Trophy (31 page)

But it wasn’t cold water that flowed into his empty lungs; it was air – lovely, lovely, sooty, warm and filthy air, that couldn’t have tasted any better if he had been in the Alps. He tried breathing again and more of it came. Lots.

He opened his eyes, kicked off with his legs and drifted down to Lene’s head.

Michael embraced her wet figure and, little by little, his embrace was reciprocated. Just.

Her eyes glittered yellow and green, but her face was waxy and her teeth chattered from the cold.

She took his hand and guided it to an opening in the wall. Somehow she had managed to tear out the grille between
the crawlspace and Kim Andersen’s hideout, and smash through part of the breezeblock wall, so the water could drain out of the basement.

‘The water is no longer rising,’ she called out.

‘Can we get through there?’ he asked.

She pressed the hammer against his chest under the water.

‘Your turn,’ she said.

*

The remains of the roof collapsed with a boom that could be felt through the soles of their feet. Sparks whirled up against the dark sky and were snapped up by the light breeze. The sky was orange and deep blue. The two men in the forest heard the sirens in the distance and saw the first orange and blue flashing lights through the trees.

‘They’re finished,’ the taller of them said.

‘About bloody time,’ the other said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

He pulled a mobile out of his pocket and looked at the screen.

‘It’s a client,’ he said. ‘An Englishman. Norwegian ancestry. Magnusson. An oil man from Aberdeen. Big shot. Filthy rich.’

‘Has he been checked out?’

‘Of course.’

They started walking. They still carried their automatic carbines ready and loaded. The barrels were smoking hot.

‘What does he want?’ the smaller of the two men asked.

‘One, preferably two.’

‘Where?’

‘He likes Norway and Finland. Alaska, possibly.’

‘Let’s find him a treat,’ the other said. ‘Fancy a trip to Norway?’

‘Is that her? Kim’s wife?’ Michael asked, and hugged himself tightly. The shivers came and went. Right now they were very violent and he could barely talk.

‘That’s Louise Andersen. Kim’s widow. And her children.’

Lene was also shivering like a wet dog.

The cottage was still burning under the long cascading jets of water from the fire hoses. Wherever the water landed, sparks flew and white steam rose towards the sky, which was cloudless and clear.

He leaned against the nearest tree and watched a young, slim woman, with two small children pressed against her legs. The younger, a girl, had wrapped her arms around her mother’s legs and refused to look, while the boy stared numbly at the fire with a thumb in his mouth. The woman just stood there, her face impossible to interpret in the flickering light.

The ambulance had left and the bearded police officer and the dog handler stood with their hands in their pockets, saying nothing – silent, black silhouettes against the flashing blue light from the patrol car.

Finally, the last big flames began to die down. Clouds of sparks settled on the ground and the firemen reduced the pressure of the jets.

‘Let’s go,’ Lene said. ‘I’m freezing cold.’

‘Yes.’

They walked in among the trees and in a wide curve behind the meadow. They stooped as they walked, lost in their own private world. Michael kept checking if the CD was still in his inside pocket, one of the few parts of his anorak still intact.

They had had a brief, heated exchange, teeth chattering, about whether they should make themselves known to the firemen and the officers from Holbæk Police or simply disappear. Michael preferred the latter. Being dead gave you a certain amount of leeway, he argued; room for manoeuvre that he regarded as essential right now. Lene had given in eventually, but whether it was because of his powers of persuasion, or because she was too exhausted to carry on arguing with him, was hard to say.

They left the forest a few hundred metres from the lay-by and ran the last stretch. Lene’s numb fingers dropped the car keys and Michael picked them up and managed on his third attempt to unlock the car. He sat down behind the steering wheel while she curled up on the passenger seat next to him. He started the car, turned the heating to maximum and held his hands above the warm air vents. Flat
white blisters had started forming on his fingers and palms, but they didn’t hurt very much.

‘The seat heating! Hurry up,’ she urged him.

‘Hang on …’

Michael turned off the engine when he saw the fire engines and the patrol car in the rear-view mirror pull out onto the main road with their flashing lights switched off. Shortly afterwards a white Alfa Romeo appeared, indicating right before disappearing behind a hill.

‘The wedding present?’ he asked.

‘Was it a white Alfa?’

‘Yes.’

‘She paid a high price for that,’ she said. ‘Let’s drive. It’ll help us warm up.’

‘Lene …’

‘Sorry. The GPS transmitter. I had forgotten all about it.’

‘Unless we have a serious death wish, we have to leave here on foot. I don’t know about you, but I was actually hoping to live a little longer.’

‘So what do we do?’ she asked. ‘We can arrest Thomas Berg. We have the film …’

‘And the others? He can’t be the only one left,’ Michael said.

‘I expect he’ll confess.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it. They have their crazy warrior code. I want to get everyone who belongs to that insane organization. Dead or alive. Thomas Berg clearly isn’t the only one. There were at least two of them at the cottage.’

‘Dead or alive?’ she asked.

‘Exactly. Preferably the latter. But the former will do.’

She was silent for a long time. Perhaps she was thinking about her daughter. Then she took a deep breath. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay?’

‘Yes, Michael. Okay. So what do we do now?’

‘We walk.’

‘Where?’

‘To the scout hut,’ he said.

‘But they know about the hut!’

‘They think we’re dead. So why would they watch it?’

‘You hope.’

‘I hope,’ he admitted.

‘How about a hotel?’ she pleaded. ‘A lovely, warm hotel with real beds and duvets and … room service … and …’

‘We’re dead, Lene. Dead people don’t book hotel rooms.’

She gave him a hateful stare.

‘If you have a better idea, then by all means let me hear it,’ he said.

‘I can’t think. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I miss my daughter.’

‘She’s fine, Lene,’ Michael said. ‘Flying her to Greenland was a good idea. It really was.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I’m absolutely sure.’

She pulled her wet jacket around her more tightly.

‘Five more minutes?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Five more minutes won’t make any difference.’

*

They changed into dry clothes from the supplies Michael had bought earlier that morning. Lene went behind some trees to change and Michael shook his head at her modesty, which he regarded as rather misplaced. They had almost burned up and drowned together. How much closer could two people get? Then he searched their bags, weapons and wet clothes for electronic tell-tales without finding anything; afterwards he examined Charlotte Falster’s Passat and found the first bug a few minutes later: a small, black Garmin GTU-10 the size of a packet of cigarettes attached with Velcro to a dark, inaccessible corner of the spare tyre compartment. A small LED light bulb flashed green and happy at the back of the sender. The gadget was ideal to monitor teenage daughters claiming to be staying the night at a girlfriend’s – or stubborn superintendents and interfering security consultants. He put it back where he had found it. The whole exercise was pointless. Even if he found one, there could be many more. There were literally hundreds of hiding places in an ordinary saloon car.

Afterwards they walked the four or five kilometres into Holbæk and found a taxi outside the railway station.

Michael called Elizabeth Caspersen from a payphone, giving her a status report and a description of the contents of the CD. He didn’t give her the chance to ask questions,
offer suggestions or raise objections before he hung up. He was going to leave the CD for her in the scout hut, he said, and described the location of the hiding place he had in mind.

*

The taxi dropped them half a kilometre from their destination. They walked quietly and avoided the path between the trees. Lene had the machine gun loaded and ready in her hands, while Michael carried her service pistol, also loaded and ready. The scout hut lay dark and deserted in the moonlight. He touched her shoulder and signalled that she should head to the right while he walked in a wide curve around the hut to the left. They met in the deep shadows at the campfire area behind the hut without having seen or heard any other living creatures.

Michael kneeled down outside the front door and opened it with one finger while Lene pressed herself against the wall with the machine pistol at shoulder height. There was no welcoming committee.

She turned on her torch, put down the bag and checked the sleeping loft, the kitchen and the lavatory.

‘It’s not much, but it’s home,’ she said.

Michael broke up the bench and tore down the last banners in order to sacrifice them to the stove. He feared there would be tearful faces all around at the next scout meeting.

He got the fire going and stood for a moment with his back to the open grate and inspected his hands with his
torch. The blisters were proud and waxy. A couple of them had burst and plasma seeped down his fingers.

Michael heaved a sigh and went out into the kitchen.

Lene had put a camping lantern on the table and was heating a tin of minestrone on the Trangia, stirring the contents without expression. Her hair was considerably shorter after the fire and the ends were black, crispy and singed. Michael sat down at the kitchen table, instinctively ran a hand over his scalp and winced. He was bald, and skinless patches stretched from the neck and over his ears. He wondered if hair would ever grow back from those charred stubble fields.

Lene looked at him while he fished his most recent mobile out of his trouser pocket. He removed the back cover and tipped the water out on the table. Then he stared forlornly at it and put it to one side.

‘Do you have any electronic equipment in working order?’ he asked.

‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Are you tired?’

‘You’re asking if I’m tired?’

She smiled and served up some minestrone.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m quite tired,’ he admitted.

‘Me too,’ she said.

‘Wait a moment,’ he said.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said.

He squatted down next to the bag and found Elizabeth
Caspersen’s document, which left a fortune to Sara and the children if he got himself killed.

Michael unfolded it on the kitchen table, took a pen, which was attached to the wall by a piece of string, and looked at Lene.

‘What’s your daughter’s full name and civil registration number?’

‘Why? What’s that?’

‘Something I should have done sooner,’ he said. ‘This is a document drawn up by my client. It has been witnessed by her partners and registered with the public notary. If … well, if anything should happen to me … if I die, in other words, your daughter will get a lifetime pension from Elizabeth Caspersen or her estate. I can add her as a beneficiary.’

‘Are you serious? Can I see it?’

He pushed the paper across the table and she read it carefully.

‘Josefine Ida Thea Jensen,’ she then said.

She gave him her daughter’s civil registration number, reached her hand across the table and put it on his forearm. It was the first time she had touched him – except for putting out the flames when he was on fire.

‘Thank you, Michael.’

‘She can afford it; really, she can, in fact …’

He fell silent when the realization hit him like a punch to the stomach.

‘In fact what?’

‘Nothing.’

He tried smiling, but knew he hadn’t succeeded. Michael shook his head, despairing at himself. He was tired, exhausted … borderline insane, possibly. And no wonder, given what they had been through. But the nagging thought refused to go away. Was he being used? Was he simply the means to clear away the opposition in Sonartek so Elizabeth Caspersen could take charge with her own and her mother’s majority share? Was that her real goal, rather than expose a gang of psychopathic man hunters? And had she known all the time who was behind the murder of Kasper Hansen? No one would have been in a better position to plant that DVD. She knew the code to the safe. She could have put the Mauser in Flemming Caspersen’s weapon room, couldn’t she? It was as easy as 1-2-3.

Nonsense. He was paranoid and seeing conspiracies everywhere.

‘What’s wrong, Michael?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. What’s happened? I mean, apart from lots of men trying to kill you?’

He pulled himself together and returned her smile.

‘Nothing … nothing at all. I’m fine. Great. Absolutely. Super.’

She threw him a worried look.

She hadn’t said ‘kill
us
’. He hoped that one day he would be just as unselfish.

‘You’re right,’ she said later.

‘About what?’

‘Thomas Berg and the others. It’s not enough. Arresting them is not enough.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I agree with you. You’re a very bad influence on me, Michael.’

‘So everyone says.’

*

They ate their soup in silence because there was nothing else to be said. Michael hid the CD under a loose floorboard, as agreed with Elizabeth Caspersen, while Lene washed up. They carried their sleeping bags upstairs, unrolled them and switched off their torches.

They lay next to each other and were warm inside their sleeping bags. Michael had to lie on his stomach to protect the burns on his back. He rested his forehead on his forearms and listened to Lene’s breathing getting slower and slower.

Then he heard her murmuring and it took a while before he realized she was saying the Lord’s Prayer. She finished the prayer by holding up her folded hands in the darkness before she placed her arms along her sides.

‘You pray?’ he asked.

She said nothing.

‘My father was a vicar,’ he mumbled.

‘I’m a believer,’ she said. ‘You think about the grandfather clock in your grandmother’s sitting room and I pray. It doesn’t make me less able, Michael.’

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Good night.’

‘Good night.’

She jerked violently a couple of times and the whole sleeping loft shuddered while she balanced on the edge between sleeping and awakening. Michael imagined that her subconscious was desperately working overtime.

She twitched again in her sleeping bag and muttered something pitiful and incomprehensible; Michael sighed. It was like trying to sleep next to an anxious dog reliving that day’s hunts. He stared down between the planks. The faint glow from the stove spread across the floor and he was reminded of the flickering, restless surface of the water in the crawlspace in the forest while the cottage burned above them.