by David Hewson
‘Don’t—’
‘You know the stupid thing, Raben? If I could walk I’d go straight back in there. Serve again. For all the shit and the pain. It’s what we do, isn’t it?’
‘I guess . . .’
‘When he grows up the kid wants to have a wheelchair.’ Grüner laughed again, spun round on the spot. ‘Just like Daddy. Got a beautiful boy. A loving wife. Got my music. A crappy job. Could be worse.’
He leaned forward, put his arms on the pew.
‘When did they let you out?’
‘They didn’t. I walked.’
He got up, stood over the man in the wheelchair.
‘Did Myg look you up? There’s something happening.’
‘Jesus . . .’ Grüner wouldn’t look him in the eye. ‘They’ll lock you up for ever now.’
‘I was there for ever anyway.’
His voice was too loud. Raben could hear it echoing through the cold body of the church.
‘Raben—’
‘Myg’s dead. That lawyer woman too. Don’t you see the news?’
‘Yes. But Myg and me didn’t exactly exchange Christmas cards.’
Raben bent down, took hold of the arms of the wheelchair.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Who says anything’s going on? There are some terrorists—’
‘You believe that?’
Grüner looked at the mosaics.
‘I don’t know what to believe. Maybe it’s the will of God . . .’
Raben could feel his temper rising and couldn’t stop it. He bent down, spoke fiercely in Grüner’s ear.
‘God didn’t string Myg upside down and let him bleed to death. He visited me the day he was killed. He was worried about something—’
‘Don’t stir up that old shit!’ His voice was so loud it silenced Raben. ‘It’s dead. Keep it that way.’
His hands went to the wheels. Raben held them, locked them.
‘I don’t know what happened, Grüner. I don’t remember—’
‘Let me go, dammit.’
‘What do you know?’
He was still strong, fighting as hard as he could to get free.
‘I don’t know shit!’
The crippled man’s torso lurched forward. The wheelchair overbalanced. In one slow movement David Grüner tumbled face first onto the hard marble floor.
Raben tried to cushion the fall, caught most of it. Kicked the chair upright, struggled to drag Grüner back onto the seat.
‘Get your fucking hands off me!’
His voice was almost a falsetto. It rang shrill around the nave.
Raben stood back, held up his arms. Waited.
Something on the floor. Sheet music. He bent down, picked it up, placed it on the crippled man’s withered legs.
‘You’re crazy,’ Grüner grunted and started pushing himself towards the doors.
Raben strode past him, unlocked them.
‘If you want to talk to me call Priest. OK?’
No answer. He watched as the man who was once one of his strongest, bravest soldiers wheeled himself down the disabled ramp, moved off into the busy street.
Gunnar Torpe stayed behind in the nave.
‘What did he say?’ he asked when Grüner was out of sight.
‘Nothing. I need to get hold of the others.’
‘How can you do that? I don’t know where they are.’
‘You’ve got connections. Use them. Get me some addresses.’
The phone he’d taken from the kid at the petrol station was useless. They’d be listening.
‘I need a mobile. I’ve got to talk to Louise, tell her why I broke out.’
‘Tell me,’ Torpe said. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘In time . . .’
Still Torpe found him a spare phone. And a copy of the morning paper.
‘You’re news.’
Bottom of the page. Stock army photo. A story about his escape.
‘It says you’re dangerous, Jens.’
‘I can read.’
‘The best thing you can do . . .’
Raben thrust the paper back at him.
‘Don’t shop me. That wouldn’t be a good idea.’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because this is about us somehow. About what happened. About . . .’
Sometimes it came back as a dream, as a nightmare of sound, of blood, of screams. But what was real and what fantasy Raben never understood.
‘Do you know what happened in Helmand, Priest?’
‘I wasn’t there, was I? I just heard the rumours when they got you out of there. I know three good men never came back, and those that did weren’t the same. Sometimes you have to think about the future, not the past. Sometimes . . .’
Raben’s hand went to his shoulder. A friendly gesture. At least it was meant that way.
‘I tried that and they wouldn’t let me. Myg’s dead. So’s the lawyer. Someone’s got a list. I need it too.’
Louise Raben was in the infirmary talking to a sick soldier, someone clearly suffering from serious wounds. She didn’t want to leave. Lund didn’t give her any choice.
Outside in the cold, she stood shivering in a skimpy coat over her white nurse’s uniform. Grey sky. Men in khaki everywhere.
‘I told you everything I know. Why can’t you leave us alone? I didn’t help Jens escape. I wish to God he hadn’t . . .’
Lund pulled the photo out of her bag. It was crumpled now and had a coffee stain on it.
‘This is Anne Dragsholm. The woman murdered in the memorial park. Your husband knew her.’
She looked at the photo, shook her head.
‘Well I don’t.’
‘Was Jens worried about something?’
Louise Raben started to walk back towards the office block where Lund had confronted her father earlier.
‘Myg had just been killed. The parole board had turned him down for release. What do you think?’
Lund kept up with her, wouldn’t let this woman go.
‘That’s why he escaped?’
She blinked, looked close to tears, said nothing.
‘How long have you been married?’
‘Is this important?’
‘I’m trying to understand, Louise. I don’t think your husband wanted to break out at all. He’s worried about something. I need to know what that is. How long have you known him?’
They stopped in the cold road.
‘I don’t know . . . fourteen, fifteen years. It’s six since we got married.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘I visited my dad in the barracks. Jens gave me a lift into town. He’d just started here.’ She hesitated. ‘I was always going into town back then. This place . . .’ She briefly looked around her. ‘It was like a prison. My mum had left us. She couldn’t take it.’
‘And then you got together?’
‘No. Jens joined the army because he bought all their promises. See the world. Become a man. Achieve something. And he did. It was what he wanted.’
Lund waited.
‘I didn’t plan to be a soldier’s girlfriend. I certainly didn’t want to be an army wife. I told him.’ The shortest of laughs. ‘Some things you can’t stop, can you? Doesn’t matter how hard you try.’
‘What happened?’
‘After the Ægir tour we’d agreed. He was going to leave the army. Get a civilian job. We’d move to the city and Jonas would go to school there. Then . . .’
Anger and grief in her pretty, pained face.
‘They got ambushed and cut off from the rest. Afterwards they flew Jens to a field hospital and put him on a flight home when he was fit enough. I went and sat by the bed. It was weeks before anyone even knew if he’d survive and then . . .’
‘Then what?’
‘He wasn’t the same man,’ Louise Raben said in a blunt, flat voice.
Lund fumbled for her card, handed it over. ‘If he contacts you it’s important you let me know. For his
sake too.’
Louise Raben stared at the piece of paper.
‘The border police at Gedser?’
‘My number’s on the back.’
‘You’ve got terrible handwriting.’
‘I know.’
‘He was their sergeant,’ she said. ‘Do you know what that means? He felt responsible. Still does somehow. The army . . . I grew up here. I’m still a stranger, an outsider really. It’s hard to understand sometimes . . .’
‘Call whenever you want,’ Lund said and started for her car.
‘Wait!’
Louise Raben was thinking about something.
‘That woman in the picture. I think maybe she visited Jens when he was in hospital. Not long before they threw him out of the army. I saw her there. Lots of people came to see him when he was recovering.’
‘What did they want?’
‘I don’t know. He was sick. He couldn’t really remember what happened. That wasn’t his fault, was it?’
‘No,’ Lund said. ‘Do you know what he did?’
‘Nothing bad. He was a soldier. He did his duty. Whatever they told him.’
Lund took out the photo again.
‘You saw this woman in the hospital?’
‘I think so.’ Louise Raben shrugged her shoulders. ‘It was two years ago. I’m not sure. I’m sorry. I’ve got to pick up my son . . .’
Lund called Strange for an update when she was gone.
‘We’ve got an email Kodmani sent,’ he said. ‘He was inciting his followers to continue the war on Danish soil. We’re pulling in everyone he’s been in contact with . . .’
Lund closed her eyes, listened to the sounds around her: heavy vehicles, men marching, barked orders. Louise Raben felt trapped in this place, wanted so much to escape it. As did her husband, or so she thought.
And now he’d done something so stupid he wouldn’t be out of jail for years . . .
‘Anne Dragsholm visited Raben in hospital when he got back from Afghanistan,’ Lund told him. ‘Louise Raben recognized her. I think Dragsholm wanted to question him about what happened over there.’
‘Why would she want to do that?’
‘You’ll have to ask someone in the army.’
He laughed.
‘Oh no. I’m not banging my head against that brick wall again.’
‘This is a double murder case. We can talk to them as much as we want. Find out what Dragsholm was doing for the army when Raben was in hospital. She went there for a reason.’
A deep sigh.
‘And in the meantime you’ll be doing what?’
‘Talking to Dragsholm’s husband.’
‘Not a good idea. He’s suing us for wrongful arrest. Also today’s her funeral.’
‘I’ll be discreet.’
That silence of his again.
‘Strange?’
‘It’s OK. I was just trying to imagine what that was like. Listen to me. PET want to hold a press conference about the investigation. We’re going public with these arrests. König thinks the terrorists killed Anne Dragsholm. And Myg Poulsen. They say . . .’
Lund took the phone from her ear. Louise Raben had stopped some way along the road. She was talking to Søgaard, the big, self-assured blond major. Smiling, face lit up, eyes sparkling.
‘Lund? Lund?’
Strange’s tinny voice squawked at her.
‘Did you hear what I just said? PET think this is about the Islamists. Brix says so too.’
She cut the call and put the phone back in her pocket.
Then it must be true, she thought.
The training was so intense it never left you. Jens Peter Raben had gone undercover in Iraq, in Afghanistan. In other places the Danish public weren’t supposed to know about. And now he was hiding in plain sight in Copenhagen.
Hood up, hunched over, with the gait of a sick and shorter man, he’d hung around Østerport Station for the best part of an hour. Jonas’s kindergarten was nearby. Louise had to come here sooner or later.
Amidst the pushbikes and scooters, hidden by the iron railing, he watched her emerge from the subway, cross the street, walk the short distance to the nursery. Then return with Jonas back along the road, not smiling, not talking.
After two years of incarceration, first in hospital, then, after a brief spell of freedom, in Herstedvester, Raben found this grey and open world a strange and foreign place. It looked bigger. So did Jonas.
Louise wore a black coat and a pink scarf. He was in a blue anorak with green mittens. Feeling awkward, looking sullen. Louise was having to drag him along by the hand. He dropped his lunch box, deliberately. She picked it up. He let go of his mittens. She said something and got those.
They crossed the road.
Behind the railing Raben was no more than ten metres from them now but if they saw him, doubled over, hood down, looking like a cripple, they’d never know.
See but be unseen. Move like a ghost, swift and invisible.
The hard-taught lessons kept you alive when others perished.
Louise was on the phone, dragging Jonas by the hand along the other side of the railings. Still hunched over, hidden in the shadows, Raben began to walk.
All she had to do was turn into the entrance, get into the darkness of the stairway down to the metro. Then he could glide towards her, say something briefly, look to all the world like a stranger asking directions.
Two men in uniform by the subway entrance. Raben’s head went down further, he turned his back, stopped, coughed, kept out of sight.
Chance gone.
Then, through the iron railings, he saw the blue uniforms again. The cops were stepping into a white marked car, one talking on the radio. Raben watched it set off into the traffic, heart lifting, wondering if he could catch up with Louise down the steps.
Put his hood down. Walked out, looked, saw nothing.
A cry, young and angry.
In front of Raben was a single green mitten. Beyond it Louise was dragging Jonas to a military Mercedes G-Wagen.
Christian Sögaard stood by the vehicle, holding the door open, waving them in.
Jonas screamed something at him. Louise stopped, looked up at Søgaard and smiled.
Something cold and furious held Jens Peter Raben where he was.
Training.
The head rules the heart. The head keeps you alive.
He stepped behind the station wall, peeked round the corner. Watched his wife and son climb into the khaki Mercedes.
Was close enough to hear their voices. Søgaard’s officer’s boom.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t drop you off. Tomorrow should be fine. Jonas . . . sit in the middle. Five minutes and we’re home.’
We’re home.
He was too cold, too tired to get mad. So Raben did what he was supposed to. Tried to plan.
Went back and picked up the mitten. Bought himself a coffee from the Irma supermarket by the station and stood in the shadows behind the railings, sipping at it.
After a while the phone he’d got from Torpe rang.
‘This is Grüner.’
‘What’s up?’
He could hear sounds behind Grüner’s worried voice. Traffic in the open air somewhere. Not the job Grüner got in an underground garage. That would have sounded different. Raben tried to picture him trapped in that nightmare, all day, some nights too, locked up with the petrol fumes, dreaming of music. Hell came in different shapes and sizes.
‘I’m sorry I got mad with you, Jens. I was scared. That lawyer woman came asking questions a few weeks before she was killed.’
‘What about?’
‘You really don’t remember, do you?’
‘I told you—’
‘Lucky man. Come and see me at work.’
Grüner gave him an address in Islands Brygge across the water.
‘Half an hour,’ Raben said.
‘No. I don’t start till four. Give me a couple of hours and then . . .’
Th
e funeral was at Solbjerg Park in Frederiksberg. Lund stood and listened to a distant church bell as she watched the small group of black-clad mourners gathered round the grave.
She’d seen Stig Dragsholm briefly in the Politigården on that first day when he was a suspect. Not long after Svendsen had managed to bully a confession out of him. He was a tall, good-looking man with the trim, honed appearance of a fancy lawyer. No one talked to him much as his former wife was buried. No one walked away from the grave by his side.
She stepped across the grass and stopped him close to the car park.
‘Sarah Lund,’ she said, flashing her card. ‘Police. I just want to ask a few questions . . .’
He stared at her, incredulous, then shook his head and walked off.
Lund followed.
‘I wouldn’t bother you today if it wasn’t important.’
Dragsholm got out his car keys. She heard the locks click on his Volvo, got in front of the car door.
‘I’m worried that other people are going to die. That your wife’s not the last.’
He brushed her out of the way, climbed in, sat behind the wheel. Stared at the dashboard. Didn’t make a move.
Lund walked round, opened the passenger door and got in.
He was crying. She let him get on with that for a while.
All the other mourners were gone. Another funeral was getting under way, pale coffin being carried across the grass. It was an endless procession, one Lund knew well by now.
Dragsholm got out, stood by the front of the spotless saloon. She joined him. After a while he started to walk round the sprawling cemetery. Lund kept up.
‘Why did you confess?’ she asked when they were away from the car and the grave.
‘That pig of a policeman kept screaming at me. I just wanted him to shut up. I knew I didn’t kill Anne. She knew it too. That’s all that matters.’
He looked at her.
‘Besides. I’m a lawyer. I was going to tear your case to shreds once I got out of that stinking hole.’
‘I’m sure,’ Lund agreed, and felt happy Svendsen had departed on holiday the previous night. ‘Did she talk about what she did with the army?’
‘Not much.’
He looked round the cemetery. The vases. The bouquets, huge and plentiful for recent burials, smaller for earlier ones. Some graves unattended, forgotten completely.
‘Did she ever mention Myg Poulsen?’
‘They asked me that already. The answer’s still no.’