by Lotte Hammer
The telecommunications company NewTalkInTown had its head-quarters in two yellow-brick buildings in Ballerup between Ring Road 4 and Herlev, an area popularly known as Denmark’s Silicon Valley. The Countess parked in a visitor parking bay, and noted to her satisfaction that her patrol car had already arrived. Two uniformed officers were waiting for her alongside their vehicle in the street right next to the car park. She spent ten minutes talking to them, making sure to gesture regularly towards the building in front of them, where curious faces were already pressed against the windowpanes.
Outside the entrance to the main building a group of staff had clustered with their cigarettes. The flower beds to either side of the short flagstone path were littered with cigarette butts; dirty yellow filters at every stage of decay were scattered among vicious-looking firethorn bushes. A man was waiting a short distance from the smokers. He had arrived while she was talking to the officers, so it wasn’t hard to guess that he must be her contact. Even from a distance she could sense his nerves. Yet again the performance with the uniformed officers had paid off, the Countess thought, on sparkling form as she introduced herself and shook his hand.
The man was in his early forties, of ordinary build as well as appearance, and his handshake was limp – it was like squeezing a fish. The Countess discreetly wiped her palm on her lower back. He introduced himself and stressed his title, he was the chief programmer. Then he took four pieces of paper stapled together from his inside pocket and handed them to her. His hand was shaking. The printout was headed THE CORRECTED DATA, written in a large red font. She flicked through them and saw that the papers consisted of a list of Frode Otto’s mobile telephone calls. The list looked familiar except that the Ambassador’s telephone number had been replaced by another one. She pointed to the new number:
‘This mobile number, is it one of yours?’
‘No, that’s a Telia number. You need to speak to them if you want to know more.’
‘Why was it wrong before?’
The man was sweating as he stuttered his answer.
‘Someone changed the code in our printing program. But no one can prove who did it. It’s impossible.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
His voice rose a few octaves:
‘You’ll never be able to prove anything, ever!’
She said quietly:
‘Then you leave me no choice. You have to come with me now to the station.’
He didn’t react to her accusation, merely reiterated that she couldn’t prove anything. She took him to her car and spent half an hour cajoling him, threatening him, even trying to appeal to his better judgement, but to no avail.
‘You can’t prove anything.’
He could barely utter the words, his voice was shaking so badly, yet he kept repeating this. It was like talking to a child. He was sweating and squirming, yet he stuck to his guns.
‘You can’t prove a thing, no way.’
A brief visit to the chief programmer’s line manager didn’t help her. The line manager refused, politely but vehemently, to join in any form of questioning of the employee. The Countess returned to Police Headquarters utterly frustrated.
The Hanehoved investigation was grinding to a halt. Konrad Simonsen interviewed the officer who, on 19 March 2008, had taken part in the vehicle check north of Lynge in Nordsjælland. The conversation was relaxed, he liked the man, and the officer tried his very best to remember more than he actually could, which was simply that he had seen an African woman in the back of a car. Possibly an expensive car, and possibly with two men in the front, but he couldn’t be sure. His memory of that day was remarkable, something Konrad Simonsen began by asking him about. The officer’s explanation was simple and credible. It was his wedding anniversary and purely by chance his wife had been out driving that day and been pulled over so that her car could be more closely examined, though not by him. Their car was an older model, and it had failed its inspection. Later he and his wife had discussed what a terrible way it was to celebrate their anniversary. He could provide no explanation as to why he remembered the African woman, though she obviously stood out due to the colour of her skin.
The officer’s statement confirmed the date and the time of the killing, but otherwise wasn’t much use, as he couldn’t remember any further details. Showing him a reconstruction of the woman’s face produced no results. It might be her, it might not, he simply didn’t know.
Konrad Simonsen spent an hour with him before he gave up.
All that was left was the different telephone number the Countess had been given during her visit to NewTalkInTown, and a chief programmer and a rapist who both refused to share their knowledge with the police.
The telephone number was their best, if not their only, hope of progressing the case. It was a Telia mobile number and had formed part of a prepaid package deal sold via kiosks and petrol stations as far back as the spring of 2005. There was no information about the customer, of course, and Telia could provide no other information than that it had been topped up on a regular basis – roughly twice a month – usually with a hundred kroner at a time. The top-up cards had mostly been bought in the town of Roskilde, but it was impossible to trace by whom, let alone from which shop.
The Countess let herself into her office and locked the door, something she did only very rarely. Within the major telecommunications providers such as TDC and Telia, she had contacts who, from time to time, would get her information which, strictly speaking, the Homicide Department wasn’t entitled to access. It usually required a certain amount of persuasion to convince her resources to deliver, and in this case it required a lot of persuasion. The man she spoke to protested vehemently.
‘It means I have to search our whole database to see who was in contact with your number. It’s not something you just do at the drop of a hat.’
The Countess understood, and was very grateful.
‘And it’s bloody well illegal!’
‘I only need the names of the three people my number spoke to most frequently. That’s all.’
That’s all! It was plenty. She laughed and turned up the charm. He called back one hour later, grumpy and curt: only one person had cropped up. However, there had been daily contact, often two or three times a day. The Countess got the name and thanked him profusely. He hung up on her.
CHAPTER 49
It is a fact that hypochondriacs love reading doctors’ advice columns in newspapers and that people with a fear of flying are regular viewers of TV programmes about plane crashes. So it was with Svend Lerche. His favourite hate figure was Helena Holt Andersen, a politician who had spent the past decade campaigning to introduce in Denmark a law, like the ones that had already been introduced in Norway and Sweden, that would ban paying for sex by criminalising the customers rather than the prostitutes. A law which, if passed, would utterly destroy Svend Lerche’s lucrative business. No customers for Karina Larsen’s African au pair girls meant no dirty money for the Poker Academy to launder, which in the best-case scenario would make him even more dependent on Bjarne Fabricius than he already was. In the worst-case scenario, he would have to shut up shop.
Helena Holt Andersen was taking part in a round-table discussion on the television debate programme Deadline. She had participated in such debates before, and every time she did, Svend Lerche would be ready and waiting in front of the television in a state of rising agitation. Karina Larsen reassured him:
‘Don’t worry about it, Svend. The Danes will always want to buy pussy, no politician can change that.’
Svend Lerche poured himself a whisky, his second in thirty minutes. He looked at his daughter, sitting in an armchair to his right, and pointed at the bottle. Benedikte Lerche-Larsen shook her head. Then he lectured his wife in a belligerent voice:
‘It’s not a question of what the Danes want, it’s a question of what the government wants. That stupid cow will get her way in the end.’
‘But they can’t make a law if pe
ople are against it.’
Benedikte Lerche-Larsen took over from her father and said in honeyed tones:
‘Oh, yes, Mother dear, they really can.’
She never missed an opportunity to observe her father when he was watching Helena Holt Andersen. She had come downstairs an hour earlier in order not to lose out on the fun, and her chair was strategically placed so that she could see both the television and Svend Lerche. He was perfectly aware that she was there only to savour his outrage, but he tolerated her presence nevertheless as she was a far better audience for his antagonism than his wife, who didn’t understand even the most basic social mechanisms. Now he snapped at his daughter.
‘What the hell are you going to do if that woman ever gets a majority?’
‘A majority where?’
It was Karina Larsen airing her ignorance again; her husband and her daughter both ignored her. Shortly afterwards Benedikte Lerche-Larsen said:
‘Our plan should be to buy a floating brothel, a luxury liner in international waters with a fixed schedule of speedboats from Copenhagen, Elsinore and Malmö.’
Karina Larsen swallowed the bait immediately. She burst out in excitement:
‘What a brilliant idea, Svend, don’t you think? That means we’ll have a boat, I’ve always wanted a boat.’
‘Well, that’s agreed then. I’ll request an opinion from the Faculty of Law regarding international legal issues. We can begin trading in a few weeks. Perhaps you should start shopping around for cheap life-jackets and a ship, Mum.’
‘Stop that nonsense, Benedikte. I’m trying to watch this, look – there she is.’
And there she was. The programme had started with footage from an area described as Copenhagen’s red-light district: a young woman in a tight miniskirt and high heels tottered up and down a rainy pavement as the viewers were fed statistics. There were three hundred thousand men in Denmark who regularly or often paid for sex. Denmark’s neighbours, Norway and Sweden, had both made paying for sex a criminal offence. Every year traffickers made millions importing women from other parts of the world into Europe. More dull facts followed, all the stuff people pretty much knew already. Finally the teaser ended, and a camera zoomed in on Helena Holt Andersen, while the studio host opened a debate by stressing its importance in a professionally engaged tone of voice. Svend Lerche hissed:
‘Arrogant, self-righteous cow.’
‘Who is the other one, Svend? Is she another politician?’
‘She represents your imported workers, Mum. She’s a former hooker, just like you.’
When Benedikte Lerche-Larsen returned to her own flat, she called Bjarne Fabricius and gave him her weekly update. She concluded with her father’s rage at the TV debate and Helena Holt Andersen, and chuckled while she told him about it. Bjarne Fabricius, however, didn’t laugh. On the contrary, he asked in a cold voice:
‘Is Svend losing his grip, is that what you’re telling me?’
‘Not at all. She just touched a nerve, she and the Revenue are his pet hates.’
‘And what’s he going to do about it?’
Benedikte Lerche-Larsen replied pensively:
‘Nothing, I presume. What can he do?’
‘Exactly what you say, nothing. Otherwise we have a situation. A serious situation, I expect him to understand that.’
‘Of course. He’s not stupid, just angry.’
Bjarne Fabricius reiterated his demands, and they went round in circles. The amusement of earlier had long since evaporated, and she had at least an hour’s homework to do before tomorrow’s lessons.
CHAPTER 50
Henrik Krag and his mates were watching football, a delayed broadcast of today’s match at Anfield between Liverpool and Manchester United. A vital match if you were a supporter of one of the two clubs, which divided the four men neatly. The flat echoed with outbursts, cheers and sympathetic cries; at stake was the right to humiliate and mock the other two for the next six months, before the next clash between the two arch rivals. At half-time events on the field were discussed.
‘I don’t get why they have a fifteen-minute break when it’s recorded. That’s bloody stupid.’
‘Shit, we were this close to scoring. Pass me a beer, will you?’
‘Why the long face, Henrik, do you already know the final score? Did your crap team lose again?’
Henrik Krag denied this. Then he glanced at his beer supply, which had diminished considerably.
‘How about one of you goes and gets some more beers? Or we’ll run out.’
All three guests appreciated the gravity of the situation, and one of the group, who lived in the neighbouring block, got up. He soon returned with six beers and Benedikte Lerche-Larsen.
Henrik Krag was torn, but football won out. This became clear when the second half started and his friends’ attention focused once more on the screen, as did his. However, his unexpected guest took her defeat on the chin, something that surprised him. The need to be the centre of attention was normally one of Benedikte Lerche-Larsen’s more obvious characteristics. But not tonight it would appear. She stood still for a moment, looked around, then she shrugged her shoulders to signal that she knew when she was beaten, before unlacing her boots and kicking them off. From the coffee table she snatched a red and white scarf before flopping down on the sofa, where the seat vacated by the beer fetcher had yet to be occupied. She rested her head in Henrik Krag’s lap, he put a scatter cushion under it and let her stay there. But during a pause in the game, he said in a low voice:
‘I haven’t received my task yet, if that’s why you’re here?’
She whispered back to him:
‘I’m here because I want to be here, and I don’t want to hear about your task until you’ve done it.’
‘I’m not allowed to say anything?’
‘No, and he’ll probably tell you that. He said that to me the second time.’
‘But no one’ll ever know if I tell you.’
She shook her head firmly.
‘Wake me up when you’ve finished your boring game.’
Then she folded the scarf and placed it over her head, cutting off any further communication.
The friends’ traditional match post-mortem was suspended in light of Henrik Krag’s latest arrival. The three friends restricted themselves to small talk and the winning team’s two supporters refrained from major trash talk. Nor were there any crude remarks or telling grimaces. Henrik Krag removed the scarf from Benedikte Lerche-Larsen’s face, and half-heartedly shook her a couple of times with no effect other than her clasping his hand, turning over onto her stomach and burying her face in the cushion. He let her sleep and at his request a friend fetched a duvet, which Henrik covered her with. The others said goodbye more with gestures than with words, and turned off the light as they left.
He sat quietly enjoying the moment, determined to stay awake. Perhaps he could stroke her hair later, carefully, very carefully, once he was absolutely sure that she was fast asleep. Or even better – smell her perfume, preferably on her neck, if he dared. His bold intentions made him close his eyes, and his hopes mixed with thoughts he couldn’t control. Soon he too nodded off.
He woke up with a jolt when Benedikte turned onto her side, dragging his hand with her. She clutched it like a comforter and he could feel the warmth from her breast against his knuckles. A crescent moon hung at the top of his window and its faint light showed him the contours of her face. Carefully, he let his finger trace first her forehead, then her temple, her cheekbone, the bridge of her nose, her lips. And back again. Her breathing was deep; from time to time she wrinkled her nose and he would pause his stroking, but her unrest soon stopped. He thought how different she was from all the other girls he had ever known, and would probably ever know. Different, unobtainable, remote, and yet here she was lying next to him, alive and beautiful, how incredible it was. He reached out his hand to stroke her again, but she turned over onto her back at that same moment.
He froze when she pressed his palm against her breast, an anxious voice sounding the alarm inside him as adrenaline surged through his veins. He quickly closed his hand around two of her fingers, scared that she might wake up and think he was touching her while she was asleep. The thought made him blush and he almost apologised to her, but managed to stop himself in time.
Their thumbs accidentally brushed against one another, fingertip to fingertip; he removed his, only to find that hers followed. He did it again – with the same result. Wordless communication or random reactions? Tentatively he stretched out his forefinger, which was met by hers. His thumb, then his forefinger and also his little finger was answered. It was not until then that he saw it: the crinkling of a smile on her lips and around her closed eyes. His hand found courage. She helped him unbutton her blouse and remove her bra. Then he slid himself in beside her and felt how she arched her back, quivering at his hand’s still hesitant journey, her Brazilian flanked by smooth shaven skin, neural paths exploding in his brain, soft warmth, moisture outside and in. Urgency as they clumsily fumbled to remove their clothing. He lay on top of her – their very first kiss, greedy, hungry – and then . . .
Then nothing!
Nothing except humiliating detumescence, an incomprehensible betrayal by his own body.
He sat up at her feet in black eternity, letting the cold punish him. Eventually she pulled him down next to her and shared her duvet with him. He muttered something, but her hand stopped his words and she patted his cheek softly. They lay like this for a long time, then she turned her head and whispered into his ear:
‘When dreams come true, they can be hard to control.’
Her voice was tender, almost comforting.
She rose and got dressed; he stayed where he was, not caring about anything, including her leaving. Instead, though, she fetched a cushion and sat down. Their roles had been reversed, now his head was in her lap. For a while she stroked him affectionately, gently, as though he were a child. Finally she nudged him on the nose with her thumb. Then she spoke quietly.
