Next of Kin (5 page)

The last heat of the Indian summer steamed off the fields as the taxi wound its way from Old Skejby down Humlehusvej, where town met country.

Rose clutched her bag and wondered if she was doing the right thing after all. She had never met Aziz's sister before. How could she be sure that Nazleen was even who she said she was?

And yet. The house on Humlehusvej was something only she and Aziz knew about. They had taken the dog for many walks and had often passed the sinister, unfinished house, which no one seemed to look after. There was no glass in the windows and only a padlocked door made from planks and chipboard. The roof had never been completed and there was no sign that the owner was in a hurry to finish his restoration of the old farmhouse. Aziz had a theory that lack of money was what determined the rate of progress. At any rate, the house nestled there like a kind of modern ruin in the middle of a wild coppice of trees and bushes, in the middle of a beautiful meadow close by her mother's house in Kasted.

Rose's conclusion was that Aziz was unaware she had left home. He'd be thinking that all she needed to do was walk a few kilometres down the road to meet him. She was convinced of that.

Twilight was already laying its veil across the landscape, but the evening was warm as she got out and paid the minor fortune the trip had cost her. She stood for a while watching the rear lights of the taxi as it drove back towards the city. Then there was nothing. No traffic on the little side road; no sounds of cars or people. Only the hooting of an owl nearby. Suddenly she felt vulnerable—here in the middle of the countryside where, up until now, she had always felt so safe. As she slowly started to make her way towards the house she thought about the film her mother had described to her and regretted she hadn't brought a torch. The building was set back from the road and with its gaping windows it looked like a haunted house.

What was he after here? Was it really true that they had to hide from his enemies or was there a different reason?

Her shoes crunched on the gravel path. In the silence the sound echoed in her ears.

Perhaps she should have told someone where she was going. Perhaps she should have phoned her mother and Bo, but they had gone out to a party and the last thing her mum would have wanted was for her and Aziz to get back together again.

The harvest moon sent out a few pale beams, helping her find her way.

‘Aziz?'

She called his name in a low voice, but there was no reply. She found the main door. The padlock had been forced and the door creaked on its rusty hinges. She stepped back. When was the last time they had been here? She tried to remember and images of his face emerged. They had spread out a blanket and cuddled in the sun, close to a rosehip thicket. They had kissed and enjoyed the summer and chatted about everything, the way you did when you had just found each other. But they hadn't made love. They had never made love. He wanted to wait, he said. The time had to be right.

And then all the other stuff happened and the right time never came.

A slight noise made her spin round.

He stood in the moonlight watching her. The outline of his body wasn't as she remembered it from the old days. He was broader than he used to be. His posture had changed, too. He stood as though nailed to the ground, not to be shifted. His face resembled something she had once seen in an art museum. There were edges where there used to be softness; determination where she used to sense his confusion.

What he saw she had no idea, but he gave her a hint when he spoke.

‘You've changed.'

She instantly felt hesitant. ‘How?'

He came closer. He still had his old suppleness and moved without a sound. She briefly wondered how long he might have been standing there. How long he had been watching her.

‘You're more beautiful,' he said as he reached her. ‘I thought it would be impossible, but you are.'

They stood for a while. She could hear that he was breathing fast. Her pulse followed suit and that frightened her a little.

His arm shot out and grabbed her wrist. A deep sound erupted from his throat as he pulled her towards him. She let him, but then she felt the arms holding her and his muscles tensing against her. He was hot, as though running a fever. Her body seemed separate from her brain and spoke to his body in a new language: his hands and her tight jeans. His tongue; her mouth. His groin and her moist thighs under the itchy denim.

‘Come with me.'

He spoke in a hoarse voice, with his mouth against hers as he freed his hand to push open the door to the house. She was pulled inside with him, into the dark, down a corridor to a small room at the farthest end. There was no roof here, only the moon and a few stars had appeared. Two candles burned on an upturned beer crate. A sleeping bag had been spread out on a ground sheet on the floor and a backpack was leaning against the brick wall.

‘You're well prepared.'

Aziz bent down over the backpack and pulled out a bottle of wine and two tooth mugs, setting them on the beer crate. In the outer pocket of the bag he found a corkscrew. She followed him with her eyes and registered every single tiny movement, every twitch of his muscles as he uncorked the bottle with a small pop.

‘I didn't know you drank alcohol.'

‘Well, I am Danish after all,' he said in a harsh tone.

‘You're a Muslim, too.'

He poured and passed her a glass, poured one for himself and brought his glass to hers for a toast. He downed his wine in long deep gulps. She only sipped at hers and put her glass back on the beer crate.

‘I'm so sick and tired of religion,' he said. ‘All kinds of religion.'

Rose wanted to say something, but he continued. ‘I'm so sick and tired of the differences between all of you and us. Between you and me.'

He let out a deep sigh and stared at the ground. ‘And I'm so sick and tired of missing you and knowing that any idiot, like the one at the bar, can chat to you, but I can't.'

Rose wrenched the glass from his hand and put it next to hers. She said the only thing that occurred to her.

‘I love you. That's the important thing. Do you love me?' she asked. She was very close to him now.

She heard him swallow. He tilted back her head and she followed his gaze.

‘All the way up there,' he said.

She smiled. ‘To the moon?'

He smiled back now. She saw his white teeth sparkle in the darkness.

‘To the stars.'

He kissed her and their hands sought the heat under their clothes and against bare skin. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and his upper body gleamed in the candlelight while something pulled her in two directions, away from him and towards him, as though someone were trying to open a stubborn sealed door. They sank down onto the sleeping bag, hands sought buttons and pulled and unzipped until there was nothing left but skin and sweat and the taste of salt and an ancient hunger whirling her into the universe.

She woke up. He was sitting on the beer crate watching her. The candles were still burning.

‘What time is it?'

‘Three.'

She was not sure how she had ended up in the sleeping bag. Her whole body ached. She felt she could take on the world and yet something was eating away at her.

‘What do we do now?'

His eyes changed in the flickering light. She felt she had spoilt something.

‘We need to be careful,' he said at last. ‘There are no safe places for us.'

She heard his bitterness. She wanted to hear his optimism and his firm belief that everything was going to be all right. She wanted to hear him say that from now on they would be together and have nothing to worry about. But that wasn't what she got.

Aziz grabbed her hand and guided it to his mouth. He kissed her palm and placed it against his cheek. She could feel stubble where he always used to be so smooth. He was so different; he suddenly seemed very dangerous, as though there were explosives inside him that could go off very easily.

‘I couldn't just let you go,' he said. ‘Not after what happened at the café.'

He looked at her. She could see the agony in his eyes.

‘I couldn't bear to see another man sitting next to you. It would be impossible.'

‘But I wasn't interested in him. He was a nuisance.'

‘But all the same,' he confessed. ‘I wanted to …' He stopped himself. The candles burned in the silence. ‘… kill him,' he finished.

‘Come. Come down here.' Rose unzipped the sleeping bag. She wanted to take his rage and hurl it far away. She wanted to smooth
his brow and take his burden from him.

He slid off the beer crate and went over to her. ‘I know I should leave you alone,' he said. ‘I've been keeping away for such a long time, hoping it'd pass, but it only gets stronger. Deeper.'

It was so two-sided. Joy mixed with fear of what the future held for them. But right now joy was in the ascendancy and it gave her courage.

‘What about Mustapha?' she asked. ‘Do you know anything?'

‘I know he's in Denmark.'

She didn't want to ask how he knew that. He kept himself informed and he had his sources.

‘At home? With his wife?'

Aziz nodded. He tried to hide the grief in his eyes by staring fiercely at the empty wine bottle. He and Mustapha had been childhood friends in Gellerup. But, according to Mustapha, Aziz had betrayed their friendship and now they were enemies.

‘Is he still just as radical?'

Aziz nodded again. ‘I think so. He's come back from Iraq. What he got up to while he was there is anyone's guess.'

Rose wondered if this was the moment to say the thing that would change so much. She watched Aziz's face and memorised his features in the candlelight: his straight, almost aristocratic nose, his dark eyebrows and his eyes, so deep-set. His jaw was square and his neck muscles could be seen just under the surface of his skin.

‘There's something I've got to tell you,' she said tentatively.

Something watchful surfaced in him. ‘What?'

‘My mother's got a story in the paper tomorrow. Someone sent her a tape, you know, like they do in Iraq, when they've kidnapped someone.'

He froze. His voice sounded tense as if his vocal cords might snap. ‘What's on the tape?'

‘A beheading. The story is about how Muslim terrorism has come to Denmark.'

For a moment he sat still. Then his whole body was transformed. He jumped up as though someone had pressed a button. He automatically began stuffing things into the backpack.

‘Shit. Shit. Shit.' His anger was channelled into rough, rapid movements. ‘When will it ever end?' he blurted. ‘When will we ever be allowed to live a normal life?'

She knew that his anger had all sorts of targets. The criminals, obviously, because they violated their religion and made people suspect all Muslims; the newspaper and her mother because they spread the story and very possibly gave it an extra twist; native Danes who would now be given a pretext to go after immigrants. But most of all he was angry with himself because there was nothing he could do, and because he had his feet on both sides of a fence which was growing higher and higher. He wanted to be Danish, he had said. He wanted to love her until the end of time and he didn't want to live in an arranged marriage with a woman he didn't know. He went to the Police Academy and would soon be one of those on whose shoulders the community rested. He had a love of old Danish movies and treasured his collection of videos and DVDs.

Yet he was and always would be a foreigner. Someone you couldn't trust.

‘When will it end?' he almost screamed, slumping down onto the beer crate. ‘Can you tell me that?'

She had no answer to give him.

‘… have confiscated the film. Aarhus Crime Squad say they're treating the incident as murder, but have no further comment to make. The Intelligence Services have battened down the hatches and no one was prepared to make a statement as to whether they are even part of the picture. However, expert opinion suggests that anything else would be unthinkable.'

The TV2 reporter performed a half-turn. The camera followed and panned around the newspaper office. Dicte looked briefly into the lens, hoping Kaiser was sitting in the Copenhagen office and could sense the curses she was sending in his direction. She also hoped that no one had noticed her gigantic hangover following the excesses of the night before.

‘… And so now here with us in the newspaper's office in Aarhus is journalist Dicte Svendsen, wondering why she should have been chosen to open the envelope containing this macabre film last Thursday, a film which very strongly suggests that international terrorism must now be considered part of Danish life.'

For a brief second viewers were led to believe that the feature would end on this abrupt note, but then a disclaimer followed, intended to place the story in perspective.

‘… In the interest of balanced reporting, however, it must be stressed that no one has yet claimed responsibility for this grotesque action and hence there is nothing to confirm that the motivation behind this is of a religious nature.'

The reporter held his microphone close to his lips like a seductive American crooner. There was just enough time for a small breather and a dramatic break before he rounded off with sombre theatricality in his voice:

‘An isolated incident? An ordinary murder inspired by practices seen in Iraq and other places? Or something quite, quite different? For the time being the answer is blowing in the wind. Jens Rosenberg, TV2, Aarhus.'

A short pause followed. The reporter continued to meet the camera with a firm, authoritative gaze until someone said ‘Okay. It's a take.'

Muttering among themselves, the TV crew started packing their equipment. Lights and cables were gathered up and coiled into crates. The two cameras were transported out on the cameramen's shoulders.

Dicte leaned back in her chair and cursed them roundly. Kaiser had called before the crack of dawn and asked her to make herself available for a range of interviews, but had of course stressed to her that no one else could be given any hitherto unreleased information. As if there was any information, she thought, glaring at the TV crew dressed in their khaki vests with ammunition pockets, pretending they were on a reconnaissance patrol in Afghanistan.

It was a question of establishing a profile, Kaiser had said, meaning it was really a matter of selling more newspapers. Bo had suggested they catch the first plane out of Denmark. She had said no, and consequently he was making himself conveniently invisible in his photo lab while she lined up for interviews like Kaiser's little lapdog.

She watched the reporter gulp down his last mouthful of coffee and he sent her a sympathetic smile which she neglected to return. Instead she stared into her computer screen pretending there was some vital information to be found there. Her own story had, of course, made the biggest splash.

Both news channels had decided to run extra news flashes—‘Breaking News' as they called it these days, although everyone had wised up to the fact that such programs were hype. ‘Breaking News' flashes broadcast everything from earthquakes and typhoons to the Danish Queen and her consort visiting the Bilka Superstore in Hundige. Saturday morning TV was normally back-to-back cartoons for the kiddies so Mummy and Daddy could treat themselves to a bit of a lie-in, but there wouldn't have been much time for one this morning, Dicte thought, as she answered the telephone which was ringing for the umpteenth time.

‘Dicte Svendsen.'

‘It was huge, I loved it.' Kaiser sounded as excited as a four-year-old with a new fire engine. ‘You displayed just the right amount of shock.'

‘That might be because I am feeling shocked,' she replied.

‘Yes, of course you are. We all are,' he said, blanking her reproach. ‘What have you got on for tomorrow?'

It was never-ending. She ought to have known, but she had her hands full keeping the press off her doorstep like some pop star. The story had generated precisely the kind of attention for which Kaiser had hoped.

‘Nothing. Nothing new has happened, apart from the Danish world press turning up in Aarhus.'

‘I've got an idea.'

Dicte seldom liked Kaiser's ideas. She sank deeper into her office chair and waved goodbye to the reporter, who had tossed his Philip Marlowe coat over his shoulder. ‘What is it?'

‘Dicte Svendsen speaks out,' he proclaimed.

She nearly repeated her party piece from Thursday night over the carpet. But she'd eaten nothing for several hours so there was unlikely to be anything to bring up.

‘Nope. Over my dead body.'

‘Well, we can call it something else,' he said, sounding hurt. ‘The journalist in her own words. My worst nightmare. Something like that. The others are bloody carrying stories about you, so why not your own paper?'

‘Not on your life.'

‘Davidsen could write it.'

She looked over at Davidsen, who was hammering away on his keyboard. ‘Davidsen? You can't be serious.'

On hearing his own name Davidsen peered up and gave Dicte the schoolteacher look. Her deep-rooted hatred of the office's number one man stuck in her craw. Everything was starting to take a turn for the worst. She deeply regretted she hadn't been able to curb her curiosity and chuck the envelope and the CD in the bin, unopened.

‘I'll think of something,' she said hurriedly. ‘You'll get something from me. But not that. There's no bloody way you're getting me to pour out my soul to the readers.' Then she realised she had walked straight into a trap.

‘Getting others to do just that has never troubled you,' Otto Kaiser stated. ‘In fact, that's what you do for a living.'

Her palms were sweating so much the receiver nearly slipped out of her hand. He was right, but she wasn't going to give up without a fight.

‘And here was I thinking I was being paid to save the world,' she said.

She could hear his smile when he said, ‘I'll hold some space on the front page. I'm counting on you, Svendsen!'

‘And where did you say we were going? The Philippines? Outer Mongolia?'

Dicte's head was still spinning from too much wine and not enough sleep. She settled on the sofa in Bo's photo lab where he sat gawping at the screen. The coffee table was covered with papers and she casually scanned them. Insurance papers, she noticed. That's right, he'd mentioned that he needed to be re-insured, ready for his next trip abroad, but as far as she knew he had no actual plans.

Discreetly she pulled a sheet closer while Bo sat studying something on his screen, lost in concentration. He had filled in most of the boxes, she could see. His age, height, weight, address, telephone number and email address had been added in his handwriting. One box read ‘Next of kin'. He had yet to fill that one in.

‘Shit!' he said in English.

It wasn't so much the word, more the intensity in his voice which made her look up, just in time to discover that he was zooming out. Suddenly she realised what he had been looking at.

‘What are you up to?'

He tore himself away from the screen. ‘I've been studying the details. But I'm probably not going to find anything Crime Squad or PET haven't already found.'

An image of the beheading was frozen on the screen. Dicte saw the sabre gleaming in the air on its way down to the man's neck.

‘Bloody hell,' was all she said. ‘How can you bear to watch it?'

‘It's all we've got,' he muttered as he zoomed in again, not on the weapon or the assailant, but on the background. ‘Can you see it?'

‘See what?'

He indicated something with his ballpoint. Far away on the horizon, squeezed in between two big broad-leaved trees, the sky had two hues. The upper hue a shade of blue lighter than the lower one where, if you looked closely, there was a small white spot.

‘Water,' Bo said.

She pulled up a chair and put her face right up close to the screen. ‘The sea?'

‘Hmm.'

‘And that thing there?' She pointed to the small white spot.

‘It's a ship.'

‘How big can we make it?'

‘Big enough.'

She looked away from the screen, stared at Bo and then realised that he'd known all the time. And, indeed, he had a triumphant smile on his face as he let the information sink in.

‘It's the
Vesborg
.'

‘The Samsø ferry?'

‘Looks like it.'

She had another look. The ferry sailed from Hov on the mainland to Sælvig on the island of Samsø; she had been there with Rose one weekend at the start of the summer while Bo had been away on a trip. She tried to recall the landscape around Hov. Not very hilly, as far as she remembered. A bit flat, in fact.

‘It could be Samsø,' she said. ‘There's a ridge you can see the ferry from.'

He nodded. She was already on her feet with her bag in her hand. A thousand thoughts cascaded through her head. The police had their IT experts, too. Of course they had studied the film. Of course they would have reached the same conclusion.

‘Why don't you call and make us a booking? Two passengers and a car?'

Bo put on his cunning smile.

‘We might still be lucky. Unless they've already sold every single car space on that ferry to the police.'