The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  ‘But from what I’ve heard on the grapevine, not all your detectives share that opinion.’

  ‘Then you’ve heard wrong. There might be one person getting a little creative, but that’s not so odd, given that the individual in question wasn’t part of the massive investigation we conducted last year.’

  ‘Who the hell are we talking about?’ a senior police inspector had asked.

  Nylander’s deputy explained loyally that they were talking about Mark Hess, the liaison officer who’d had problems in the Hague and had recently been put out to grass until his future was decided. Nylander sensed from the others’ disapproval that they didn’t think much of a liaison officer souring the relationship with Europol still further. He’d thought the discussion was over, but then the deputy commissioner had butted in, saying that he remembered Hess very well and knew for a fact the man was no fool. Hess might be a tad unorthodox, but in his day he’d been one of the best detectives ever to set foot in the department.

  ‘But I’m hearing you say he’s got the wrong end of the stick. That’s reassuring to know, especially considering that I heard the Justice Minister on the radio less than an hour ago, denying once again there was any reason to start digging back into the Kristine Hartung case. On the other hand, we’ve got four murders and a cop killer to be getting on with, so it’s crucial we act now. We’re only shooting ourselves in the foot if there are things not being checked because we’re trying to look after our own skins.’

  Nylander had denied trying to look after anything, but doubt had lingered in the air above the mahogany table in the Parade Hall. Luckily he’d been quick-witted enough to add that he was about to order a more detailed interview of Minister Rosa Hartung that very day. Just to double-check whether she and her office might have any further information that could lead to the killer’s apprehension.

  Nylander had left the Parade Hall with his head held high, and without revealing that somewhere deep down a worry had begun to niggle: perhaps they had made a mistake in the Hartung case.

  He’s run through it in his mind countless times, but he still can’t see what the mistake could possibly be. At the same time, he knows he can kiss goodbye to all hope of a high-flying career at the station or anywhere else in the city unless they reach a breakthrough soon.

  ‘You need to let me back on the case.’

  ‘Jansen, we’ve talked about this. You’re not getting back on the case. Go home. Take a week off.’

  ‘I’m not going home. I want to help.’

  ‘No way. I know what Ricks meant to you.’

  Tim Jansen hasn’t sat down on the Eames chair Nylander has offered him. Instead he remains standing, his eyes fixed on the columned courtyard outside the window.

  ‘What’s happening right now?’

  ‘A lot of hard bloody work. I’ll let you know when we have something.’

  ‘So they’ve still got fuck all, then? Hess and that cunt?’

  ‘Jansen, go home. You’re not thinking clearly. Go home and sleep.’

  ‘It was Hess’s fault, this. You do realize that?’

  ‘Ricks’s death was no one’s fault but the killer’s. I was the one who gave the operation the green light, not Hess, so if you’re going to be angry with anyone it should be me.’

  ‘Ricks never would have left that house by himself if it hadn’t been for Hess. It was Hess who pushed him to do it.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  At first Jansen doesn’t respond.

  ‘We barely slept for three weeks … we gave everything we had, until finally we had proof and we got that confession … but then that arsehole comes waltzing in from the Hague and starts spreading rumours about how we cocked it up …’

  The words come slowly, and Jansen’s eyes are far away.

  ‘But you didn’t. The case was solved. So you didn’t cock it up. Did you?’

  Again Jansen doesn’t reply; but then his phone rings and he leaves to take the call. Nylander watches him go. Suddenly he hopes more than anything that Hess and Thulin will get something out of their visit to the minister.

  81

  The Minister for Social Affairs’ civil servants are carrying in boxes and placing them on the white oval meeting table in the middle of the high-ceilinged room.

  ‘This should be the lot. Let me know if you need anything else,’ the Chief of Staff adds helpfully before making for the door. ‘Good luck.’

  For a moment the boxes stand bathed in sunlight, particles of dust dancing above them, before the clouds gather outside the windows once more and leave the light to the Poul Henningsen lamps. The detectives get started on the folders in the boxes, but for Hess the déjà vu is paralysing. Only a few days before he’d been in another meeting room with another stack of cases, and now it is as though the killer has thrust him into yet another Kafka-esque nightmare of new cases to read through. The more folders Hess counts in the boxes, the more clearly he realizes that he needs to do something completely different. Break the mould, do the unpredictable. But he doesn’t know how.

  He’d put his hope in the interview with Rosa Hartung. After some irrelevant chit-chat with her adviser Vogel, who emphasized to Thulin and Hess that this wasn’t an interview but a conversation, the three of them went into her office, where the minister was waiting. She professed to know nothing about the murdered women, although they’d gone through them laboriously, victim by victim. To Hess it was obvious the minister was genuinely trying to recall whether she’d ever come across the victims or their family members before, but it didn’t seem that she had. He even had to fight back a feeling of sympathy. Rosa Hartung, a beautiful, talented woman who’d lost her daughter, had in the brief time he’d known her become haggard and drawn. Her eyes were confused, vulnerable, like a hunted animal’s, and as she pored through the photographs and papers Hess could see her slender hands trembling, even as she fought to stop them.

  Still, he kept the tone brisk; he was certain Rosa Hartung was the key. The murdered women had something in common. In all three cases their children had been appallingly abused or maltreated at home. In all cases the killer had sent an anonymous tip recommending they be taken into care, and in all cases the system had mistakenly cleared the families of suspicion and neglected to intervene. Since the victims had each been left with a chestnut doll marked with Rosa Hartung’s daughter’s fingerprint, the likelihood was that the killer wanted to call her to account. So the cases had to mean something to the minister.

  ‘But they don’t. I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything.’

  ‘What about the threats you’ve had recently? I understand you received an unpleasant email, and somebody wrote ‘murderer’ on your ministerial car. Do you have any idea who might have done that? Or why?’

  ‘The intelligence people have been asking me the same thing, but I can’t think of anyone …’

  Hess had deliberately avoided linking the threats with the murders, because if the car had been vandalized at the same time as Anne Sejer-Lassen was attacked, then the two things had to be independent. Unless they were dealing with two people, but so far there was nothing to suggest that. Thulin lost her patience.

  ‘But surely you must know what this is about? Obviously you’re not popular in all quarters, and you must know whether you’ve done something to make someone want revenge?’

  The minister’s adviser, Vogel, protested at her harsh tone, but Rosa Hartung insisted on trying to help. She just didn’t know how. It was widely known that she’d always done her best for children, and had always recommended removal if they were being abused; that was part of the reason why she’d asked the councils to set up whistle-blower schemes like the one at City Hall. Children’s needs were her key issue, and the first thing she’d done when selected as minister was to encourage the councils to be more proactive on that front. After some unusually unpleasant cases of neglect among certain Jutland councils, the need had been made obvious – but it was clear that she m
ight have opponents, not least among the councils and the families that had felt the effects of her clampdown.

  ‘But there could well be somebody who thinks you’ve let children down, couldn’t there?’ Thulin had pursued.

  ‘No, I can’t imagine that.’

  ‘Why not? As a minister it must be easy to get distracted by –’

  ‘Because I’m not like that. Not that it’s any of your business, but I was a foster child myself, so I know what’s at stake and I don’t let children down.’

  Rage blazed in her eyes as Rosa Hartung set Thulin straight, and although Hess was glad she’d asked he suddenly understood why Hartung was so popular. After a few rough years as a minister, she still possessed the sincerity that all politicians tried to conjure while the cameras were rolling, but in Hartung’s case it was instinctive.

  ‘What about the chestnut men? Can you think of any reason why anybody would want to confront you with chestnut men or chestnuts in general?’

  The killer’s signature was unusual, and if Hess was right that Hartung was the key, he hoped she might be able to come up with something.

  ‘No, sorry. Only that Kristine had a stall in the autumn. When they sat at the table, she and Mathilde, and … but I’ve already told you that.’

  The minister had been fighting back tears, and Vogel tried to cut short the interview, but Thulin objected that they still needed her help: since the minister had encouraged more children to be taken into care by the councils, Thulin and Hess would like to see all the cases that had been handled during her tenure. The killer might be someone involved, perhaps eager for revenge on the minister and the system she represented, and with a nod Rosa Hartung sent Vogel out to have a word with the Chief of Staff, who would see to their request. Hess and Thulin had risen and thanked Rosa Hartung for her time, when suddenly she surprised them with a question.

  ‘Before we leave, I’d like to know whether there’s a chance my daughter is alive.’

  Neither of them knew what to say. It was an obvious question, yet they were unprepared. At last, Hess heard himself reply.

  ‘Your daughter’s case has been solved. A man confessed, and he was sentenced.’

  ‘But the fingerprints … three times?’

  ‘If the killer doesn’t like you for reasons of his own, it would be the cruellest thing he could make you and your family believe.’

  ‘But you don’t know that. You can’t know that.’

  ‘As I said –’

  ‘I’ll do anything you say. But you need to find her.’

  ‘We can’t do that. As I said …’

  Rosa Hartung hadn’t said another word, merely looked at them with shining eyes until she came to herself and Vogel arrived to fetch her. Hess and Thulin had then been given the meeting room, and Nylander had hastily instructed ten detectives to help them screen the case files.

  Thulin enters with yet another box, which she sets down on the table.

  ‘There was one more. I’m reading on a laptop next door. Let’s get going!’

  The optimism Hess had felt when they were given permission to speak with the minister has dissipated. Yet again they are sitting and reading. Reams of awful childhoods, wounded feelings, council interventions and failure; probably the killer wants to confront the police and the authorities with it all. Hess realizes he’s had too little sleep. His mind is leaping around, racing too quickly, and he’s struggling to focus. Is the killer to be found among the injured parties in the case files on the table? It seems logical, but is the killer logical? He must have foreseen well in advance that they would pore over precisely these files, so why risk drawing them in his direction? And why make chestnut men? Why cut off the hands and feet, why hate the mothers instead of the fathers? And where was Kristine Hartung?

  Hess reassures himself that the plastic wallet is still in his inside pocket, then makes for the door.

  ‘Thulin, we’re leaving. Tell your people to ring if they find anything.’

  ‘Why? Where are we going?’

  ‘Back to the beginning.’

  Hess disappears through the doorway without waiting to see whether Thulin is behind him. On the way out he catches a glimpse of Frederik Vogel, who nods a goodbye and shuts the door to the minister’s office.

  82

  ‘But why are we talking about the Hartung case when Nylander says it’s not relevant?’

  ‘No clue. If it’s about machetes and pig dismemberment I’m out, but you can ask him.’

  Thulin is standing across from Genz in his lab. She nods irritably at Hess, who shuts the door so that nobody can hear what they are saying. They have driven straight from the minister’s office and through the city to Genz’s angular building with its glass cages and white coats. On the way over Hess asked Thulin to make sure Genz was there, while he himself had been engrossed in a conversation on his mobile. Genz sounded pleased to get Thulin’s call, perhaps especially so because it was unexpected, but maybe also a tad disappointed when she said Hess wanted to go over a few things with him. Thulin had hoped Genz would be too busy, but apparently a cancelled meeting had given him some free time, and by now Thulin is regretting having tagged along. They are standing by the desk where they were shown the first of Kristine Hartung’s fingerprints, but that feels like a long time ago. A welder and various paraphernalia over a heat source in the background tells Thulin that Genz has been warming plastic to test its flexibility, but now his pleasant if wary eyes are glued to Hess, who approaches the desk.

  ‘Because I believe the Hartung case is relevant. But neither I nor Thulin were around during the investigation, so I need help, and you’re the only one I trust. If you’re worried about getting into hot water, just say so now and we’ll leave.’

  Genz grins. ‘I’m curious. As long as you’re not asking me to carve up another pig, it’s all right with me. What’s this about?’

  ‘The evidence against Linus Bekker.’

  ‘I knew it.’

  Thulin rises from the chair where she’s just sat down, but Hess catches her hand.

  ‘Hear me out. Until now we’ve only been doing what the killer expects. We need to find a short cut somehow. If it’s a waste of time digging around in the old case, then we’ll establish that once and for all right now, and then I’ll keep my mouth shut. About Kristine Hartung, too.’

  Hess lets go of her hand. Thulin stands there for a moment before returning to her seat. She can tell Genz noticed Hess reach out and grab her hand, and for some reason it embarrasses her that she didn’t simply tear it back. Hess opens a thick case file.

  ‘On the afternoon of 18 October last year Kristine Hartung went missing on her way home from handball practice. Her disappearance was quickly reported to the police, and the investigation began in earnest when her bike and bag were found dumped in the woods a few hours later. They searched for three weeks, but it was like she’d vanished into thin air. Then they got a tip, an anonymous tip, recommending they search the home of a particular man, Linus Bekker, twenty-three, who lived in a ground-floor apartment at a complex in Bispebjerg. Sound about right so far?’

  ‘Yep. I was present at the search myself, and it turned out to be a solid tip.’

  Hess doesn’t address this remark, continuing instead to flip through the file. ‘They went to Linus Bekker’s, interviewed him about Kristine Hartung, and did a search, as you say. The man appeared suspicious. No job, no education, no social network. Living alone, spending his days in front of the computer, most of his income from online poker. More significant still, he’d done three years in prison for raping a mother and her teenage daughter at a house in Vanløse, which he’d broken into at the age of eighteen. Bekker also had a few minor convictions for indecent behaviour and was being treated for psychological problems at the local clinic, but from the very first he denied all knowledge of any crime against Kristine Hartung.’

  ‘I think he even said he was normal again. But then we opened his laptop, of course. Or the tech gu
ys did, I should say.’

  ‘Exactly. As I understand it, Linus Bekker turned out to be a first-rate hacker. Self-taught, but persistent. Ironically, his interest in computers had been sparked by an IT course in prison, and they discovered that for at least six months he’d been able to break into the police’s digital archive of crime-scene photographs and look at pictures of dead bodies.’

  Thulin had intended to keep quiet to save time, but on this point she has to correct Hess.

  ‘Technically speaking, he hadn’t broken in. He’d intercepted a login cookie from one of the computers logged into the system, and because the system was old and insecure he’d been able to trick it by resending the cookie. It’s a disgrace the system wasn’t replaced ages ago.’

  ‘Fine. Either way, Bekker’d had access to hundreds of photographs from crime scenes going back years, and it must have been a shock when it was discovered.’

  ‘Not just a shock. It was a nuclear bomb,’ interjects Genz. ‘The guy had managed to access something nobody is supposed to access apart from us. It also emerged from his user data that he’d used it to access some of the worst killings he could possibly have found.’

  ‘That was my understanding too. Mainly sexually motivated murders of women. Women who’d been stripped and mutilated were apparently among his favourites, but he also went in for crimes against children, especially underage girls. Bekker confessed to having sadistic urges and was sexually aroused by looking at the pictures. But he still denied having laid a finger on Kristine Hartung, and at that point there was nothing to suggest he had. Correct?’

  ‘Correct. Until we analysed a pair of his shoes.’

  ‘Tell me about the shoes.’

  ‘It’s fairly simple. We checked everything in the apartment, including his old white sneakers, which had been placed on newspaper in a wardrobe. Analysis of the soil in the treads revealed a hundred per cent match with the type of soil in the area of woodland where Kristine Hartung’s bike and bag had been found. No doubt about it. But then he began to lie, of course.’