Next of Kin (17 page)

The notes from the saxophone twirled in the smoke-filled air and twisted into garlands around Wagner's head. The barefoot girl was dancing right in front of him and beckoning him to come closer like a snake charmer performing his showpiece. Her tiny top barely covered her budding breasts. Her stomach was flat and hard and undulated in sync with the hips she had yet to develop. A small gold ring gleamed from her bellybutton and it was this which drew him in, as though he was physically attached to it. It beckoned him even though his whole body, his entire being, fought against it.

‘Come, come to me,' a voice tempted him and he saw her form the words with her child's red painted lips, but he could hear them only in his head.

‘No!' He pushed her away with all his strength and in that instant the spell was broken. He woke up.

‘What on earth is the matter with you?'

Ida Marie sat up in their bed. Her long hair flowed over her shoulders and breasts. In the dawn light he could see that her eyes were wide with fear.

‘You nearly kicked me out the bed.'

‘Sorry, I was having a nightmare,' he mumbled.

She sat for a while recovering. Then her fear gave way to tenderness and she took his hand and started to stroke his arm. He wanted to push her away, but couldn't find it in his heart.

‘Do you want to talk about it?'

He shook his head.

The shame of it smarted. How could he have dreamt such a dream? How could his brain produce images of a ten-year-old girl as a temptress unless there had been an initial spark of attraction?

‘That's fine.'

Ida Marie's hand continued to stroke him. Slowly and deliberately, she massaged his hand and his arm. She leaned back in the bed and caressed his shoulders; she pressed herself against him so that he had to hold his breath to create just a little distance between them.

Panic-stricken, he flung the duvet to one side. ‘I need a glass of cold water.'

He looked at the clock. It was five thirty. ‘You get some sleep,' he said with a feigned calm voice and his insides in uproar. He couldn't remember ever rejecting her like this before. He had never been so full of lust and revulsion before.

In the living room he sat down in an armchair and listened to the silence, but found it unbearable because the insistence of the saxophone kept intruding. Finally he got up and put on Bach's Brandenburg concertos and listened to the music through his headset.

Still he couldn't stop himself rewinding the dream and viewing selected images. The ten-year-old girl moving with the awareness of a grown woman. Her eyes that met his with their provocation and her body which she practically offered him. They were signals he thought he recognised. An undisguised invitation to sex as if he had been taking a walk through the red light district in Amsterdam where women sat in the windows wearing red G-strings and patent leather boots.

Today's children were certainly more forward and more informed about the mysteries of life than children were when he had been growing up. But all the same. It wasn't just how she moved her body. It was her eyes as well. Eyes which spoke of knowledge and experience of a subject no ten-year-old ought to know.

Incest? It was an obvious conclusion and it must have been bubbling away in his subconscious. Her stepfather? Her biological father? Her mother? Was her behaviour an indication of abuse? Perhaps he ought to consult a psychologist.

Of course he and Hansen had discussed the meeting with the family in Gedding, but it had been hard to pinpoint anything more specific, only that something just didn't seem to add up.

Incest? His thought intertwined like the horns, trumpets and trombones of Bach's music.

If Kjeld Arne Husum had sexually abused his daughter then the girl's mother had a motive for killing him.

By her own admission, she had been to the house on Samsø, even though she claimed she hadn't been there for two years. The bread-slicers were hers. Perhaps the Tampax string that the forensic team had found belonged to her, too?

As the precision and lucidity of the music found a way into his brain and deeper into his system, his logic kicked in. He visualised Connie Husum in her silk kimono and couldn't imagine the same woman disguised beyond all recognition waving a sword above her ex-husband's head, even though her hatred of her ex-husband had been self-evident. There was something missing. But what? Was he merely being old-fashioned because his brain refused to accept that the executioner could be a woman? Or was there something else? An instinct that told him that Connie Husum didn't possess the brutality or the self control needed to take the life of another person in this way?

The coarse fabric of the armchair scratched his skin as he lay back against the headrest. Ida Marie hated that chair, which was a left-over from his marriage. He loved the comfort of disappearing into the familiar womb of the armchair and shutting out the world with his music.

He visualised Connie Husum in his mind's eye. Her soft curves and her sensuous mouth. Her ample breasts under the silk. He couldn't very well argue that this would make her an unlikely killer, and perhaps it was evidence of sexist thinking that he would be reluctant to air in company. But nonetheless, despite her alibi Connie Husum was the closest they had to a person with a motive.

After the morning briefing at ten Wagner drove to the Institute of Forensic Medicine to see Gormsen. As always it was tricky to find a parking space and he ended up having to park at the Department of Thoracic Medicine and walk back to the Institute at the other end of the road.

Gormsen was heading for the autopsy room with his team and was already wearing his blue gown and green trousers.

‘Busy already?'

Gormsen nodded, looking anything but stressed. A smile beamed from his face. He was a man who loved his job and had made it his hobby.

‘Partly your fault,' he said. ‘Your lot have just ordered three autopsies and then we have eight judicial post mortem examinations today as well. Plus odd bits and pieces. Take the weight off your feet for a moment.'

He nodded in the direction of the bench, to which numerous medical students must have retired to escape the horrors of the autopsy room and to get a breath of fresh air to stop themselves from fainting. Wagner sat down.

‘You're looking wan. Are you feeling all right?'

A spur of the moment impulse made him talk about his dream. Gormsen nodded. Wagner knew he had immense experience as an expert witness in rape cases and probably incest cases as well.

‘It's supposed to be an indicator of sexual abuse, so you're probably on the right track. A sexually abused child quickly learns that this is the way to get adult attention.'

‘So Connie Husum has a motive,' Wagner said.

Gormsen nodded.

‘But she's not the only one,' Wagner went on and pulled out an envelope from his inside pocket, which had arrived the same morning from the Department of Forensic Genetics in Copenhagen. He read it out loud.

‘The preliminary DNA analysis proves that the semen we got from Johanne Jespersen belongs to Kjeld Arne Husum.' He stared at the report and suddenly smelled putrid flesh from the autopsy room.

‘Does she have any relatives?' Gormsen asked delicately.

Wagner sighed. ‘A nephew.'

‘Then you might have found yourself another possible suspect for that execution,' Gormson declared.

He brought it up later when he had banished the remains of the dream with a cup of strong coffee.

‘Jens Jespersen,' Eriksen said. ‘Yes, that's the name of Johanne Jespersen's nephew. I spoke to him at the start of the case.' He flicked through a few pages in his notepad. ‘He lives in Skødstrup and works as a purser for Sterling Airways. It's well documented that he had been in Skejby Sygehus for a while and was unable to visit for a couple of weeks as a result. This was possibly why she lay undetected for so long.'

‘Jens Jespersen, did you say? I'm sure I've come across that name before.' Hansen placed a shiny new briefcase on the table. It shone like varnish.

‘What the hell is that?' Ivar K wanted to know, giving the briefcase a look of disgust. ‘You training to become an accountant?'

‘It's a birthday present. From my wife,' Hansen said, his voice filled with affection.

‘It makes you look like a bloody bank manager,' Ivar K snorted. He always carried a notepad in his back pocket and a pen in his shirt pocket or dangling from the neck of his T-shirt.

‘Talking about banks,' Hansen said gently, pulling out some A4 sheets. ‘Kjeld Arne Husum's bank statements from Arbejdernes Landsbank.' He shuffled though them briefly before handing the pile to Wagner. ‘I think you'll find they make interesting reading.'

Wagner would have preferred a verbal explanation, but acknowledged Hansen's need to savour the moment the pieces fell into place. And they did, fast.

‘Bloody hell!'

‘What?' said Ivar K, scenting the air. ‘Has the man been committing fraud?'

Wagner placed the papers on the table in front of him and pointed. ‘Monthly payments have been going into Husum's account for at least the past year, if not longer. Fifteen hundred kroner each time.'

‘The money was deposited by one Jens Jespersen, Grenåvej 43, Skødstrup,' Eriksen added.

It might be a coincidence. The tattoo. The commune. The whole thing.

Dicte mouthed a silent prayer as she cleared out the fridge. Please God. A coincidence. Please don't let it have anything to do with me.

She pulled out a plastic container and opened it. Left-over red cabbage, well past its prime. Out with it.

Mentally she went through the list of residents in the commune. Earlier that day she had found the last missing names from the National Register. Morten had forgotten to inform them that at some point his present wife had moved in. There were three others he had also forgotten. She vaguely remembered a couple of them. She wondered if they'd be able to recall Kjeld Arne Husum. And if so, why?

She had spent a few hours tracking them down until at last she had all the names. Of course they were scattered all over the country by now, but most had chosen to stay in Jutland. Fortunately, the majority were men, who had kept their surnames. That made it easier. It was trickier with the telephone which—she was convinced—PET had bugged. She had borrowed her colleagues' mobiles and become rather adept at making up excuses. Not that she absolutely had to do this off her own bat, she told herself. She just wanted to be the one to decide when the news about the commune got out. She needed to be sure that there was even a connection there to begin with before she started inviting others to a past where she personally had played a less than glorious part. Besides, there was no reason to waste everyone's time if the events were totally unrelated.

One thought, however, was niggling her as she sniffed the overripe fish and chucked it out, along with a couple of mouldy lemons. Words such as ‘slippery slope' and ‘consequences' came to mind, but she shut them out. Everyone had to find their own solution. The police had their methods and in all likelihood were in contact with the Metropolitan Police in London while they continued to investigate the killing on Samsø in the old fashioned way. PET were having the film analysed, probably at both the Institute of Technology and the National Investigation Centre, and might even have hooked up with experts from abroad, such as the FBI. Apart from that their main brief, as far as she knew, was keeping young men from the possible terrorism case under surveillance and discovering links with the beheading through computer usage and telephone conversations. Thus, surveillance of her movements was merely a safety precaution, on a par with spot checks of bicycle lights and strategically placed speed cameras. Nothing terribly serious. A routine measure, as the police called it.

And as for her? Surely she was only doing what any other journalist in her place would be doing: trying to find out where she fitted in; mapping out her own contribution and perhaps discovering a few truths along the way?

Truth.

The word floated briefly in the air before it was dissolved by the chill from the fridge. The image of the hooded executioner appeared in her mind as indeterminate smells guided her to left-overs whose expiry dates had long passed. Who was hiding behind the robes? A man or a woman? A Muslim or a Christian, or neither? And what did the Dark Tower commune have to do with it all?

A pot of old yoghurt took up space next to a plastic bag of grated cheese, theoretically for making a pizza. But Rose never came round to make pizzas any more. As a matter of fact, she seldom came round, full stop. Bo thought it was Dicte's sceptical attitude regarding her relationship with Aziz that had scared her off. Bo thought a lot of things.

She wanted to brush it aside, but that little word ‘truth' was persistent. Did she have a blind spot somewhere? Was she worried because Aziz was a Muslim, or was it because he had once been part of the criminal fraternity in Gellerup? Bottom line: What was her attitude to the immigration problem and to the Muslims who had chosen to live in Denmark?

The question went straight to that space she always reserved for unresolved issues. On automatic pilot, she moved two milk cartons to make way for a bottle of mineral water.

This wasn't the first time the quandary had forced itself inside her four walls. Nor was it the first time she had been forced to capitulate to its complexity. Every day they were bombarded with opinions and new statistics in the media, and in the end everything swirled round and spiralled upwards. Sometimes she was outraged at the vitriolic or downright brain-dead statements certain politicians made. It reminded her of 1930s Germany. At other times there were hair-raising proclamations from dark-skinned imams that made her flesh creep. And somewhere in the middle there was probably a large group of Muslims and Danes who just wanted peace and quiet and to be left to get on with their ordinary lives as they wished. But no such luck. Things had polarised. Words and accusations, like sharp stones, were hurled between the parties, above the heads of the silent majority.

She would happily admit that seeing young women with headscarves irritated her. But was that any reason to ban headscarves in schools, as they had done in France and, many years ago, in Turkey? Should Muslims be allowed to say Friday prayers in colleges with the inherent risk that this would be hijacked by rabid Muslims? Should parents be allowed to send their children back to their home country for re-education?

There were many questions. She didn't have the answers. She took the last pile of food out of the fridge and chucked it all in the bin without bothering to check it. She glanced from the kitchen into the living room, where Bo was sitting, busy with some paperwork, while the TV news blared out. She heard an item about the Swedes' annoyance with the Danes because of their debate on immigrants. Prominent EU politicians were also interviewed about Danish immigration policies; there were warnings about human rights infringements and the tone of the debate, which was crasser than in other EU countries with the same, or worse, integration problems. Spokesmen from the Danish government brushed the criticism aside as hyper-sensitive nonsense and contended that the respective foreign politicians were out of touch with their own people.

‘What do you think? Are they right?'

Bo gave her a baffled look. ‘Right about what?'

‘The immigration issue? The tone of the debate?'

‘Tone.' He tasted the word. ‘Possibly,' he said with indifference. ‘It's a problem, isn't it? It's not going to go away just because we don't talk about it. But it's not a pretty sight and it's not pleasant to listen to, either.'

‘It'll make great photos,' she said, and could hear the sarcasm in her own voice. ‘Headscarves. Offensive finger gestures. Wretched families sentenced to forcible deportation.'

He shrugged, unperturbed. ‘Of course.' He gave her an innocent look and reeled off the list of usual suspects. ‘Culture clash: mixed marriages, pukka Danish girls wearing headscarves and turned-up shoes, and weapons concealed in the Koran.'

She shuddered and thought about Rose and Aziz. She perched on the edge of a chair. ‘What do you think his family's like?'

‘Whose?'

‘Aziz's.'

Bo looked down at his papers. He twirled his pen between the fingers on his right hand. Then his gaze, behind an inscrutable expression, wandered across her face as though he were testing her. ‘Well, I imagine they live under a tin roof, shit in a hole in the floor, wipe their arses with one hand and eat rice with the other. But apart from that they're probably terribly nice and easy to get on with.'

She thanked the Lord above they were alone. This was precisely the kind of comment he would come out with purely to get a reaction.

‘And let's not forget the X-factor,' he mumbled along the pen which he was tapping against his lips.'

‘What X-factor?'

He looked up. Somewhere at the very back of his eyes was a glimmer of tenderness.

‘Love,' he said.

It wasn't the word itself, more the way he said it. If she'd been a musician, a singer perhaps, she might have been able to pinpoint it more precisely: the intonation it came wrapped in, giving it a sound which was both rough and gentle.

‘Love,' she echoed. ‘What about it?'

He wrote something down on paper. She saw it was that bloody insurance form.

‘It conquers all, allegedly,' he said.

‘Do you think it does?'

He gathered his papers and threw the pen across the table. ‘Don't you?'

She was relieved when the telephone rang and interrupted them. She swiftly walked over to lift the receiver and press the green button.

‘It's Dicte.'

‘Mum! Help!' Rose's voice was breathless. ‘They're following me.'

‘Who? Where? Rose. Say something, Rose.'

She didn't realise she was shouting. The sounds in the receiver intensified and fell away. She could hear running and indistinct voices in the distance.

Then everything went quiet.