Authors: David Hewson
‘This is a bad time for us,’ the soldier said. ‘We had two suicide bombers this morning. Been quiet for weeks. Then the bastards come back.’
They sat next to one another in the back, Strange at home in the body armour and helmet, Lund fidgeting with it.
‘The hospital’s frantic,’ the driver added. ‘Buckle your helmet, please. And your vest. Otherwise they’re useless.’
Strange sighed, reached for the straps and did them up before she could say anything. The soldier didn’t look happy having a woman in the vehicle.
‘Do you want to . . . freshen up when we get to the base?’ he asked.
‘Just take us to the hospital, will you?’ she said. ‘We want to see Frederik Holst.’
Thirty minutes later they met the first traffic. A truck with locals in the open back. Farm workers maybe. They squatted in the rear, stared at the Land Rover as it went past. Lund saw the
driver tense as they got near. Soon there were more vans, a few battered cars, some army vehicles. Troop carriers, jeeps, armoured cars.
After an hour they pulled into a small town. Women and girls walking round a few vegetable stalls, faces hidden inside gaudy burkas. Men by the roadside sipping tea from glasses, watching the
army Land Rover with keen dark eyes.
A checkpoint. Soldiers in uniform with the Danish flag, rifles in their arms. They looked at the driver’s papers and waved them through.
It was more like a run-down market hall than a hospital. A single-storey grubby brick building; on the side a large red cross crudely painted against the crumbling plasterwork. She thought of
the spotless, shiny corridors of the Rigshospitalet. Copenhagen was a world away. She was a stranger here, a foreigner, unwelcome to locals and soldiers alike.
Lund climbed out of the door. A man in a turban was hacking a side of raw lamb on a wooden table just outside the perimeter fence, flies all round. He watched as she gathered up her clipboard
and folders.
‘They all look like that,’ Strange said. ‘Ordinary. Innocent probably.’ His calm, intelligent eyes scanned the area, the way they must have done so many times when he was
serving here. ‘You never know until it’s too late.’
There was a sign by the hospital entrance: NO WEAPONS. The driver checked his with security. They had none anyway.
It was dark inside, the smell a fetid mix of medicine and decay. A couple of locals, an elderly man and a young woman, sat in a corner, crouched on the floor, back against the wall, the woman
wailing, the man glassy-eyed.
‘You couldn’t wait, could you?’ the soldier at the desk asked. ‘We’ve got casualties. Ours and theirs.’
‘No,’ Lund said. ‘We can’t.’
She walked on. Peered in and out of the side rooms where men struggled on crutches, lay moaning on ancient gurneys. Further along three Afghans sat patiently on chairs, their clothes covered in
blood, bandages round their hands.
Someone pushed at her from behind, barked an order to get out of the way.
A stretcher, a figure on it, legs just visible. Or the remains of them, flesh and bone.
A look of pain and disbelief in the soldier’s face. A nurse was fixing a drip into his arm, feeding what Lund guessed was painkiller into a vein.
A memory: Jan Meyer unconscious, leaping with the electric shocks they gave him in the ambulance when he was shot.
She hated hospitals. This place more than any she’d seen.
‘I’m going home in a week,’ the man on the stretcher said in croaky Danish. ‘Home. You hear that?’
He struggled to get his head up, peered down his body.
Lund looked again. Two stumps where his feet should have been.
The soldier didn’t cry. Just puffed out his cheeks in a big, deep breath then lay back on the grubby stretcher pillow and gazed at the ceiling.
Strange was by her side, silent, watching too.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ she said.
The operating theatre was nothing more than a small area closed off with curtains. One circular light, two nurses in white uniforms, a surgeon in green. A body on the table,
mask on, eyes closed, unconscious. A gaping wound in his torso. Peeling walls, barely white as if someone had been fighting a losing battle to keep them clean. A ragged piece of fabric at the
window, the white winter sun pouring through the holes.
‘Holst?’ Lund said, when the man in green came away from the table and issued some orders to the nurses. ‘We’re—’
‘I know who you are. Wait outside, fifteen minutes. Then we’ll talk.’
They sat in a small room with an arched ceiling and a single light. Strange let her take off the helmet. The body armour stayed. It took thirty minutes then Holst marched in, tore off his paper
mask, threw it into the bin, began to wash his hands in the simple basin.
‘We want to know what you did in Copenhagen,’ Lund said, watching him.
‘I was on leave. Three weeks. A month. Something like that.’
He sat down. A big, unsmiling man with the face of a surly teenager. The faintest resemblance to his dead brother. Frederik looked tougher, more worn by the war. Lund was struck by a thought: he
should have been the soldier, Sebastian the doctor.
‘So what?’ he said and reached for a drawer, took out a packet of cigarettes, lit one, blew smoke towards the window.
‘Where were you?’ Strange asked.
‘What business is it of yours?’
‘We’ve got a warrant for your arrest. Come up with some answers or you’ll be on a plane with us tonight.’
He looked surprised.
‘I wanted some time to myself. That’s all.’
‘You didn’t talk to your father?’ Lund wanted to know.
‘Not much. I told you.’ He pushed back some boxes of dressings and drugs on the desk, a stethoscope. ‘Do you mind telling me who I’m supposed to have murdered? Just out
of politeness, you know.’
She took out the photos from her bag: Anne Dragsholm, Myg Poulsen, David Grüner, Lisbeth Thomsen, Gunnar Torpe.
Holst picked up the picture of Dragsholm.
‘The rest look familiar. Who’s she?’
‘Where were you?’ Lund repeated. ‘What did you do?’
‘I’m a surgeon. I spend my life saving people. Not killing them. You could have phoned. I would have saved you the trip.’
Lund placed the photo of Dragsholm back among the others.
‘She was the woman who was going to prove they were innocent. Two years ago you tried to save your brother. We saw his video diary. What he said about Raben.’ She reached into the
case, took out the squad photo with the crosses on it. ‘We found this in the rubbish you threw out from the flat you rented in Islands Brygge.’
He looked at the faces, the marks through them.
‘You think Raben was responsible for Sebastian’s death, don’t you? Anne Dragsholm was going to get him vindicated.’
‘I don’t even know who that woman is . . .’
Holst stubbed out his cigarette. Someone came to the door and tried to talk to him. He waved them away.
‘We know you tried to contact Raben,’ Strange went on. ‘He sent your letters back.’
‘Really?’
‘Start talking,’ Lund told him. ‘We’ve come a long way. We’re not going back empty-handed. You’d better believe that.’
‘You’re wasting your time. I didn’t kill anybody. Why—’
Strange bellowed a curse, slammed his fist on the table. The noise was so sudden and so loud it made Lund jump.
‘Don’t give me this shit! You had their photo. You crossed them out, one by one.’
‘Just a game,’ Holst said calmly, with a shrug. ‘Something to pass the time.’
‘You were here when they brought in your brother.’ Lund looked round the miserable little field hospital.
He blinked, didn’t look at her.
‘It must hurt whoever it is,’ she went on. ‘But your own brother, wounded alongside the rest—’
‘Yeah, yeah! You made your point!’
‘And then you find out Raben and the others were to blame. They’re alive and he was on the slab.’
Holst pointed a long pale finger at her.
‘Stay away from heroes,’ he said in a quiet, damaged voice. ‘That’s my advice. They get you killed.’
‘So Raben’s got your brother’s blood on his hands?’
‘Oh yes!’ he cried. ‘And I hope the bastard burns in hell. But . . .’
They waited. It took a long time.
‘That’s the way it goes,’ Holst said in the end. ‘Raben was in command. There’s no law that said he couldn’t force a kid like Sebastian into that
hornets’ nest. What could I do?’
He laughed.
‘Except put a little surprise in there myself. There was another body part in all the pieces they brought in. A hand.’
His eyes were somewhere else. Holst was remembering.
‘I thought if I threw that in then maybe someone back in Copenhagen would start asking a few questions. There were lots of rumours going round. How a family had been murdered.’
‘You think they did it?’ Strange asked.
‘Who else? No one believed that fairy story about an officer. I thought . . .’
He reached for the cigarettes, lit another one.
‘I thought the army would get to the bottom of it. Check it out. Find the truth. We don’t cover things up. Not like that. But . . .’ A grim, brief smile. ‘I was wrong
there too. The judge advocate dismissed the idea that any civilians had been killed. They walked away scot-free, until Raben got himself locked up anyway.’
Lund checked through the documents.
‘The hand belonged to the suicide bomber,’ she said.
‘It was a hand. I don’t know whose.’
‘You were pissed off. You worked up a false medical report—’
‘The hand came from the village! Someone should have looked into what went on there!’
‘You’re in trouble, Holst,’ she said.
That short laugh again.
‘Oh dear. How very worrying.’ He leaned forward. ‘Sebastian died here, just round the corner. From a punctured lung. That was all. If it had happened back in Copenhagen
he’d be walking round now. It’s nothing. But here . . .’
His eyes ranged the room, beyond.
‘I couldn’t save him. I had to watch him die. And that psychopath Raben, the idiot who made him go into that village, had a fancy lawyer who got them off scot-free. It’s a
wonder he didn’t get a medal. Pissed off ?’
The anger broke in him. Both hands, straight from the operating theatre, hammered the desk.
‘Yes!’ Frederik Holst roared. ‘You bet!’
Lund waited.
After a while Holst recovered, said in the same low, flat tone he’d used before, ‘But it doesn’t matter how pissed off I am. It won’t bring Sebastian back. So what else
can I do? Except try to save him again. Every single day on that wreck of an operating table.’
Holst sniffed, stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette.
‘That’s all it amounts to,’ he said, pushing the photo with the crossed-out faces back across the table. ‘Sorry to disappoint.’
They got nothing more out of Frederik Holst. He had work to do. Another patient, a Taliban fighter, badly wounded and screaming at the nurses.
Lund used the satellite phone to call Copenhagen.
‘Holst can’t account for his movements during any of the murders. Or won’t,’ she told Brix.
‘Never mind that. Did he do it?’
Even over thousands of miles and a satellite connection his anxiety came through clearly.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Jesus, Lund. Are you telling me this was all a waste of time?’
‘I don’t know yet.’ They were back in the main reception area. Nurses and another doctor were gathered round the soldier she’d seen earlier. The one who’d lost his
feet. ‘Has Raben said anything new?’
‘He’s sticking to the same story.’
‘Søgaard’s name keeps coming up here,’ she lied. ‘He was commander when it happened. Everything must have gone through him.’
‘Just pack your sunglasses and come home, will you? Søgaard’s a surly, unhelpful bastard. We’ve got nothing on him.’
Silence.
Then, ‘Lund?
Lund?
’
She couldn’t stop herself looking. The nurses round the trolley had moved back. Except one, a young woman with glassy, sad eyes. She was pulling up the green sheet. Covering the face of
the Danish soldier who’d only wanted to go home. To escape the maelstrom for another week. To survive.
Strange stood next to her. He walked in front, blocked her view.
‘What does Brix say?’ he asked.
‘He says we should come home.’
Strange picked up her helmet, placed it carefully on her head, did up the strap, looked into her eyes.
‘Brix is right.’
Ruth Hedeby was watching from the end of the corridor as he came off the phone. They knew one another well enough by now. She was a smart, sensitive woman. Could read his
face.
‘For God’s sake, Lennart, tell me this whole adventure was worth it. That we’re not just taking a shot in the dark.’
Brix walked to join her. He didn’t want anyone else listening in.
‘Everything’s dark to begin with.’
‘Don’t get cryptic on me. I’ve got the Ministry, Parliament, PET on my back every minute of the day.’
Brix nodded.
‘They think we’ve made a breakthrough in the case,’ Hedeby added.
He smiled.
‘Have we, Lennart?’
‘I’m sure the Minister of Justice will understand—’
‘He’s hanging on to his job by a thread. Probably not for much longer.’ She had a newspaper under her arm, took it out. A photo of Thomas Buch looking furious, making
accusations he seemed unable to substantiate. ‘Don’t count on him.’
‘I’m still working on this.’
‘That’s not good enough. We’re under a microscope here. Everything we do’s under scrutiny.’
‘What’s new?’
‘This,’ she said, prodding his jacket. ‘Do nothing without my knowledge from now on. I want no more surprises. Or I will suspend you in an instant.’
He watched her go, went back into the office. Asked Madsen what had been happening.
Precious little. The trawl of officers had led to nothing.
‘If it’s not Frederik Holst,’ Madsen said, ‘we’re left with Raben.’
‘How could Raben have done all of this?’ Brix asked wearily. ‘He was in a cell in Herstedvester.’
One of the detectives came over with a new file.
‘We’ve been chasing the things he was buying in Per K. Møller’s name. He didn’t use a credit card. Just cash, bought second hand from individuals mainly. If a
couple of them hadn’t sent receipts to Møller’s mother we’d never have known.’