Next of Kin (32 page)

Dicte pointed the gun at the woman on the floor. ‘Lie completely still. Everything will be fine.'

No answer. The other woman stared at her blankly.

‘It's over.'

Now Kirsten Husum gave her a strained smile. ‘It was over before it began.'

Dicte backed away. Still pointing the gun at the woman on the floor, she found her handbag, took out her mobile and called for an ambulance.

‘Dinner is served.
Plat du jour
and a bottle of house red. Full satisfaction or a full refund.'

Bo tossed his biro away and looked up at her as the television droned in the background. His papers were scattered all across the coffee table and he quickly gathered them into a pile to clear a space for the plates.

‘Full satisfaction? For 75 kroner? Now that's what I call service.'

‘Food,' Dicte said. ‘And the service is included.'

She placed two plates of her best spaghetti carbonara on the place mats he'd set out for them. He ran his hand up her thigh as she bent over to pour the wine.

‘Full satisfaction and service included. Sounds exciting.'

She sidled away and pursed her lips. ‘I said the service. Not the waitress. What's that?'

She nodded in the direction of the papers and recognised the wretched insurance form which she had managed to forget all about over the last three months. During that time they had both been busy. Him with photo assignments in Denmark and looking after his children because his ex-wife had been ill. Her with the job and recovering from the events of the autumn, trying to forgive herself, make sense of it all and come to terms with the existence of evil in the world. Business as usual, she was tempted to think. Every now and again she wished she could switch off her thoughts and just become a less complicated person. Like Bo, for example. That was probably why she loved him.

‘It was inevitable,' Bo said, rubbing his eyes. ‘The paper wants to send me and Johannes Prehn to Mombasa to research a series about drug routes.'

At least it wasn't the Middle East, she told herself by way of consolation. She decided not to think any further about Kenya and how dangerous it might turn out to be. After all, it was his job and nothing could change that.

She sat down and couldn't resist the temptation to peek at what he had written on the form. And there was her name in clear capital letters. With tears and air welling up inside her, she looked at him and instantly knew that he had been waiting for this moment and her reaction.

‘You bastard!'

‘Why, what have I done this time?' he said, feigning innocence.

‘You could have done that earlier.'

His expression was gentle, as he shovelled in the pasta. ‘I didn't know for certain whether you wanted that responsibility,' he said. ‘Because it is a responsibility,' he said gravely, washing the food down with red wine. ‘It's no joke. You risk getting some bad news one day. You do know that, don't you?'

She nodded. She knew. But it was better than being the last to know.

‘So is that what you want?' he asked.

She stared at her name on the dotted line.

‘To be my next of kin?'

She didn't really know why it was so important, but it was. She was about to say that of course that was what she wanted. That there was nothing to think about. But then the telephone rang and for a long time she sat there, rigid, before automatically getting up to answer it without taking her eyes off him.

‘What took you so long?' said Anne's voice from Nuuk. ‘How are you?'

Just listening to her was like landing in a place you could call home. Serenity descended, settled in her stomach and weighed her down in the most positive way. Stability. Security. A boyfriend and good friends, what more could you want? Happy children, of course, but one out of two wasn't bad, and Rose and Aziz were living in their own private paradise.

‘Fine,' she said, watching Bo and the way he ate, as though he were wolfing down a plate of beans by a campfire before falling asleep beneath a starlit sky with his head on his saddlebag.

‘And Wagner? Is he still in a huff?'

Wagner. Dicte's gaze wandered around the room. Harsh words had been spoken. Severe disapproval had been registered for acting on her own and not answering her mobile when the police had been trying to contact her. But she'd also heard grudging respect in his voice during their last conversation in his office.

‘Don't you ever take time off?' he'd asked.

‘Of course I do. Every weekend.'

‘No, I mean a proper holiday. Abroad for example?'

Wagner had studied her intently across his desk. He wants to get rid of me, she thought. He wants some peace.

She had shaken her head, and a smile had found its way to her lips. ‘A holiday? That would be a bit of an anti-climax when you're used to bullets whizzing past your ears.'

‘Well, there's always Hollywood,' he'd suggested. ‘I hear they're often on the look-out for extras.'

Dicte re-focused and returned to Anne.

‘Wagner and I are okay,' she replied, with more conviction than she actually felt. ‘Luckily it was just a surface wound,' she added. ‘There's going to be a proper trial now.'

‘And justice will be done,' Anne said, with scepticism in her voice.

‘I suppose we'll just have to hope so. That's all we've got. Now, do tell me tales of the great white plains.'

While Anne told her about family life in Greenland, Dicte's thoughts returned to Wagner again and how it had all ended. What he didn't understand and what Strøm, in particular, couldn't grasp was how Mustapha Pinar had managed to vanish into thin air. She didn't really understand it either. But if she worked hard enough she might be able to come up with a theory that could be of interest to them. Not that she was planning to. After all, blood was thicker than water.

However, intelligence channels had uncovered Uomo, a
Filipino
man who had been trying to recruit further tsunami victims for deadly missions and doomed skirmishes in the name of justice. The same scenario was spreading into all corners of the globe. How many cells were they talking about? Would they be able to find them all? You could only hope.

‘Dicte? Are you there?' Anne asked.

‘I'm here. When are you coming home?'

Anne laughed. It was good to hear she was happy, but at the same time Dicte was also anxious. ‘You will be coming home, won't you?'

‘Of course we will. But we've got a few more months to go.'

They ended their conversation with prolonged goodbyes to everyone from the dog to the Greenland seals. From his seat on the sofa, Bo, having finished the pasta, reached for his waitress while following the news on TV.

‘What's happening in the big wide world?' she asked, falling onto his lap.

Now his hunger had assumed a new form and she reached for the remote control, switching off the television.

‘Not much,' he mumbled as he nuzzled up against her; she could smell pasta and the aroma of his skin; his own, very distinct smell. ‘Those Mohammed cartoons again,' he said as his lips trailed the line of her neck.

‘Really?' she said, totally uninterested. ‘Can they still find something new to say about them?'

Slowly he began unbuttoning her blouse. His mouth followed.

‘Something about a flock of imams touring Egypt and the Middle East to complain about everything.'

‘About what? About the cartoons?
Jyllands-Posten
?' She found it hard to see a connection between the newspaper and Egypt.

‘Everything, I think,' Bo said, kissing her. Clearly, everything had physical connotations now. It had nothing to do with Denmark, the Prime Minister, the Queen and the free press with its use or abuse of their sacred freedom of speech.

‘Don't know what they think they'll achieve by doing that,' he said, pulling off her blouse.

Journalist Dicte Svendsen finds herself investigating the shocking murder of a young woman found at the football stadium in Aarhus. The young woman has been savagely beaten and mutilated. The only clue to her attacker's identity is a glimpse of boots in the bushes behind the corpse, in a photo found on a little girl's mobile phone.

Is the man with the boots the same one who has been trawling local bars to lure women into sado-masochistic relationships? Or is the mutilated woman linked to other victims of bizarre crimes throughout Europe?

Dicte is contacted by a hospital inmate who claims to have vital information about the case. But what does he want in exchange?

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