‘What the hell are you doing? Fucking let me go!’
When she’s finished the two officers haul the man upright, still with his hands between his shoulder blades, making him shriek even louder.
He’s roughly forty. Muscular, a salesman type with slicked-back hair and a wedding ring. He’s wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants underneath his coat, as though he’s just stepped out of bed. His nose is crooked and swollen, and his roll-around on the floor has smeared the blood all over his face.
‘Nikolaj Møller. Mantuavej 76, Copenhagen S.’
Thulin reads aloud from the man’s health-insurance card, which is tucked alongside credit cards and family photos in the wallet she’s found in his inside pocket, as well as a mobile phone and a car key stamped with the Audi logo.
‘What’s going on? I haven’t done anything!’
‘What are you doing here? I asked you what you’re doing here?’
Thulin steps directly up to the man and forces his bloodied face upwards so that she can see his eyes. He’s still shocked, and clearly amazed to see a strange woman dressed as Jessie Kvium.
‘I just wanted to talk to Jessie. She texted me to say I should come over!’
‘That’s a lie. What are you doing here? Eh?’
‘I haven’t done anything, for fuck’s sake! She’s the one taking me for a ride!’
‘Show me the text. Right now.’
Hess takes the phone from Thulin and holds it out to the man. The officers let him go, and with his bloodied fingers he begins, snivelling, to input the screen-lock password on his phone.
‘Come on, hurry up!’ Hess is impatient. He knows instinctively that this is the answer to his misgivings, but not how or why.
‘Show me, come on!’
Hess tears the phone out of the man’s hand before he can pass it back, and stares at the display.
There’s no number for the sender – it reads only ‘unknown’ – and the text is short and sweet:
‘Come over now. Or I’m sending the pictures to your wife.’
Hess sees that an image is attached to the text, and he taps the screen to enlarge it. The photo has been taken at four or five yards’ distance from its subject, and Hess recognizes the wheelie bins from the corridor underneath the dance studio at the shopping centre where they found Jessie Kvium. Two people are pressed close together, and it’s obvious what they’re doing. The one in front is Jessie Kvium, wearing the same clothes Thulin now has on, and behind her is Nikolaj Møller with his trousers around his ankles.
A thousand thoughts explode inside Hess’s mind. ‘When did you receive this text?’
‘Let me go. I haven’t done anything!’
‘When?!’
‘Half an hour ago. Now what the fuck is going on?’
For a moment Hess stares at the man. Then he releases his grip and bolts towards the door.
75
Hammock Gardens in Valby, comprising just over a hundred plots and cabins, is closed for the winter. In the summertime it is one of the town’s liveliest oases, but when autumn bites the small wooden houses and gardens are locked up and left to their own devices until the next spring. Only in one cabin, in the heart of the darkened gardens, is there a light – in the cabin belonging to Copenhagen Council.
It is late, but Jessie Kvium is still awake. Outside the wind is rattling at the trees and bushes, and sometimes it sounds almost as though the roof of the little two-room cabin is being torn off. The smell in the house is different from in the summer, and from the bed in the dark room where she is lying with her small, sleeping daughter she can see the light from the main room through the crack under the door. She can still hardly comprehend that there are really two police officers sitting on the other side, protecting her and Olivia. Jessie strokes her daughter’s cheek. She rarely does so, and although she is close to tears, although in a moment of clarity she’s realized her daughter is the only meaningful thing in her whole shitty life, she also understands that she has to give her up if things are ever going to get better.
The day has been dramatic. First the scene with Nikolaj, who humiliated her at the shopping centre. Then her flight through the corridors, the interrogation at the police station, and finally being brought to the deserted allotment gardens. Although Jessie stoutly protested her innocence, she’s been shaken by the accusations during the interview. The accusations that she hit and neglected her daughter, as the council’s anonymous tipster claimed. Or maybe it isn’t the accusations that have shaken her. She’s heard them before, of course; it’s more that she was shocked by the seriousness that accompanied them. The two detectives are different from the council lot. It’s like they know what has happened. She threw a fit and screamed and shouted, the way she imagined a wronged mother would do, but no matter how convincingly she lied they didn’t believe her. And although she doesn’t understand why she and her daughter have to be kept under guard in a damp and chilly hut, she does know it is her own damn fault. Like so much else.
Once they were alone in the bedroom, Jessie thought at first she could pull herself together. Change overnight. Stop partying and drinking, stop degrading herself in an eternal attempt to make somebody take the bait, make herself feel loved. She’s already deleted Nikolaj’s info from her phone, so she won’t end up contacting him again. But will it last? Won’t there just be others? There have been others before him, guys and girls, and now her crap life has become Olivia’s, too, left to cope with all this stuff. With long days at institutions, with solitude in playgrounds, with crazy evenings at bars, even mornings with total strangers Jessie drags home and lets do whatever they please, if only they’ll add a little sweetness to her life. She hated her daughter, and she hit her. At times only the child-benefit allowance from the council kept her from giving Olivia away.
But no matter how much she regrets it, and no matter how much she wants to turn things around, Jessie also knows she won’t be able to do it by herself.
Gingerly she slips out from under the duvet, careful not to wake Olivia. The floor feels icy beneath her bare feet, but she takes the time to tuck the covers around her daughter before she goes to the door.
76
Detective Martin Ricks’s belly growls noisily as he scrolls through the pages of naked women on Pornhub. He’s been on the job for twelve years, and it is always tedious as fuck whenever he is assigned a task like tonight’s, but Pornhub, Bet365 and sushi are among the few things that perk up the wait. He continues to flick through the endless rows of pornographic images, but this time no number of plastic tits, high heels and bondage ropes can get rid of his frustration about that arsehole Hess and the media explosion around the Hartung case.
Martin Ricks has been Tim Jansen’s right-hand man ever since he transferred to the murder squad from Bellahøj Police Station six years ago. At first he didn’t much take to the tall, arrogant man with the intense, probing gaze. Jansen is always ready with a quip and a put-down, and Ricks, who’s never been very sharp with words, lumped him in with all the other idiots ever since his schooldays who’ve thought he was stupid. Until he got the chance to beat them to a pulp, anyway. But it wasn’t like that with Jansen. The more experienced detective saw something in his doggedness and general mistrust of people and the world. In Ricks’s first six months they spent time together in cars, interview rooms, operations rooms, changing rooms and canteens, and when Ricks’s official mentorship period was over they told the boss they wanted to keep working as a duo. After six years they know each other inside and out, and it’s no exaggeration to say that despite the revolving door of bosses they’ve achieved a status nobody dare challenge. At least, not until that arsehole showed up a few weeks ago.
Hess is a broken reed. He might have been decent once, long ago, when he was in the department, but now he is cut from the same elitist, arrogant cloth as the rest of Europol. Ricks remembers him as a loner, quiet and snooty, and it was a relief to get shot of him. But now Europol has ap
parently had enough, and instead of making himself useful Hess has started questioning the investigation that is Ricks’s and Jansen’s greatest feat to date.
Ricks still has detailed memories of those days in October last year. The pressure was huge. He and Jansen slogged day and night, and it was they who interviewed and arrested Linus Bekker off the back of the anonymous tip – they who initiated the search. Sitting with Bekker during yet another interrogation several days afterwards, Ricks sensed this one would be special. They were holding good cards. Evidence they could rub the guy’s face in. Obviously, in the end, he had no option but to come clean. The relief was tremendous, and they celebrated the confession by drinking themselves senseless and playing billiards at a dive bar in Vesterbro until well into the morning hours. True, they never found the kid’s body, but that was only a minor detail.
And now Ricks is freezing his bollocks off in an allotment in Valby, babysitting some alkie single mum – all because of Hess and that cunt Thulin. While the rest of the team, including Jansen, is bustling around in Urbanplan, where all the exciting stuff is happening, he’s stuck here. Best-case scenario, he’ll be relieved at half six tomorrow morning.
Suddenly the bedroom door opens. It is the woman he is supposed to be guarding, wearing nothing but a T-shirt. Ricks puts down his phone, screen down. For a moment she peers around in surprise.
‘Where’s the other officer?’
‘Not officer. Detective.’
‘Where’s the other detective?’
Although it isn’t actually any of her business, Ricks explains that he’s gone down to fetch sushi on Valby Langgade.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason. I just wanted to speak to the two detectives who interviewed me today.’
‘About what? You can talk to me.’
Although alco-mum is standing behind the sofa, Ricks can see she has a decent arse. For a moment he wonders whether he has a chance – whether there’s time for a quickie on the sofa before his partner comes back with the sushi. It is one of Ricks’s many fantasies. Sex with a witness under his protection. But that particular fantasy has gone unfulfilled.
‘I’d like to tell them the truth. And I’d like to speak to someone about having my daughter placed with a good family until I can get my act together.’
The answer disappoints Martin Ricks. He replies dryly that she’ll have to wait. The social welfare office isn’t open yet. ‘The truth’, on the other hand, he would like to hear, but before the woman can open her mouth his phone rings.
‘It’s Hess. All okay?’
Hess is out of breath, and it sounds like he is slamming a car door while someone starts an engine. Martin Ricks makes an effort to sound arrogant.
‘Why shouldn’t it be okay? What about you lot?’
But Ricks never hears the answer, because at that moment a car alarm goes off. In the allotment garden.
The loud siren wails in an infuriating loop, and Ricks turns to look at his car, which is parked outside. The lights are flashing in the autumn dark like a merry-go-round at Tivoli.
Martin Ricks is baffled. As far as he can tell, there is no one in the vicinity of the vehicle. He still has the phone to his ear, and when he tells that arsehole Hess that the car alarm has gone off he can hear Hess’s voice grow alert.
‘Stay in the house, we’re on our way.’
‘Why are you on your way? What’s happening?’
‘Stay in the house and protect Jessie Kvium! You hear what I’m saying?’
Martin Ricks hesitates a moment. Then he breaks the connection, so that the only sound is the alarm. If Hess thinks Ricks is going to take orders from him, he has another think coming.
‘What’s going on?’
Now alco-mum is staring worriedly at him.
‘Nothing. Go inside and sleep.’
The answer doesn’t convince her, but before she can protest they hear the sound of a child crying from the bedroom, and she hurries inside.
Ricks stuffs his mobile in his pocket and undoes the strap on his gun holster. He isn’t stupid, and he’s realized from the conversation that the situation has flipped. This might be his only chance to shut all their mouths. Hess’s and Thulin’s and especially the Chestnut Man’s, as the media has started calling the killer. Soon the task force will come bursting through the gate, but right now the stage is empty, ready for the taking.
Ricks draws his car keys from his jacket and unlocks the door. With his gun in his hand, he walks down the garden path as though down a red carpet.
77
Olivia isn’t fully awake, although she’s sitting up in bed against the wooden wall.
‘What’s going on, Mummy?’
‘Nothing, love. Just lie back down.’
Jessie Kvium hurries over and sits down on the bed, stroking her daughter’s hair.
‘But I can’t sleep when it’s noisy,’ whispers her daughter, leaning against Jessie’s shoulder just as the alarm falls silent.
‘There, it’s stopped now. You can go back to sleep, sweetie.’
A moment later Olivia has dropped off again, and while Jessie watches her she thinks it helped saying something to the officer. It wasn’t enough, of course, and she wishes she could have told him more, got it all properly off her chest. But the car alarm abruptly changed the mood. She felt a fear she’s never known before, but now the siren has stopped, and when she hears the familiar sound of the officer’s mobile phone ringing somewhere in the garden, she feels silly. Until it strikes her that he isn’t picking up. She listens and waits, but the ringtone ceases. Then it starts afresh, but no one answers this time either.
Outside, the wind seizes Jessie’s hair. She is wearing shoes, but it is bitingly cold, and she regrets not putting a blanket around her legs before walking through the door. She can hear the phone ringing somewhere by the vehicle, but she still can’t see the officer.
‘Hey? Where are you?’
No answer. Hesitantly, Jessie approaches the hedge and the car, which is parked on the gravel outside the gate. If she takes one more step, all the way on to the gravel, she’ll be able to see the whole car and probably also the phone, which is ringing somewhere very nearby. But then she remembers what the detectives said during her interview, and the danger they were talking about comes creeping up on her. Out of the garden’s bent trees and stripped bushes it prowls, the threat, snatching at her bare legs, and Jessie turns and runs back into the house, up the wooden steps and in through the open door, which she slams behind her.
From the officer’s phone conversation a moment ago she knows help is on its way, and she tells herself she mustn’t panic. She turns the key in the lock and heaves a chest of drawers up against the door. Then she runs into the kitchen and the small bathroom to make sure the doors and windows are still locked. In a kitchen drawer she finds a long knife, which she picks up. She can see nothing out of the windows into the back garden, but suddenly it strikes her that she is bathed in light. If anyone is out there – and she no longer doubts that there is someone – they will be able to see every single move she makes. In a few steps she is back in the living room, and after several feverish attempts to find the right switch she manages to get all the lights turned off.
Jessie stands quietly, her eyes fixed on the front garden. Nothing. Only the wind, trying to knock the cabin over. She is standing close to the electric radiator, and realizes she accidentally turned it off when she was looking for the light switch. Jessie bends down and turns it back on. The radiator begins to hum, and in the weak reddish light from its display she can suddenly see the little figurine on the chair where the officer had been sitting.
For a few seconds she doesn’t know what it is. But then it dawns on her. And although the little chestnut man is quite innocent, reaching its matchstick arms despairingly towards the skies, it fills her with dread: she knows instantly that it wasn’t there a moment ago, when she went out to find the officer. When she looks back up, it’s as thoug
h something in the gloom has come alive in front of her, and gathering every ounce of strength she slashes the knife through the air.
78
The squad car crashes through the main gate to the allotment gardens and continues down the gravel path. It is pitch black in the little huddle of small houses and garden plots, and only the long beam of the headlamps gives them a glimpse of a reflective number plate further inside. Thulin races all the way up to the unmarked police vehicle, and Hess leaps out.
A couple of sushi boxes lie discarded on the gravel, and a young officer is bent over a figure. He sees Hess and screams for help, trying frantically with both hands to stem the flow of blood that is pumping from a deep gash in Martin Ricks’s throat. Ricks is convulsing, his eyes fixed rigidly on the black trees above him, and Hess speeds onwards towards the cabin. The door is locked. He kicks it in, shoving a chest of drawers out of the way. It is dark in the front room, but as he brandishes his gun he can gradually see that the chairs and tables are overturned as though there’s been a fight. In the bedroom Jessie Kvium’s daughter is clinging to the duvet, confused and tearful. Jessie isn’t there, and it is Thulin who points out to Hess that the kitchen door is wide open.
The rear garden angles steeply down, and in three steps they are on the grass at the back. Hess and Thulin run past the tall apple tree in the middle of the lawn, but there’s no one in sight when they reach the thin fence adjoining the neighbour’s plot. The row of windswept gardens continues as far as the high-rise blocks on the boulevard, and it isn’t until they turn back towards the house that they discover her. The lowest branches on the apple tree aren’t branches. They are Jessie Kvium’s bare legs. Her body has been arranged in a seated position where the trunk splits in two, crammed astride the thickest limb, so that her legs are sticking out unnaturally in both directions. Her head is tilted, her lifeless arms supported by branches that point them towards the sky.
The Chestnut Man Page 22