by David Hewson
Buch marched on.
‘OK. Let’s leave that for now,’ Vemmer suggested. ‘Here’s the truth. The evidence you wanted was sitting right under your nose all along.’
They were at the door. Buch was opening it.
She let go, swore at him.
‘Hey, genius! Why didn’t you check the dates on those two medical reports? Why—’
Buch slammed the heavy wooden door behind him.
Connie Vemmer stood out in the bright cold street, finished her cigarette, threw the butt into the gutter along with a few coarse epithets.
The door opened. Buch came out, eyed her.
‘What dates?’ he asked.
Sebastian Holst’s father lived in a half-finished apartment not far from the Amalienborg Palace. Modern paintings everywhere, on the walls, on the floor. Suitcases and building materials. An old building on the way up. Still some distance to go. Walls to be plastered, ceilings to be painted.
He made Lund a coffee and sat next to her at a table by the window.
‘I believe Sebastian always had his camera with him,’ she began.
He was a hefty man not much older than she was. Bright-blue shirt, hair long and unkempt.
An artist, she guessed. Or an architect. He never said.
‘He was always taking pictures. That kind of thing runs in the family. We see the world through our eyes. Why not try to record it?’
‘Everything?’
‘Everything he could. He took lots of pictures in Afghanistan. The army kept them. They said they were theirs.’ Holst frowned. ‘You mean you haven’t seen them?’
‘Did the army tell you why his camera was missing?’
‘Who told you that? He sent it home a couple of weeks before he was killed. He’d broken it. Sebastian was always a bit clumsy. I was going to get it repaired. Or buy him a new one.’ Holst sighed. ‘Probably the latter.’
He got up, went to some boxes beneath a line of gaudy paintings. Took out an old-looking camera.
‘Film only,’ Holst said. ‘He was very fastidious about some things.’
‘Were there more pictures?’
‘No. Only the ones the army have as far as I know. They wouldn’t let him post stuff like that back here, would they?’
It was a slender hope and now he’d dashed it.
‘I guess not. I’m sorry I bothered you,’ Lund said, picking up her bag.
‘I heard you’d found his squad leader, Raben. I suppose that whole business is going to get dragged up again.’
‘What business?’
Holst stared at her. He was no fool.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘I never believed all that bullshit. About there being an officer. Raben made that up as an excuse. He wanted to go into that village anyway. It was his fault Sebastian and the others got killed.’
He was turning the old camera in his hands. A Leica, she saw. Expensive. Marked and worn. His mild, plain face was suddenly wreathed in anger.
‘Sebastian said something was going to happen.’
He walked back to the table unsteadily and Lund saw now that everything was a mask, an act of subterfuge. Inside Holst was breaking, weeping.
‘I’ve lost both my sons to a war I don’t understand,’ he whispered, falling heavily onto a chair near the door. ‘One came home in a coffin. The other’s not the same.’
He rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands.
‘What did we do wrong? Why did they deserve this?’
The room was quiet except for the low murmur of traffic beyond the window. These walls would stay unplastered, unfinished for a long time. This man was lost in a limbo created by a distant conflict that was beyond him.
His hands played fondly with the old, battered Leica. His mind seemed somewhere else.
‘I’m looking for answers,’ Lund said.
Holst snapped awake. His sad, dark eyes fixed on her.
‘Answers,’ she repeated. ‘And it’s hard.’
‘No one asked me any questions before. They just came here to tell me things. What to do. What to say. How to feel.’
‘I’m struggling, Holst. People don’t talk to me. They want to bury things . . .’
He was frightened. She could see that.
‘If there’s something you haven’t told us—’
‘This stops with me,’ he said quickly. ‘Don’t blame anyone else. Not Sebastian. Frederik.’
‘Frederik?’
His eyes went to one of two photos on a nearby rollup desk. Two young men in uniform.
‘If he doesn’t come back God knows . . .’
‘It won’t go any further,’ Lund told him.
Holst got up, shambled back to the boxes, picked up a tiny pocket video camera.
‘He had this too. He used to sneak off and keep a diary. It came back hidden inside the Leica.’
He pressed some buttons. Nothing happened. Her heart was in her mouth. Holst rifled through the boxes, found some batteries, put them in the thing.
Flicked a switch. A face came on the tiny screen.
It didn’t take long. When she’d finished Lund called Madsen.
‘Is Raben fit for questioning?’ she asked.
‘He’s in hospital. How hard can it be?’
‘I mean,’ she said patiently, ‘is he fit to be brought into the Politigården?’
‘Wait a minute.’
She did.
He came back.
‘The hospital says we can bring him in here for an hour or two. He’ll need to go back afterwards. His wife was coming to see him. I guess we can tell her to come here now.’
‘She can see him first. Then it’s a full interview. I want Brix there as well.’
‘That’s generous of you.’
She watched the tiny picture on the screen.
‘Not really,’ Lund said.
They put Raben in a secure waiting room with a uniformed guard. When Louise arrived, mad with the police and fearful about the meeting, she found him waiting for her, standing, arm in a sling. No blood, no visible sign of hurt.
She stayed at the door, didn’t know what to say.
‘Can we get a bit of privacy?’ Raben asked the officer in the room.
‘Sorry,’ the man said. ‘I have to stay.’
‘For God’s sake . . .’ he pleaded.
The officer stared at him, leaned against the wall, watched.
‘Let’s sit down, Jens,’ she said, and they took two chairs at the far end of the room.
He didn’t look bad at all. There was something dogged, relentless about this man. The more they threw at him, the harder he came back.
His fingers reached over, took hers. She was cold from waiting outside and didn’t respond.
‘It was just . . .’ He was staring at her in that importunate way he had. The one that said: forgive everything. ‘I was beside myself.’
He held her more tightly. The familiar smell of hospital soap and medication.
‘It won’t happen again,’ he promised.
She didn’t speak.
‘I know I said that before. This time—’
‘Let’s not talk about it now.’
His eyes were on her, pleading, insistent.
‘I let you down. You and Jonas. I know that. I was a rotten husband. A rotten father. If I could turn back the clock I would.’
She saw the previous night in her head. Søgaard beneath her. A physical act, nothing more. But one that haunted her.
His voice rose, a note of hope in it.
‘Things are looking up. They’re listening to me now. They know I was telling the truth. You and Jonas . . .’
‘Two years,’ she whispered. ‘All that time on my own. Even when I came to see you. Even when they left us together in Herstedvester. You scarcely touched me. You just talked about yourself. About the army. About what happened . . .’
‘We can put this back together.’
It had to be said. She couldn’t bear it any more.
&n
bsp; Eyes on his, words forming already in her head.
‘No we can’t. I slept with Søgaard.’
The shock on his face hurt her. He looked like a child who’d seen something real, something terrible for the first time.
He didn’t speak. She slipped her fingers out of his.
‘I’m sorry. It didn’t mean anything. I was just . . . lonely. I missed you, every single day. I knew you weren’t coming back. Not after all this. I just couldn’t stand it any longer. Being alone.’ She wouldn’t cry. That wasn’t right. ‘Can’t you see? It’s no use. It’s never going to happen for us now. They won’t let it.’
His eyes fell to the floor.
‘You won’t let it, Jens.’
The door opened. The detective she knew as Madsen strode in.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but this meeting’s at an end.’
‘We’re talking,’ Raben shot at him.
The uniform cop came and stood next to them. Ready for trouble.
‘This is important,’ Madsen insisted. ‘We need you now.’
Lund had Holst’s video on her laptop. Raben opposite her, Brix next to him.
‘Do you want to see a lawyer?’ she asked as she worked the keyboard, finding the file.
‘No.’ A surly, juvenile tone in his voice. ‘I want to see my wife.’
‘Sebastian Holst sent his father a video diary not long before he was killed. Did you know about that?’
Raben shook his head.
‘He shouldn’t have done. Against regulations.’
‘Lots of things are against regulations,’ Lund said, turning the laptop round so he could see the screen. ‘But he sent it all the same.’
A face there. A young man with a beard and curly hair. He wore a white T-shirt and looked tired and scared. A bare wall in the background, crude plastering and a tourist poster of Copenhagen.
‘. . . Don’t get worried, Dad,’ Sebastian Holst said in a quiet voice, ‘but something’s not right in our squad.’
Raben watched, caught by the dead man on the screen.
‘Why do I have to see this? He was one of my comrades . . .’
‘. . . Raben’s the worst.’ Holst’s voice was clear and unmistakable in spite of the tinny speaker. He shook his head, blinked, looked terrified for a moment. ‘He’s going crazy. He sees Taliban everywhere. All he thinks of is killing. Like there’s one round every corner and we’ve got to shoot them first. Christ . . .’
The man in the blue prison suit went quiet, eyes locked on the screen.
‘. . . He runs so many risks. We do things we shouldn’t. Sometimes . . .’ Holst’s voice was close to breaking. ‘Sometimes he makes up radio messages just so we can get out there and kick ass. This morning . . .’ There was shame on Holst’s face, alongside the fear. ‘We crossed the river to raid a village for the third time. Raben thinks one of the men there’s Taliban.’
Holst’s hand went to his head.
‘They’re farmers or bakers or something. Maybe they’re running dope. Maybe they’re bribing someone. Who isn’t here? We still took the place apart. Raben yelled at the guy, called him an informer. Poked a gun in his face. I thought he was going to shoot him.’
‘Turn it off,’ Raben said, reaching for the laptop.
‘No,’ Brix said, and pushed back his hand. ‘You need to hear this.’
‘. . . The kids were screaming,’ Holst went on. ‘The mother and the old women were crying. They thought we were going to kill them all. Raben’s running wild, Dad. He wants to do it all over again tomorrow. It’s like he’s in the Wild West or something. I talked to the others. They say it’s going to be OK. We’re back home in a couple of weeks.’
Holst didn’t look at the camera.
‘They don’t want to cross him. They’re scared. Me too. But I guess . . .’ A nod of his head. ‘I guess he knows what he’s doing. He’s the boss. Good guy when the shit hits the fan. Someone gave him that job. We’re just . . .’
A smile. He was trying to pull himself together for home.
‘Anyway,’ Holst said. ‘That’s me done moaning. Raben says I do it all the time. In a couple of weeks we’ll be back in Copenhagen. I can’t wait to see you.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not coming back here. That’s a promise.’
A broader smile.
‘I miss you all. I’ll see you soon. I’ll give your love to big brother when I see him. Bye.’
The dead man in the white T-shirt reached out and turned off the camera. Lund closed the laptop lid.
‘Is it true?’
A knock on the door. A call for Brix. He went out to take it.
‘Is it true?’ Lund asked again.
‘Sebastian was only there because his older brother enlisted. It was like a competition between them. He wasn’t up to it.’
‘He said you broke orders. Threatened civilians.’
‘It’s war! Not a game! This isn’t about Sebastian. It’s about Perk.’
‘The family he mentioned. Are they the ones you say Perk killed?’
‘He murdered them all right.’
‘So you and the rest of the squad had been in the house before?’
‘The bastard was a crook. Selling dope. Feeding our movements to the Taliban. Scum . . .’
‘And you were determined to go back until you proved that?’
Raben shook his head wearily.
‘You’re not listening to me. What I think’s irrelevant. We got that radio call. Perk must have been sent there because whoever was running him knew too.’
‘It’s not irrelevant, Raben. There’s no record of any radio traffic calling you to that house. There was no officer called Perk.’
He swore and there was a look in his face she couldn’t quite read. Unless it was defeat.
‘What I’ve told you is the truth. I can’t . . .’
Lund was getting mad. She took out some scene of crime and autopsy photos.
‘Look at these,’ she insisted, spreading the pictures across the table. ‘Five people have been killed.’
Anne Dragsholm. Myg Poulsen. Grüner. Lisbeth Thomsen. The priest. Savagely murdered. Still torn corpses caught for ever.
‘I’ve done everything I can to track down that officer,’ she told him. ‘If you’re lying to me and he doesn’t exist . . .’ Her voice was cracking. ‘For pity’s sake tell me now and let’s bring this nonsense to an end. I’ll do my best to help you. That’s a promise, and it’s more than you deserve.’
He seemed calm. Calmer than her.
‘It was my decision to enter the village. The others didn’t want to go.’ He stared at her. ‘They were right. I should have listened to them.’
‘You should—’
‘But there was an officer. We got that radio message. His name was Perk.’ He paused, made sure she was looking at him. ‘He’s the man I saw. The one who tried to kill me.’
The door opened. Brix came back, sat down.
‘We just received documentation from the army,’ he said. ‘It shows beyond any doubt that the police officer you accused yesterday . . .’
Brix shuffled the photos on the table, glanced at them.
‘He wasn’t in Afghanistan at the time. He wasn’t Perk. Couldn’t be.’
The man in the prison suit swore and shook his head.
‘What about Sebastian’s older brother?’ Lund asked. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Not really.’ His voice was low and miserable. ‘He was a doctor working out of Camp Viking.’
‘An army surgeon? Frederik?’
‘Why ask me?’ Raben shot back at her, punching his head with his fist. ‘I’m just crazy, aren’t I?’
Then he stamped hard on the pictures of the mangled corpses in front of him.
‘Someone killed these people, didn’t they? And that wasn’t me.’
‘We need to talk to Frederik Holst,’ Brix said. ‘Fix it.’
The debate on the anti-terror package had dragged on into the early evening. Birgitte Agge
r’s MPs were doing everything they could to stall it. Buch had spent an hour driving round Copenhagen with Connie Vemmer, watching her smoke, listening all the time.
When he marched back into his office Karina and Plough were waiting for him. In the room outside a desk was set up for the resignation press conference. Microphones in place already.
‘I’m sorry I tricked you,’ Karina told him as he marched to his desk. ‘You needed to see her.’
Buch took his chair. It felt familiar. Comfortable. Right.
‘We know you can’t tell us everything,’ Plough added. ‘But if you felt able . . .’
He had a set of papers inside a yellow document folder. Buch read the top page again, absorbed in what Vemmer had said.
‘Even if you don’t act upon it, Thomas,’ Karina added, ‘I thought you deserved to hear what she had to say.’
Still Buch kept quiet.
‘I’m resigned to going to Skopje,’ Plough added. ‘It’s in Macedonia apparently.’
Buch stared at the microphones.
‘Thomas,’ Karina added quietly. ‘If you’re going to do something you need to do it—’
‘When does the vote start?’
‘Soon.’
‘And Krabbe’s there?’
‘Of course.’
He grabbed the yellow folder from the desk and got up.
‘But Krabbe’s got nothing to do with it!’ she cried as he bustled for the door.
‘He’s a decent man,’ Buch cried as he left. ‘Not my type but . . .’ He waved the papers. ‘Krabbe is all I’ve got.’
The Folketinget before a vote was like a theatre between acts. An interval was in place, men and women in serious business suits conferring in whispers in the anterooms outside the chamber.
Buch saw Krabbe chatting to one of Grue Eriksen’s aides at the far end of the room. Then he disappeared into the toilets.
No one at the urinals. Buch walked up and down the stall doors, saying, ‘Krabbe? Are you here? You are. I know it. I saw you come in. Krabbe?’
He paced the length of them, looking for the red locked sign and feet underneath the door.
Only one appeared occupied. Yellow folder in hand, Buch hitched up his trousers, got down and placed his bearded face against the cold tiles to peer through.
‘Krabbe? Is that you?’
All Buch could see were two black trouser legs down around skinny ankles, some shiny shoes and a very colourful pair of underpants.
