“You think the motive is religious?”
“Possibly, but we’re not involved in the investigation. Fortunately. ‘Holy’ killings. That would mean a hell of a lot of paperwork. And going through a pile of dusty old reference books. Whatever happened to greed and jealousy? Those were motives we could understand.”
Sommersted broke off and stared out the window for several seconds. Niels had a feeling it was the word “jealousy” that had sent his thoughts elsewhere. He’d seen Sommersted’s wife on several occasions. A pampered little rich girl, blond, a slightly faded beauty who had probably never seen much of the sleazy side of life. But maybe it wasn’t that easy to be a stay-at-home upper-class girl. Where would you find your triumphs and minor setbacks? The personal confirmations that provide nourishment for the soul? Sommersted’s wife found hers in the looks she attracted from other men; Niels had noticed that the very first time he saw her at a reception. She stood close to her husband, even held his hand several times, but always aware of the looks directed at her from others in the room.
“I think you should spend today making contact with the . . . let’s say the eight to ten good people here in Copenhagen. Find out if they’ve noticed anything unusual. The head of the Red Cross, people who have something to do with human rights, and the local environmentalists. Those kinds of organizations. Ask them to be on the lookout. That should cover our back.”
“What about all the delegates coming here for the conference?”
“No.” Sommersted gave a forced laugh. “I think we’ve already got them sufficiently covered. Besides, in four days they’ll all be leaving. I think this is more of a long-term threat.”
Niels skimmed through what it said on the two pieces of paper, even though Sommersted was clearly eager to hustle him out the door. “Are there any suspects?” Niels asked.
“Bentzon. Timely precaution, nothing more.”
“But why have they come to us about the case?”
“Listen up: This is nothing. You can almost think of it as a day off to thank you for your help last night. If we were going to take these sorts of unspecified threats seriously, we’d have no time for anything else. There’s plenty to keep us busy here. If we make the slightest mistake, tomorrow there are going to be three morning newspapers and 179 members of Parliament demanding an explanation and an investigation, telling us we need to prioritize our work. Even though I’d like to tell them all to shut up, I’m forced to stand there and smile and nod like a schoolboy at a prom.” Sommersted gave an exaggerated sigh and leaned back in his chair. He’d given this speech before. “This is my reality, Bentzon: to consult with the justice minister and the attorney general. To send e-mails about why we didn’t reach the crime scene two minutes earlier. To take calls from journalists about why we’re doing such a lousy job. Because that’s how they see us.”
Sommersted pointed out the window, toward the general public. “Think of me as your defender. I’ll handle the bloodhounds at Christiansborg and various newsrooms. All you officers have to do is what you’ve always done: Catch the criminals, toss them in prison, and throw away the key.”
Niels merely smiled. Sommersted did have a sense of humor.
“Timely precaution, Bentzon. Consider this a confidential assignment. Just between you and me. And have a good vacation when you get there.”
11
Police headquarters archives—Copenhagen
Good people?” There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in Casper’s voice. Only genuine curiosity. “You’re looking for ‘good people’?”
“Exactly.” Niels sat down on the edge of the desk and looked around the computer room with its clinical atmosphere. “We need to locate the good people. Can you help me?”
Casper had already sat down in front of the computer. Niels wasn’t offered a chair; that was standard procedure in the archives. Even though the office looked like all the other offices, just a little bigger, Niels felt like he’d forced his way into a stranger’s home. No offer of coffee or a chair. No polite introductory remarks. Niels couldn’t figure out whether the archivists didn’t like him or whether they simply lacked social skills. Maybe spending so many years in the dusty archives, surrounded by index cards, file folders, and computer systems, had gradually desocialized them and filled them with the fear that foreign bodies like Niels might destroy their meticulous order. The fear that anyone entering through the heavy black-painted wooden doors would bring chaos along with him.
“The art of being a good person,” said Casper as he Googled “good person.” He went on: “First hit: Jesus.”
“I’m glad we got that established, Casper.”
Casper looked up from the screen, genuinely pleased with Niels’s compliment. Irony doesn’t work in here, Niels reminded himself. Of course not. Irony can create misunderstandings, and misunderstandings can cause index errors, and then an important book, a file, or maybe a crucial letter might be lost forever. The archives storage rooms supposedly contained more than three hundred thousand registered items. Niels had never been there—access was strictly forbidden to unauthorized personnel—but the few people who had seen it described the place as a treasure trove of police history. There were things from as far back as the thirteenth century. And way too many unsolved murder cases. More than a hundred since the end of World War II. Of course, a lot of the perpetrators had long since gone to their graves and received their judgment in the next world. But from a statistical point of view, there were still at least forty murderers running around loose. Not to mention all the Danes who had disappeared. Some of them had run off, while others had gone to ground so successfully that they weren’t included in the statistics about unsolved murders.
Many of Niels’s colleagues had asked for permission to hunt through the archives after they retired. So even though irony was of no use down here, the place wasn’t lacking in its own overriding irony. Only when officers retired did they have enough time to do the work they’d been hired to do. Way too much time was spent on unnecessary paperwork. Reports that nobody read, documentation that was of no interest to anyone. Soon they wouldn’t be able to use the toilet without first consulting an Excel chart. Over the past eight or ten years it had gotten worse. The government had talked about cracking down on all the excess paperwork and unnecessary bureaucracy, but the reality was the exact opposite. In the meantime there was enough to deal with out in the streets and alleyways: biker clubhouses; gang wars; bestial violence in every imaginable abomination; the evictions of the squatters from the Youth House and the conflicts that followed in its wake; clueless young immigrants who couldn’t tell the difference between a disposable grill and their neighbor’s car; morally callous businesspeople who were constantly on the lookout for opportunities to strip a company of its assets; so-called gangsters from Eastern Europe and the Middle East; African prostitutes; poor wretches who were mentally ill but had nowhere to go because the number of hospital beds had been drastically cut back; and so on and so on. It wasn’t surprising that some police officers found it necessary to work beyond the retirement age. Among the police chiefs, it was whispered—only half in jest—that the government ought to create a republican guard like in the Middle Eastern countries. A small army of willing agents to do the government’s bidding. Such a guard could take care of clearing out the aging hippies from the Christiania settlement of Copenhagen and go to battle against the demonstrators here, there, and everywhere. It would create a breathing space so the police could do what they did best: to protect and to serve. To protect the people, to prevent and solve crimes.
Casper gave Niels a hesitant look. “Can you use Jesus?”
“We need to locate Danes, Casper. Who are alive today.”
“Good Danes?”
“Yes. Good, righteous people. I’d like to have a list.”
“Supreme Court justices and people like that?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Why don’t you give me an example?”
&nbs
p; “The Red Cross,” said Niels.
“Okay, good. So you’re talking about charity.”
“Not just charity. But including that.”
Casper turned back to his computer screen. How old was he? Probably not a day over twenty-two. So many young people today have learned so much by an early age, thought Niels. They’ve been around the world three times and finished their formal education; they can speak multiple languages and know how to develop their own computer programs. When Niels was twenty-two, he could patch a bicycle tire and count to ten in German.
“How many do you want? The Red Cross, Amnesty International, Lutheran Emergency Aid, UNICEF Denmark, the Peace Academy . . .”
“What’s the Peace Academy?” asked Susanne, the oldest archivist, looking up from her work.
Casper shrugged and pulled up their website. Susanne gave Casper and Niels a dissatisfied look.
“What about Save the Children? I send them donations,” she said.
“I don’t want organizations. I want people. Good people.”
“So what about the woman who’s in charge of Save the Children?” asked Susanne.
Niels took a deep breath and decided to start over from the beginning. “Here’s the thing: All around the world, good people are being murdered. People who have fought for the lives and limbs of other human beings. Their rights and their living conditions—”
“Okay, we’ll try something else,” Casper interrupted him. “We’ll do a search on those words.”
“What words?”
“Cross-referencing. The people that we label as ‘especially good’ will always be mentioned the most in the media, right? If there’s an international terrorist traveling around murdering them, he has to be getting his information somewhere. And that somewhere is the Internet.”
“Granted.”
“So all we—and the terrorists—have to do is enter the words we think would generate a goodness hit list. You know, words like environment, third world. Things like that.”
While Susanne thought about whether this was a good idea, Niels added more words to the list: “Aid workers, AIDS, medicine.”
Casper nodded and went on, “Climate. Vaccine. Cancer. Ecology. CO2.”
“But what does it mean to be a good person?” Susanne asked.
“It doesn’t really matter,” said Casper. “The important thing is what other people perceive as good.”
Niels had thought of other words: “Research. Clean water—no, clean drinking water.”
“That’s good. More?” Casper began typing in the words.
Susanne finally threw her skepticism to the wind. “What about infant mortality? Malaria. Health.”
“Good!”
“Illiteracy. Prostitution.”
“Abuse,” Niels interjected.
“Microloans. Working in developing countries, volunteers,” said Casper.
“The rain forest,” Susanne said, completing the list and looking indignant, as if Casper and Niels were personally in the process of chopping the rain forest into kindling. Casper’s fingers lifted off the keyboard as if it were a Steinway and he’d just played the last chords of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 3.
“Give me ten minutes,” he said.
Niels spent the waiting time at the coffee machine. The mocha was insipid. It didn’t measure up to the coffee from the espresso machine that Kathrine had dragged home from Paris last year. Niels was in an irascible mood. Maybe it was because of the place where he found himself at the moment. All those unsolved murders. Niels hated injustice more than he loved justice. An unsolved crime—murder, rape, assault—could keep him awake at night. Resentment and anger: That was the energy that drove him to fight injustice. But once he saw the criminal convicted, when he stood in front of the courthouse and saw him being driven off to prison, Niels was often struck by an inexplicable feeling of emptiness.
“Okay. How many names do you want?” asked Casper from his place at the keyboard.
Niels looked at his watch. A few minutes past ten. He wanted to get home by six o’clock at the latest so he could pack. He also needed to take more pills. Eight hours. One hour for each conversation. He would have to meet with all of them in person. He reasoned that a warning about a potential murder, no matter how unlikely, couldn’t be delivered over the phone. “Give me the top eight,” he said.
“Do you want a printout?”
“Yes, please.”
The machine hummed. Niels looked at the list. The cream of the crop of the humanitarian causes. The best of the best. He could stop anybody on the street, and they would most likely come up with the same names.
“Should we check them against our own database?” Casper glanced at Niels with almost a smile. It was tempting. These were the people who had gotten the most hits from the words “pertaining to goodness”—the ones who were most often in the media when it came to defending the weak and the helpless. Should they take a look at what the police database had to say about them?
“What do you think? It would take two minutes, tops,” Casper went on.
“No. We don’t need to do that. What matters is how the rest of the world perceives them.”
Susanne scrutinized the list, looking over Niels’s shoulder. “There, you see? The woman from Save the Children is on the list,” she said with relief. “But why is Mærsk the shipping magnate included?”
Casper studied the search results and shook his head. “Mærsk is associated with so many different projects around the world and in Denmark that he almost always shows up, no matter what we search for. He probably pays for a hundred elementary schools a year with his taxes alone. If we ran a search for the most hated Dane, he would probably show up on that list, too. Shall I cross him out?”
“Yes, do that. I don’t think he’d be first in the line of fire.”
“Who’s the person at the top?” asked Susanne.
“Thorvaldsen?” Niels was surprised she didn’t know him. “That’s the secretary-general of the Red Cross in Denmark.”
A new list came out of the printer. Instead of Mærsk occupying sixth place, it was now held by a pastor who was frequently in the news.
“All old friends,” Niels concluded. “Except for number eight. I don’t know him.”
“Gustav Lund. He got 11,237 hits on the words ‘save’ and ‘world.’ Let’s take a look,” said Casper as he Googled him. An intense-looking, aging professor in his fifties.
“Handsome guy,” said Susanne drily.
“Gustav Lund. Professor of mathematics. Oh, okay: recipient of the Fields Medal in mathematics in 2003, along with two Canadian and three American colleagues. Hmm . . . his son committed suicide . . . at only twelve years old.”
“That doesn’t make him a bad person,” Susanne said.
Niels and Casper looked as if they disagreed.
“Why is he considered good?” asked Susanne.
“Excellent question.” Casper studied the screen. “Here it is: In connection with the award, he stated that ‘it will be a mathematician who saves the world.’ That remark was apparently quoted far and wide. Should I cross him off the list and take number nine instead? A climate spokesperson from—”
“No, that’s okay.” Niels looked at the list. “Let’s leave room for a few surprises.”
12
Arlanda Airport—Stockholm, Sweden
As Abdul Hadi disembarked, he kept his eyes on the floor instead of the stewardess. He couldn’t do it. She belonged to the West; she was their possession. There was no reason to think anything else. She also reminded him too much of his sister, even though they looked nothing alike. The only similarity was their age, the age his sister would have been today: thirty-eight. She was only eight when she died.
At passport control, he got in the line for “all other nationalities.” Citizens of the European Union whisked right through their privileged gateway. They were the ones who could be trusted. Abdul Hadi’s line wasn’t moving. He was used to tha
t. An Arabic man had once called the line for other nationalities the “Orient Express.” A Somali mother with three children was carrying on a hopeless discussion with the Swedish police officer behind the glass pane. Abdul Hadi could see at once that she would never be admitted. He witnessed the same scene every time he traveled: non-Westerners who were sent back home because of problems with their visas, a child’s name that was not spelled the same on the passport and the plane ticket, no return ticket, or a passport photo that was too old. The slightest discrepancy could deny a person entry. Europe was a fortress—the passport control was the drawbridge over the moat, and if you didn’t know the correct password, you would be turned away.
The Somali woman was crying. Her children were hungry; their skin was stretched tight over the bones of their faces, something that was usually seen only on people who were very old. It pained him to look at them. The woman had to step aside to make way for others. Abdul Hadi’s face was subjected to intense scrutiny, both his passport photo and his features. While he waited, he counted the Europeans who were allowed to pass through in the other line. Five. The officer slid his passport through some sort of machine. Twelve.
“Business?”
“Visiting family.”
“Do you have a return ticket?”
“Yes.”
“Show me, please.”
Abdul Hadi looked at the other line. Five more—seventeen. The officer inspected his return ticket. Admittance was denied unless you had a valid return ticket. They wanted to be sure that you would be leaving as soon as possible. Twenty-five. Abdul Hadi counted to thirty-two before the officer handed back his passport and ticket without comment.
“Next!”
There was only one Arabic man waiting alone in the arrivals area. He and Abdul Hadi exchanged glances and then approached each other.
The Last Good Man Page 7