Trophy

by Steffen Jacobsen

  She poured him a cup and left the kitchen. They heard her clatter about in the utility room.

  ‘Did anyone disturb you last night, Michael?’

  Elizabeth Caspersen’s suggestive eyebrow technique was unsurpassable.

  He added milk and looked around.

  ‘Where are they all?’

  ‘Victor always leaves early to avoid the traffic, the boys didn’t come back, and Monika … either she’s still asleep or she’s out with the horses. What did you think of the family?’

  ‘If they were a place, they would be the Balkans,’ he mumbled, and sipped his hot coffee.

  She laughed and said something, but he wasn’t listening. He felt restless. Again he thought about the redheaded superintendent, Lene Jensen. She was important.

  ‘Pardon?’ he said.

  ‘I was just asking when you want to leave.’

  She took a bite of her toast and wiped a crumb off her upper lip with the napkin. She looked as unflappable, efficient and impeccable as always. Perhaps because she was going straight to the office. Elizabeth Caspersen had applied elegant make-up; her lips were painted a shade of dark red that complemented her finely arched eyebrows and her grey eyes. She wore her pearls today, a grey silk blouse, and a jacket and skirt that fitted her long figure like a glove.

  ‘As soon as possible,’ he said.

  She nodded, emptied her coffee cup and got up. They both knew that they couldn’t discuss anything sensitive while they were still at the estate.

  They walked out into the hall together and Michael looked at the antlers on the wall.

  ‘The gamekeeper, Thomas. Do you know him?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I’ve seen him a couple of times. Big man. Handsome. Dark … He’s moody and likes to keep to himself. Hard to get to know, I think. Something of a hermit.’

  ‘But a friend of Jakob’s?’

  ‘Yes, one of the blood brothers. They’re a secret society.’

  ‘Forged by fire and blood?’

  She looked at him.

  ‘Yes, you could say that. Wasn’t it like that for you?’

  He smiled.

  ‘I was more of a desk soldier, Elizabeth. I arrested drunken soldiers and banged them up. That kind of thing. It was peacetime back then, if I can put it like that. It’s different for them – Jakob Schmidt and his friends. What about Peter, the temp?’

  Elizabeth Caspersen bent down and picked up her overnight bag.

  He noticed that today’s nylon stockings had a fine, black seam at the back. He opened the door to her.

  ‘More forthcoming,’ she said. ‘Light-hearted and quite cheerful, as far as I remember. I don’t hunt, Michael.’

  ‘But your father must have known them quite well,’ he insisted. ‘He spent a lot of time here, didn’t he?’

  ‘Indeed he did. But I very rarely spoke to him. Like I said.’

  She pointed. ‘There’s Monika.’

  Michael paused on the steps and held up a hand to shield his eyes. The blue spring sky looked freshly washed and the sunbeams fell diagonally through the tall branches of the oak trees and across fresh, green pastures.

  Perhaps it was a cliché, but horse and rider appeared to be one, and Monika Schmidt looked as if she had been born in the saddle. Her face was serene and an invisible plumb-line began with her head, went straight through her neck and body, and continued into the horse’s chest. The long-limbed, dark brown animal trotted forwards and sideways in some kind of well-schooled gait, and the rider was in motion just as much as the horse was. The sun bounced off the mother-of-pearl hairclip at the back her neck when the horse pirouetted and trotted back.

  ‘She’s good, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And tragic,’ Elizabeth Caspersen said.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ he said. ‘But are we referring to the same thing?’

  ‘No, Michael. Yes, or … No, the tragedy is that she didn’t know she could ride until she was in her early forties. She had never been on a horse until then. If she had started like all other girls when she was ten years old, she could have …’

  ‘Broken her neck and been in a wheelchair she could only move by blowing into a tube,’ he said. ‘I don’t like horses. Do they even have a brain?’

  ‘Ask Monika,’ she said.

  Horse and rider came back towards them and Elizabeth Caspersen waved. There was no reaction on Monika Schmidt’s face. She was totally focused on what she was doing.

  He looked past the enclosure, past Monika Schmidt and Cavalier of Pederslund, if that was who it was, past the stable buildings and towards a distant figure standing very still on the edge of the forest. Flat cap, wellies, tweed jacket and a spotted hunting dog at his feet.

  And a pair of binoculars in front of his eyes.

  ‘That’s Peter,’ Elizabeth Caspersen said.

  She waved and the man lowered his binoculars and disappeared into the forest.

  ‘Not very welcoming,’ Michael said.

  A line appeared in her brow.

  ‘Oh. How strange. He’s usually … different.’

  ‘Time to go?’

  They walked down the steps. Elizabeth Caspersen headed for the enclosure; Michael followed with some reluctance. The horse reared in front of them. It came down on its front legs, tossed its head, and trotted towards the fence posts, where Monika Schmidt swung her leg over the horse’s croup and let herself glide to the ground. She landed, perfectly balanced, and pulled the horse along. Without the horse and her high heels, she looked tiny. He had expected a look of mild contempt, or at least reserve, but the Swedish woman’s features were still characterized by that strange wistfulness he had seen the night before.

  Elizabeth Caspersen bent down for a quick embrace, after which Monika Schmidt offered him a gloved hand.

  ‘It was nice to meet you, Michael.’

  ‘Thank you, likewise. And thank you for a great meal last night. I hope that everything works out.’

  ‘With Charles Simpson?’

  Her face had a natural redness after the ride and he could detect signs of her age around her mouth and eyes in the daylight. But he thought she would always be beautiful.

  ‘With Simpson Junior and everything else,’ he said politely.

  ‘Are you leaving now?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re sending Michael to New York,’ Elizabeth Caspersen said.

  Monika Schmidt smiled and looked down.

  ‘You’re always welcome here, Michael.’ She laughed, sounding a little husky. ‘As are you, snällä Elizabeth, obviously.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  She pulled the horse’s head over her shoulder and stroked its muzzle. Its eyes were the size of apples.

  ‘Cavalier?’ he asked, and she laughed out loud and shook her head so vehemently that her hair slide fell to the ground.

  He picked it up and handed it to her.

  ‘Oh, Michael. Even you can’t be that innocent! This is Zarina, Cavalier’s little friend from Germany.’

  He softened his knees slightly and peered between the horse’s hind legs.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You’d be able to tell the difference,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure I would.’

  *

  He turned in the Opel’s passenger seat and looked back as they drove through the park. Monika Schmidt was back on the horse and the gamekeeper had appeared out of nowhere. The dog sniffed around and relieved itself against the post while the two people were deep in conversation. Monika Schmidt sat straight in the saddle and stared right ahead while the man gestured with his hands.

  Michael’s mobile pinged to tell him that a fresh e-mail had landed in his inbox.

  The message was from Dr Henkel, the forensic examiner in Berne. Michael clicked on the attachment to open it, read the eminent professor’s conclusions, leaned back and rubbed his eyelids with his fingertips.

  ‘What is it, Michael?’

  ‘The lab in Berne,’ he
said.

  ‘Are they done?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked across the fields of Jungshoved and the blue, glittering water of Bøgestrømmen.

  ‘Your father’s fingerprints were on the cartridge shell from the Mauser. They match the prints from the whisky glass.’

  ‘And the jewellery box?’

  ‘Only your prints, Elizabeth.’

  ‘No hair or skin cells?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you can’t send him the DVD?’ she said.

  ‘The only prints on it were yours,’ he said. ‘I checked it myself with a bit of evaporated iodine powder and some tape.’

  ‘I’m an idiot, Michael. When I found it in the safe, I didn’t think anything of it.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. You couldn’t know what it was. It could have been anything.’

  ‘So my father went to Sweden in Sonartek’s jet in March and you’ve found his fingerprints on a cartridge from the rifle which you think was used for hunting and killing up there. But you’re saying it sounds too good to be true. You’re not happy, Michael? Have I got that right?’

  ‘How did he get from Stockholm to Norway and Finnmark?’ he wondered out loud, then shifted in his seat.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he just got in a car and drove there with the rest of them. It’s not the best-guarded border in the world. It’s not North Korea.’

  ‘But who were the others?’ he said. ‘That’s the question.’

  ‘Will you find out?’

  ‘Of course. Have you heard from your father’s accountant?’

  ‘About any bizarre transactions with the Cayman Islands, Cyprus or Liechtenstein?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She glanced at her watch.

  ‘He said he was going to ring this afternoon. He has been going through my father’s bank statements and credit cards with a fine-tooth comb since our first meeting.’

  ‘Great.’

  Nothing else was said until they reached the outskirts of Copenhagen.

  ‘Now what?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘There are a couple of other things I want to look into,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘What about Norway?’

  ‘I’ll go up there as soon as I can.’

  ‘It’s been two years, Michael. What on earth could possibly be left in those godforsaken mountains?’

  ‘Nothing, but if I don’t go up there, I’ll always be wondering, what if there were some sort of evidence? Or remains that the families could bury? I have to go.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, sounding tired. ‘I’ll drop you at your hotel.’

  *

  When he had got out, he leaned inside the car and smiled.

  ‘Speak to you later,’ he said.

  She looked at him. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, and she didn’t smile.

  ‘It was him, Michael. It’s what he became. It’s what they become.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

  He waved after the car as it pulled out from the kerb, and she looked at him in the rear-view mirror and held up a gloved hand. Then Michael turned around. He was no longer smiling.

  Who the hell wipes their fingerprints off their own DVD before returning it to their own, private, high security safe?

  Chapter 32

  He had lain down on his bed, a brief nap that turned into three hours of dreamless sleep. Michael rose stiffly, stumbled into the bathroom, and didn’t wake up properly until he mistook the hot tap for the cold in the shower.

  He dried himself meditatively in front of the mirror and wondered whether to shave, but couldn’t be bothered.

  Superintendent Lene Jensen. The little voice that kept telling him to contact her had grown stronger, though every unwritten rule in his profession warned him not to involve outsiders. But he had to place Kim Andersen and his suicide somewhere in the picture. And soon.

  The superintendent wasn’t in her office … And no, the Rigspolitiet did not give out the private numbers of its staff. And, yes, that included former staff members. If he would like to leave a message, the superintendent would ring him as soon as she could.

  Michael declined, thanked the secretary, and rang off.

  He thought he had been able to detect a slight, dry tension in the secretary’s voice. She had asked him twice to state his name, and he had heard the keyboard clatter when she entered his name and telephone number. He fiddled with the mobile in his jacket pocket while he tried to remember his old colleagues from the Hvidovre Police. He had worked there for three years as a very green police sergeant. Who had shown the least initiative? Who might still be hanging around?

  They had been a bunch of young sergeants – still wet behind the ears, but ambitious – and he couldn’t imagine that any of them would still be working in the same police district, but there had been a couple of older police sergeants who had seemed happy to stay put. They lived nearby and their wives worked at Hvidovre Hospital. Nurses and cops had always made a natural and stable combination.

  He was in luck. Daniel Tarnovski was still there; he was in his office and he remembered him well. This came as a surprise to Michael, who regarded himself as totally forgettable. After various questions as to how life had treated him, to which he gave non-committal answers, Tarnovski proclaimed Lene Jensen to be one tough cookie. Very energetic. Which was Daniel Tarnovski-speak for a fanatical overachiever. She worked for a posh chief superintendent with a law degree in the Rigspolitiet by the name of Charlotte Falster, whom Daniel Tarnovski was also happy to hold forth about. Why did Michael want to know?

  Michael closed his eyes and tried hard to come up with a good story.

  He had met the superintendent at a party and had fallen in love?

  Unlikely.

  He had a hunch that her current investigation into the suicide of an ex-soldier in Holbæk actually ran parallel to his own investigation into a group of psychopathic veterans who were organizing industrial-scale manhunts in the globe’s most inaccessible corners?

  That would raise an eyebrow or two out in Hvidovre.

  Michael flipped the situation one hundred and eighty degrees and said that the superintendent had contacted him the day before to find out if – in his capacity as a former military police captain with the Horse Guards – he knew of a group of privates who had been involved in the black-market sale of medicines and military supplies in Sarajevo. Kim Andersen, the man who had killed himself in Holbæk, was one of those whose name had cropped up. The Public Prosecutor had handed Lene Jensen the file and Michael had been listed as the original case officer.

  Michael laughed sheepishly.

  ‘I was all over the place when she rang, Daniel. The kids were bawling their eyes out, the washing machine was flooding the utility room, and the dog was having eight puppies, so I’m afraid I told her to get lost, which was unfair, really, when she was just trying to do her job. I can remember her name, but not her number. And I do know one or two things about the case which might be important. You know how it is …’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Daniel Tarnovski said. ‘Yelling at her when she’s just doing her job is out of order. I mean it, Michael.’

  ‘And that’s why I’m calling. Sorry,’ he mumbled remorsefully.

  ‘Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to her.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve tried calling her. But Lene Jensen? There are millions with that name.’

  ‘Send flowers,’ the other suggested.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Just a moment.’

  Tarnovski gave him an address in Frederiksberg and a private mobile number.

  ‘And I expect you to call her right now,’ he said.

  *

  The digital age had made life easier for investigators like Michael. Today anyone with Internet access and around 150 kroner could buy an effective and reliable GPS transmitter that could be attached to the underside of a car with Velcro or slipped into the bottom of a bag. You could then follow anyone’s mov
ements from the comfort of your own home on Google Maps. It had become so much easier to find people – or for them to find you, which was the flipside, and one of the reasons he replaced his mobile daily and always used unlisted numbers.

  Michael opened up www.mgoogle.com/latitude/ on the mobile’s web browser, entered Lene Jensen’s mobile number, and two seconds later knew that the mobile, and therefore presumably its owner, were currently at the Rigshospitalet, 9 Blegdamsvej, Østerbro, somewhere in Stairwell 2 of the hospital’s main building.

  He studied the location with a frown before he ran down to the hotel reception and asked them to get him a cab.

  *

  Thirty minutes later Michael leaned his head back and looked up at the ugly grey façade of the Seventies hospital. Lene Jensen’s mobile hadn’t moved. He continued through the revolving door and entered a lift along with silent patients, staff in white uniforms and glum-looking relatives.

  He was the only one to exit the densely packed lift on the seventh floor and he looked about him. There were several options. He opened a glass door and was enveloped in the familiar hospital smell; he walked through a waiting area at a leisurely pace while he looked out for a certain shade of chestnut-red hair. He continued down a corridor until the next landing with lifts and tried a parallel corridor: the Ear, Nose and Throat surgical unit. A nurse behind a glass window looked up at him. A couple of mummified patients at a nearby table were eating slowly and in total silence, as if the wrong chewing motion or a rash word could make the brackets, screws, elastics and carefully restored skull bones fall apart, but even they stared at him, and Michael felt conspicuous. When his mobile rang, the nurse shot him an angry look, raised a finger to her lips and pointed to a sign on the wall banning mobiles in the ward. They apparently interfered with respirators or other vital equipment.

  Michael half ran down the corridor and out of the ward. He found an empty common room with a magnificent view across Fælledparken and the towers, spires and roofs of Copenhagen. A pigeon on the railing outside the windows watched him with blinking, red eyes. One of the bird’s claws was deformed by a large tumour and he wondered how it managed to balance on the railing, let alone how on earth it was still alive.