by David Hewson
Lund couldn’t take her eyes off the black and white photo. Raben seemed so happy, so young in that. Not innocent. Not quite.
‘Were you a soldier, Strange?’
‘For a while. I did my duty.’
‘You were a jæger?’
He threw back his head and laughed. It was so spontaneous and funny she almost did too.
‘Are you kidding? Do I look the hero type? I’m not macho enough for those guys. Even if I wanted to be. Which I don’t.’
She took one last scan of the room.
‘From what I remember,’ Strange added, scratching his crew cut, ‘you never tell anyone you were in special forces. So maybe Raben was.’
Lund looked at him. Waited.
‘And maybe I was too,’ Strange added, catching on. ‘Except I wasn’t.’
She was back going through Raben’s clothes.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Something that tells me who he is. Why he’d break out.’
‘They turned him down for release.’
‘Yes. And one day we’ll find him. And he’ll be back here for years. For a smart man this seems very stupid. Or desperate.’
So many paintings on the wall and all of them by his young son.
‘Raben’s thrown away everything. Why?’
‘Brix is asking for us.’
‘Is the medical director here?’
‘She is. But Brix wants a report. PET have arrested three—’
‘Brix can wait.’
Director Toft’s file on Jens Peter Raben seemed remarkably slim for a man in open-ended custody.
‘He was considered for parole but the Prison Service turned him down,’ she said. ‘I guess that caused a relapse . . .’
‘Of what?’ Lund asked.
‘Post-traumatic stress. As I said he was involved in an incident in Afghanistan. It’s not uncommon sadly. But Raben’s case was extreme. He could be violent, delusional, obsessed—’
‘What kind of incident?’
Toft shook her blonde head.
‘There are rules . . .’
‘You just told me we’ve got a very dangerous man at large. He’s probably headed for Copenhagen. If you conceal anything . . .’
Toft sat back in her chair. This was a new experience and she didn’t like it.
‘Some of his comrades died in an attack in Helmand. He held himself responsible. In one way his amnesia spared him some grief. In others, it made it worse.’
Strange asked, ‘How?’
‘Because he didn’t know what really happened. So his mind invented fantasies to fill the vacuum. Sometimes he’d think people here were soldiers. Dead ones. He’d scream at them. Attack them if he had the chance. I told you. Before he was committed he took a complete stranger hostage. Almost killed him. I’d hoped we were over that phase . . .’
Lund pushed a photo in front of her.
‘Tell me about Myg Poulsen.’
Toft nodded.
‘Raben wanted to call him for some reason. He said he was worried.’
‘Worried about what?’
She thought about this.
‘He said Poulsen might harm himself.’
‘And you didn’t think that was important?’
Toft laughed.
‘Raben was delusional. If I believed everything he said I’d be as sick as him.’
‘What about her?’ Lund placed the woman’s photo on the table. ‘Anne Dragsholm. Lawyer. Adviser to the military.’
Toft shook her head.
‘Raben hadn’t talked about the war for months. He was focused on the future and his family.’
‘Could he have been in touch with this woman?’
‘I don’t think so. I vet all contacts. What is this? Look, I’m sorry he’s escaped. But that’s all this is. Someone who got out of here . . .’ She looked puzzled, lost for a moment. ‘I should have realized he wasn’t doing as well as I thought. You need to see something.’
She went to a filing cabinet, retrieved a disk, slotted it into her laptop.
‘This was what he was like when he first came. He spent three weeks in solitary before we could even consider treatment.’
Lund and Strange walked behind her desk. It didn’t look like the man she’d met here only the day before. Raben was thinner, with a full beard and greasy, unkempt hair. Dressed in a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms. Cursing, screaming. Right arm in a cast but he still tried to hammer the walls with his bare fists until they bled.
Then he picked up the one chair in the bare room and began to beat at the lens, bellowing with fury.
‘Most of them don’t even notice the camera,’ Toft said. ‘It’s supposed to be hidden. Raben . . .’
The video came to an end. She closed the screen.
‘I think he saw through everything. Me included. If anyone was going to escape it was him.’
They were outside again by nine. Just as many officers and dogs around.
‘We need the area searched,’ Lund ordered. ‘I want visits to his family and friends. Keep them under surveillance. He got out because he wants to talk to someone.’
‘He’s a missing convict, not a suspect,’ Strange said. ‘Let’s not get this out of proportion.’
‘Listen—’
‘No, Lund. You listen. Raben was photographed with the two victims, but there’s nothing to tie him to their murders. He was locked up in this place when they happened. He can’t have—’
‘He knows something. He lied about Anne Dragsholm and then clawed his way out of here.’
He opened the car door, signalled for her to get in.
‘There’s not a phone call or a visit from anyone who looks remotely suspicious. Brix says they’ve got more on Kodmani. We have to question him again. Just get in, will you?’
She stayed by the door, furious.
‘Raben could have escaped from here a long time ago. He’s smart enough. He was a jæger, wasn’t he?’
Strange groaned.
‘I wish I’d never said all that.’
‘He could have got out whenever he wanted. So why now? Why this moment? Will you at least admit it’s worthy of investigation? I’m trying to help you here.’
‘Help me?’ His passive face lit up with astonishment. ‘I’ve got rank, Lund. They didn’t give me that as a favour.’
She held out her hand.
‘Give me the keys. I’m driving.’
‘It’s my car . . .’
She came and stood next to him, hand out, like a mother demanding something from a disobedient child.
‘Give me the keys.’
He shoved his hands in his pockets, wouldn’t move.
‘We can stand here all night if you like,’ Lund said.
Nothing.
‘All night. I promise—’
‘Dammit,’ he swore, then walked round and climbed into the passenger seat.
It took six phone calls before Louise Raben found a lawyer willing to listen. Most didn’t take on hopeless cases. This one at least seemed willing to consider it.
‘He hasn’t any previous convictions,’ she said, listening to him wriggle on the line.
‘Let me think about it,’ the man said.
‘He’s a good husband. A loving father. They treated him terribly. I don’t know—’
‘I said I’ll think about it. Call me next Monday . . .’
‘I can call you tomorrow.’
‘I’m busy for the rest of the week. Get me the papers. We’ll talk on Monday. I don’t normally take on soldiers’ cases. I don’t think they should be over there.’
Another time she’d have bitten his head off. Jens didn’t start that war. He was a soldier. He went where they sent him. But now . . .
‘Jens didn’t like it either.’
On that fragile lie she ended the call, closed her eyes, said a small prayer.
When she looked up her father was in the living-room doorway.
‘Dad.’ She ran t
o him. ‘I think I’ve got us a new lawyer. A good one this time. We’ve got grounds for appeal.’
He didn’t look his usual self.
‘I promised to send him all the papers.’
‘Louise . . . there are some people here.’
Two men had moved behind him. Police in their blue uniforms.
She was an army wife. Could scent bad news on the wind, in people’s eyes.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
Then sat at the kitchen table and listened.
One cop spoke for both of them.
‘He’d been planning this for some time,’ he concluded.
‘When did he escape?’ her father asked.
The man nodded at her.
‘Just after your daughter’s visit.’
All three of them stared at her.
‘I didn’t know. That’s the truth.’
‘Louise . . .’
She ran to the sink, stared at the black night, tears blurring her vision.
‘Dad! Don’t you believe me?’
‘There was no one waiting for him outside,’ the cop added. ‘We don’t think he had help. But if you’ve got any idea where he’s heading you should tell us. He’s dangerous—’
‘No he’s not!’ she cried, turning on them. ‘That’s the point. If you’d let him out. Let him come to me and Jonas—’
‘Your husband’s an escaped felon,’ the cop said. ‘We’re treating him as a risk to the public and himself. If you know where he is—’
‘She’s no idea,’ her father broke in. ‘They didn’t let my daughter see him much. When she did get in he wasn’t exactly . . . communicative.’
Louise Raben wiped her eyes and glared at him.
‘We need a list of his friends. Relatives. Places he liked to go.’
‘I’ll talk to my daughter. We’ll be in touch.’
The man in blue got up, came and stood next to her.
‘If you hide anything you’re breaking the law. You could go to jail too.’
‘She knows nothing!’ Jarnvig yelled at him. ‘Just go, will you? Can’t you see we’re shaken up by this? We thought Jens was coming home.’
The second cop, the silent one, got up and shuffled over.
‘We’ll be back for that list in an hour,’ he said. ‘If you don’t have it I’ll wait.’
Then they left.
Dishes in the sink. Washing to do. Jonas had broken his lunch box. She couldn’t get it back together again.
‘Want me to help with that?’ her father asked.
‘No.’
She went and sat at the table again, struggled to put the plastic fastenings in place.
‘This is all wrong.’
‘Louise . . .’
‘He said he’d resumed the treatment. All he wanted to do was come home.’
Her father took the lunch box from her, snapped the lid back in. She couldn’t begin to make sense of what she’d heard.
‘Whatever he’s done, there must be a reason. Jens wouldn’t just run off . . .’
He took her hand.
‘But he did.’
A bright spark of anger.
‘Just like that? No reason? The way Mum did? That’s what you said then, didn’t you? And that wasn’t true? Was it?’
He didn’t like it when someone answered back.
‘No. She left me. She hated . . .’ He nodded towards the barracks outside. ‘. . . this. The army life. So I suppose she came to hate me too.’
‘She had her reasons.’
‘They were her reasons, not mine. I never understood them. How she could leave me, yes. But not you. Never you. I can’t begin . . .’
The words failed him. Torsten Jarnvig was staring at the door. She turned. Jonas was there. He looked tired, close to tears.
‘Mum?’ the boy said in a clear, hurt voice. ‘What’s happened?’
She was there in an instant, scooping up his little body in her arms, holding him, feeling his warm cheek against hers.
‘Nothing, darling,’ she whispered. ‘Nothing.’
‘They were talking about—’
‘Nothing,’ she murmured and hugged him so tight he couldn’t say anything at all.
A cold damp night. Frost on the ground, on the trees of this dead land at the edge of Copenhagen. Jens Peter Raben was finally free.
After he’d emerged from the remote disposal plant he’d broken into the staff offices, stolen some clean clothes, jeans, a sweater, a khaki hooded jacket, dashed into the woods, washing himself with the frosty dew on the trees, trying to get rid of the stink, then changed.
The plant was empty. No car to hotwire. Not even a bike.
So he ran down the track, a steady jogging pace for twenty minutes or more, until he found a main road busy with night traffic, trucks and cars.
Soon it started to rain. Then the rain turned to sleet. Two hours after he’d slipped out of Herstedvester he found himself approaching a petrol station surrounded by woodland.
He stopped in a clump of conifers by the edge, tried to fix in his head what he was doing.
Training.
It didn’t all happen abroad. Often they’d run manoeuvres in Denmark, on terrain much like this. Hide and hunt sorties. Stay out of sight, cover tens, hundreds of kilometres with no money, no obvious form of transport. Emerge at the other end, carry out the assignment.
He didn’t fail then. Didn’t intend to now. But that was practice, for a purpose. One the army supplied. Now he was on his own. A solitary man with a mission he’d yet to discover.
Even in Afghanistan, on the odd lone assignment, he’d never been completely alone. The army came with you. Whispered comforting promises in your ear.
Not now, by this deserted petrol station on the icy outskirts of Copenhagen.
Raben checked for the positions of the CCTV cameras, pulled the hood down as far as it would go, then walked over to the toilets. Got some water to drink. Broke open the lock, jammed the door, stripped off, washed again. Sniffed. Tried to believe the smell of the sewer was gone.
A car pulled in. Long black Volvo estate. Raben angled himself so he could see better. A man about his own age got out with two boys, filled up, went into the kiosk.
Time to get to the Volvo, close enough to see the keys were in the dash. He was about to get in when he heard the kids’ voices.
They were heading back, laughing at the sweets they’d got out of their father.
Raben went straight to the bucket, picked out the squeegee, started sponging down the windscreen, taking off every speck of dirt, every leaf.
The driver came up, gave him a filthy look. The kids got in the back doing the same.
‘Here,’ the man said and gave him a twenty-kroner coin.
Raben took the money. If it weren’t for the kids he’d have seized the keys so easily.
‘I really need a lift into the city,’ he pleaded.
‘I’m not going there.’
‘Can I drive with you anyway? If I can get to a station—’
‘No.’
The man’s head was down, his eyes on the ground. Raben knew this look. It was the one he got from employers after the army kicked him out and he was forced to go round begging for work. It said: I know you exist but I wish I didn’t. This is not my business and never will be.
Another car had pulled in, quickly refuelled. The woman driver was walking back towards it. Raben strode over, asked for a lift.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll behave. I just want to . . .’
Not a word. She was scared. Running behind the wheel, starting the engine, pulling out.
Raben looked back to the kiosk. He was out in the open, had taken down his hood without thinking. They could see his face. Two cameras on him at that moment, maybe more. The attendant was on the phone.
It wouldn’t take the cops long. The training seemed lost to him. It was all so distant it seemed unreal.
He walked inside, took the mobile from the hands of the kid b
ehind the till, put it in his pocket.
‘Give me all the cash you’ve got,’ Raben ordered. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
Couldn’t have been more than nineteen. Jonas might look this way one day.
‘Please, kid. Don’t screw around. Just give me the money.’
‘We don’t have much. People pay by card.’
He pushed the till open. Raben snatched the few notes there.
‘And your car keys.’
‘I don’t have a—’
‘You’re in the middle of the woods! You don’t walk.’
‘My dad brings me,’ he said in a low, petulant voice.
Raben wanted to hate himself but didn’t have the time.
‘I need to get out of here.’
The kid reached down behind the counter. Raben was too slow to stop him.
Came up with a leather fob and a single key on it.
‘The manager keeps an old wreck out the back for emergencies. Here . . .’
Couldn’t move for a moment for the shame.
‘You’d better go, mister,’ the kid said.
‘Sorry,’ Raben said, then walked out, found a beat-up old Ford out back, got it to start on third go, saw the fuel gauge go up to half, then turned out and slowly, carefully drove towards Copenhagen.
He’d got a phone and a few hundred kroner. A car he could drive for thirty minutes in safety, no more.
Back in training, charged with getting across country and committing a fake hit somewhere he didn’t even know, this would have counted as cheating.
Right now it felt that way too.
Buch stood in Grue Eriksen’s office watching the TV. The lead story was the probable collapse of the anti-terror package. And him.
‘Newly appointed Minister of Justice Thomas Buch failed in his attempt to win a broad agreement on the bill which the Prime Minister says is vital for national security.’
‘Ha!’ Buch pushed out his big chest and laughed.
‘The Opposition accuses the government of withholding key evidence about the two murders, believed to be acts of terrorism.’
Birgitte Agger came on, expression set to outrage.
‘In a memo, PET specifically warned the Ministry of Justice there were terrorist links. The government did nothing,’ she insisted.
‘I knew nothing of that memo,’ Buch grumbled. ‘I told her . . .’
There was frost on the circle, frost on the grand grey buildings all around the island of Slotsholmen. Karina had walked Buch through the maze of corridors once more. But he was learning the private way from his office opposite the Børsen, through the Folketinget, across the second-floor pedestrian bridge into the Christianborg Palace. Next time maybe . . .