Trophy (25 page)

Was it possible to die from grief and guilt? To be eaten up by shame, for it to hollow you out until the shell collapsed, until you turned into something no one wanted to bury or sing hymns for? Lene had prayed. She had said the Lord’s Prayer dozens of times while she listened to Josefine’s breathing, and the regular beeping of the heart monitor, until the morphine had been washed out of her daughter’s body, the pain returned, her heartbeat accelerated and Lene pulled the bell cord.

She had listened to the nurses’ and doctors’ cautious knocking on the door, their footsteps across the linoleum and their attention to her daughter, who was sleeping in the hospital bed next to a guest bed for Lene that had been rolled into the ward along with her daughter’s. She had turned her face to the wall when they came in because everything was her fault. Her eyes were dry, and chaotic thoughts and images tumbled over each other. They had asked if she wanted something to help her sleep, but she didn’t think she deserved rest and oblivion.

She had barely uttered one word all day, but she had heard every word that had come out of Charlotte Falster’s mouth. And she was ashamed. She was ashamed that she had made fun of her boss, at her own lack of trust, her inferiority complex, her arrogant attitude towards a bureaucrat who had never had to find dead children.

She was ashamed because Charlotte Falster had been compassionate and patient. She had stood by the window and waited for hours until Josefine came out of surgery. She had spoken to the doctors and translated their information into snippets that Lene could take in. She had brushed over difficulties and complications and focused on the positive: the MRI scan had shown no signs of brain damage. Josefine would be able to see and hear, taste and speak normally again. In time. They had put small titanium braces on her facial bones, so that everything was neatly in place again. In a couple of days the maxillofacial surgeon would measure her for implants to replace the teeth that had been left behind in the warehouse in Sydhavnen. Cosmetically she would be fine. No one would be able to tell that they were not her own. The Ear, Nose and Throat specialists would fix her broken nose, and hand surgeons had said that Josefine had suffered pressure lesions to her hands as one would expect, but that all muscle and nerve tissue would return to normal and the bones would heal by themselves.

Charlotte Falster had kneeled down by her chair. One of the doctors happened to touch Lene’s shoulder and from
then on everyone knew not to get within arm’s length of the redheaded superintendent in Side Ward 12. It was said that the superintendent was armed, and moreover there were now two vigilant, short-haired and very fit young men from the armed response unit sitting outside the ward with machine guns on their laps. Charlotte Falster had seen to that.

Niels had been there and spoken to the superintendent. And cried and cried. Lene had peered furtively at her ex-husband and caught a glimpse of pure, unadulterated hatred even though he was usually the mildest and gentlest of men. He had sat by Josefine’s bed for an hour before a nurse had said Josefine needed rest, and had asked both Charlotte Falster and Niels to leave. He had bent over Lene on his way out, and had started to say something in a low, hoarse voice, when the chief superintendent dragged him out of the ward.

Lene swung her feet down onto the floor and went out into the small bathroom. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror, but relieved herself and washed her hands. She drank a mouthful of water from the tap, went back to the window and looked out at the city. The sky was orange and violet; she heard a helicopter preparing to land on one of the other buildings. The navigation lights glowed red, green and flashing white.

She pulled a chair up to the bed and carefully caressed one of Josefine’s bandaged hands. Her daughter’s face was discoloured from blood effusions and yellow iodine, and
waxy where it was still intact. Lene held her daughter’s hand and continued to look at her. She must have dozed off, but woke up when she felt a presence. The bedside lamp was aimed at the floor. Its light was dim and yellow. Lene looked at Josefine’s healthy, open eye and watched the pupil expand and seek something in the air. She leaned closer to her.

Her daughter’s grotesquely swollen lips moved painstakingly.

‘You don’t have to say anything, darling,’ Lene whispered.

Josefine nodded slowly and stubbornly. ‘Stupid,’ she mumbled indistinctly.

Her breath smelled of blood.

‘I know, darling. I’m sorry.’

The head moved from side to side.

‘Me … Stupid …’

Lene had thought she had no more tears left, but she was wrong. They dripped down on her daughter. Josefine’s hand moved, tried to free itself and Lene let it go. Very, very slowly it rose up into the air and came to rest softly on her cheek, and something inside Lene broke. She started sobbing.

Her daughter let her hand fall down on the duvet and Lene looked at the broken face. It was calm and the eye was starting to close again. Then it opened and the corner curled very slightly upwards as it always did whenever Josefine smiled. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. She knew it would be okay. Josefine was still in there.

Her daughter fell asleep again and Lene got up, folded her
arms and rested her forehead against the cold windowpane. A pigeon with a deformed claw was sitting on the railing outside the window. It tucked its head inside its feathers, cooed softly and closed its eyes.

‘Coffee?’

The voice sounded right behind her and a moment ago Lene would have jumped out of the window or shot the silent intruder. But something had changed.

‘Yes, please,’ she said, without turning.

Charlotte Falster was back.

A brown paper cup came past her and was put down on the windowsill. The door to the corridor was ajar and Lene nodded at the other woman in the dark window. One of the bodyguards outside the side ward shifted in her chair. Two women had replaced the men; Lene could see her pistol holster and the elbow of one of them.

‘Has she woken up yet?’ the chief superintendent asked. ‘Yes.’

‘Did she say anything?’

‘ “Stupid.” ’

Lene eased the lid off the cup and took a sip.

‘What time is it?’ she asked.

‘Ten thirty. Why did they do it, Lene?’

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She couldn’t speak. She cleared her throat, drank some coffee and tried again with the same result. The chief superintendent watched her agonized face.

‘Can’t you write it down?’ she asked impatiently.

Lene smiled angrily.

‘I can’t,’ she murmured.

The chief superintendent sighed.

‘Okay. Then I’ll try to reconstruct it for you. Allan Lundkvist was killed by a .22-calibre bullet to his brain. He had been dead for about an hour when you turned up. We almost failed to get him out of the living room. The bees kept attacking the CSOs until one of them had the bright idea of chucking the queens into a corner, so they could get access to the body. There was no sign of a struggle; there were no other injuries and nothing under his nails. We presume that Allan Lundkvist knew his killer.’

Lene started to cry again.

The chief superintendent fell silent.

‘I’m sorry, Lene. And it’s not the real reason I’m here. I’m here because I’ve had a call from one of my husband’s old university friends, someone I haven’t seen for years. Her name is Elizabeth Caspersen. It was a very surprising conversation and it was mainly about the man who was here today. Michael Sander. Are you listening? Black hair. Blue eyes?’

Lene nodded.

‘It was also a rather frustrating conversation. She was very secretive and I’m not sure that she was being entirely honest. I’ve checked out Michael Vedby Sander. He was a military police captain in the Horse Guards, and later a promising
police sergeant in Hvidovre, before he fell in love with a British girl and moved to London. He was called something else, then. For almost eleven years he worked as a security consultant for one of the big, international security companies over there, Shepherd & Wilkins. They don’t hire fools, Lene. They really don’t. He now works for Elizabeth Caspersen on some kind of investigation where Kim Andersen’s name has cropped up. It turns out that Kim Andersen was a member of a group of veterans from the Royal Life Guards, who went hunting on an estate belonging to her late father’s business partner. It would appear some of the group’s activities were not entirely … sound. That was the word she used. And there’s another thing. My husband has made some enquiries in the banking world, don’t ask me how, but the 200,000 Swiss francs that appeared in Kim Andersen’s account can be traced back to the West Indies. Kim won it in an online casino called Running Man Casino. It’s registered in Antigua and Barbuda and would appear to be legal and above board. The money was paid out via a British bookmaker, so European VAT has been paid. Like I said, it’s legal, but it stinks.’

Charlotte Falster paused and sought out Lene’s eyes in the window.

‘What did Sander say to you, Lene?’

‘I wasn’t listening.’

Charlotte Falster heaved a sigh.

‘You’ll never learn to trust others, will you?’

‘Probably not. Thanks for everything you’ve done,
Charlotte. And I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch to you. You didn’t deserve that.’

The chief superintendent shrugged it off. ‘I don’t think you’ve been that bad. I’ve never found it to be much of a problem. You’re good, Lene. I wish I had more people like you. Articulate officers who didn’t always play the Lone Wolf. The time for that has passed on this occasion.’

Lene laughed bitterly.

‘True, and now when I really want to tell you something, I can’t.’

‘Let’s start over some other time,’ Charlotte Falster said. ‘Like I said, I know Elizabeth Caspersen and she knows quality when she sees it, she’s generous and she’s stinking rich. I’m certain that she picks only the best – including when it comes to private investigators. I’m aware that we don’t usually work with amateurs, though in this instance Sander would probably regard
us
as the amateurs.’

She put a note on the windowsill next to the coffee cup and hid a deep yawn behind her hand.

‘If you think there is any way you can continue with this case, perhaps you should speak to Michael Sander. I don’t think it can do any harm and it’s okay as far as I’m concerned. His number is on that piece of paper. One of his numbers. Elizabeth Caspersen’s private mobile number is there as well. She knows where he is.’

‘But if I talk to him, they’ll find out, Charlotte.’ Lene gestured towards the figure in the bed. ‘They’ll hurt my daughter
again. Not now, perhaps. But some day. One day she won’t come home because I wouldn’t back down. That was the deal.’

The chief superintendent nodded. ‘I have children of my own, Lene. I’ll understand if you don’t want to go on. Of course I will, and of course it’s all right with me. However, that doesn’t really make it all right. I’ve spoken to my superior and he has promised me full cover from the armed response unit as long as we deem it necessary. That means that they’ll watch you and your daughter, 24/7, anywhere.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Sleep tight, Lene.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll just leave the note there, okay?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Well, good night, then.’

‘Good night.’

Finally she left and Lene crawled back into her bed, pulled the duvet up to her chin and stared at the ceiling.

And she looked deeply into herself. She thought about Kim Andersen. About the shiny 9-mm cartridges on his children’s pillows. About the choice he made. An old rock song on a CD. His tattoos.
Dominus Providebit
: ‘The Lord will provide.’ That was the test she was facing. If she passed it, Josefine would be safe. If she failed it, everything Lene believed in would come crashing down and Josefine would still be a victim because there would be nothing to stop them
carrying out their threats in the future. And she thought about the serious man with the black hair, Michael Sander. And about the Running Man Casino in the West Indies.

And though it was hard, she banished Josefine, Michael Sander and Charlotte Falster from her mind. Instead she looked for a flicker of anger in the midst of all her guilt and fears for her daughter, and when she finally found it, she blew on it, carefully, very carefully until it started to glow and turn into a small flame, which she nurtured and fed with thoughts about what she was going to do to the man with the smiling blue eyes behind the leather mask and to the man who had waved her inside Allan Lundkvist’s house.

She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time with her face cradled in her hands.

Josefine mumbled something in her sleep and Lene’s sweat ran cold in the darkness at the thought of the terrors her daughter’s subconscious was fighting. The door to the ward opened and one of the bodyguards slipped inside with her machine pistol raised. Lene looked at her.

‘What?’

‘You were shouting,’ the young woman said, and lowered her weapon. She was dark-skinned and had short hair. Indian or Pakistani. Nimble.

‘Did I? I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.’

The teeth in the girl’s dark face were very white.

‘Is everything okay? I mean …’

Lene nodded.

‘Everything is okay. What’s your name?’

‘Aisha.’

‘I would like to speak to a doctor, Aisha. One who can make things happen. And I’d like to borrow your mobile.’

The young woman took a mobile from the thigh pocket of her combat trousers and handed it to her.

‘The code is 1882 and I’ll get you a doctor. One who can make things happen.’

She disappeared.

*

Charlotte Falster sounded wide awake, even though it was now one thirty in the morning.

‘It’s me,’ Lene said.

‘How are you?’

‘I’m going to need some guarantees,’ she said.

‘Start talking.’

They spoke for a long time. On certain points the chief superintendent was very accommodating; on others she bridled – mainly because there were no precedents for Lene’s requests. And they were all expensive and required substantial manpower. But Lene didn’t care. It was all or nothing.