Authors: David Hewson
‘Did you have special forces operatives in the area in question, two years ago?’ Lund asked.
Brix stood by the filing cabinets, listening.
‘I wouldn’t normally answer a question like this,’ Arild said. ‘But since you seem to think it so important, yes, we had officers there.’
‘While Team Ægir was in place?’
‘Didn’t I just answer that?’
‘And Ulrik Strange was demobilized six months before this incident in Helmand?’
‘Too far,’ Arild replied. ‘You know I can’t discuss names.’
‘I want a list of who was there!’ Lund insisted.
He laughed at her.
‘You don’t want much, do you? Do you understand the kind of people we’re talking about? The work they do?’
‘Not really,’ Lund replied.
Arild’s confident, smiling face fell.
‘We’re fighting animals who’ll decapitate their own daughters for wearing the wrong clothes. Hang a man in the street for listening to the radio. Geneva’s a long way from
Helmand. They know it. We do too.’
He didn’t like women, Lund thought. Except in their place.
‘I want that information, General.’
‘I’m not at liberty to disclose anything about individual officers. What I will say is this. No one from Jægerkorpset or any other special forces unit was involved in that
particular incident. It happened without our involvement and our knowledge.’
A knock on the door. Someone asking for Brix. He left the room.
Arild came a step closer.
‘I’m trying to help you,’ he said. ‘We don’t go around murdering innocent civilians. Here or in Afghanistan. Now . . .’ He picked up his cap. ‘You must
excuse me.’
‘These officers were deployed too,’ she said, passing him the latest list of soldiers attached to Ægir from other regiments. ‘I want what you have on them. They’re
not special forces. You’ve no reason to object—’
‘The ramblings of a traumatized soldier do not merit this nonsense,’ Arild barked, close to losing his temper. ‘And how is it Jens Peter Raben could elude PET so easily? Tell
me that. I thought you people had him under surveillance . . . You’ve no idea what you’re getting into, woman. Any more questions before I leave?’
She wanted to ask if he dyed his hair but didn’t. Instead she folded her arms, gave him a jaded look and said, ‘If you stand in my way I’ll go public. You’ll have every
hack and TV crew in Denmark banging on your door demanding answers. Your choice.’
He didn’t like that.
Brix came back. Arild marched with him to the black marble corridor outside.
‘What information we can provide,’ Arild said very deliberately to Brix alone, ‘I will send you. You’ll hear from my office this afternoon.’
Then he left.
‘What changed his mind?’ Brix asked.
‘Female charm.’
‘How are you feeling?’
The wound didn’t hurt any more. The bruise was just a red weal.
‘Fine,’ Lund said.
‘Raben’s conscious. He wants to talk. Doesn’t mind whether a lawyer’s present or not.’
Lund got her keys.
‘Take Madsen with you,’ he called as she left.
But Madsen was on the phone. Lund walked on without him.
Buch had brushed his teeth four times already that morning. But he could still taste stale kimchi in his mouth. He’d called together the most senior staff in the
Ministry, stood in front of them in the reception area outside his office.
No energy for a tie. Just a clean suit, a blue sweater and a white shirt that was in need of an iron.
Plough and Karina stood behind him looking mutinous.
‘I’m sorry my ineptitude embarrassed you all,’ Buch said. ‘The newspapers are telling everyone I’m just a simple farmer from Jutland.’
Karina muttered something.
‘It seems,’ Buch went on, ‘they were right. Which is a shame because I enjoyed working with you greatly. You deserved better. I trust my successor, whoever he or she turns out
to be, will bring you that.’
Plough led the applause. Karina took it up. Soon they were all clapping him, which made Buch feel rather odd. As if he’d touched these people, not that he understood how.
He went back into his office. Plough and Karina marched in behind, closing the door.
‘Today’s schedule,’ she began, placing a sheet of paper on his desk. ‘The Prime Minister’s office will vet your leaving statement and arrange a suitable exchange of
letters.’
Buch put a couple of headache pills in a glass, topped them up with water, swilled them around.
‘About Raben,’ she began.
‘Oh, forget it, Karina,’ Buch cut in. He looked at her, at Plough. ‘Please. I’m really sorry for last night. It was inexcusable. Can you draft a letter of apology to the
poor Koreans?’
They said nothing.
‘You’ve both been so kind. So supportive, from the beginning. And all I did was foul things up.’
‘Thomas . . .’ she began.
‘No. Let me finish. This is the best solution for the government and the Ministry.’ He thought of the difficult, strained conversation he’d had with Marie that morning. All she
knew was what she’d read. It was hard to explain over the phone. ‘For me too. I want to go home. I need to. Here . . .’
He reached beneath the desk and pulled out the bottle of expensive Armagnac he’d picked up for Plough.
‘I wish you all the best, Carsten. And for you . . .’
He handed Karina a box of chocolates.
Plough’s phone rang. He excused himself and walked away to take it.
‘Was it the wrong Armagnac?’ Buch asked, watching him go.
‘It’s fine.’ She looked at Carsten Plough, talking in low tones in the corner of the room. ‘He’s got worries of his own.’
‘What worries?’
She took a deep breath.
‘He’s been called to a meeting in the Prime Minister’s office. There seems to be some kind of reorganization on the cards.’
Buch gulped at the headache pills and the water. He’d offered his own head. It was never part of the deal that Grue Eriksen would take others too.
‘They want to appoint Plough to an EU consultant’s post in Skopje.’ She shrugged. ‘If they’re going to pick on Plough then I’m gone too. But that’s fine
by me.’
‘This is wrong . . .’
‘It’s the way things happen. Connie Vemmer called. She wants to explain . . .’
‘Oh no . . .’
‘She says she needs to speak to you personally. Only you. I really think . . .’
Buch tried to smile, took another sip of the water.
‘We lost, Karina. It’s done with. I’ll talk to Grue Eriksen about your careers. It’s quite unacceptable that you should pay for my incompetence and stupidity.’
‘Don’t say that!’ she shouted. ‘It’s not true.’
‘I’ll put this right. If I can.’
Lund sat next to Raben’s bed in the private ward, amidst the racket of the medical machinery, listening to his firm and insistent voice.
She left the recorder running, took no notes. Raben claimed he was starting to remember more of what happened in Helmand. There was a decision to be made here: who to believe?
‘We were in the Green Zone. We got a message at nine thirty in the morning,’ Raben said. ‘It was on an emergency frequency. It said a Danish unit was under fire.’
His shoulder had a fresh dressing. The doctor said some of the lines from the night before had been removed. Raben was a hard man. He recovered quickly.
‘We crossed the river to help. Did Thomsen tell you what happened?’
‘I want to hear it from you.’
‘The bridge was mined. I left her to sort it out. We made it into the village.’
He looked at her from the pillow.
‘There was no Danish unit. Just one officer who’d got himself trapped in there with the family and didn’t dare come out.’
‘What made you think he was called Perk?’
‘He told me. I saw his dog tag.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘No. He hadn’t been through Camp Viking. I’m sure of that. But the special forces guys came from all over. Kabul. Direct sometimes. He said he got cut off from his
squad.’
‘You didn’t believe him?’
Raben clutched his injured arm.
‘I didn’t know what to think. He said he’d been on a mission and the Taliban had caught wind of it. They were hounding him. He was waiting for backup.’
She folded her arms and waited.
‘We weren’t supposed to ask men like that what they were doing,’ Raben said eventually. ‘It wasn’t our business.’
‘Do you have any idea?’
‘No. But he was scared. We all were. Just five of us left. Myg, HC, David, Sebastian and me. And Perk. Dolmer got hit by sniper fire on the way in. Dead. Grüner’s leg was shot
to bits. He needed help. There were Taliban in the village. Too scared to come for us but that wasn’t going to last. We’d left the radio with Thomsen.’
‘What about Perk’s radio?’
‘He said it got hit by fire after he called for us. I didn’t see it. I didn’t . . .’ His head went from side to side on the pillow. ‘I don’t remember too
clearly. Perk was an officer. It was like he was in command straight off. He said we had to wait. Not try to fight our way out. There were too many of them.’
Raben swore, closed his eyes for a moment.
‘We should have just gone for it. The family were getting really jumpy. We couldn’t let them leave.’
He stared at her.
‘Grüner was screaming. The place stank of shit and blood and . . .’ A moment of pain and bewilderment. ‘I kept thinking they’d come for us but they didn’t.
Perk was getting madder and madder. Then he decided we had to get out, whatever.’
Raben went quiet.
‘And?’ Lund asked.
‘It’s in here!’ Raben shrieked, tapping his forehead.
‘Tell me what you can.’
‘He said . . .’ Raben spoke very slowly, as if unsure of himself. ‘He told me he wanted the father to help him get hold of a radio. If we got that we could call in a helicopter
and backup. But the father was just a villager. He didn’t have one. He didn’t have anything.’
He wiped his face with the sleeve of his hospital gown.
‘Perk didn’t believe him. So he grabbed one of the kids. A little girl.’ He shuffled on the bed, dead eyes, face full of pain. ‘Put his gun to her head. He said the
father had to decide. Was he with the Taliban? Or with us?’
Head thrust back into the pillow.
‘Then he shot her right in front of us. Seven years old. Eight maybe. Just gone like that.’
‘You remember this? You’re sure?’
‘I remember!’ Raben shrieked, eyes open, full of shame and fear. ‘I watched him grab hold of the mother and he shot her too. He was crazy. The man held his son. He was crying,
screaming. Begging Perk to spare them. But he just blew them away, there in the room. In front of us.’
She waited till he took hold of himself.
‘There was one kid left. A little girl. Four maybe. I held her. I didn’t think he’d shoot. Perk just snatched her from my arms and blew her head off.’
‘And the others?’
‘They were shouting. Sebastian was crying.’
She checked her notes.
‘That’s Sebastian Holst?’
‘Yeah. The youngest. He was more interested in his camera than his gun. Wanted to be a press photographer when he came out. I put my arms round him. Made him calm down. It got dark.
Suddenly we heard the sound of a motorbike outside. Some guy drove into the courtyard and blew himself up. They said Søgaard had almost found us by then. He came into the village, got us out
of there. I don’t recall.’
‘And Perk?’ she asked. ‘Where was he?’
He shrugged.
‘I don’t really know what happened after that. Perk was a clever guy. I think he maybe found a way out before Søgaard came in. Either that or . . .’
‘Or what?’
‘Or someone helped him. We were just ordinary soldiers. He was higher up the food chain.’
Another look at her notes.
‘Søgaard filed a report. He said there was no sign of any civilians. No bodies.’
‘Yeah. Well . . .’ A sour expression on Raben’s bearded face. ‘Maybe Perk got rid of them. Or someone didn’t look too hard.’
He stretched up, gazed into her eyes.
‘They were there. I’m telling the truth. Ask Perk yourself. He’s one of yours.’
‘Raben . . .’
‘He’s the one who shot me.’
She put the notebook to one side.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I remember!’
‘You said you don’t remember well. You said Skåning was Perk. That man you kidnapped two years ago. He was a librarian—’
‘I remember now!’
Lund frowned.
‘Clearly?’ she asked. ‘Everything?’
Raben closed his eyes, looked desperate.
‘Not everything. No. But I know he’s Perk. He killed those people. I saw that. He’s got a tattoo on his shoulder. He’s—’
‘Skåning’s got the tattoo. So have lots of officers.’
She pulled out a set of photographs. Black and white mugshots from the files. Men she didn’t know.
The moment Ulrik Strange’s face appeared Raben picked the photo and thrust it in her face.
‘Him,’ he said. ‘That’s Perk.’
Brix and Hedeby were talking when Lund got back from the hospital. They listened to what she had to say. But Hedeby wasn’t interested in Raben at that moment. She wanted
to know about Strange.
‘So now you’re telling me one of our own officers killed these people?’ Hedeby asked. ‘Seriously?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lund admitted. ‘Raben’s got good reason to tell a tale like that. He’s facing criminal charges. I guess he might get off more lightly if he
can throw the blame on us.’
Hedeby muttered a quiet curse.
‘We need Strange cleared by name,’ she said emphatically.
‘We won’t get it,’ Lund said taking a seat.
‘Raben’s mentally unstable,’ Brix added. ‘We’ve got proof of that. He could easily have confused Strange with someone else. He’s done it before. Besides . . .
Strange has been an active member of the team here. He didn’t have time to invent nonsense like the Muslim League.’
Lund sighed.
‘There are gaps in his movements,’ she said. ‘He says he was at home on his own before we found Myg Poulsen. Grüner was killed by a bomb detonated by a mobile phone placed
in advance. Same thing. No alibi.’
‘Lund—’ Brix began.