Trophy (27 page)

‘Jakob?’

‘Yes.’

Michael scrutinized the photograph.

‘He’s standing apart from the others,’ he said. ‘Something Jakob Schmidt would undoubtedly do. I’ve met him. He’s a very cold young man. And intelligent. It could be him. It’s the right hair colour. And build. He’s the right height.’

‘But you’re not sure?’

Michael lowered his gaze.

‘No. The gamekeeper at Pederslund is called Thomas. I haven’t met him. He runs a safari business. Thomas Berg.’

‘How many people were on the film?’ she asked.

‘Seven, including the client.’

She nodded and counted on her fingers: ‘Kim Andersen, Robert Olsen, Kenneth Enderlein, Allan Lundkvist, the man with the scorpion tattoo and Flemming Caspersen. Who’s the seventh man?’

He looked at her and shrugged. ‘I guess it could be Jakob Schmidt.’

‘Was he the one who attacked you?’

Michael touched his head and carefully pressed the cut with his fingertips.

‘No. But I think he wished he had. He had found out that I had searched his room. The person who attacked me took
my computer and the DVD … and slammed a door into my head before he left.’

‘You kept the DVD in your room?’ she said in disbelief.

‘I was working on it. I had to have it nearby, didn’t I? I had hidden it.’

‘Hidden it?’

‘Yes, of course I bloody had.’

Michael was aware that he was reddening. He wasn’t used to this. Previously he had always been able to charm people, but Lene was immune. Not one aspect of her was susceptible to that charm, and Michael’s vanity was suffering, even though he realized why she was so intent behind her grief. He was beginning to see why you should never come between a female bear and her cubs. It was a bloody dangerous place to be. The hunters had made an incredibly bad mistake by taking her daughter, he realized. They had messed with the controls in nature’s engine room. And they hadn’t understood how fatal that could be because they were men.

‘So we carry on?’ he asked.

‘What with? You already know who they are.’

Michael thought it was obvious: some hunters, some army veterans and a bloodthirsty, deranged billionaire. A fertile environment for the realization of sick fantasies at an enchanted, isolated castle. A discreet payment route in the West Indies. He could visualize it: the euphoria after that day’s shoot and the triumphant display of the bag, the thrill of increasingly frowned-upon masculinity, the lunches, the
bragging, the fascination with weapons and their finely honed skills. Feelings of superiority had flourished under far less favourable conditions.

‘I think I do. But there must have been someone higher up who organized it. Have you ever met the man with the scorpion tattoo?’

‘I saw him in a car parked outside a hotel in Holbæk where I spent the night after Kim Andersen’s suicide. I saw him from the back.’

‘Were you meant to see him?’

‘I don’t think so. I went for a walk after dinner. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.’

‘Why were you even there, when it was a suicide?’

She looked annoyed. ‘The wife handcuffed him.’

‘What?!’

She sighed and yanked a short, dark brown lock of hair in anger. ‘To attract our interest, I presume.’

‘In what?’

She looked at him. ‘In the money, Michael. The change in his personality. The car and the diamonds. She knew something was terribly wrong with Kim. The injury to his leg. His depression. Part of me totally gets where she’s coming from. She, too, was trying to protect her children.’

‘Have you seen the guy with the scorpion since?’

She hesitated.

‘I don’t think so. My daughter met a man at the café where she works. She thought … well, she believed she was going
on a date with him. People in the café must have seen him, but I haven’t spoken to any witnesses yet.’

‘Was he at Allan Lundkvist’s place?’

‘He might have been. I never saw him. I waltzed straight in and found Allan dead in the living room. Covered by a hell of a lot of bees. I was an idiot.’

She described the attack, being naked, the collar around her neck, how it had taken her a long time to knock over the chair, get hold of the craft knife and free herself. She had called Charlotte Falster, who had found Josefine for her.

‘Did you see his hands?’ he asked.

‘Gloves.’

‘How about his wrists?’

‘I don’t think so. Why?’

Michael remembered Jakob Schmidt’s distinctive twist of the hand when he pulled back his sleeve to check his watch, and the white mark under the strap on his tanned skin.

‘Jakob Schmidt wears a stainless steel Rolex on his left wrist,’ he said. ‘He’s tanned, but the skin under his watch is white.’

He saw her trawl though her memories. Then she shook her head: ‘No wrists. I’m sure. I’m usually good at noticing things … or at least recalling them later … when it’s too late. Gloves, ski masks. The man who tortured my daughter wore a black fetish leather mask, one of those with a lot of zips. He had very clear blue eyes. Smiling, blue eyes, in fact.’

Lene fell silent and Michael watched her closely. The tears
crept out behind the sunglasses and trickled down her cheeks.

‘You’re crying,’ he said.

‘Am I?’

She dried her tears with her sleeves.

‘They had added a soundtrack. A song. “I’m on Fire”.’

‘Springsteen?’

‘He caned my daughter to the beat of the song.’

Michael said nothing.

‘I’m truly terrified of them,’ she said, looking down at her lap. ‘I am. Their methods really work.’

‘I’m scared of them too,’ he said. ‘And we have every reason to be. But someone has to stop them. If they think they’re smarter and cleverer than anyone else, their actions will only get worse. It’s inevitable.’

She took a deep breath and looked at him with eyes that glowed green like water.

‘So you know who they are, you know what they do and have done, you know how they transfer the money, and you almost know who is behind the organization. All you’re missing is …’

‘Evidence,’ he said. ‘Though I’m starting not to care very much about the law.’

She smiled. ‘Me neither. But I don’t suppose we can just find them and shoot them.’

‘No,’ he conceded. ‘Even though it’s tempting.’

‘I think there might be some evidence in Kim Andersen’s
cottage,’ she said. ‘We missed something when we were there, the CSOs and me.’

‘What?’

‘Their laptop was gone. It would be good to find it. And they have a chimney and a fine lean-to with a perfect log pile – but no fireplace. Only an oil tank. What if Kim Andersen built a place …’

‘He was a carpenter, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

Michael got up.

‘It’s worth looking into,’ he said.

‘I agree,’ she said.

‘I presume you didn’t walk here,’ he said.

‘I borrowed my boss’s car.’

‘I need to buy some kit,’ Michael said. ‘Including a sleeping bag that fits me.’

She put the car keys in his hand. ‘White Passat, a few hundred metres down the road. Please would you buy two sleeping bags while you’re at it, and do you need any money?’

Michael patted his pocket.

‘For once that’s the only thing I have plenty of,’ he said.

‘Shout out when you come back,’ she said. ‘Or you risk a bullet to the head. I mean it. And if you see a torch, buy it.’

When Michael returned to the scout hut a few hours later, laden down with sports bags, carrier bags and with a rucksack on his back, the bench outside was empty. Nor was Lene inside. He sat down and put his bags on the floor while needle-sharp claws played the xylophone up and down his spine.

He went out into the sunshine and looked around the clearing.

Nothing.

She had told him to call out when he came back if he didn’t want to get shot, so he had shouted out his name a couple of times, stood very still and listened to the birds and the distant hum of transmission cables. He walked into the wood and a few minutes later, he found Lene at the foot of a tree in a sunlit clearing – fast asleep.

Michael breathed a sigh of relief and tried to hide his annoyance as he walked up to her. Lene was sitting in between the roots of the tree with her knees pulled up to her chest and a black Heckler & Koch MP5 machine pistol
on her lap; the favoured close-combat weapon for all soldiers and police officers. A twig snapped under his foot and the sound was followed by the click of the machine pistol’s safety catch being removed – a sound with which Michael was extremely familiar. He now looked straight down the barrel of the gun, which was aimed at a point between his eyes. Over the fore sight the superintendent’s eyes were narrowed, but strangely cloudy as though she weren’t fully conscious. A finger curled around the trigger and Michael closed his eyes.

‘It’s me,’ he said wearily, and held up his hands in front of his face, as if they could stop a bullet. He pressed his eyes shut, turned his face away and waited …

The shot never came and he opened one eye very slightly. Lene had got up and was looking at him without expression.

‘You should have shouted,’ she said.

‘I did,’ he snapped.

‘Sorry.’

His knees were shaking.

She secured the weapon and walked past him with strangely wooden movements.

‘I bought sleeping bags,’ he said angrily to her back. ‘And a torch and a new laptop … and a bottle of wine.’

‘Wine?’

‘Châteauneuf-du-Pape.’

‘And a corkscrew?’

‘There’s just no pleasing you, is there?’

She didn’t reply and carried on walking.

*

Michael took out his new mobile and looked at the display. The first thing he had done was send a text message to Keith Mallory in London, and the Englishman’s one-word reply was:
Contact
. Michael smiled and nearly tripped over a tree root. He tried Sara’s mobile and was in luck.

‘Hi, darling, it’s me.’

‘I’ve been calling and calling, Michael. Has something happened to you?’

Her voice was trembling, and Michael knew that she was close to tears and fighting it as hard as she could. Sometimes she succeeded, other times not.

‘I’m fine, darling. Really I am. I’m all right.’

Lene was swallowed up by the scout hut.

‘Are you sure? What happened?’

Michael ran his hand over the stubble at the back of his head and considered various responses.

‘I was attacked and someone took my laptop and some other important stuff,’ he said.

‘Attacked? Who by, when, where …? Are you hurt?’

‘I don’t know who it was, Sara, but it happened last night at my hotel room. The only thing to suffer permanent damage is my pride.’

There was a long pause. He could hear only her breathing.

‘Michael …’

He looked up at the bare treetops. Sara and he had been here before and he didn’t want to go there again. Not right now. He didn’t have the energy. And he didn’t have the time.

‘I’m trying, I really am,’ she said.

‘I know you are. You’re doing really well, Sara.’

‘When will you be done?’ she asked.

‘It’ll be some time. Your brother’s holiday cottage … Could you go there with the kids?’

‘Now?’

‘I think it might be a good idea.’

It wouldn’t be the first time he had asked her to leave the house when he thought someone was getting too close. It helped him to know that they were out of harm’s way.

‘For how long?’

‘A week, I think.’

‘I’m so tired of this, Michael. Really. I’d love to be upbeat, ironic and brave and all that, but quite frankly I’m starting to –’

‘Not now, Sara.’

‘Are you alone?’ she asked.

‘No, for once I’m not. There’s a police officer here. She’s trying … We’re trying to help each other.’

‘Great,’ she said in a flat voice, and Michael sighed.

‘Cute?’ she wanted to know.

‘Super-cute. Stop it, Sara.’

She sniffed, and Michael looked down towards the hut. Smoke was rising from the chimney. The superintendent
had found something with which she could start a fire. Why hadn’t he thought of that last night?

‘I’ll ask him. About the cottage,’ she mumbled.

‘Thank you. That would be good, Sara.’

‘Take care,’ she said.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘Bye …’

*

Michael looked at the phone and stuck it in his pocket. He walked down the path and into the hut. Lene had hammered the cork down the neck of the bottle and was pouring wine into paper cups while holding the cork back with a pen. The wine sloshed into the cup and ran down her hand. She finished pouring and washed her hands in the sink.

‘It should be scientifically impossible,’ she muttered.

‘What?’

‘For liquid to run upwards.’

She handed him a cup and raised her own. ‘Cheers. Was that your wife?’

‘Correct.’

She smiled faintly. ‘I bet you’re not easy to be married to. Given your line of work, I mean.’

‘Probably not. I don’t suppose you are, either.’

‘We’re divorced. Do you have any children?’

‘Eighteen months, and four years.’

Michael took the cup and wandered over to an old oil barrel that acted as a stove in the common room and whose
bottom had started to glow red. He positioned himself with his back to it, closed his eyes and savoured the heat. He was still chilled to the bone, but knew it wasn’t purely because of his night in the sleeping loft and the gaps between the roof panels.

Lene sat down on a bench by the wall and ran a fingertip along one of the inscriptions which generations of scouts had carved into the table top. She drank wine and her finger found another inscription.

‘Was there any firewood?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘I used some of their banners and animal hides and a chair that was starting to fall apart. It was for the scrap heap.’

Michael looked at the empty walls.

‘I bet the scouts will be thrilled,’ he said. ‘Your daughter … Josefine. What’s going to happen to her? Will she recover?’

An ominous look flared up in her eyes and she eyeballed him as if he were a cardboard cut-out criminal on a shooting range.

‘She’ll recover, they say. As far as her soul, mind, psyche, whatever … because that’s what you’re really asking, isn’t it?’

‘Not just hers.’

‘No. I know. Thank you. What’s done is done, isn’t it. You can’t turn back time. I don’t think either of us can pretend that it didn’t happen. Ever. We’re not like that.’

She rose quickly, walked out into the kitchen and returned with the wine bottle. She waved it. And he held out his cup.

‘Thank you. Is she strong? Mentally?’

‘I think so. But her confidence … whether she’ll ever trust a man again, that’s another matter.’

She wiped a tear brusquely from her cheek with the back of her hand.

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Let’s not talk about it,’ she said. ‘I’m shattered.’

Michael nodded, and pressed his tongue against the loose molar. He started unpacking the bags on the table while she watched him. He handed her one of the sleeping bags. She opened the packaging, got up and shook it out. She held it up to her nose.

‘It smells good,’ she said.

‘Goose down. The best that money can buy. I bought inflatable camper mats too,’ Michael said, draping his own sleeping bag over a chair near the stove. ‘Food. A torch. I also bought a couple of T-shirts, which I think we’ll both fit. Underwear …’

‘For me?’

He held up a pair of white men’s underpants. ‘Large.’

‘You’re saying I have a big arse?’

He looked at her and put the underpants back in the bag. Women. They get everything out of proportion.

*

Later she yawned and stretched out while he sat on the chair next to the oil barrel, wrapped in his sleeping bag. They had
emptied the wine bottle without him really knowing how that had happened.

‘What if you’re wrong and there’s nothing in Kim’s house?’ he mumbled with closed eyes.

‘I’m not wrong,’ she said. ‘What about the man with the scorpion tattoo? Do you think we’ll bump into him?’

‘I hope not. At least, not yet. He’s dangerous. They all are.’

‘We’re armed to the teeth,’ she said.

‘Are we?’

She unzipped the black sports bag and rummaged around for a moment before pulling out the pistol holster and putting it on the table. Michael looked at the weapon.

‘For me?’ he asked.

‘If you like. It’s a service pistol with eighteen shots. It’s fine, I’ll take responsibility.’

Michael got up and took the pistol out of the holster, clicked the magazine out into his hand, went through the unloading drill, and looked through the barrel. Heckler & Koch. Same make as the machine pistol. Good, heavy and ugly. He replaced the clip, stuck the pistol in the holster on the table and looked at it.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t like guns.’

She returned the pistol to the black sports bag.

‘It’s there if you change your mind. How about a siesta? I’m bushed.’

‘Will you be able to sleep?’ he asked.

‘Probably not. But I’m willing to give it a try.’

He took her sleeping bag and hurled it up onto the sleeping loft.

‘How about you?’ she asked.

‘I’ll stay down here and keep watch.’

She nodded and disappeared.

Michael stretched out on the bench, still wrapped in the sleeping bag. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He turned on his side and watched the red glow behind the stove’s damper. He heard the planks squeak under Lene’s feet, a sigh – and then he fell asleep, like a trapdoor shutting.