Niels could tell as soon as he picked up the phone: Sommersted was trying to act calm and sympathetic, but he wasn’t having much luck with either. He was breathing fast, in a halting manner, and that gave him away.
“What’s going on?”
“I know, I know.” Niels was annoyed that his voice sounded so weak.
“What do you know?”
“I know that I’ve been arrested for breaking into a health clinic.”
“What’s going on, Niels?” his boss asked again, casting aside any attempt to seem sympathetic. What remained was a thoroughly furious Sommersted. “And what the hell are you doing on Fyn?”
Niels didn’t reply. He found silence preferable to trying to offer impossible explanations. What was he supposed to say?
“I’m waiting, Bentzon.” Sommersted had toned down his rage.
“It has to do with the case of the good people who are being murdered.”
“That again?” A resigned, melodramatic sigh. Followed by silence. Sommersted was working up to something. Niels could sense it. And sure enough: “So it’s true, what they’ve been saying.”
“They?”
“That was why you needed the pills. For yourself. You’re not well, Niels.”
“No.”
“I don’t think you’re at all well.”
Niels could practically hear Sommersted thinking over the phone.
“All right. I want you to come back to Copenhagen. I’ll get Rishøj to drive you across the bridge. Leon will pick you up there.”
“Rishøj?” Niels made eye contact with Hans, who smiled.
“Exactly. Leave now, and then I’ll see you at headquarters around . . . Give me a call when you’re getting close. We won’t be able to avoid an internal investigation.”
Niels wasn’t listening. He heard only one sentence: I want you to come back to Copenhagen. “I’m not going back to Copenhagen.”
“What do you mean?” Sommersted sounded hostile.
“I’m not going back to Copenhagen.”
Niels hung up. He stood there, looking around at the local station. The police force’s answer to Little House on the Prairie. A couple of computers. The walls decorated with photos of children and grandchildren. An article clipped from the local paper. Police Doing Battle with Obesity. Niels wondered what that was about but didn’t bother to read the article. What exactly were they doing? Had they started handing out tickets to people for not keeping up with their weekly jogging?
“We’ve got to go now.” Rishøj sounded almost apologetic.
Niels didn’t move.
“Niels? Your wife is waiting out in the car.”
“She’s not my wife.”
Rishøj put on his coat.
“Rishøj? I know this probably sounds crazy. But what if I ask you to lock me up until Saturday morning?”
5
Fyn
The snow’s encounter with northern Fyn was not a pretty sight. All around the station, the clumps of white crystals were mixed with swirling dirt. Instead of white, this part of the world had turned light brown.
The police car was also covered with dirty snow and slush. Hannah was sitting in the front passenger seat, which surprised Niels. It was a clear breach of regulations, but maybe it was because Rishøj regarded them more as friends than as enemies. Hannah didn’t say a word as Niels and Hans got in. Niels sat in back. The doors couldn’t be opened from the inside.
Rishøj turned the key in the ignition. Lisa was still inside the office, which was also against the rules. One officer for two prisoners. Prisoners. The word seemed all wrong.
The aging police officer turned so he could see both Hannah and Niels. As if he were a schoolteacher about to take the kids out for a field trip and he wanted to issue a few admonitions. Niels was almost expecting him to say: “We’ll be at Hans Christian Andersen’s house in an hour. Did you remember to bring your bag lunches and milk?” Instead, he said, “I’ve got to be honest. I’ve never seen the likes of this before.”
Both Niels and Hannah hoped that the other person would say something. But their continued silence didn’t seem to bother Rishøj.
“Not much happens out here. Young toughs getting into trouble. Brawls down at the bodega. That sort of thing. Occasionally, we’ve gone over to Vollsmose to help out when the young Arabs get out of hand. And you know what?”
“No, what?” Hannah hurried to ask.
“Most of them are okay. Sure, some of them are off the deep end, but most of them are just bored. So why not just give them a youth center or a soccer field? Oh well, that wasn’t what I meant to talk about.”
Niels stared at him. Rishøj smiled, looking like a man who had long ago lost all connection with the world around him. A bewildered, slightly absentminded man who ought to get rid of the police uniform and realize that his future battles would be waged out at his summer house where the enemies weren’t “young Arabs” but knotgrass, saltbush, and other garden weeds.
Whenever Hans Rishøj paused in his monologue, they rode in silence. It was snowing harder. Drifts swept across the road from the fields, and the traffic moved slowly. Hans talked a lot. Mostly about his daughter who was a hairdresser. Hannah nodded now and then, but Niels wasn’t listening. He was thinking about what would happen when they reached Copenhagen. He could just picture it: Sommersted’s anger. Leon’s scorn. Worst of all: the psychological evaluation he’d have to undergo in the National Hospital’s psychiatric unit. He felt like screaming: I don’t want to die! But it was as if something—something—were tugging at him.
“One of your colleagues is waiting for us on the other side of the bridge,” Rishøj explained. “He’ll drive you the rest of the way back to the city.”
Hannah turned to look at Niels. “You see, Niels? No matter what you do. Now we’re on our way back.”
“Just like you said.”
“But look at the other side of it: This is something bigger than us. Something we don’t know anything about. And now you can sense it.”
“Are you trying to console me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Rishøj gave her a puzzled look.
Niels felt an urge to curl up in a fetal position. In less than two hours, he would be back in Copenhagen. Up ahead they could see the line starting to form for the Great Belt Bridge. I’m not going back across that bridge, he promised himself. If I reach the other side, it’s all over.
A long line of cars was waiting in front of the bridge.
“What’s going on?” Rishøj muttered to himself.
“Closed because of the weather, maybe?” Hannah suggested.
The officer nodded. He sat there, impatiently drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “My pipe is calling to me,” he murmured, and opened the door. “Anyone else?” he asked.
Niels nodded.
Hannah was right. The bridge had been temporarily closed because of poor visibility. Niels caught her eye as she climbed out of the car, too.
“I’m going to call your colleagues on the other side. Just so they don’t think we’ve forgotten them.” Rishøj moved a few yards away to make the call.
“Are you ready?” Niels whispered to Hannah.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not going across that bridge.”
“Niels, it doesn’t matter what—” Hannah didn’t manage to say anything else before Rishøj was back.
“They say the wind is starting to die down.” He got out his pipe and tried to light it, but his lighter refused to work.
Niels thought fast. “I have a lighter in my suitcase in the trunk.”
Rishøj nodded and fished out his keys. The trunk opened with a faint clack. Niels reached inside his suitcase.
“There’s more snow on the way. Look over there,” Hannah said, and the aging policeman looked toward the north with concern. When he turned, he was in the direct line of fire from Niels’s Heckler & Koch. But he didn’t notice. He had lo
ng ago tossed all instinctive reflexes overboard. It was lucky that the national police force had any use for him at all. “It’s always this stretch of water that gets hit the hardest,” he muttered. “I’ve got a boat in Kerteminde that—”
Niels had to raise his gun and tap him on the shoulder before the officer noticed the pistol. He wasn’t afraid. Not even surprised. He simply couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
“Get in the car,” Niels said to Rishøj. He picked up his suitcase and handed it to Hannah.
“What?”
“I want you to get in the backseat of the car.”
“But why?” Rishøj’s voice was barely audible.
Niels didn’t answer, just opened the door. “Give me the keys.”
“All right, but—”
“Now!” Niels raised his voice.
The clicking sound when Niels opened the door to the backseat made Rishøj’s expression change. Niels saw it at once. Everything came into focus. Niels realized that he had actually done Rishøj a service. The moment was of crucial importance for the officer. His image of the world as an oversize Duckburg, where everyone was basically good at heart—an image that he had cultivated for decades—collapsed as Niels and Hannah looked on. Nothing remained but disappointment. I thought we were on the same team, his expression said.
“Get in the car,” Niels calmly insisted.
“But why?”
“Because I’m not going back to Copenhagen. I need to get away.” Niels leaned inside and pounded the butt of his gun against the police radio until it was smashed, leaving a couple of wires sticking out. “Give me your cell phone.”
The blow to his head caught Niels completely off guard. Pain spread through his skull, and he heard a screaming sound in his left ear.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” roared Rishøj. “Do you think you can lock me up in here?”
Another blow. This one harder. Niels staggered and dropped his gun. Rishøj was fumbling to take out his weapon. Niels spun around and punched him.
“Niels!” Hannah’s shout seemed to come from another world, even though she was standing right next to him. Niels took a second to gather his thoughts. The morphine. The syringes. They were in the glove compartment. He was aware that Rishøj was wailing in pain and desperation. Niels found the morphine packet inside one of the clinically clean plastic bags used by the police to collect evidence.
“The suitcase!” Niels said. He snatched up the suitcase and then grabbed Hannah by the hand, and they set off running.
They climbed over the traffic divider, leaped over a frozen puddle, and raced across the frost-covered fields. Taking a quick glance over his shoulder, Niels saw the old policeman aiming his pistol at them. “Hannah, I think he’s—”
The sound of a faint bang resounded across the frozen ground. Another bang. They sounded like firecrackers.
“He’s shooting at us!” shouted Niels, gasping for breath as they ran, finally disappearing into the swirling snow.
Their shoes sank deep into the powdery snow between the trees.
“Is he coming after us?” Hannah turned around.
“I can see a road up ahead.”
She was crying. “Where?”
In Denmark there was always a road up ahead. “Just keep going.”
They left the trees behind and clambered across the honest efforts of a landscape architect to unite farm fields with a picnic area.
“What now? Which way?” She started walking along the road. “Maybe a car will give us a lift or—” She was interrupted by the sound of a bus coming toward them.
“Here comes the cavalry,” muttered Niels, sticking out his hand, knowing that was the way to flag down a bus out in the country.
The bus stopped.
“Your car couldn’t take the cold, is that it?” yelled the driver in his lilting Fyn accent. “I’m only going as far as the station, but from there you can catch a train to Odense.”
“Thanks.” Niels boarded the bus first, trying to avoid the driver’s eye.
They sat down in the last seat in the back and looked out the window. The icy road forced the driver to proceed slowly, which was not at all in keeping with Niels’s racing pulse. But the driver set the pace, which was fine. It was a matter of staying calm. Acting like everybody else.
Niels knew of professional criminals who had committed the most meticulously planned robberies—stealing from banks, armored cars, jewelry stores—only to be overwhelmed by panic afterward, when the job was done. It was a behavior that was deeply embedded in the human psyche. After committing a crime, the impulse was to get away fast. Far away.
The bus pulled into a small station, and the driver got off along with the passengers.
Hannah and Niels went inside a minuscule waiting room. The coffee vending machine wasn’t working. The whole place smelled of urine.
“The train station is over there.” Niels pointed. “We’ll go and buy tickets. Where should we go?”
She touched his lower lip. “You’re bleeding.”
Niels nodded. He felt dizzy. Rishøj had hit him hard. “You don’t really need to . . .” He stopped.
“What? Flee with you?”
“Yes. It’s not you that someone’s after.”
“Something’s after,” she said, smiling. “Not someone. If it was a person, I wouldn’t be here. But since it’s something, that makes it much more interesting.”
“Worth going to prison for? If things go that far?”
“I’ll just tell them that you kidnapped me.”
The train stopped every time two houses stood close enough together to be called a village. But it didn’t matter. They sat across from each other, and it felt good. Niels kept trying to steal glances at Hannah, but she caught him at it. Niels turned to look out the window, trying to fix his eyes on what they were passing. When they headed into a tunnel, he saw Hannah’s reflection in the windowpane. She was studying him. In a way that pleased him.
“Look at me,” she said.
He complied. He thought the tunnel suddenly seemed very long. Just before they emerged into the light again, he happened to think about Kathrine—his guilty conscience calling to him. He tried to imagine it was Kathrine sitting across from him, but he saw only Hannah.
An experience from his childhood rescued him from the awkward situation. Niels began talking and talking, as if Hannah might attack him and strip off his clothes if he stopped. “I was six years old,” he said. “On the way to Costa Brava on a bus with my mother. By the time we reached Flensburg, things started to go wrong. It was late at night, and most of the other passengers were asleep. I woke up feeling sick, almost as if I were suffocating. My mother was worried, and she asked the driver to stop the bus. The other passengers got mad. They were headed off on vacation and didn’t want to have to stop because of a boy suffering from motion sickness. But when they saw the boy—when they saw me—lying in the center aisle and gasping for breath, my whole body racked by convulsions, they didn’t say another word.
“An ambulance was called. It was all very confusing because at first the ambulance wasn’t allowed to enter Germany. Finally, the bus drove me back to the Danish border, and the medics carried me across. I don’t think I was conscious; at least I don’t remember what happened. I woke up a few hours later in the Aabenraa hospital, and I felt fine.”
“You can’t leave your territory. That’s fantastic.”
He looked down at the floor.
“Sorry. I meant fascinating. As a phenomenon.”
“Maybe.” Niels didn’t know what to think about being called a fascinating phenomenon.
“So what happened with your vacation?” Hannah asked when she realized there was a human aspect to the story.
Niels shrugged. “We spent a week in a summer house on the fjord, catching a lot of crabs. So many that it bordered on mass murder.” He chuckled at the memory. “Since then things have gotten a little better,” he went on. “Maybe it
’s my age, but nowadays I can drag myself all the way to Berlin. Although I end up feeling sick then, too.”
They changed trains in Odense and continued west toward Esbjerg. Niels was now sitting next to Hannah. Not across from her. They had taken backward-facing seats.
“Just imagine a very long train without separate cars,” she said suddenly. “Meaning one long space, so it’s possible to stand in the middle of it and look from one end to the other.”
“You mean I’m on the train?”
“No, you’re standing on the platform. I’m standing inside the train.” She got up. The other passengers stared at her, but she didn’t care. “Imagine that I’m holding a flashlight in each hand.” Hannah was standing in the center aisle, holding two imaginary flashlights. “Can you picture it? The flashlights are shining in opposite directions. One is aimed at the front of the train, the other at the rear. It’s a very long train.”
The three other passengers had stopped pretending they weren’t listening. They put down their newspapers and closed their laptops and were looking at Hannah. She was looking at them. “All of you are on the platform. The train is moving fast. It’s very long. Are you following me?”
“Yes.” They all nodded.
“The train rushes past, and you’re all standing on the platform. The second that I’m right in front of you, I turn on the flashlights simultaneously.” She allowed the image to sink in. “Which beam of light strikes first?”
They pondered the problem. Niels was just about to answer when a young man near the door beat him to it. “The beam pointed at the rear.”
“Exactly. Why?”
“Because the train catches up with it. While the front of the train is traveling away from the other one,” he replied.
“That’s right!”
Hannah was in her natural habitat: the lecture hall. Immersed in theories and ideas and the conveying of knowledge.
“Now imagine that all of you are standing here, inside the train. And you’re holding the flashlights. The train rushes along. Then you turn them on simultaneously. Which beam strikes first? The one pointing toward the rear or the one pointing toward the front of the train?”
The Last Good Man Page 35