Next of Kin (26 page)

‘That's just what we need.'

Wagner's mix of surliness and despair produced a tone all of its own. Detective Chief Superintendent Hartvigsen let out a loud sigh. Hans Erik Dagø, the Police Commissioner, took off his glasses, pinched the top of his nose with two fingers and closed his eyes as if he could make the whole business disappear. Only Kurt Strøm seemed bright-eyed. Dicte stole furtive glances at him from the corner chair in Wagner's office.

‘Let's have another look at this,' Strøm said with authority, for the second time.

Wagner's back protested. She saw it in the tension between the shoulder blades jutting out of his shirt. She knew he'd rather be sitting with his investigative team gnawing their way through the case from one end.

Nevertheless, he re-activated the computer and they were back with the backdrop of the concrete wall and the hostage whose eyes were wide with fear. Once again the monotonous, distorted voice demanded action from the legislators and extended the deadline.

‘We're going to be busy,' Wagner commented. ‘Forty-eight hours is nothing.'

‘Better than twenty-four,' Dagø said, and it occurred to Dicte that he was probably a fan of the eponymous American TV series. She was on the point of saying how everything seemed to move faster over there, but kept her observation to herself.

They appeared to have forgotten that she existed. She had immediately rung Wagner after seeing the film and then left for the police station where they were already assembled and waiting for her with sombre expressions on their faces.

‘Of course, we'll have to get the experts to have a look,' Strøm said. ‘But where can it be? Any guesses at the location?'

‘The light seems artificial,' Wagner mumbled. ‘Probably not daylight.'

It was true. Cold light came in from somewhere at the top left hand corner of the film. The result was that the man with the newspaper cast a shadow on the untreated damp wall.

‘There's something about that light,' Strøm muttered. ‘Something's not right.'

‘What about the sound?' Hartvigsen asked.

‘It's been been filtered,' Wagner said. ‘It's a bit slow.'

‘And you're saying it's a woman,' Strøm said to Wagner with some scepticism.

‘Yes. A witness from Samsø came forward this morning,' Wagner said. ‘She saw a woman unlocking the house door with a key in the time period we're working on. It fits in with the other clues we have.'

Strøm shook his head, making his cheeks quiver. ‘Don't tell me we don't have equal opportunities then.'

As the words left his mouth, Strøm suddenly seemed to remember Dicte's existence. His gaze fell on her, and she could feel herself being scrutinised, weighed up, maybe even considered as a suspect simply because her gender slotted into a theory.

‘What are you lot doing?' he said. ‘What does your editor say?'

Dicte sighed. Big Brother was watching. Kaiser had smelled blood and asked her to write a front-page spread, but she knew that had made him edgy. On the other hand, not publishing the story would make him nervous.

‘We're going to publish,' she informed them. ‘Unless you get a court order and issue a ban. It's up to you.'

To her surprise, Strøm nodded. ‘I think you should write the story. I also think you should take a print from the film. You might end up running errands for the terrorists but you also might get some information about where they're holding the victim. You took a copy, didn't you?'

Dicte nodded. Of course she had.

What was right and what was wrong? When did you go that step too far and reap the consequences? A hostage's life hangs on a very thin thread. Was it wrong to publish the story? Was it wrong to report that someone had cloned the terrifying cocktail of vigilantism and terror, and in so doing passed the idea on to others?

When she returned to the office—after promising that she could be contacted day or night, and giving assurances that she had no plans to leave the country—Dicte considered whether the fact that the hostage was a convicted paedophile made any difference. If it did make a difference, she knew that was wrong. But would she be more outraged if the man had been innocent?

Anne's absence hit her hard. There would be no doubt in her friend's mind: The man had served his sentence. They should make the same determined efforts to release him that they would have made for the eight-year-old daughter he had abused. Shouldn't they?

They took a cigarette break—without cigarettes, and it lasted a mere ten minutes. But it was much needed.

Wagner drank in the relatively fresh air from the car park. He looked at his watch. At eleven the investigation team was supposed to meet in the briefing room, with reinforcements from outside and the whole shebang. He was to run the meeting and inspire them; that was his role, apart from getting results, of course. In one way or another he was meant to get them going; convince them that rescuing a paedophile was just as important for them as rescuing any other person in need.

He walked down Ridderstræde towards the Immigration Office wearing only a tweed jacket, right into a cold wind which went straight through his shirt. The feeling that he was hopelessly adrift and that someone's life depended on his intellect and dynamism, as always, served to goad him into action, and it was a chance to think.

He thought about Ida Marie and her crusade against the male teacher who might, or might not, be too interested in small boys. Her reference to his not being Martin's father and her accusation that he didn't feel enough for the boy for that reason were still eating away at him. Yes, they had talked it through. Yes, she had apologised. But what was said couldn't be unsaid, they both knew that, and now he had to ask himself quite objectively whether she was right. A life was not just a life. Some lives were worth more than others. The whole of civilisation was built on the fact that children's lives were more important than adults', and women's lives more important than men's. It was men who were killed in war. Men who were sent off as cannon-fodder.

Was Martin more important to Ida Marie than the boy was to him? Probably, he concluded. She was his mother, Martin her only child. He had three of his own from his marriage to Nina. He was old-fashioned, he knew that. But in the final analysis weren't blood ties the strongest? And wasn't a mother's love for her child the strongest of all?

He had walked quite a way up Sønder Alle. Drizzle was beginning to fall from clouds that seemed darker than before. He walked back with a sudden yearning and desire for Ida Marie, whom he had neglected for a long time, they both knew that. She had been right; he wanted to tell her that. He loved Martin but not as she did, nor should he. Her love should shine like a jewel in Martin's life and his was a pale lantern by comparison. It couldn't be any different, otherwise nothing was holy and everything a matter of indifference.

And that wasn't true, he concluded, on his way through the interim entry doors in Dynkarken. There were loves that were greater than others and lives that were worth more than others. That was the way it was. It was debatable, but he was a professional and had a job to do, to carry out the principles of law which he believed in implicitly. There was a man they had to find and rescue, and that was their focus. It wasn't their job to judge him; otherwise they were no better than those who had taken him hostage.

Wagner's team made him ashamed of his nervousness. Even Ivar K kept his remarks to himself. It was as though someone had peeled layer after layer off all of them, and now they were like a pack of wolves with their instincts sharpened, determined to search and find. The coffee and pastries were ready, but no one had poured a drop. No one seemed to be interested in anything except the case.

He showed them the film; the copy, to be precise. The original had been sent to the PET experts long ago for examination.

‘Bloody hell,' Ivar K said. ‘A woman, you say?'

Wagner nodded in the direction of Eriksen, who repeated to the group what he had already told him over the phone early this morning.

‘The witness's name is Dagny Henriksen, and she and her husband live opposite the house in Toftebjerg. She's eighty-three but hawk-eyed. She didn't come forward before because she got the days mixed up.'

‘Mixed up?' said Hansen, not quite without sarcasm. ‘How can you mix up one day?'

Eriksen sighed. ‘She suffers from insomnia and had been doing a crossword in the middle of the night when she saw a woman entering the house. Then she forgot all about the incident and when it happened, but then she picked up the crossword again. She remembered it because there had been one clue she had been puzzling over. And then she saw that the date on the newspaper matched the time slot we identified as relevant to this crime.'

Wagner summed up. ‘Now we have a description. And even more important: we know that the killer in all probability is a woman. That fits in with the Tampax packaging and the Muslim clothes.'

‘But does it fit in with the crime?' asked Pedersen, who was always a gentleman and was having an even tougher time than Wagner imagining a member of the so-called weaker sex swinging a sabre.

Ivar K nodded. ‘It's feasible. Gormsen himself says so. But she may have had a different weapon to start off with. Probably a pistol to threaten Husum with. Or a knife.' He leaned forward like a hunting dog with a glint in its eye.

‘Imagine the scene. It's the middle of the night. She catches him by surprise in the house on Samsø, threatens him with a gun and ties his hands up. All this takes place in the house. Then she works in the garden, sheltered by bushes and trees, and hammers poles in beside the tree trunk. She forces him out with the gun in his back, ties his hands to the bottom of the poles and places his head on the block. And then—'

‘Thank you very much,' Wagner said. ‘We can imagine the rest. But if the witness says she opened the house door, she must have had a key.'

There was silence. Eriksen reached out for the coffee and the cups and passed them round. Wagner stood up and went to the chart, flipped over to a clean sheet and clicked off the lid of a marker.

‘Who would have had a key?'

‘Connie Husum,' Hansen suggested. ‘She's been to the house before. She could have had one or had a copy made.

Wagner wrote her name on the chart. ‘Others?'

‘Husum's family and friends,' said Ivar K. ‘Neighbours maybe.'

‘All the neighbours have watertight alibis,' Wagner reminded them. ‘We have also eliminated Connie Husum and Jens Jespersen from our inquiries. Shall we take another look at them or choose a different route?'

Kristian Hvidt put his hand up like a schoolboy. Wagner nodded at him.

‘I spoke to a psychologist, as you suggested,' he began. ‘Apart from the old assault charge, Husum had a clean record. But we know that chances are he did abuse his daughter. We know from Connie Husum that he was a man with a great need for sex. We also know he had a paying client and probably felt no shame or guilt.'

As Hvidt searched for words Wagner nodded encouragement.

‘It's just a thought, but the psychologist thinks there may be other, undiscovered incidents in his past. Crimes of a sexual nature that fit his profile as a sexual predator.'

Pedersen and Eriksen frowned.

Wagner prompted him. ‘Kristian?'

Hvidt fumbled with his biro and knocked it against the edge of the table in his nervousness. He wasn't used to making such long speeches, but he was clearly onto something. ‘If there is an old crime that went unpunished,' he said, ‘there may also be someone who knows about it. That may be our avenger.'

‘Not terrorism, then,' said Hansen. ‘So much for PET and Strøm's wet dreams about unravelling terrorist networks and becoming heroes.'

Wagner wrote on the chart. ‘It could be anything. It might have spread as some form of ideology, but it must have a personal origin. Kristian's theory sounds like a good bet. It has my vote.'

He looked round the circle of men. The others nodded in agreement.

‘Good. So let's approach Husum's past from a geographical point of view,' Wagner said. ‘Where did he spend any time in his life? Where did he live? Where did he work? And then let's look at potentially interesting cold cases, sexual offences, in those areas and at those times, okay?'

They swilled back their coffee and spread in all directions to follow up their tasks, the pastries untouched.

‘Where to?'

Dion shrugged his shoulders and folded his long body into the passenger seat of her Fiat. ‘Towards the city centre,' he sulked.

Dicte ignored his tone of voice and turned the car around in a side street. She didn't trust him and wished they were sitting face to face so that she could watch his eyes. But there were no obvious places nearby, so the city centre it was.

‘We'll find somewhere,' she says. ‘I'll buy you a beer.'

He gave a snort of contempt and said nothing.

‘I want you to know what this is about,' she said, positioning the car behind a white van. ‘Kjeld Arne Husum was the man who was executed on Samsø. Kaspar obviously told you that.'

She caught a brief, reluctant nod and went on. ‘What he hasn't told you, because he doesn't know of course, is that I received another film today. A convicted paedophile has been kidnapped. The hostage-takers have issued a forty-eight hour deadline before he is executed the same way as Kjeld Arne.'

Dion said nothing.

‘Have you ever seen anyone being beheaded?' Dicte asked.

Dion shook his head.

‘It's not a pretty sight,' she said conversationally, deciding to overtake the van. ‘It's not as easy as you would imagine. There can be complications. It's tricky to get a clear cut. The body starts twitching—'

‘Shut up!' There were tears in his voice.

She went on. ‘Someone had something on Husum. And Husum, in turn, had something on all of you. On Morten and Kaspar.'

She took her eyes off the road for a moment and looked directly at his profile, which was on the point of crumbling. ‘And on you.'

He said nothing. All the way into town he sat still, staring straight ahead. Dicte found a parking space near Sankt Pauls Kirkeplads and practically dragged him into a nearby pub she had never heard of and would probably never frequent again. It was dark and as good as deserted and stank of beer and tobacco. An anorexic-looking girl chewing gum was behind the bar and gave them a bored look. Dicte ordered two draught beers and found a table away from the window.

‘She sounds lovely, your wife,' she said, taking a sip. ‘Got any kids?'

Dion looked ready to explode. His face flushed with blood and the words were spat out with a spray of beer. ‘Shut up! Leave my family out of this.'

‘Then tell me what happened,' she said. ‘Enlighten me.'

He drank half his beer in a gulp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The alcohol seemed to give him strength somehow.

‘I had … have … an old conviction. Well, what I mean is, it wasn't old at the time. I was very young. I had a job at a nursery school in Aarhus …'

She knew what was coming. It all seemed so transparent.

‘Paedophilia,' she said in a matter of fact voice, as though they were discussing petty thieving or failing to keep your dog on a leash.

He drained his glass. ‘I was twenty years old. It was my first job. I didn't know what was right or wrong … Yes, of course, I knew it was wrong but … it's not something I have felt the urge to repeat, not since then, and now I've got children of my own.'

‘But Kjeld Arne knew?'

He nodded into the empty beer glass. ‘We both worked in the same nursery for a while. So yes, he obviously knew.'

‘And when you moved into the commune, you got another job in a nursery. They didn't screen you?'

He shook his head. ‘They didn't do that in those days. I'm not even sure it's working all that well nowadays. If you want to cheat the system there's always a way.' Then he looked at her. ‘I love children. I'm not a paedophile and I've never touched a child since. I wouldn't dream of doing it.'

‘But you dreamed about it then?'

He shrugged. ‘What's done cannot be undone.'

‘And Henriette doesn't know?'

The panic rose in his eyes, and she was ashamed. She held a man's destiny in her hands and she realised she liked this uncomplicated feeling of power. For a second it was irrelevant what she was going to do with it or whether her intentions were good.

‘No,' he said. ‘She knows nothing and she never will.'

Dicte sensed it was time for a break. She bought him another beer and a cup of coffee for herself, then sat back down at the wooden table, stained by years of spilled drinks and countless glasses.

‘So you knew something which Kjeld Arne preferred to keep quiet,' she guessed. ‘And when you threatened to reveal all, he used your old conviction to blackmail you. If your new employer knew the truth, would you be finished?'

He sipped at his second beer and nodded, visibly relaxed now, she could tell. His problem wasn't what Husum had done, but what he had done. Now it was out in the open and all that was left was the other matter.

She waited. She thought of Astrid Agerbæk's words: when it comes down to it we all have something to hide. Relationships we would prefer not to be made public, to be held up and scrutinised and judged by others. After all, if she had to be completely honest about all this, wasn't this why she was running around playing detective? Because there was something that didn't feel right?

The truth, Anne would have said—and she could almost hear her voice all the way from Greenland—the truth is always best.

She drank her coffee, which was lifeless and lukewarm. She wasn't Anne and she didn't have quite the same convictions. There were times when she felt that truth didn't quite live up to its reputation. In this case at least, right now there was a discrepancy between supply and demand, and truth seemed to her somewhat overrated.

‘Kjeld Arne had a younger sister,' Dion said. ‘She went missing. They searched for her and the whole country was turned upside down looking for her. But then fourteen days later, hey presto, she reappeared on a playground near her home.'

‘Unharmed?'

‘There were signs of ... abuse ... Rape,' he said hesitantly.

Dicte thought back. Things were slotting into place, but she still didnt have the complete picture. Being brought up as a Jehovah's Witness meant that you didn't keep abreast of worldly issues. You read
The Watchtower
and
Awake!
and told yourself that was enough.

‘When did this happen?'

‘June 1977.'

She didn't need to do the maths. It was the summer which was etched into her brain. Her summer with Morten.

‘Did they found out where she had been?'

Dion shook his head. ‘I think she was only three or four. And according to the media she was so traumatised that she couldn't speak at all. Or she didn't want to, or was afraid.' His gaze moved from her to the skinny barmaid now serving a couple of AGF Aarhus football fans wearing scarves and hats.

‘Do you know what happened?'

For a long time he looked as if hadn't heard her.

‘Dion?'

A movement in his neck revealed his tension. At length he nodded. ‘I know exactly what happened to her.'