Trophy (21 page)

Opening her eyes intensified the pain at the back of her head to an unbearable level, but she had to keep them open. She would never do anything more important than this in her entire life. She owed it to herself, to everyone, to the whole world, to keep those eyes open. It felt as if someone had rammed an iron bar through her head and down her spine. She had bitten her tongue and the blood tasted warm and salty. It was completely dark outside her field of vision and nothing would have been easier, nothing would have made more sense, than to embrace the darkness and let it carry her away. Her stomach heaved and bitter gall trickled from the corners of her mouth and her nostrils. Lene spat it out and breathed in spasms.

She was sitting on a hard chair. She was completely naked and she saw in disbelief the strips of silver tape keeping her legs together and tied to the chair, exactly like the dead man in the living room. She couldn’t move her head and, for a moment, she believed that she was permanently injured, that her neck was broken and that she would never walk again.

She closed her eyes and thought furiously. Reconstructed
the events, forcing herself to feel everything. A hard edge chafed her chin and she realized that her unseen attacker had fitted her with the kind of neck collar paramedics used to stabilize the vertebrae of people injured in car crashes. She could move her feet, she could press her lower legs against the unforgiving tape and she could feel the rough floorboards under the soles of her feet. She wasn’t paralysed. Her neck wasn’t broken.

She sensed the stranger behind her, even though he had no sound or smell. A floorboard moved under the chair and she tried to turn her head until the sharp, white pain shot up her neck and out through the back of her head again. She groaned softly in time with her laboured breathing. She couldn’t help it. The pain demanded an outlet.

‘Can you see, Lene?’

She opened her eyes and spotted a computer on a chest of drawers right in front of her. Something white and red was moving across the screen, and a voice was coming from the laptop: metallic, flat and not of this world. She stared at the screen and identified a raw, concrete wall, with a high ceiling and deep shadows, which the floodlights carved out of the darkness.

The camera settled on a pair of suspended, bloody feet tied to a broom handle, which kept them apart. The feet were swaying lightly and there was the faint squeaking of a chain. The camera zoomed in on a slim, right foot. Neatly applied, coral nail polish. Nice, even toes.

Her tears blurred her view of the computer, and the lightly swaying feet on the screen, and she blinked hard.

The voice spoke. ‘Can you see?’

Lene blinked harder and stared.

The white toes were pulled into view. The nail polish. She refused to recognize the colour. She refused to recognize a foot that looked so much like her own.

‘Can you?’

Her muscles tensed against the unforgiving tape, and the chair rocked. She tried to get away from the picture, though she knew that it was forbidden, and heard movement through the air right before her attacker’s clenched fist hit her ear. The chair jerked sideways and she heard her own scream.

‘Do you see, Lene?’

‘YES! … yes …’

A warm trickle of blood ran from her ear and down her neck. A shrill howling came through the perforated eardrum and she could hear the vibration and friction of every air molecule.

Or so it felt.

‘YES!!’

The camera zoomed out. The body appeared on the screen, one centimetre at a time, a hanging, bound, graceful and slim body, white and brown where the blood had dried in a pattern that looked like the veins on a leaf. The camera lingered on a narrow strip of blonde hair over her groin. Her
stomach raised and fell slightly with the body’s shallow breathing. The legs were spread wide apart by the stick.

A black, gloved hand at the end of a dark sleeve appeared in the picture. The fingers spread across the girl’s abdomen and pushed it. The body moved back, the hand disappeared from the picture and the body swung forwards.

Lene cried out again and heard movement behind her despite her screams. She expected another blow, but it didn’t come.

They let her scream.

The body on the screen swung back and forth: a strange fruit hanging from a branch, drooping in the wind. The camera slowly moved upwards. Lene closed her eyes and the camera stopped.

‘Lene,’ the voice said. ‘I can see you, you know. There’s a camera in the laptop in front of you and I want you to open your fucking eyes right now.’

She shook her head vehemently.

‘No? Oh well, we’ll do it as a radio play,’ the voice said. ‘You keep your eyes closed and I’ll try and get you to open them. It’s a good game. I know you can’t see it, but I’m showing you a piece of freshly cut bamboo. It’s old school, but still the best.’

Lene heard the bamboo swish through the air.

The voice sounded flatter, more dispassionate.

‘Let’s try it out on her. See what she’s made of, eh, Lene?’

Lene flung herself against the back of the chair when the
cane struck the girl’s flesh with a wet smack which went right into Lene’s brain and soul. The deepest, the very deepest of places.

And she heard the raw cry from a young woman who was beyond all consciousness and whose body could react only to even stronger pain.

Lene opened her eyes. A fresh, red welt had been drawn across the body and groin of the suspended girl. The cane had cut through the thin skin and blood was pouring from the edges.

‘Can you see it? Lene?’

‘Yes … oh, YES!’ she sobbed. ‘Stop!’

‘Do you want to see the rest?’

‘Yes. Oh, God … yes.’

She heard a click from the loudspeakers. Music? Lene was convinced her mind must be playing tricks on her, that something inside her had broken, but the music continued and grew louder and louder. It bounced off the walls in the hall and gathered around the young, suspended body.

She had danced to this song with Niels. At one of the first parties where he had noticed her and she had noticed him. They had smiled to each other across a table covered with glasses and bottles – and he had nodded his head in the direction of the small dance area in the living room of a mutual friend, and she had got up. The camera zoomed in on the body, picking out and highlighting details: a pink nipple, a shaved armpit, an upper arm whose muscles
twitched and pulsed under the skin. Long trails of blood down her arm, a wrist with a piece of surgical tape and a cannula, white hands, broken and blue below the shiny handcuffs, a rusty chain that continued upwards into the darkness. The camera rested on the hands and paused before finding blonde, bloody and matted hair and an earring with a pearl and a small dolphin.

The camera zoomed out; she couldn’t see the face behind the hair. The chin had fallen down on the chest. The gloved hand gathered up a handful of blonde hair.

‘Can you see it, Lene?’

‘Yes.’

‘Those are your earrings, aren’t they?’

She whispered something.

‘I can’t hear you. This is very, very important for you. And … for her.’

‘YES … They’re my earrings.’

The head was yanked up and the hair fell away from the girl’s face. Lene moaned.

‘Jose … oh, God, Jose …’

It was no longer a face; it was no longer her daughter’s face, but a swollen, discoloured, grotesque and disfigured lump. A broken mask. The intact eyelid twitched, the eye opened, and the green iris was aimed at the camera and at her. There were haemorrhages in the white membrane of the eye and it was stripped of expression. The crooked, swollen mouth opened to reveal a black hole where her teeth used to be.

The hands let go of the head and, without support, it flopped back onto the chest. The song continued, but the camera had shifted from the hanging figure to the floor where blood and urine had gathered in a puddle.

‘Lene?’

She shook her head.

‘You can stop this now,’ the voice said calmly.

‘There will be others,’ she said.

‘
You
can stop it now, Lene, close the case. I’m talking about
you
. No one else. If anyone takes over, we’ll communicate with them. Do you understand? Do you want it to stop, Lene?’

The cane swooped through the air before making contact.

‘YES!’

‘Thank you. Thank you for that.’

A man appeared on screen, but all Lene could see was a black boiler suit, black gloves, a shapeless outline and a strange, tight-fitting black leather mask of the kind bondage aficionados and fetishists would wear, with a zip in front of the eyes and mouth. He lifted her daughter’s head by her hair again, pressed a gag, in the form of an obscene, red rubber ball, into her bleeding, distorted mouth, and tightened it behind her neck with a leather cord.

‘She’s a lovely girl, Lene. Aren’t you lovely, Josefine?’

‘DON’T TOUCH HER!’ Lene screamed, but the man ignored her. She saw his gloved hand glide up her daughter’s thigh and two fingers being pressed hard up and inside.

A low, mournful sound erupted from her daughter.

The man walked up close to the camera. The leather mask filled the screen. She looked at his smiling, blue eyes behind the slits. He showed her a narrow, double-edged knife, went back, and placed the tip of the knife under Josefine’s breastbone. The tip made a depression in the elastic skin.

‘The strange thing, Lene, is that they always … always hope. They keep hoping that it isn’t going to happen, even when it does and the knife goes in. They’re so surprised, so incredibly confused and disappointed when their life ends, and it was all for nothing.’

The screen went blank.

The superintendent didn’t notice him, even though he stood only one metre away from her. Her eyes were fixed at the black, shiny computer screen.

He saw only defeat and shock in her face, and he left the bedroom. He walked round to the back of the farmhouse and called his boss.

‘It’s done,’ he said.

‘Sure?’

‘Totally. She’s finished.’

‘Right, then I’ll get out of here,’ the other one said. ‘You should probably do the same.’

‘Do what?’

‘Make yourself scarce. I’ll contact you if I need you. I probably will.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. Goodbye.’

‘What about the other one?’ he asked.

‘Michael Sander?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll deal with him. At least he’s interesting. Safe trip.’

‘Thank you. But why does he show up now?’

‘I’ve no idea. Really I don’t. I found his homepage with a specialized search engine. He’s a professional and we shouldn’t underestimate him. But we could let him lead us to Kim’s stuff.’

‘The movies?’

‘Kim was the only one who knew where those sodding films and pictures are,’ the other one said.

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘Perhaps I should have a word with Kim’s widow,’ his boss wondered out loud.

*

When he returned to the bedroom, he put a blackout fabric hood over the superintendent’s unmoving head and tightened the cord a little. Then he packed his things into a suitcase, put the suitcase by the door and looked around. The angry bees were still buzzing around the living room.

He put a handwritten piece of cardboard on the floor next to her chair with the address of the abandoned warehouse in Sydhavnen, cut the cable-ties around her wrists and put the craft knife next to the chair. He turned her chair so that she would see the knife, and removed the hood from her head.

Then he picked up the suitcase and left the farmhouse.

‘Good sleep?’

‘Not really,’ Michael replied.

He sat down opposite Elizabeth Caspersen at the kitchen table. The indefatigable Mrs Nielsen was busy at the Aga, and there was a lovely smell of scrambled eggs in the kitchen.

Elizabeth Caspersen spread a thin layer of butter on a piece of toast very methodically and gestured towards a jar of marmalade near Michael’s hand. He passed it to her as the housekeeper came over to the table.

‘Scrambled eggs?’ she asked him politely.

‘I won’t, thanks. Just some black coffee, please.’

She poured him a cup and left the kitchen. They heard her clatter about in the utility room.

‘Did anyone disturb you last night, Michael?’

Elizabeth Caspersen’s suggestive eyebrow technique was unsurpassable.

He added milk and looked around.

‘Where are they all?’

‘Victor always leaves early to avoid the traffic, the boys
didn’t come back, and Monika … either she’s still asleep or she’s out with the horses. What did you think of the family?’

‘If they were a place, they would be the Balkans,’ he mumbled, and sipped his hot coffee.

She laughed and said something, but he wasn’t listening. He felt restless. Again he thought about the redheaded superintendent, Lene Jensen. She was important.

‘Pardon?’ he said.

‘I was just asking when you want to leave.’

She took a bite of her toast and wiped a crumb off her upper lip with the napkin. She looked as unflappable, efficient and impeccable as always. Perhaps because she was going straight to the office. Elizabeth Caspersen had applied elegant make-up; her lips were painted a shade of dark red that complemented her finely arched eyebrows and her grey eyes. She wore her pearls today, a grey silk blouse, and a jacket and skirt that fitted her long figure like a glove.

‘As soon as possible,’ he said.

She nodded, emptied her coffee cup and got up. They both knew that they couldn’t discuss anything sensitive while they were still at the estate.

They walked out into the hall together and Michael looked at the antlers on the wall.

‘The gamekeeper, Thomas. Do you know him?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I’ve seen him a couple of times. Big man. Handsome. Dark … He’s moody and likes to keep to himself. Hard to get to know, I think. Something of a hermit.’

‘But a friend of Jakob’s?’

‘Yes, one of the blood brothers. They’re a secret society.’

‘Forged by fire and blood?’

She looked at him.

‘Yes, you could say that. Wasn’t it like that for you?’

He smiled.

‘I was more of a desk soldier, Elizabeth. I arrested drunken soldiers and banged them up. That kind of thing. It was peacetime back then, if I can put it like that. It’s different for them – Jakob Schmidt and his friends. What about Peter, the temp?’

Elizabeth Caspersen bent down and picked up her overnight bag.

He noticed that today’s nylon stockings had a fine, black seam at the back. He opened the door to her.

‘More forthcoming,’ she said. ‘Light-hearted and quite cheerful, as far as I remember. I don’t hunt, Michael.’

‘But your father must have known them quite well,’ he insisted. ‘He spent a lot of time here, didn’t he?’

‘Indeed he did. But I very rarely spoke to him. Like I said.’

She pointed. ‘There’s Monika.’

Michael paused on the steps and held up a hand to shield his eyes. The blue spring sky looked freshly washed and the sunbeams fell diagonally through the tall branches of the oak trees and across fresh, green pastures.

Perhaps it was a cliché, but horse and rider appeared to be one, and Monika Schmidt looked as if she had been born
in the saddle. Her face was serene and an invisible plumb-line began with her head, went straight through her neck and body, and continued into the horse’s chest. The long-limbed, dark brown animal trotted forwards and sideways in some kind of well-schooled gait, and the rider was in motion just as much as the horse was. The sun bounced off the mother-of-pearl hairclip at the back her neck when the horse pirouetted and trotted back.

‘She’s good, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘And tragic,’ Elizabeth Caspersen said.

‘Undoubtedly,’ he said. ‘But are we referring to the same thing?’

‘No, Michael. Yes, or … No, the tragedy is that she didn’t know she could ride until she was in her early forties. She had never been on a horse until then. If she had started like all other girls when she was ten years old, she could have …’

‘Broken her neck and been in a wheelchair she could only move by blowing into a tube,’ he said. ‘I don’t like horses. Do they even have a brain?’

‘Ask Monika,’ she said.

Horse and rider came back towards them and Elizabeth Caspersen waved. There was no reaction on Monika Schmidt’s face. She was totally focused on what she was doing.

He looked past the enclosure, past Monika Schmidt and Cavalier of Pederslund, if that was who it was, past the stable
buildings and towards a distant figure standing very still on the edge of the forest. Flat cap, wellies, tweed jacket and a spotted hunting dog at his feet.

And a pair of binoculars in front of his eyes.

‘That’s Peter,’ Elizabeth Caspersen said.

She waved and the man lowered his binoculars and disappeared into the forest.

‘Not very welcoming,’ Michael said.

A line appeared in her brow.

‘Oh. How strange. He’s usually … different.’

‘Time to go?’

They walked down the steps. Elizabeth Caspersen headed for the enclosure; Michael followed with some reluctance. The horse reared in front of them. It came down on its front legs, tossed its head, and trotted towards the fence posts, where Monika Schmidt swung her leg over the horse’s croup and let herself glide to the ground. She landed, perfectly balanced, and pulled the horse along. Without the horse and her high heels, she looked tiny. He had expected a look of mild contempt, or at least reserve, but the Swedish woman’s features were still characterized by that strange wistfulness he had seen the night before.

Elizabeth Caspersen bent down for a quick embrace, after which Monika Schmidt offered him a gloved hand.

‘It was nice to meet you, Michael.’

‘Thank you, likewise. And thank you for a great meal last night. I hope that everything works out.’

‘With Charles Simpson?’

Her face had a natural redness after the ride and he could detect signs of her age around her mouth and eyes in the daylight. But he thought she would always be beautiful.

‘With Simpson Junior and everything else,’ he said politely.

‘Are you leaving now?’ she asked.

‘We’re sending Michael to New York,’ Elizabeth Caspersen said.

Monika Schmidt smiled and looked down.

‘You’re always welcome here, Michael.’ She laughed, sounding a little husky. ‘As are you,
snällä
Elizabeth, obviously.’

‘Thank you,’ he said.

She pulled the horse’s head over her shoulder and stroked its muzzle. Its eyes were the size of apples.

‘Cavalier?’ he asked, and she laughed out loud and shook her head so vehemently that her hair slide fell to the ground.

He picked it up and handed it to her.

‘Oh, Michael. Even you can’t be that innocent! This is Zarina, Cavalier’s little friend from Germany.’

He softened his knees slightly and peered between the horse’s hind legs.

‘Of course.’

‘You’d be able to tell the difference,’ she said.

‘I’m sure I would.’

*

He turned in the Opel’s passenger seat and looked back as they drove through the park. Monika Schmidt was back on the horse and the gamekeeper had appeared out of nowhere. The dog sniffed around and relieved itself against the post while the two people were deep in conversation. Monika Schmidt sat straight in the saddle and stared right ahead while the man gestured with his hands.

Michael’s mobile pinged to tell him that a fresh e-mail had landed in his inbox.

The message was from Dr Henkel, the forensic examiner in Berne. Michael clicked on the attachment to open it, read the eminent professor’s conclusions, leaned back and rubbed his eyelids with his fingertips.

‘What is it, Michael?’

‘The lab in Berne,’ he said.

‘Are they done?’

‘Yes.’

He looked across the fields of Jungshoved and the blue, glittering water of Bøgestrømmen.

‘Your father’s fingerprints were on the cartridge shell from the Mauser. They match the prints from the whisky glass.’

‘And the jewellery box?’

‘Only your prints, Elizabeth.’

‘No hair or skin cells?’

‘No.’

‘And you can’t send him the DVD?’ she said.

‘The only prints on it were yours,’ he said. ‘I checked it myself with a bit of evaporated iodine powder and some tape.’

‘I’m an idiot, Michael. When I found it in the safe, I didn’t think anything of it.’

‘Of course you didn’t. You couldn’t know what it was. It could have been anything.’

‘So my father went to Sweden in Sonartek’s jet in March and you’ve found his fingerprints on a cartridge from the rifle which you think was used for hunting and killing up there. But you’re saying it sounds too good to be true. You’re not happy, Michael? Have I got that right?’

‘How did he get from Stockholm to Norway and Finnmark?’ he wondered out loud, then shifted in his seat.

‘I don’t know. Maybe he just got in a car and drove there with the rest of them. It’s not the best-guarded border in the world. It’s not North Korea.’

‘But who were the others?’ he said. ‘That’s the question.’

‘Will you find out?’

‘Of course. Have you heard from your father’s accountant?’

‘About any bizarre transactions with the Cayman Islands, Cyprus or Liechtenstein?’

‘Yes.’

She glanced at her watch.

‘He said he was going to ring this afternoon. He has been
going through my father’s bank statements and credit cards with a fine-tooth comb since our first meeting.’

‘Great.’

Nothing else was said until they reached the outskirts of Copenhagen.

‘Now what?’ she wanted to know.

‘There are a couple of other things I want to look into,’ he said vaguely.

‘What about Norway?’

‘I’ll go up there as soon as I can.’

‘It’s been two years, Michael. What on earth could possibly be left in those godforsaken mountains?’

‘Nothing, but if I don’t go up there, I’ll always be wondering, what if there were some sort of evidence? Or remains that the families could bury? I have to go.’

‘Of course,’ she said, sounding tired. ‘I’ll drop you at your hotel.’

*

When he had got out, he leaned inside the car and smiled.

‘Speak to you later,’ he said.

She looked at him. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, and she didn’t smile.

‘It
was
him, Michael. It’s what he became. It’s what they become.’

‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

He waved after the car as it pulled out from the kerb, and she looked at him in the rear-view mirror and held up a
gloved hand. Then Michael turned around. He was no longer smiling.

Who the hell wipes their fingerprints off their own DVD before returning it to their own, private, high security safe?