‘I’m sorting myself out. You’ve got
every right to be mad at me.’
Silence.
‘Mark?’
‘Yes?’
‘I just want to see you once in a while.’
‘Things are really busy.’
‘How about tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow’s not good.’
She sat down. Juncker’s photos were on the table. A severed head. A dead mouth set in a grimace. An arm with tattoos. A woman’s name probably. Something else, a short word, the
middle letters removed by a bloody wound.
‘The day after then. You tell me when.’
‘I don’t know . . .’
The first letter on the obscured tattoo was a capital ‘M’ in a gothic script.
‘It’ll have to be another day,’ Mark said.
The last letter was a lower case ‘a’. Probably five or six letters in the word, that was all.
‘Mum? Hello?’
She picked up a pen, hovered over the photo.
‘Another day, Mum. Are you there?’
‘Yes. Another day. That’s fine. Just let me know.’
Then he was gone and she traced in the missing letters. Spelled out the word.
She called Brix.
‘Hi, Lund. Did you get the champagne and the note from OPA? They want you to start next week. No need for an interview. Congratulations I guess.’
‘Do we still have people at the dock?’
‘You called them off. Remember?’
‘Well call them back. There’s a ship there.
Medea.
I want to see it.’
‘You said it was nothing.’
‘And send a team out to Stubben. I’m on my way.’
She enjoyed an excuse to drive fast, didn’t bother with the light on the roof. A boat team was waiting by the dock. So was Mathias Borch. He said Hartmann and his team
were half a kilometre away at the homeless camp.
‘Tell him to get out of there,’ Lund ordered.
‘I tried. How sure are you?’
She passed him the photo, the name ‘Medea’ outlined in ink.
‘When the dock office contacted the ship this morning it wasn’t the crew they talked to. I asked them to try again just now. No reply.’
Borch glared at her.
‘If I’d known this I could have stopped Hartmann!’
Lund shrugged, climbed into the inflatable with Juncker and the two-man boat team.
‘So stop him now,’ she said, and the dinghy lurched off into the harbour.
Troels Hartmann was handing out plates of stew to quiet, scruffy men seated at camp tables in makeshift tents. The place stank of cheap food and open drains. Newspaper
reporters mingled with camera crews, following him from serving to serving, asking questions he didn’t answer.
As soon as a camera came close he smiled. Karen Nebel watched and didn’t. She wanted him back in Slotsholmen for a press conference.
Then Morten Weber led in a couple of men bearing crates of beer. A cheer rang out. A couple of the hobos grabbed bottles, stood up and toasted Hartmann.
He grinned, walked out.
Was still smiling when he turned to Weber and said, ‘Handing out booze to alcoholics, Morten. Very clever.’
Weber laughed.
‘You astonish me, Troels. Such a stiff-backed puritan in many ways. And yet . . .’
He waited for an answer, didn’t get one.
‘PET want us out of here right now. They think there’s an immediate threat.’
‘We need to get back for the press conference anyway,’ Nebel added.
Hartmann shook his head.
‘All the hacks are here. Why put them to the trouble?’
He marched to the car, sat on the bonnet, beamed for the cameras, waved them on. Even the reporters were taken aback.
Men in heavy coats were gathering round. They had earpieces with curly leads winding down their necks and looked worried.
‘So,’ Hartmann said cheerily. ‘Let’s not waste time, shall we? You’ve got questions? Ask me now.’
‘Shit,’ Karen Nebel muttered, and listened as they kicked into gear.
Weber was talking to the noisiest of the PET officers, a man who’d introduced himself as Mathias Borch. She went over, listened. The conversation was getting heated.
‘I told you to get him out of here,’ Borch insisted. ‘Will you just do it?’
‘Troels is Prime