The Woman from Bratislava (7 page)

Outside stood two men, one in his late thirties, the other in his fifties. The younger of them showed me his ID card and said:

‘Police. We have a Theodor Nikolaj Pedersen registered as living at this address.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘You’re looking at him.’

‘Are you telling me that you are Theodor Nikolaj Pedersen?’ Again it was the younger of the two who spoke.

‘Are the forces of law and order always so slow on the uptake,’ I said. ‘I just said so, didn’t I? Teddy to my friends. At your service.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be in Budapest?’

‘How the hell do you know that?’

‘Might we come in for a moment?’ the older man asked.

‘Why? Has something happened?’

‘We’ve received a message from the police in Budapest. This evening. Earlier today the Danish Embassy down there got in touch with us. They reported that a Danish citizen by the name of Theodor Nikolaj Pedersen had been found murdered. But now our Hungarian colleagues are saying that it is, in fact, another Danish citizen. A Niels Lassen. May we come in?’

‘Of course,’ I said, more shaken than I let on. This was definitely not the most ordinary day in Teddy’s normally so straightforward academic life.

THEY SEATED THEMSELVES
on the edge of the sofa. I remained standing. I asked if they would like coffee. They said they would, so I fetched two more cups, poured coffee for them and told them just to call me Teddy. Everyone else does. They introduced
themselves
. The middle-aged man gave only his surname: Bjerregaard. He was wearing the sort of jacket I wear myself, along with shirt, tie and grey flannels. Very conservative, but dapper. The younger man’s name was Per Toftlund. He was the athletic type, with the look of a boxer, or a soldier: hair close-cropped, clad in a dark leather jacket, light-coloured shirt, tie and faded jeans. He could even have been taken for an undercover cop. I had the feeling that I had seen him before. In the news, in connection with that bloody business involving the writer Sara Santanda, the one with the fatwa on her head. I could not recall all the details, but I was sure Toftlund was the name of the officer who had been hung out in the media for failing to prevent the attempt on her life at Flakfortet. If I remembered rightly the would-be assassin had got away too. Toftlund was clearly still with the police, though, so maybe he had not been left to carry the can. Or maybe he had been transferred from PET to the CID or Interpol?

‘Won’t you take a seat?’ Bjerregaard asked, as if he were the host.

‘No thanks,’ I said, putting a demonstrative hand to the base of my spine. ‘I have a bad back.’

‘Have you tried doing some stretching exercises?’ Toftlund asked. ‘Lie down and I’ll loosen it up for you.’

‘No, that’s okay. Thanks anyway,’ I said, sounding more startled by this offer than I intended. But I could just imagine what those strong hands and muscular upper arms could do to my back. They would make the torturers from Bratislava seem like amateurs.

‘It does help, you know,’ he said.

‘Why don’t we just get down to the matter in hand,’ I said. ‘What’s all this about Niels?’

‘Was he a good friend of yours?’ Toftlund asked.

‘Not really. An acquaintance. In this Lilliputian land of ours the academic world is not all that big. Everybody knows everybody else. But what about his daughter? Charlotte?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, she was with him,’ I snapped – this whole situation was starting to get to me.

Gently, Toftlund put down his coffee cup. His movements were smooth, almost graceful, those powerful hands notwithstanding.

‘We don’t actually know that much. We’ve received a couple of faxes from Budapest. We’re only here now because your name cropped up. Maybe you can help us. When did you get home?’

‘No. No, dammit. I want to know what happened!’

‘Sometime last night a person or persons unknown broke into Niels Lassen’s hotel room in Budapest. The room was registered in your name. He was killed, either by strangulation or by a blow to the back of head. The details are still a bit vague, but according to our Hungarian colleagues it was a very professional job. The intruders then ransacked the room before making their getaway. No one saw them come or go. As far as we know.’

‘Bloody hell,’ I muttered vacantly. ‘Poor Charlotte.’

‘Yeah, poor Charlotte,’ Toftlund said with something
approaching
sarcasm. I did not like his arrogance or his coolness, but I told them the story. About my back and how I had come home, how the room had been paid for in advance and Charlotte had asked if she could make use of it, since it was going to be lying empty anyway. They had obviously done it the other way round, though. Either that or Brandt had mucked things up and given them the wrong keys. He always checked people in. I deliberately kept quiet about the woman who had come to my room in Bratislava. That had nothing to do with the police. Only as I finished telling my
story did it dawn on me how lucky I had been. Incredibly lucky, to have hurt my back and have had to come home. Toftlund could obviously tell from my face what I was thinking.

‘Yes, Teddy Pedersen. Fate’s been kind to you.’

‘A fat lot of good it does to know that. You make it sound as if it was my fault.’

‘Not at all, but I can’t help wondering whether the killers simply picked that room at random, or whether there was more to it?’

He let those last words hang in the air. Bjerregaard merely sat there, hunched over the table with his coffee cup in his hand, suspended, like a little painting almost:
Still Life of Plain-clothes Policeman with Coffee Cup on Teddy’s Sofa
.

I put my hand to the small of my back, which was throbbing like mad, and said:

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Oh, of course you do,’ Toftlund replied. ‘What could they have been looking for?’

‘How should I know? I don’t smuggle alcohol or drugs. I’m sure I look guilty as sin if I’m carrying as much as four cigarettes over the allowance.’

‘It’s an odd coincidence, though,’ Toftlund said.

‘Yes, exactly. A coincidence. Have you any idea how crime has exploded in that corner of the world since the collapse of
communism
. It’s part of the way of life in the old Soviet bloc. Capitalism brought them freedom, poverty and the mafia.’

‘Maybe so,’ Toftlund persisted. ‘But you could have enemies down there. You’ve done a lot of travelling in Eastern Europe.’

How the hell did he know that, I wondered. They must have run a check on me before making their little surprise visit. My name was bound to crop up in various PET files, what with all the trips I had made behind the Iron Curtain over the years. Not that I had anything to hide, but I read the papers. Something akin to a
witch-hunt
had been under way to unmask old Stasi spies ever since the Americans had handed over the magnetic tapes which held the
key to the identities of the people behind the aliases used by Stasi’s thousands of agents and informers. There was something farcical about the whole thing. Ten years after the fall of the Wall some of my fellow academics were shaking in their shoes at the thought of what might be on those tapes. Had some of their pronouncements been a little too pro-Soviet? Had they accepted a couple of gifts too many? Made some remark which was now preserved on
yellowing
papers along with other nuggets of intelligence
information
? The problem was, however, that it had been in the interests of controllers and other agents to exaggerate the importance of the information they received; that, and the fact that there was in effect no court of appeal. You were guilty until you could prove otherwise. Just as well I had kept my nose clean. A few trips to the East in the old days didn’t make you a flaming communist.

‘I’ve enough enemies here in Denmark,’ I said.

‘And who might they be?’ Bjerregaard asked, only now putting down his coffee cup.

‘My academic colleagues and rivals. All the people whom I’ve pipped at the post for research grants, as well as those to whom, as a member of various boards and committees, I’ve denied funding, because I questioned the validity of their projects. We smile at one another, congratulate one another, but what each of us really wishes for all the rest is failure, disgrace and a job teaching high school in some far corner of Jutland. But we fight with words, not knives. Or at least only the symbolic sort used for stabbing people in the back,’ I said.

Toftlund laughed. He had a deep, very pleasant laugh; even the more straitlaced Bjerregaard smiled and I, too, gave a little chuckle, to relieve some of the awkwardness and indeed the
unpleasantness
of the situation.

‘Right, then,’ Toftlund said, standing up. ‘We may have to get back to you.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But can you tell me … the rest of the group, are they being kept down there? Or are they coming home?’

‘As far as I know they’re coming home. I would assume that they’ve all been interviewed – it’s standard procedure. But it sounds as though the Budapest police think, as I do, that it was a robbery that went wrong. We’ll be speaking to the daughter when she gets back to Denmark with the … deceased.’

It was a grim word, and with that and a handshake they were gone. I wandered around the flat with my hand pressed to my back as if I was nine months gone, reflecting on how lucky I had been and what a really awful story it was. I called Irma again, but still only got her answering machine. So I had a whisky, took a
sleeping
pill, flossed my teeth as prescribed by my dentist, so vigorously that I all but sawed through to my jawbone, and went out like a light. For the next couple of days, over the weekend, I took good care of myself. I stayed indoors. Partly because rest seemed to be the best thing for my back and partly because the rain and wind were battering off my windowpanes. I read the old newspapers, a new book on Stalingrad which a British colleague had sent me, watched films on TV, drank some red wine and went to bed early. I missed Janne and the kids more than I would have thought
possible
, even picked up the phone a couple of times to call her at his, ‘the other man’s’, place – talk about a cliché – but thought better of it and instead gave myself up to wallowing in self-pity. I have always been good at that. What hurt most was the fridge door. More than once I found myself standing gazing at it, bleary-eyed. It was plastered with all the usual little notes. Copies of school timetables. Reminders about swimming lessons and handball practice. Pictures of the children. A postcard or two. An invitation to a birthday party. Affixed with little magnets: hearts, dogs, a cow and a cat and a shiny red apple. Little magnets holding the secure pattern of everyday life firmly in place on a white refrigerator door. This picture could have been entitled:
Teddy Forsaken By All.

On Monday morning, wonder of wonders, the late March sun was shining and Copenhagen was once again my beloved city with its roofs and spires, girl cyclists, little doggies and big yellow
corporation buses bowling almost soundlessly along. People
everywhere
were tilting their heads back and gazing up at that blue sky, as if trying to drink in the light. Sunlight streamed through my kitchen window as I made coffee, and I deemed it a victory that I had managed to get out of bed unaided, without having to do it in three stages as on the previous days: first sitting up, then easing my legs over the side of the bed and finally pushing myself onto my feet. It was rather like being a three-year-old again, so pleased and proud of being able to put on one’s own socks. It still hurt like hell, but in many ways I had forgiven my back, seeing that it had, in fact, saved my life. When Janne called I surprised both her and myself by being pleasant and urbane and agreeing to find a day on which to discuss the practicalities. We were civilised people, after all. Nonetheless, our conversation left a dent in my good mood.

The fact was that a couple of crucial events which had occurred during the past couple of days looked set to triumph over my highly-developed ability to block out any sort of unpleasantness, particularly of an emotional nature. One of these was Janne’s desertion. I was on my own again. All the signs were that this was a fact. But did I really want to be on my own? I had to admit that it probably was not going to be as easy as it had been in the good, old days for me to score the female students. Seldom, now, did I attract any glances from the new batches of first years with their bewildered, awestruck eyes. Being single again might be a lot more difficult than I thought. And then there was the appearance in Bratislava of that mysterious woman. Who was she? And what did she want with me? If she had not simply been spinning me a yarn, that is. It bothered me that Irma had not yet called me back. I really needed to talk to my wise sister; she usually had a good explanation for just about anything. She was a tough cookie, it’s true, but she could also dispense tea and sympathy if she felt that was what you needed. And poor Teddy certainly did.

For want of anything better to do I made my way over to the south side, to Amager and the University of Copenhagen and
my tiny office in the monstrosity of a building which some mad architect had succeeded in getting past the planners back in the early seventies. Imagine building a concrete pile in the worst East German style to house, of all things, the Faculty of
Humanities
– in which we who worked and studied there were expected to think great thoughts about the meaning of life and instil in young people a knowledge of language, history and literature. The weighty matters in life. Maybe that was why most of the thoughts generated here tended to be small and muddled. We led our own life within these walls, unaffected by the society around us which footed the bill. I was not the only one to have ground to a halt in the academic world; the odd polemical piece in the newspapers the only visible sign of our existence. Every attempt to have the whole execrable edifice pulled down had failed and I had
eventually
come to the resigned conclusion that this travesty of a
building
would outlive both me and the next generation. But at least the pay and the pension were good, considering how little one had to do for it. In the canteen we tried to outdo one another with tales of how godawful busy we were. And what hell it was to be slaves to diaries which nowadays were always packed with
meetings
. How demanding our research was. What we did not say, we middle-aged lecturers, was that the new generation was coming up fast and that they were both ambitious and talented. Just as well we all had tenure. From the early seventies onwards we had been appointed in droves, regardless of our exam results. And the idea that anyone could be fired for incompetence or laziness was beyond the bounds of our imaginations.

There were only a couple of people at the Institute when I got there. I stopped for a quick chat with them, but not about the one thing on all our minds: they knew that I knew that Janne had left me.

The woman, Signe, was – like most of us – in her fifties, an
acerbic-looking
character who always behaved as if no one realised how brilliant she was. Her one concession to a world that had
moved on was a touch of mascara on her eyelashes. Her specialist area was women’s writing in a male-dominated society, a subject which had filled classes in the seventies and early eighties, but like mine her course was not particularly popular today. That was not why she was so bitter, though. There were two other reasons for her hatred of the world. One was that another old Marxist had landed the job of editing a major history of literature for
Gyldendal
, the country’s biggest publishing house. They were both
dyed-in-the-wool
hard-line leftists, so the injustice lay more in the fact that she had lost out to someone from such a provincial institution as South Jutland University. The other was that Signe had dreamt of becoming a literary critic with
Politiken,
the leading left-wing daily, even though she always described it as a crypto-conservative paper, but since the demise of the communist
Land og Folk
along with that of the Berlin Wall and my own narrow field of academic expertise, they had no use for her. In these post-Wall times her ability to assess a work of literature in the light of the slogan ‘No feminist struggle without class struggle. No class struggle without feminist struggle’ was not what
Politiken
was looking for. So she had wound up working for
Information,
which was fine as far as it went, but not what she wanted – so few people read the little left-wing rag. She was, therefore, pretty bitter. She had been in the same consciousness-raising group as Irma, and tended therefore to give me a bit more slack than she allowed other men, although if the truth be told she had always viewed me as a shallow
womaniser
with no concept of the singularly repressed state of the female sex. Her current lover, Jeppe, who stood there nodding
throughout
our conversation, was nothing but a moron. We carried on as though our teaching and our research work were of the utmost importance, but were wise enough not to actually talk shop.