The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  Hess had brought almost nothing to Copenhagen. He’d chucked the bare necessities into his holdall before setting off, and after the disastrous meeting he went to recover at the Methodist hotel near the railway station, although he’d only just checked out. As a first step he’d called his partner François to explain the situation and to get an update on the outlook in the Hague. François was a bald forty-one-year-old Frenchman from Marseille, a third-generation policeman, hard-boiled but with a heart of gold, and the only one among his colleagues Hess liked and trusted. François explained that the evaluation had been set in motion and he’d keep Hess in the loop, covering for him as much as possible, but that they needed to coordinate who said what so that it didn’t look like they’d colluded in their respective reports. If it became a disciplinary matter, their telephone conversations might be tapped, so it seemed like a good idea to get new phones. After the call, Hess downed a can of beer from the minibar and tried to get hold of the property manager who had the key to his apartment: no need to pay for more nights at the hotel than absolutely necessary. But the office was closed, and Hess dozed off fully clothed on the hotel bed to Ajax Amsterdam’s ignominious three-nil defeat by the Germans.

  The spiders have finished devouring their mother by the time his new phone rings. François’s English isn’t quite smooth, so Hess prefers to speak French with him, although his French is broken and self-taught.

  ‘How was your first day at work?’ is what François wants to know.

  ‘Super.’

  They coordinate briefly, Hess bringing François up to speed on what he’s writing in his report, and François updates him on the latest developments. When they’re done, Hess senses there is something weighing on the Frenchman’s mind.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘I’m just thinking out loud here: why don’t you just relax and stay in Copenhagen for a bit? I’m sure you’ll be back, but maybe this is good for you. Getting away from it all. Recharging your batteries. Meeting a few sweet Danish girls, and –’

  ‘You’re right. I don’t want to hear it. Just concentrate on your report and have it on Freimann’s desk asap.’

  Hess hangs up. The prospect of remaining in Copenhagen has become increasingly unbearable over the course of the day. His nearly five years at Europol were no picnic, but anything is better than here. As a liaison officer representing the Danish police he could in principle have contented himself with sitting in front of a computer screen in his office at HQ, but soon after his arrival Hess had been headhunted as an investigator for their transnational mobile taskforce. On average he’d probably spent 150 days out of the year travelling, as one case was superseded by the next. Berlin become Lisbon, Lisbon became Calabria, Calabria became Marseille, and so it had continued, the only interruption brief stays at the Hague, where he’d been provided with an apartment. He kept in tenuous touch with the Danish system via occasional reports, which were supposed to summarize the connections of organized crime to Northern Europe – Scandinavia and Denmark especially. Via email, as a rule, and on rare occasions via Skype. This peripheral contact had suited Hess perfectly. So did the feeling of rootlessness. In time he’d even learned to live with the machinery of the European police, a colossus with feet of clay and a thousand legal and political hurdles, which seemed more and more insurmountable each time he encountered them. Did he burn out? Yeah, maybe. As an investigator he saw fresh examples of organized injustice, malice and death all the time. He followed leads, gathered evidence and interrogated people in countless different languages, but often the charges were shelved by politicians who couldn’t come to an agreement across national lines. On the other hand, Hess was left mostly to his own devices. The system was so vast and labyrinthine you could get away with anything. Until recently, at least, with the arrival of a new boss to his department: Freimann, a young bureaucrat from former East Germany who believed in pan-European police cooperation and had diligently begun to streamline operations and clean house. But even a long weekend on a desert island with Freimann had sounded tempting after his first day on the job in Copenhagen.

  To be fair, the day had got off to a tolerable start. He’d avoided bumping into old acquaintances at the station and was sent out on assignment from early morning onwards. The female investigator he’d been partnered with was sharper than most and clearly uninterested in his presence, which could only play to his advantage. But then an apparently simple killing in privet-hedgesville was complicated by a fingerprint, and before he could blink he was standing in a house where grief clung to the walls like thick tar, which always made him want to run screaming from the room.

  After their visit to the Hartungs he needed some air. There was something nagging him, and it wasn’t just the grief. It was a detail. Something that hadn’t yet become a thought; or maybe it had, but it had brought with it a blizzard of questions that his conscious mind had rushed to dismiss – he simply didn’t want to act on them.

  Hess walked through the dripping streets, taking a detour into the city he no longer knew. Structures of glass and steel were everywhere, roadworks that testified to a city under transformation, in principle a European capital like all the others, yet still smaller, lower and safer than most of the capitals to the south. Happy families with children had defied the autumn and the rain for the attractions of Tivoli, but the piles of fallen leaves underneath the chestnut trees by the lakes made him think of Laura Kjær. The picture-postcard image of this safe fairy-tale land had once more begun to crack, and by the time he reached Queen Louise’s Bridge memories of his own had begun to materialize, like small, teasing ghosts, refusing to vanish until he came to Outer Nørrebro.

  Hess knows it doesn’t have to concern him. It isn’t his responsibility. There are nutcases all over the place, and parents lose their children every single day, just as children lose their parents. He’s seen it so many times before in so many different cities and nations, in more faces than he cares to remember. In a few days there will be a conciliatory call from the Hague, so it doesn’t matter what he’s seen today. He will board a flight or a train or get into a car with another clear-cut task, and until then he simply has to pass the time.

  Hess realizes he’s staring apathetically at one of the discoloured walls, and before the sense of unease can pluck at him again he chucks the box of leftover noodles into the bin and heads for the door.

  23

  The sound of Bob the Builder’s voice fills Nehru Amdi’s living room, where his youngest child seems especially absorbed by the screen. Nehru is busy preparing curried lamb and spinach for his wife and four kids when there’s a knock at the door. His wife yells that she’s busy on the phone with her cousin, so Nehru has to get it. Irritably, an apron still around his waist, he opens the door to find the white man from 37C standing outside. Nehru already caught a glimpse of him earlier in the day.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, but I’d like to paint my apartment. Thirty-seven C.’

  ‘Paint your apartment? Now?’

  ‘Yes please. The manager said you’re the caretaker, so you’d know where the painting supplies are kept.’ Nehru notices the man’s eyes are two different colours, one green and one blue.

  ‘But you can’t just up and paint it. You need the owner’s permission for that type of thing, and the owner’s away.’

  ‘I am the owner.’

  ‘You’re the owner?’

  ‘Maybe you could just give me the key. Is the stuff down in the basement?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, but it’s dark. You can’t paint now unless you’ve got lamps. Have you got lamps?’

  ‘No, but it’s only now I’ve got the time,’ the man replies impatiently. ‘I’m in Copenhagen for a few days and I’d like to spruce up the apartment a bit so I can sell it. So if it’s not too much trouble, could I have the key?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to give out keys to the basement
. Wait for me in the corridor, I’ll be right there.’

  The man nods and leaves. Nehru’s wife takes her phone from her ear and shoots Nehru a glance as he starts rummaging around for the key. No normal white man would voluntarily own anything at Odin, let alone live there, so there’s good cause to be on his guard.

  The roller trundles up and down the wall, spattering globs of paint across the cardboard-covered floor. As Nehru walks through the door with another pot of paint, the man is sloshing the roller around in the tray before returning to his task, sweat dripping down his face.

  ‘There was one more tin, but I’ve got no time, so you’ll have to check yourself whether it’s the same colour code.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, just has to be white.’

  ‘It does matter. It has to be the same code.’

  Nehru moves the man’s jacket to make room for the tin, so he can check the code. As he does so he exposes the gun holster, and Nehru freezes.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m a policeman.’

  ‘Right, of course,’ says Nehru, shuffling half a step backwards towards the door as he remembers his wife’s glance.

  The man flips open his police badge with the tips of his fingers, which are already flecked with white.

  ‘Seriously. I am.’

  Nehru feels only slightly reassured as he examines the badge, while the tall figure begins moving the roller up and down again.

  ‘A plainclothes agent? You’re using the apartment for surveillance?’

  Odin is often accused of being a breeding ground for criminal gangs and Islamic terrorists, so Nehru’s question is not unreasonable.

  ‘Nah, it’s just mine. No surveillance. But I work overseas, so now I’m looking to get it off my hands. Leave the door ajar when you go – I want to let the air in.’

  The reply disarms Nehru. He’s still baffled as to why the man has taken it into his head to buy real estate in Odin, but being asked to leave is reassuring. Very Danish and normal. Eying the figure, Nehru can’t resist. The tall man paints like a horse kicks. Like his life depends on it.

  ‘You’re doing that much too hard. Can I just see the roller –’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  ‘Well, you can’t see a thing without light.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Stop, I’m telling you. If I don’t help, you won’t be happy with what you’re doing.’

  ‘I won’t be unhappy, I promise.’

  But Nehru has grabbed the handle and is surveying the roller, even as the man maintains his grip.

  ‘I thought so. It needs to be changed. I’ll just do that now.’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  ‘It’s not fine. I’m an old hand at painting, and I can’t just stand by and watch you mess it up when I know better.’

  ‘Listen, I just want to paint –’

  ‘I can’t just stand and watch. One’s obliged to help if one can. I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.’

  The man slowly releases the handle. For a moment he stares into empty space, as though Nehru has deflated his life of meaning, and Nehru hurries off with the roller before he can change his mind.

  Back at his apartment, Nehru swiftly hunts out a few work lamps and a new roller in a bucket at the back of the cupboard in the hall. His wife is sitting at the kitchen table with the children. She doesn’t understand him; 37C can look after himself until they’ve eaten, surely. ‘The man could be lying, you know. Could be some poor nutter the council’s housed in the complex?’

  Nehru gives up trying to explain to her that when you paint, you’ve got to do it properly. Carrying the gear under his arm, he shuts the front door behind him and is about to pick up the roller handle from the newspaper on the doormat where he left it, when suddenly he notices the figure from 37C hurrying past the basketball court outside.

  For a moment Nehru is nonplussed. Then he tells himself that people these days have no respect for each other, and that his wife might be on to something about the nutter and the council. Either way, it’s a good thing the man is selling.

  24

  To her surprise, Thulin is beginning to enjoy dinner at Sebastian’s luxurious apartment. Sebastian belongs to a reputable, prosperous family of lawyers, of which his father is the all-imposing patriarch. Nearly ten years ago he was made a regional judge, and now Sebastian and his older brother lead the firm – although that certainly doesn’t mean they see eye to eye on everything. That much is plain at dinner. His older brother’s awkward, neo-liberal observations about state and community tumble clunkily across the table, sharply pursued by Sebastian’s quick rejoinders and his sister-in-law’s sarcastic reminders that her husband’s emotional life officially died when he finished his legal training. His father had asked Thulin about her role in the murder squad and praised her decision to apply to NC3, which he firmly believed was the future, unlike the fusty old Major Crimes Division. His older brother, meanwhile, insisted that none of the departments would still exist in twenty years’ time, since by that time all police work would hopefully have been privatized. In the middle of the main course, however, his interest turns to why Sebastian apparently isn’t attractive enough for Thulin to want to move in with him.

  ‘He’s not man enough to give you what you want, eh?’

  ‘No, he is. I’d just rather take advantage of him sexually than choke the life out of the relationship.’

  Her answer makes the man’s wife splutter with laughter, so much so that red wine ends up on his white Hugo Boss shirt, which he immediately begins scrubbing with his napkin. ‘Cheers to that,’ she says, emptying her glass before the others can catch up. Sebastian shoots Thulin a smile, and his mother gives her hand a squeeze. ‘Well, we’re certainly very pleased to meet you, and I know Sebastian is happy.’

  ‘Mum, give over.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything!’

  She has Sebastian’s eyes. The same warm, dark glow Thulin felt a little more than four months earlier in court, when she sat in the spectators’ gallery while one of her cases was being heard by a judge. Witnessing Sebastian Valeur during this preliminary hearing was like seeing a factory-fresh Tesla at a classic car museum, but her knee-jerk judgement about his arrogance had been put to shame. As the court-appointed lawyer for the accused, a Somali, he defended his client without putting on airs and with such good sense that he convinced the man to plead guilty to the incident of domestic violence with which he’d been charged. Afterwards Sebastian caught up with her outside the building, and although he had no luck inviting her out, she was attracted to him. One late afternoon in early June, she showed up unannounced at his office in Amaliegade and tore off his trousers as soon as they were alone. She hadn’t thought it would develop into anything more, but the sex was surprisingly good, and Sebastian understood she wasn’t looking for someone to go for long walks on the beach with. Now that she’s actually sitting here and laughing along with his oddball family, that part doesn’t seem quite as frightening as it usually does.

  Suddenly a loud ringtone makes the table fall silent, and Thulin has to reach into her pocket and answer the call.

  ‘Yes, hello?’

  ‘Hey, it’s Hess. Where’s the boy now?’

  Thulin stands up and slips into the hallway to be alone.

  ‘The boy?’

  ‘The boy from the house in Husum. There’s something I’ve got to ask him, and it has to be now.’

  ‘You can’t talk to him now. He was examined by a doctor who decided he was possibly in shock, so he’s been taken to A&E.’

  ‘Which A&E?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll figure it out.’

  ‘Why do you –’

  The line goes dead. For a moment Thulin stands there with the phone in her hand. The chatter of voices around the table continues, but she’s no longer listening to what they’re saying. By the time Sebastian appears to ask whether anything is wrong, she’s already pulling on her coat and h
alfway out the door.

  25

  The corridors are deserted and only dimly lit when Thulin enters the Children and Adolescent Psychiatric Centre at Glostrup Hospital. As she reaches the desk she sees Hess arguing with an elderly nurse in the back office. Their voices seep out under the door of the glass-partitioned room, and a few teenagers in slippers have stopped to watch. Thulin pushes past them, knocks and opens the door.

  ‘Come with me.’

  Hess, noticing Thulin, follows reluctantly after her while the nurse watches him with a peevish expression.

  ‘I’ve got to speak to the boy, but some idiot promised them he wouldn’t be disturbed again today.’

  ‘I promised that. What do you need to speak to him about?’

  She looks at Hess, who for some reason has flecks of white paint on his face and fingers.

  ‘The boy has already been questioned once today, and if you can’t tell me what this is about then it can’t be that important.’

  ‘It’s just a few questions. If you can persuade the nurse, I promise I’ll call in sick tomorrow in exchange.’

  ‘Tell me what you want to ask him.’

  26

  The ward at the Children and Adolescent Psychiatric Centre is essentially identical to the one for adults, except for a few scattered islands of toys and books beside child-sized tables and chairs. They don’t make much difference – the interior still feels barren and sad – but Thulin knows from experience that there are places much worse than this.