by David Hewson
‘Are you back in the government?’
‘Do you support the Prime Minister?’
‘Are you being charged?’
‘Do you maintain your accusations?’
He knew now to do nothing but smile and push his way through. The experience had changed him. Perhaps made him a politician at last.
Kahn was waiting for him in his old office, still unoccupied ahead of the coming reshuffle.
‘Where is everyone?’ Buch asked.
‘They asked me to come alone,’ the Interior Minister said. ‘Best not to make too much fuss.’
Buch realized he’d been so preoccupied he’d forgotten to brush his teeth. So he went to the desk, took out the brush he kept there and the little tube of toothpaste, poured himself a glass of water. Plough and Karina watched in silence from the bookcase near the door.
‘I apologize for the mess,’ he said, seating himself on his desk. ‘I left in rather a hurry as you may know.’
Then he started brushing his teeth.
‘We were hasty yesterday,’ Kahn said. ‘We didn’t know the full facts. We had to protect the party.’
‘At all costs? At the expense of the truth?’
‘Fine, fine. Bawl me out. You’ve got to admit. It was a pretty tall tale. We’re all sorry. OK?’
‘Accepted,’ Buch said. ‘Now we must act quickly. There are only two options.’
Kahn glanced at Plough and Karina.
‘Either Grue Eriksen resigns,’ Buch said, ‘or we force him to do so. Let’s have a private conversation first and see if he’ll do the decent thing and fall on his own sword.’
‘There’d be a general election. One we’d lose,’ Kahn said wearily.
‘That’s a reason for not doing the right thing?’ Buch asked.
‘Listen to me, Thomas,’ Kahn pleaded. ‘The Prime Minister wants to see you. He’s appointing new ministers. You’re looking at promotion.’
Buch turned to the window and the twisting dragons, walked to the door, pointed at it with his toothbrush and said, ‘Get out.’
‘You like being a minister!’ Kahn cried.
‘Out!’
Kahn walked through the door, sour-faced again.
‘Krabbe and the Prime Minister are of one mind on this. Rossing won’t help you. It’s time to grow up.’
‘Wait till I put Krabbe right on a few things. Thank you! Thank you! Goodbye! Chop, chop!’
Buch slammed the door behind him. Karina and Plough watched, wide-eyed and speechless.
‘Well?’ Buch asked. ‘What else could I do? Krabbe!’ He raised a fleshy finger. ‘Let’s find him.’
Carsten Plough put his hand to his eyes, shook his head, then wandered slowly outside.
Søgaard was still in the Politigården. Brix’s personal decision. He didn’t like the man and was in no rush to let him go.
The major now wore the blue suit of a prisoner and faced being charged as an accessory. Lund and Strange sat in the interview room watching him walk nervously up and down by the window. He was finally starting to look scared.
‘Tell us about Bilal’s contacts,’ Lund began. ‘Friends? Family?’ Søgaard dragged a seat to the table, sat down, glared at her.
‘I was his commanding officer. Nothing more. Why in God’s name am I still here?’
She tapped the pile of evidence in front of him.
‘There’s clear proof in the radio logs that some messages were deleted. You investigated.’ Søgaard picked up the sheet and looked at it. ‘Why didn’t you find any of that?’
He didn’t answer. Lund nodded.
‘You didn’t look into this yourself, did you? Too menial. So you delegated it. Let me guess—’
‘Of course I asked Bilal to check them! He was the officer responsible for that area.’
Strange threw up his hands and laughed.
‘So you asked him to investigate himself? Give me strength . . .’
She showed Søgaard the new photos from forensic. The skulls and bones she’d brought back from Helmand.
‘We know for a fact these civilians were killed. No point in denying it now. An officer was there. Raben told the truth.’
‘Raben was talking like a madman—’
‘He told the truth! Bilal concealed those messages. Your men were witnesses to an atrocity. I don’t believe for one minute you’d no idea something bad went on.’
‘No.’ He kept looking at the radio logs. ‘I was assured nothing happened. I never knew about the messages. We never found anything at the house.’
‘That’s because you didn’t look,’ Lund threw at him. ‘This isn’t going to go down well with the next promotions board—’
A knock on the door. Strange went to deal with it.
‘I can’t answer for Bilal.’ Søgaard leaned back, looked weary. ‘Ask him.’
‘You knew about the message five days before. The one that told you special forces were heading for the village. Who were they?’
A hand to his head.
‘I never saw that message!’
She got up from the table, stood by the window, hands on hips, staring at the rain running down the pane.
‘You really weren’t much in command at all, were you?’ Lund asked, looking at the grimy glass.
‘You don’t know what it’s like . . .’
‘Listen to me, Søgaard. What future you’ve got in the army depends on the answers you give me now. The man who murdered these people used Per K. Møller’s identity. Did Bilal know Møller?’
It took him a while to answer.
‘No reason why he should.’
‘Was Bilal there when the real Møller died?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Was anyone from special forces . . . Jægerkorpset . . . any of these people around when that happened?’
‘No. He was on his own when there was an explosion. He went straight to the nearest field hospital in Lashkar Gah.’
Lund turned and looked at him.
‘Was he wearing his ID?’
‘Why wouldn’t he be?’
She picked up the photos, showed him the charred dog tag she’d picked up in Helmand. All in one piece.
‘Explain that.’
‘I’m not going to try.’
Lund didn’t take her eyes off him.
‘If you had a special forces officer come to you and say he needed a new ID for a covert mission—’
‘Never happened, Lund! Don’t go there.’
‘If. You could just look through the recent deaths. Pick a name. Get a new dog tag made.’ Her hand went to her head, ran through her long dark hair. ‘Maybe Møller’s did get lost. Or someone took it. If this is a covert mission they’ll give him a new one anyway. Like a fake passport.’
Søgaard was rigid in the seat opposite her.
‘But an order like that’s above your pay grade, isn’t it? Above Jarnvig’s too I guess. It would need someone back here.’
‘I never did anything like that in my life. I was never asked.’
‘If you were?’
No answer. A knock on the door. Strange there.
‘They’ve found Bilal’s G-Wagen outside Hillerød. No sign of him or the woman. He must have stolen a new vehicle.’
She got up to leave.
‘What about me?’ Christian Søgaard shouted as she walked for the door.
‘You can wait,’ Lund said.
Outside the office was buzzing as Brix gathered a team. They’d placed a tap on Jarnvig’s phone and captured the conversation with Bilal.
‘What did he say?’ Lund asked. ‘This still doesn’t—’
‘He claims he’s been set up. He wants Arild to get him out of this.’
Lund sat down next to an officer at a computer.
‘Bilal’s never been anything but a soldier. He’s going to want somewhere military to hide. The place he left the G-Wagen—’
‘There’s nowhere military in that area,’ Brix said. ‘We ch
ecked.’
‘Nowhere now,’ Strange said. ‘During the Cold War we had lots of places up there. We thought the Russians were going to walk straight in, remember?’
Lund ran her finger over the screen, not minding how much this annoyed the woman detective perched in front of it.
‘What kind of facilities?’
‘All sorts,’ Strange said. ‘Underground barracks.’ His mild face hardened. ‘We were supposed to hide there and wait. Just sixteen Danish soldiers died when the Nazis invaded. The Russians weren’t going to get off that lightly.’
‘I imagine not,’ Lund murmured, thinking. ‘Have we checked for abandoned facilities?’
She got up, went to the wall, looked at the evidence photos. A blackened skull from Afghanistan now alongside the bloody photos of Anne Dragsholm and the four members of Ægir.
‘I want someone to get hold of Frederik Holst,’ she said to the nearest detective. ‘He’s an army surgeon in Lashkar Gah.’
There was a photo of the smoky piece of metal she’d dragged out of the oven the Afghan cop had uncovered at the back of that sad little house.
‘Get through and ask him what happened to Per K. Møller’s dog tag.’
A buzz of excitement ran round the office.
‘Lund!’ Strange yelled from the exit. ‘We’ve got somewhere. Grab your coat. We’re going.’
‘Ask him if there were any special forces officers in the hospital at the time,’ she added. ‘Get me names. Is that clear?’
‘Sure,’ the young officer said. ‘Will do.’
She got her donkey jacket from the locker. Looked at the gun in the locker, took it. Strange was right. She knew there’d been body armour sitting on the second shelf. It had been there ever since they took her back. No one mentioned it. No one ever told her how to use the thing. Not that she minded. She knew now.
The woods north of Hillerød were dense and dark. The green army G-Wagen moved slowly down the narrow lane. Jarnvig at the wheel. Angry.
‘This is ridiculous. We can’t keep looking.’
‘Bilal used to come here,’ Raben said. ‘He told me about it. You could break in. Go underground. See all these places they used during the Cold War.’
He waved at the broken wire ahead. Flat green land beyond it, forest in the distance. No buildings. Not even a sign.
‘We should call the police,’ Jarnvig said again.
There was a shop along the road.
‘Keep driving, will you?’ Raben said.
‘I’m taking orders from you now, am I? We could get hold of Arild. Bilal worships him. If anyone could cut a deal . . .’
The roadside shop was for local campers. Fruit and vegetables. Gas. Clothing. General supplies.
‘Let’s ask someone,’ Raben said.
He told Jarnvig to stop the jeep. The two of them walked into the ramshackle store. A short bearded man stood behind the counter.
‘Can I help? We’ve got fresh potatoes—’
‘We’re from the army,’ Jarnvig said. ‘Looking for a deserter. Probably in fatigues. Acting a bit scared. He’s—’
‘He’s sick,’ Raben said.
‘What kind of sick?’ the man asked, reaching for something underneath the counter.
‘A bad kind. He’s young-looking. About twenty-eight. Dark hair. Dark skin. Immigrant. He’d probably want to buy food or . . .’
The bearded shopkeeper pulled out a double-barrelled shotgun, held it loose in his arms.
‘Don’t get many people this time of year. Those you do get . . . sometimes they act funny.’ He looked at them. ‘What kind of bad?’
‘We can deal with it,’ Raben said.
The man nodded at Jarnvig.
‘You’re the second squaddie who’s walked in here with a gun on his belt. I’d get arrested if I went round like that.’
‘Where did he go?’ Raben asked.
He laughed.
‘Come into a shop and you’ve got to buy something. It’s only polite. Everyone knows that.’
Jarnvig muttered something, nodded at the cigarette stand and threw fifty kroner on the counter. ‘Give me twenty Prince.’
‘Prince cost a hundred out here, mister,’ the shopkeeper said with a big grin. ‘It’s the transport, you see.’
Raben was getting furious. Jarnvig threw another note on the counter.
‘Where . . . ?’ Raben started.
‘Go left. A couple of hundred metres down he took an old track into the woods. Not seen that used in years. You ought to find him just from following the tyre tracks.’
‘He had a woman with him?’ Jarnvig asked.
‘Not that I saw. You want to buy something else?’
But by then Raben was hurtling back towards the Mercedes.
Torsten Jarnvig sat in the passenger seat, shaken by Raben’s crazed driving as they careered along the overgrown trail.
There was only one set of tyre marks ahead. He could have followed them. Would have done too. But Raben was a jaeger, just like Jan Arild all those years before in the Gulf, the Balkans and places they never talked about. Like dogs after a scent, they didn’t pursue a quarry. They chased it down.
The woods were coniferous, thick and dark, even in winter. From the state of the ground it looked as if only one vehicle had been this way all season.
A crossroads. Raben didn’t even stop before taking the Mercedes into a hard left swing, rounding the corner at such speed the vehicle almost toppled over. Jarnvig clung to the door handle, didn’t say a thing. There was no point.
The track narrowed. There was open space ahead. At fifty kilometres an hour they burst into a clearing. An old black Land Rover was parked on a concrete pad. A rusty, low watchtower to the right. Raben stamped on the brakes, kept the wheels bursting in and out of lock, brought the vehicle to a halt in a dead straight line.
No one in the Land Rover. Behind it was an ancient fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. A yellow sign, rickety, now at forty-five degrees: MILITARY AREA. KEEP OUT.
Raben stretched out his hand. How long did Torsten Jarnvig think about this? As long as he did in the Iraqi desert, when he was alongside Jan Arild, wondering how to stay alive.
He took the army handgun from his belt and handed it over.
‘Call the police,’ Raben said.
‘Do you want me as backup?’
That was a look Arild gave him from time to time too.
It said: Are you kidding?
‘There’s space enough for a couple of thousand soldiers underground here,’ Raben said. ‘Their radios won’t work. They won’t know where I am.’ A sour, hurt expression on his face. ‘I’d rather not get shot again. Tell them that too.’
Then he worked his way through the wire.
It took a minute to find the entrance. Cold War. Built to shelter from a nuclear blast. They’d been mothballed by the time Raben came into the army. But the word was they were never totally out of commission. Some bright spark had realized the end of one conflict, even a half-century stand-off between the world’s great powers, didn’t spell peace on earth. The time might come again . . .
Raben remembered this as he edged through the open heavy iron door set into what looked like a derelict guardhouse surrounded by blackthorn and elder bushes. He had a torch but he didn’t need it. The place was lit up like Strøget at Christmas. Two lines of bulbs in a whitewashed ceiling led down a stone staircase that seemed to go on for ever. The place had power. Was still breathing, alive.
Jarnvig’s P210 pistol sat steady in his hand. He took the steps one by one, moving slowly down this steep artery into the earth. There was nowhere to hide in this freezing, dank refuge beneath the ground. Not for him. Or Said Bilal.
Buch found Erling Krabbe on the main staircase in the Folketinget.
‘I left you some messages . . .’
The People’s Party man looked even more evasive than usual.
‘I was about to call you back. After my next meeting. Look . . .’
>
MPs and civil servants were wandering up and down, glancing at them. Krabbe walked down to the next landing, disappeared into the shadows of a corridor. Buch followed.
‘Just tell me,’ he begged. ‘Will you join the Opposition in bringing down Grue Eriksen?’
Erling Krabbe bit his bloodless lower lip, said nothing.
‘Dammit!’ Buch barked. ‘You know he’s not fit to stay in office. The man’s as guilty as hell. They found proof that family was murdered in Helmand.’
‘You only have Rossing’s word for that and he’s chosen to take the blame . . .’
‘Rossing’s the scapegoat! And a happy one too. He won’t get prosecuted. He’ll be back in government in eighteen months. It was the truth. You know it too.’
Krabbe glanced at his watch so quickly Buch knew he hadn’t even checked the time. Then he started to walk off.
Buch’s hand came out and grabbed his arm.
‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Thomas Buch demanded. ‘I’ve got a right to know.’
Krabbe peeled Buch’s fat fingers from his arm.
‘I’m not going to get into bed with Birgitte Agger without thinking it over. You don’t honestly believe it’s justice she’s after.’
‘This isn’t about politics. It’s about right and wrong . . .’
Erling Krabbe was staring at him, as if he’d seen something new.
‘It really is that black and white for you, isn’t it?’ He laughed. ‘I suppose it was for me once. But it isn’t and it never will be.’
He went back to the staircase, started to walk down the steps.
‘So it was you who spilled the beans, was it?’ Buch bellowed, his voice echoing off the walls, making heads turn everywhere. ‘When I told you Rossing had confessed. You went straight to Grue Eriksen like the lapdog you are?’
Krabbe came back, astonished. Hurt, Buch thought.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You’re the only one I told!’
Erling Krabbe folded his skinny arms and waited.
‘Apart from . . . my own people,’ Buch said more quietly. ‘People I trust, naturally.’
Krabbe laughed at him.
‘Oh honestly. Did your week as a minister teach you nothing? There’s no one you can trust in this place.’
A pat on the arm. A look that seemed almost kindly. He held out his hand.
‘I’ll call you when I’ve decided,’ Krabbe said.