Authors: David Hewson
‘A moment,’ Buch said and put Krabbe on hold.
‘The police have found out who set up the website for the video,’ she said.
He nodded, went back to Krabbe.
‘Let’s meet tomorrow morning and I’ll brief you as much as I can.’
‘Why not now?’
‘Because I’m busy. Wouldn’t you expect me to be?’
‘We’re not going to get on, are we?’
That offended Thomas Buch.
‘I hope so. For everyone’s sake. How about eight? I’d like Agger to be there.’
‘Eight,’ Krabbe said and the line went dead.
A terraced building across the Lakes, close to the Dronning Louises bridge. The usual pizza and kebab shop on the ground floor. Flats above and behind, probably fifteen or more
in the whole block. They worked their way door by door up to the second floor.
‘Where’s the bookshop?’ Lund grumbled.
A woman came up the stairs. She was young, Middle Eastern-looking with a purple hijab.
‘Hi,’ Lund said, taking out her ID. ‘We’re looking for Aisha Oman.’
A young man behind her was carrying a baby. Husband, Lund guessed.
‘You’ve come to the wrong place,’ he said. ‘We live here.’
‘She owns a bookshop.’
The man thought for a moment, then said, ‘Try the ground floor. Behind the pizza place. Someone keeps books there I think.’
‘Who?’ Strange demanded.
‘Kodmani. I haven’t seen him today.’
‘What about his wife?’ Lund asked.
‘She died a couple of years ago.’
Lund looked at Strange.
‘I thought you tried that door.’
‘I did. No one answered.’
She walked downstairs, found the bell push, pressed it once, waited for a couple of seconds, then kept her thumb on it, listening to the weedy trilling from behind the door.
Nothing.
They stood back. Lights on inside. Music coming from somewhere.
Lund looked at Strange. Raised a dark eyebrow. Waited.
Watched him kick down the door, go in yelling, handgun raised.
This, at least, he seemed good at.
The place was brightly lit, the walls covered in exotic tapestries, repeating oriental patterns, beaded curtains dividing off the space between dining room and a small tidy kitchen.
Footsteps. The gun twitched. A tall, heavily built man with a thick black beard came out from behind the beads, started yelling at them, a foreign tongue first, then Danish.
‘My children are asleep. What is this? What do you want?’
A young boy, no more than eight or nine, stood behind him, clinging to his father’s white robe. A girl, a year or two older, was further back, glaring at them, her pretty face full of
hate.
Strange told the man to hold out his arms, patted him down.
‘Are you Kodmani?’
‘What do you want?’
He was still playing with a prayer bead as the handgun dodged around him.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Lund said to the two kids. ‘Go back to bed. There’s nothing to worry about.’
She looked at the man.
‘Kodmani? Help us here. We’ve no business with your children.’
He calmed down a little at that, told them to go back to their rooms.
These big old houses, she thought, looking around. They seemed to run on and on for ever.
‘Three months ago you ordered some leaflets in your wife’s name,’ Lund said once the kids were out of earshot. ‘Why did you do that?’
He puffed out his chest. Like the men in Ryvangen, Kodmani didn’t think women should be asking questions either.
‘Do you have a search warrant? I know my rights—’
‘Where were you earlier today?’
‘I want to see a lawyer.’
‘Why?’ Strange asked. ‘What did you do wrong?’
‘I know my rights.’ He was wagging his right finger at them, the way men did in the suicide videos she’d seen. ‘I know you can’t just break in here . . .’
Lund looked at the oriental carpet and the way the wiring ran around it. Some of the cabling was amateurish, tacked along the skirting board.
Then it went down. Somewhere close to where Kodmani had quite deliberately stood.
‘Move away,’ she ordered.
He didn’t shift.
‘Move!’ Strange yelled.
Kodmani got off the carpet. Lund dragged it aside.
A full-length trapdoor replaced the flooring all the way into a disused chimney breast. She took hold of the handle, lifted it.
‘That’s my storeroom!’ Kodmani shouted, getting angry, scared. ‘You can’t go down there. I want to see a search warrant.’
Lund found a light switch, walked down a set of modern metal stairs.
It was warm and fusty and smelled of damp. One big bare room with pipes and discarded tools. But there was a faint light coming from behind another set of beaded curtains.
She walked through.
A desk. A fish tank. An angled lamp. Boxes and boxes of freshly printed leaflets and posters. Piles and piles of a book with the title
Al Jihad
in English.
Rack upon rack of computer equipment, boxes, wires, what looked like a discarded satellite dish, and one large monitor.
She sat down in front of it, found she could place the image of the screensaver. Mecca during the Haj. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims milling around the black and gold cube of the
Kaaba.
Lund edged the mouse on the desk, brought the screen to life.
A single window, a browser. Anne Dragsholm on the screen, reading out the last words she’d ever utter.
Back upstairs, she nodded at Strange.
‘Do you have any relatives who can look after your kids?’ Lund asked Kodmani.
‘Why?’
The man in the long white robe didn’t look so confident any more.
‘Because I don’t think you’ll be seeing them for a while.’
Tuesday 15th November
7.43 a.m.
The sound of morning traffic. Stale city air. It took a moment to realize where she was. Then Sarah Lund walked into her
mother’s tiny bathroom and got ready for the day.
Mark was gone, along with every shred of wrapping paper. He was a teenager who tidied up now. How things had changed.
Vibeke was still in bed. Strange called as Lund got some coffee and toast.
‘His name’s Abdel Hussein Kodmani. A widower. Moroccan.’
She went into the spare room. There were still some clothes from two years before. Shirts, jeans and the Faroese sweaters she’d grown to like. They hadn’t followed her to Gedser.
Looking at them now she couldn’t remember why.
Strange was going through tedious details.
‘Kodmani’s lived in Copenhagen for sixteen years. He was running the website that hosted the video.’
I guessed that, she almost said.
The sweaters once meant something. Promised a life she’d never have, out in the rural wilds of Sweden with Bengt Rosling, pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
Lund picked up the heavy, thick-knit jumper. It didn’t feel quite right yet. Too many associated memories. So she got a plain red one instead and climbed into a pair of clean jeans. They
still fitted. Gedser hadn’t changed her really.
‘The police say Kodmani has been working under several aliases.’
‘Does he have a record?’
‘Not a thing. The school says he’s a good father. Very picky about the details of his kids’ education. Most of the Muslims there think he’s a bit nuts.’
Lund didn’t say anything.
‘What are you thinking?’ Strange asked.
‘Who says I’m thinking anything?’
‘I can tell.’
‘I was just thinking . . . if you’re running a terrorist cell, do you pick someone to front it who’s nuts?’
‘Yeah, well,’ Strange said a little testily. ‘That was all the good news. Here’s the bad. PET want a meeting. They’re pissed off with us. They’d had their
sights on Kodmani for a while. We picked him up while they were waiting for some big fish to arrive.’
‘How the hell were we supposed to know that?’
‘Ask them. We’ve got to be there at nine.’
Then he was gone.
Vibeke came in. She didn’t look as welcoming as the day before.
‘You’re not going to stay in a hotel tonight, are you?’
‘I don’t want to disturb you. I don’t know what kind of hours . . .’
‘You won’t bother me.’
It was a bright, pale day. Vibeke’s street was by the railway line running to the Ryvangen Barracks, then Mindelunden across the tracks. In a way this case felt local.
‘You can have the key. I’m at Bjørn’s place most of the time anyway. We can talk about Saturday later.’
Lund packed her bag, got her jacket.
‘What about Saturday?’
Vibeke folded her arms.
‘I’m getting married, remember?’
‘Of course I remember!’ Lund lied. ‘I meant . . . what about Saturday, here?’
‘Bjørn’s relatives will be staying over. We’ve more than thirty people. Let me get you a spare key.’
She went to the table and found one on a short ribbon.
‘You will have time for dinner with us, won’t you? I want you to get to know Bjørn. He’s lovely. So kind and funny.’
Lund took out a plain elastic band, pulled her hair roughly into place behind her neck, didn’t bother looking for a mirror.
‘I’d like to get to know him. Maybe not now. I’m going to be busy. I want to see Mark too.’
‘You surely have time to eat!’ Vibeke took a deep breath. ‘Bjørn has a very pleasant friend. Much younger than him. It would be nice if you could meet him.’
Lund’s fingers fumbled with the elastic band. She kept quiet.
‘Well,’ Vibeke said. ‘I suppose it doesn’t have to be right now.’
There was a sound outside. Lund looked. Strange’s black police car was up on the pavement by the bench seats near the trees. He was out by the driver’s door, honking the horn. A
touch of Meyer there, she thought. About time.
‘I’ve got to dash,’ she said. ‘I’d love to have dinner with Bjørn and you. Sometime.’
Vibeke was at the window.
‘Who’s that man?’
‘The key, Mum.’
‘Oh.’
She handed it over.
‘Sarah. I heard the news. I know I can’t ask you . . .’
‘You can’t.’
‘I said! I know!’
Lund was bad at these moments. She hadn’t appreciated quite how awkward they were for her mother too.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said and briefly touched Vibeke’s arm.
Brix sat silent throughout the meeting with Erik König in an interview room at the Politigården. The grey man from the security agency was clearly determined to make
them feel as small and as guilty as possible.
‘You’ve jeopardized an investigation we’ve had running for months,’ the PET man declared, tapping the table with his trimmed fingernails.
‘We were faced with a situation. We dealt with it,’ Strange replied.
‘This has done us incalculable damage.’
‘If you’d been watching him for months why didn’t you know something was about to happen?’ Lund asked.
No answer.
‘Or did you?’ she persisted.
‘You know I’m not going to discuss matters of national security. You stick to your job. Let us do ours. And don’t get in our way.’
Strange was getting mad.
‘Don’t try and pin the blame on us. We’ve got two corpses in the morgue. What are we supposed to do? Twiddle our thumbs until you decide to say something?’
‘This is an unfortunate outcome,’ Brix intervened. ‘Let’s accept that and work out where we go from here. At least we’ve got our man.’
König snorted.
‘No you haven’t. Kodmani’s got an alibi, and since we’ve been watching him we know it’s watertight. Even if he didn’t . . . he’s a troublemaker. He
doesn’t have the guts to kill someone. They’re pulling his strings. He’s just an idiot they used . . .’
‘He must know something,’ Lund said. ‘Do you have other leads?’
König took off his rimless glasses, played with them.
‘We’ve inquiries to make. I want you to focus on Kodmani and any followers he might have.’ Glasses back in place. Cold grey eyes on Brix. ‘Is that agreed?’
Beyond the window, shapes moving. Guards from the adjoining prison, walking Kodmani to a room in the Politigården.
‘Good,’ König said without waiting for an answer. ‘Let’s see how he interviews.’ He cast a glance at Strange then Lund. ‘And you.’
Breakfast in Thomas Buch’s office. Birgitte Agger and Erling Krabbe around the table with coffee and pastries. Buch pacing the room, going through the morning coverage.
Plough making notes.
‘What’s happened with the man they arrested?’ Agger asked.
‘It takes time,’ Buch replied. ‘They’ll interview him this morning. Let’s leave the police and the security services to do their work, which I will follow. And
concentrate on ours.’
He sat down, showed them a front page: Anne Dragsholm’s bloody face from the video.
‘We need to announce a united front about the anti-terror package. The public expects a response. So do the vicious bastards behind this. The answer for both is the same. We’re
resolute. We shall not be moved. Denmark is an open, democratic nation. We’ll guard our borders, redouble our security. But we will not change who we are.’
Agger scowled.
‘Save your speeches for the press. Why were we taken by surprise in the first place?’
‘The police believed the Dragsholm woman was murdered by her husband,’ Carsten Plough broke in. ‘We had no way of knowing there was a connection to terrorism.’
She was unconvinced.
‘You have PET. That’s why they’re here. Anything else you need to tell us?’
‘No,’ Buch said. ‘We need to stick together. If we let them divide us—’
‘I said this would happen!’ Krabbe cried. ‘You’ve allowed these people to come here, to behave as they wish. To poison our way of life . . .’
Buch took a deep breath.
‘We’re here to discuss a piece of legislation. Not a criminal case under investigation.’
‘Two people are dead, Buch. A fundamentalist is in custody. Save your breath. We won’t vote for this package as it stands. It’s cowardly and insufficient. These people are
murdering innocent Danes.’
Buch fought to keep his temper.
‘I’m the Minister of Justice and I don’t know who these people, as you call them, are. Why are you so sure?’
‘Who else could it be? And when he’s found guilty—’