The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  But the lab is empty. So is Genz’s private office, which adjoins it. The state of normality in both rooms is comforting, however – everything is neat and tidy, and a plastic cup containing a few last drops of coffee stands peacefully on the desk in front of the big screen.

  The receptionist, who has followed them into the lab, seems unfazed by her boss’s absence, and announces she will find him. As soon as she’s gone, Nylander begins plotting how to make Hess’s life and career harder – payback for the gaffe he’s been browbeaten into committing. When Genz arrives he’ll explain. He might even laugh and point out that it isn’t him in the picture. That he’s never been called Toke Bering, that he hasn’t spent years of his life preparing his revenge, that of course he isn’t the psychopathic killer Hess claims he is.

  But then he sees it. Standing in the lab, his eyes sweeping across the room, he glances into Genz’s office and at the objects on the desk, which he hadn’t noticed when he first peered inside. Genz’s ID card, keys, work phone and access card are laid out neatly on the bare surface, almost as if abandoned, never to be used again. Yet that isn’t what horrifies him. It’s the innocent little chestnut man enthroned on the box of matchsticks beside them.

  111

  Just as Hess gets through to Nylander, he joins the final stretch of motorway towards Copenhagen. He’d tried calling several times already, but only now is the idiot picking up – and he is clearly not in a chatty mood.

  ‘What do you want? I’m busy!’

  ‘Have you found them?’

  The laboratory had been empty. No sign of Genz, apart from the signature he left to greet his pursuers. At first his staff had thought he must be at a conference in Jutland, but when they enquired it turned out Genz had been a no-show.

  ‘What about his home address?’

  ‘That’s where we are right now. Some big penthouse apartment in a new complex in Nordhavn. But it’s empty, and I mean empty: no furniture, nothing left behind. Not so much as a fingerprint, I reckon.’

  Hess can see no more than twenty yards ahead on the motorway, but he puts his foot down a little harder on the accelerator.

  ‘But you have got Rosa Hartung, correct? This whole thing is about her, and if Genz –’

  ‘We’ve got bugger all. Apparently no one knows where she is, and her phone’s off, so we can’t trace it. Her husband doesn’t know anything either, but it seems the au-pair girl saw her drive off in her car after she found some sort of ornament made of chestnut men outside the back door.’

  ‘What kind of ornament?’

  ‘I haven’t seen it.’

  ‘Can’t Genz be traced? His phone or his car –’

  ‘Nope. He left his phone in his office, and there are no tracker units in the cars from Forensics. Any other handy suggestions?’

  ‘What about the computer in his lab? Get Thulin to break the code so we can see what’s on there.’

  ‘We’ve already got a team trying to access it.’

  ‘Get hold of Thulin! She’ll have it sorted in no –’

  ‘Thulin’s gone.’

  There’s something ominous about Nylander’s words. Hess can hear him and the others walking down some steps in an echoing stairwell, and he guesses the search of Genz’s empty apartment is over.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Apparently she went looking for Genz at the Forensics Department and met with him earlier today. A tech in the garage said he saw them coming down the back stairs, getting into Genz’s car and driving off a couple of hours ago. That’s all I know.’

  ‘A couple of hours ago? Surely you’ve tried calling her, then?’

  ‘No answer. I’ve just been told her phone was found in a bin outside Forensics.’

  Hess brakes, veering towards the hard shoulder beside the snowy motorway. Several cars beep at him, and he avoids a lorry in the inside lane by the skin of his teeth before he reaches the hard shoulder and stops the car.

  ‘Genz has no use for her. He might have just dropped her off somewhere. Maybe she’s at home, or with her –’

  ‘Hess, we’ve checked. Thulin is missing. Do you have anything I can use? Any idea where he might be?’

  Hess hears the question. Traffic thunders past. He tries to force himself out of his paralysis, but the only thing moving is the windscreen wipers, which glide back and forth.

  ‘Hess!’

  ‘No. I don’t know.’

  Hess hears a car door slam, and the line go dead. A few seconds pass before he lowers the phone from his ear. Cars plough past him in the snow, and the windscreen wipers keep resolutely squeaking back and forth.

  He should have called her. He should have called her from the airport the moment he realized something was wrong. If he’d called, she would be absorbed in Bekker’s favourite crime-scene photos right now, and she’d never have gone to see Genz. But he hadn’t, and the emotions sticking in his throat tell him there are more reasons for that than he wants to admit.

  Hess tries to cling to a rational train of thought. It might not be too late. He has no idea why Thulin visited Genz, but if she got into a car with him willingly then it had to be because she didn’t know who he was. Ergo, Genz has no reason to harm her, much less any interest in spending time with her. Unless Thulin discovered something, and sought out Genz as an ally she could talk to.

  The thought is terrifying. But Thulin is at most a bump in the road for Genz, and he isn’t going to shift focus on her account. This is about Rosa Hartung – it has been about Rosa all along. Rosa Hartung and the past.

  Suddenly Hess knows what to do. It’s a shot in the dark, maybe more a feeling than a rational thought, but the other possibilities are either too unlikely or already covered by Nylander and the detectives in Copenhagen. He glances over his shoulder and stares into the fog lights of the rows of cars whizzing past, sending black snow spraying. When there are a few seconds’ respite – enough, at least, so that the next phalanx of cars has a chance to get out of the way – he slams the pedal to the floor and swings clear across the motorway, aiming for a gap in the crash barrier. The wheels spin, and for a moment he thinks the car is going to whirl around like a stuck bowling pin. But then the wheels bite the tarmac, and he crosses the central reservation on to the opposite carriageway. He hasn’t even looked at those cars, so he simply leans on the horn and slips in between two vans, only righting himself when he reaches the slow lane.

  Hess drives back the way he came. Seconds later, the speedometer reaches 140 kilometres per hour, and he has the whole outside lane to himself.

  112

  ‘It’s a nice day for a trip to the woods, but as far as I can see there’s nothing but ordinary beeches round here.’

  Genz’s words make Thulin peer even more intently out of the windscreen and side windows, but it looks like he is right. Even without the snow, it would probably have been difficult to identify the chestnut trees, and with Møn covered in white powder it’s feeling more and more impossible.

  They are driving down a narrow, winding country road, and Genz, who is sitting behind the wheel, glances at his watch.

  ‘It was worth a shot. But let’s head back to the bridge. I’ll give you a lift to the train station at Vordingborg, then I’ll drive on to Jutland. Okay?’

  ‘Sure …’

  Thulin realizes the trip has been pointless, and she falls back in her seat.

  ‘Sorry I wasted your time.’

  ‘It’s completely fine. Like you said, I was going this way anyway.’

  Thulin tries to return Genz’s smile, although she is freezing cold and tired.

  It didn’t take long to track down the expert who helped Forensics determine the type of chestnut.

  Ingrid Kalke, Professor of Botany at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Copenhagen University, was exceptionally young for a professor, perhaps thirty-five years old, but the slender woman spoke with authority. Addressing them from her office via Skype, she confirmed that the chestnuts she’d been
asked to identify were a different kind from the horse chestnuts predominantly found in Denmark.

  ‘The kind of chestnut these dolls were made of is an edible variety. Normally the climate in this country is too cold for them, but you do find a few trees roundabout, near the Limfjord, for instance. To be precise, this is a hybrid of the European and Japanese chestnut, what’s known as a castanea sativa x crenata. At first glance they look to be Marigoules, which in itself is not unusual. The unusual thing is that these ones seem to have been crossed with Bouche de Betizacs. Most experts believe that precise combination is extinct in this country, and the last I heard about them was several years ago, when the last few trees were allegedly killed off by a particular fungus. But I’ve already told you all this.’

  The young professor had covered this ground with the assistant who had contacted her, and Thulin noticed Genz fall quiet when she reminded them of this. Clearly he felt it embarrassed his department that the information hadn’t found its way to the police before now.

  The investigation might have ended there, if Thulin hadn’t asked one final question.

  ‘Where in Denmark was the Marigoule-Betizac variety last sighted?’

  Professor Ingrid Kalke double-checked with a colleague, and it turned out that the most recently registered chestnut trees of that type were from sites on Møn, but she repeated that the variety was now extinct. Even so, Thulin carefully noted down the different locations on the island before saying goodbye to the professor; then she had to spend some time convincing Genz, who didn’t quite understand the significance of the discovery.

  Thulin explained that if the chestnuts with Kristine Hartung’s fingerprints weren’t horse chestnuts then they couldn’t come from her stall, which made their origin even more mysterious than first thought. It no longer seemed logically possible to explain how Benedikte Skans and Asger Neergaard could have got hold of them, certainly not ones with Kristine Hartung’s fingerprints on them, and that cast doubt on Nylander’s reading of the case. On the other hand, Thulin was glad that recent sightings of the variety could be traced back to relatively few places in Denmark – specifically, to a handful of sites on Møn. If the variety was as rare as the expert had claimed, those locations might open up a new avenue of investigation. Best-case scenario, they might even offer something new about the killer – or about Kristine Hartung.

  By that point Genz had realized Thulin believed there was a chance the murders were still unsolved. That Hess could have been right. That somebody might have made it appear as though the young couple had committed the crimes.

  ‘You don’t believe that. You’re kidding.’

  At first Genz laughed and refused to drive her to Møn to look for chestnut trees. Even after she tried telling him it was on his way, if he was driving to Jutland. More or less, anyhow. But he shook his head – until he realized she was going to do it no matter what. Then he capitulated, and she was grateful. Partly because she didn’t have a car of her own that day, and partly because she could use his help identifying the variety, assuming they actually found one.

  Unfortunately, things hadn’t gone as she’d hoped. Genz had made good time on the journey – despite the snow, they managed it in an hour and a half – but once they reached the locations the expert had given them, either there had been nothing but old snow-covered stumps or the trees had long since been cleared to make way for new housing developments. In one last-ditch attempt, Thulin had Genz drive away from the main road and back towards the Zealand bridge, a route that took them along a country road bordered by forest on one side and fields on the other. But the snow had made progress steadily more difficult, and although Genz remained chipper, it gradually became obvious that they had to abandon the project.

  Thulin’s mind turns to her daughter and Aksel. The school party must have finished ages ago, and she decides to call and reassure them she is on her way home.

  ‘Have you seen my phone?’

  She gropes around in her coat pockets, but no matter how deeply she digs she can’t find it.

  ‘No. But I do have a theory about how the chestnuts could have come from rare trees on Møn and still have ended up at the Hartung place. The family might have taken a trip to Møn, seen the cliffs and gathered a few chestnuts to take home?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  The last time Thulin took out her phone, it was to put it on the desk in Genz’s lab, and she is baffled that she’s forgotten it. She never normally does. She’s about to rummage through her pockets one more time when her eyes happen to be caught by something on the roadside. For a moment she isn’t sure, but the image remains, and then she understands what it is that has sent her mind in another direction.

  ‘Stop! Stop here! Stop!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just stop! Stop!’

  Genz finally puts his foot on the brake, and the car skids a fraction before coming to a stop. Thulin flings open the door and emerges into the silence. It is mid-afternoon, but the sun is setting. To her right are the broad, snow-clad fields, sprawling into the distance until snow and sky become one at the horizon; to her left are the woods, dark and heavy-laden. And there, a little further back at the edge of the road, stands an enormous tree. It is taller than the others. Its trunk is thick as a barrel, its height twenty, perhaps twenty-five metres, and its hulking skeleton of branches is covered in snow. It doesn’t actually look like a chestnut tree. Apart from the snow it is bare and stark, yet Thulin is certain. She approaches the tree, snow crunching in the cold air, and as she walks beneath the branches, where the snow isn’t as thick, she immediately feels the small globes underneath her feet. She isn’t wearing gloves, so with her bare hands she digs around in the snow to pick up the fallen chestnuts.

  ‘Genz!’

  It annoys her that Genz has remained standing by the car, that he isn’t as excited as she is. She brushes the snow off the chestnuts, and the icy, dark-brown spheres in her left hand look like the ones that had borne Kristine Hartung’s fingerprints. Thulin tries to remember the distinguishing characteristics the expert had mentioned.

  ‘Come and look at these. It might be them!’

  ‘Thulin, even if they’re the same chestnuts, it doesn’t prove anything. The Hartungs could have come down to see the cliffs and driven along this road on the way home. Their daughter could have picked up some chestnuts here.’

  Thulin doesn’t reply. She didn’t see it when they first drove past the tree, but now she is standing underneath it she realizes that the forest isn’t as dense as she’d thought. Beside the tree there is a road that twists deep into the woods, and the snow looks utterly unspoiled.

  ‘Let’s drive down here and take a look.’

  ‘Why? There’s nothing down there.’

  ‘You don’t know that. The worst that can happen is we might get stuck.’

  Thulin tramps energetically back to the car. Genz is standing beside the driver’s-side door. He’s watching her, but as she passes him and walks around to the other side, his gaze snags on an invisible point far down the narrow road into the woods.

  ‘Fine, then. If that’s really what you want.’

  113

  Autumn, 1987

  The boy’s hands are dirty, and he has earth under his nails. He’s trying clumsily to make a hole in the chestnut with the awl, but Rosa has to show him how it’s done. You don’t jab, you bore. You twist the awl until it bites and pierces the flesh of the chestnut. First you make the hole for the neck in both chestnuts, then you screw half a matchstick firmly into one of them before you stick the other chestnut on top. Then you bore in with the awl again to make holes for the arms and legs – deep holes are what you want, so the matchsticks have a good firm hold.

  It’s the girl who gets it first. It’s as though the boy’s fingers are too rough and insensitive, and time after time the chestnuts fall from his hands and on to the wet lawn, so that Rosa has to pick them up for him so he can try again. Rosa and the girl laugh at him. Not to m
ake fun, and the boy doesn’t take it that way. Well, maybe at the start, the first few times, when they went into the undergrowth beneath the tall tree to gather chestnuts with Mum and Dad. Afterwards they sat in the back garden, like they are now, on the steps of the old playhouse among the red and yellow leaves, and Rosa laughed at his fumbling with the chestnuts. He’d looked frightened, and so had his sister, but then Rosa had helped them both, and they’d understood her laughter meant no harm.

  ‘Chestnut man, do come in, chestnut man, do come in –’

  It’s Rosa who sings that song as she shows the boy what to do, until at last his chestnut man is finished too, and can be placed on the wooden board alongside the others they’ve made. She tells the twins that the more they make the more money they can earn when they sell them at the stall by the road. Rosa has never had siblings before, and although she knows the twins won’t be here for ever, probably not even until Christmas, she doesn’t want to think about that. It’s lovely to have them there when she awakes.

  Early in the morning on a Sunday or a Saturday, when there’s no school, she can sneak into the guest room on the far side of Mum and Dad’s bedroom, and even when she wakes up the twins they don’t get cross. They rub the sleep from their eyes and wait for her to tell them what they’re going to do. They listen eagerly to the games Rosa suggests, and it doesn’t matter to her that the twins don’t talk much and don’t have any suggestions of their own. She always looks forward to telling them what she’s come up with, and it’s as though her imagination swells with fun ideas and inventions once she has an audience besides Mum and Dad, who usually just go ‘ooh’ and ‘well’ or ‘We’ve seen that one now’.

  ‘Rosa, could you come in here a minute?’

  ‘Not now, Mum, we’re playing.’

  ‘Rosa, come in here. It won’t take long.’

  Rosa runs across the grass and past the kitchen garden, where her dad’s spade is wedged between the potato plants and the gooseberry bushes.