If not for him, things would have been different. He’d let everyone down. If Sonja, Theodor and Matilda had had a husband and father who was there for them, not just in thought but physically, everything would have been so much better.
The problem was that he wasn’t ready to go. Not yet. Somehow, he was convinced he had more left to give before he was done. He hadn’t even said goodbye. To Matilda. To Theodor, who was counting on him to be there for him once the trial resumed. To Sonja, who was expecting him to show up at her performance tonight. She’d told him she needed him by her side, and his death would just be another in a long line of betrayals.
If he could just have one more chance, he’d do anything, absolutely anything. Maybe he should change careers. Quit policing and do something else entirely. Though what was the point of thinking about that. What was the point of thinking at all, now that—
He suddenly realized everything had gone quiet. That the beating of the dice against the plastic dome had stopped. He didn’t know how long since, just that there was an outcome. A ruling.
‘Don’t you want to see what it is?’ Milwokh said in an unreadable voice.
‘Just do what you have to do and get it over with,’ he said, and opened his eyes.
80
KIM SLEIZNER HURRIED around the corner from Stoltenbergsgade to Bernstorffsgade with the phone pressed against his ear. He was walking as briskly as he was able without overheating. Turning up sweaty, oozing desperation, would not do. He was in charge and people who were in charge didn’t turn up with pit stains the size of dinner plates, looking frantic.
No, this was his organization, his town, his country. He called the shots. He gave the orders and laid down the law. Not some sycophantic fucking amoeba who didn’t know which hand to hold his cock in.
But why was that daft fucking cow not picking up? Why was she keeping him waiting after spending half the day trying to reach him? The strange thing was that the phone kept ringing. There was no voicemail or intercept message. Nothing but this goddam fucking ringing, on and on and on.
At least the police station was less than half a mile from Tivoli, so he reached the police cordon on Tietgensgade in minutes. It was a mess of cars, cyclists and pedestrians who didn’t know where to go. Not to mention all the fucking journalists and rubberneckers getting in his way.
‘Hey, you!’ someone shouted behind him just as he’d managed to push to the front of the crowd and reach the police tape. ‘Stop right there. This street is closed to unauthorized personnel.’
Sleizner turned to face the uniformed officer standing behind him. ‘Well, then, aren’t we lucky I am authorized, or, more exactly, the head of Copenhagen’s Homicide Unit.’ He smiled through his fury.
The uniformed officer swallowed. ‘I see. Do you have some form of ID to confirm that?’
‘ID? Who the fuck do you think you are?’ He gesticulated angrily with his free hand. ‘I’m Kim fucking Sleizner, and you’re a goddam nobody who’s about to piss himself.’
‘Yes, this is Astrid Tuvesson at the Helsingborg CID,’ a voice suddenly said in his ear.
‘You know what I think of people who sound like they don’t know who’s calling even though they can see it on their screen?’ Sleizner said as he shoved his ID in the uniformed officer’s face and ducked under the tape.
‘You’ll have to excuse me, all I can see is a Danish number,’ Tuvesson replied. ‘But now that I hear your voice, there can be no doubt. Hi, Kim.’
Fuck, right, he wasn’t using his own phone. ‘You’ve been trying to reach me.’
‘Yes, that’s correct. We’ve unsuccessfully been trying to get in touch with you guys all day so we can work together. But given recent events, it seems a bit late to come crawling now.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about? Working together? Crawling?’ he said, holding out his ID to yet another uniformed officer to avoid another scene as he walked through one of Tivoli’s entrances. ‘Is storming in, waving a gun around and opening fire in public what you call working together?’
‘What was he supposed to do? It was a desperate situation.’
Sleizner lowered the phone, covered the microphone and turned to the uniformed officer. ‘Take me to whoever’s in charge as quickly as possible.’
The officer nodded and led the way.
‘I’m sorry, where were we?’
‘I was saying that this is about saving lives. Not marking territory!’
‘Settle down, Miss Tuvesson. I’m not the one who has a lunatic running around Tivoli. You are. Or actually, you have two armed lunatics running around. You’ve lost every semblance of control. Luckily, the organization I’m in charge of is better run and working hard to evacuate the public and arrest the perpetrator as we speak. That’s all I wanted to tell you. That in Denmark, we’re on top of things because we follow the rules.’
‘And what does that mean in relation to Fabian Risk?’
‘Don’t ask me. That’s completely up to him.’
81
A SIX.
His first thought had been that his eyes were deceiving him. But it was a six. The dice had decided that he would be allowed to keep breathing, and Milwokh had already put his rifle down without protest and started to unbuckle all the belt bags strapped around his torso.
He still didn’t dare to believe it. It was as though he needed more time to overcome his conviction that everything was really over and his life had reached its end. He’d been wrong. The odds had been wrong. Because he was walking, or rather hobbling, out of the hotel and down the front steps, leaning heavily on one crutch. He was carrying the other one over his shoulder as a hanger for all Milwokh’s bags and weapons.
Pontus Milwokh was walking next to him with his hands tied behind his back. Just as they’d agreed, he’d consented to being arrested the moment the dice under the plastic dome had landed with its six pips facing up.
It was over. It was really over.
All the work he and the team had put in over the past month. All the hours. All the theories and assumptions. All the dead ends and mistaken suspects. All the times they’d thought they’d hit upon a solution when they’d in fact been on the wrong track. Together, all those things had contributed to Milwokh finally being under arrest.
But truth be told, chance had played the biggest and most important role. They had chance to thank. If not for chance, they would never have—
‘Put your hands up and get down on the ground!’ someone shouted through a megaphone.
Fabian turned around and saw men wearing bulletproof vests and helmets and armed with automatic rifles advancing on them from opposite directions. ‘It’s already over,’ he called back. ‘He’s given himself up, you can just come and get him.’
‘I said put your hands up and get down!’ shouted Jan Hesk, who was standing off to the side with the megaphone in his hand.
‘He can’t! His hands are tied,’ Fabian shouted back and he turned to Milwokh, whose eyes were darting back and forth between the two special operations teams. ‘Pontus. You should do as they say and lie down.’
‘Face on the ground!’
‘Calm down! He’s doing it! Just do as they say so no one else gets hurt.’
‘Okay,’ Milwokh said finally, getting down on his knees and then his stomach.
‘Good,’ Fabian said. A split second later, he heard a bang somewhere behind him.
It sounded like a handgun firing, thin and hollow, like a medium-sized firecracker. But it couldn’t be a handgun since the special operations officers were carrying automatic rifles and Hesk was only holding a megaphone. Fabian didn’t understand and was feeling increasingly confused, and in the end, it was as though the uncertainty morphed into a physical condition that made it increasingly difficult to keep upright.
Then he noticed the blood blooming across the leg of his jeans and realized he’d been shot, that it really had been a gunshot he’d heard. As he fell, he managed to twist around and catch a glimpse of Kim Sleiz
ner walking towards him with a gun in his hand before his head hit the ground and everything went dark.
82
SHE’D BEEN HOPING Fabian would be one of the first to enter the venue when the doors opened. That he would hang back in a corner and let her do what she needed to do, while also being ready to step in if anything went wrong or anyone took things too far.
She’d prayed that this time he’d listened and taken her seriously when she’d expressly told him she needed him by her side. That this time was more important than all the other ones.
But he hadn’t been one of the first. He wasn’t standing in a corner, waiting for it to start. He wasn’t even there.
She was sure there was an explanation. There always was. But right now, tonight, the explanation didn’t matter. Whatever it was, regardless of how reasonable and plausible it was, she’d needed her husband by her side.
Being in the foetal position on the floor made her even more vulnerable and she had no choice but to let the visitors make their way in and spread out in the space. There was no manual. No instructions for what was expected of them. Nothing, other than herself.
The audience was bigger than she’d dared to hope. Much bigger. Exactly how many was hard to judge, but certainly a hundred, maybe more. She wanted to get up and run away. Bolt. She didn’t know where to, but as far away as possible.
That was exactly why it was so important that she remain on the floor. That she endured and pushed through this agony. If she failed, she would never come out the other side. She would forever be stuck in the feeling she’d been carrying around with her for the past few months. A feeling that she was waiting for something to end, unaware that it already had.
She’d felt it over the past week or so, and she could feel it now, stronger than ever. This wasn’t for the audience. This wasn’t her way back to art.
They may be in an art gallery and the programme may have called this a performance piece, part of an exhibition, but it wasn’t. This was something she had to do for herself, for her own survival, as an attempt to find her way back to a place where she felt like she still had things to live for. That she hadn’t reached the full stop. The audience were there as extras, spectators who contributed their gaze, like witnesses.
Without them, it was meaningless. Without them, what was about to happen would never have taken place.
Then the doors closed. The distant din from outside subsided and the soundscape in the room became more intimate. After another minute or so, the anticipation was palpable. The air trembled with it. Or was it just her?
The room was dead quiet now, but she made herself wait a little longer still. This wasn’t something she could just force to get it out of the way. Stay in the pain, she repeated inwardly like a mantra. Stay and endure.
Then she slowly got up, first into sitting position and then, just as slowly, onto her knees. Finally, she stood, her back straight, her arms by her sides. The silence was now so profound it felt like every last molecule in the air was holding its breath.
She held a man’s gaze until he looked away. It didn’t take long. Not long enough. She picked a woman instead. She did better, but in the end she, too, gave in and averted her eyes.
She needed to pick the next one more carefully, so she walked around studying the spectators for several minutes. Their different styles, body shapes and personalities. One person smelled strongly, another was in a wheelchair and a third gave her a weird smile.
The man she eventually settled on was her age, maybe slightly younger, fit and with clean features. She instantly sensed that he was the bold type who wouldn’t just crawl into his shell. And so she let the minutes pass while they looked at each other, and when she had assured herself he would be able to take it, she began to unbutton her blouse, one button at a time.
She had been sure her hands would shake, but they didn’t. The man held her gaze until her blouse was completely unbuttoned then looked away, allowing her to retreat into the middle of the room and let the blouse fall to the floor.
She looked down at her breasts and the red lace bra Fabian had bought as part of a set for Christmas a number of years ago. She’d found it sexist and demeaning and had given him a stern talking-to and refused to wear it.
The set had stayed in a drawer until she’d started her affair. And now. She’d wanted to burn it, turn it into ashes as though it had never existed. But instead, she’d put it on and it was dazzling everyone with its redness.
Next, she picked the wife of one of the slightly older men, who was virtually devouring her with his eyes, walked over and turned her back to her. Once again, she let the minutes pass; she’d lost count of them by the time the woman was able to summon enough courage to unhook her bra, allowing her to walk back into the middle of the room and let that, too, fall.
This was what she looked like. She normally didn’t even want Fabian to see her. And yet here she was, standing in front of a hundred strangers, feeling her nipples harden. Whether it was because of the mood in the room or the cool air from the vents in the ceiling was impossible to say. She hadn’t seen it coming, but it made her feel stronger.
Then she unbuttoned her wide-legged trousers and let them fall. Only her knickers were left.
In the end, she removed those, too, and stood there, naked, exposed.
She had only a vague sense of what her audience were thinking. Before, that would have been what mattered. The opinions behind all those gazes. Now, it was like they cancelled each other out.
All but one.
She’d seen him and yet she hadn’t. The man in the wheelchair. As cowardly as everyone else, she’d quickly moved on to the next person, sidestepping what looked like overwhelming pain. All those cuts and bruises. Only now was she brave enough to see it. Now that she herself was naked and just like him had nothing left to lose.
She didn’t know what had happened to him. What he’d been through, other than that it must have been horrifyingly violent. The only thing she knew for sure was that he’d listened. Despite everything he must have been dealing with, he’d heard every word.
Because there he was, the one who belonged to her, and just like that, she felt calm.
She turned to the wooden box sitting on the floor a few feet behind her and slowly walked over to it. When she reached it, she turned to her audience and waited another minute before stepping into it, lying down with her arms along her sides and closing her eyes.
She woke up when the lid that had been propped against the box was placed over her. Then she could hear some of them pick up the screwdrivers scattered on the floor, grab a screw and start fastening the lid to the box. From time to time, someone dropped a screwdriver, which suggested they were taking turns.
When the lid was in place, silence descended on the room once more. As though it had just dawned on them that they had all participated in burying her. Then she drifted off again. At least it felt like she did. She couldn’t be sure. Time seemed to move in circles.
In the end, someone must have made a decision and persuaded at least one other person. Maybe more. But she could clearly hear the four steel wires dangling from the ceiling being hooked onto the hoops at the four corners of the box.
Then she was raised higher and higher, further and further from the grave she had been on her way down into just a few weeks ago.
83
ASTRID TUVESSON ENDED the call, put her phone in her handbag and looked out from the balcony. Apart from the banging and the angry buzzing of saws in the bedroom, it was a pretty nice evening. The kind of evening when summer really shines, with a perfect, balmy breeze.
And yet the pavements and the outdoor seating area of the restaurant down the street were virtually deserted. Only the occasional car drove past below. Instead, everyone was sitting in their living rooms, glued to their TVs in some kind of collective shock.
Not because of the European Football Championship semi-final between Germany and Italy, but because of the news. She could see as much
through several of the windows across the street. The news from Tivoli in Copenhagen.
A few hours ago, this had been just another day of glorious summer weather in the middle of the holiday season. A few hours ago, people had been blissfully unaware of the darkness simmering just beneath the surface. Now they were all going to remember, for the rest of their lives, where they were and what they’d been doing when the news reached them.
So far, only the Danes had held a press conference, with Kim Sleizner taking the lead, basking in the glory of the arrest. That would all change tomorrow, when she held her own press conference and told the world about all the things the Danes had decided to sweep under the rug. About how difficult the Danes were to work with. About all the other cases they had thought were solved but which now turned out to be connected. And about Molander…
She still hadn’t been able to digest that. She hadn’t even had time to think about it, and at the moment she had no idea how she was going to approach it when she was standing on the podium tomorrow.
She sat down on the balcony chair with a heavy sigh. The handbag in her lap was still open, and there, next to the phone, on top of the silvery bag of gum, it lay, waiting for her say-so.
She had been good, she really had. The past twenty-four hours had been like nothing she’d ever experienced in all her years on the force. But they had pulled through. She had pulled through.
Now they were just waiting for the noise from the bedroom to die down. Then they were officially done, and they would all be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel proud. Fabian, Klippan, Irene and her. Proud that despite their failings, they’d managed to do the right thing in the end. If she didn’t deserve a tipple now, when would she ever? Just a sip, a small one.
Before she’d even made a conscious decision, one hand was already pulling the flask out of the handbag while the other unscrewed the cap. Then the spirits burned on her tongue and left a hot, pulsating trail all the way down her throat. As if on cue, warmth spread through the rest of her body and she instantly felt her shoulders relax. She took another sip and then another before she could get hold of herself, put the flask away and shove a couple of pieces of gum in her mouth.
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