat.
‘Monberg took his decision out of consideration for national security,’ he pointed out.
‘Are you saying we couldn’t be trusted?’
Buch rolled his eyes in despair. Carsten Plough was seated next to him, twitching uncomfortably at the polite aggression building up in the room.
‘What about Ahl Al-Kahf?’ Krabbe asked. ‘Is it true that members of this disgraceful organization have been arrested?’
‘A number are being interviewed . . .’
Krabbe leaned forward and spoke loudly into the microphone.
‘Let it be noted that this is one of the groups the People’s Party wants proscribed.’
Buch smiled, waited till they were all looking at him.
‘The anti-terror package which will be put to Parliament next week will include measures against all the groups which our security agencies believe merit action. If Ahl Al-Kahf fall into this category, their name will be on the list. If not—’
‘You’re wriggling, Buch,’ Birgitte Agger interrupted. ‘Your predecessor thought this was an act of terror. So why did the police spend ten days questioning the victim’s husband?’
A good question. Thomas Buch closed his eyes and wondered what the kids were doing at home in Jutland.
‘Frode Monberg cannot be here to answer for his actions for reasons we all know. However I am able to share something.’
He nodded to Karina who walked round the table handing out copies of a single-page document.
‘I’m circulating this in confidence and with some reluctance. This document remains classified information and must not be shared with others, including the press. When you read it—’
‘Games, Buch,’ Agger said.
‘When you read it . . . You’ll see that Monberg was advised that any open investigation might reveal information which would compromise our military strategy in Afghanistan, thus endangering the lives of Danish soldiers.’
Agger passed the sheet to her assistant.
‘So you say.’
‘No. So our own security advisers say. Do you doubt their motives too?’ Buch asked. ‘As you appear to doubt mine?’
‘Don’t bring up your brother again—’
Buch’s fist slammed the table.
‘My brother’s been dead six years! Nothing I can do will bring him back. But if I can save one Danish family the pain we went through I will—’
‘Then bring them home,’ Agger yelled and regretted the words the moment they’d left her lips.
‘They’re there,’ Buch said, sensing triumph. ‘Whatever you feel about the war they are there. So tell me. If this memo had fallen on your desk. If you’d read what it said. That to talk about this case would expose our brave men and women to mortal peril . . .’
Agger’s mouth was a thin line of fury. She snatched at her remaining papers. A few fell on the floor.
‘Would you have gone ahead and revealed it anyway?’ Buch asked. ‘Never mind the cost?’
No answer. She got up, stormed off. All eyes fell on him.
‘If there are no more questions . . .’
It was aimed at Krabbe only and he shook his head.
‘Then,’ Thomas Buch added, ‘I will withdraw and resume my duties.’
‘Damn, what a team!’ Back in the Ministry, Buch beamed at Plough, blew a kiss at Karina. ‘Did I go too far? I’m not mentioning my brother again. I’d never have brought him into it if she wasn’t alluding—’
‘She asked for it,’ Karina declared. ‘Bloody cheek. There’s something we need to talk—’
‘We could still report her for making a classified memo public,’ Plough added hopefully.
‘Magnanimous in victory!’ Buch declared. ‘Forget it. Anyone fancy a hot dog? I’m buying.’
Neither rose to the offer.
‘We still need to find out how Agger got hold of the memo
,’ Plough said. ‘Someone’s stirring it here.’
The phone on the desk rang. Karina took it.
‘It’s the Prime Minister,’ she whispered, hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Get someone onto that,’ Buch told Plough.
‘Thomas!’ Grue Eriksen sounded happy. ‘Congratulations. I hear it went quite well.’
‘I’ve got good staff here.’ He nodded at Plough and Karina. ‘They prepared me well. The credit’s theirs in all honesty.’
‘You’re too modest. Now concentrate on the bill. Feed Krabbe a few crumbs. Let’s get it out of the way.’
‘I’ll do that. Prime Minister?’
But by then Grue Eriksen was gone and Carsten Plough was opening a bottle.
‘Krabbe’s going to demand you put that organization on the banned list,’ Plough warned.
‘Ha! I just saw off Birgitte Agger, the Wicked Queen of the North. I’m not in the mood to start cutting deals with little people now, am I?’
Plough laughed, said, ‘Skå l.’
‘Karina?’
She’d gone to the office. When she returned she closed the door behind her.
‘Send some bottles to the Ministry of Defence too,’ Plough ordered. ‘Agger’s not going to get anywhere with her inquiry now. She wouldn’t dare.’
‘There’s something you need to see,’ Karina said, placing a leather desk diary on Buch’s desk. ‘I found it when I was going through Monberg’s private documents before the meeting. I can’t believe I never saw it before.’
‘Just put all that stuff in a box and send it to his home,’ Plough said and poured more drinks. ‘Here. You deserve one too.’
‘I don’t want a drink. Will you please listen to me? Monberg kept a private diary. I didn’t know. It was just him, and his thoughts.’
‘So what?’ Buch said.
She took a deep breath.
‘I read a bit. It seems he knew Anne Dragsholm personally. He was meeting her. Recently.’
She opened the pages of a small brown leather diary. Plough put down his glass. Buch finished his. The two men came and looked.
‘This is her mobile number. The last time they met was in a hotel the weekend before she was murdered.’
Buch leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. The sweet taste of victory was gone.
He looked at Plough, tapped his finger on the page.
‘Check this out,’ Buch ordered. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
Eight o’clock, a pitch-black November night. Jonas in the front room of Jarnvig’s barrack house playing with his toys. A plastic tank, three soldiers, a gun, a warplane.
Louise Raben watched him from the doorway. These first few years were so important. They would shape the rest of his life. And what did he have? An absent father. A mother who spent her days fighting for his release. And the men around him . . . soldiers too. Jonas was growing up in a world coloured khaki, filled with the sound of army vehicles, of boots on concrete, of shouted orders, hierarchies and obedience.
The idea of freedom would never occur to him. It barely occurred to her any more. She loved her father. He loved Jonas. If you had to live in a cell this was, at least, one that had some comforts.
But it was still a prison, with no hope of release. Jens was now a criminal twice over, not just a dangerous, deranged ex-soldier. When he broke out of Herstedvester their chances of escape had dwindled to nothing. The police would catch him. They’d put him away for years. Jonas might be in his teens before his own father was able to sleep in the same house.
Could he wait? Could she?
Louise Raben was thirty-four. She missed her husband. Missed his company and his touch. The physical rush of being with a man. And he’d never reach for her in prison again. Not on the makeshift sofa in the area they set aside for married couples. She knew that now.
A part of him had died in Helmand. There were hard decisions ahead. Not for Jonas but for her.
‘Mum?’
He had Søgaard’s plastic plane in his hands, was fiddling with the toy bombs set under its wings.
‘Can we have dinner soon?’
‘In a minute. When I’m done with the washing.’
‘I’ve been fighting.’
Her heart fell.
‘At school?’
‘No! Here. With my soldiers. My men.’
‘Fighting who?’
‘Ragheads!’ he cried.
She didn’t laugh.
‘Don’t use words like that. You spend too much time with the soldiers.’
‘I’m going to be one when I grow up. Like Dad. Like Granddad. I’m going to be a major like Christian.’
‘Are you?’
She knelt down and watched him playing with the plane, making it climb and dive in his hand, growling violent bombing noises from his little throat, caught in the grip of a child’s vividly unrealistic imagination.
‘Listen, Jonas. How would you like to have your own room?’
He looked at her, smiled, nodded.
‘We could make it really cosy with all your toys. You wouldn’t have to listen to Mummy snoring all night.’
‘You don’t snore!’
‘Shall we do that?’
The plane came up to her face. He peeked from behind it and said, ‘Yes.’
‘There’s a school near here.’
‘Am I starting school soon?’
She looked around at the barracks house. It wasn’t so bad. Life here was safe. Predictable. What choice was there?
All the same her voice was getting weak and she could feel the tears pricking at her eyes.
‘Yes. Soon.’
‘Is Daddy going to have his own room?’
Footsteps at the door. Her father stood there, looking at the two of them.
‘One day. Let’s get some dinner, shall we?’
She got up.
‘Jonas,’ Jarnvig said. ‘I’ve got something of yours.’
The boy dropped the plane and came to him.
‘One green mitten.’ Jarnvig held it in his hand, looking down at the boy. ‘You must have dropped it.’
‘When?’ Louise asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Jonas said.
‘It’s got his name tag.’ Jarnvig showed her. ‘One of the men found it by the main gate.’
‘We didn’t come in by the main gate. Søgaard gave us a lift.’
He held the mitten in front of her face.
Louise sighed.
‘You, young man, need to be more careful in future. Instead of dropping things everywhere . . .’
Jonas went back to the toy plane and the bombing noises.
‘I’m going to get changed,’ Jarnvig said heading upstairs.
She waited for him to leave. Then looked more closely at the mitten on the table.
Jonas never had a name tag. He couldn’t have left it by the main gate.
And it was scarcely a tag at all. A shred of white cotton, probably ripped from a handkerchief. A name written in leaky ballpoint, ‘Jonas Raben’.
It was a childlike scribble, one she recognized.
Strange was out somewhere when she got back to the Politigården. No answer on his phone. Lund went through some files, avoided Brix and Erik König who was hanging round the place looking desperate. Word had filtered through from Slotsholmen that the politicians were unhappy PET had kept the terrorist dimension to the Dragsholm case to themselves. König’s job might be on the line, which would only make him more desperate to shuffle the blame elsewhere.
Finally her phone went.
‘You always moan if I go somewhere without telling you,’ she pointed out before he could say a word.
‘I don’t believe it. Still jealous?’
‘You wish . . .’
‘I do. For your information I’ve been trying to find someone who served with Raben. It’s not easy. They seem to have spread themselves out since Ægir.’
‘And?’
‘I was thinking of pizza toni
ght. Quattro stagione or margherita?’
She liked pizza but she wasn’t going to tell him.
‘Do we have someone to talk to?’
‘I’ll come and pick you up.’
She waited outside the Politigården. Was glad to see his plain black car pull up. Strange jumped out, opened the door theatrically as he ushered her in.
‘Pathetic . . .’ Lund muttered as she took the passenger seat.
‘You first,’ he said getting behind the wheel. ‘Was Dragsholm the unit’s lawyer?’
‘I think so. We need to confirm it. Where are we going?’
‘Not far. David Grüner. Conscript soldier served with Raben’s men. He was a promising pianist before he joined up. Degree in music.’
They started to cross the harbour.
‘Now he’s a car park attendant in Islands Brygge. Stuck in a wheelchair. He’ll be at work till ten.’
They stopped at an office block near the metro station. Lund got out, looked through the door.
‘Are you sure this is the place? It looks empty.’
‘His wife said it’s here. And wives never lie. You try inside. I’ll see if there’s another entrance.’
She took the nearest door into the cavernous building.
A bored security guard stopped her before long. Lund flashed her ID, mentioned Grüner’s name and the car park. He took her to a door by the lifts. They were out for maintenance so she had to walk.
Two floors down. The smell of engines and dust.
A sign for the office. Followed it.
The petrol stink was stronger here and it seemed raw somehow. The desk in the tiny room was empty. The computer screen contained nothing but musical notation.
She looked along the corridor. A figure in jeans and a khaki winter jacket shuffling along, back to her.
No wheelchair.
‘Hey!’ Lund shouted.
He turned.
Bearded, angular face. Muscular frame.
Couldn’t think for a moment.
‘Raben? Raben?’
He flew off through the far door, out into the car park.
She could run. But not like that. All she saw by the time she got there was Strange’s black car wheeling down the ramp.
Lund ran out into the open space between the lanes and flagged him down.
‘What?’ Strange said, winding down the window.
‘Raben’s here. Grüner isn’t. What the hell’s going on?’
