‘Just drive.’
‘I’ve got to find the key.’
Steen looks for the key, opening the car door into the darkness to make the light come on, and eventually finds it lying on the mat beneath the wheel. His son shrinks down into the seat as the last few children go by.
‘Aha … there it is.’
Steen shuts the door.
‘Did it go well, your –’
‘I don’t want you picking me up any more.’
‘What do you mean –’
‘The whole car stinks.’
‘Gustav, I don’t know –’
‘I miss her too, but I don’t drink!’
Steen freezes. He stares out at the trees and feels the weight of a thousand dead, drenched leaves, burying him. In the rear-view mirror he can see his son gazing out of the window, his eyes hard. He’s only eleven years old, and his words should sound comical, but they don’t. Steen wants to say something, to say it isn’t true, that the boy is mistaken, to laugh loudly and heartily and crack some joke that will get his son to laugh, because he never laughs any more, and it’s been so long since the last time.
‘Sorry … you’re right.’
Gustav’s face doesn’t change. He just stares out into the empty carpark.
‘It was a mistake. I’ll pull myself together …’
Still no reply.
‘I understand you don’t believe that, but I mean it. This won’t happen again. The last thing I want is to make you unhappy. Okay?’
‘Can I play with Kalle before we eat?’
Kalle is Gustav’s best friend, and he lives on their way home. Steen takes a final glance in the rear-view mirror before turning the key and starting the engine.
‘Yeah. Of course.’
19
‘And? What happened then?’
‘Well, then the opposition got started. It all went nuts – remember that pretty woman from the Red–Greens with the horn-rimmed glasses?’
Steen is standing by the large gas stove, tasting the food and nodding with a smile. The radio is playing in the background, and Rosa is pouring a glass of wine. She’s about to pour one for him too, but he waves her away.
‘You mean the woman who drank too much at the Christmas party and got sent home?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. She leapt up in the middle of the Chamber and began hurling insults at the Prime Minister while the Chairman tried to make her sit back down. Only then she started insulting the Chairman. And she’d already refused to stand when Her Majesty entered, so now half the Chamber began to boo her, and finally she got so furious she threw down her notes and they went flying across the room along with her pen and glasses case.’
Rosa is laughing, and Steen smiles along. He can’t remember the last time they stood in the kitchen and chatted like this, but it feels like much too long ago. He pushes the other thing aside in his mind. The thing he can’t think about – the thing that would make her sad. Their eyes meet in the wake of their smiles, and for a moment neither of them speaks.
‘I’m glad you had a good day.’
She nods and sips her wine – a little too quickly, he thinks, but she’s still smiling.
‘And you haven’t even heard about the People’s Party’s new spokesperson yet.’ Her mobile has begun to ring on the kitchen table. ‘But I’ll tell you later. I’ll just go and change while I brief Liu about a memo for tomorrow.’
She takes her phone and he hears her talking as she walks up the staircase to the first floor. Steen pours the rice into the boiling water, and when the doorbell rings in the hall he isn’t surprised: it’s bound to be Gustav, back from Kalle’s and too lazy to fish out his key.
20
When the front door of the villa opens and Thulin looks into Steen Hartung’s face, she instantly regrets being there. He has an apron around his waist and a measuring cup with a few grains of rice in his hand, and his eyes tell her he was expecting someone else.
‘Steen Hartung?’
‘Yes?’
‘Sorry to disturb you. Police.’
The man’s face shifts. It’s as though something breaks inside him, or as if he’s been brought down to a reality momentarily forgotten.
‘May we come in?’
‘What’s this about?’
‘It’ll only take a minute. Best we talk inside.’
Thulin and Hess glance awkwardly around the spacious living room as they wait, not exchanging so much as a word. Beyond the glass patio doors, the garden is unlit. The dining table is laid for three people beneath a large Arne Jacobsen lamp, and the aromatic savour of a stew drifts in from the kitchen. Thulin has a sudden urge to bolt through the door before Steen Hartung comes back. She casts a sidelong glance at her companion, who is standing with his back turned to her; she knows she can expect no help from that quarter.
After their conversation with Genz at Forensics she had phoned Nylander, who responded tetchily at being interrupted during a meeting. Nor did his mood improve when she explained the reason for her call. At first he was disbelieving, insisting that it had to be a mistake, but once he realized Genz had cross-checked the result a million times he’d gone quiet. Despite her generally negative impression of the department, Thulin knew Nylander was far from stupid, and it was clear he took the information seriously. He said there had to be a logical explanation, some simple connection they weren’t aware of, so he dispatched them to see the Hartungs. Personally Thulin can’t imagine a logical explanation.
Hess hasn’t said much. On their way over in the car she gave him the gist of the Kristine Hartung business. She wasn’t with the department at the time, but naturally the case was a topic of conversation at the station and in the media long after it was closed. For that matter, it still is. Kristine Hartung was the daughter of Rosa Hartung, politician and Minister for Social Affairs, who has only just made her political comeback. The twelve-year-old girl went missing on her way home from sports practice less than a year ago. Her bag and bike were found dumped in the woods, and a few weeks later a young tech nerd, Linus Bekker, was arrested. He had several sexual offences on his record, and the weight of evidence was overwhelming. During an interrogation at the station, Bekker confessed to sexually assaulting Kristine Hartung before strangling her and dismembering the body with a machete – stained with Kristine’s blood – discovered in his garage. According to his own testimony, he then buried the various parts of her body at different locations in the forests of North Zealand, but Bekker, who had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, was unable to show the police exactly where, and after two months of resource-intensive investigation they gave up when the frost set in and the task became impossible. Bekker was convicted in the spring under fierce media scrutiny and given the harshest possible punishment: detention in psychiatric care for an indefinite period of time. In reality, this meant the man would be locked up for at least fifteen to twenty years.
Thulin hears the radio being switched off, and Steen Hartung re-emerges from the kitchen.
‘My wife is upstairs. If this is because you’ve –’
Hartung stumbles, groping for the words.
‘If something’s been found … I’d like to hear about it before my wife finds out.’
‘We haven’t. This has nothing to do with that.’
The man looks at her. He’s relieved, yet also puzzled and wary: he knows, of course, that there has to be a reason they’re there.
‘In the course of examining a crime scene earlier today, we happened across an object that most likely has your daughter’s fingerprint on it. To be specific, the print is on a little doll made of chestnuts. I’ve brought a photo, and I’d like you to take a look.’
She holds out a photograph, but Steen Hartung merely glances at it in bewilderment before looking back at Thulin.
‘It’s not a hundred per cent certain that it is her print, but it’s probable enough that we need to explain why it’s there.’
Hartung picks up the
photo, which Thulin has placed on the dining table.
‘I don’t understand. A fingerprint …?’
‘Yes. We found the doll at a play area in Husum. At 7 Cedervænget, to be precise. Does that playground or that address mean anything to you?’
‘No.’
‘What about a woman named Laura Kjær? Or her son Magnus, or a man by the name of Hans Henrik Hauge?’
‘No.’
‘Is it possible that your daughter might have known the family? Or another family in the area – maybe she had playdates there, or visited someone, or –’
‘No. We live here. I don’t understand what this means?’
For a moment Thulin doesn’t know what to say.
‘There’s probably a logical explanation. If your wife is home maybe we could ask her about –’
‘No. You’re not asking my wife.’ Hartung glares at them, his eyes hostile.
‘I’m very sorry, but we need to get to the bottom of this.’
‘I couldn’t give a fuck. You’re not talking to my wife. My answers are just as good as hers. We have no idea about any fingerprint and we don’t know the place you’re talking about, and I don’t understand why the hell it’s so important!’
Steen Hartung suddenly realizes that Thulin and Hess are staring at something behind him. His wife has come down the stairs and is looking at them from the hall.
For a moment nobody says anything. Rosa Hartung enters the living room and picks up the photograph Steen has tossed angrily aside. Once again Thulin considers making a run for the door, and she’s becoming increasingly ticked off with Hess, who is still wordlessly skulking in the background.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you. We –’
‘I heard you.’
Rosa Hartung studies the picture of the chestnut man as if she’s hoping to find something. Her husband begins shepherding them towards the front door.
‘They’re going now. I’ve told them we don’t know anything. It’s been a real pleasure.’
‘She sold them down by the main road …’
Steen Hartung pauses in the doorway and turns back towards his wife.
‘Every autumn. With Mathilde, another girl in her class. They used to sit here and make piles of them …’
Rosa Hartung looks from the photo to her husband, and Thulin can see the memory suddenly cross his face.
‘Sold them how?’ Hess speaks up, treading closer.
‘They had a little stall. For people walking past, or cars that stopped. They also baked cakes and made squash. You could buy them with one of these …’
‘And they did that last year too?’
‘Yeah … they sat at this table. They’d been gathering chestnuts in the garden, and they were having a lovely time. In the summer they did the flea market, but … but she liked it best in the autumn, if we had time to do it together. I remember, because it was the weekend before …’ Rosa Hartung breaks off.
‘Why does it matter?’
‘It’s just something we need to investigate. With regard to a different case.’
Rosa Hartung says nothing. Her husband is standing only a step away, and it’s as though both of them are in free fall. Thulin reaches for the photo as though for a lifeline.
‘Thank you so much. We’ve got what we needed. Apologies again for the interruption.’
21
Thulin glances at Hess in the rear-view mirror while she accelerates and drives away. As she opened the car door in the driveway, he looked back at the house and said he’d rather walk, which suits her just fine. She takes the first side street out of the neighbourhood and makes two calls on her way back into town. The first is to Nylander, and he picks up immediately. He’s clearly been waiting for it. She can hear his wife and children in the background, and when she tells him the result of their visit to Kristine Hartung’s parents he sounds satisfied with the explanation. Before hanging up, however, he impresses on Thulin that the information should be kept confidential – he doesn’t want the media latching on to something irrelevant and creating a nuisance for the girl’s parents – but Thulin is only listening with half an ear. She’s already figured that much out for herself.
Afterwards she calls the third photo on her family tree, the man her daughter calls Grandad: Aksel, always loyal and always sturdy, the person to whom she owes everything. It’s good to hear his calm voice, and he informs her they’re playing a very complex South Korean game he doesn’t understand a thing about. Le asks in the background whether she can sleep over at Grandad’s, and Thulin gives in, although she doesn’t feel like being alone tonight. Aksel can hear it in her voice, and she hurriedly tells him everything is fine before she hangs up. Through the car window she can see families plodding home with their bags of shopping, and she feels a rising unease that she struggles to quell.
A girl sells a chestnut man at a booth by the road, and it happens to end up at a playhouse somewhere in Husum. Finished, end of story. She makes a decision and turns down Store Kongensgade.
An elderly man in a fur coat and carrying a dog in his arms comes out of the front door and eyes her mistrustfully as she enters the lobby without ringing the bell. She walks up the wide staircase past large, luxurious apartments, and when she reaches the second floor she can hear music coming from inside Sebastian’s place. She knocks once but opens the door without waiting. Sebastian is standing holding his phone. He gives a smile of surprise, still in his suit, which seems to be the only acceptable uniform in his industry.
‘Hi?’
Thulin lets her coat fall.
‘Take off your clothes, I have half an hour.’
Her hands have unzipped his trousers and are busy with his belt before she hears the sound of footsteps.
‘Where do you keep your corkscrew, my lad?’
An older man with sharp features appears in the doorway holding a bottle of wine, and at a break in the music Thulin becomes aware of the cacophony of voices from the living room.
‘This is my father – Dad, this is Naia.’ Sebastian introduces them with a grin, as a couple of children playing catch race through the hall and out into the kitchen.
‘Pleasure to meet you. Sweetheart, come here!’
Before she knows what’s happening, Thulin finds herself encircled by Sebastian’s mother and the rest of his family. After her third attempt to turn down the invitation, it becomes clear she’ll be joining them for dinner.
22
It’s drizzling, and the fluorescent tubes in the bike sheds illuminate one end of the basketball court. The wet children pause to watch the figure before they continue their game. Odin Park in Outer Nørrebro doesn’t have many white residents, so when one does show up people take notice. Usually they’ll be police, uniformed or plainclothes, but police come in pairs, never alone like this figure, which is ambling towards a block on the edge of the complex with a takeaway bag in its hand.
Hess climbs up the external staircase to the third floor, then goes down the walkway towards the last door. In front of the other doors are bin bags and bikes and junk, and from a slightly open window drift Arabic voices and spices that remind Hess of the Tunisian neighbourhood in Paris. In front of the final door, 37C, is a weather-beaten old garden table and an unsteady white plastic chair. Hess pauses to fish out his key.
The apartment is dark, and he switches on the light. There are two rooms; his dirty holdall sits by the wall, where he put it down after being given the key by the property manager earlier in the day. The apartment was most recently let to a Bolivian student, but the young man went home in April, and according to the manager it has proved impossible to rent out Hess’s apartment since. Which perhaps isn’t all that strange. In the front room there are a table, two chairs, a kitchenette with two hotplates, a hole-ridden, uneven floor and four bare, blotchy walls. Nothing personal, only the battered old TV in the corner, which despite its analogue appearance still works, because it’s hooked up to the residents’ association’s cable package. T
here has never been any reason to do up the place because Hess is never there, but over the years the mortgage has been paid off by renters, so he’s kept the apartment. Hess takes off his jacket, removes his holster and his cigarettes and hangs his jacket over the back of a chair to dry. For the third time in half an hour he calls François on the number they agreed, but again the call goes unanswered, and Hess doesn’t leave a message.
As he sits at the table and opens the carton of Vietnamese food, he switches on the TV. He eats chicken and noodles without appetite, flicking restlessly through the cornucopia of channels until he reaches the news. They’re showing images of Rosa Hartung taken that day at Christiansborg, while a voiceover recounts the story about her daughter. Hess keeps flicking through the channels, ending up on a nature programme about South African spiders that are notable for eating their mother as soon as they’re hatched. The programme doesn’t interest him, but neither does it disturb his train of thought as he tries to figure out how he can get back to the Hague as quickly as possible.
It has been a dramatic few days for Hess. Out of the blue this past weekend he was relieved of duty by his German boss at Europol, Freimann – effective immediately. Well, maybe it wasn’t completely unexpected, but it was certainly an overreaction. In Hess’s eyes, at least. The decision made its way through the system, the rumour swiftly reaching Copenhagen, and on Sunday evening he was ordered home to face the music. At Monday’s meeting at the station, his Danish bosses refused to accept his reading of the situation and reminded him that his actions were particularly unfortunate given the Danish police’s already troubled relationship with Europol, which had been strained ever since the notorious referendum. Hess, in other words, was not helping matters, and their collaboration hinged on staying in Europol’s good books. In fact, one of the bosses emphasized that it bordered on the embarrassing, and Hess had tried to look chastened. After that they ran through the checklist of his sins: disciplinary issues involving arguments with his superiors; absences; generally slipshod work; accusations of drunkenness and partying in European capitals; and then the overarching umbrella theory about burnout. He objected that it was a storm in a teacup, and he was sure the evaluation would end up finding in his favour. In his head he was already on the 15.55 flight to the Hague – his ticket was already booked – and unless the plane was delayed he’d be back at his second-floor apartment in Zeekantstraat in time to plump down on the sofa and watch the postponed Champions League match between Ajax Amsterdam and Dortmund. But then the bomb had dropped. Until things were straightened out, Hess was relegated to his former division, Major Crimes. Starting the very next morning.
The Chestnut Man Page 6