Trophy (38 page)

Three days later, Michael was back behind the desk in his usual room at the Admiral Hotel. The hallway carpet had been replaced. There had been no complaints or compensation claims from the hotel management and the porter was just as polite and welcoming as always. She was used to rap and rock stars, she said, and nothing Michael did could ever compare to the total vandalism which the music industry’s current wunderkinds subjected hotels to – if only to keep up their image. Even so Michael felt compelled to tip her and the other staff generously at every opportunity.

And he could afford it. Sara had called the same morning and told him in a breathless voice of the astronomical sums pouring into his business account. His accountant had hummed a little tune when he rang her, she said. In addition to his agreed fee and reimbursement of various expenses, Elizabeth Caspersen had decided that he had earned a bonus. Of the seven-figure variety. A seven-figure sweetener to buy his silence, Michael said to his wife, but she wasn’t listening.

She couldn’t wait to see him.

‘I can’t wait to see you either,’ he said.

‘And the children?’ she asked.

‘Sod the children. I can’t wait to see
you
,’ he said.

There was a smile in her voice.

‘Thank you. When will you be home?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Not today?’

‘I’ve got a couple of things to do here, Sara. Little things. But important.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘How will I recognize you?’

‘Look for my ears,’ he said.

*

He had visited Elizabeth Caspersen the day before at the Caspersen mansion in Hellerup. Her black Opel was parked on the gravel below the main steps, but the garage was empty; the Maserati, the Mercedes and the Rolls-Royce were gone and inside the house the wall above the stairs was bare. There was a faded rectangle left by Flemming Caspersen’s portrait. The man was systematically being erased, Michael thought.

Klara Caspersen still missed her husband and continued to ask for him in her darkened bedroom where a nurse tried gently to distract her. In the library the light and the view were still sensational, but the bear had gone along with the photograph from Sweden. The endless summer afternoon in the canoe had been taken down.

‘Will you be moving in here?’ he asked Elizabeth Caspersen.

‘I would rather die,’ she said and took a seat. ‘Do sit down.’

Michael sat down on the armchair next to the lawyer. She was wearing a well-fitting, pinstripe suit and a collarless white silk blouse; her expression was neutral.

‘Will it grow back?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘Your hair.’

Michael ran his palm over the short stubble. His hands were freshly bandaged and the plastic surgeon had been hopeful. He didn’t think Michael would have much in the way of permanent scarring.

‘So they tell me.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said and her fingers found the string of pearls around her throat. ‘It was nice. Your hair.’

‘Thank you.’

Michael looked out of the windows. Something was missing.

‘Where is the dog?’ he asked.

‘Nigger? I had to have him put down, sadly. The neighbours complained. Michael?’

He looked at her.

‘Yes?’

She blushed faintly.

‘Did he do it?’

‘Yes, he did.’

She closed her eyes for a moment and sank back into the armchair.

‘Why?’

Michael lit a cigarette and offered her one. She hesitated before taking one, then she got up and found an ashtray which she placed on the armrest of her chair.

‘I’m trying to quit,’ she said. ‘Again.’

‘So am I,’ he said. ‘Henrik Schmidt was the driving force, I think. It might have been your father’s idea, but it was Henrik who organized it, set up Running Man Casino for the financial transactions and screened the clients. I guess they thought they might as well make money out of their sport while they were at it. They were business people through and through, your father, Victor and Henrik Schmidt.’

‘But why?’

‘Henrik was insane. Textbook psycho. And he desperately wanted to be close to your father and his own. He wanted to be important to them and surpass his brother. That was probably his primary motive.’

He looked at her.

‘By the way, thanks for your help,’ he said. ‘We were as good as dead. They had seen through Keith, or Henrik had. They killed him.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Michael.’

‘How did you convince Jakob to help us?’

She narrowed her eyes and studied him for a while before she replied.

‘Deep down Jakob is a survivor. I imagine he could see where it was heading with his brother and his … Victor.’

‘His half-brother, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think that’s the whole story, Elizabeth.’

She winked, but then she smiled to him. A genuine smile.

‘You’re sharp, Michael. The girl. Henrik took her from him. He was jealous. He loved Jakob. And hated him because Jakob was the favourite even though Henrik was the one who always did as he was told and what he was expected to do and worked day and night for Victor and my father.’

‘Johanne Reimers?’

‘Yes. Jakob met her in Nepal. He fell in love with her, but he was in the army at that time so he had to go back to Afghanistan.’

‘And Henrik Schmidt found out about her?’

‘They were close back then so of course Jakob told Henrik about her. Henrik organized the hunting trip with his friends from Pederslund. Perhaps it was the first of many and I presume it was that trip which prompted Henrik to create the set-up. I picked up the CD in the scout hut where you had hidden it and I called Jakob. I told him about Nepal and he saw the film. You could call it an incentive.’

‘And you gave him the coordinates for Porsanger Fjord?’

‘That was all he asked for. He’s very good.’

Michael nodded. ‘He’s very, very good indeed. But couldn’t you have told me that he was coming?’

‘I suppose I could have, but you might not have needed him, it might have been enough for him to observe and then go home. Or perhaps your reactions might not have been so convincing, if you knew that he was there. Perhaps the others wouldn’t have felt so confident.’

‘And perhaps he could have shot Thomas before he executed Keith Mallory,’ Michael said harshly.

‘There are a lot of variables here, Michael. I did the best I could. I can’t mastermind everything.’

She stared out of the window and he sensed a steely will and hard quality that he should have detected long ago.

‘Of course not, Elizabeth. I’m sorry. He saved our lives, there’s no doubt about it. Thank you.’

‘Did you find it?’ she asked.

He stuck his hand in his pocket and handed her the DVD.

She held the plastic disc carefully between her fingertips.

‘And you haven’t made any copies?’ she asked with a smile as if the question had been asked in jest.

‘No.’

She nodded and her knuckles whitened as she snapped the DVD in half. An almost serene expression spread across her face.

‘I’m so relieved,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I presume it’s yours?’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘All this time I’ve been wondering why the only fingerprints on the DVD were yours. Who the hell wipes their own
fingerprints off their own DVD? And who would store a film like this in a safe in their own home?’

The lawyer managed a guarded smile, but she had stopped looking at him.

‘That’s an interesting question, Michael. It really is. One of those that can never be fully answered.’

‘I guess not. You’re right.’

She got up and Michael rose to his feet as well.

‘I’d like to recommend you to others if I may,’ she said. ‘To people with special problems.’

‘You may. Only they don’t have to be quite as complex. The problems, I mean.’

‘You don’t always get to choose,’ she said.

Michael held out his hand.

‘The files?’

Elizabeth Caspersen’s eyes narrowed.

‘What do you want with them?’

‘Satisfy my own curiosity, that’s all. Round things off.’

‘I don’t expect to see them on YouTube, Michael.’

She placed the small USB stick in his hand.

‘Of course not. They’ll be deleted as soon as I’ve finished with them. How do you truly feel about it?’

‘Which?’

‘That it was your father … that he …’

‘Killed people?’

Her face was in profile against the grey windows. The light was pleasant, subdued, and softened the lines. Her
gaze was distant and aimed at something across the sea. Her pulse beat slowly under the delicate skin above the string of pearls.

‘Yes, that he killed random people,’ he said.

‘It’s no longer important,’ she said. ‘Not in that way, and not any more …’

‘I see. Was it expensive?’

‘Was what expensive?’

‘Getting someone to break into the house and steal the rhino horns? I presume that was why the dog wasn’t here.’

There was no reaction in her broad face. She was formidable, he thought.

‘It was money well spent. Goodbye, Michael.’

‘Not
au revoir
?’

‘I can’t imagine. Unless you do something very foolish and I know that you won’t.’

‘One last thing,’ he said.

‘Oh, I really hope it is, Michael.’

‘What about Tove Hansen and the twins?’

Elizabeth Caspersen nodded gravely. ‘Now that
is
important. They’ll want for nothing. Ever. An anonymous benefactor will remember them in his will. A rich man with no children of his own or any other family. He had read about their parents’ disappearance and was deeply touched by their story.’

‘Excellent,’ Michael said, and left the big, empty house.

*

Michael inserted Elizabeth Caspersen’s small USB stick into his new laptop and clicked on a high resolution picture. A very familiar photograph appeared: Five soldiers in the Afghan desert – Kim Andersen, Kenneth Enderlein, Robert Olsen, Allan Lundkvist and, standing slightly apart, Thomas Berg. The young warriors. The photo had also been on Kim Andersen’s CD.

He had invested in a professional picture editing program and selected and cut a section from the picture: Robert Olsen’s reflective Oakley sunglasses. Pasting the segment into a new file, Michael cut and pasted one of the lenses, zoomed in … and kept zooming.

His heart started to beat faster. Allan Lundkvist had told Lene that the photograph had been taken with a self-timer, but like everything else in this case, it had been a lie. The photographer was reflected in the Oakley sunglasses, a sixth man with a camera which obscured half, but only half his face. A desert hat lay at his feet along with his carbine and he was wearing a sand-coloured T-shirt and loose-fitting camouflage trousers.

Jakob Schmidt.

Michael clicked to close the picture and opened the only other file on the USB stick: the recording of the smugglers on the desert road outside Musa Qala. He drummed his fingers until the taller and more watchful of the two opium smugglers aimed an accusing finger at the Humvee and the picture frame wobbled. Then he froze the recording and
studied the image. There was a green reflection in the side door’s thick, bulletproof glass. Michael cut and enlarged it repeatedly until he was finally able to lean back in his chair and stare at the screen.

Once again, Jakob Schmidt was the man who had filmed the exchange and the killing of the smugglers. He was reflected in the window of the Humvee.

A chameleon. A ghost.

Michael got up, opened the balcony door and lit a cigarette. The sea breeze swept into the room. He furrowed his brow and recalled the evening Henrik Schmidt had attacked him and taken Elizabeth Caspersen’s DVD, and Jakob had found him bleeding in his hotel room. Jakob had said something about picking the winning horse. And Elizabeth Caspersen had described him as an opportunistic survivor.

Michael closed the balcony door, went back to the desk and shut the laptop. He hadn’t finished with Jakob Schmidt, he thought. He would find him one day.

He watched his own reflection in the balcony door. He was homesick. He really was. But even so he would miss the case. The excitement. The investigation. The opposition. The chase. Even the introverted and irritatingly headstrong police superintendent whom he had taken to Copenhagen Airport that morning. No power on earth could keep her from her daughter any longer.

They had exchanged a few muffled words and almost
hugged in front of the escalator to the departure lounge, but at the top she had turned and waved to him. Stony-faced.

He had grown used to her. Like you learn to get along with a bad-tempered cat.

Michael sighed, turned away from his reflection and started packing.

Three weeks later

In the doorway to Elizabeth Caspersen’s office, the young woman cleared her throat and the lawyer turned round with a smile.

‘Take a seat, Louise.’

The woman sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs and crossed her legs while the lawyer took a good look at her. Louise had changed in the weeks that had passed since she last saw her. Her skin was clear and glowing, and her dark, curly hair looked fantastic as always, but was now cut in a simple, classic style.

Louise Andersen gestured towards the removal boxes.

‘You’re packing,’ she said.

The lawyer nodded, took the last papers from a drawer and put them in a box. She inserted a picture of her husband and daughters carefully into a padded envelope and placed it on top of the papers.

‘I’ve been promoted,’ she said. ‘Or rather, I’ve now got my own business.’

Louise Andersen smiled.

‘You’re the new Chairman of Sonartek, Elizabeth. Is that what you call getting your own business?’

Elizabeth Caspersen returned her smile.

‘In a way, yes. You’re busy packing, too, I gather?’

‘There’s not much to pack. Most of it was lost in the fire.’

‘Of course. When are you leaving?’

‘Monday. For a month to start with. I’ve always wanted to see Switzerland. I think the Alps will be good for my asthma.’

The lawyer sat down behind her desk, then she leaned forwards and pushed the box to one side.

‘Your bank is Allgemeine Genève, Louise, and your bank manager is Dr Steinschweiger. Remember to address him as Herr Doktor. The Swiss are very particular when it comes to titles. It’s a small, very discreet bank, also used by Sonartek, incidentally. They value us and would do almost anything for us.’

‘Thank you.’

Elizabeth Caspersen smiled again, but shook her head.

‘I should be thanking you, Louise. If you hadn’t found those films and brought them to me, I definitely wouldn’t be sitting here now and certainly not as Sonartek’s new chairman. Perhaps I wouldn’t be here at all. I can never repay my debt to you. The DVD and the other films in your husband’s hiding place made Lene Jensen and Michael Sander
take an interest in the case, and they forced my enemies to make mistakes. Did you know that your husband was going to kill himself?’

The widow looked out of the window. Her face was relatively composed.

‘He was a murderer. I don’t know how many people he and the others killed, and I don’t want to know. But he loved the kids. I knew exactly what he would do when he heard the song and saw the bullets. He used to say that you were the only normal person he had met at Pederslund and that’s why I came to you when I discovered that was where the hunters were recruited.’

Elizabeth Caspersen nodded. ‘And, like I said, for that I will be forever in your debt. By the way, Sander didn’t buy the rhino horn theft. That Kim did it.’

Louise Andersen frowned. ‘But I planted the floor plans in his rucksack, like you told me to. He must have found them.’

‘Of course, but Victor or the others must have convinced him that Kim wasn’t involved.’

She dismissed the thought with her large hand.

‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. It was a detail I believed to be important at the time.’

‘So they won’t be coming after me?’ the widow asked. ‘Michael Sander or the police superintendent?’

The lawyer looked at her with surprise: ‘Why would they? They’ve no reason to suspect you. You’ve done nothing
wrong, Louise. You put a stop to it. You should be proud of yourself. Besides, Michael Sander does only what he’s paid to do and no one is paying him to bother you.’

The other nodded sceptically.

‘Of course. Thank you.’

The lawyer put her arm around the young woman’s shoulder. She could have chosen that perfume herself.

‘So what do the children say to Switzerland?’

‘Skiing!’

Elizabeth Caspersen laughed.

‘Fantastic.’