Authors: David Hewson
Lund pushed the judge advocate’s report towards the army man.
‘This says something about civilian casualties. What was that about?’
‘The usual.’
‘The usual? The usual what?’
‘It’s a war. People die. We try to avoid collateral damage as much as we can but . . .’ He sighed as if this were all tedious. ‘We’re fighting in towns and
villages. In people’s homes sometimes. They don’t wear uniforms. They look like everyone else. It could be a kid carrying an IED. A woman.’ He stared at them. ‘A police
officer.’
‘I appreciate that. But in this specific case . . . was it true?’
‘No. There was a thorough investigation. It cleared the squad of any wrongdoing. The complaint came from a village that was involved in the opium trade. There was the question of
government corruption. It’s a complicated situation . . .’
An officer came to the door and nodded at Strange. He left.
‘So you don’t believe the allegations?’ Lund asked.
Jarnvig gave her a filthy look.
‘Not for one minute.’
She picked up a passage in the papers.
‘The report says—’
‘I didn’t come here to be treated like a criminal.’
Jarnvig seemed bolder with Strange out of the room.
‘You haven’t seen how I treat criminals,’ Lund replied with a smile. ‘We’re trying to get to the bottom of three murders, Colonel.’
‘I lost that many men, all of them from Ryvangen. Dead in some Afghan hellhole.’ He pointed at the papers. ‘I think you’ll find that in there as well. We took it
seriously.’
Lund sat back, looked at her empty coffee cup. She’d meant to bring Strange a piece of cake but forgot.
‘And you think someone from Afghanistan has come all this way to take revenge?’ she asked.
‘You tell me. We try to build bridges over there. We don’t want a battle with the entire population. But someone could still bear a grudge. We’re not universally popular, in
case you hadn’t guessed.’
‘What if it’s one of your own? Someone within the ranks who sympathizes with the Taliban?’
Jarnvig laughed at her.
‘You really don’t know anything about the army, do you?’
‘I’m doing my best to learn.’
He leaned forward, rapped his strong finger on the table.
‘We’re a family. We look after our own. We don’t murder them.’
A memory. A word.
Stikke.
Grass. Informer. Grüner with the tyre round his neck. Something older too. During the Second World War with the Resistance growing. When the Nazis
occupied the Politigården itself and a few brave Copenhagen police officers risked their lives to fight them from within.
Some of those wound up on the stakes in Mindelunden where Anne Dragsholm’s corpse was tied almost seventy years on.
‘What if someone betrays the tribe?’ Lund asked. ‘If he’s a
stikke
? What happens to them?’
Jarnvig stared at her.
‘I’ve no idea what you mean. Do you honestly think a Danish soldier is killing his comrades one by one?’
‘I’m trying to keep an open mind. How about you?’
Strange came back in. He was waving a piece of paper in his hand.
‘The very idea’s insane,’ Jarnvig said then got up from the table.
Khaki uniform. Three silver pips on his epaulettes. Monarch of the little kingdom of Ryvangen.
‘Thanks,’ Lund said and held out her hand. ‘That’s all for now.’
‘What is it?’ she asked when Jarnvig was gone.
‘Lisbeth Thomsen’s living in Sweden. An island called Skogö. Two hours north of Malmö.’
He was getting his jacket. She did the same.
‘She’s staying in a house that belonged to her late uncle. Someone’s going to talk to the Swedish police, tell them we’re on our way. My car. I just filled it
up.’
‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘I’ll drive.’
He looked puzzled.
‘Why? Oh!’ His stubbly face brightened. ‘It’s the cake.’ He looked at her bag. ‘You brought me some.’
Lund said nothing.
‘You promised.’
‘I’ll buy something along the way.’
‘I don’t drive and eat.’
‘I said I’ll drive.’
‘Oh no. Your mind wanders. I’ve noticed.’
‘I’ll get you some cake,’ she insisted. ‘You can eat and watch me drive. Can we go now, please?’
Thirty minutes later they were across the Øresund bridge, through the checkpoints, into Sweden. She drove carefully, responsibly. Never breaking the limit. Never taking
her eyes off the road.
There was one reason only: Strange would be on her in an instant if she started speeding or getting a little careless. He was a very precise and proper man. Almost puritanical in a way.
Lund still found time to watch the Swedish countryside go by. She knew this drive so well. Two years before she’d been about to take it one last time, abandoning Denmark for ever for a new
life with Bengt and Mark. Her life as a Copenhagen cop would have been over. Instead she’d be a lowly civilian with the Swedish force. A good mother to her son. A loving partner to Bengt
Rosling.
Then the Birk Larsen case intervened and exile to Gedser. Everything changed. Except her. She could still taste the anger that old self had felt as the search for Nanna spiralled into confusion
and finally madness.
She had regrets. About Jan Meyer mainly, and the mistake – her mistake – which left him in a wheelchair. But those few slip-ups apart she felt sorry for nothing. Given the chance
again she would attack the case with the same determined vigour. And hope for some better breaks.
‘Lisbeth Thomsen was a volunteer,’ Strange said as they passed solitary woodland, naked trees, brown grass, signs showing leaping deer, the odd ramshackle wooden bungalow. He was
going through the files again, slowly, page by page, line by line.
‘I take it you weren’t.’
He laughed out loud.
‘Volunteer for something? You’ve got to be kidding.’
She turned and smiled at him. He was looking a little guilty.
‘I told them I had a bad back.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. But I was scared. Didn’t work. They checked with the doctor so I ended up in a muddy field, full kit, running up and down like a madman, messing round with rifles and stuff. I
think they were getting their revenge.’
‘Come on. You’re a man. You must have loved it.’
His head went from side to side.
‘It wasn’t so bad. I thought I’d join the police for a while. I did a whole summer in the Politigården after college. Work experience. You were there.’
Lund’s foot came off the accelerator. She looked at him.
‘What?’
‘Couple of years older than me. You were a real cop. I was just a cadet. So you never talked to me. I wasn’t important enough.’
‘Even eighteen, twenty years ago, there were quite a few women in the police. I think.’
‘It was you, Lund. You were scary even then.’ He hesitated, licked his lips, thought about whether to say it. ‘Pretty too. In uniform. Apart from that you haven’t changed
much actually. Me . . .’
He ran his hand over his cropped hair.
‘I’ve aged.’
‘Bullshitter,’ she muttered.
‘Believe it or not. I did a summer in the Politigården. I saw you a couple of times. Then I went and did my army service. I didn’t have anything else to do. Actually . .
.’ He seemed to be going back to something he’d never thought about much. ‘. . . when my time was up I stayed on for a few years. There was a freeze on recruitment in the police.
The army’s all right. I know that Jarnvig character comes across as an ass. But . . .’
‘But what?’ she asked when he said nothing.
‘It’s hard to explain if you’ve never seen it. The army’s about loyalty. About duty. About looking after each other. And not having to think much. Just do as you’re
told.’
She wondered about this.
‘Does that mean he’d lie if he wanted to protect someone?’
‘Maybe,’ Strange said.
He tapped on the map that sat between them.
‘You’re going the wrong way. We should be on the E6.’
‘No. This is quicker.’
‘The map says—’
‘The map’s wrong.’
He wouldn’t give up.
‘Well I think—’
‘I don’t give a damn what you think. I used to drive up here all the time. I had a Swedish boyfriend.’
‘Oh,’ he said, as if he understood something.
Lund kept driving. Kept thinking. Strange was an easy man to be with.
‘I bet he was called Nilsson,’ he said. ‘They’re all called Nilsson. Also—’
‘He wasn’t called Nilsson.’
‘Johansson then. Or Andersson—’
‘It doesn’t matter what he was called!’
He picked up the map and looked at it again.
‘Why didn’t it work out?’
‘It just didn’t.’
He kept quiet. Waiting.
‘I was about to move to Sweden when . . . a lot of things happened.’
Strange looked at her and shook his head.
‘I can’t see you holding hands in the forest. Playing a guitar. Mind you . . .’ He pointed at her jumper. She’d got out one of the old patterned pullovers from the
Faroes. They seemed to fit her mood now. ‘You’ve got the sweater for it.’
She didn’t want to laugh. Didn’t want to like this man really. Lund had married a cop once and that was one of the biggest mistakes she ever made.
But he was wry and funny and charming. She was glad he was there.
‘Very amusing.’
‘I like the sweater. It’s got character. It says something.’ He scratched his stubbly chin. ‘I’m not sure what . . .’
‘Has someone warned the local police Raben may turn up?’
‘That’s unlikely, isn’t it?’
She looked at him, raised an eyebrow.
‘You don’t think I’m very good at this, do you?’ Strange asked.
‘When did I say that?’
‘You don’t need to. I can see it in your face.’
‘Don’t look then.’
She made sure they didn’t talk much after that. An hour later they were on the ferry. Twenty minutes more and they were on the island of Skogö, parked outside the harbour where the
ferry docked: fishing boats and dinghies.
They got out, looked around. Strange had finished the cake she’d bought him without spilling a single crumb. Lund wondered how he’d managed that.
‘Do you think they have bears here?’ he asked, suddenly as excited as a school kid on a trip. ‘I’ve never seen a bear. I mean, not outside a zoo.’
She stopped, folded her arms, looked at him.
‘I’ll find out where Thomsen is,’ he said sheepishly, and went off to talk to a cop chatting to a fisherman by the quay.
Lund watched him go. Her mind wandered. So she never saw the farmer’s truck drive last off the ferry. Or the figure in a grubby parka slipping from behind the hay bales in the back,
crouching furtively behind the harbour wall until he reached the cover of brambles and shrubs at the edge of the long, shallow bay.
Buch was out of options. He called Plough and Karina into his office.
‘The Prime Minister wants us to accept all the demands of the People’s Party. Every last one. We need an agreement on the anti-terror package today—’
‘Impossible,’ Plough interrupted. ‘This is all far too hasty.’
‘I’ll decide what’s possible or not. Just write it up, will you.’
‘How?’ Plough asked. ‘Do I hand them a blank cheque?’
Buch appreciated this man. Admired him in some ways. But his obsession with detail . . .
‘You wanted this agreement, Plough.’
‘Not at any price. There are too many loose ends.’
‘And,’ Karina cut in, ‘you’re against the kind of blanket ban Krabbe’s demanding.’
‘It’s not up to me! It’s a political decision. Above my head.’
‘You stood up for something, Thomas.’
‘Yes. I did. And I lost. These fundamentalists have done themselves no favours. The kind of material they’ve been handing out—’
‘Who says the fundamentalists have anything to do with it?’ she asked.
‘Who says they don’t?’
Buch had thought about this overnight. Had scarcely slept. He hated the idea of giving in to Krabbe. But there seemed no alternative.
‘We can’t prove that Monberg and Anne Dragsholm were having some kind of relationship. It’s just gossip and I’m not having my arse hauled over the coals for that again.
Let’s just do as we’re told.’
A knock at the door. Erling Krabbe looking triumphant.
Buch smiled as broadly as he felt able.
They went through into the meeting room. Krabbe had a handwritten list of amendments on a sheet of paper. He took off his jacket and read them one by one. Bored, Buch went to the window and
watched the dragons wrestling across the road.
‘You talked to the Prime Minister, I gather,’ Krabbe said without lifting his head up from the table.
‘I did.’
‘So all of these organizations will now be proscribed?’
‘They will.’
Krabbe tapped his finger on the paper.
‘Not quite there yet. Your draft says, “Organizations said to encourage or incite to terror . . .” ’
‘You’ve had all the time in the world to come up with amendments,’ Plough pointed out.
Buch thought he’d never seen him so furious.
‘True,’ Krabbe said, grinning at him. ‘But I only just thought of this one. It ought to read, “. . . incite to terror or any other subversive
activities”.’
‘Then we’d have to define what subversive means,’ Plough objected.
‘I know what it means,’ Krabbe replied. ‘Don’t you?’
He scribbled the changes on a fresh piece of paper then passed it over.
‘So now we’re back to where I was when I finished negotiating with Monberg. A pity he couldn’t have dealt with it.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Buch replied, straight-faced.
Krabbe didn’t notice the edge in his voice. He didn’t notice much, it seemed to Buch.
‘Monberg put in a lot of effort on this, you know,’ Krabbe said. ‘He only cancelled one meeting.’
He was remembering something.
‘It was the day all those leftie protesters turned up outside the home of the Minister of Integration. That gave us something to talk about at the next session.’
Buch sat down, put his big fist under his chin and listened.
‘You need to know who your enemies are,’ Krabbe added. ‘Send me the finalized agreement. I’m open to the timing of the press conference. You tell me.’