Trophy

by Steffen Jacobsen

  ‘Psychopaths, you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps. What’s the current definition of a psychopath?’

  The psychologist threw up her hands: ‘Pretty much the same as it always was, I think. They’re callous, manipulative, exist outside ordinary, social norms and lack empathy. They act only in their own interests and use every available means. Without consideration for others.’

  ‘Have you met some of them here?’ Lene asked.

  ‘Both in the Armed Forces and outside. Of course I have. It’s a deviation from the norm, and there is a spectrum. On the other hand, sometimes it’s much easier to define deviancy than normality. I mean, what’s normal?’

  ‘Would they thrive in the military?’

  ‘They could be used for certain tasks. Black ops, for example – missions where it’s best not to have too many feelings or where ethical concerns would only get in the way. I’m speaking generally now, not specifically about the Danish Armed Forces.’

  ‘What about Kim Andersen?’ Lene said.

  Hanne Meier reached for a slim, green case file and put on her reading glasses.

  ‘He definitely wasn’t a psychopath or a sociopath. I don’t remember him all that well, but I spoke to him in January 2009, a couple of months after he was sent back for the last time. To be honest, I’m surprised to hear that he killed himself. Very surprised.’

  Everyone seems to be, Lene thought.

  ‘He wasn’t very academic, but he was highly disciplined and got on well with the NCOs and his friends,’ the psychologist continued. ‘A cheerful disposition, would be my initial assessment, and nothing can replace an innate, cheerful disposition. He was in excellent physical health, incidentally. He had practically no disciplinary notes, except the usual pranks such as hoisting the battalion chief’s bicycle up a flagpole and throwing flash-bang grenades into the dormitories at night. That kind of stuff.’

  ‘Did he go on black ops?’ Lene asked.

  ‘He completed specialized sniper training here at home and in England. He would appear to have been a natural.’

  ‘He was certainly an experienced hunter,’ Lene said. ‘And he was prescribed antidepressants for the last two years of his life. Something seems to have upset his cheerful disposition. By the way, he married his girlfriend of seven years, Louise, the day before he hanged himself. They have two children, aged three and five.’

  ‘I’m shocked,’ Hanne Meier said. ‘I really am. We use various tools, a range of psychological questionnaires, including a depression index, and Kim Andersen’s replies never gave us cause for concern.’

  ‘He began treatment for depression in June 2011,’ Lene informed her. ‘Around the same time he started having trouble sleeping. He took sleeping tablets every night, his wife told me. His GP has confirmed it.’

  Hanne Meier nodded and pensively looked out of the only window in the office. Young men and women from all three services strolled towards an auditorium. Chatty, laughing, athletic-looking. Lene watched them as well. It was comforting to see so many passionate and enthusiastic young people. Good to know that they still existed.

  ‘What do they do in the camps in Afghanistan when they’re off duty?’ she asked.

  ‘They watch porn or action films, play computer games, work out. Pretty much what they would do at home.’

  ‘How do I join?’ Lene mumbled.

  ‘I think you’d get bored pretty quickly.’

  Lene smiled. ‘Surely you expect them to experience some psychological problems when their tour of duty ends?’ she asked.

  ‘Soldiers have a range of problems,’ Hanne Meier said. ‘And not all of them are caused by active service, though Kim Andersen was deployed the maximum number of times.’

  ‘Of course not. But some find it tough to come home, don’t they? They miss their friends, life on the edge, the daily adrenaline kick, the structure?’

  ‘I think most of them feel that way, to be honest,’ the psychologist said. ‘To a greater or lesser extent. There’s a world of difference between clearing a village of heavily armed and fanatical Taliban fighters and spending your Saturday going to the DIY store with your wife to buy draught excluders or spending the day cleaning the gutters. The majority want to go back. But Kim Andersen had tried it before, several times, in fact. He knew exactly what coming home would be like.’

  ‘Okay, then, thank you …’

  Lene stuck her hand into her shoulder bag and found the desert photograph. She had studied it endlessly and every time she felt its significance. She had folded back the left quarter of the picture to ensure the psychologist would focus on the bigger section.

  She pointed.

  ‘That’s Kim Andersen. The guy with the most tattoos. Do you recognize him?’

  ‘Not really,’ Hanne Meier said. ‘They all look the same. Heavily tattooed, long beards and long hair. They must have been away from camp for a long time to look like that. Perhaps they’ve been on an investigative mission. Someone is missing.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A platoon commander, I would say.’

  ‘Like this one?’

  Lene unfolded the picture and pointed to the man with the scorpion tattoo.

  The psychologist pushed her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose and narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Yes, perhaps. He looks like a leader.’

  ‘Do you recognize him?’

  ‘No. But like I said, I’m not sure even their own mothers would recognize them.’

  Lene sighed.

  ‘He’s a ghost,’ she said, putting the photograph back in her bag. ‘Kim Andersen’s wife doesn’t know him either, even though the photograph has been on their bookcase for years. Can you tell me if he’s an officer?’

  ‘He’s not wearing any badges, so no, I can’t.’

  ‘Are officers tattooed as well?’ Lene wanted to know.

  ‘Of course. It’s not limited to the lower ranks. Who are the others?’

  ‘Two of them died in May 2011. Robert Olsen and Kenneth Enderlein. A roadside bomb. And the fifth is Allan Lundkvist.’

  ‘Is he the beekeeper?’ Hanne Meier asked.

  Lene smiled.

  ‘I believe so. Do you know him?’

  ‘One of my colleagues has spoken to him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I can’t comment on the psychological profile of living soldiers, Lene.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  She got up, shook hands with the psychologist and had reached the door when Hanne Meier said softly, ‘I think he’s okay, the beekeeper. He gave my colleague some honey. And I imagine he must know who the fifth man is.’

  ‘Well, I certainly intend to ask him,’ Lene said. ‘I’ve phoned him dozens of times, but he hasn’t returned my calls.’

  She opened the door, but the chief psychologist continued. ‘Your ghost …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is he Danish?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘I thought … Oh, I don’t know …’

  ‘What?’

  Hanne Meier hesitated.

  ‘I tell myself that I have some experience by now, Lene. With oddballs, dangerous men. I think he stands out, in a weird and totally unscientific way. Perhaps you should stay away from him.’

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ the superintendent said, as something dark and cold stirred inside her.

  ‘Well, in that case, watch your back,’ the chief psychologist said gravely.

  ‘I will. Thank you.’

  Chapter 18

  ‘Why are we here, Lene?’

  Oh, so we’re on first name terms, are we? Lene bristled. Charlotte Falster had called a press briefing at Holbæk Police Station and Lene definitely couldn’t complain about the turnout. The station’s canteen was packed to the rafters with journalists. Holbæk’s own chief of police had offered to take part, but Lene had declined. She could handle it, she assured him, and she had detected a certain relief.

  She looked coolly at the man who
had asked the question, a journalist from a Copenhagen morning paper. They grew younger and younger – or perhaps she was getting older. Shaved head. Small architect’s spectacles. Black T-shirt with a Metallica logo on the front.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Let me rephrase: Why are you here? If this is “just” a suicide?’

  Good point.

  The other journalists looked at her. The boy was only saying what everyone was thinking.

  ‘Initially, we believed that there were some … that the technical evidence from Kim Andersen’s suicide could be interpreted in several ways,’ Lene said. ‘It’s not uncommon for us to be involved in an apparent suicide until the forensic examiner’s report is ready. In this case, it was clear and unequivocal.’

  She smiled at an older, female journalist from Ekstra Bladet. They had followed each other’s careers for quite a while now, and Lene found the reporter’s work to be balanced and sober. The woman smiled too, and made a note of something on her pad.

  ‘Interpreted how, Lene? Was there anything to suggest that a crime had been committed? … In terms of the technical evidence?’ the skinhead continued.

  He stressed the word ‘technical’ and looked around the room, like the classroom star he had undoubtedly always been.

  Hungry. On his way up.

  ‘I’m unable to give you any details … Janus? All I can say is that we no longer doubt that Kim Andersen committed suicide. So, as far as we’re concerned, the case is closed.’

  The boy nodded his dissatisfaction and Lene pointed to a plump, middle-aged man in a pale blue shirt and tweed jacket. The buttons looked close to bursting. He was holding up a broad, red, farmer’s hand.

  ‘Isn’t it strange that Kim Andersen, a tough veteran from the Royal Life Guards, decides to kill himself the day after his wedding?’ he said. ‘He left the army four years ago. Was he being treated for some kind of depression?’

  Lene’s hands stayed calmly folded on the grey Formica table. These days anyone who knew a doctor, a chemist or a personal carer could access other people’s medical records if they knew the civil registration number of the individual concerned. It wouldn’t be difficult for an experienced journalist to find out everything there was to know about Kim Andersen’s treatment for depression.

  ‘I can’t give you any information about that,’ she said, knowing full well that the journalist already had the answer.

  ‘But you would agree that the timing is unusual?’

  ‘That would be my initial reaction. But for obvious reasons, we won’t ever know why Kim Andersen took his own life.’

  ‘Did he have financial problems?’

  ‘I have no information about that, so I can’t comment.’

  ‘And you’re not linking his suicide to his military service?’ The journalist flicked through his notebook. ‘He had been deployed to Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina and three times to Helmand. Have you spoken to his company commander, for example? Fellow soldiers?’

  ‘I haven’t.’ Lene looked directly at the journalist: ‘I want to emphasize that we have no reason to think that a crime was committed in connection with the death of Kim Andersen. Suicide remains a private matter. And the case is closed as far as the Rigspolitiet is concerned. I’m not here to speculate about his motives.’

  The reporter from Ekstra Bladet asked the next question. ‘Kim Andersen had two young children, Lene. And he had been with his wife, Louise, for seven years before they were married. You’ve spoken to his widow. How is she coping? I understand it was she who cut down her husband and tried to resuscitate him. I believe that you had a long conversation with her here at the station yesterday afternoon.’

  Lene nodded gravely and moved the salt shaker towards a bottle of ketchup.

  ‘I think she’s coping remarkably well,’ she said warmly. ‘It’s a huge shock, obviously. It would be for anybody. Suddenly finding herself alone with two young children … but her parents live nearby and she has a good support network. Louise Andersen will get through this, I know she will. For years she has lived with the knowledge that Kim Andersen could be killed in action and those mental preparation will benefit her now. And I’m sure that the Armed Forces will assist in every way they can.’

  The journalist smiled. She might just have got her headline.

  ‘Do you think that the Armed Forces do enough for veterans?’ asked the journalist with the farmworker hands. ‘It’s not the first time that a veteran has committed suicide.’

  ‘I’m not a sociologist and I don’t feel that I’m qualified to express an opinion about that,’ Lene said.

  She got up.

  ‘Any more questions?’

  She looked around the room and knew that every single journalist was frustrated at having driven all this way for so little. They had been hoping for a crime or a human interest story about a traumatized war veteran whose past caught up with him, propelling him to a final, irrevocable action. Yet another broken soldier.

  They got up and she had picked up her duffel coat from the table when Metallica said, ‘I’ve spoken to Kim Andersen’s friends and colleagues, Lene.’ The boy was brimming with confidence and was the only one still sitting down. ‘He was injured.’

  Lene dropped her coat. Don’t blink, she told herself.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was never wounded in action, but he was injured –’ Metallica consulted his notepad – ‘in the spring of 2011. He was on sick leave for three months before getting some kind of protected work.’ The journalist ignored Lene’s death stare. ‘According to my sources, he started taking antidepressants in June 2011. He was very open about his treatment.’

  ‘So it would appear,’ Lene said. ‘And?’

  None of the other journalists stirred.

  ‘No one can quite understand how he could afford to invite eighty guests to his wedding and buy his wife a new Alfa Romeo.’

  Metallica paused for effect.

  What did the little pipsqueak expect, she wondered. A standing ovation? Cheerleaders?

  ‘What was your question?’ she asked.

  ‘Well … Do you have any comments on that information?’

  She smiled at the boy, despite a strong urge to put him over her knees and give him the thrashing his parents had clearly never managed.

  ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. People might have been jealous of him, what do I know? I have no further comment.’

  There was a flash of anger behind the architect spectacles. Lene recognized the type. She came across it more and more often. A spoiled generation of children with helicopter parents and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, brought up in a loving home – far too bloody loving and indulgent. No one had ever said no to him. Wooden toys. Rudolf Steiner nursery. Wobbly masculine identity. In short, an arsehole.

  ‘But you haven’t given me anything!’ Metallica protested. ‘His friends from the shooting syndicate and his colleagues told me he boasted of having lots of money. Surely that must mean something!’

  ‘I fail to see how,’ Lene replied. ‘He killed himself. And perhaps he died rich, who knows? Have a nice day.’

  She left the canteen with a grim face and didn’t start breathing properly until she stepped out into the rain. Then she trod in a pothole, her shoe filled with water and she swore all the way to her car. She got in, grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and shook it as hard as she could while she screamed.

  ‘Good job, Lene,’ she muttered to herself when she eventually calmed down and was staring blankly out of the windscreen. ‘You’re a real pro.’

  Chapter 19

  Peter Nicolaisen, a journalist with Danmarks Radio, also known as Michael Sander, had called Tove Hansen in advance. She was the legal guardian and grandmother of two orphaned, four-year-old twins and the mother and mother-in-law of Kasper Hansen and Ingrid Sundsbö respectively. He hadn’t bothered with a disguise, and was wearing his usual anorak, hoodie, jeans and running shoes when h
e rang the doorbell of the small yellow house. He knew he could easily play the part of an investigative journalist looking for two of the many Danes who had vanished without a trace in 2011.

  It didn’t sound as if the twins were at home and he was grateful for that. He looked down the garden path. A couple of well-maintained children’s bicycles were leaning up against a tree in the front garden; there was a swingball stand in the lawn and a big garden trampoline with half its springs missing. The herbaceous border was invaded by weeds and a broken basement window had been patched up with a yellow supermarket bag and gaffer tape.

  He smiled at the woman who appeared in the doorway and introduced himself. She nodded and Michael made a move to take off his shoes, but she shook her head.

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘Thank you. I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

  The woman shrugged. She untied her apron and hung it on an already heavily burdened row of pegs in the narrow hallway: children’s winter clothes, snow suits, a beige ladies’ coat, woolly hats, and an orange bobsleigh that had made it as far as the pegs on its spring journey from the garden to the basement. Tove Hansen opened the door to a living room with a low ceiling.

  She took a seat in an armchair and a small white poodle wandered over to Michael and sniffed his leg. He would appear to have been accepted because the dog padded out of the door without barking.

  ‘That’s Perle,’ she said gravely.

  ‘Cute dog,’ he said.

  He sat down opposite her.

  ‘I can make coffee if you like,’ she said with a nod to the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve just had some, Mrs Hansen. But thank you very much.’

  ‘Tove,’ she said.

  ‘Tove.’

  She looked at him with tired grey eyes, and Michael checked out the room. The bookcases were filled with book-club purchases. The furniture was nice, but shabby. Toys lay neatly sorted in blue and red IKEA boxes. He looked at a photo showing a younger, slim and tanned version of Tove Hansen next to a dark-haired man on a hotel balcony with a blue shimmering sea in the background. He could see Kasper Hansen in both of them, and there was a photograph of their son on the day he left sixth form on the wall above the sofa. His sixth-form cap was pushed cheerfully back and the young man looked ready to take a big, gluttonous chunk out of life with his white teeth. Next to Kasper Hansen hung another student photo of a blonde, long-haired girl with very similar features to her brother, but in a softer and feminine version.