‘What?’
His voice is frosty, and he knows his wife will hear it in his reply, but it’s her own fucking fault he’s like this. He pauses and looks for the woman in the Louboutins, but she has already vanished into the crowd.
‘Sorry if I’m disturbing you.’
‘What do you want? I can’t talk now. I told you so.’
‘I just wanted to find out if it’s okay for me to take the girls up to Mum’s today. For the night.’
He’s suspicious.
‘Why would you want to do that?’
She’s silent a moment.
‘It’s just ages since I’ve seen her. And if you’re not home anyway.’
‘Do you want me to come home, Anne?’
‘Yes, of course I do. It’s just, you said you were working late today, so –’
‘So what, Anne?’
‘Sorry … we’ll stay home, then … if you don’t think it’s a good idea …’
There’s something about her that irritates him. Something about her voice – something he doesn’t trust. He wishes it wasn’t like that; he wishes so much he could rewind the whole thing and redo it altogether differently. Then suddenly he hears the sound of heels on marble flooring, and when he turns around he sees the woman in the Louboutins emerge from a cosmetics stand with a chic little bag in her hand and strut towards the lift beside the Købmagergade exit.
‘That’s fine. Whatever, go.’
Breaking off the call, Erik Sejer-Lassen just makes it to the lift before the doors close.
‘May I ride with you?’
She is standing alone with her doll-like face, staring at him in surprise. She takes the measure of him swiftly – he can sense her gaze on his features and dark hair, on his expensive suit and shoes – and then her face breaks into a beaming smile.
‘Of course.’
Erik steps into the lift. He has just returned the smile, pressed the button and turned to the woman when a man with a wild expression thrusts his arm between the doors and slams him against the mirrored wall, flattening his nose against the cold glass. The woman squeals in terror. He feels the weight of the man at his back, his hands frisking him, and for a brief moment he catches a glimpse of the man’s eye colour and thinks he must be insane.
36
It’s clear to Steen that the client doesn’t have a clue when it comes to the drawings. He’s seen it many times before, but in this instance it’s immensely annoying, because the client is also making a virtue of his ignorance and insisting that it means his ideas are ‘original’ and ‘lateral’ and ‘outside the box’.
They’re waiting in the large meeting room, he and his partner Bjarke, for the client to finally stop staring at yet another drawing and deign to give them an opinion. Steen glances at his watch. The meeting has dragged on and on. He should have been in the car five minutes ago, on his way to the school. But the client is twenty-three, a tech multi-millionaire, dressed like a fifteen-year-old in a hoodie, ripped jeans and white sneakers, and Steen knows instinctively that the guy would only be able to spell functionalism with the aid of the autocorrect on his brand-new iPhone, which he’s placed on the table and can’t stop fiddling with.
‘Lads, there’s not a lot of detail on this.’
‘No. Last time you said there was too much detail.’
Steen senses Bjarke wince, and his partner hurries to smooth over the remark.
‘We can always add more, no problem.’
‘Either way, it just needs more pang, more kapow.’
Steen, who has been waiting for that very comment, pulls out the stack of old drawings.
‘These are the most recent drawings. They had pang and kapow, but you said it was too much?’
‘Yeah, it was. Or too little, maybe.’
Steen looks at the man, who returns his gaze with a wide smile.
‘Maybe the problem is that it’s all too in-between. You keep coming with one drawing after another – you know your shit, but it’s too nuanced, and it needs to be much more no strings attached. You follow me?’
‘No, I don’t follow you. But maybe we can put red plastic animals along the driveway and turn the lobby into a pirate ship, if that’s any better.’
Bjarke gives a yap of laughter, much too loud, in an attempt to defuse the situation, but the young Sun King isn’t having it.
‘That might be a good idea. Or I could ask your competition, if you don’t have a better take on it before your deadline this evening.’
When Steen is in his car on the way to school a few minutes later, he phones his lawyer’s office and says he still hasn’t received the certificate confirming presumption of death. The secretary sounds surprised and apologizes, and Steen cuts her off a little too quickly – but she gets the message and promises to chase it up.
By the time he’s pulled up outside the school he’s already downed three of the small liquor bottles, but this time he’s remembered his chewing gum and driven several kilometres with the windows rolled down. Seeing that Gustav isn’t waiting under the trees as usual, he tries his mobile. Suddenly he isn’t sure whether he’s arrived too early or too late. The schoolyard is empty. Steen looks at his watch. He rarely goes inside the school these days; in fact, he can’t remember the last time he did so. It’s as though both he and his son know it’s better he remain outside. But now his son isn’t there, and in half an hour Steen has to be back at the office to revise the drawings for the Sun King. Too restive to help himself, he opens the car door.
37
The door to Gustav’s classroom is ajar, but the room is empty. Steen hurries onwards, counting himself lucky that lessons are in progress: the corridors are free of enquiring glances. As he passes the doors leading to the buzzing kindergarten classes, he almost manages to ignore the decorative autumn twigs and animals made of chestnuts. The police visit the other day had been a nightmare. The fingerprint. The feeling awoken inside him when he realized what they were saying. The hope, welling up and mingling with bewilderment. It had happened to them many times before – being smacked back to square one – but this time it had been more unexpected. They’d discussed it afterwards – that it just was what it was – and that for Gustav’s sake, at least, they should try to be strong enough to meet head-on the knocks and pitfalls these reminders of their daughter would always be. Regardless of what form they took. They’d promised each other that they would move on, in spite of everything, and although Steen can almost feel the chestnut animals following him with their eyes as he turns the corner towards the common area, he’s determined not to let it affect him.
Steen stops short. It takes him a moment to realize the children sitting in the common room are her classmates. It’s ages since he’s seen them, but he recognizes their faces.
They are sitting peacefully around the white tables arranged on the brown carpet, working in groups; but as soon as the first pupil catches sight of him, there is a ripple of attention across the room, and all faces turn towards him. No one speaks. For a second he doesn’t know what to do, but then he begins to retreat the way he came.
‘Hi.’
Steen turns to the girl sitting alone at the nearest table, her schoolbooks piled neatly in front of her, and realizes it’s Mathilde. She looks older. Graver, clad in black. She gives him a friendly smile.
‘Are you looking for Gustav?’
‘Yeah.’
He’s seen her thousands of times; she’d been in their home so often it had become almost customary for him to speak to her as though to his own daughter, but it isn’t any more, and he can’t find the words.
‘His class went past a little while ago, but they’ll probably be back soon.’
‘Thanks. Do you know where they went?’
‘No.’
Steen checks his watch, although he knows the time.
‘Okay, I’ll wait for him in the car.’
‘How are you doing?’
Steen looks at Mathilde and tries to smile.
It’s one of the dangerous questions, but he’s heard it so often that he knows all he has to do is answer quickly.
‘Fine. Bit busy, but that’s all good. And you?’
She nods and forces a smile, but she looks sad.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t come to visit more.’
‘Don’t be. We’re all right.’
‘Hi, Steen. Anything I can help you with?’
Steen turns to find the teacher, Jonas Kragh, approaching them. He’s in his mid forties, dressed in jeans and a tight black T-shirt. His eyes are kind, but also vigilant and probing, and Steen knows exactly why he’s looking at him that way. The whole class has been affected by what happened, and the school has been trying to help the pupils get through it ever since. Kragh was one of the staff who thought it was better for the students not to take part in the memorial ceremony, which for logical reasons was held a few months after Kristine’s disappearance. It would do more harm than good, he believed, reopening a wound that was beginning to heal, and he’d made that clear to Steen at the time. Meanwhile the school board had decreed that the students could make up their own minds whether to take part, and more or less all Kristine’s classmates had turned up.
‘No, it’s fine. I’m just leaving.’
As Steen reaches the car, the bell rings. He shuts the door and tries to concentrate on finding Gustav’s figure among the kids streaming out of the main doors. He knows he’s done the right thing, but the sight of Mathilde has brought the visit from the police crowding back to the forefront of his mind, and he reminds himself of his most recent therapist’s words: that grief is love made homeless, that one needs to live with grief and force oneself on.
He hears Gustav get into the passenger seat beside him, and hears him explain that the Danish teacher dragged them all down to the library and made them borrow books to read in their free time, which is why he’s a bit late. Steen wants to nod understandingly, start the engine and pull away from the curb, but he sits where he is, and knows he needs to go back inside the school. The bell rings, and he fights the urge. He knows to obey it will take him over the line he’s drawn for himself, but if he doesn’t do it now he might never ask Mathilde, and there is something about the question that matters, that matters perhaps more than anything else in the world.
‘Is something wrong?’
Steen opens the car door.
‘Just something I have to do. You stay put.’
‘What are you doing?’
Steen slams the door and heads for the main entrance, the leaves whirling around him.
38
‘What the hell are you doing? I demand an explanation,’ roars Erik Sejer-Lassen.
Thulin presses the messages icon on his Samsung Galaxy phone and skims his texts while Hess empties the contents of Sejer-Lassen’s bag on to one of the white leather sofas, which are arranged like a lounge.
They’re in the man’s office on the top level of the building. While department-store muzak and hordes of people battle for space on the floors below them, the storey nearest the sky is dedicated to the impressive offices of Sejer-Lassen’s investment firm. The daylight is fading, and beyond the glass partition between the office and the hall, employees with worried faces have gathered to watch their CEO, who moments earlier has been frogmarched out of the lift in unmistakeable fashion.
‘You have no right to do this. What are you doing with my phone?’
Ignoring him, Thulin switches off his phone and glances at Hess, who is rummaging through the contents of the bag again.
‘The message isn’t there.’
‘He could have deleted it. They’re saying the signal is still coming from here.’
Hess grabs a white 7-Eleven carrier bag out of the satchel, while Erik Sejer-Lassen takes a step towards Thulin.
‘I haven’t done anything. Either you get the fuck out of here, or you tell me –’
‘What is your relationship with Laura Kjær?’
‘Laura Kjær, thirty-seven years old, dental nurse. You just sent a message to her phone.’
‘I’ve never heard of her!’
‘What have you done with your other mobile?’
‘I only have one!’
‘What’s in the package?’
Thulin sees that Hess has removed a padded white A5 envelope from the carrier bag and is holding it out towards Sejer-Lassen.
‘No idea, I only just picked it up! I was coming out of a meeting and got a text from a courier to say there was a package for me at 7-Elev … hey!’
Hess is tearing open the padded envelope.
‘What are you doing? What the hell is this?!’
Hess abruptly lets the package drop on to the white leather. The opening is big enough for Thulin to glimpse a transparent plastic bag clotted with dark stains and an old, flashing Nokia mobile phone. The Nokia is gaffer-taped to a strange grey lump, and it isn’t until Thulin recognizes the ring on the finger that she realizes they are staring at Laura Kjær’s amputated hand.
Erik Sejer-Lassen goggles at it.
‘What the fuck is that?’
Hess and Thulin exchange a glance, and Hess takes a step closer.
‘I want you to think very carefully. Laura Kjær –’
‘Hey, look, I don’t know anything!’
‘Who sent you the package?’
‘I only just got it! I don’t know –’
‘Where were you last Monday evening?’
‘Monday evening?’
Thulin tunes out their voices as she surveys the man’s office. She knows instinctively their conversation is irrelevant. The confusion feels intentional. Like someone is already laughing at them as they bumble around like insects in a bottle, and she tries to focus on why they are there, why the place seems somehow right and wrong.
Somebody has deliberately sent a text to lure them here. Somebody wanted them to follow the signal from the Nokia and find Laura Kjær’s right hand in Erik Sejer-Lassen’s office. But why? Not to help, and apparently not because Sejer-Lassen could shed any light on the case. Yet why lead them straight to him?
Thulin’s eyes come to rest on the beautifully framed photograph of Erik Sejer-Lassen, his wife and children on the Montana shelves behind the desk, and it dawns on her what the most appalling reason would be.
‘Where is your wife?’
At Thulin’s interruption, Hess and Erik Sejer-Lassen fall silent and turn to look at her.
‘Your wife! Where is she right now?’
Sejer-Lassen shakes his head incredulously, while Hess glances from Thulin to the family photo on the shelf. She can tell he’s had the same thought. Sejer-Lassen shrugs his shoulders and laughs.
‘How the hell should I know. Home, probably. Why?’
39
The house is one of the biggest in Klampenborg, and ever since Anne Sejer-Lassen, her husband and their two children moved in a few months earlier it has been her habit to finish her run outside the imposing electronic metal gates and walk the final stretch across the gravel to the front door, getting her breath back and her pulse down. But not today. After she screwed up her courage and called Erik she ran hard to get home, continuing over the gravel, past the neatly pruned bushes, the alabaster fountain and the Land Rover. She doesn’t care that she’s left the gate open, because she knows in a minute she’ll be driving out through it for the last time in her life. She’s already called the au-pair and said she will be picking up Lina and Sofia from kindergarten and the after-school club herself. When she reaches the stone front step the dog bounces up and barks at her playfully as usual, but she pats it distractedly, takes the key from underneath the stone pot and unlocks the door.
Inside the house darkness is beginning to settle, and she switches on the light before disarming the security system, still out of breath. She kicks off her running shoes and walks purposefully up the stairs with the dog at her heels. She knows exactly what she needs, because in her head she’s packed her bags many times before. From the child
ren’s room on the first floor she takes the two piles she has ready at the back of the wardrobe, and in the bathroom she remembers to grab their toothbrushes and toiletry bags. When her mobile rings she can see on the screen that it’s her husband, but she doesn’t pick up. If she hurries now she can call him later and say she couldn’t answer because she was driving, and then he probably won’t figure out what’s going on until tomorrow morning, when he finds out they aren’t at her mother’s. She speeds up, stuffing the girls’ clothes into the black holdall in the master bedroom, which is already full of her own clothes and their three beetroot-coloured passports. She zips the bag shut and rushes down the stairs, getting as far as the front room with its floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the forest before it suddenly occurs to her what she’s forgotten. Chucking the bag on to the floor, she places her phone on top of it and jogs back up the stairs to the first floor. It’s already dark in the children’s room. She rummages feverishly underneath the duvets and the beds, but it isn’t until she glances at the windowsill that she finds the two small, indispensable panda bears. Grateful to have located them so quickly, she speeds back down the stairs, reminding herself that all she has to do now is remember her wallet and car keys. Both are in the kitchen, waiting for her on the big, rustic table made of Chinese timber. Then she reaches the front room and stiffens.
In the middle of the floor, where the black holdall had been a moment earlier, there is nothing. No bag, no mobile phone. Only the bluish light from the bulbs in the garden, which shines through the terrace doors on to the varnished wooden flooring – and a little doll made of chestnuts. For a moment she’s nonplussed. Maybe it’s just a chestnut man one of the girls has made with the au-pair, and maybe Anne has just put the holdall somewhere else; but a split second later she knows that isn’t the case.
The Chestnut Man Page 11