Authors: Leif Davidsen
‘I’d love to,’ she said.
‘John will be allocating each of us some schools to visit. We’ll call them in the morning and go round them in the afternoon.’
‘Okay,’ she said, but then he saw her face fall.
‘You’re thinking about Ole, aren’t you?’
She nodded.
‘I don’t understand what can have happened to him.’
‘Don’t worry, he’ll turn up tomorrow, you’ll see.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ she said, although she didn’t really believe it. She didn’t know why, but she had the feeling that something was very wrong.
By lunchtime the next day they had whittled the list down to twenty-one names, all sons of Yugoslavian guest workers who fulfilled both of their two criteria: they had sat their school-leavers’ examination in the mid-eighties, and they were no longer resident in Denmark. Eight people had worked right through the night on this, and Per didn’t dare think about the overtime chits he would be asked to sign later. His boss would nod approvingly if his gamble paid off and give him a bawling-out for lack of judgement if it turned out to be a wild-goose chase. Per could not help feeling a little guilty that he had not been there to help, but it was routine work and he was really going to have to be on the ball over the next forty-eight hours. Besides which, he had to admit that he hated the thought of missing a night with Lise. Not that he didn’t feel pretty sure of her, but that didn’t stop him from being afraid that she might walk out of his life as suddenly as she had entered it. She was worried about her husband. A laudable trait in a human being, perhaps, but it also told him that she still had feelings for Ole, and it wouldn’t be the first time he had seen an errant wife return to the safety of the nest. Which had been fine with him, on those other occasions, but he was not so certain that it would be so this time. This was developing into something more than an affair.
She seemed agitated when they set out to visit the three schools they had picked out. He knew she had spent the morning calling friends and family, but no one had seen Ole. She did not want to report him missing just yet; she would give it another day. He hadn’t taken anything from the apartment. The car was parked at the kerb, but she couldn’t find the car keys. Only the spare set, which was hanging on a hook in the kitchen. It was like the story of the man who went out to buy cigarettes and never came back. She borrowed Per’s mobile and called home, but every time she tried she got the answering machine.
At the first school they drew a blank. They looked at the class pictures, and the school had a list of the pupils’ names for them, but there had been only two Yugoslavian boys in the class, and their profiles didn’t fit. One was still living in the area and had a Danish wife. The other had been killed in a car crash only four years previously. None of the other pupils at the school matched up with any of the twenty-one names on the list given to Per by the officers who had done the spadework. The second school lay in Nørrebro, in an old redbrick building. Here, in the late afternoon, it was empty and quiet,
with no children or teachers around. An elderly man was standing just inside the door, waiting for them. He looked as though he had been there for some time. He was impeccably turned out in an old-fashioned tweed jacket complete with waistcoat and tie and grey flannels with a knife-edge crease. His hair was snowy white but still thick and bushy. The skin of his face had a pinkish cast to it, as if he had given himself an extra close shave that day. Lise gauged him to be at least seventy, possibly more. He was the very image of a venerable old schoolmaster, the last of a dying breed. He had about him a whiff of schooldays long gone, but the word Lise would have used to describe him was ‘distinguished’. He stepped forward and shook their hands:
‘Gustav Hansen, senior teacher, retired.’
‘Lise Carlsen, Danish PEN and
Politiken
.’
‘Detective-Inspector Toftlund.’
‘Excellent,’ said Gustav Hansen. His hand was dry and cool. He spoke slowly and very distinctly in a deep baritone. He pointed down the corridor and up a stairway and walked ahead of them with a firm, if slow stride, talking as he went: ‘I know you are pressed for time, and I have been thoroughly briefed regarding the purpose of your investigation, so I gathered together all the material I believe to be relevant while awaiting your arrival. The headmistress has been of great help with everything and has even given us the use of her office.’
He opened the door of the headmistress’s office. The headmistress herself was a small, slightly built woman in her forties who greeted them politely then left, saying that they were in the best possible hands with Gustav Hansen.
Mr Hansen laid nine class photos out on the desk, as if he were dealing cards, explaining as he did so in his distinct didactic tones:
‘Here they are. These are the photographs of the final-year classes of 1984, ’85, ’86 and ’87. Difficult classes but good. Still bearing the marks of a rather too liberal upbringing; victims, if you like, of all the confusion of the seventies, but they were bright those children. That they were. That they were.’
The photographs were in colour and were all pretty much identical. The young people were arranged in rows and looking straight at the camera. The length of the boys’ hair was the only indication of the passage of time. Each year it was a little shorter than the year before.
‘Do you also happen to have the class registers, sir?’ Per asked as he examined the pictures.
‘Why would you need those, Detective-Inspector?’
‘Because we would like to be able to put names to some of these faces.’
Gustav Hansen straightened his shoulders and eyed Per squarely.
‘I was a teacher for fifty years,’ he said. ‘I remember every single child I ever taught. I do not need registers. I even took part in a so-called quiz programme on television once, where they tried to catch me out. I am proud to say that not even on television could they do that. I would also like to point out…’
‘Sorry, no offence meant,’ Per interjected. Lise caught the note of impatience in his voice, but she found the old teacher charming and quite fascinating. She thought she would like to write a piece about him at some point. What they had here was a small piece of bygone Denmark. It would make a nice little human-interest story.
‘How many of these kids are Yugoslavian?’ Per asked.
Gustav Hansen regarded the pictures with what might have been wistfulness, or love even, Lise thought, before he said:
‘We had quite a few of them at that time. Thirteen children, in all, from Yugoslavian homes. Six of them were girls. Quiet, but very bright. That they were. Oh yes, that they were. It’s terrible what’s happening down there now. There was never any trouble between them during my time here. Seven boys…although we couldn’t have said whether they were Croatian or…’
Now it was Lise’s turn to interrupt:
‘Can you remember which of them went on to high school?’
‘From these years? Let me see now. A handful. There was Janos, and Jaumin. Apart from them…no. Oh, yes, there was one girl. A bit weak in physics, but otherwise…let me see…they were really starting to make progress. With their Danish. The ones who were born here. A command of the language really is so important.’
Hansen stood there, sunk in thought. They seemed to have lost him to his memories.
‘Were any of the boys fair-haired and blue-eyed?’ Lise asked.
Gustav Hansen’s face lit up once more and he was back with them again.
‘How extraordinary that you should ask that,’ he said. ‘You know, I was just thinking about him. In fact I mentioned him only a moment ago. Janos?’
He picked up one of the class photographs and pointed to a very young version of Vuk. Standing among the other teenagers, grinning broadly at the camera. The boy on his left was Mikael, and to the right of him stood another boy whose face seemed familiar to Lise. She took the picture. There was something about the young, fair-haired Yugoslavian whom Gustav Hansen had pointed out that stirred something in her memory, but it was the boy to the right whom she recognized.
‘What is it?’ Per asked.
‘Isn’t that Peter Sørensen from the evening news?’ she said, looking at Gustav Hansen.
‘That’s right.’
‘Janos?’ said Per.
‘Janos Milosovic. An extraordinarily gifted boy. I wonder what became of him,’ Hansen said.
‘That’s something we’d like to know too,’ Per commented, running his eye down his list. The name was there.
‘Well, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you ask his old friend?’ Hansen said, sighing impatiently as if he were talking to two rather inattentive children. ‘He might know. I have to say I am rather proud to have had him as a pupil. One cannot help feeling that one has had a hand in his success. Those first years are so crucial, you know. The moulding of these young characters.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not with you.’ Per said, no longer able to conceal his irritation.
‘Peter Sørensen, the foreign correspondent, of course. From the evening news. Miss Carlsen mentioned him herself. He lived next door to Janos. They were very good friends.’
Per thought for a moment. Then:
‘Lise, do you happen to know offhand the number for the Danmarks Radio news desk?’ he asked, pulling out his mobile.
Peter Sørensen was out on a shoot, but they were given a mobile number at which they could reach him. He said he would be back in the office around seven, but then he had the story to edit so he was going to be really busy. If
they could come around eight-thirty, though, that would be okay. Per explained what it was they wanted to talk to him about, and he sounded very interested, but that didn’t alter the fact that he had a story to edit first.
They called in at the last school on their list, but it did not furnish them with any likely candidates. Then they found a restaurant in Nørreport and had dinner together, eating mostly in silence. Sara Santanda was arriving the next day, and in three days’ time she would be travelling on to Sweden. Lise wondered whether things would be different between them once they were no longer working together. She didn’t know. Her usual healthy appetite had deserted her, and she merely picked at her food. To save Per knowing that she was calling home again, she used the payphone next to the toilets but still got only her own answering machine. She also rang the paper and spoke to the sub-editor, who told her that her pieces were fantastic and would be given all the space they needed. Normally this would have given her a tremendous boost, but somehow she couldn’t get worked up about it at all. She was scared and did not know exactly why, although she realized it was probably because she was so worried about Ole. Where could he have got to?
At 8.00 pm they drove out to the Danmarks Radio studios. The breeze had stiffened, and it had started to rain, but Lise knew that the forecast for the next day was for a clearer, brighter morning with the possibility of showers in the afternoon. Just at that moment, in the dark and the rain, the idea of a press conference at Flakfortet did not seem such a brilliant idea.
Peter Sørensen came down to meet them at the security desk and led them up to his office. He shook Per’s hand formally and introduced himself, then turned to Lise, shook her hand too, with a ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ His office was tiny and chaotic, but he pushed a pile of newspapers off one chair, fetched another from the corridor and got them settled. He took his own seat behind his overloaded desk. On his computer screen, in white characters on a blue background, was a wire story from Reuters about the situation in Bosnia. He gave them coffee in plastic cups, and Per showed him the class picture.
‘Yeah, sure. That’s Janos. And muggins there, that’s me. Where the hell did you dig up this old picture?’
‘So you know him?’ Per said.
‘I should think so. Janos went back to Yugoslavia at the end of our second year in high school. It was a bloody shame. He was so fucking bright, that guy. I actually tried to trace him when I was down there for DR. My sources tell me he’s one of the Serbs’ top hit men. They say he kills people as casually as you would squash a fly.’
Per’s eyes were fixed on him. Lise thought he looked like a hunter or a wild beast – a puma – that has caught wind of its prey.
‘Did you find him?’ Lise asked.
‘No. I heard something down there about the Muslims having massacred his whole family. I tried to trace them too. I really liked his parents, and he had the sweetest little sister, but there was just no way, what with the war and all.’ He turned to Per and added: ‘But why are the police asking questions about him? Has it to do with Bosnia? Or…has it something to do with Scheer?’
‘What makes you think that?’ Toftlund said.
‘Well, Lise here has called a press conference with Scheer for tomorrow afternoon. And they’re out to get him in Germany. I’ll be covering the event for the evening news.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t comment on that,’ Per replied stiffly.
‘No, I don’t suppose you can. But what do you want with Janos?’
‘To talk to him.’
Peter Sørensen sipped his coffee. His curiosity was piqued, Lise could tell. The newshound in him scented a story here. He guessed that there was more to this than met the eye, although obviously he couldn’t know what. Ten to one he would be on the phone to her later, when the police weren’t around, trying to pump her for information.
‘I lost touch with him. But have you spoken to Mikael?’
He could tell by their faces that they had no idea who he was talking about, so he continued:
‘He was Janos’s other friend. We three hung out together a lot.’ He lifted the class photograph and pointed to Mikael as he went on talking: ‘Mikael’s a real screwball, computer mad. He’s become a bit of a hermit, you might say. Lives alone in his parents’ old house in Hellerup. They’re rolling in money and spend most of the year in Spain. They were doing that even when we were kids. So Mikael lived with his aunt and grew up along with the rest of us lads in
Nørrebro. They wanted to send him to boarding school, but Mikael kept running away, so he ended up staying with his aunt. Have you spoken to Mikael?’