Trophy (14 page)

‘I don’t think I can,’ the superintendent said, as something dark and cold stirred inside her.

‘Well, in that case, watch your back,’ the chief psychologist said gravely.

‘I will. Thank you.’

‘Why are we here, Lene?’

Oh, so we’re on first name terms, are we? Lene bristled. Charlotte Falster had called a press briefing at Holbæk Police Station and Lene definitely couldn’t complain about the turnout. The station’s canteen was packed to the rafters with journalists. Holbæk’s own chief of police had offered to take part, but Lene had declined. She could handle it, she assured him, and she had detected a certain relief.

She looked coolly at the man who had asked the question, a journalist from a Copenhagen morning paper. They grew younger and younger – or perhaps she was getting older. Shaved head. Small architect’s spectacles. Black T-shirt with a Metallica logo on the front.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Let me rephrase: Why are you here? If this is “just” a suicide?’

Good point.

The other journalists looked at her. The boy was only saying what everyone was thinking.

‘Initially, we believed that there were some … that the technical evidence from Kim Andersen’s suicide could be interpreted in several ways,’ Lene said. ‘It’s not uncommon for us to be involved in an apparent suicide until the forensic examiner’s report is ready. In this case, it was clear and unequivocal.’

She smiled at an older, female journalist from
Ekstra Bladet
. They had followed each other’s careers for quite a while now, and Lene found the reporter’s work to be balanced and sober. The woman smiled too, and made a note of something on her pad.

‘Interpreted how, Lene? Was there anything to suggest that a crime had been committed? … In terms of the technical evidence?’ the skinhead continued.

He stressed the word ‘technical’ and looked around the room, like the classroom star he had undoubtedly always been.

Hungry. On his way up.

‘I’m unable to give you any details … Janus? All I can say is that we no longer doubt that Kim Andersen committed suicide. So, as far as we’re concerned, the case is closed.’

The boy nodded his dissatisfaction and Lene pointed to a plump, middle-aged man in a pale blue shirt and tweed jacket. The buttons looked close to bursting. He was holding up a broad, red, farmer’s hand.

‘Isn’t it strange that Kim Andersen, a tough veteran from
the Royal Life Guards, decides to kill himself the day after his wedding?’ he said. ‘He left the army four years ago. Was he being treated for some kind of depression?’

Lene’s hands stayed calmly folded on the grey Formica table. These days anyone who knew a doctor, a chemist or a personal carer could access other people’s medical records if they knew the civil registration number of the individual concerned. It wouldn’t be difficult for an experienced journalist to find out everything there was to know about Kim Andersen’s treatment for depression.

‘I can’t give you any information about that,’ she said, knowing full well that the journalist already had the answer.

‘But you would agree that the timing is unusual?’

‘That would be my initial reaction. But for obvious reasons, we won’t ever know why Kim Andersen took his own life.’

‘Did he have financial problems?’

‘I have no information about that, so I can’t comment.’

‘And you’re not linking his suicide to his military service?’ The journalist flicked through his notebook. ‘He had been deployed to Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina and three times to Helmand. Have you spoken to his company commander, for example? Fellow soldiers?’

‘I haven’t.’ Lene looked directly at the journalist: ‘I want to emphasize that we have no reason to think that a crime was committed in connection with the death of Kim Andersen. Suicide remains a private matter. And the case is
closed as far as the Rigspolitiet is concerned. I’m not here to speculate about his motives.’

The reporter from
Ekstra Bladet
asked the next question. ‘Kim Andersen had two young children, Lene. And he had been with his wife, Louise, for seven years before they were married. You’ve spoken to his widow. How is she coping? I understand it was she who cut down her husband and tried to resuscitate him. I believe that you had a long conversation with her here at the station yesterday afternoon.’

Lene nodded gravely and moved the salt shaker towards a bottle of ketchup.

‘I think she’s coping remarkably well,’ she said warmly. ‘It’s a huge shock, obviously. It would be for anybody. Suddenly finding herself alone with two young children … but her parents live nearby and she has a good support network. Louise Andersen will get through this, I know she will. For years she has lived with the knowledge that Kim Andersen could be killed in action and those mental preparation will benefit her now. And I’m sure that the Armed Forces will assist in every way they can.’

The journalist smiled. She might just have got her headline.

‘Do you think that the Armed Forces do enough for veterans?’ asked the journalist with the farmworker hands. ‘It’s not the first time that a veteran has committed suicide.’

‘I’m not a sociologist and I don’t feel that I’m qualified to express an opinion about that,’ Lene said.

She got up.

‘Any more questions?’

She looked around the room and knew that every single journalist was frustrated at having driven all this way for so little. They had been hoping for a crime or a human interest story about a traumatized war veteran whose past caught up with him, propelling him to a final, irrevocable action. Yet another broken soldier.

They got up and she had picked up her duffel coat from the table when Metallica said, ‘I’ve spoken to Kim Andersen’s friends and colleagues, Lene.’ The boy was brimming with confidence and was the only one still sitting down. ‘He was injured.’

Lene dropped her coat. Don’t blink, she told herself.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was never wounded in action, but he was injured –’ Metallica consulted his notepad – ‘in the spring of 2011. He was on sick leave for three months before getting some kind of protected work.’ The journalist ignored Lene’s death stare. ‘According to my sources, he started taking antidepressants in June 2011. He was very open about his treatment.’

‘So it would appear,’ Lene said. ‘And?’

None of the other journalists stirred.

‘No one can quite understand how he could afford to invite eighty guests to his wedding and buy his wife a new Alfa Romeo.’

Metallica paused for effect.

What did the little pipsqueak expect, she wondered. A standing ovation? Cheerleaders?

‘What was your question?’ she asked.

‘Well … Do you have any comments on that information?’

She smiled at the boy, despite a strong urge to put him over her knees and give him the thrashing his parents had clearly never managed.

‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. People might have been jealous of him, what do I know? I have no further comment.’

There was a flash of anger behind the architect spectacles. Lene recognized the type. She came across it more and more often. A spoiled generation of children with helicopter parents and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, brought up in a loving home – far too bloody loving and indulgent. No one had ever said no to him. Wooden toys. Rudolf Steiner nursery. Wobbly masculine identity. In short, an arsehole.

‘But you haven’t given me anything!’ Metallica protested. ‘His friends from the shooting syndicate and his colleagues told me he boasted of having lots of money. Surely that must mean something!’

‘I fail to see how,’ Lene replied. ‘He killed himself. And perhaps he died rich, who knows? Have a nice day.’

She left the canteen with a grim face and didn’t start breathing properly until she stepped out into the rain. Then she trod in a pothole, her shoe filled with water and she swore all the way to her car. She got in, grabbed the steering
wheel with both hands and shook it as hard as she could while she screamed.

‘Good job, Lene,’ she muttered to herself when she eventually calmed down and was staring blankly out of the windscreen. ‘You’re a real pro.’

Peter Nicolaisen, a journalist with Danmarks Radio, also known as Michael Sander, had called Tove Hansen in advance. She was the legal guardian and grandmother of two orphaned, four-year-old twins and the mother and mother-in-law of Kasper Hansen and Ingrid Sundsbö respectively. He hadn’t bothered with a disguise, and was wearing his usual anorak, hoodie, jeans and running shoes when he rang the doorbell of the small yellow house. He knew he could easily play the part of an investigative journalist looking for two of the many Danes who had vanished without a trace in 2011.

It didn’t sound as if the twins were at home and he was grateful for that. He looked down the garden path. A couple of well-maintained children’s bicycles were leaning up against a tree in the front garden; there was a swingball stand in the lawn and a big garden trampoline with half its springs missing. The herbaceous border was invaded by weeds and a broken basement window had been patched up with a yellow supermarket bag and gaffer tape.

He smiled at the woman who appeared in the doorway and introduced himself. She nodded and Michael made a move to take off his shoes, but she shook her head.

‘There’s no need.’

‘Thank you. I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

The woman shrugged. She untied her apron and hung it on an already heavily burdened row of pegs in the narrow hallway: children’s winter clothes, snow suits, a beige ladies’ coat, woolly hats, and an orange bobsleigh that had made it as far as the pegs on its spring journey from the garden to the basement. Tove Hansen opened the door to a living room with a low ceiling.

She took a seat in an armchair and a small white poodle wandered over to Michael and sniffed his leg. He would appear to have been accepted because the dog padded out of the door without barking.

‘That’s Perle,’ she said gravely.

‘Cute dog,’ he said.

He sat down opposite her.

‘I can make coffee if you like,’ she said with a nod to the kitchen.

‘I’ve just had some, Mrs Hansen. But thank you very much.’

‘Tove,’ she said.

‘Tove.’

She looked at him with tired grey eyes, and Michael checked out the room. The bookcases were filled with book-club
purchases. The furniture was nice, but shabby. Toys lay neatly sorted in blue and red IKEA boxes. He looked at a photo showing a younger, slim and tanned version of Tove Hansen next to a dark-haired man on a hotel balcony with a blue shimmering sea in the background. He could see Kasper Hansen in both of them, and there was a photograph of their son on the day he left sixth form on the wall above the sofa. His sixth-form cap was pushed cheerfully back and the young man looked ready to take a big, gluttonous chunk out of life with his white teeth. Next to Kasper Hansen hung another student photo of a blonde, long-haired girl with very similar features to her brother, but in a softer and feminine version.

‘It’s Kasper to the left and Sanne to the right,’ Tove Hansen said.

‘Yes, I recognize him. A couple of weeks ago I came across a photo of Kasper and Ingrid in an article in
Verdens Gang
. My editor thought it might be worth following it up.’

‘It has been two years now,’ she said. ‘It’s strange … I still can’t get used to it. Every morning when I wake up, I think he’s still alive … the moment I hear the kids, I know that Kasper is gone, of course, but at other times I think he’s still here.’

‘They’re four years old now?’ he asked. ‘A boy and a girl?’

She looked at him as if she registered the words, but hadn’t quite taken them in. Then she nodded. ‘They’re at nursery. I can pick them up, if …’

‘There’s no need,’ Michael said with a weak smile, while fighting a feeling of profound self-loathing. He produced a notebook from his inside pocket, though he had no intention of writing anything down, and opened it.

‘They disappeared in Norway in March 2011?’

‘March the 24th or 25th,’ she said.

‘What were they doing in Finnmark?’

‘Hiking. They loved the mountains.’

‘Did anyone invite them or were they travelling with other people?’

‘No, it was a last-minute decision. They hadn’t been up there for two years and they were missing it. Ingrid missed it the most, seeing as she was born and bred up there. Kasper had saved up some holiday and Ingrid worked part-time, so she could look after the children. She was a graphic designer. They told me that the weather up there was unusually mild. A kind of early spring. They were only going to be away for a couple of days and asked me if I could have the kids. They dropped off the twins on the morning of the 22nd and I drove them to the airport.’

Without warning Tove Hansen started to cry, but there was no reaction in her face. Michael watched her, wondering when she would realize. She jumped when a tear landed on her wrist. She muttered something and half ran out of the living room. He heard her on the stairs to the first floor.

Michael quickly got up, took out a small digital camera from the pocket of his anorak and photographed all the
pictures on the walls: the twins right from when they were born to when they could stand on the trampoline in the front garden, Tove Hansen’s wedding photo, Kasper Hansen’s student pictures, yet another portrait of her son, this time in his army uniform, a picture of Kasper and Ingrid at a party; she looked lovely with her raven-black hair done up, a green silk dress and bare, tanned arms.

Michael put away the camera and slipped back into his chair a moment before Tove Hansen returned.

‘I get upset,’ she said.

‘Of course you do, Tove. Did Kasper grow up in this house?’

‘My husband and I have lived here since we were married. Sanne lives in California. She’s an engineer, just like Kasper. My husband … their father died five years ago.’

Michael pointed to the picture of Kasper Hansen in uniform.

‘Where did Kasper do his military service?’

‘He was with the Horse Guards in Slagelse. It didn’t interest him. I think he was bored.’

Michael almost did a double take. He himself had been a first lieutenant, and later a military police captain, at Antvorskov Barracks in Slagelse, but that was long before Kasper Hansen had completed his training there.

‘What do you think happened to them?’ he asked, closing his notebook.

Tove Hansen moved a candlestick on the coffee table.

‘Everything. I’ve imagined everything. Sometimes it’s a
happy ending and I see him again … Other times, not so good.’

‘I understand.’

‘Did you say you work for Danmarks Radio or TV2?’ she asked.

‘Danmarks Radio.’

‘Danmarks Radio, fancy that. Kasper’s father was a butcher and I worked in a shop. But our children went to university, Sanne and Kasper both …’

Her voice ebbed out.

‘Were Kasper and Ingrid in good health?’ Michael asked.

‘Pardon …? Yes, they were. There was nothing wrong with them. They loved to exercise. They ran and cycled, Kasper played squash with some colleagues twice a week. There was nothing wrong with them. Nor was Kasper ever ill when he was little.’

‘And they never called you from Norway?’

‘They just vanished. No one has ever heard from them.’

‘Did they know the area?’

‘They had been there several times. I’ve never visited it myself, but I’ve seen their recordings and photographs. There are rocks, glaciers and bogs. I imagine it’s easy to have an accident if you’re not careful.’

Michael nodded.

‘Does anyone help you with the twins?’

‘I prefer to look after them myself. Ingrid’s parents travel down here every now and again, and the twins spend
some of their holidays with them. Ingrid was an only child. Then there’s my daughter, whose children are the same age. She visits from the US as often as she can. I think the twins are doing well, they don’t remember their parents any more.’

‘And financially?’

The woman straightened up.

‘I manage. What is it you’re going to do?’

Michael leaned forwards: ‘We’ve done a series of programmes about missing Danes. The concept is very popular and we’ve managed to reunite friends and family on many occasions. This is different because Kasper and Ingrid went missing in a remote and dangerous area. The most obvious explanation is that they had an accident of some kind. Most of our other stories have been about people who had mental health issues or chose to disappear for financial reasons.’

‘I understand,’ Tove Hansen said.

Michael sent her as much of an encouraging smile as he could muster.

‘On the other hand, it’s a good story, Tove. Don’t get me wrong, but we have some options. We can send a team up there to talk to the police, the army, the locals. We might find some leads and perhaps we can help raise awareness of the dangers of hiking in northern Sweden or Norway. Kasper wasn’t the first Dane to go missing up there, and he probably won’t be the last.’

She nodded.

‘I think that would be good. But I still want to know what happened.’

‘Of course you do.’

‘I would like to have a place where I can take the twins and tell them that this is where their parents are buried. I think it’s important for them when they grow up. The way we live now is so strange. As if they were lost at sea.’

‘Of course it is. I do understand,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry on with my investigation if that’s all right with you, and I’ll be in touch. We’ll need some interviews with both families, friends and colleagues.’

She got up and looked at her watch.

‘It’s time for me to go get the children.’

Michael got up as well.

‘Of course.’

‘Would you like to see Kasper’s room?’ she asked. ‘It hasn’t been touched since he left home. It’s in the basement.’

Every cell in Michael’s body was screaming to get out of the small, quiet house.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I would like that very much.’