‘Gina! You must come and meet my papa,’ she cries, propelling me towards him. He clasps my hand in a fearsome grip and looks me intently in the eye. ‘Thank you for being kind to my girl,’ he says, his voice a seismic rumble of emotion.
‘Oh, really, I – nothing, really,’ I burble helplessly, and then turn to the Wagners. ‘I am so sorry for your loss,’ I say, attempting to catch his eye but failing. Mrs Wagner III or IV takes my hand. ‘Thank you so much,’ she breathes huskily. ‘My husband appreciates it.’
After that, there seems to be nothing more to say so I make my excuses – ‘Well, I must just er –‘ and go to join Annie in the other group. ‘You didn’t tell me your father was here,’ I say with dangerous brightness to Annie. ‘What a surprise.’
‘Annie felt that I should be here,’ he says with that note of sonorous self-righteousness that I have always found particularly annoying. As I sit down, he bends forward to give me, for PR purposes, a kiss on the cheek but I bend my head to pay sudden attention to the strap of a sandal and manage to hit him a glancing blow on the nose with my head. Then I determine to behave well. The McIntyres look like people with whom one would like to behave well – gentle, civilised, restrained. Spurts of malice and fury would leave them puzzled and disappointed, one feels. They are doing most of the talking here, quietly and politely keeping the conversation afloat with nice, neutral topics. Ray is with them too, helping things along, though I see Susan flinch once or twice as his breezy tone gets too much for her. She is tense and silent, her face set in an unwavering social smile, her head somewhere else.
I do a quick assessment of Andrew as he does travel talk with the others. He is still a very good-looking man, which is infuriating. (I sometimes think that I divorced him not only because he was a hopeless husband but because I resented the fact that he was better looking than me.) He still has a head of thick, dark blond hair, only mildly grey at the temples and still with a boyish lock flopping over one eye, which is, actually, ridiculous at his age. He is as well dressed as ever, in a linen jacket of an expensive caramel colour that complements his tan. Like Tony Blair, Andrew always has a tan. It’s a perk of the international lawyer’s life, as it is of the roving ambassador’s – or whatever it is that Blair does nowadays besides after-dinner speeches, which don’t get you a tan. For reasons I’ve never really thought about, tyranny and corruption seem to flourish in the sunnier parts of the world and where they are, there is Andrew – hence the permatan.
Looking at Annie sitting there with Andrew and the McIntyres, it strikes me that I don’t really know what the situation is between Annie and Jon. Who knows what kind of understanding has developed in the four days since I last saw them together in the hospital? Annie had a proprietorial look about her even then, and he can hardly run away, can he? From the way she introduces his parents as Gordon and Jean and the way Jean calls her my dear, I judge that she has been accorded some kind of girlfriend status, at least by them, which puts me behind the curve.
Susan’s phone rings and she reacts as people do who don’t really use their mobiles, rummaging in her bag, peering at the display, fumbling to open it. Once she is connected, she listens, says, ‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ and starts to cry. ‘She’s awake,’ she says, turning to me, ‘and she’s asking for me.’
She looks around her helplessly. ‘I’d like –’ she says.
‘To go to the hospital,’ I say. ‘Would you like me to come with you?’
She would and we get up to go. Gordon McIntyre gets to his feet too, suggesting that he could take her and talk to the doctors, and Ray brandishes his keys and offers to drive her in the van. Andrew is vaguely offering something too, I think, but I’m not sure what. And now the other group is involved. Zada comes over to give Susan a hug and Adam is chipping in too. Everyone wants to be in on the drama, volunteering company and support. Susan stands, bewildered by this superfluity of kindness, not knowing whom to offend. Well, I offered first and she’ll be more comfortable crying all over me than she will over either of the men, and if Sophie is going to say anything about what happened to her, aren’t I the person to be there to hear it? ‘We shall be fine,’ I say rather loudly, and then, to soften it, I add, ‘It’s a mother thing, you know,’ and I start to guide her through the house. Ray is following us, still rattling his keys but I can see that he’s too much for her at the moment. I stop and look him firmly in the eye. ‘Thanks, Ray, but we’ll get a taxi. I’ve got a card from the cab that brought us here just now. We don’t need looking after, you know. We’ll be fine.’
Susan is not disposed to chat during the ride in the taxi and this gives me some thinking time – my last chance to work out who attacked Sophie before she opens her eyes and tells us. I am nearly there. That text message is the key: it’s not just the slackness of How about we meet, nor the commas where the laws of syntax require full stops. It’s that A chance for you and I to put things right. It’s a common enough mistake – I instead of me after a preposition when it’s coupled with a noun or another pronoun. No-one would say A chance for I, but they will say A chance for you and I. It’s very odd but remarkably widespread. I remember John Major got laughed at for getting it wrong in the House of Commons – Put your questions to my honourable friend and I – and I hear it in TV dramas all the time, from scriptwriters who ought to know better – or perhaps it’s the actors who change it. It’s not one of the grammar things I care about deeply and it really doesn’t matter but I’m quite certain that it’s not a mistake James would make even if he was being hasty and careless. Being educated at Eton doesn’t guarantee getting it right, I’m sure, but the thing about James is he’s a linguist; he started out as a classicist and then took up Arabic so grammar must mean as much to him as it does to me. That only takes me so far, though; the other bit I’m groping for is where I saw that error just recently. It must have been in the emails I showed to David last night and I can find it again when I get back to the hotel, but I want to nail it now. And, just as the taxi draws to a stop outside the hospital, I do.
There is a policewoman stationed outside Sophie’s room, which freaks Susan a bit and makes me wonder just how certain Mortensen feels about James being her would-be killer. The security is serious: Susan is made to prove her identity, which she does by brandishing her passport, and I, to my fury, am denied admittance, identification or no. ‘Close family only,’ the policewoman repeats stolidly in the face of my bluster and blandishments, and I am forced to retreat. Still, I’ve got plenty to reflect on and I find my way to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee and some thinking time. I am buzzing with the conviction that I’m right about who – though one grammar error is hardly solid evidence – and how isn’t difficult to guess at, but I haven’t yet worked out why. I can only conclude that whatever James was being blackmailed about involved my suspect too, and that Sophie was getting out of control and loose-tongued and had to be shut up. I sip my coffee and think about this and then, suddenly, my stomach plunges as violently as if I’d just stepped off a stair into empty space. Wasn’t my suspect there when Susan got the message from the hospital Sophie’s awake and she’s asking for me? What to do then, when very soon Susan would be at Sophie’s bedside hearing the story from her? Well, plan A was obviously to accompany her to the hospital. And then do what? Abduct her? Tie her up and leave her somewhere before coming here and dealing with Sophie? If you watch enough TV dramas you can come to believe that it’s remarkably easy for a determined murderer with no previous medical knowledge to approach a hospital bedside and, with lightning speed, detach a crucial drip, lethally twiddle the dials on a hi-tech machine or administer a fatal injection and slip away unnoticed. And since Susan turned down all offers except mine, plan B must have been to get here before us. There was a car parked outside the villa when Annie and I arrived this morning. I didn’t think about it but I’ll bet it was Andrew’s; he’s never comfortable unless he’s got a snazzy car at his disposal. He’d have given anyone a lift without as
king questions. And then there was the van, with Ray dangling his keys so invitingly. Susan and I waited at least fifteen minutes for our taxi, and we were in the house during that time while Susan went through Sophie’s suitcase, looking in vain for clean pyjamas and exclaiming in horror at the state of her brush and comb. Plenty of time then for anyone to pre-empt us, with no need for any abduction or tying up.
I abandon my coffee and head back to Sophie’s room as fast as I can go without actually running and risking getting thrown out of the hospital. I pant to a stop in front of my friend the policewoman on the door. Everything looks calm – no sign that Susan went in and found Sophie undripped or lethally injected. ‘Is she all right?’ I demand. ‘Is her mother with her?’
‘She is,’ she says, stirring herself for another battle with me.
‘Was there anyone here earlier?’ I ask. ‘Young? Student age?’
‘Close family only,’ she says.
‘But someone was here?’
‘Only the mother,’ she says.
‘Only her mother has gone in, yes. But did someone try to go in before that?’
She shrugs. ‘You did,’ she says.
‘I know that!’ The desire to slap her is almost overwhelming. ‘Was there anyone else? This is important. You’re supposed to be protecting her.’
‘Like to you, I said close family only.’
‘So you didn’t let them in?’
She gives a self-satisfied little smile.
‘No,’ she says.
‘Brilliant!’ I say, giving her a dazzling grin in return. ‘Well done. Excellent job.’ And I leave her looking astonished.
This, however, is all very well but it doesn’t solve my problem. Sophie and Susan are safe enough behind their police guard, but I am shut out of Eden. I am doomed to wander these corridors, a prey to attack. My stalker doesn’t know that I was denied entry, will assume that I know everything and will be determined that I shan’t get away from here to spread the word. I am probably being stalked at this very moment, in fact. I consider my options.
What I would like to do is to go back and beg to be allowed to sit with the policewoman in her reassuring uniform and put myself under her protection, but I know I can’t do that.
What I should stop doing is walking towards the hospital exit because that is the logical place for my stalker to lie in wait for me.
What I need to do is to summon help but the police have got my bloody phone.
What I actually do is to sprint to a pay phone which I see at the end of the corridor, nearly knocking over a man who might possibly get there before me. I make two failed attempts because the instructions are in Danish and my hands are trembling, but eventually I connect.
‘David,’ I say. ‘Are you busy?’
16
MISSION
Karin and Jonas Møller, Scott thought, when he had dropped Gina at the station and was fighting his way through the town centre traffic towards the castle, deserved some attention. Gina had produced them over dinner the previous evening as though they were a particularly delicious and exotic side dish but he had to admit they were intriguing all the same. And they were completely off Mortensen’s radar, which made them even more appealing. Mentally, he listed their points of interest:
Karin Møller, known to both Conrad Wagner and James Asquith. How?
Karin Møller seen approaching the police station and turning back on seeing Asquith. Why?
Karin Møller’s face injured after she is hit by a car. Who?
Jonas Møller loaned the car to Wagner. Brakes already damaged? Why?
Jonas Møller played down Karin’s injuries. Why?
Spotting Kronborg Garage to his right, he swung in and drove past the petrol pumps to an office behind them. It was a low, wooden building with posters of fast cars pasted to its walls. There was no-one at the reception desk but at the far end of the room with its back to him was an undoubtedly female figure in dungarees, kneeling down, busy opening a large package. Hearing him, she jumped up and came towards him. She was tall, had a good figure even in the dungarees and would have been more attractive if her expression had been less guarded and her face not disfigured by yellowing bruises and an angry graze.
‘Hej,’ she said.
‘Hej,’ he said, trying a big smile. ‘I wonder if you can help me.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘I hired a car in Copenhagen and it’s not running that well. I wondered if someone could give it the once over.’
‘Yeah, I can look it over. Where is it?’
‘Just outside.’
‘OK. Let’s take a look.’
She circled the car and then knelt down to look at the near front tyre. ‘Well, this tyre’s dodgy for a start. When did you pick the car up?’
‘Day before yesterday.’
She looked at the hire company’s logo on the back windscreen. ‘I don’t know this company,’ she said. ‘Where did you find them?’
‘They have a place near the airport.’
‘Huh!’ she laughed. ‘You want to watch out with those places. A lot of cowboys there ready to rip you off.’
Phrasal verbs, he thought. That’s what Gina called them: look it over, pick it up, watch out, rip you off. When someone could get those right then they could really speak English, that was what she said.
‘You speak very good English,’ he said. ‘Very colloquial.’
‘Thanks. She put out a hand for the keys. ‘I worked for an English family for a year. Au pair.’
‘Really? Whereabouts in England were you?’
She was turning the engine over. ‘I was only in England for three months, actually – West London,’ she said, listening to the engine. ‘Then we went abroad. Cairo.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Yes.’
She turned the engine off and got out. ‘If you want to leave it with us we can check it over,’ she said.
‘All right if I bring it back this afternoon?’
‘Fine. Come with me and I’ll book it in.’
As he followed her back into the office, he said, ‘I suppose you get a lot of British tourists here, do you? Because of the Hamlet connection?’
‘Quite a lot,’ she said, opening up a large, dog-eared ledger on the desk.
‘There’s that group of students doing Hamlet at the Castle, of course,’ he said. ‘Have you come across any of them?’
‘Don’t think so,’ she said, her head down, bending over the desk, apparently intent on date and time, but he saw colour flood her face.
‘But you must have heard about the car accident, of course,’ he said.
‘What car accident?’ she asked, still not looking at him, and then, without waiting for an answer, ‘What time do you want to bring it in?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘That depends on how long we’re going to spend at the police station.’
She slammed the book shut and glared at him. ‘What are you talking about – police station?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector David Scott,’ he said pulling out his ID, and added, only moderately untruthfully, ‘I’m working on the investigation into the death of Conrad Wagner, the fall of Sophie Forrester into the castle moat and, quite possibly, the incident in which you were knocked off your bike.’
‘I don’t know what –’
‘Of course you do. Wagner hired the car from this garage. You’ve had the police all over here. You know all about it.’
‘I just didn’t want to talk about it because it’s bad for bus –’
‘We have a witness who tells us that you knew Conrad Wagner and you know James Asquith, who’s being held by the police at the moment on suspicion of killing Wagner. They’ll be very interested in anything you have to tell them.’
‘I haven’t got –’
‘Who knocked you off your bike, Karin?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see. He just reversed away and made off while I was still picking myself up.’
‘And you aren’t worried that he’ll have another go?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think you know what I mean. The safest thing, Karin, is to tell the police what you know. Then there will be no point in trying to shut you up. I can send someone to arrest you or I can drive you to the station myself. It’s up to you.’
She looked at him for a long moment.
‘You’d better go slow on that dodgy tyre then,’ she said.
*
She was silent in the car but once installed in Mortensen’s office with a cup of coffee she was surprisingly composed. In the jeans and sleeveless top she had changed into before they left, she looked younger and less wary. She and Mortensen agreed to speak English for Scott’s benefit and she even made a joke about doing it in Danish but with subtitles.
‘To start off with,’ she said, looking them both in the eye, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong – nothing. If anything, I’m a victim – let’s get that clear.’
‘Fine,’ Mortensen said. ‘We may have some questions about that but why don’t you tell us your story and we’ll see.’
‘OK.’ She took a swig of coffee, leaned back in her chair and pushed her hair off her face. ‘When I was seventeen I got a job as an au pair with a British family. He was the UK ambassador in Cairo and they had two young children – five-year-old twins – as well as their older son. He was at a boarding school in England but he was at home for the holidays.’
‘And this was the Asquith family?’ Scott asked. ‘Sir Bruce Asquith?’
‘He wasn’t Sir Bruce then. That came later.’
‘And the older son was James Asquith?’
‘Yes. So –’
‘Just one more thing,’ Mortensen said. ‘How did you get the job? Seventeen is young for such a job, isn’t it?’
‘I signed up with an agency. I was surprised to be offered a job with a family like that but the agency said not many girls wanted to go to somewhere like Cairo – they wanted a year in England. And I had some experience. My mum worked as a child minder and I used to help her in the school holidays.’
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