Authors: David Hewson
Crouched down, looked at the child, young face full of fury, tears in his eyes.
‘You’ve grown, Jonas,’ Raben said. ‘It’s me. Daddy.’
He smiled. Jonas didn’t.
Raben’s hand went out to the toy soldier sticking out of the boy’s jacket pocket. Retrieved the figure. A warrior with a shield and a raised sword.
‘What’s he called?’
‘Mummy,’ Jonas said, wheeling his scooter to her side, ‘I want to go.’
She took the boy’s hand and led him to the door. Stopped there. Looked around. In summer this place was full of happy voices, kids playing with their parents, running, laughing, feeling
alive. Jonas had never known that. Nor had she. Raben had fled from them through some inner fear he’d never been able to share. And now she hated him for that too.
‘Don’t ever try to see us again,’ she said, aware of the spiteful fury in her voice. ‘I mean it . . .’
‘Louise?’
He could turn on the charm when he wanted, like a naughty child caught stealing. But she’d been tested, so many times.
‘Never again,’ she said and walked out into the first few drops of winter sleet starting to fall from the heavy sky.
Jonas tugged on her hand. He was pointing at the man hiding in the doorway. In Raben’s hand was the toy soldier, shield raised, sword at the ready.
‘I’ll buy you a new one,’ she told her son and dragged him to the car.
It took a lot of arguing to get permission to visit Monberg in a private room in the Rigshospitalet. But Karina won through in the end and accompanied Buch in the car from the
Ministry.
They stopped in the corridor outside.
‘You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to,’ he said. ‘If it’s embarrassing.’
The remark seemed to puzzle her.
‘Why would I be embarrassed?’
‘Well . . .’ Buch struggled for an answer.
‘Let’s go in, shall we?’ she said and led the way.
Frode Monberg was in a bed by the window. Unshaven. Looking tired and pale. As a backbench MP Buch had never mixed much with ministers. Now he could see Monberg was a handsome man, with a
narrow, smiling, genial face, a mop of unruly brown hair and lively, roaming eyes.
Buch stepped forward and placed a box of expensive chocolates on the bed.
‘Karina,’ Monberg said warily. ‘My successor. Congratulations, Thomas. I hope you’re having fun.’
‘It’s good to see you. How are you doing?’
No tubes, no wires. The monitors by the bed were switched off. This was a man in recovery. Barely sick at all. And yet behind the bright facade there seemed something gloomy and desperate about
Frode Monberg. The politician’s smile vanished much too quickly.
‘I’m OK.’ His melancholy brown eyes roved over Buch’s huge frame. ‘It seems quite a storm’s been brewing while I’ve been in here.’
He looked at Karina.
‘And how are you?’
She nodded, said nothing.
‘It was good of you to take the job,’ Monberg added, turning back to Buch. ‘You must have wondered what the Prime Minister was thinking. But now . . .’ He patted his
chest. ‘I can take better care of this old heart.’
He moved to put the chocolates on the bedside table.
‘I doubt I’ll be allowed things like this for a while. The doctors . . .’
Karina folded her arms. Buch said nothing. Monberg’s face turned sour again.
‘So. It gets around.’
‘I took over your job,’ Buch said. ‘I had to be told. It’s not general knowledge. It won’t be. Don’t worry.’
‘Don’t worry?’ His voice became fragile and old. ‘That’s easy for you to say. I was sick for ages. No one noticed. No one cared. You’re stuck in that damned
office, day in, day out. Nights too. It all . . .’
His eyes turned briefly to the smartly dressed blonde woman by his bed.
‘It all becomes unreal after a while. You find yourself doing things you’d never dream of. I don’t want my family to suffer any more. You hear that?’
‘Of course,’ Buch said. ‘I guarantee it. We just want to talk about that old military case. The one you were looking into. Before . . .’ He nodded at the bed. ‘You
know. The Dragsholm woman.’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Monberg said too quickly. ‘Anne came to me with this odd story. She wanted me to look into it. A favour for an old friend.’
‘And?’ Buch asked.
‘We had a meeting. Talked about the past. She was going through a divorce. I think she was getting a bit . . . obsessive. She gave me a folder when I was leaving. The case seemed to mean a
lot to her. God knows why. I never got to look at it, of course.’
Buch took a deep breath, folded his arms, said nothing.
‘Why do you ask these questions, Thomas?’
‘You already knew about the case before she came to you. You sent that envelope to a dead address for a reason. Please. Try to be clear on these things. The Defence Minister called a
meeting about a soldier.’
Karina extracted the papers from her bag. Buch showed them to the man in the bed.
‘A certain Jens Peter Raben.’
Monberg took the documents, did no more than glance at them.
‘I’m still a bit hazy about some things.’
‘Let’s dispense with this nonsense,’ Buch said, aware his voice was rising. ‘Just tell me what you and Rossing spoke about at that meeting. It’s
important.’
Monberg shrugged, got a pair of reading glasses from the table, scanned the papers.
‘This was ages ago.’
‘You withheld information about a serious military investigation! You kept it hidden from the police, from PET, from your own civil servants.’ He pulled up a chair, got close to the
bed. ‘Why? What are you and Rossing hiding?’
Monberg turned to Karina, pleaded for her help. She kept quiet.
‘Why did you have a meeting about Raben?’ Buch persisted. ‘What did Rossing say to you? Why were no minutes kept?’
‘What is this, Buch? What are you going on about?’
‘You met with Rossing. Later Dragsholm raises the case with you. But you never let on. Never told the police or PET, even when she was murdered. I need to know—’
‘If you’ve come to blame me for your screw-ups you can get out of here now,’ Monberg barked.
‘What did Rossing say at that meeting?’
A noise at the door. A woman in a dark-blue suit. A doctor by her side. Monberg’s wife. Buch recognized her.
‘Visitors again, Frode?’ she said, rushing to his side, kissing his head as Monberg scowled like a child. ‘That won’t do.’ She stared at Buch. ‘I appreciate
your concern. But the doctor needs to examine my husband.’
Monberg held up the papers. Karina took them then went to the window and began to sift through the get-well cards.
‘This kind of pressure isn’t good for him,’ the wife added.
‘I’m supposed to rest,’ Monberg agreed.
Karina nudged Buch. One of the cards was from Flemming Rossing. A bunch of roses on the front. A standard handwritten greeting inside, then a scribbled addition –
It was so good to see
you better, Frode. We are brothers always.
Buch read it and nodded.
‘I believe the minister’s about to leave,’ Monberg noted.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Get well soon, Frode.’ He threw Rossing’s card on the sheets by Monberg’s knees. ‘All of your friends want to see that.’
Outside in the corridor, breathing in the hospital smells, listening to the beeps and whirrs of the machines in the wards around them, Buch waited for Karina to catch up with his furious
pace.
‘Rossing got there before us, didn’t he?’ he snapped when she reached his side.
‘He knew what you were going to ask. And what he was going to say.’
‘Shit,’ he muttered. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘What’s Monberg like? Really?’
‘Witty. Funny. Charming.’ She thought about it. ‘Weak.’
‘We need more options,’ Buch said, and tried to imagine what they might be.
‘Here’s an idea,’ Karina said as they sat in the back of the ministerial car, trapped in traffic on the way back to the Ministry. ‘Why not issue an
apology for the exhumation of the soldier?’
Buch grunted something wordless and looked at the crowds of shoppers beyond the window. Ordinary people with ordinary lives. He envied them.
‘Thomas,’ Karina went on. She always used his first name now, when they were on their own. He liked that. ‘It’ll take off some of the pressure. Krabbe’s getting
impatient. He’s pestering Plough for an urgent meeting.’
‘Plough can tell Krabbe to go and sit outside the Prime Minister’s office, begging for an audience with him if he wants.’
‘An apology would go down well.’
Buch kept several packs of chocolate biscuits in the back of the car, in the small cabinet where others stored booze. He opened the nearest, offered it to Karina, took two when she shook her
head.
‘How can I say sorry for something I never knew about?’
‘You’re the minister. It happens all the time.’
‘That doesn’t mean I like it. Whose idea was it to dig up this poor bastard anyway?’
‘A policewoman. She was fired.’
‘That was quick.’
‘She had history. Remember the Birk Larsen case a couple of years ago?’
Buch shuddered.
‘That was horrible.’
‘She solved it. Got fired after that too.’
Buch looked at her, interested.
‘There was a possibility a few local politicians were involved,’ Karina went on. ‘She wouldn’t let go of that either. If you put out a statement you could mention this
wasn’t the first time she ran into disciplinary issues. Say something like . . . we expect all officers to uphold the fine traditions of the force.’
Buch stared at her.
‘OK,’ Karina agreed. ‘That’s not your style. I’ll leave the wording to you.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Sarah Lund.’
‘I want to talk to her.’
She burst out laughing. The thought that he could amuse this sharp, intelligent woman cheered him somehow.
‘You can’t possibly talk to her! She’s just been booted out of the force.’
‘I’m the Minister of Justice. I can talk to anyone I like. If this Lund woman solved the Birk Larsen case she can’t be stupid. Maybe she knows something.’
He offered her the biscuits again. This time she took one.
‘If you do that you’ll compromise your relations with the police.’
‘And haven’t they been forthcoming! No. If Monberg won’t speak to us we’ll have to try another avenue. Get me Sarah Lund, please.’
‘Thomas,’ she said, and her voice was that of a mother scolding a child. ‘If they find out you could be in big trouble.’
‘Oh for pity’s sake. If I don’t get to the bottom of this I’m out on my ear anyway. Let’s not pretend otherwise, shall we?’ He tapped her bag.
‘You’re very good on the phone. Find me this Sarah Lund please. We’ll go there straight away.’
A Danish working-class wedding. A hotel banqueting room full of friends and relatives. A happy couple. Soft music. A civilian registrar pronouncing the familiar refrain,
‘I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.’
Bjørn, a playful little man, full of good humour and mischief, grinned like a wicked pixie and did as he was told.
Lund was glad her cake hadn’t poisoned him much. He was nice and her mother was finally happy after so many years of solitary bitterness.
So she stood in the best dress she had, purple silk, applauded them both, smiled at Mark, tall and handsome beside her.
All the world moved on. Everything shifted with the times. But not her. She was in the same place she occupied two years before, after that black night when Meyer was shot and everything
unravelled in her life. That was why she took so much awkward guilty comfort in the sight of her mother like this, consumed by the smothering bliss, the contentment that came from giving
one’s life selflessly to another, burying an individual identity in a shared love that would whisper the perpetual lie ‘Now you’re safe for ever.’
This was a sacrifice she could never make and those who knew her understood. Mark was no longer the surly teenager who once snarled, ‘You’re only interested in dead
people.’
He still thought that, she guessed. He was just too kind to say it.
It was a fine banqueting hall in Østerbro. Marble walls and the scent of too many bouquets. When the applause faded Bjørn clapped his hands and declared, ‘Now let’s
have something to eat and drink, please. Then another drink! Then another!’
Her mother was in a green silk dress she’d made herself. She looked so perfect, so complete, Lund felt the tears start to well in her eyes.
‘You can tell Bjørn used to be in the Home Guard,’ Mark chuckled by her side.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, watching a couple of men in regimental blazers embrace the old man and slap him on the back.
Vibeke came over, hugged them both, kisses on the cheek, arms round each.
‘This idea about me making the toast . . .’ Lund began.
‘Nothing to it,’ Vibeke said quickly. ‘A short speech for your mother’s wedding. Small price to get rid of me.’
‘I’ve never been much good at speaking.’
‘All the more reason to keep it short. There has to be time for dancing. Next you’ll tell me you’re no good at dancing too. And I know that isn’t true.’
Vibeke’s joyful face became serious for a moment. ‘I remember you when you were Mark’s age. I know you can dance, Sarah.’
‘Wife! Wife!’ Bjørn’s squeaky voice rose above the hubbub. ‘We’ve got to have our pictures taken.’
Still she didn’t move. The two of them stayed where they were, mother and daughter. Mark retreated as if seeing something.
‘But I won’t make you,’ Vibeke said quietly. ‘I’ve tried so hard over the years to force you to be someone you’re not. I’m sorry. I just wanted . .
.’
Lund threw her arms round her mother, brushed her lips against Vibeke’s warm and powdered cheeks.
‘You are who you are and I love you for that,’ her mother whispered into her ear, then fled back into the crowd as if terrified by this sudden outburst of intimate honesty.
A hotel worker in a white shirt appeared with a small bell in his hand.
‘You ring this for attention,’ he said, as if she’d never been to a wedding before. ‘The presents are on the table. Along with the flowers. Oh, and the bouquet that came
for you.’