Next of Kin (22 page)

‘You're not still reading that, are you?'

Maibritt was in bed, supported on a couple of pillows. He couldn't see her face, which was concealed by the book she was reading.
The Da Vinci Code
. It was bloody everywhere, in his bedroom now as well.

She lowered the book and looked at him over her glasses. There was some tenderness in her eyes, but he could see the question; the examination, as though he were one of her young readers who had misunderstood a story.

‘You have to do something when you can't sleep,' she said.

The recrimination hung, dangled, in the air. He heard it, but it just annoyed him even more. As if you could have any energy left over for sex when your daughter was dead. How could you even think about it? How could she?

He sat down on the bed and began to undress. Shoes first. Shirt over his head, most of the buttons still done up. Trousers off, socks off in the same thrust. He knew he had become lazy. Everything happened in the easiest way possible; if he could find a short cut, he took it.

That was true for his patients as well, he conceded, but only to himself. They received a minimum of attention, only what he felt he had to give them to avoid cracking up with self-loathing. And then there was Maibritt.

‘Have you thought about taking the pills the doctor gave you? The sedatives?'

She addressed his back as he sat on the edge of the bed. Oh no, not that again. He was so bloody sick of all the insinuations that he was a man on the brink of a precipice. Couldn't they see him writhing down there? Didn't they know he had chosen to jump? Him, the one who didn't understand why they hadn't all jumped, too. Because they were the ones who had got it wrong: Maibritt and the doctor and Maibritt's sister and Maibritt's mother and anyone else who deluded themselves into thinking they were qualified to make a pronouncement about his state of mind. They were the ones with the short memory, as though Nanna had just been a precious stone on the beach that now, after a storm, was covered with sand. You would bloody think they were the ones who had studied psychology, but in fact they had their so-called knowledge from pseudo-scientific articles from a variety of women's magazines, where anyone under the sun might be wheeled in as an expert. Anyone except himself, of course. You had to be a woman. Male psychologists were not so sought after in the media, but he couldn't care less, fortunately, and he had never pandered to anyone.

‘Ole?'

Her question was threaded into his head again, like a piece of magnetic tape. ‘I refuse to take pills,' he said, not up to any discussion.

She sighed, but did make a little effort to soften it. ‘They might make you feel better.'

‘I'm absolutely fine, thank you.'

He flipped over the duvet and sank into the mattress, wishing there were a partition between them.

She lay back on the pillows and went on reading, but even that annoyed him.

‘I'm fine,' he said. ‘Absolutely fine.'

He could hear how he sounded—like a sullen child—and he wished he'd kept his mouth shut and closed his eyes, if for no other reason than to feign sleep. Maibritt didn't answer and in a way that made the whole business much worse.

‘Why the hell do you all think I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown?'

He heard the book being lowered, the pages scraping against the duvet. The gaze from above her glasses swept over him, tentacles outstretched. He could feel the suction pads on him.

‘I miss her too,' Maibritt said gently. ‘This isn't a competition. You don't have a monopoly on mourning, Ole.'

The words writhed inside him. Monopoly and competition. Where the hell had she read that? In some superficial article about grieving? Grieving was so modern, of course he knew that. Everything from miscarriages to deceased pets should be grieved over. Everything was put on the same footing, and you had to be oh-so understanding when there has been a bereavement. It was a real buzz word. If you had suffered one, in some people's eyes, you had special status. All of a sudden there was an aura around your person, and you were shown a lot of respect because no one dared do anything else. But understanding was a very different matter. Knowing what went on inside you, that wasn't really part of the deal.

He mumbled something and turned his back on her and her damned book. But then she stuck out a hand and stroked his back, and he had to admit that was brave of her, not to say foolhardy. She must have known it could end up in a catastrophe. She must have sensed the air quivering with his conflicting emotions—nausea at being touched and the need for comfort locked in battle.

‘I talk to her,' Maibritt said softly as her hand caressed him. ‘I have long conversations, and I tell her you've lost your way, Ole. I tell her that grief is splitting you in half.'

‘And what does she say to that?' he asked, with a touch of disdain to conceal his curiosity.

‘She says it's your way of saying goodbye. She says you're made like that. You have to get it out of your system.'

Out? Where to? he wanted to know. Where would it end? But he said nothing because her hand's continual stroking was driving all the fluid up through his body, through his gullet and neck, further up into his head where it collected and put pressure on his senses; his eyes hurt, his throat itched, his ears were bombarded with the rushing water of a deep, rough sea. He wanted to ask her to stop, but his voice was gone. His body had swallowed it, and perhaps that was why the muscles in his solar plexus were beginning to spasm. It took him a while to recognise he was crying: a dry, inevitable sobbing that seized and shuddered, bursting through tear ducts and mucous membranes.

Fortunately, she said nothing, or else he couldn't hear it. There were only the movements of her hand, circling now, as though she were an exorcist who wanted to drive away the evil from their door. Then the sudden cold swish of the duvet as it was pushed aside to make way for her curves against his, like two spoons nestling in a drawer. Gradually the hurricane abated and became a light breeze, but still she held him and her hand circled, now on his upper arm, shoulder and chest. He wanted to push her away, but he couldn't find the strength and they fell asleep where they lay.

When he woke up, it was five minutes to three. He was freezing. Maibritt was back on her own side and the emptiness hit him. He wondered whether to reach out and wake her, but felt like a wimp, unable to cope with anything on his own. How was it she could cope and he could not? He didn't understand, but thought about what Nanna had answered all the way from another world. Out of his system, she had said. But where to?

He whipped off the covers, got up and put some clothes on. An old sweatshirt and a pair of jogging pants from his running days. He left, closing the bedroom door after him, trudged down to his office and switched on his computer. Anything to keep his mind busy. Perhaps some kind of game. Chess or mahjong to sharpen his senses, even though he probably needed the opposite.

He saw a message flashing in his inbox. The sender's name was ‘Justitia' and made him think of an American film, a courtroom drama. He clicked on it and read, imagining he could hear a voice that had homed in on his state of mind and understood what others had not.

‘Justice is the only thing that can give you peace of mind. You know that yourself. You also know what to do. Help us to make this world a better place and kill the person who robbed you of what you loved most. We are called the United Victims. Together we can change the world.'

Ole Nyborg Madsen leaned forward and re-read the message.

‘This might sound like a discussion program on TV, but you can't tar them all with the same brush.'

‘I'm not,' she said, prodding at the food on the plate. She should have ordered something smaller than a burger.

‘Yes, you are. To some extent you are.'

He was right in a way. Resistance breeds resistance. Violence breeds violence. Wasn't that the refrain? That was how wars started, just on a bigger scale. People were annoyed; victims looked for the guilty parties and pointed a finger at whole groups. And she felt like pointing at everyone right now.

‘Well, okay, to some extent. A very small extent,' she conceded.

Bo leaned over the tiny table in Café Englen and went on eating, with his gaze fixed on her. In his eyes she could read respect for her concession, and she thought about their night together and longed for intimacy. She could be angry at so many people, but his disapproval was hard to handle, and her awareness of the text message was gnawing at her. She knew she ought to tell him even though she had once thought the opposite. She took a sip of wine in preparation.

Actually she would have preferred to be at home, keeping out of the public eye, but he had persuaded her to go out. To be more precise, she would have preferred to be at home with Rose, ensuring that she was all right, but Rose didn't want to play along. Rose was in her flat and had said that she was spending the evening with Katrine.

‘There are two killers,' Bo said at last, after doing battle with the shank of lamb he had ordered. ‘No more, no less. There might be a couple of men behind the scenes.'

He shovelled his fork through the bulgar wheat. The smell of cinnamon reached Dicte's nostrils.

‘You can't blame all Muslims. Not even all Muslim men and boys. Not even those living in Aarhus, or to narrow it down even further, in Gellerup. There are guilty and there are innocent parties. That's all.'

‘What about their view of women?' she pointed out, ill at ease because she hated being accused of intolerance when that was precisely what she was targeting in her opponents. ‘Their lack of respect for women who don't wear a scarf? That sort?'

He shrugged and opened his mouth above the piled fork. ‘That can be a problem, of course, but you have to judge each case on its merits. Otherwise it becomes simplistic. Just look at Aziz,' he munched. ‘He would die for Rose. You can't ask any more of a hero.'

What else could she reasonably ask for? Perhaps a young man with a less complicated background. But then who was she to talk, the expert at picking problematic boyfriends? ‘She didn't want him to find out anything,' Dicte said. ‘I think she's frightened he'll be disgusted and leave her.'

Bo's expression was sceptical as he washed the food down with water. ‘She may have a different motive.'

Dicte tucked into the red wine. That had been her deal: if he promised to drive home, she would go to town for a meal after work, where she felt under pressure from Kaiser, readers' expectations and herself. Not to mention all the other media and colleagues queuing for comments. Without alcohol it would be hard to put up with the looks she received. Although no one said anything, everyone knew. Everyone had read the papers or seen the news. She had become ‘the execution woman', and Bo had used all his powers of persuasion to entice her out.

‘You can't let that stuff get to you,' he had said, sweeping aside her objections. He was right. She shouldn't let herself be driven out of society as she was wont to do. They would have to put up with her, and with the story, and with all the emotions that had been stirred up.

She observed Bo as he sat struggling with the last of the tender meat on the bone. Something had happened between them over the previous twenty-four hours. The glue that held them together seemed to be working again, and she knew it was connected with the attack on Rose. She had seen his reaction, his anger and frustration. There had been a sudden recognition of something she knew very well, but which she had forgotten in all the disagreement about the case and his way of tackling it: there was so much she was not sure of with him. His constancy and his support when she had a difficult case or story, and his presence, because he simply wasn't there for her whenever his ex-wife or the children needed him, or he was away on assignments. But she had no doubts about his love or loyalty when it counted. She repeated that to herself. She had to remember that. When she was under maximum pressure, like now, when she was about to tell him something that might test his loyalty.

She started with Astrid Agerbæk and by the time the bottle was empty she had told him everything.

He sat looking at her as she tried to read his face. She had expected him to be angry, but he just seemed saddened.

‘What?' she asked at length. ‘Tell me. Tell me I'm obsessed and I'm torturing myself with ghosts from the past. Tell me this is a dead end.'

His eyes were hooded. ‘What do you want from me?' he asked. ‘My blessing? I'm not your father, and I'm not a priest, either. If that's the path you have to tread, do it. But do you dare?'

Not without you, she thought. ‘Of course I do. I have to find out what the hell is going on.'

‘And what if this is all about your son?'

‘Perhaps it isn't,' she said.

‘But that's what you fear, isn't it?'

‘It's perhaps what someone wants me to fear.'

Bo's hand hovered between water glass, wine glass and her hand, which was twisting and turning on the table, kneading a serviette. His hand brushed hers as he took the wine glass and twirled the stem between his fingers.

‘Once more,' he said in a chilling tone. ‘What do you want from me?'

‘I want to know if you're with me.'

‘And if I'm not?'

Then you're against me, a voice sang out. ‘Then I'd just like to know,' she ended up saying.

The silence between them was filled by the noise of the door in constant motion, the music and people chatting over food and drinks. She could see him putting his artillery into position and prepared herself for a rejection; yet his commitment to her was so much more frightening.

‘Of course I'm with you, if that's what you want,' he said. ‘I've asked you before why you don't try to find out where he is and who he is, just for peace of mind. I can't object to that. What worries me more is the road there.'

He let go of the wine glass and waved his hand in the air. ‘Disappointments, things unsaid and the distance they bring. All the stuff that happens and that you decide not to mention until it is too late.' He leaned across. ‘That's what you're like, Dicte. You think we share, but it's only you. Your life. Your child. I'm just along for the ride.'

There was sadness in his eyes. She knew he was right. The past was like a colossus and she would have to grapple with it on her own. Helle had a free rein, but this wasn't about her. This was something she had to confront inside herself, even if it put her love at risk.

Without her wishing it, the conversation with Astrid Agerbæk barged its way to the forefront of her mind. She thought about the blackmail which had involved her, too. She seemed to be appearing all over the place, like a shadow she did not want. What had the shadow been doing? What had it heard and seen? Perhaps it was washing around somewhere in her subconsciousness. She had given birth to a son, yes. Perhaps the child had turned up again, but she had to think of herself, too. Her role in this. Which Dicte was it that had beaten a path to the commune? Was there anything else on her conscience, apart from her child?

Bo got up and went to the toilet, and she watched his back as he merged into the crowd. She fought an impulse to run after him, because she knew there was no point.