Life and Limb (28 page)

W
agner opened the jar, took out a pill and washed it down with cold tea. Cold green tea. As he put the mug back on the table his face contorted – from the pill, the tea and the realisation that was he was now required to fuss so much about his own body. However, it seemed to do the trick. The agonising spasms had stopped and his fear of having a heart attack was subsiding.

He stared at the notepad in front of him. Every now and then he found it useful to write down the contradictory clues.

At the top he had written:
Who killed Mette Mortensen?

Underneath that he had listed the possible killers. The Thin Man was his prime suspect. Who was he? Wagner circled the nickname absentmindedly with his pen. He was clearly someone known to Mette Mortensen and, in all likelihood, also to Bay. But no one in Mette's circles answered that description, possibly with the exception of her boss, Carsten Kamm, and he had an alibi. Then there was her father. Ulrik Storck's name was right below Kamm's, which again was right below that of The Thin Man. Why had Mette called her father that Saturday night? To tell him she would be home late? That is what Storck had said when they had sent Kristian Hvidt and Arne Petersen to the address in Sjællandsgade. But could it really have taken all of five minutes to tell him that? What had gone on between father and daughter that night? Had they had an argument? Or had something else happened which the father was reluctant to disclose?

Below those three Wagner wrote the name Arne Bay. He circled this name too. What was Bay mixed up in? What kind of information did he have on The Thin Man that he thought he could use to blackmail him with?

If only they'd had the globetrotting Refstrup's explanation earlier. It unequivocally placed Bay at the stadium on the day Mette was found. But did that make him the killer? Had Bay dumped her body in the car park during the second half of the match?

Wagner used logic to organise his thoughts. If Bay was the blackmailer, then he was the one with the knowledge, not The Thin Man. Bay was probably involved – perhaps as a henchman – in the kind of business that Dicte Svendsen had outlined. He had something on The Thin Man relating to the murder of Mortensen. What if he remembered more from that Saturday night than he had admitted? What if he was even an accessory?

Wagner looked at his watch. The time was 9 a.m. At eleven a police car from Aalborg would be arriving with Jan Møller who, after a preliminary hearing, had been remanded in custody for two weeks, charged with the murder of his girlfriend. Hopefully Møller could provide them with some answers. In the right-wing extremist group he and Bay were best friends and always seen together.

The other list on his notepad contained the names of clients whose accounts Mortensen had helped Kamm prepare. It consisted of seven names and each of these would have to be examined in depth, but they hadn't had time to go through all of them yet. Ivar K and Eriksen had an appointment this morning with one client, a florist trading under the name floristen.dk. The rest would be interviewed later in the day. Wagner and Jan Hansen had arranged to speak to the managing director of StemBank Denmark which, to compound the irony, was the same company Hansen was prepared to pay for collecting and storing the umbilical cord blood of his unborn child.

Wagner sighed and doodled on the pad. The world was full of bizarre coincidences. He couldn't help smiling at the memory of Hansen's reaction on hearing that his new hero and the owner of StemBank Denmark, the financier Claes Bülow, had turned out to be one of Kamm's clients and had consequently – because Mortensen had been working on the company's annual accounts – attracted a certain amount of suspicion.

‘I'm sure it's all entirely above board,' Hansen had insisted.

Ivar K had nodded vigorously as he'd popped a piece of nicotine chewing gum in his mouth and said, ‘Yeah, course it is.'

‘No, I mean it. How can Bülow know that Kamm forces his staff to work unpaid overtime? It doesn't mean he gets a smaller bill. Don't forget you're innocent until proven guilty.'

Hansen had jabbed his finger at Ivar K who was chewing loudly. ‘You appear to have forgotten that.'

Wagner had interrupted them to invite Hansen to go with him to StemBank Denmark and speak to the managing director.

It was quite deliberate, he admitted to himself. Hansen needed to have his eyes opened. Wagner didn't want to get dragged into the row with Ivar K, although he was inclined to agree with him: Hansen was a fine police officer, but in his private life he could be rather naive, and signing up for the umbilical cord program could end up costing him and his wife a lot of money. Money which, on the salaries of a police officer and a nurse, the couple could ill afford. Giving Hansen a sense of perspective wouldn't do any harm.

The telephone on his desk rang.

‘Wagner speaking.'

‘I think the body of Arne Bay has been found,' Dicte Svendsen said.

‘What do you mean,
think
?'

Irritation mixed with admiration stuck in his throat.

‘I've had a tip-off. We're going there now.'

‘Going where?'

‘Åbyhøj. Thorsvej. There's a park on one side of the road. Åbyhøj Sports Club uses it for football matches. Are you coming or do you want me to give you a ring when it's been confirmed?'

‘Don't you dare touch anything – and keep your distance.'

‘Sorry, what did you say? Signal is breaking up,' she said in a loud, clear voice before breaking the connection.

T
he body was naked from the waist up and lay face down in the grass. At the centre of the Celtic cross a knife had been plunged in up to the hilt. The tattoos stood out against the pale skin in the sunlight.

‘Christ Almighty,' Bo muttered. ‘No one deserves to die like that.'

Dicte could only agree. But even in this state, stripped of all dignity, there was still something terrifying about Arne Bay, and she remembered how shocked she had been when he'd grabbed her. He had seemed so callous and, looking at his body, she had to remind herself that he had been alive once and that someone had loved him and maybe he had returned their love.

Frederik Winkler was sitting nearby on a boulder. Dicte wasn't sure he had even registered that they had arrived. He was rocking back and forth with his head buried in his hands.

‘Winkler.'

Gently, she placed a hand on his shoulder and he looked up.

‘It's my fault. It was always my fault,' the man said. ‘He was a good boy once, but I played them off against each other and I didn't even know.'

She squatted down in front of him while Bo circled the crime scene without touching the camera dangling around his neck.

‘He made his own choices,' she said in an attempt to console him. ‘He was a grown man who knew what he was doing.'

Winkler shook his head. Something in his eyes had died since she last saw him, and he had aged.

‘Everything he did, he did to hurt me. It was all about revenge. He wanted to assert himself and prove that he was someone.'

Disagreeing with the man served no purpose. The father blamed himself for his son's choices and subsequent death, and this was unlikely ever to change. The two men's conflicting roles had been shaped over time, like two swords sharpening on the blade of the other.

‘And he was. He was your son, but he made the wrong choices and that's not your fault.'

He heard her, but she could tell that he took no notice of her words. She turned to look at the body. It had been dragged from the football pitch to a small patch of green nearby. The legs were half hidden under a bush. She looked across the turf stretching out between the two goals. The grass was reduced to mud between the goalposts and in front of the goals. The clubhouse lay on the other side of a small gravel road, at the end of which there was a playground with no children. It wasn't the NRGI Park Stadium but it was still a football pitch, and the echo of the earlier murder was unmistakable.

‘The photo you showed me,' she said. ‘The one where you're playing football with him. Was that taken here?'

Winkler nodded.

‘We used to be an ordinary family' he said. ‘And then everything went wrong.'

He shook his head.

She was about to offer him more words of comfort when she heard the siren coming from Silkeborgvej,on its way down Thorsvej. A few seconds later the police pulled up with a patrol car, an ambulance and two civilian cars, one of them Wagner's black Passat. The other car belonged to Paul Gormsen, the forensic examiner. The last car to arrive was the blue van belonging to the crime-scene investigators.

Dicte stood up. Bo stayed behind, calmly talking to Winkler, while she went to meet Wagner as he and Jan Hansen got out of the car. She was expecting to be reprimanded because Wagner hadn't sounded pleased on the phone, but she could tell from his stride that he was focused on the job and she had long since been relegated to the periphery of his mind.

‘What are you up to, Svendsen?' he said without malice, marching towards the crime scene. ‘Is it him?'

She nodded and followed him and Hansen, who greeted her with a friendly ‘Good morning'.

‘His father's sitting over there. He found him.'

‘You know him?'

She detected disapproval in Wagner's voice as she took long strides to keep up with them.

‘I've interviewed him in connection with right-wing extremist groups he has infiltrated.'

Wagner stopped.

‘It's no secret. It wouldn't have made any difference. It wouldn't have helped you find Arne Bay any sooner.'

Wagner looked at her with scepticism. She could see he was debating whether or not to ask about her relationship with Winkler, but instead he said, ‘You've seen the body. What do you make of it?'

She contemplated her response while the crime-scene investigators got out, put on their white overalls and started unfurling the police tape.

‘It seems personal. The killer has stuck a knife into the middle of a large tattoo on Bay's back. A Celtic cross. A symbol of the extreme right wing. It's as if the killer wanted to attack Bay's beliefs.'

‘Hmmm.'

Wagner resumed his striding. Bo was now taking photos and circling around outside the tape.

‘At least we now know that Bay didn't kill Mette Mortensen,' Dicte said, following Wagner, although she knew she wouldn't be allowed in behind the cordon.

Wagner stopped again and for a while he looked as if he was deciding how much to tell her. Hansen left them and joined some of the others. She saw him exchange a few words with Bo before putting on a pair of blue overshoes and entering the crime scene.

‘Can we talk off the record?'

Dicte nodded.

‘Always.'

She had grown so used to Wagner's lack of communication that now she knew not to expect anything from him.

‘We already knew that Bay was unlikely to be the killer,' he said. ‘We have another suspect. A tall, thin man we've yet to identify. Bay appears to have tried to blackmail him. We've got a witness to an incident that took place during the first half of the match just before the discovery of Mette Mortensen's body. We believe The Thin Man is the killer and that Bay was a minor player who wanted to exploit what he knew to make some extra cash.'

Wagner nodded in the direction of the crime scene.

‘His actions have evidently had consequences. He was up against something much bigger than he had anticipated.'

‘It certainly looks like it.'

Wagner scrutinised her.

‘You wouldn't happen to have come across a tall, thin man in your work?'

Her eyes were following developments further away. One of the crime-scene officers had started taking photographs from every possible angle. She mused on how little privacy there was in death before replying.

‘No, but if I come across him, I'll let you know.'

She wondered if she should tell him about the
Human Tissue Act
and her recent discussion with Bo, but Wagner's attention had wandered and he nodded at her then headed towards the cordon.

Dicte watched at a distance, like an uninvited guest, and saw Frederik Winkler being gently escorted to the police car before, in all likelihood, being taken to the police station to give a statement. Bo was still taking photographs and she went for a little walk in the park, with the summer sun – whenever it deigned to peek out from behind the clouds – warming her neck. She knew that this case was so complex and so far-reaching that she hadn't understood its scope yet. She thought about Marie Gejl Andersen's father and the glass eyes, and wondered how everything was connected, wondered what it must be like to have a relative subjected to such an assault after death. Was that what had happened to Andersen's father? Had someone not only removed his eyes and replaced them with prosthetics, but also stripped his body of thighbones and other tissue because they knew he was going to be cremated and his family wouldn't see his body again?

Dicte clenched her fists down by her sides. Once she would have said the body didn't matter after you were dead. Now she was not so sure. Death seemed like an extension of life and showing continued respect was important. Especially in an age when a human body had a monetary value and where many conflicting interests were at stake. You should be the owner of your own earthly remains – shouldn't you?

She heard Bo say her name and turned around to join him.

T
he name was almost at the bottom of the list.

Janos Kempinski scrolled down and let the cursor rest on Marie Vejleborg. She was number 213 – a number that suddenly seemed ominous, although he had never been superstitious.

In theory he could just move her higher up, but it wouldn't work. He was – and thank God for that – not the only person with access to Scandia Transplant's waiting list with its data about all the patients who hoped to receive a cadaveric kidney. He would be found out; the system had been set up to make sure that he would. He could possibly force something through, but everyone would know what he had done and if he had to defend the indefensible his professional reputation would suffer. Besides, he was far from certain that he could get away with it.

He clicked on the girl's name and up came the explanation for why she couldn't receive a kidney from her family. Her mother was mentally unstable and her father's kidneys were unsuitable for medical reasons. There were no siblings.

‘Anything interesting?'

The voice made him jump in his chair. Smidt had entered the room without a sound and was standing right behind him. It was too late to close the file. His colleague could read the contents from some distance.

‘There was just something I wanted to check after you mentioned her,' Kempinski said. ‘I didn't understand why the family couldn't donate.'

‘I see. Well, in that case it might interest you to know that our mutual friend Vejleborg called me yesterday.'

Kempinski's stomach lurched. He clicked on the file and closed the waiting list.

‘Did he now? Why was that?'

He knew it made him sound unduly inquisitive, but Smidt and Vejleborg had been closer friends with each other than he had been to either of them back in college. Had Vejleborg told Smidt about his visit to the clinic? That would be unprofessional, but so was asking someone to tamper with the waiting lists.

‘Golf,' Smidt said, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick he fished out from the breast pocket of his coat. ‘He wanted to invite me over for a round of golf. It appears he's a member of a club down his neck of the woods.'

The uneasiness lingered. This was no coincidence. It had to be Vejleborg's way of putting him, Janos, under pressure. He must know that manipulating the waiting list was out of the question. But there was still a price to be paid – in cash, probably – and it never hurt to have a little bit of bargaining power up your sleeve.

‘Did you say yes?'

Smidt whistled as he headed for the door.

‘Of course I did. It's always fun to try out a new course.'

He reached the door, and Kempinski was wondering how to interpret the last sentence.

‘By the way, what's happened to your secretary?'

Smidt had turned around with his hand on the door handle. ‘She's gorgeous. Everyone's talking about her.'

‘She's off sick.'

‘Nothing serious, I hope?'

Kempinski sighed.

‘I don't really know,' he lied, and in order not to sound like a complete idiot, he added, ‘Something to do with her eyes, I believe.'

He regretted it instantly. Smidt could clearly smell a rat and Kempinski could almost see him sniffing like a police dog for drugs.

‘Is that right? Anything specific? I mean, we're doctors and this is a hospital, so perhaps we could help her?'

Kempinski turned off the computer – he didn't know why, maybe it was a symbolic gesture to try to make the subject go away.

‘I don't know.'

He got up and looked at his watch. ‘And now I have to go. I have an appointment with a patient.'

‘I'll walk with you,' Smidt said lightly.

‘I don't think …'

The telephone on Lena's desk rang. Smidt nodded to Kempinski.

‘Answer it. I'll wait.'

Kempinski crossed the room stiffly, picked up and said, ‘Kempinski speaking.'

‘Janos, old pal. Are you and your girlfriend ready to roll?'

‘Vejleb … ready to roll?'

‘Yes, ready to roll. Up for the op. I've got a pair of suitable corneas for her. I thought Wednesday would be good if you could get here early in the morning?'

Kempinski looked up. Smidt was still standing in the doorway with his eyebrows raised and a faint smile playing on his lips. Kempinski had to fight the panic rising in his throat like milk boiling.

‘That sounds great. Thank you,' he managed to say in a relatively normal voice. ‘We'll be there.'

‘Our friend Vejleborg is a generous man,' Smidt said as Kempinski put the handset down.

Kempinski searched his brain for a suitable response, but realised how pointless it was when Smidt said, ‘I didn't know you were a golfer as well. Why don't we drive down there together on Sunday?'