Next of Kin (10 page)

Dicte found a space in a department store car park and pressed the speed dial button on her mobile.

‘Kaiser.'

‘I've got another film.' She stared into the concrete wall. Behind her other cars competed for a recently vacated space.

‘I'm listening.'

‘It's about the death penalty. They call themselves the United Victims.' She briefed him on what she had seen on the film.

‘The death penalty,' Kaiser muttered. ‘In Denmark? They've got to be joking.'

‘I don't think so, and neither do you. I looked it up on the net. One in five Danes is in favour.'

Silence crackled down the telephone. An impatient driver sounded his horn. In her rear-view mirror Dicte could see a woman trying to edge herself into her seat laden with an assortment of shopping bags. There was a child restraint in the car. The children were probably in care or at school, and later in the evening the family would all be sitting round the table for tea. Just an ordinary day for some, while threats of terrorism and death hung over others.

‘I suppose we all favour the death penalty when it's about our loved ones,' Kaiser said at length.

For some reason the words ‘loved ones' sounded wrong coming from him.

‘One in five,' she repeated. ‘If there's a terrorist attack we can expect that number to rise. Generally the trend is for longer and more severe sentences. That's what the nation and the politicians think.'

‘But the death penalty.' He hesitated. ‘It has to be personal. A vendetta.'

‘It sounded like more than that.'

She heard him muttering something. An escalation of violence made people demand higher sentences. Mere knowledge of the film might cause a shift in these statistics. Perhaps that was the effect the masterminds were after, like the way extremists highlighted the differences between religions and turned Muslims and Christians into enemies. You create hatred and hatred makes people demand action.

‘And they speak of God and Allah?'

‘Yes.'

‘God Almighty, if you'll pardon the expression. That's so warped.'

His words poured out in a voice she didn't recognise. Things had come to a pretty pass when even Kaiser, the king of cynicism, was moved, she thought. Then he seemed to pull himself together and a little of the old, energetic editor returned.

‘Well, we've got to run it. We're a newspaper, for Christ's sake, and it's a massive story. It's the law of nature. We do have freedom of speech in this country.'

‘PET won't like it.' She could hear him thinking.

‘To hell with PET. It's no good. We have an obligation to our readers.'

‘Even when it means doing the terrorists' work for them?' Dicte hated playing the devil's advocate, but there was no one else to take the part. She could hear more crackling down the phone before Kaiser responded.

‘Okay, this is what's going to happen. I'll meet with PET. We'll go over the situation yet again, and you hand over that film to your policeman friend, who will pass it on the relevant people. Perhaps now is not the time to splash it across the front pages, so we'll put the brakes on for the time being.'

In a way she agreed with him, but somehow it still felt like a defeat, and it surprised her that he was so quick to roll over. After all, he was The Kaiser: the news emperor.

‘It might come back to haunt us,' he added, and suddenly she understood. He wasn't worried about PET or the authorities; he was worried about the readers and their reactions. They might direct their anger at the newspaper for allowing itself to be led by the nose by potential terrorists. When push came to shove, circulation was all that mattered.

‘If we publish, people might think we're letting ourselves be manipulated,' he elaborated, thus confirming her theory. ‘That we're behaving in a way which might endanger national security purely to sell more papers. Everyone knows those people need the oxygen of publicity. Without publicity they're nothing.' Then he added, ‘We'll write it afterwards. When it's all out in the open.'

It made some sense. When it was all over, if it was ever all over, she was still the one who had been picked to be the channel. She was the one who had been sent the films. She was the one who had been chosen.

‘But then there's the murder case,' Kaiser said. ‘We can go for that.'

‘There's a press conference in a little while. I'm on my way there now.'

Kaiser was back on form. His voice quivered with excitement. ‘The murder can be our entry into the story. We'll need everything you can find. No one can blame us for that. Keep anything else you discover along the way close to your chest, and we'll pull out all the stops later on.'

Whenever he got excited he always spoke in clichés. And she knew that he was excited even though he sounded relatively normal right now. This went against all his instincts, and hers, too. Freedom of speech was their religion. They'd had it stuffed down their throats column inch by column inch. Now they were axing it of their own free will, and they needed something in return.

‘Anyway, they might have sent copies to other newspapers,' she said. ‘This film might very well be on the desk of every major newspaper and TV channel in the country.'

She could almost hear the cogs grinding in his brain, but he had made up his mind. ‘We'll let PET sort that out. What about you? Are you all right? Do you need protection?'

‘Why?'

‘You don't think this is a personal threat?'

‘If it's personal, I'll have to handle it myself.' She didn't sound nearly as self-assured as she had hoped. She'd felt like a go-between. It had never occurred to her that she might be the intended victim.

Kaiser wasn't attuned to the finer nuances of tone of voice or language, or if he was, he never let on. ‘That's the spirit.'

Dicte could hear how relieved he was to be able to stop thinking about her as he pushed his chair back, ready for the next story of the day.

The press briefing was due to start in four minutes, so she had no time to get hold of Wagner. Instead she ran alongside the red brickwork of the police station and got there just as the briefing room door was closing. Everyone was present, facing the podium where Detective Chief Superintendent Hartvigsen and John Wagner, leading the investigation, sat like two overgrown schoolboys behind a school desk. She noticed that Wagner didn't seem to be looking forward to the conference and sensed her own reluctance reflected in him. The case was so diffuse and out of control, and he was only a small player in what might turn out to be a national security game that would set the press and the public, immigrants and politicians at each other's throats. It was so very different from the cases he normally handled and which, at the most, involved asking for assistance from other police districts.

Hartvigsen led the introduction as always and then handed over to Wagner, who swiftly and somewhat tersely outlined the case and confirmed that during their investigations on Samsø they had found the body of a man whose head had been severed from his body. The man had been identified as Kjeld Arne Husum, Grønnegade 5. His family had been informed. The forensic examiner had concluded from the state of the body that the man had been killed approximately one week before. They asked for any witnesses to come forward and showed an earlier photo of the man on an overhead projector.

‘Has he been beheaded?' a tabloid journalist wanted to know. ‘Can you confirm that he's the man from the film?'

Wagner focused on an indeterminate point somewhere in the middle distance.

‘The forensic examiner can confirm that the head was severed from the body with a sabre-like instrument with no teeth, and at a perpendicular angle.'

‘So he was beheaded?' the journalist repeated.

Wagner said nothing.

‘What's the motive? Has anyone claimed responsibility yet?'

‘I can't comment on that,' Wagner said, and it was obvious that he hated this expression because he then found something synonymous. ‘We have nothing to add in this regard.'

‘Bearing in mind how the killer was dressed, I presume radical Muslims might be behind this?'

This came from the journalist from
Jyllands-Posten
. Wagner looked at him.

‘Your guess is as good as mine.'

‘But, his clothing—'

‘There might be numerous explanations,' Wagner said, clearly irritated.

He scanned the gathering. He knows, Dicte thought. He knows they will write about terrorism, even though nothing has been confirmed. They know he can't give them anything. We all know and yet we all play the game.

‘Has PET become involved in this case?' the
Jyllands-Posten
reporter asked.

‘Not in the actual murder investigation,' Wagner replied. ‘This is the responsibility of Aarhus Crime Squad in partnership with the National Crime Scene Investigation Bureau.'

‘What about the murder weapon? Was it discovered at the crime scene or is it still missing?'
Aarhus Stiftstidende
asked.

Wagner nodded towards the police officer working the projector. Shortly afterwards a close-up of a sabre held in a gloved hand appeared on the screen. The blade was beautifully arched; the handle was decorated with blue and red jewels.

‘You'll be given two photos,' he said. ‘This is an enlargement of the sabre used in the film. We would very much like to find it or get an idea of what kind of sabre it is and where it comes from.'

‘What about immigrant communities?'

‘What about them?' Wagner asked brusquely.

‘Are you bringing in more manpower? More patrols? Surveillance? After all, it's no secret that this case has caused unrest to flare up in the ghettos.'

‘I can't say anything about that. That's for the uniformed police to deal with,' Wagner said to the journalist from
Politiken
.

Dicte stared up at the two men on the podium. Unease surged through her like a heat wave. What had she set in motion here? Could she have done anything different? Could the police have done anything different?

She thought about the coverage and the fact that terrorism had been mentioned in every newspaper and TV headline since the news about the first film had been released. It was like waving a red rag in the face of ethnic communities, which were already hyper-sensitive following
Jyllands-Posten
's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed and a well-known politician's website with racist overtones. Not to mention the suicide bombings in London and, furthermore, the picture which was beginning to emerge of terrorists as totally ordinary, settled, well integrated young men of Middle Eastern origin. Everyone of ethnic origin felt they were being blamed. Of course, this was unreasonable, but then who was to blame, if anyone at all? The press was free. It was free to write the stories, but was it also free to abstain? And should it abstain? Had Kaiser made the right call? Or should they have just let the story explode like a bomb, see what happened next?

Were they censoring themselves? Was their concern misguided?

Everything was spinning. It had been her choice, too. And her responsibility, even though she hadn't wanted it and hadn't asked for it.

Dicte forced herself to put her hand up.

‘Yes, Ms Svendsen,' Wagner nodded formally.

‘Is there any link between the murder of the elderly woman in Grønnegade and the fact that Husum also lived in the same street?'

It was her attempt to divert attention from the terrorist angle. Wagner looked grateful and initiated a lengthy lecture about the investigation of the first murder and a possible connection with the Samsø man. Dicte closed her eyes. She wasn't quite sure what was happening but, in the distance, heard Wagner and Hartvigsen rounding off the press briefing, and then saw the whole pack of journalists and photographers launch a barrage of questions at her, which felt like a salvo of machine-gun fire.

‘Have you received any more films in the post?'

‘Do you have any idea who is behind this?'

‘Why do you think they've targeted you?'

‘What's your reaction to the incidents in Gellerup and Rosenhøj?'

‘Do you feel responsible for the anger felt by ethnic communities?'

She should have known. She was news. She was herself a story. She got up and tried to fight her way out. ‘Go away, for God's sake. Leave me alone.'

She regretted her outburst the moment it left her mouth. For a split second she could visualise it, in bold print on the front of tomorrow's newsstands. Bloody hell. If only she had stuck to her psychology degree, she would have been sitting calmly listening to her clients, away from the public eye.

‘Follow me.'

Wagner had come to her rescue. It annoyed her that she had to grab his outstretched hand as he started to pull her away from her own kind, but she had no choice.

‘Idiots,' Dicte hissed, but allowed herself to be dragged into an office. ‘I wish someone would chop their bloody heads off, every single one of them.'

She reminded him of a cat that had just come out of a fight, whose claws were out and whose tail was still bushy. She stared angrily into space and her whole body exuded defiance.

‘You're under a lot of pressure,' he said. ‘Sit down for a moment and take a deep breath.'

She did as she was told, yet managed to make it look as if she was acting under duress. Then she pulled a plastic bag containing an envelope from her bag and placed it on the desk.

‘Another calling card from our friend on Samsø,' she announced.

He closed his eyes briefly and dispatched a silent prayer.

‘What now?' he asked.

‘They want the death penalty reinstated.'

He carefully retrieved the envelope using the plastic bag as a makeshift glove. Filled with anxiety, he slipped the CD into the computer. When he had seen the film he was even more anxious.

‘Well, this is brilliant,' he said. ‘What does your editor say? I presume you've informed him.'

She nodded. Of course she had.

‘He says he'll meet with PET to discuss it. He says we need to be responsible.'

She made it sound as though it were something distasteful.

He sighed. He knew it was against all of her instincts.‘This is a unique situation,' he said. ‘We've never seen anything like it. Once something hits the printed page, you can't take it back. You don't know what forces you have unleashed.'

It was her turn to sigh, but she said nothing.

‘Where's Bo Skytte?' he asked, and could hear the hidden reproach, but he didn't care. She shouldn't have come on her own. In fact, she shouldn't even be going out alone.

‘He's busy.'

He detected a hint of bitterness. ‘Next time you might want to think about sending someone else. You should have known that your colleagues would pester you for more information.' He put on a smile. ‘After all, you know the press better than most.'

Dicte turned away and looked out of the window. There was only a view of the car park. Right below her, in the reserved bays, were two emergency vehicles on permanent standby.

‘You're under pressure as well,' she said.

‘That's my job.'

‘What are you going to do now?'

She turned to look at him. She seemed to be pointing a flashlight right into his soul and seeing how repugnant he found the whole situation.

‘I want to find a killer,' he said. ‘Anything else I'll leave to the others.'

‘Do you believe in the death penalty?' she asked.

He gave her a searching look. She looked dazed, like someone who was lost and was searching for the right direction. Her hair was messy and her make-up flawed as always, if she was wearing any at all. He very much wanted to help, but as so often before he felt inadequate in her presence.

‘I wouldn't use the word “believe”. We're not talking about religion here,' he said at length.

She re-formulated the question. ‘Are you in favour of the death penalty?'

‘Off the record?'

‘Of course.'

He nodded. ‘In theory, yes.'

‘Why?'

‘Because anything else would be hypocrisy.'

‘How do you mean?'

He thought of Martin. He thought of Ida Marie and of his other children. ‘If anyone killed someone close to me, on purpose, I would want them to die in pain. Most people would. In theory.'

‘What about in practice?'

He leaned forward. What was going on in her head? There were times when he longed to chart the twists and turns of her thoughts.

‘In practice I wouldn't dream of it. If for no other reason than there would inevitably be miscarriages of justice.'

‘And innocent people would be executed?'

He nodded. ‘Or people who, when they committed the act, couldn't be said to have been responsible for their actions.'

For a while Dicte sat chewing over their exchange. Then he remembered something.

‘You're probably going to say no, but I'm going to offer it to you, anyway,' he said. ‘We have two good psychologists in emergency services. Having a word or two with one of them might help.'

She appeared to consider it, but he could see rejection in the way she sat up and her eyes closed down, like a door being slammed. She shook her head.

‘Thanks, but no thanks. I don't need any help.'

It was the understatement of the century, but he left it hanging in the air hoping she could see it for herself.

Apparently it was lost on her. She said, ‘This Husum guy. Was there anything unusual about him? At the autopsy, I mean?'

‘Only a tattoo.'

‘What and where?'

They hadn't considered this could be significant. After all, the man had been identified. Yet she made him feel that they had made a mistake by not mentioning it at the press briefing.

‘Right upper arm. It looked like a tower.'

‘A single tower? Round? Square?'

There was an edge to her voice now. She had sat up straight.

‘Square. Like out of a fairytale. Medieval,' he said, correcting himself.

‘Nothing else?'

He shook his head. Her eyes focused on him and he knew there was something she wanted from him even before she had opened her mouth.

‘I have to see that tower. I don't care how I see it, whether it's on a photo or on a corpse, but I have to see it.'