The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  ‘Because we’re not done with the investigation, Hess.’

  ‘Thirdly, Skans and probably Neergaard both have an alibi for the murders of Jessie Kvium and Martin Ricks on the night of 16 October. If it turns out Neergaard was in the foyer at the Royal Library, then neither of them could have committed the murders that night, which means it’s not likely they committed the other killings either.’

  ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re babbling about, but if you’ve got proof then I’d love to hear it.’

  Nylander has reached the operations room and is ready to pick up his papers for the press conference, but Hess blocks his path.

  ‘Plus I’ve just spoken to the coroner. Benedikte Skans appears to have cut her own carotid artery, but when you reconstruct the movement it’s unnatural – and it could be interpreted as a sign that somebody tried to make it look like suicide.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to him as well. And he emphasized that it was just as conceivable she did do it herself.’

  ‘The stab wounds on Neergaard’s torso are also slightly too high for Skans’s height, and if she imagined that she and her boyfriend were going to die together, then why the hell were they lying ten metres from each other, as if she was trying to escape?’

  Nylander is about to say something, but Hess doesn’t give him the chance.

  ‘If they were capable of carrying out those murders, then they wouldn’t have been stupid enough to abduct the boy in an easily traceable rented van!’

  ‘So what do you think should be done, if it were up to you?’

  Nylander’s question catches Hess off guard, and he can feel himself getting carried away as he speaks. He can hear himself rambling about Linus Bekker and the archive of crime-scene photographs, which they need to check through asap. He has just reminded one of the IT techs about the material, which he asked Genz to provide earlier in the day.

  ‘And Hartung’s adviser, Frederik Vogel, we need to have him checked out, especially about whether he has an alibi for the times of the murders!’

  ‘Hess, you haven’t listened to the message I left on your phone …’

  Hess turns towards Thulin’s voice and realizes she has entered the room. She is staring at him and holding a little sheaf of photos in her hand.

  ‘What message?’

  ‘Thulin, bring him up to speed. I don’t have time.’

  Nylander makes for the door, but Hess grabs his shoulder.

  ‘What about the fingerprints on the chestnut men? You can’t go in there and claim the case is solved before we figure that bit out! Three murdered women could still become four if you make a mistake now!’

  ‘I’m not making a mistake! You’re the only one who doesn’t get that.’

  Tearing himself free, Nylander nods at Thulin and adjusts his clothes. Hess gazes enquiringly at her, and, hesitating, she passes him the photographs. He finds himself staring at the top one. A picture of four sawn-off human hands, lying higgledy-piggledy on a shelf in a fridge.

  ‘I found them on Skans’ and Neergaard’s property. In a mini-fridge in one of the cold stores in the old abattoir …’

  Hess leafs incredulously through the various images of the amputated female hands, pausing at a different photograph: a bluish female foot, sawn off at the ankle, lying in the crisper drawer like an installation by Damien Hirst.

  Hess is nonplussed. He struggles to find words.

  ‘But … why weren’t these found by the techs earlier in the day? Was the place locked? Could anybody have put them there?’

  ‘Hess, go home for Christ’s sake.’

  When he looks up, he is met by Nylander’s gaze.

  ‘But the fingerprints? The Hartung girl … if we stop looking, and if the girl’s not dead …’

  Nylander vanishes through the doorway, leaving Hess stupefied. When he glances at Thulin a moment later, seeking her agreement, he finds she is looking at him with compassion. Her eyes are sombre and sympathetic, but not because of Kristine Hartung. Not because of a girl who went missing and was never found, not because of mysterious fingerprints on chestnut men, but because of him. He can see in her eyes that she believes he has lost his common sense and power of judgement, and it fills him with horror, because he isn’t sure that she’s wrong.

  Hess staggers backwards through the door and veers down the corridor, hearing her call his name. In the rain outside he dashes across the courtyard, and although he doesn’t turn around he can feel her looking at him through the window. Just before the exit, he breaks into a run.

  FRIDAY 30 OCTOBER

  * * *

  99

  It’s the earliest snow Hess can remember. It’s only the penultimate day in October, but already there are two or three centimetres, and it is still snowing outside the tall panes in the international terminal at the airport, where Hess has just smoked a Camel that he hopes will let him get through the trip to Bucharest without going into withdrawal.

  Hess first noticed the snow forty-five minutes earlier, as he slammed the door to his apartment one final time, went out into the clear, frosty air, and descended the stairs to the waiting taxi. The daylight had blinded him, and he felt relieved when his hands found the battered pair of sunglasses in his inside pocket – he hadn’t been sure they’d be there. He wasn’t sure of much in general, if it came to that, having woken with a nasty hangover, so the fact that the sunglasses were where they ought to be made him feel like it might be a good day after all. During the taxi ride he enjoyed watching the autumn be slowly interred, and the good vibes continue as he passes through Security and moves deeper into the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the airport. Hess is surrounded by tourists and other foreigners, all gabbling away in their various languages, and he already feels as though he’s put Copenhagen behind him. He checks the departures board and sees with satisfaction that his flight is boarding. The snow isn’t affecting planes yet – another sign that luck is on his side. Picking up his bag, packed with the few possessions he has brought, Hess heads for the gate. As he catches a glimpse of himself in the window of a clothes store, it strikes him that his attire might be even less suitable for the climate in Bucharest than it was in Copenhagen. Was it warm in Bucharest, or was there snow and frost? Might be best to grab a parka and a pair of Timberland boots at the terminal, but the hangover and his yen to leave the country overpowers him, so he contents himself with a croissant and a takeaway Starbucks.

  The green light from the Hague had come yesterday evening in the form of a call from Freimann’s secretary and a one-way ticket to Romania. Ironically, Hess is in much worse shape now than when he fell out of favour and was dispatched to Copenhagen just over three weeks before. For the last ten days he’d been soaking himself in alcohol at the bars and pubs so plentiful in Copenhagen, and he was barely able to speak clearly when the call came through. After a moment he was put through to Freimann himself, and his boss informed him tersely that the evaluation had concluded in his favour.

  ‘Understand, however, that if there’s a whisper of neglect, insubordination or the merest hint of a vanishing act, the hammer will fall so fast it’ll make your head spin. Your superiors at Copenhagen have spoken positively about you and guaranteed that you’re highly motivated, so it shouldn’t be difficult for you to comply.’

  Hess steered clear of long sentences, merely answering in the affirmative. There was no reason to explain that Nylander’s positive assessment was motivated solely by a desire to get Hess out of his hair, and once the message sank in Hess rang François to thank him for his help. The prospect of retreating back into his comfortable shell at Europol is a tremendous relief. After a detour via Bucharest, of course – another faceless hotel room and another Euro case – but anywhere was better than here.

  Things have panned out with the apartment, too. The contract wasn’t quite signed yet, true, but astonishingly the estate agent has managed to find a buyer. Mainly, Hess assumes, because he agreed to lower the asking price by 200,000 kroner on one of his
drunker days. Late last night, Hess dropped off his keys with the caretaker, who seemed every bit as relieved to get rid of him as Nylander and the crowd at the station. The man had even made a song and dance earlier in the week about being happy to polish the floors and touch up the apartment if it meant Hess could sell it. Hess had thanked him, but the truth was he couldn’t give a toss about floors and asking prices so long as he got the piece of crap off his hands and never needed to return.

  The only piece of unfinished business is the awkward situation with Naia Thulin, and that’s so insignificant it can barely be called a business at all. The last time he saw her he got the distinct impression that she thought his theories about the Hartung girl were the product of an unbalanced mind. That she judged him incapable of assessing things as they really were, purely because he had his own shit to deal with. Most likely someone had told her ages ago about his past, and the reasons why one might think that – and perhaps she was right. At any rate, he’d spent no more time musing on chestnuts and fingerprints since that night. The case was solved – the amputated limbs discovered in the old abattoir had made that plain – and now that he is queuing at his gate, his boarding pass ready on his phone, it feels weird to recall how strongly he disagreed. The only things that would haunt him from his time in Copenhagen are Thulin’s clear, resolute eyes and the fact that he did not call to say goodbye. But that’s all fixable – or at least, such is his frame of mind as he boards the aircraft and sits down in 12B.

  A disapproving glance from the businessman beside him tells Hess he reeks of spirits, but he sinks deep into the seat for an hour or two’s nap. He’s just promised himself a restorative gin and tonic to guarantee some solid beauty sleep when a text, in English, arrives from François.

  ‘I’ll pick you up at the airport. We go straight to headquarters. Make sure you read the case before arrival!’

  The latter had slipped Hess’s mind, but no harm done – he can still read up on the case if he postpones his beauty sleep and starts now. Reluctantly he opens the inbox on his phone for the first time in more than a week, only to find he hasn’t received the material. Another text exchange with François makes it clear the mistake is his.

  ‘Check again. Emailed you the case at 10.37 p.m., you lazy Danish sod.’

  Hess discovers why he hasn’t received François’s email. A huge file attached to a different email has filled all the space in his inbox, blocking everything else. The email is from a digital forensics tech, and the file turns out to be the material Thulin asked Genz to procure after their visit to Linus Bekker, which Hess prodded the techs to send him later that same night. Specifically, it’s the hitlist of images from the crime-scene archive that had attracted most attention from Bekker before his arrest and confession.

  Since the email is now irrelevant, Hess is about to delete it – but then his curiosity gets the better of him. Meeting Linus Bekker was not pleasant, but from a professional standpoint his psychology is interesting, and Hess has time: there are still passengers sidling down the aisles to find their seats. He double-clicks on the file. It takes a moment, and then he has a full view of the images Linus Bekker had most enjoyed. Only on his phone’s small screen, true, but that’s plenty.

  At first glance, Linus Bekker’s hitlist consists exclusively of images from crime-scenes featuring murdered women. Mainly between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, many of them probably mothers, at least judging by the objects scattered around them or visible in the background: plastic tractors, play pens, tricycles and the like. Some of the images are in black and white, but the majority are in colour, and overall they represent murders stretching over many years, all the way from the 1950s to the point of Bekker’s arrest. Naked women, clothed women, dark-haired, fair-haired, big and small. Shot, stabbed, strangled, drowned or beaten to death. Some clearly after being raped. A grotesque, sadistic potpourri, and Hess struggles to get his head round the idea that Linus Bekker had been sexually excited by them. He feels the Starbucks croissant forcing its way back up, but as he scrolls hastily back to the top to get out of the file – an old habit – the volume of data proves too much for his phone and the screen freezes on an image he didn’t notice first time round.

  It’s a photograph nearly thirty years old, taken in a bathroom, and the typewritten caption at the bottom reads Møn Island, 31 Oct. 1989. A naked woman’s body lies twisted and disfigured on a terrazzo floor, smeared with blood that is black and congealed. She is probably around forty, but it’s difficult to say for sure, because her face has been battered beyond recognition. It’s the amputation that catches Hess’s attention. One arm and one leg have been chopped off, lying separate from the torso. It seems to have taken numerous attempts – as though done with an axe, heavy and unwieldy, that only gradually learned to obey its owner. The savagery of the attack attested to the killer’s lust for blood, and although the scene resembles nothing Hess has seen before, he feels compelled by the photograph.

  ‘All passengers please take your seats.’

  The cabin staff are busy stuffing the last pieces of hand luggage into place, and the steward puts the telephone back on the wall by the cockpit.

  It turns out that the photo of the naked woman in the bathroom is the first in a short series of images of murders apparently committed in the same house and with the same caption: Møn Island, 31 Oct. 1989. A teenage boy and a teenage girl lie murdered in the kitchen, the boy slumped against an oven, the girl sprawled across the table with her head in a bowl of porridge. Both had gunshot wounds. Hess scrolls on, finding to his surprise that the next victim in the series is an older police officer, who lies dead on a basement floor. Judging by the state of the man’s face, he’s been killed with the axe as well. The image is the last in the series, and Hess is about to return to the dismembered woman on the bathroom floor when his attention is suddenly caught by the number in brackets that accompanies the photo of the policeman. ‘(37)’. It dawns on Hess that the figure must be the tech’s note of the number of times Linus Bekker had clicked on that specific image.

  ‘All electronic devices should now be switched off, please.’

  Hess nods to signal that he’s understood the steward, who continues past to deliver the message to the next row. It makes no sense that Bekker would have looked at a photo of a murdered policeman thirty-seven times. Not when he so obviously favoured women. Hess swiftly checks a few of the other pictures, now looking for the small number accompanying every photo. But none of the other images has as high a count as the one of the murdered policeman. Not even the woman in the bathroom, whose number reads ‘(16)’.

  Hess feels his stomach knot. There has to be something important about the picture of the policeman on the basement floor, and he tries for a moment to repress the possibility that the tech has simply made a mistake. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the steward heading back through the plane, and he curses the tiny screen – he has to use his shaky, half-drunken fingers to zoom in on the photo and search for the details he’s overlooked. The task is impossible. Soon his eyes are swimming with chequered pixels that offer no clue as to why Linus Bekker had focused on this particular image.

  ‘Time to switch that off, please!’

  This time the steward doesn’t budge. Hess is about to give in when his fingers brush the screen, moving the image so that it focuses on some shelving above the policeman. Hess stiffens. At first his brain doesn’t comprehend what it is looking at, but then he zooms out and time stands still.

  On the basement wall above the policeman’s body are three rickety wooden shelves. All are crammed with small, childish dolls: chestnut men, chestnut ladies, chestnut animals. Big and small, some unfinished, still missing limbs, others dusty and dirty. All stand there mute, with empty eyes, like small soldiers, a mighty army of the outcast.

  Without being able to explain why, he knows instantly that this is why Bekker viewed the image thirty-seven times. He senses the plane jolt into motion, and before the steward
can stop him he is making for the cockpit.

  100

  The business lounge at Copenhagen Airport is nearly deserted, smelling of perfume, freshly brewed coffee and newly baked bread, but it takes more than five minutes of arguing with the hostess at the entrance before Hess is allowed to go inside. Her young face is perfectly made-up, and although she smiles and nods pleasantly it is clear she finds it hard to connect his appearance and behaviour with the European police badge with which he repeatedly tries to explain his important errand. It isn’t until a young Somali security guard is called and verifies the badge that she shows mercy and permits Hess to enter the hallowed halls of the business lounge.

  Hess makes a beeline for the three computers available to guests at the back of the lounge. The few people already in the room are absorbed in their smartphones and low-calorie brunches at the round tables, and it’s doubtful whether the tall, empty chairs in front of the screens have ever been used except by children occasionally dragged along on business trips. Hess settles at a keyboard, inwardly cursing and fuming as he logs on and navigates through Europol’s security system before reaching his inbox. He knows there are several departures to Bucharest that day, even if it means a stopover somewhere tedious in Germany, but the delay will irritate Freimann if it reaches his ears. Still, Hess doesn’t feel he has a choice, and as soon as he opens Bekker’s hitlist again and sees the chestnut dolls, he forgets all about his boss.

  On the bigger screen the silent dolls in the photograph, nearly thirty years old, seem even more uncanny, but Hess still isn’t sure what his discovery means. Clearly Bekker has attached great value to the image. That much is obvious from the thirty-seven times he viewed it, as well as the fact that the victim isn’t his preferred type. But why did he value it? The first time he saw it – about eighteen months ago, when he hacked into the archive – there had been nothing in the press or anywhere else about a mysterious killer who murdered women and left chestnut dolls at the scene of the crime. That killer didn’t even exist at the time Bekker originally viewed the photograph, so from that perspective it makes no sense that he’d be so enthralled by the army of handmade chestnut dolls. Yet there is no doubt in Hess’s mind that he was.