Three Dog Night (35 page)

‘But not if he'd sabotaged it,' Felix interjected.

Sand nodded.

‘Exactly.'

‘I remember us circling,' she said. ‘And I remember Erik suddenly pressing some buttons.'

Sand produced more photos. They showed the sequence of a helicopter in dire trouble; the angles and the rotation of the aircraft made that clear.

‘When you lose control of your tail rotor, you need to get it into auto rotation quickly. If you don't, the helicopter will twist in the opposite direction and spiral downwards.'

He held up a picture of the inside of a helicopter engine.

‘The tail rotor gearbox is driven by an axle. Our theory is that someone tampered with the drive shaft flex plate – that's the axle mechanism that drives the tail rotor – and loosened a few bolts.'

Felix straightened. It all added up. She'd had her suspicions, but she hadn't wanted to face the truth. She stared right into Sand's brown eyes and saw the pieces of the jigsaw falling into place: Erik and his drug connections. Someone had been out to get him.

‘I'm starting to remember much more,' she said. ‘And it all fits with what you're telling me.'

He looked hopeful.

‘Feel free to tell me.'

She launched into it. They had drunk their coffee and Sand had eaten a couple of sandwiches by the time she'd finished telling him about the briefcase and her suspicion that Erik was involved in drug trafficking. For Peter's sake, she avoided mentioning Stinger or Peter himself, but spoke only about what she remembered or had experienced personally.

After she had finished, he looked at her pensively.

‘And no one specific springs to mind? Someone who'd want to kill Erik?'

She shook her head.

‘I'm sure it's about drug trafficking. I don't know the names of Erik's associates, but I think he was circling over a place called Lille Lysegrund.'

She had memorised the coordinates, but she had also written them down on the note she pushed across to Sand. He took it, read and nodded. She felt his eyes on her, regarding her with respect.

‘They're real enough. It's somewhere in the Kattegat, and Lille Lysegrund sounds about right. We'll check it out and see what we can find.'

He closed the file to indicate that the meeting was over.

‘We'll obviously be in touch. I'll contact Inspector Erling Bank of East Jutland Police. We've been working together closely on this investigation.'

Felix nodded. It was done. She had passed her burden on to the right person. The police could deal with it now. She felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders when she rang Peter shortly afterwards to tell him that the meeting had finished and would he please come and get her. There was no reply. She thought he might be driving and couldn't hear the phone, so she left a message.

Sand stood up.

‘I have to go. I've got another meeting in two minutes.'

He looked at her.

‘I'll contact the police as we've agreed. In the meantime, take care.'

He escorted her down to reception and they shook hands. ‘We'll do our best,' he said. ‘It would be a relief for everyone to get to the bottom of this and, given what you've just told me, I think we have a good chance.'

She waited fifteen minutes before finally receiving a text from Peter.

P
ETER LEFT HIS
car, stuffed his mobile into a pocket and ran to the main entrance of Skejby Hospital. He was still in two minds as to whether he had made the right decision, but Elisabeth had called him, in tears, while he was waiting for Felix. Stinger had regained consciousness and asked after him, but doctors described his condition as critical. All they could do was hope that Stinger would make it through the day.

‘Please come, Peter. I think he has something important to tell you.'

He hated abandoning Felix but convinced himself that she was in safe hands. SOK was the closest you could get to a naval police force, so for the time being she was protected by the long arm of the law, an institution he had loathed and detested most of his life. But this wasn't about him. This was about her. He had texted her to wait for him.

Stinger was still hooked up to several machines. Elisabeth was sitting on the bed, flattening one end of the mattress. Her blue and green T-shirt was far too tight and her shoulders were quivering.

‘Hi.'

She turned around, tears streaming down her cheeks.

‘I'm so glad you came.'

At first he thought the man in the bed had already died. His breathing was so shallow and the movement of his chest so minimal that he could barely see it. There was no light in the eyes staring into the room and if Stinger had been thin before, now he looked like a concentration camp victim: the skin on his face was stretched taut over bones which protruded and threatened to pierce it. The wispy hair couldn't hide the veins clearly visible beneath the thin membrane of skin over his skull, and his arms lay on the bed like stems of withered flowers. His tattoos had blurred because the muscles were wasted.

Peter took Stinger's hand and squeezed it carefully.

‘Stinger, you old swinger you.'

It took time. But eventually the hand returned his squeeze, though only weakly. The eyes tried to focus. Peter carried on talking and felt his throat swell around a lump that refused to go away.

‘It's Peter. I'm right here.'

Stinger's cracked lips moved, but he gave up. He flapped helplessly with his free hand on the duvet.

‘Here.'

Elisabeth handed Peter a cup of water. There was a swab in it, with a small, round sponge on the end. He took it and wetted Stinger's lips. Some of the water trickled into his mouth and he swallowed with difficulty while his tongue searched for more.

‘… eter …'

The sound seemed to come from the grave, dry and feeble.

‘… eter …'

‘Yes, Stinger. I'm here.'

He squeezed Stinger's hand again, and this time it grabbed his with greater strength. In the course of a few seconds their friendship flashed before his eyes. He remembered their first meeting: Stinger had found him in the prison showers, battered and beaten, friendless and practically unconscious. He remembered Stinger lifting him up and calling the guard. He remembered Stinger's self-deprecating gesture later when he thanked him. A movement that said saving someone's life was no big deal. He remembered happy hours in Stinger's company; the glint in his eyes when he came up with yet another scheme to improve his life in prison; winding the staff round his little finger and his constant generosity when it came to booze or cigarettes, which he preferred to share rather than keep for himself. This was the essence of Stinger's life: friends meant more to him than all the intoxicating stimulants in the world.

Stinger's colourless eyes focused on him while he tried to raise his head from the pillow, like a dead man pulling himself out of his coffin. The lump in Peter's throat spread to the rest of body.

‘… rian …'

‘Brian?'

‘… rian sai …'

‘Brian said?'

Stinger was clearly exerting himself. It was as if all his strength was going into the words.

‘… rian said you would … Grimme … lanned it.'

‘Planned it? Had Brian planned that I would deal with Grimme?'

Stinger didn't appear to be listening. He mumbled again: ‘… eter will do it.'

Stinger's head fell back on the pillow. His eyes rolled upwards. The exertion had sapped the last of his strength. His chest barely rose and fell now. Elisabeth whimpered.

‘What's happening?'

‘Call the doctor,' Peter said, but he knew it was already too late.

Old Stinger who had sung and danced and blagged his way through life had danced his final dance. Elisabeth pulled the cord for help, but before it arrived Stinger's chest rose and he let out a sigh. He breathed his last holding Peter's hand and staring at the ceiling.

P
ETER'S TEXT MESSAGE
was very brief. An emergency had come up, she gathered. He told her to wait.

She sat down on the leather sofa in reception wondering whether she should be worried. What could have happened since he'd failed to pick her up as agreed? It obviously had to be something important if it couldn't be put off. But perhaps he didn't have to worry about her now. She'd given the coordinates to Sand. It felt good.

She got up and started pacing the floor. The woman behind the counter ignored her and carried on speaking into her headset while leafing through some papers. In the car park vehicles came and went, and people – mostly men – negotiated their way through the piles of snow outside the building. Anyone entering through the glass door stamped their feet on the mat to get the snow off their shoes and hurried up the stairs with briefcases under their arms. A couple of the men, in uniform and heavy boots, were clearly naval officers.

Felix bought herself a cup of hot chocolate from a vending machine and looked at her watch. Half an hour had passed and still there was no news from Peter. What was he doing?

She wandered around the reception area holding the hot cup. She stopped for a moment in front of a large abstract painting, an explosion of colour, remembering how, after the helicopter crash, she had opened her eyes to a white world: the ward was white; the walls, the ceiling, the blinds and curtains were white, the bed linen too. A nurse in a white uniform had called a doctor, who had probably been wearing green. But everything inside her head was white and flickered like an old black-and-white TV screen. There was nothing to hold her attention. Everything merged into an indefinable mass of tingling and bubbling sensations.

She had only slowly realised why she was in hospital. She could understand the words they said to her and she could just about understand the fragments of memory that helped her to cobble her life together. She knew she had lost Erik and Maria. She knew it intellectually, but not emotionally. Everything inside her had died. She felt nothing, no grief, no joy.

She drank the hot chocolate and let it flow through her. Nice and hot. The same feeling she'd had when she went upstairs to Peter. He had guided her to where she was now. He had turned on the tap and opened the floodgates so that she could start to feel something again. The fact that she could feel joy again, despite still mourning the loss of Maria, was his doing.

In that way she was indebted to him, but he wasn't here now and perhaps it was about time she started taking responsibility for herself. They had grown close in the days when he nursed her. They had made love. But she couldn't be his responsibility.

All this time her parents had been waiting in the wings for her to go to them and ask for their help. They would have loved to have her with them until the police and Sand had completed their investigation and she could start rebuilding her life.

She wandered up and down mulling these things over, giving Peter a chance to turn up or send another text. But as neither happened, she called her mother and agreed to go over to their flat straightaway.

She waited a little longer and finished the rest of her hot chocolate. She was about to call a taxi when the absurdity of the situation suddenly struck her. This was Denmark. This was Brabrand of all places. Her childhood town. She could walk there in ten minutes.

The car park was the most peaceful spot on earth. The snow had been shovelled into heaps, some black with dirt, others white and pristine. Some of the cars still had snow on their roofs and their owners hadn't bothered to de-ice the windows. Others were immaculate, no snow or ice, as if their owners were models of virtue in a classroom of badly behaved children. The sun was shining.

She pushed open the door and stepped outside into the fresh air, determined to put the slightly stuffy, unnatural indoor climate behind her. She started walking and, for the first time in a long while, she felt happy, free and independent. The chill down her spine had gone. She had handed over her problems to Sand. She texted Peter. She perceived the world in a new way now, thanks to him. And she wanted to tell him.

Perhaps there was another reason. Perhaps she wanted to talk about their early morning activity. She was pondering this when a black car slid alongside, as swiftly as a shark through water.

Peter hoped Felix would still be waiting for him, but he had been unable to compose a fitting text message. He rubbed his wrist while manoeuvring the car through snow and slush on his way from Skejby Hospital to Brabrand. He could still feel Stinger's grip on his arm.

Brian had thought someone should stop Grimme, and had decided that person would be Peter. Because he could be manipulated. Because he and Grimme had old scores to settle.

With one foot in the grave, Brian had neatly orchestrated his own revenge on Grimme. He had just forgotten to take into account that his remote-controlled avenger might refuse to play ball.

Peter reached for the radio and turned it on. Thomas Helmig poured out of the speakers singing ‘Stupid Man'. The song felt like it was about Peter. He had been stupid to think he could put the past behind him. He was stupid to dream of a normal life when parts of his present were still attached to his past, like an unravelling sweater caught in a door.

His mobile beeped – probably Felix. More evidence of his stupidity. He was stupid and soft-hearted. He had taken her in; he had nursed her. And now, as she was starting to recover, he was no longer the focal point; his past was. Had he really killed a man?

He was approaching the SOK building and had signalled to turn when he spotted her in her black Puffa jacket roughly fifty metres ahead. She walked the way she danced and it hit him like a punch in the midriff; the memory of her thin, supple body, her lips, her eyes. Her strength when she held him tight and sent them both into ecstasy.

For a second the memory of Stinger was gone and his sombre thoughts dissolved into thin air. There she was, alive and kicking. His dream come true. Perhaps it would melt and disappear like the snow on his tyres, but it had been there. He'd had a sense of her. That in itself was huge.