The Last Good Man

by A. J. Kazinsky

  “It looks like that’s what you’re already doing.”

  “I can toss it out the window.”

  “Go ahead and smoke. I’ll have one, too.”

  Niels pounded on the car horn. “We’re not getting anywhere like this,” he said.

  “No, I can see that.”

  He swerved the car over into the other lane. An idiot wearing a suit and hiding behind the wheel of a huge BMW instantly pulled out to block the intersection. Niels slapped his police ID against the window. “Jerk!”

  “Isn’t this street one-way?” asked Hannah as the BMW moved back and Niels sped down the side street.

  “Here. Take my cell phone.”

  “Why?”

  “You said there are two places where the next murders will take place, right?”

  “Yes, here and in Venice.”

  “Call Tommaso. The Italian.”

  “Di Barbara?”

  “Tell him that . . . No, give him the coordinates. Tell him what you’ve figured out.”

  Reluctantly, Hannah took Niels’s cell. He had already punched in the number. Hannah listened. “It’s his voice mail.”

  “Leave a message.”

  “What should I say?”

  Niels gave Hannah an annoyed look. Only a short time ago this woman had been a powerhouse, a fucking explosion of thoughts and ideas, calculations and greatness, yet now she’d been reduced to a blithering amateur. Somebody who was a tourist in real life, who would soon hurry home to the fortress of theory and grief that she’d created inside her summer house.

  “Tell Tommaso you’ve figured out that a murder is going to be committed today, either in Venice or in Copenhagen, when the sun goes down.”

  Hannah turned back to the Italian’s voice mail. “Bonjour, Monsieur di Barbara.”

  Her rusty French proceeded in the same fashion as the car Niels was driving the wrong way up the one-way street: faltering and swerving. Niels clumsily maneuvered around a garbage truck. A man riding a bicycle didn’t hesitate to express his anger. He pounded his fist on the roof of the Audi. Hannah gave a start. In Copenhagen it was the bicyclists versus the drivers, and people easily switched from one role to the other.

  “Tell him that you’ll text him the latitude and longitude. Then he can find the location on a GPS.”

  Hannah went back to speaking French.

  Niels listened. Even though Hannah sometimes came to an abrupt halt in the middle of a sentence, French words had never sounded more beautiful than the ones now issuing from her lips.

  57

  Venice

  The sound of the boat’s motor plowing its way through the murky water drowned out the phone. Tommaso’s Yamaha outboard had been in the shop for repair since October, but he finally had it back. He was enjoying the sound of its uninterrupted roar without a single discordant note—it ran like a dream. A ray of sun lit up the lagoon, promising better times. Tommaso looked at the dachshund precariously stretched out on top of a pile of rotten ropes. The dog belonged to his mother, and he was on his way to take the animal to the pound.

  “Are you seasick?” Tommaso asked the dog as he attempted a smile. The dachshund gave him a woeful look, as if aware of what was in store for him.

  Tommaso could see the island now. The sick-bay island, as some people called Santa Maria di Nazareth. When people arrived in the city at the head of the Adriatic four hundred years ago, the plague was ravaging the continent and they had been forced to spend forty days on the island. Quaranta, which means “forty” in Italian. That was the origin of the word “quarantine.” Forty days for people to prove that their skin wasn’t going to break out in blisters. Forty days of not knowing whether the island might be the last place they ever saw on this earth. Maybe it was the thought of the plague, but Tommaso felt as if the flulike symptoms he’d been experiencing for the past few days were getting more insistent. “Swine flu,” he murmured as he decreased the speed of the boat. He was having a little trouble breathing. He closed his eyes and savored the warmth of the sun. If he hadn’t been suspended, he’d be over at the train station with his fellow officers. The arrival of the politicians and the justice minister was a big event, and Commissario Morante had ordered the entire police force to stand ready. That would happen without Tommaso. And it suited him just fine.

  The buildings facing the lagoon were all lopsided. The swampy earth beneath the island had twisted their foundations, and the structures were starting to list. Rust from the iron bars on the windows had run in streaks down the brick walls. After the plague disappeared, the island had been used as a prison for the insane, but these days it was a pound for dogs. Stray dogs from both the mainland and the islands were brought here. Many were euthanized; some waited for a new owner.

  Tommaso switched off the motor a few yards from the dock. At that instant he heard his cell phone ringing. Ten missed calls. One from Denmark. From Niels Bentzon. Nine calls from the hospice. That was a bad sign.

  58

  Copenhagen

  Save the planet. Apocalypse if we don’t act now. We demand action.

  Niels and Hannah sat in the car, staring at the demonstration. Some of the protesters were dancing, while others were about to explode with anger at the injustice in the world.

  “How far is it now?” asked Niels.

  “That depends on the mode of transportation.”

  “How many decimals of latitude and longitude?”

  “Decimals?” She smiled. “The degrees are divided up into minutes—meaning sixtieths—and seconds. So the number of seconds depends on—”

  Niels interrupted her. “Hannah! How far?”

  “About a mile and a half.”

  Niels drove the car up onto the sidewalk, set the hand brake, and yanked the GPS out of the socket.

  “What are you doing?” Hannah asked him.

  “We’re going to walk.”

  From a distance, there was almost something aesthetic about the demonstrators. It was a picture they’d seen a hundred times before—a dense swarm of people following the curve of the streets. But it wasn’t the same thing when they joined the throngs and walked among them. Niels held on to Hannah’s arm as they forced their way through. Here, in the center of the action, they were surrounded by fierce and chaotic energy. And the stench of liquor. Niels caught the eye of a woman with multiple piercings. The pupils of her eyes were slightly dilated, and she had a remote expression on her face. Nothing could possibly happen to her; she wouldn’t even feel it when the police batons struck her. That was something the people sitting at home in front of their TV sets didn’t know. The young people were on drugs, and it often took two or three officers to handle an irate anarchist anesthetized by some bizarre cocktail of potent beer and designer drugs. They didn’t react to pain.

  Where was Hannah? A few moments ago he was holding on to her arm, but now she was gone. Niels looked around. Everyone was dressed in black, as if for Judgment Day. A big drum was trying to keep the tempo. Suddenly, he saw her. She looked scared. A drunk who was at least ten years too old for this kind of demonstration had put his arm around Hannah and was trying to dance. As if this were Mardi Gras.

  “Niels!”

  He pushed his way through the crowd, moving against the stream.

  “Hey!” A youth had grabbed hold of Niels’s jacket. “I know you. You’re a cop! A fucking cop!” he cried, and was clearly about to repeat it even louder when Niels shoved him aside. The boy lost his footing and dropped to the ground like summer dew, light and barely noticeable. At least it happened so quickly that Niels was able to get hold of Hannah before anyone discovered the kid. He held on to her hand, which was warm in spite of the cold temperature.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I want to get out of here.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here,” said Niels, looking over his shoulder. The boy was on his feet, glancing around. They were barely able to make out his words before they were drowned out by the noise fro
m the big drum: “You fucking pig. You fucking pig.”

  Copenhagen had become an angry city. People had even scrawled on the yellow stucco walls surrounding Assistens Cemetery, voicing their frustrations. “Fucked” was apparently the word that best described the city’s existential crisis. The earth carries your imprint, it said above the entrance to the cemetery, friendly-looking letters shaped out of red neon. Maybe yet another climate message. Or it could be the simple truth of a gravedigger: We leave an imprint if we allow ourselves to be buried.

  Inside the cemetery, they paused to catch their breath.

  “We’ll cut through here. Okay?” asked Niels.

  Hannah surveyed the cemetery and then looked back at the demonstrators, as if considering turning around.

  “As the crow flies. Is something wrong?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  He had an urge to hold her hand again. It had felt so good in his.

  “What does the GPS say?”

  She took it out of her pocket. “The battery’s low.”

  “Then come on.”

  Niels touched her elbow. She gave a start. Then her expression changed, and she looked so vulnerable that he wanted to put his arms around her. A thought occurred to Niels, but too late. Was it here that Hannah’s son was buried?

  Kathrine had dragged him over here on a specially arranged midnight tour a few years ago. The participants had been given burning torches, and they had moved from one grave to another while two pastors, one woman and one man, took turns recounting the history of the cemetery. The English sweate. He remembered that term because it sounded so strange. It was a virus that had killed thousands of Copenhagen citizens in the sixteenth century. There were so many bodies that a new cemetery had to be established. Ever since then, the most famous Danes had all been buried here at Assistens Cemetery.

  “What does the GPS say now?”

  “Straight ahead,” replied Hannah, still looking uneasy. The snow had turned the cemetery into a monochrome landscape. The white blanket was broken only by the dark headstones. It looked like a checkerboard in black and white. The smaller headstones belonged to the pawns, the unknown dead. Moss and all manner of weather had long since worn away the names engraved on the stones. High above them towered the kings: Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, and Niels Bohr. Surrounding them stood the bishops and rooks: the actors and civil servants who had been well known in their day but were now forgotten. Finally, there were those who had achieved immortality because of their unusual exit from life. A young widow, for instance, who had been buried alive a couple of centuries ago. Niels recalled the story that the female pastor had told. In those days a gravedigger also did some moonlighting. He would bury the people in the daytime and then work as a grave robber at night. When he opened the young widow’s coffin, her eyes flew open. “Free me from this terrible place!” she screamed. The gravedigger slammed his shovel against her forehead, grabbed her jewelry, and covered the grave back up. Many years later, on his deathbed, the gravedigger confessed to the murder. In modern times the body of the widow was exhumed and found to be lying in disarray and without any jewelry; her body had clearly been disturbed in its coffin. Nowadays her grave received as many visitors as Hans Christian Andersen’s.

  Hannah looked relieved as they left the cemetery and once again stood out on the street. They crossed Nørrebrogade and walked along Møllergade, past the Literary Center and the Jewish cemetery. The snow crunched under their feet, and the air was bitterly cold. They walked in silence. Hannah kept her eyes fixed on the GPS. Then she came to an abrupt halt. “Here!”

  “Here?” Niels looked around. What had he expected? At any rate, not a drab old co-op apartment building. Two baby strollers were competing with a delivery bicycle to block the sidewalk.

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked at the GPS doubtfully. “At least I think so,” she replied uncertainly. “Although the battery is used up now. It’s dead.”

  “But you think it was here?”

  “Yes. Of course, there’s room for error. But it has to be within a few yards of here.”

  Niels walked a few yards back and forth. The co-op building stood all by itself. There had once been adjoining buildings on either side, but they had been torn down. The only other thing in sight was a dreary and deserted playground.

  “I don’t know,” said Hannah, shifting from one foot to the other uneasily.

  “What don’t you know?”

  “There’s a small degree of error. Maybe a few hundred yards. If only I had more time.”

  “This can’t be the place.”

  She looked at him. “What were you expecting to find?”

  Niels shook his head. “I don’t know. A religious lunatic, maybe. Let’s assume that your system is right. Who could have thought up such a thing?”

  “Why aren’t you looking for the next victim instead?”

  Niels shrugged. “It could be anybody. Someone who happens to come walking past.” He looked at the nameplates posted next to the door of the building.

  “If you think about it, Niels . . . I mean, just think about the mathematical precision.” Hannah smiled at the thought.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Let’s call it a phenomenon,” she suggested.

  “A phenomenon?” Niels couldn’t share Hannah’s apparent joy over the theory. Instead, he called Casper back at police headquarters. “Niels Bentzon here. I have a few names that I’d like you to check for me.”

  Hannah looked at Niels in surprise as he began reading off the names from the building’s intercom panel. Carl Petersen, third floor. Lisa O. Jensen, third floor. All of a sudden the door opened. Niels took a step back. An old man gave them a surly look. “What are you doing here?”

  Niels didn’t even bother to take out his ID. “Copenhagen Police. Keep moving!”

  The old man was about to say something else, but Niels interrupted him. “This is none of your concern.”

  The building tenant headed down the street, although he looked back at least five times. In the meantime, Casper had typed in the names. “I think I have the person you’re looking for,” he said.

  “Who is it?”

  “Carl Petersen, third-floor right.”

  “Really? What about him?”

  “He raped and strangled a girl back in 1972. Buried her body near Damhus Lake. He was paroled in 1993. Born in 1951.”

  59

  Ospedale Fatebenefratelli—Venice

  Tommaso tied the dachshund’s leash to the boat, which he moored behind the ambulance that was quietly rocking from side to side at the covered boat landing. It was possible to bring a boat right into the middle of the hospice, which was what Tommaso had just done. The dog barked and growled, apparently delighted to be at a safe distance from the pound once again. Tommaso jumped up onto the slippery marble floor and took off running. As if that would make any difference. He’d gotten the message that his mother was dead just as he was pulling up at the sick-bay island. He’d been preparing himself for this event for months, but the guilt he felt was stronger than he’d expected. He should have been here.

  The eldest monk was sitting in the room, but not next to the bed. Instead, he sat next to the window, bending over his rosary. He looked up. Was there a trace of reproach in his eyes? Tommaso didn’t care for the man; he wasn’t as forgiving and loving as Sister Magdalena.

  “It’s good that you came,” said the monk.

  Tommaso walked around the bed and sat down on a chair. His mother didn’t look any different. “When did she die?” he asked.

  “About an hour ago,” said the monk.

  “Was she alone?”

  “Sister Magdalena had been in to see her before going home. The next time we looked in on her . . .”

  He didn’t need to say anything more. Signora di Barbara had died alone.

  The tears were unexpected. Tommaso had thought that he would feel relieved. But he didn’t.
For a few moments he sobbed without making a sound, then he gasped for air, letting his lungs take over and give voice to his pain. The monk came to stand behind him, placing his hand on Tommaso’s shoulder. At the moment that was all right; it was what he needed.

  “I wish I had been here,” he managed to stammer.

  “She died in her sleep. It’s the best kind of death.”

  The best kind of death. The words tried to find some meaning in Tommaso’s mind.

  “The best kind of death,” the monk repeated.

  “Yes.”

  Tommaso reached for his mother’s hand. It was cold. The small knuckles, which had worked so hard all her life, were closed in a fist. A coin fell out of her hand. Ten cents. The little gleaming coin lay on the blanket. Tommaso was surprised, and he turned to look at the monk. He had seen it, too. Tommaso turned his mother’s hand over and carefully opened her fingers. There were two more coins. A half euro and a twenty-cent piece. “Why is she holding coins?”

  The monk shrugged. “I’ll ask Magdalena. We’ve been trying to call her. I’m sure we’ll be able to reach her soon.”

  Tommaso sat there, holding the three coins, unsure what to do with them. It was as if the unexpected appearance of the coins had put a damper on his grief, adding a slight mystery to the situation. Why was his dead mother holding eighty cents? Tommaso put the coins in his pocket, then turned her hand over and placed it palm down, like the other one.

  60

  Nørrebro—Copenhagen

  Before Niels knocked on the door, he reached over and pulled up the collar of Hannah’s coat.

  “Do I look like a cop now?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Just let me do the talking.”

  Niels knocked. There was no nameplate fastened to the door. The tenant had used a marker to write his name directly on the paneling. They could hear noise coming from inside, but no one opened the door. Niels unbuttoned his jacket so he’d have easier access to his gun.