The Killing Bay

by Chris Ould

  “Okay,” Karl Atli said, although he still didn’t seem overly happy.

  “Okay, good. You can drop me off here.”

  Karl Atli stopped the car on the corner of Djóna í Geil gøta opposite the grey police building and Hentze got out quickly. “Fjalsgøta 82,” he said again before closing the door. “As fast as you can.”

  50

  INSIDE THE STATION THE STAIRWELL ECHOED WITH CLATTERING feet, going up and coming down, but on the the third floor Hentze found the CID corridor as quiet as normal for that time of night. It surprised him, given what seemed to have occurred, and he walked briskly to Remi Syderbø’s office.

  The door was open and Remi was on the phone, saying little but listening carefully with a serious frown on his face. As Hentze entered, Remi said, “Okay, I understand. Yes.” He rang off and gestured Hentze further in. “Tell me what you know,” he said without any preamble.

  Hentze took a second to regroup his thoughts, then told Remi as briefly as possible what had occurred. He went as far as the security forces breaking into the garage but didn’t mention his instructions to Karl Atli regarding Veerle Koning.

  “Right,” Remi said when Hentze came to a stop. “And you’ve heard there was an explosion at the harbour about ten minutes ago?”

  “Yeh, just,” Hentze nodded. “Do you know any details?”

  “No, but we have to assume it’s connected to what you found – especially as the national security service has closed off the area.” He gestured at the phone. “That was the Commander. We’re instructed to comply with all security service instructions for the duration of this emergency.”

  “Which emergency?” Hentze asked. “The explosion or something else?”

  Remi shook his head as if the distinction didn’t matter. “Apparently counter-terrorism have several operations in progress across the islands. That’s all I know, except that Hans Lassen is going spare in the operations room. He’s got patrols being held back at the harbour and reports coming in of men with guns at Runavík and on the approach to the Northern Isles Tunnel. I hope, though I’m guessing, that they’re security forces and not something else.”

  “Have you called anyone in – from our department, I mean?”

  “Only Oddur so far. Dánjal was on duty anyway and—”

  His phone rang again and he picked it up straight away. “Yes?”

  Remi listened for several seconds, face cast in a deepening frown. “They’re taking them to hospital?” he asked in the end. “Okay, I’ll get someone from uniform to be there – no, there’s no point. Yeh, bring him here.”

  He hung up.

  “That was Dánjal. He’s at the west harbour. Annika Mortensen was hurt in the explosion. It sounds as if she was trying to catch one of the Alliance protesters with a petrol bomb and it went off.”

  “Shit – how badly hurt?”

  “Burns; that’s all the Danes will say. Also, Jan Reyná was detained with another man, but he’s being released.”

  Hentze nodded, already taking out his phone. “I’ll call some people I know in the hospital ED. They’ll tell me how Annika is whether the Danes like it or not.”

  * * *

  When your hands have been zip-tied by a professional it hurts for the first two or three minutes, then you start to lose sensation below your wrists. After fifteen minutes I couldn’t feel my hands at all – not even if they were still there. I couldn’t check because the guy who’d fastened the zip tie round my wrists was a pro and they always make sure your hands are behind you.

  There was no point in complaining, though, even if there’d been someone to complain to. The guys in black tactical uniforms and masks were – at the least – anti-terrorist squad, perhaps special forces, and neither would give a damn about my discomfort. All they’re ever interested in is making sure you’re incapable of pressing, pushing or releasing anything that might make something go bang.

  To that end I’d also been thoroughly and roughly frisked and my mobile, wallet and keys had been taken away. My only small consolation was that I hadn’t been hauled off and thrown in the back of a van with a hood over my head like Lange, the man I’d been holding when the tactical squad had arrived.

  So I sat awkwardly in the back of an unmarked car and tried not to rest my weight on my tied hands. From this sideways position I watched with a limited view as black-clad figures came and went with brisk efficiency, and then as two ambulances arrived and were allowed through the blockade on the road. Their crews carried rucksacks and bags quickly towards the harbour jetties, but then I couldn’t see any more. I still didn’t know how badly Annika Mortensen had been hurt, but I guessed that she must have been injured from the fact that there were two ambulances. The woman she’d been chasing when the petrol bomb exploded was probably the worse off. I hoped it was that way round, anyway.

  Finally, about five minutes after the ambulances had arrived, a woman wearing what looked like a police jacket but bare of insignia approached the car with a tall man whose face was still masked. The rear door of the car was opened and the woman looked in. She was about forty and very brisk. “Mr Reyná, you can get out now.”

  That was easier said than done without working hands, but once I’d shuffled along the seat and got my feet in the doorway the tall guy reached in without ceremony and hauled me to my feet. As soon as I was upright he turned me around, then I heard a snip and felt the release of my wrists.

  “Takk,” I said with relief. He said nothing, just stood there. The rain hadn’t stopped, but it was slackening off, and now that I was out in it again I felt cold.

  The woman seemed to wait for a prescribed time while I refamiliarised myself with my hands, then she shifted. She had the dry, pragmatic air of someone who had a long list of tasks to carry out. “For the moment this area is restricted,” she said. “So you will be escorted to the barrier and passed into the authority of the local police force. They will wish to ask you some questions. You will not speak to or try to communicate with anyone else until you have been released by the local police. Do you understand this?”

  It was a pro forma speech so I nodded. “Do you know what happened to Annika Mortensen, the police officer I was with?”

  The woman considered that briefly. “She has some injuries, but they are not a danger to life.”

  “And the girl she was chasing?”

  She wasn’t going to go that far. “You may be told more information by the local police. They will also return your personal possessions. Now…”

  She gestured across the car park towards the road where Annika and I had left Hentze’s car and the guy beside me shifted as an additional hint. I started moving and he followed, to my left and slightly behind, as I took the shortest course towards the blue lights from two patrol cars. All the while my hands were throbbing back to painful life; pins and needles pulsing through them, intense and burning.

  My escort didn’t say anything but a couple of yards from the railing at the edge of the car park he stopped and watched me walk on until I was met by Dánjal Michelsen, one of maybe half a dozen people – both uniformed and plain-clothed – standing guard.

  “Jan, are you okay?” Dánjal asked.

  “I’ll live.” I ducked under the railing.

  “You have to come with me to the station,” Dánjal said flatly. I knew he’d been given an order.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said, looking round. “Is Hjalti here?”

  “Nei. I’m just told to take you to the station.” He glanced back in the direction I’d just come. “No one knows anything,” he said bleakly. “Only that something is really fucked up.”

  * * *

  The atmosphere in the station on Yviri við Strond was one I recognised: tense and pressured. I’d been confined to an office on the third floor and when people passed the window they were all moving briskly and their expressions were set. In situations like that there’s always the thought at the back of your mind that if things are like this now, how much furt
her might they go?

  Dánjal Michelsen had left me saying he’d try to find out what was happening and come back when he knew. I didn’t see him again that night. Instead a young uniformed officer came in a few minutes later, asked if I’d like coffee and went off to make it when I said that I would. He had the look of someone who was grateful to know what was required of him, even if it was only making a coffee.

  Finally, after an hour of impotent boredom whose only distraction had been the slow drying out of my jeans, Hentze arrived. He was carrying a plastic evidence bag with my possessions in it and as he handed it to me he gestured to the door. “Can you come with me?” he said. Seeing him in proper light for the first time that evening I realised he looked tired: worn down and weary.

  We didn’t go far. Three offices along the corridor he unlocked a room and led the way in. I saw immediately that details of Erla Sivertsen’s murder were written up on whiteboards, along with photographs and a timeline. The photos jolted me for a moment. She’d been someone I knew, albeit briefly.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Hentze. “Is there any news about Annika?”

  “Yeh, she’s okay,” he said with some relief. “She has some small burns but she will be all right. From what we can tell the girl she was chasing had a petrol bomb, but when it went off Annika was still far enough away for most of the fire to miss her.”

  “And the girl?”

  He shook his head. “Not so good. She has second-degree burns on her face and neck. They also think she may have damaged her lungs.”

  “They were bombs for definite, then? I only got a brief look.”

  “Yeh. The security people are only saying ‘improvised explosives’ but, yeh, petrol mixed with diesel and oil is what we think.”

  He shifted then, as if he’d already stayed longer than he’d intended. “Do you need anything? I have to see someone, but then I’ll come back.”

  “No, I’m okay. But just so I know, am I under arrest?”

  He shook his head. “No, not so much. But upstairs would like to know where you are – until we know more. You may be a witness.”

  “Okay,” I told him. “I won’t go anywhere.”

  51

  REMI SYDERBØ MET HENTZE AT THE STAIRWELL AND THEY WENT up to the fifth floor.

  “Uniform are missing two people,” Remi said. “Karl Atli Árting and Rosa Olsen. The GPS shows Karl Atli’s car at Runavík but he isn’t responding to the radio.”

  Hentze shook his head. “I told him not to. They have the woman from the Alliance house with them: Veerle Koning. I wanted to keep her out of the way in case the Danes were looking for her.”

  Remi frowned. “Why would they be?”

  “Because she has information about Erla Sivertsen’s movements on Saturday evening. They weren’t as we were told. Veerle was being abused by her boyfriend – a man called Drescher – and Erla found out. Now Veerle says she thinks Erla may have confronted Drescher about the abuse.”

  “And that makes you think Drescher could have killed Erla?”

  “I don’t know,” Hentze said. “If nothing else, it gives us a new line of enquiry – but only if we can get a statement from Veerle and then interview Drescher without the Danes interfering. I don’t know where he is, but I think there’s a good chance he may be one of the people the Danes are out looking for.”

  Along the fifth-floor corridor most of the office lights were on, despite a strange absence of people. It felt as if everyone had been summoned away, which of course they might have been, Hentze thought. Who knew how many briefings and meetings had been called because of what had happened tonight?

  For the second time in two days Hentze and Remi entered Andrias Berg’s office, but this time Remi Syderbø wasn’t dismissed. Instead he and Hentze were waved to two chairs and it was Berg’s turn to stand, leaning on his desk. In the same chair he’d occupied before the national security man, Munk, was examining his fingernails, as if the time this was taking was already wasted.

  “This will be brief,” Berg said, when Hentze and Remi were seated. “It’s simply to apprise you of the current situation.”

  He looked to Munk, who now dismissed his nails and raised his eyes to the two seated officers.

  “As you know, some members of the AWCA organisation have been arrested for terrorist offences in the last couple of hours,” Munk said colourlessly. “These people are part of a radicalised splinter group who used the Alliance for cover. This group style themselves as Defend ’86, or just ’86, which is a reference to the date of the international ban on commercial whaling. As a group in their own right they’ve been on our radar for some time, but when it became known that they planned to infiltrate the Alliance protests in the Faroes we took a greater interest. To that end we’ve had a covert officer lodged with them for more than a year. He was able to get close to the ringleader and establish their intention, which was to destroy boats used in the whale drives, or simply any boats from the whaling locations.”

  “You say he,” Remi said. “So this was not Erla Sivertsen?”

  “No.”

  “But she was working for you.”

  Munk conceded to this with a small nod. “In an auxiliary capacity.”

  Hentze shifted. He hadn’t been distracted by the side line. He said, “If you knew or suspected what the ’86 group’s targets would be, why did you wait until they were driving round the islands with petrol bombs before taking action? Why didn’t you arrest them before?”

  Munk considered this unhurriedly. “I’m not going to debate operational procedure with you,” he said. “Our intelligence sources led us to think that Defend ’86 might have had another agenda – another target – and access to other material. If so, the impact of their actions would have been much greater: politically, economically and environmentally. Therefore we waited until we could be sure of seizing all their materials and arresting everyone involved in one operation.”

  In his head Hentze ran through the list of places where there’d been reports of arrests and tried to think of possible targets that would have had the impact Munk was implying. The realisation came to him when he remembered there’d been an incident at Runavík.

  “You thought they were after the oil rig,” he said. “The Titan in Skálafjørður. Yes?”

  Munk allowed that with a slight dip of his chin. “It was possible, yes.”

  “And this other material you thought they might have: was that explosives? Was that what you thought?’

  Munk wouldn’t be drawn. “We’re satisfied now that the group only had improvised explosive devices,” he said.

  “Now, yes,” Hentze said. “But did you know it before they set off round the islands?”

  Munk was unmoved, beyond a slight pursing of his lips. “As I said, I’m not going to debate operational tactics. The fact is, we’re facing a new kind of threat. Even for those who aren’t motivated by religion, it’s now become acceptable for radical groups such as Defend ’86 to put the action before self. As long as they’ve made their statement for broadcast on the internet it doesn’t matter whether they are caught or killed. Even if they fail, the fact that they’ve shown such a disregard for themselves is its own message.”

  Hentze remembered the video camera and white sheet set up in Gregersen’s garage. He said, “Are you saying they want to be caught?”

  “No,” Munk shook his head. “I’m saying that the true radicals don’t care. That’s something they’ve learned from the jihadists. Of course, out here that may not worry you so much, but in Denmark, after the Copenhagen shootings, we take it seriously.”

  “We still take murder seriously,” Hentze said flatly. “And in connection with that I believe one of the men from this Defend ’86 group, Lukas Drescher, could be a suspect for the killing of Erla Sivertsen. Is he one of those you’ve detained?”

  Munk nodded. “He is. Commander Berg has, or will be given, a full list of the detainees.”

  Hentze turned to Andrias
Berg, but as if he suspected what Hentze might say, Remi cut in first. “I’d like to interview Drescher,” he told the commander. “I’d also like to take a statement from Herre Munk’s undercover officer for any corroborating information he has.”

  Berg inclined his large head. “Drescher can be interviewed in relation to the murder inquiry, of course. His terrorist activities are quite separate.”

  “And the undercover officer?”

  Berg passed that to Munk with a look and the Dane made a studied and lazy show of thought before appearing to reach a decision.

  “Yes, all right,” he told Remi. “You may speak to the officer concerned, but only to provide clarification. It will not be recorded and any information he provides will not be admissible in court. You can have a few minutes, then he will have to go.”

  “Where?”

  “To be with the other Defend ’86 members,” Munk said, as if it was obvious. “For the moment he is still working with them.”

  * * *

  Remi and Hentze walked back along the deserted corridor in silence until they were in the stairwell again.

  “He already knows what happened to Erla,” Hentze said then.

  “Munk?”

  “Yeh. If he didn’t he wouldn’t have agreed to this.”

  “Well, let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, shall we?” Remi said. “You got what you wanted, which is more than I expected.”

  “You thought they’d close the whole thing down?”

  “I thought they might try.”

  “You’ve caught Oddur’s disease,” Hentze said.

  “Yeh, well, we’ll see.”

  * * *

  As a place near at hand, but one that would be unused at this hour, Hentze had walked the short distance down the road to the department gym. He was heartily sick of all this underhand nonsense, but if it meant they could just move things forward he was prepared to go along with it.

  Now, in the recreation room at the back of the building, he paced and waited until Remi Syderbø opened the door, standing aside as he did so to usher in a man in his thirties. The man was bearded, dressed in black, with a spectacular bruise on his left cheekbone and another, or perhaps the same one, which reached up to his eye, half closing it. He was carrying a bottle of water and a blister pack of paracetamol.