The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  The revelation that Genz was the Chestnut Man came as a shock to everyone. As the head of the Forensics Department, he’d been a guiding light to his co-workers, and there were still disciples in the cube who struggled to believe he’d abused his office and had several lives on his conscience. In the opposite camp, his critics argued that Genz had wielded too much power. But the criticism and soul-searching didn’t stop there. Certainly not in the media. The Major Crimes Division – which had made use of Genz and his skills while harbouring no apparent suspicions about him – had come under heavy fire. So had the top brass, of course, who had been responsible for his promotion in the first place. So far the beleaguered Justice Minister had withheld any consequences for these mistakes, at least until they had an explanation of Simon Genz’s actions.

  With the media buzzing, Hess and the other detectives had concentrated on tidying up loose ends. What had struck Hess was the degree to which Genz had managed to steer the investigation: how from the very beginning he’d guided Thulin and Hess towards the little chestnut man with the fingerprint, so that Rosa Hartung was brought into play; how he’d made Thulin and Hess pursue the package containing Laura Kjær’s mobile phone to Erik Sejer-Lassen, while Genz himself was attacking Sejer-Lassen’s wife at home in Klampenborg; how he’d broken into the database at the Rigshospital’s paediatric department and found reasons to study Laura Kjær’s, Anne Sejer-Lassen’s and Jessie Kvium’s children – it had turned out that Olivia Kvium had also been hospitalized there after an accident at home – before sending the anonymous messages to the council, so that the police and other authorities would be confronted with the incompetence of the system; how alert he’d been to the trap set for the killer at Urbanplan; and how he must have felt pressured by Thulin’s and Hess’s visit to Linus Bekker, which was why he’d planted the severed limbs on Skans’ and Neergaard’s property when he went to examine the scene in his official capacity. Last but not least, how Genz had followed the young couple into the woods using the tracking unit in the rented van, and how he must have killed the two suspects before he called Nylander and told him where to find them. They were all unpleasant discoveries, and there were probably others in store. Especially because they weren’t finished investigating the role Genz had played in Kristine Hartung’s disappearance the previous year.

  When it came to Genz’s personal history, the information Hess had found in the database had been examined and expanded. The orphaned twins were separated after their stay at Ørum’s farm, and when the authorities ran out of foster families for Toke Bering, then seventeen, they sent him to a boarding school in West Zealand. Evidently fate smiled on him. An aging, childless businessman who had previously set up a foundation to benefit the school’s more deprived children ended up adopting the boy. The man, whose last name was Genz, gave him the chance to start afresh at an elite high school in Sorø, now under the adopted name of Simon Genz, where the boy distinguished himself with astonishing speed. Yet only on the surface was the man’s social experiment a success: at twenty-one, while studying business economics and IT at university in Aarhus, Genz apparently came into contact with the lab assistant from the Risskov case. On closer examination of the case files from the Aarhus Police it emerged that ‘Simon Genz, a student living in the halls of residence opposite, was interviewed concerning the possible sighting of the victim’s ex-boyfriend on the day of the murder’. In other words, Genz had lived opposite the victim and offered his help in solving a killing he’d almost certainly committed himself.

  When his patron died of a heart attack shortly afterwards, Genz inherited a considerable sum, and he used his newfound freedom to move to the capital and transfer to the Police Academy with the modest goal of becoming a Forensics tech. His talent and dedication to the subject were soon noticed, but evidently one of the first things he learned was how to hack his way into the national database of ID numbers and change his data so that he could no longer be connected with Toke Bering. His subsequent rise up the career ladder made for impressive yet appalling reading, given that another two unsolved murders of women between 2007 and 2011 now had to be reopened because chestnut men had been observed in the crime-scene photographs.

  From 2014 onwards, by then a renowned expert, he worked with the German Federal Police as well as Scotland Yard, but left both posts when he was offered the job of head of Forensics in Copenhagen roughly two years ago. The real reason he applied was presumably to exploit the role in his plans for Rosa Hartung, who had just become nationally famous when she was made Minister for Social Affairs. Genz immediately bought Chestnut Farm, renovating it with the money left over from his inheritance, and as soon as the leaves began to fall from the trees last autumn he was ready to put the first part of his strategy into action and avenge himself on Rosa Hartung. As head of Forensics it was easy for him to control the various pieces of evidence in the investigation: first, the evidence that placed the abduction of Kristine at the wrong location, but soon also the evidence that convicted Linus Bekker. Examining Genz’s computer at the lab over the weekend, Thulin had discovered that he knew about Linus Bekker and his access to the crime-scene archive long before the police became aware of it. Not that he mentioned it to anybody. Genz must have realized that in Linus Bekker he’d found the scapegoat he needed, and it would have been a piece of cake to plant the bloodied machete in the garage at Bekker’s block of flats before anonymously tipping off the police. That Bekker had subsequently decided to confess to the crime must have been an amusing bonus for Genz, if an unnecessary one – after all, there was already ample evidence.

  For Hess, the overarching problem was that nowhere in Genz’s vanishingly small number of possessions was there any trace of what had really happened to Kristine Hartung. All of it had apparently been deleted, destroyed or incinerated, as the burned-out shell at Chestnut Farm testified. Initially he’d pinned his hopes on the two mobile phones found in the wrecked car in the woods, but both had turned out to be brand new, used only on the day they were found. The car’s GPS history, on the other hand, had revealed a number of visits to a particular area south-east of Rostock in northern Germany. It hadn’t seemed significant at first, given Genz’s past work with the German Bundespolizei, but when Hess had contacted the terminals where the Danish ferries from Falster and Lolland docked the previous afternoon, the Rostock trail had started to look interesting. A dark green rental car was still waiting to be picked up at the ferry terminal in Rostock, and had been since Friday – the day Genz had died, impaled on a chestnut tree. By contacting the German rental company, Hess learned that the car was rented in a woman’s name.

  ‘Der Name der Mieterin ist Astrid Bering,’ the voice on the other end had said.

  The investigation then picked up speed. Hess swiftly used his contacts in the German police, and after a few detours it turned out that Genz’s twin sister was now registered as living in Germany, which they narrowed down to an area outside a small village, Bugewitz, approximately two hours’ drive from Rostock and not far from the Polish border. From the database, Hess remembered that all trace of the twin sister had vanished when she’d been discharged from a psychiatric institution just under a year before, but if she and Genz had been in touch in the intervening period – as the GPS history in Genz’s car indicated – the sister might well be the only person who knew anything about Kristine Hartung’s fate.

  ‘Thulin, wake up.’

  A phone has begun to ring in the bundle on the seat beside him, and Thulin pokes her bleary-eyed head out of the quilted jacket she’s drawn over herself.

  ‘Might be the Germans. Since I’m the one driving, I asked them to call you if they had anything, but just pass it to me.’

  ‘I’m not an invalid, and I speak excellent German.’

  Hess grins to himself as Thulin fumbles the phone out of the jacket pocket, still grumpy at having been woken so early in the morning. Her left arm, broken in two places, is in a sling, and in combination with her bruised face she
looks like a walking traffic accident. Hess doesn’t look much better, and they made a lovely couple at the breakfast buffet on the ferry half an hour earlier. Once they were back in the car, she asked if he minded whether she took a nap, and he had no objection. They’d been at the grindstone since Saturday afternoon. Both had been granted a few days by their respective employers to wind up the case and recuperate, and Hess guesses Thulin hasn’t had much sleep. He is also still deeply grateful, because if she hadn’t kicked Genz in that car he would probably have been run down and killed. He found Thulin’s unconscious body in the snow some distance beyond the tree where Genz hung, and he wasn’t able to tell whether her injuries were serious. At the first sound of approaching sirens, he picked her up and carried her out on to the road towards the emergency vehicles, sending her to the nearest hospital in the first one that stopped.

  ‘Yes … gut … I understand … danke.’

  Thulin hangs up, and there is life in her eyes.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘The task force is waiting for us at a carpark five kilometres from the address. One of the locals says there’s definitely a woman living in the house, and the description fits someone of Astrid Bering’s age.’

  ‘But?’

  Hess can tell from Thulin’s face that there is more, but he can’t decode whether it is good or bad.

  ‘The woman keeps to herself, mainly, but apparently a few times she’s been seen going for walks in the woods with a child about twelve or thirteen, a child they assumed until now was her son …’

  125

  The sun shines behind the frosted glass. The bags rest on the coir matting at her feet, and Astrid waits uneasily in the hallway for the family on bikes to get a little further away from the house so that they won’t see her when she opens the door and darts out. It is only fifteen or so steps to the garage and the small, battered Seat, but she is shifting her feet impatiently: she wants to get back to the house and pick up Mulle before another cyclist or car comes past.

  Astrid hasn’t had much sleep. Most of the night she lay awake, her mind whirring with thoughts about what might have happened, and at about quarter past six that morning she decided to defy her brother’s orders and get out of there. She unlocked the pantry, shook Mulle gently awake, and told her to get dressed while she made breakfast. Only a few pieces of crispbread with jam today, and a single apple for Mulle – she hadn’t dared risk a trip to the shops since last week. Their bags have been packed since Friday evening, when her brother had told her they should be ready to leave when he arrived. But he hasn’t. Astrid waited and waited, and from her spot by the kitchen window above the sink she stared out at the country road with bated breath, peering at the headlights that occasionally appeared in the darkness. But each time they drove past the lonely house, surrounded by fields and forest. She felt equal parts fear and relief, but didn’t dare do anything besides wait another day. Then another, and another. Normally he phoned like clockwork, morning and evening, to make sure things were as they should be, but there’d been no calls since Friday morning, and she couldn’t call him because she didn’t know his number. It would be too dangerous, he’d told her ages ago, and she’d put up with the arrangement. As she put up with almost everything he suggested, because he was the strong one, because he knew what was best.

  Without her brother Astrid had long ago succumbed to drugs, alcohol and self-loathing. He knocked tirelessly on the doors of homes and treatment centres so they could try again to heal her, to come up with new strategies. Time after time he sat and listened to doctors and therapists explaining the damage to her mind, and she didn’t understand that her suffering was also his. She knew, of course, what he was capable of, because she saw it with her own eyes that day at Ørum’s farm, but she’d been so swallowed up in her own pain for so many years that she didn’t notice his until it was too late.

  About a year ago, when she was at yet another institution, he picked her up one day and took her out to a car. They drove to the ferry, then down to somewhere south of Rostock, where there was a little cottage he’d bought in her name. She was bewildered, but the place and the autumn colours were enchanting that day, and she was so overwhelmed and grateful for his love. Until he told her why he bought the house, and what it would be used for.

  It had happened at night, him bringing back the little girl drugged in the boot. Astrid was horrified. She recognized the girl’s face from the TV in the common area at the institution the month before, and he reminded her triumphantly who the girl’s mother was. When Astrid objected to his plan he burst into a fit of rage, saying he’d have to kill the girl immediately if Astrid wouldn’t look after her. Then he put her in the specially adapted pantry and left, but not before telling Astrid that the house was fitted with enough cameras so that he could observe every little thing they did. She was afraid of him then, suddenly much more than when he stood in the basement with the axe over the corpse of that policeman.

  At first she’d largely avoided contact with the girl. She was only near her twice a day, when she opened the pantry door to give her food. But the sound of crying had been unbearable, and the girl’s distress reminded her of her own imprisonment. Soon Astrid was letting her come out and eat in the kitchen with her. Or letting her watch a kids’ TV show in the living room on one of the German channels. Astrid felt like they were both prisoners under the same roof, and the time didn’t go quite as slowly when they were together, but when the girl tried to make a run for the door Astrid had to block her path and lock her back in the pantry. There weren’t any neighbours, so the noise didn’t matter, yet it was still unpleasant, and it occurred to Astrid that she felt sorry for the girl. So just after Christmas and New Year, which she hadn’t had the energy to celebrate, she’d decided to introduce fixed routines, so they could use the time in a meaningful way.

  The day began with breakfast, then schoolwork. On a trip to one of the bigger towns nearby Astrid had bought a pink pencil case as well as maths and English textbooks, and she did her best to teach the girl at the kitchen table. Astrid used a website she’d found online to teach her Danish literature, and the girl seized the initiative gratefully. Mornings were split into three lessons, followed by lunch together, which they both helped to make, and then another lesson, which was always makeshift PE in the living room. It was there they first shared a laugh together, because they both looked so silly as they tried to run on the spot and do high knees. That was at the end of March, and Astrid felt happier than she’d been in many years. She’d started calling the girl Mulle, because it was the sweetest name she could think of.

  When her brother came to visit, which he did at least once a week, the atmosphere changed. Astrid and Mulle fell timid and silent, as though a hangman had entered the room. Her brother sensed the bond that had arisen between them, and he’d upbraided Astrid several times, including on the phone, when the cameras betrayed how much freedom she allowed the girl. When the three of them ate together, usually in silence, he often sat watching Mulle with a sombre expression as she cleared the plates and did the washing up, and Astrid kept a vigilant eye on his movements. But nothing ever happened. Only after another escape attempt during the summer had he hit Mulle, and only with the flat of his hand.

  Before that episode the heat had made it unbearable to sit indoors, so they’d moved their lessons on to the patio behind the house, including PE. One day Mulle asked whether they could go for a walk in the woods. Astrid foresaw no danger in that. The woods were vast, and she rarely bumped into anybody in them. In any case, they were far from Denmark, and Mulle looked different from when she’d arrived: hair clipped short, clothes that made her look like a boy. But on one of the walks, her brother having graciously given his permission, Mulle bolted. As usual when they saw other people strolling through the woods, they turned back towards the house, but Mulle tore herself free and tried to catch up with an older couple. Astrid had to drag the hysterical girl all the way home, and it was obvious on the
cameras that something had happened. A few hours later her brother arrived, and her punishment was a month’s quarantine: for thirty days, the girl was only allowed out of the pantry to go to the toilet. Once the punishment was over, Astrid took her out on the patio and gave her the biggest ice cream she’d been able to buy. She explained how disappointed she was, Mulle apologized, and Astrid hugged her frail body. After that things went well, they stuck to their lessons and workout routine, and Astrid wished it could last for ever. But then the autumn came – and with it her brother, bringing the chestnuts.

  ‘Stay here, Mulle. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  The family of cyclists has gone, and Astrid opens the front door and goes out into the cold, clear air with a bag in each hand. She hurries across to the garage, wondering how far they can get today if she drives quickly. She’s had no time to make a plan; usually it is her brother who takes care of such things, but now she’s left to her own devices. Still, as long as Mulle is there, everything is fine. She’s realized they belong together, and has long since stopped thinking that the girl has ever had any home besides this one. Perhaps it’s actually a good thing her brother isn’t around. Deep down Astrid has been afraid he’ll do something to the girl once the whole thing is finished.

  It is the last thought that crosses her mind before she turns into the garage and a gloved hand is clamped over her mouth.

  ‘Wie viele gibt es im Haus?!’

  ‘Das Mädchen, wo ist sie?!’

  ‘Antworte!’

  The bags are ripped from her hands, but Astrid is too shocked to reply. It is only when a tall, bruised man with two different-coloured eyes speaks to her in Danish that she starts stammering that they can’t take her girl. She feels a lump in her throat, and the tears begin to stream, because he isn’t listening.

  ‘Where is she?’ he keeps asking.