The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  Only when she realizes they are about to storm the house with their rifles and sinister masks does she tell him what he wants to hear, and then she collapses on the tiles beneath him.

  126

  The kitchen is empty in a way that tells her she is never coming back. She sits in her coat on the stool by the blotchy linoleum table and waits for her mum to come and fetch her, because she isn’t allowed to go out by herself.

  It isn’t her real mum, but ‘Mum’ is what the woman has said to call her. Instead of Astrid. Especially when they are outside the house. She can still remember her real mother and her father and her little brother, and she dreams about seeing them every day. But dreaming hurts, and she’s taught herself to do as she is told until the day she can make a run for it. She’s tried so many times, in reality and in her imagination, but it has never worked out. Yet now a strange hope arises inside her as she sits looking alertly out of the window towards the garage.

  Perhaps it had started a few days ago, when the man didn’t show up. Mum had been all packed, and she’d been told to sit ready with her on the stool where she is sitting now. But he didn’t come. Nor the day after, or the day after that. There had been no phone calls either. Mum seemed more nervous and uncertain than she usually did. And when she woke her up this morning, she heard at once in her voice that she’d made a decision.

  Getting away might be a good thing. Away from the house she hated, from the man and the man’s cameras, which were always following her. But where, and to what – maybe to something worse? She hasn’t dared pursue that thought all the way to the end yet. So that isn’t what the hope has sprung from – it springs from the sliver of daylight through the open front door, and the fact that Mum still isn’t back.

  Placing her feet carefully on the floor and standing up, she keeps her eyes fixed on the empty space outside the garage. Maybe this is her last chance. In the corner of the ceiling the camera’s red light blinks, and she moves one foot tentatively in front of the other.

  127

  Nylander hates the fact that he is standing on the edge of a wood with a German task force, waiting to find out whether Kristine Hartung is inside the little wooden house or not. Gradually everything seems to be spiralling out of his control; ever since last Friday, in fact, when the rug was pulled out from under him. On top of that, his humiliation has been broadcast live. Egged on by the communications consultant, the same one he’d been thinking about seducing in a hotel room, his bosses twisted his arm into acknowledging he’d misjudged the case. And, of course, into giving credit for solving it to Hess and Thulin.

  In Nylander’s eyes, they might as well have cut off his balls and nailed them to the wall outside the police station. But he did as they’d commanded, and afterwards he had to watch his own people and experts seizing on Genz’s few possessions in the hope of finding a trace of the Hartung girl, whose case Nylander had finally put to rest before whirring cameras only a few days before.

  He feels, in other words, that he is up to his ears in shit, yet he still schlepped down here in the three-car convoy, which left Copenhagen Police Station at the crack of dawn that morning. It won’t be long before the tension breaks, and he’ll know whether the fatal blow is going to fall. If Kristine Hartung isn’t in the house, then the damage can be handled, and her case will probably remain a mystery – he can ramble on about that to the press. If Kristine Hartung is in the house, then all hell will break loose. Unless, of course, he manages to pass the buck by arguing that his error is entirely understandable, that it is due solely to the fact that someone – someone other than himself – had committed the mother of all howlers by giving a psychopath like Genz so important a job.

  The German task force have surrounded the house, and the men are beginning to edge towards it in groups of two. Then, abruptly, they stop short. The front door has swung open, and a skinny figure shoots out at high speed. Nylander follows it with his eyes. When it reaches the middle of the long, dew-damp grass in the overgrown garden, it stops and stares at them.

  Everyone freezes. Her features are different. She’s grown, and her eyes are wild and dark. But Nylander has seen her picture a hundred times, and he recognizes her at once.

  128

  It is taking too long, and Rosa senses it’s a bad sign. They can’t see the cottage from the main road where they are standing, but they’ve been told it is only five hundred metres away, on the other side of the field and the wild copse with the tall trees and bushes. The sun is shining, but the wind is bitingly chilly, even though they are sheltered behind two large German police vans.

  When they were told the night before that the police were investigating a lead in Germany, Rosa and Steen had insisted on coming. The killer’s sister apparently lived in a cottage close to the Polish border, and there were signs he’d been on his way to see her before he was killed on a forest road not far from Chestnut Farm. There is a real chance, it seems, that the sister is an accomplice and might know something about Kristine, and since there are no other leads to pin their hopes on they insisted categorically on joining the convoy. Especially now that the murderer can no longer speak for himself.

  That was Rosa’s first question when she woke up in hospital after the operations. She looked into Steen’s tear-stained face, and when she realized where she was – in a proper hospital and not in the nightmarish white basement – she asked whether the man had said anything. Steen shook his head, and she saw that it didn’t matter to him at that moment. For him it was a relief that Rosa was alive, and she saw the same relief in Gustav’s eyes too. They were also distressed, of course, because of the way she’d been tortured and mutilated. The clamp at the end of her left arm had helped save her life, preventing her from losing too much blood, but the severed hand had been devoured by the flames. The doctors had told her the pain would diminish. At some point she would be given a prosthesis made specifically for her, and she would get used to it, and not keep being surprised whenever she briefly forgot the pain and glimpsed a reflection of herself and the bandaged stump at the end of her arm.

  Oddly enough, it doesn’t bother Rosa. She isn’t crushed by it; instead, she finds herself thinking it is a trivial sacrifice. She would give everything. Her right hand, too, which has been stitched back together, both her feet or life itself, if only she could turn back time and save Kristine. Guilt overwhelmed her in her hospital bed, and in tears she reproached herself for the sin she’d committed long ago, when she herself was a little girl. It was her fault, and although she’d spent most of her adult life making amends, it hadn’t helped. Instead Kristine had suffered for it, although she’d done nothing apart from being her daughter. That knowledge was horrifying. Steen tried to make her see she shouldn’t torment herself, but Kristine was gone, and so was the man who said he’d taken her, and not a moment passed when Rosa didn’t wish it was her the man had taken instead.

  Amid the sorrow and self-reproach they received word of the lead the night before, and they were given a place in the convoy of cars, which left for Germany before the sun rose. A few hours later, arriving at the carpark where the German police vans had been waiting, Steen gleaned from an exchange of information between the Danish and German officers that the woman who lived at that address had been seen over the summer walking with a child. Possibly around Kristine’s age. The Danish officers wouldn’t confirm anything, and Rosa and Steen were left by the cars with two German officers as soon as the operation was underway.

  Suddenly it strikes Rosa that she doesn’t dare believe Kristine might be alive. Once again she has built up a hope, a dream, a castle in the air, which might shatter at any moment. That night, when she got up to dress for the journey, she caught herself choosing clothes she knew Kristine would be able to recognize. The dark blue jeans, the green jumper, the old autumn jacket, and the small, fur-lined boots Kristine had always called ‘teddy-bear boots’. She made excuses, telling herself she had to wear something, but she’d chosen those clothes for one
reason only – because she’d started hoping that today might be the day she sees her child again, the day she runs towards Kristine and squeezes her close and overwhelms her with all her love.

  ‘Steen, I want to go home. I think we should go back now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Open the car door. She’s not there.’

  ‘They’re not back yet …’

  ‘We shouldn’t be away long. I want to go back to Gustav.’

  ‘Rosa, we’re staying here.’

  ‘Open the door! You hear what I’m saying? Open the door!’

  She jerks at the handle, but Steen won’t take out the key and let her in. He’s caught sight of something behind her back, and she turns to look in the same direction.

  Two figures are coming towards them from the copse of trees and bushes. They are approaching across the field, making for the road and the police vans, lifting their feet extra high, probably because the mud from the field is clinging to their shoes. One is the policewoman, the one called Thulin. The other, holding Thulin’s hand, seems at first glance to be a boy about twelve or thirteen. He is short-haired and scruffy. His clothes hang off him like a scarecrow, and he keeps his eyes fixed to the ground because it is hard work trudging through the mud. But when the boy looks up and peers searchingly towards the cars, where Rosa is standing with Steen, she knows. She feels the deep jolt in her stomach, and when she glances at Steen to check whether he is seeing the same thing she is, his face is already cracking, and the tears are running down his cheeks. Rosa begins to run. She runs free of the cars and out into the field. When Kristine lets go of the policewoman’s hand and she, too, breaks into a run, then Rosa knows that it is true.

  WEDNESDAY 4 NOVEMBER

  * * *

  129

  The cigarette doesn’t taste like it normally does, and Hess is in no rush to enter the international atmosphere, fond of it though he usually is. He is standing at the airport outside the entrance to Terminal 3, and despite the pelting rain he waits to see whether Thulin will show up.

  The emotions of yesterday are still with him, and if he forgets them for a brief moment he is reminded as soon as he catches a glimpse of a news screen on a mobile phone or an iPad. The Hartung family’s reunion with their daughter has supplanted the articles on Simon Genz, and it is the big news story of the day, surpassed in font size only by the possibility of a new war in the Middle East. Even Hess had struggled to hold back tears when he saw the parents standing there in the wind, embracing the girl on the field, and when he collapsed into bed at Odin late last night, he slept for ten hours at a stretch for the first time in years.

  With a forgotten feeling of wellbeing he got up and drove with Thulin and her daughter, who were on a belated autumn holiday, to the institution where Magnus Kjær had been taken. Magnus’s former stepfather, Hans Henrik Hauge, had been found and arrested that weekend by traffic officers at a rest stop in Jutland, but that wasn’t why Hess wanted to visit Magnus. The two children, Le and Magnus, had quickly bonded over a shared interest in League of Legends, while the head of the department told Thulin and Hess they’d found a good foster family for the boy. The family was from Gilleleje and had ten years’ experience, as well as a foster son who was slightly younger than Magnus and could do with a brother or sister. The meeting between Magnus and the family had apparently gone well, although afterwards Magnus had said that if he could choose he’d rather live with ‘the policeman with the eyes’. It made no sense, of course, but while Thulin went for a walk with Le, Hess and Magnus played for a while. The haul was one conquered tower and the eradication of a horde of minions plus a single champion before Hess gave Magnus a slip of paper with his phone number and left. He reassured himself one last time with the departmental head that the foster family was good enough, and then finally he went outside.

  At the Science Museum he ate the catch of the day with Thulin, and while Le was busy getting back into the Labyrinth of Light, they stayed sitting in the café among all the families with children, among the shouting and screaming. They both knew he was leaving for Bucharest, but the intimacy and naturalness that had been between them the past few days suddenly gave way to awkward conversation. Hess got lost in her deep eyes and tried to say something. Just then, however, her daughter came running back to drag them off to the Lion’s Den, where you could measure the strength of your roar by sticking your head through a hole in a box and yelling as loudly as you could. Afterwards it was time for Thulin to go, but in parting she said she would drop by the airport to say goodbye. With that cheering thought he hurried back to Odin Park, where he was supposed to meet with the caretaker and estate agent.

  The estate agent, however, was a defeated man. The buyer had pulled out, having found something ‘safer’ in Østerbro. It seemed to upset the Pakistani caretaker more than it upset Hess. Hess thanked him and gave him the keys, and on the way to the airport he felt so full of energy that he asked the taxi to make a stop at Vestre Cemetery.

  It was the first time Hess had visited the grave. He didn’t know exactly where it was, but at the cemetery office they pointed him down the paths towards a little wood. The gravesite looked as sad as he’d feared. A mossy stone, some greenery and pebbles; it made him feel guilty. Hess placed a flower from the forest on to the pebbles, then took off his wedding ring and buried it beneath the gravestone. She would have wanted him to do it ages ago, but even now it was difficult. Standing at the graveside, for the first time in years he let his memories flow freely, and as he walked back towards the exit he felt lighter than when he went in.

  Another taxi sloshes past Terminal 3, and Hess stubs out his cigarette and turns his back to the rain. Thulin isn’t coming, and maybe it’s better that way. He lives like a homeless person and not a thing in his life has got its act together. He sticks his hand in his pocket and takes out his mobile phone to find his boarding pass. On his way towards the escalator to Security, he realizes he’s received a text message.

  ‘Have a good trip’ is all it says. Seeing who the text is from, he clicks on the image attached.

  At first he can’t tell what it is. A strange childish drawing of a big tree with branches and glued-on pictures of himself and a budgie and a hamster. And then he laughs. With all his heart. By the time he reaches Security he’s looked at the picture several times, and he still can’t stop laughing.

  ‘Have you sent it? Has he seen it?’

  Le watches as Thulin puts down her phone and casts around for a kitchen drawer where she can put the poster.

  ‘Yup, sent it. Now go and open the door for your grandad.’

  ‘When’s he coming back?’

  ‘No idea, now go and open the door!’

  Le plods out into the hallway towards the ringing doorbell. For Thulin, sending the picture was the culmination of a weird day. Visiting the Kjær boy with Hess and Le was emotional, and it didn’t get much better when Le persuaded them into a trip to family hell at the Science Museum. In the middle of the café, amid screaming youngsters and lunchboxes, she suddenly sensed the danger of a life in the same rut as the families around them. She knew Hess wasn’t like that, but then he looked at her with something on the tip of his tongue, and she couldn’t help but think of detached houses, pensions and the whole fat lie of nuclear-family life. Seconds later she said she would drop by the airport, but only to get the hell out of there and safely home.

  Back home Le had insisted on printing out one of the photos she’d taken on her phone of Hess at the Lion’s Den. What’s more, she wanted to stick Hess on to the school poster of her family tree.

  Thulin was very reluctant. But once the photo had been glued on, Hess looked almost as natural as the animals that flanked him, and it is this picture of the family tree Le insisted on sending.

  Thulin hesitates by the kitchen drawer, and can’t help smiling. As she hears Le letting her grandad into the hallway, she decides she will let the poster be pinned to the kitchen wall. Not somewhere prominent. Just
next to the cooker hood. For a day or two, anyway.

  130

  Linus Bekker is breathing fresh air, but above him the clouds hang dark and heavy. The platform at Slagelse Station is deserted, and the small rucksack with the possessions he’d wanted to bring from the secure unit rests at his feet. He’s just been released, and he ought to be happy and relieved, but he isn’t. Freedom – but now what?

  Something in Linus Bekker is considering his lawyer’s suggestion about seeking compensation for pain and suffering. He’s already done more than enough time for the only offence he’s actually committed: hacking into the archive. Money is fine, he thinks, but he senses that money won’t change how disappointed he feels. The Chestnut Man case didn’t reach the conclusion he’d hoped for. Ever since he realized during an interview last year that he was an important cog in the machine, he’d been pleased. At first he had no clue who could have put the machete in his garage, but when the detectives tried for the millionth time to make him confess by confronting him with the image of the sharp weapon on the shelf, he noticed the little chestnut doll in the background. Linus had put two and two together. He confessed, and every day in the hell of the secure ward he looked forward to the coming of autumn, when the Chestnut Man would unveil his next step. It was worth the wait, once news of the killings had begun to trickle in, but then the party had fizzled out, and the Chestnut Man turned out to be a bungling amateur undeserving of his faith.

  The train pulls in, and Linus Bekker picks up his rucksack and climbs aboard. As he sits down in the window seat, life’s tedium still casts its pall – until he notices the single mother sitting diagonally opposite him with her little girl. The mother smiles and nods politely. Bekker returns her civility, smiling back.