Fear Of Broken Glass: The Elements: Prologue

by Mark, David

  Ash shrugged, looking around. ‘Only one thing in life is certain... everything all heading in one direction. From order to chaos.’

  ‘From order to chaos.’ Almquist repeated. ‘Right...’ He looked down at his lap and folded his hands and thought of the beginning. ‘From order...’

  Conrad looked down at the floor, his eyes glazed over with thought. ‘I cut him.’

  Almquist snapped to attention. ‘Cut who?’

  ‘The attacker,’ he said, looking up with a rigid expression parrying Almquist’s searching gaze.

  ‘You only mention that now?’ Almquist breathed in, deeply. ‘What knife would this be, exactly?’

  ‘Kitchen knife; I felt the blade go in.’ Conrad turned to look across at the kitchen worktop. All the knives were in the block, shiny and clean. Except one. ‘He had a gun. He would have used it, I could see that. No doubt.’ He shook his head, a small brief movement. ‘He would have shot me. I figured it was best you knew. I wasn’t going to mention it in the statement...’

  Almquist sighed. ‘I’ll still need the statement revised. Now it seems I have an abduction case to deal with.’ He nodded as he looked up again, eyes focused, parking himself into neutral until he decided how to deal with it. Could deal with it. ‘We have only half an hour to work with the dogs before the scent fades. Times up.’

  ‘Are we still safe here?’ Daniel asked.

  Almquist stared vacantly. He could hear he sounded very unsure, of anything. What could he say? He took his time answering. Of course they weren’t safe, and I don’t have many staff at my disposal; not enough with two armed men on the loose.

  He didn’t see any alternative: It would have to be the lesser of two evils. ‘The perimeter around the house has been secured. No one can get in or out without us knowing about it. Until we have secured the road, we stay put where we are.’

  ‘So we just sit it out. Here? Like sitting ducks?’ Conrad shook his head in frustration.

  Almquist raised his cigarette and took another pull. ‘I dare not move you tonight. Not until tomorrow, then we can arrange for a proper escort to a safe house and continue the investigation.’ He glanced briefly out of the window. ‘This man Chivers is coming with us for questioning. We have four officers outside; two monitoring the house. We have requested more officers from the neighboring county.’

  ‘And tomorrow?’ Justin said in exasperation.

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’ Conrad said. ‘Do you know about him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘We don’t know.’ Almquist raised his hands in the air apologetically. ‘We are doing everything we can, believe me,’ he said earnestly. ‘You didn’t see Ulrika? Hear her even?’

  Justin shook his head. ‘I should have stayed with her – I didn’t know.’ He looked at Ash. ‘I let her down.’

  It was like a painting, the truth. No, not... a painting; it was a window, like, in a church. A large, colorful window; it showed everything, people, places. Except, it was gone.

  All we have, is what we have within us.

  ‘I have this little voice.’ Almquist said, slowly, looking around at these familiar faces. They were people now, suspects still. And the window had been removed, and it had been raised on high.

  He leaned forwards, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘Over the years, I’ve learned to listen to this little voice.’ He tried to smile, to banish the brooding thoughts, to allay his fears, trying not to think about the ramifications of unknown forces, involved in what he thought had been a murder enquiry. It was a murder enquiry, the window suspended, above. All he had to do, was look, upwards. ‘Now, this little voice, it is telling me; you had no way of knowing this was going to happen.’ Almquist looked around. He waited.

  No one spoke.

  And then the window began to fall, falling, breaking, shattering on the ground into hundreds of pieces. Almquist wanted to tell them his little voice was also telling him it wasn’t good to be here. That it wasn’t good for their health.

  He kept his mouth shut, wearing his mask as he often did when he felt vulnerable. Since the pieces were right here, in this place... then he felt guilty and leaned forwards, his face passive, betraying nothing as it came into the light of the candles and decided to tell them. ‘You came here with a painting that belonged not to Anna, but to Gustav Kron.’

  Ash looked across to Justin and Daniel as they turned away from the painting. ‘You mean she was reported killed under another name?’

  Except, the color had gone from the truth and all that remained were pieces of glass, sharp and jagged. And everywhere he walked his feet were bare. He turned towards Justin. ‘She went by the name of Anna Svensson. That was her unmarried name.’

  ‘So where did Anna Kron come from?’

  And if he picked the pieces up, he was going to cut his fingers. They would be cut and he would bleed. ‘We never referred to her as Anna Kron.’

  ‘Why didn’t you mention that before?’ Conrad said from the doorway, looking at Almquist in the rocking chair.

  ‘Because we didn’t have to. That generation always had two names, using only the second one personally: Anna Gertrud Svensson.’ Then he added, almost as an afterthought. ‘I never liked the name Gertrud personally. Terrible name.’

  He hated the name. But not as much as he hated blood.

  ‘I have a question for you.’ Almquist leaned his head to the side, looking across at Justin. ‘In your statement, you mentioned your professional relationship with Denisen. What did he say, about the painting, exactly?’

  Especially, he hated the smell of it.

  ‘He said it was a fake,’ Justin added. ‘Thomas did.’

  He almost laughed at the logic of it, claiming a painting to be a fake to make a fake.

  Hear no evil, see no evil, Gustav Kron had said once. Say no evil.

  Almquist raised a hand and scratched his beard. ‘We believe, Denisen had a forgery made. A couple of weeks before you left, he called someone in Amsterdam. He had your painting copied,’ he said quietly to Justin. Do no evil.

  ‘But how? How do you know?’ Conrad demanded as he walked to the table, sitting down at the end closest to Almquist.

  The Baron was letting his guard slip.

  ‘So you take the painting seriously then?’ Justin said.

  ‘I take everything seriously,’ Almquist said in a subdued tone. Then came the bombshell.

  ‘We have... information, something we didn’t reveal in the interviews.’ Ash said quietly. ‘It was painted by someone called Ikím Agar, or Aqar, Joachim Agard, the names are similar. The man who was killed was an old friend of Agar’s.’

  ‘Is that relevant?’

  ‘That’s what we came here to find out.’ He replied, glancing in Conrad’s direction. ‘As well as find Anna Kron.’

  Anna Kron. Almquist raised a hand and scratched his head absently, unsure how to proceed. He looked at his watch. ‘Okay.’ He leaned back in the chair and placed his hands behind his head. He had an hour or more. ‘I will stay, until I become wiser.’

  ‘The, wiser,’ Ash corrected, standing up.

  Almquist looked at him questioningly as Ash walked out of the door.

  ‘It’s fucking freezing in here. I’m going to fix those windows.’

  Dejected and tired, Almquist looked briefly at Ash and Daniel as they sat down at each end of the sofa; Justin heading for the stool, poking more life into the fire to keep the cold at bay. He picked up some paper and crunching it up, threw it on to the embers until a flame erupted, then repeated the process looking lost. For himself he chose one of the three beech lounge chairs, closest to a half-empty bottle of Scotch. He poured himself a measure and swirled his glass, looking down at the floor, thinking of those shards of glass, trying to decide which one he was going to have to pick up first. His eyes shifted towards the broken window panes. The light revealed the unmistakeable outline of bullet holes Ash had fixed with pieces of plastic bags. T
he whole was like a patchwork, a mad kaleidoscope so no one could see the true nature of what lay before them. Under normal circumstances he’s have people working out the firing lines, pinpointing the positions from where the shots had come, working up a sequence of events. Under normal circumstances.

  He took a sip then looked across at him feeling perplexed. ‘You have been to Æsahult, you have seen it.’ He inclined his head. ‘And yet, you did not tell us you went there...’ he stared at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was important to your investigation. Is it?’ Ash said, raising his own glass to his lips. ‘You should have told us you went there. It is not as if this is not important or anything.’

  He could see a pattern. A hazy pattern, but a pattern never-the-less. The painter had been friends with Kron. So who could Oskar be working for? If something had the interest of the British Embassy in Copenhagen, that made it a security issue. Deduction; only one name came to mind, the Swedish Security Police: SÄPO. Oskar had to be working for SÄPO... but, in advance of a murder?

  He looked up, across at Justin who sat quietly on the stool by the fire at the far end of the table, staring into his own thoughts: The signs were ominous, since it meant something was pre-ordained. Pre-ordained...

  This painting could be real, it could be a plant. There were so many pieces to try and piece together. The only answer he could arrive at, and one he couldn’t even share with Elin - the painting was known before Einar, before Justin’s old neighbor came into contact with it.

  It could have been a plant to get someone involved like Swift. But for what purpose? There was the involvement of the security forces of the United Kingdom and Sweden. The realization stunned him. And he was alone, floating on top of a vast, bottomless ocean, looking down. Seeing nothing.

  ‘The Pastor said the Norse believed in the afterlife.’ Ash said disturbing his thoughts. ‘I was wondering,’ he looked across at Almquist, head bowed slightly looking at the candles with his glass in his hand. ‘What does a draugr actually look like?’

  Almquist pursed his lips, unprepared for the question. In a way, it was a nice break, a chance to escape for a while. He recalled what his mother used to tell him. ‘If you really want to know...’ he looked upwards, his brow raised high on his forehead, ‘people said it was quite terrible. Like...’ his mother’s words formed in his head, hearing her voice again, one he had not listened to in a long, long time. ‘Black smoke, coming out of the ground, getting big and dark. Some people said they looked like trolls.’

  ‘One draugen... two draugr?’ Daniel said staring into the fire.

  ‘Yes, exactly; more than one of them.’ Almquist paused. ‘The draugen could return again, even when defeated.’

  That was why they had left the bodies the way they did.

  ‘The Viking way to get rid of a warrior spirit, was to cut off the warrior’s head, then burn the body, dumping the ashes into the sea,’ Ash said.

  Almquist shrugged. ‘Perhaps; in Viking times, the mound of a warrior was also a sacred place. That too, was an old custom.’ He remembered his mother used to mention things like that. ‘It was a custom of the Goths,’ he added. ‘It placed a curse upon any man who desecrated it. Except, there is one little problem.’ He waited to get Ash’s attention. ‘The draugen are not living.’

  ‘If it is not living, then surely you cannot kill it?’ Daniel said.

  ‘If you could not kill it, then you had to free it from its home. Okay, I will get to the point,’ Almquist said. ‘It is this. People were so scared they locked themselves away in their houses at night. This happened.’ He tapped the armrest of the lounge chair. They used to light fires, his mother would say, he sitting on her lap on the old armchair by the fire, not unlike this one. ‘So... they lit a fire, closed their doors. Keeping them hot all night long.’

  He liked sitting with his mum by the fire.

  ‘When they believed someone who had died was possessed by the spirit of a draugr, they would take a hammer,’ he mimed a hammer with one hand, fingers clasped around air, ‘and a big nail,’ he mimed a nail with his other hand, ‘and hammer it through the foot,’ he mimed the action of hitting the nail with the hammer. ‘And again, with the other foot, to keep the dead from walking. Sometimes, they also stabbed the body, sticking a knife into its chest at the same time.’ He paused, looking around at his audience. ‘Then they took out the dead man’s eyes.’

  It was Conrad who said it, crossing one leg over the other, frowning. ‘So the draugr could not see?’

  Almquist looked at Conrad as if measuring his reaction. ‘Exactly. If they cannot see and cannot walk...’ he shrugged. ‘So, is there anything else you haven’t told me about the painting?’ Almquist said, eyes fixed upon Justin.

  Justin turned on his stool, looking lost. He turned to his left, to look at Conrad who was standing, legs planted apart, staring at the floor. ‘Tell him.’

  Conrad looked up, his face deep-set. He didn’t respond.

  ‘Tell him.’ Justin demanded. ‘Ulrika’s life might depend on it.’

  ‘Tell him what?’ Almquist said, placing his empty glass on the table.

  Justin was still looking at Conrad.

  ‘About the runes.’

  ‘Runes?’ Almquist sat up. What the hell was this?

  ‘No.’ Conrad said, striding down the room, pulling out the chair next to Almquist’s.

  ‘What is this? What do you mean no?’ He turned to Conrad, ‘What no?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ash said, looking at Daniel.

  ‘Yes,’ Daniel agreed, nodding from the sofa.

  Conrad clenched his jaw and shook his head.

  ‘Yes,’ Justin added from his stool.

  Outnumbered, finally, Conrad nodded.

  Justin stood up, leaving the fireside and walked out of the room.

  Justin took the stairs up to the first floor, feet beating upon the floorboards, entering the bare and cold middle room, walking to his bed. He reached underneath the bed, then returned back down the stairs to return to the living room. He placed it the middle of the table: The Hangman of the Gallows, the familiar figure suspended in the midst of a denuded landscape full of dead trees, trees on fire so oils glistened, moving, coming alive by the movement and flicker of flame.

  Almquist was speechless.

  ‘This is the real painting.’ Justin stepped into the light.

  The old detective looked at him. He looked surprisingly relaxed, waiting patiently for the explanation. ‘This is very unusual.’ He pointed to carved symbols in neat rows around the periphery of a gilded frame; a vibrant, shimmering gold inscribed with small symbols, runic inscriptions that ran around all four sides. The effect was both decorative and esoteric. ‘Obviously,’ Almquist said, turning to face Conrad with a look that was hard to read, ‘we have a forgery?’

  Conrad barely nodded, looking in grim mood.

  ‘So you can imagine how lucky we felt when you pitched up with another Hangman,’ Ash added with a flourish of his whiskey, stepping in.

  Daniel got up from the sofa and walked to one of the window sills, returning with a candle, a piece of paper and a felt pen, taking the last remaining unoccupied lounge chair next to Conrad. He leaned forwards, placing the candle on the low table. Five men huddled around one painting and the runes, all of them looking, regarding it as if it was a menu to be read and digested before ordering. Daniel lit the candle, lighting up their gathered faces as he applied the match, waiting the three seconds it took to melt the residue wax until the candle was burning with a steady even flame. He placed the candle on the table, moving the painting to the floor, to where the runes were revealed as shadows in a surface of shining gold.

  ‘I suppose a ruler would be out of the question?’

  ‘I saw one in one of the drawers in the Kitchen,’ Ash said with a snap of his fingers, leaving the room promptly.

  As soon as Ash reappeared with a plastic ruler Daniel carefully copied the runes in a neat, orderly fashion usi
ng the ruler as a guide, writing the translation line by line next to them. When he was done he sat up and looked at his handiwork for a moment: on the left a column of runes on four lines, on the right his translation. Satisfied, he nodded at his companions then returned to the sofa.

  Daniel pointed to the top line. ‘Helvegr directly translated refers to the road to Hel, not the biblical Hell, but Hel, as in the Underworld. Vegr means road, literally.’

  Justin looked past Thomas’s bottle of whiskey to the crystal glasses around the edge of the table, settling on Almquist, whose eyes glittered like jewels in a pit as he lit his cigarette from the candle, ‘So Helvegr...’

  ‘Means the road to the underworld.’ Daniel finished with a smug turn to his mouth. ‘The long inscription is divided into two. The left half says váfa virgilná at gengr.’ He pointed to the runes. ‘This we know – it’s a quote from the Hávamál, translating as a dangling corpse in a noose, ending on the right with the rest of the passage, ok mælir við mik – that walks and talks with me. This explains the subject – Odin, sacrificing himself for the knowledge, or magic of the runes; the power of their magic setting him alight with their energy.’ He picked up the candle, moving it closer, a sphere of shimmering light wandering across the surface towards the abstract figure of an old man hanging from a tree on fire. ‘Then we have the inscription at the bottom of the frame, referring to the old place name for Æsahult – Hörgrlund, or Horgerlund. This means place.’ He pointed left and right, ‘Subject.’ He pointed to the paper, to the top and bottom again, ‘route, and place, or something like that.’ He pointed to the inscription at the top, ‘Helvegr, literally, the road to Hel. This could also be cryptic; we haven’t quite figured out what it all means yet.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the bit that would have taken us to Anna Kron.’ Justin said, staring at the downturned face of the Hangman.

  Almquist leaned forwards, eyes eager. ‘You already know Hörgrlund,’ he said, sitting in studied concentration, cigarette in hand. ‘And this is some cryptic... what?’