The Absent One (48 page)

For a moment she studied her fellow passengers. Then she slipped her hand into her duffel bag and touched the hand grenade, the pistol and the silencer, the shoulder bag and her beloved bundle. Everything she needed was in that canvas bag.

At the Duemose whistle-stop she waited until the other early-morning passengers had been picked up or had ridden away on their bicycles that were parked by the red shelter.

One motorist asked her if she wanted a lift, but she simply smiled. A smile could also be used that way.

When the platform was clear and the road was as deserted as before they’d arrived, she walked to the end of the platform, hopped down on to the gravel and continued along the tracks by the edge of the forest until she found a place where she could leave her duffel bag.

Then she packed her shoulder bag, slung the strap over her head, tucked her jeans into her socks, and stowed the larger bag behind a bush.

‘Mummy will be back, my love, don’t be afraid,’ she said, as the voices implored her to pick up her pace.

The public forest was easy to navigate. Just a few yards up the road, past a small business establishment, and she was already on one of the paths that would lead her to the rear of Torsten’s property.

She had plenty of time, in spite of the voices telling her otherwise. She raised her eyes to catch a glimpse of the last splatters of colour hanging in the branches, and sucked in the autumn air, taking in all the season’s strength and beauty.

It had been years since she’d been able to do that. So many years.

When she reached the firebreak, she could tell it had been widened since she’d been there. She lay down at the edge of the forest and looked across the cleared area towards the fence that separated Torsten’s forest from the public one. Having lived on Copenhagen’s streets for so long she was well aware of how inconspicuous surveillance cameras could be. She scanned the trees and the fence and took her time finding out where they were. From where she was she could see four cameras. Two that were stationary and two that rotated back and forth continuously on a 180-degree axis. One of the stationary cameras was aimed directly at her.

She retreated into the thicket and considered her situation.

The firebreak itself was nine or ten yards wide. The grass was freshly mown, so the space was quite open and level. She looked in both directions. It was the same everywhere. There was only one way to get over the firebreak undetected, and that wasn’t by crossing the grass.

It was from tree to tree. Branch to branch.

She thought hard. The oak tree on her side of the clearing was taller than the beech on the other side. Sturdy, gnarled branches that stretched five or six yards across the clearing, compared to the beech’s smaller, skinnier branches. If she leaped from the tall tree to the low one, the drop was a couple of yards, but at the same time she would have to throw her body forward to land closer to the trunk of the beech tree. Otherwise the branches wouldn’t support her.

Kimmie had never been good at trees. Her mother had forbidden her to play wherever she risked getting her clothes dirty, and when her mother had gone, so too had her desire to climb trees.

It was a fine specimen, this huge oak. Crooked branches that jutted out a good distance, and the bark was rough. Actually quite easy to climb.

It was a good feeling. ‘You’ll have to try it, too, sometime, Mille,’ she said softly, and began pulling herself up.

Not until she was sitting in the tree did she begin to have second thoughts. The distance to the ground was suddenly so real, the leap over to the beech’s smooth branches seemed daunting. Could she really do it? From the ground it had looked easy, but not from here. If she fell, she was done for. She would break bones. They would see her on the surveillance cameras. They would capture her, and then everything would be out of her hands. She knew them. Revenge would then be theirs, not hers.

So she sat for a while, trying to calculate how to make her jump. Then she rose carefully, her arms behind her, clinging to the oak’s branches.

When she sprang, she knew she had made too strong a
take-off. Knew it as she flew through the air and watched the tree trunk beneath her come far too close. She felt one of her fingers breaking in her attempt to avoid the collision, but her reflexes took over. Even if one finger didn’t work, she had nine others that did. She would have to deal with the pain later. As she clung to the tree, she noted that beeches have fewer branches on the lower portion of their trunk than oaks.

She climbed down the first bit, then clutched at the lowest branch, estimating that she still had three or four yards before she reached the ground. Then she slung herself out across the branch and hung there a moment as the broken finger did its own thing. She gripped the branch closest to the trunk, wrapped an arm around it as well as she could, and then let go. Scars and knots in the tree bloodied her forearms and neck as she slid to the ground.

Examining her twisted finger, she yanked it back in place, sending waves of pain through her entire body. But Kimmie remained silent. She would have shot it off, if necessary.

Then she wiped the blood from her neck and moved into the forest shadows on the far side of the fence.

The vegetation was mixed. She remembered that from their previous hunt. Evergreens in clusters, small clearings with newly planted deciduous trees and long stretches of birch, brambles, beech and scattered oaks.

It smelled strongly of rotting leaves. Over a decade spent in the asphalt jungle made one extra sensitive to these kinds of scents.

The voices now demanded that she hurry up and finish
the job. And that the confrontation be on her terms. But Kimmie didn’t listen. She knew she had time enough. When Torsten, Ulrik and Ditlev played these gory games, they never finished until they were satiated. And that didn’t happen quickly.

‘I’m walking along the edge of the forest and the firebreak,’ she said aloud, so the voices would back off. ‘It’s a longer route, but we’ll still reach the estate.’

That was how she came to see the dark-skinned men standing around, facing the woods and waiting, and how she saw the cage with the enraged animal. It was how she noticed the leather leggings the men wore over their trousers, all the way up to the groin.

It was why she ducked back into the forest to see how things would develop.

She was in the land of the hunter.

He ran with his head angled backwards, catching glimpses of the ground beneath him in flickering alternation between dry leaves and treacherous branches. Far behind him he could hear Assad’s enraged protests, until finally everything grew quiet.

He slowed down. Struggled with the gaffer tape on his back, his nostrils dry from gasping for breath. He craned his neck to try to see.

He had to get the tape removed from his eyes. Before anything else. In a short while they would be coming at him from every direction. The hunters from up by the estate, the beaters from God knows where. He turned his body all the way round and saw only trees and more trees through the narrow slit in the tape. Then he ran again for a few seconds before a low-hanging branch knocked him on the head and flung him backwards.

‘Damn it,’ he muttered. God fucking damn it.

He stood up with difficulty and felt around for a branch on the tree, which was broken at shoulder height. Then he moved up to the trunk, positioned himself so the branch stump got under the gaffer tape right next to his nostril, and forced his body steadily downward. This caused the tape to tighten around his neck, but it didn’t get it away from his eyes. The tape was stuck too tightly to his eyelids.

He pulled his head downward again, trying to keep his eyes closed, but could feel how his eyelids once more stuck to the tape, turning the whites of his eyes outward.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ he cursed, and began swinging his head from side to side as the branch scratched one of his eyelids.

Then he heard the beaters’ cries for the first time. They weren’t as far away as he’d hoped. Maybe only a few hundred yards; inside these woods it was hard to judge. He raised his head, watched the stump release the gaffer tape, and noticed he could now see more or less freely with the one eye.

The dense forest spread out before him. The light fell unevenly and, truth be told, he had no idea which direction he was facing. That alone made him realize it could soon be all over for Carl Mørck.

The initial shots came after Carl had got past the first clearing, and now the beaters were so close that he was forced to lie on the ground. As far as he could tell, the firebreak was just ahead and behind that were the paths through the state forest. He was no more than seven or eight hundred yards, as the crow flies, from where his car was parked, but what use was that when he didn’t know what direction it was in?

He saw birds flap their wings and scatter above the treetops, heard the underbrush shifting. The beaters were shouting and knocking pieces of wood together. Animals fled.

If they have dogs with them, they’ll have no trouble at all finding
me
, he thought, dropping his eyes to a pile of leaves that the wind had swept into a heap, caught by a couple of forked branches on the ground.

When the first roe deer leaped, the shock of it made him jerk involuntarily and he rolled instinctively towards the cluster of leaves, twisting and turning and burrowing his body down into the heap.

Breathe calmly and slowly now
, he told himself, resting in the humus-scented pile. Damn, he hoped Torsten Florin hadn’t given his beaters mobiles so he could warn them that they were approaching an escaped policeman who absolutely mustn’t get away. How he wished Florin hadn’t! But was that likely? That a man like him would fail to take such precautions? Hardly. Of course the beaters had to know who and what they were chasing.

It was while he was under the pile of leaves that he noticed how his wound had reopened, how the seeping blood was making his shirt cling to his body. If there were dogs, they would sniff him out in an instant. And if he lay like that for very long, he would bleed to death.

So how the hell could he help Assad? And if against all the odds he survived and Assad died, how could he ever look at himself in the mirror again? He simply wouldn’t be able to. He’d lost a partner before. He had let down a partner before. That was a fact.

He breathed deeply. He couldn’t let it happen again. Even if he burned in hell. Even if he landed in jail. Even if it cost him his life.

He blew the leaves away from his eyes and heard a kind of hissing sound that slowly grew louder, turning into a huffing and a muted barking. He felt his pulse rise and the
wound in his shoulder throb harder. If this was a dog, it was all over now.

Further away, the beaters’ determined steps grew louder. They were laughing and shouting; they knew exactly what they were doing.

Then the brittle, crunching noises the animal was making in the underbrush stopped, and he suddenly knew it was standing there, looking at him.

He blew a few more leaves from his eyes and found himself gazing directly into the distended muzzle of a fox. Its eyes were bloodshot and there was froth ringing its mouth. Panting as though it were deathly ill, and quaking in every muscle as if it were freezing.

It hissed when it saw him blinking there among the leaves and hissed again when he held his breath. Bared its teeth in a demented growl and slunk towards him with its head lowered.

Suddenly it stiffened. Raised its head and looked back as if sensing danger. Then it turned again towards Carl, and suddenly, as if the animal possessed the capacity for reflective thought, it crawled along the ground towards him and settled at his feet, digging itself under the leaves with its dripping snout.

There it lay, breathing shallowly and waiting. Completely hidden by leaves. Exactly like him.

A flock of partridges was gathered in a shimmering ray of light a little way off, and when it took flight, frightened by the beaters’ rumbling through the woods, there was a volley of gunfire. Every single round fired sent shivers through Carl as the fox trembled at his feet.

He watched the hunters’ dogs fetch the birds, and soon
after he saw the hunters themselves, like silhouettes against the leafless thicket.

There were nine or ten of them, all wearing laced-up boots and plus fours. As they came closer, he recognized several of them as members of society’s elite.
Should I stand up and identify myself?
he wondered for a moment, before catching sight of their host and his two friends, both of whom were holding loaded crossbows. If Florin, Dybbøl Jensen or Pram spotted him, they would shoot first without hesitation. They would claim it was an accident. They would get the others in the hunting party to go along with the story. Their camaraderie was tight, he knew. They would remove the tape from him and make it look like an accident.

Carl’s breathing grew shallower and shallower, like the fox’s. What about Assad? And what about himself?

Now they were standing a few yards from the pile of leaves, the dogs growling and the animal at his feet breathing audibly. Suddenly the fox sprang straight for the nearest hunter, tearing at his groin with all the power it could muster. The young man emitted a blood-curdling scream. A cry of mortal dread. The dogs snapped at the fox, but the animal made a furious stand against them, pissing with legs spread before springing for its life. Ditlev Pram took aim.

He didn’t hear the bolt whistling through the air, but he heard the fox howl in the distance and then its whining death throes.

The dogs sniffed around the fox’s urine and one stuck its muzzle where the fox had lain at Carl’s feet, but it didn’t pick up Carl’s scent.

God bless the fox and its piss
, Carl thought to himself, as the dogs clustered around their masters and the injured man lay screaming on the ground a few yards away, writhing with cramp in both his legs. His hunting buddies bent over him and attempted to attend to his wound. They tore their scarves into strips, bandaged him and lifted him up.