Next of Kin (6 page)

Emergency services always rang at the worst possible time.

That was his first thought as he heard the familiar sound from the depths of his pocket. Of all occasions: right in the middle of his father-in-law's speech to his wife on their golden wedding anniversary.

‘Terribly sorry,' he murmured, fumbling to retrieve the irate device.

The lunch guests already seemed to be cross with him because he had been so quiet and irritable. He had snapped at Maibritt as she tried to straighten his tie, and he had also told off the waitress in an unnecessarily loud voice, but then she shouldn't have bloody well gone and poured red wine into his water tumbler—and she had stared at him as though he'd just jumped on her sandcastle.

Thirteen pairs of disapproving eyes turned in his direction. Even twelve-year-old Jonas, his nephew, frowned. Maibritt made a movement with her head that was a clear indication that he was to leave the table and go outside. So he did.

‘Ole Nyborg Madsen,' he said, while managing to open the door of the restaurant. The wind off the marina took hold of his jacket and made his coat-tails flap and his tie float in a ridiculous fashion. It was fortunate he had no hair left to whip uncontrollably in the wind.

‘Duty officer here. We've received a request from A&E for counselling. You're on duty today, right?'

He confirmed. It was his first week back in the saddle since Nanna had died those few months ago. He had felt ready. He had forgiven himself the incident in Storcenter Nord. He had worked through his grief, he concluded, even though he sensed that Maibritt did not quite agree with him. She hadn't needed any time off, but then, on the other hand, she didn't have a job where she was faced with other people's unhappiness and wrecked lives on a daily basis. There wasn't much of that when you worked on your own from home, but then there were other downsides to writing children's books.

‘What's the spiel and who's the doctor?'

‘The doctor is Hans Peter Jensen. You need to talk to a young man whose dog savaged a seven-year-old girl. She's on the operating table as we speak.'

‘So he's asked for someone to talk to? Or did the doctor request it?'

A brief pause followed. Then, ‘As far as I know the request came from the man's employer. He works for a waste management company.'

Ole Nyborg Madsen cast a relieved glance through the glass frontage of the restaurant. At the table his father-in-law had finished his speech and it was time for kisses and toasts. It suited him fine that he was able to escape the rest of the family farce.

‘Okay,' he said, barely able to suppress a smile. ‘I'll be there as soon as I can.'

He returned to the party and made his excuses. They too looked relieved. Maibritt walked him to the door and out into the wind.

‘Now I understand why,' she said.

‘Why what?'

‘It's on Monday. They're letting him out on Monday.'

Her eyes were deep blue and they looked at him with all the concern he could no longer face. How did she do it? How could she be so calm? So indifferent? He couldn't pretend that he wasn't just a tiny bit envious, yet at the same time he wasn't. Hatred, he had discovered, was an incredibly potent fuel. It gave him an energy he had never known.

He nodded. ‘After four months. One hundred and twenty-two days.'

The bitterness seeped out between his lips. He could hear it clearly when the wind caught his words.

She shook her head. She took his hand, but he withdrew it.

‘You're not ready to go back to work, Ole. Why can't you see that yourself?'

‘Of course I'm ready,' he snapped. ‘I can't keep sitting at home staring at four blank walls. How's that going to make me feel any better?'

He could tell that she wanted to say something more, but then she pursed her lips together.

‘Well, good luck then.'

She leaned forwards. He managed to shift so that her kiss landed right next to his mouth and he saw her disappointment, but he didn't have the energy to apologise.

‘I'll take the car. Can you get a lift back?'

She nodded and returned to the party without another word.

The young man sat in the consultation room staring into space. He was wearing a tight T-shirt and oversized jogging pants and was living proof of the theory that dog owners tend to resemble their dogs. In his case a small, compact bull terrier.

‘Hello. My name's Ole Nyborg Madsen. I understand you've had a nasty experience.' He stuck out his hand. ‘I'm a psychologist.'

The young man, whose name was Thor, glared at Ole's hand for a while before lazily returning the handshake and then stuffing his hand back into his pocket.

Ole sat down opposite him. A coffee table separated them. He looked into the young man's eyes searching for trauma or a hint of a troubled conscience, but his eyes met Ole's with something that suspiciously looked like defiance.

‘It's just my company,' Thor said. ‘I guess they don't want me to go gaga and take sick leave. But that's out of the question,' he added.

‘You might have a delayed reaction,' Ole said cautiously. ‘After all, as I understand it, it was a violent incident. Do you want to tell me about it?'

The young man ran his hand through his ultra-short hair and sighed; it seemed he couldn't even be bothered to find the words. He slumped back in the seat and Ole was overcome by a sudden urge to shake him, order him to sit up straight and show just a little bit of respect to the seven-year-old girl whose arm had been torn to pieces and might even lose it all together.

‘Well, this kid came running up as if Arnold was some kind of poodle she wanted to pat.'

‘She's only seven years old.'

Thor shook his head and rolled his eyes. ‘Then it's her parents' job to keep an eye on her. I had my dog on a leash. He was only trying to defend me. It's only natural, pal.' He mouthed something inaudible; it looked like ‘retard.'

Ole struggled with his hostility. ‘So you were chatting to a friend on the pavement in Silkeborgvej. The girl came up to you, right? Then what happened?'

Thor, with a frown, seemed to be having difficulty recalling the details. ‘I didn't see a lot. Suddenly I heard the dog growl. That's the first warning, you know.'

He looked at Ole, clearly indicating that the girl ought to have acquainted herself better with canine psychology.

‘And then all hell broke loose before I had time to count to three.'

‘So the growl wasn't much of a warning?'

Thor shrugged. ‘She should have damned well kept her distance. But, no, she squatted down to stroke Arnold.'

The two last words were spoken with a sneer. Ole took a deep breath. There was no indication that the incident had traumatised the young man—no tears or hysterics, no unmotivated fits of laughter or incessant talk about irrelevant matters. On the contrary, he sensed only irritation that he had to sit here in A&E wasting his time when he could be somewhere else.

The patient seemed to have read his mind. He said, ‘No offence, but how long am I supposed to sit here? I mean, I drove her here right away, didn't I? I borrowed my mate's car and drove like hell, with my foot right down.'

He sent Ole a pleading look as if he were a school kid trying to get his teacher to let him out early so he could catch the bus.

‘I mean, I've already made a statement to the police. They sent someone up here …' He glanced at his watch. ‘AGF are playing Esbjerg in thirty minutes. I'm meeting someone at the stadium.'

‘Now listen here.' Ole shifted slightly on the warm woollen seat cover. He knew he ought to stop himself, but it required effort, and he was not really in that frame of mind today.

‘A seven-year-old girl is fighting for her arm. She might very well lose it. It was your dog that bit her. According to the law, as the owner of that dog, you're responsible. Do you mean to tell me you don't feel even the slightest bit ill at ease?'

He knew it was unprofessional. It went against everything he had been taught; all the rules and regulations about how to treat people in stressful situations. He ought to have been on the man's side—that was his job. He ought to feel ashamed, but he didn't.

‘Look, pal. I didn't do this on bloody purpose!' Thor raised his voice.

Ole had heard the words before. Spoken in exactly the same way and with the exact same self-righteousness and pathetic, wounded tone of voice.

He had to wipe his brow with his shirt sleeve. His whole body was shaking. He remembered the court case and the young man in the dock, who hadn't looked him in the eyes, not once. He remembered his almost indignant defence: ‘I didn't do it on purpose!'

He hadn't drunk himself senseless on purpose and subsequently knocked down a young woman. He hadn't hit Nanna while she was on the pedestrian crossing on purpose. He hadn't killed her on purpose.

Ole got up. The room was spinning and he had to support himself on a chair for a moment.

‘I don't think there's any more to say,' he said. ‘I'll write a report confirming you feel okay about the incident and are unlikely to suffer long-term psychological damage.'

Then he made a half-hearted attempt but failed miserably in keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. ‘Anyway, you don't want to miss the start of the football match.'

The sea was grey. The wind had brought rain from the west and now it was torrential, transforming the sun deck of the Samsø ferry into a water chute. In the USA, Hurricane Rita was wreaking havoc and flooding entire towns; on the weather map typhoons whirled across Asia, bringing death and destruction; and in Denmark the weather man on the morning news had spoken about a ‘nicely coherent' cloud formation which was approaching the country and forcing temperatures down below 15 degrees Celsius. From one day to the next, summer was officially over.

Dicte clutched the railings with wet hands. With her hood tight around her ears, the drumming of the rain sounded like hundreds of runaway horses. They ought to have gone downstairs and got themselves some lunch, but a touch of seasickness plus her hangover had forced her onto the deck, and all she really felt like was standing right in the middle of it all and letting the elements rage around her. That way it seemed as if everything else could be kept at a distance: saying goodbye to Anne; the tension all morning and throngs of journalists; Kaiser's attempt to control her; the film with its bloody, bizarre contents—she imagined it all being washed away, hosed off the deck until it ran down hidden channels and disappeared into the sea.

‘It'll be tough examining a crime scene in this weather.'

Bo looked up and let the rain lash his face. His ponytail was soaked and his skin red from the impact. She wanted to tell him that he could at least pull up his collar, but she refrained. She mustn't fuss, and ever since his trip to Iraq where he had managed to get his leg smashed up during a night-time ambush, she had to be even more careful. Never mollycoddle wounded heroes. Instead she nodded. Her hood funnelled the rain down her nose and it tickled.

‘They're probably there already.'

The Samsø coastline came closer and closer. She followed Bo's eyes, which were scanning the trees and bushes all the way out to the wind turbines.

‘That makes it easier for us to find them,' he said, and she knew he was right. There were other advantages to be had from knowing the police would have been swift to analyse the film. Kaiser might very well be over the moon, but her desire to be the first to find the crime scene, the first to find decapitated heads and headless bodies, wasn't terribly strong.

They sought shelter inside the doorway so she could continue keeping an eye on the horizon and keep her seasickness at bay. She felt like exactly what she was: a very small person on a very big sea. When would a wave wash her overboard? When would it all come crashing down on top of her?

She shuddered in her raincoat. The film had been sent to her alone while Bo was standing on the sidelines. She thought about the insurance application she had seen in the photo lab. She really wanted to know what he was going to put in the last box, but was too afraid to ask.

‘It can't be far from here. We need to find a hill. Yderste Høj, next to Toftebjerg, or Dyret by Onsbjerg would both do,' Bo muttered, and once back in the car they studied the map. His finger traced the road from Sælvig Harbour to Østerby. He looked at Dicte, waiting for a decision.

‘Let's go towards Østerby,' she said, switching on the air conditioner. The rain was making the windows steam up. ‘If they're here, we're bound to see their cars, unless they've all turned up in unmarked vehicles.'

As she spoke they heard the siren. It came from the right, got closer and they just had time to see the police car pass them at breakneck speed like a black and white bolt of lightning.

‘Toftebjerg,' Bo concluded, turning onto the narrow road and indicating left.

They drove down Hærvejen following the police car along the water, with Sælvig Bay on their left. Even with the window only slightly open, Dicte could smell the seaweed and salt water mixed with damp humus. The island seemed to her to be one big luxuriant sponge absorbing moisture and feeding off it. Perhaps it was feeding off blood too? Its innocence might not be quite as pure as it appeared.

‘There.'

Bo turned off and followed the winding road across the island. Fields were rolled out like carpets, drinking up the rain. Fresh vegetables for sale on stalls with honesty boxes and handwritten cardboard signs.

Toftebjerg was no more than a cluster of houses and a few farms. Hollyhocks and woven reed fences, timber frames and chickens in the back garden. A retriever stood by the side of the road barking at them as they took another turn, past a herd of wide-eyed dairy cows. And then they saw the cars parked in messy lines: civilian cars, patrol cars, dog handlers' vehicles and an ambulance, with the rain streaming in intricate patterns down the tinted glass. Figures in raincoats and rubber boots were working inside red and white tape, and Dicte could see two dog handlers in action with their eager Alsatians. Now that the siren was silenced, the stillness was as heavy as the rain.

Bo parked and they got out. Wagner's dark blue Passat was parked with its engine still running. There were two men in the car and Dicte tapped the window softly. Ivar K rolled it down.

‘What are you doing here?'

Bo pulled up his collar. Water coursed down his neck. ‘Sightseeing. They say Samsø is lovely this time of year.'

The passenger door opened and John Wagner got out wrapped in an enormous black waterproof cape. Dicte could see irritation and stress from the frown on his forehead and the downward curl of his lips at the corners. He was looking at Bo. He'd never really liked him all that much.

‘Perhaps you're looking for a job in our IT section?'

Bo shrugged. ‘It was easy enough. Just press zoom.'

Wagner raised an eyebrow.

Dicte intervened. ‘Have you found anything?'

Wagner must have detected her desperation because he dropped his hostility towards Bo and sent her a friendly look.

‘This is the crime scene; I don't think we can keep that a secret. It's all there, the trees, the view, everything.'

‘And the body? The murder weapon?'

He shook his head.

‘Give us a chance, will you? We've only been on the island a couple of hours.' Then he nodded in the direction of the garden behind the house that appeared to be the centre of attention. ‘They're digging.'

‘Any clues?' Dicte asked.

He shook his head.

Bo had retrieved his boots from the back of their car and had sidled up to the tape to get a good look at the rear garden. She knew that he'd soon pull out his camera and start clicking even though he was unable to get any closer.

As she was about to ask Wagner another question, Dicte's mobile started ringing in her bag. She managed to locate it with freezing wet hands. ‘Dicte here.'

‘Mum!' Rose's voice was filled with despair.

‘Mum, it's not true, is it? That beheading. Please tell me it's some sort of joke.'

Her daughter had read the newspaper. As always, it seemed much more powerful than when you just told the story, as she had done over the phone. They had taken a frame from the film and put it on the front page. Kaiser had, of course, chosen the moment half a second before the head came off. The headline ran: ‘Now it's here: Muslim terror comes to Denmark.'

Oddly enough, the story coincided with one about the Arts Minister calling for action against certain Muslims' ‘medieval and undemocratic values', following the honour killing of a nineteen-year-old Pakistani woman by her brother a few days earlier.

‘Darling. Listen to me—'

‘But you can't know for sure, can you? Rose insisted. ‘No one has claimed responsibility yet, so how can you write stuff like that? How could you, Mum?'

Someone called out from the depths of the garden. Dicte looked for Wagner who, followed by Ivar K, had started heading down there.

‘Rose. Listen to me. I hope that it's wrong, too, but you know how this works. It's my job and someone's got to do it.'

‘But that headline. Imagine what it feels like … Think of …'

‘Aziz?' She said it very calmly and quietly, but something inside her started to topple. Rose and Aziz, that was it. That was the link. ‘You've been seeing Aziz, haven't you?'

It came out like an accusation and she regretted it instantly. But it was too late and her daughter hung up as she always did when she wanted to punish her. Close a door, turn around and walk out of a room, away from the confrontation. Just vanish and leave the other person with all the unanswered questions. Rose was like that, too.

She slipped the phone in her pocket and joined Bo.

‘What's up?'

Bo turned to face her. Raindrops fell from his hair onto her cheek and he put his mouth against her ear as if trying to calm a nervous dog.

‘I think they've found something down there.'