The Serbian Dane Read online

  ‘What do you say, Lise? Couldn’t we do a piece in the paper? You could write one of those scathing articles of yours. Nail the architect. Hang the Town Hall out to dry. Eh, Lise?’ Tagesen talked fast, in quick-fire bursts. He needed only a few hours’ sleep, he was an early riser, at the office before anyone else, his head buzzing with a thousand ideas.

  ‘Good morning, Tagesen. Up and at it before the rest of us had even had breakfast, were you?’ she said.

  Tagesen tugged his moustache and grinned. The wry smile passing over his face made him look very young. Lise thought there was something very attractive about him, and she was glad that she was on his side. In a newspaper office alliances are vital. And she had been right to hook up with Tagesen. She had left Politiken to work with him when he was chief-sub with the rival broadsheet and followed him back to her old paper without a second thought. In so doing, though, she had in a way also yoked her career to his.

  ‘Have a seat, Lise,’ he said.

  Lise removed a pile of newspapers from a chair and sat down. Tagesen seated himself behind his desk and toyed with a pen. He had given up smoking. So instead he was always fiddling with things: paper knives, pencils, pens, the dog-eared corners of papers.

  ‘Now, wait till you hear what I’ve got for you! The biggest story of your career. Sara Santanda wants to break out of the murk of barbarism. Out into the public eye. Out into the light!’

  Lise felt a flutter of excitement in the pit of her stomach, a thrill that told her this was something big. She knew what was coming.

  ‘That’s right, Lise. She’s coming to Denmark. At our invitation. She’ll be presented by us. Escorted by us. Reported on and applauded, all thanks to us!’

  ‘But this morning…on the radio…I heard…Iran has just…’

  ‘The death sentence. They’ve raised the price on her head. I know, but Sara’s no longer prepared to put up with being forced to live in hiding. She wants to come out into the open.’

  Lise could not sit still. She got to her feet, crossed to the window and looked down into the square. People edged their way past heaps of paving stones, lots of bare brown arms and legs: the T-shirt-and-shorts brigade was out in force again today.

  ‘But why us? Why Denmark?’ she said at length.

  Tagesen began ripping a sheet of paper into tiny pieces.

  ‘Denmark’s a peaceable country. No terrorists here.’

  ‘But it’s not exactly big.’

  ‘This story will be reported worldwide.’

  ‘But why Politiken?’

  ‘Well, I don’t mean to boast, but we’ve done our share in support of Rushdie. And the Kurds. I have. This is an activist newspaper. And I’ve met Sara Santanda a couple of times through different acquaintances…you’ve interviewed her yourself a couple of times. She remembered you. Then there’s the fact that you’re chair of Danish PEN. Her visit will be organized jointly by PEN and us. But mostly us, right? She’s looking forward to seeing you again.’

  ‘Where is she now? Has she left England?’

  ‘She’s still holed up somewhere in London. But she’s tired of being a prisoner. She wants her freedom. And she has a thing or two to say about the so-called critical dialogue with Iran that our government is pushing for down in Brussels.’

  ‘Don’t get on your soapbox now, Tagesen,’ she said.

  ‘No, no. There’ll be plenty of time for that later,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘When is she coming?’

  ‘In just under a month from now.’

  Lise sat down again. It was a tricky one; she could see that. And they didn’t have much time to prepare. There were two main points to be considered. Tagesen, and no doubt Sara too, would want her visit to be as high profile as possible. That was, after all, the whole point of her decision to come out in the open. The security guys at PET and the Copenhagen police would insist on maximum secrecy and maximum isolation. It would make their job easier. She remembered them from Rushdie’s visit. They were a hardnosed lot but very professional. And they took no chances. Took their work very seriously. They used the weirdest terminology. Instead of checking out an apartment to see whether it would make a good safe house, they said that they were looking the area over. They would want to boss around the representatives from PEN as well as any other writers or reporters involved in the visit, and that would lead to arguments. But Lise had to admit, albeit reluctantly, that they had the whip hand here. It was hard to argue with the fact that whatever they said could mean the difference between life and death, it was just that she didn’t like the way they said it.

  ‘Have you spoken with PET?’ she said.

  ‘It’s pronounced P-E-T,’ Tagesen said.

  ‘Well, have you?’

  ‘Yes. They want us to keep the whole thing under our hats until she gives her first press conference. Then we drop the bombshell…’

  ‘Have you agreed to that?’

  ‘I think it’s fair enough. We still get an exclusive.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ve made an appointment for you this afternoon with the special branch guy who’ll be in charge of the visit. His name’s Per Toftlund. A good man, by all accounts. About your age. Have a word with him. Work something out! It’s your story.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said with mock deference.

  ‘I’ve also informed Svendsen at the prime minister’s office, otherwise this is just between you and me, right, Lise?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Good…oh, and say hello to Ole for me, will you?’

  ‘Will do,’ she said, but she knew that Tagesen had already moved on to the next matter on his mind. There would be no point in trying to tell him how things were with her and Ole. Tagesen wasn’t really all that interested anyway. He was interested in ideas and in the paper, not people. That was maybe a bit harsh, she told herself. But his eyes tended to glaze over if you got too personal. And yet she supposed in a sort of a way they were friends. But now Tagesen had put her onto a story. He would expect her to run with it and only to come to him if she had problems. He trusted her. That was the kind of boss she liked, while others wanted to be nursed through the whole process of producing a story. She preferred to do things herself.

  Chapter 3

  Detective Inspector Per Toftlund had a hangover. The back of his head was the worst. That and his throat, which was as scratched as an old 78. Everything was a bit blurred, and he felt as though two steely fingers were boring into the nape of his neck. He didn’t really have anything against hangovers. It seemed a fair price to pay for abusing one’s body. He did not, however, like having a hangover when he had to go to work. He would never have agreed to going on a stag night had he known he would be getting a call from Vuldom the following morning. Even if Jens was the last of the gang to get married. Apart from himself of course. So they’d really made a night of it, knocking them back as only a bunch of former frogmen know how. Soon they’d all be settled down with kids and mortgages, and he’d be the funny old bachelor at their get-togethers. There was no point in bemoaning the fact. It was his own choice, and the domesticating of his mates had been a gradual process. He had grown used to the fact that he wasn’t as young as he used to be. Maybe someday he too would start hankering after a wife and kids and a cosy little nest. But by then it would probably too late.

  He drank a pint of cola and forced himself to do twenty-five press-ups before a scalding hot, then ice-cold, shower. He shaved. It made his head ache, and the whine of the shaver grated on his ear. He dropped two soluble painkillers into a glass of water. Then he ate a bowl of cornflakes with lots of milk and drank a whole bucketful of black coffee. The radio was playing in the background. The kitchen was small and modern. It contained a table with room for two, a dishwasher, a microwave and an array of gleaming copper pots and pans suspended on metal hooks above the kitchen bench. Everything was spotless. He took care of the place himself. He had tried having someone come in to clean, but they hadn’t done a good
enough job. As an old navy man he liked things shipshape and Bristol fashion. He set store by a tidy apartment, ironed shirts, knife-edge creases and well-polished shoes, and the navy had taught him how to fend for himself. He slipped into a pair of freshly pressed Levis, a cream button-down shirt, a blue tie and a lightweight jacket to cover the gun in the holster at his hip.

  The rest of the apartment consisted of a comfortable living room, a bedroom and a box room in which Toftlund kept his books and a computer. The furniture was of pale wood and functional. There was a good view of the low housing in Albertslund and of Vestskoven. The wood was a hazy green in the morning sunlight. A band of smog and mist hung on the horizon.

  He took the car. He knew he shouldn’t. The alcohol was by no means out of his system yet, but he was running late and couldn’t face taking the train or the bus. Any fellow officer who might stop him would have to be incredibly dumb to breathalyse him once he’d shown his badge. Or rather: the new ID card that had replaced the old police badge. It just wasn’t done, not unless he was actually involved in an accident. And he was too good a driver for that. Besides which, he loved his blue BMW. It was his one indulgence. A nippy little number, which might have gobbled up all his savings but made driving a sheer delight every day. Cars were few and far between on the road out to Bellahøj Police Station, where a modern concrete building is home to G division, the Danish Security Intelligence Service.

  Why had Vuldom’s secretary called him in, he wondered. He had put in for these two days’ leave ages ago, and he had loads of time off owing to him. He hoped he wasn’t going to have to baby sit the Crown Prince. He simply couldn’t face that again. He’d done his fair share: sitting nursing a mineral water and watching those kids whooping it up. Not that there was anything wrong with that, really. He’d been no saint either as a teenager. And it was a different story now. The Crown Prince was a frogman himself. He was one of the gang. Per took his hat off to him for that. He had gone through the same admission and training process as the rest of them, the hardest thing he had ever done. But looking after Frederik would be a pretty boring assignment, even if it was also a damned important one. For one thing, because he was the Crown Prince, but also because of all the flaming reporters who were always on his tail.

  But he didn’t like having to face Vuldom when he had a hangover. Despite the shower and deodorant, he knew the stale reek of the pub was seeping out of every pore. He had hardly slept at all. Now he was sweating out the rest of the booze. Vuldom was a formidable boss, a formidable woman. Per had nothing against female bosses. He had no time for the canteen game in which the guys had fun playing with her name. Calling the boss ‘Vulva’ was not his idea of a joke. As long as a boss was competent and fair, he didn’t care whether they were male or female, gay or lesbian. That was their own bloody business. And besides, he belonged to a generation that had spent its entire childhood and youth being cared for by women. The men had been strangely invisible until he joined the navy. Women had run the crèche, kindergarten, school and youth club, and he had never really known his father, who had remarried and moved to Jutland when Per was three. Per had been brought up by his mother. A succession of different men had shared their apartment, but his mother had always worn the trousers.

  Maybe that was why he couldn’t face being tied down to one woman, he thought, as he eased the BMW into a parking space next to the long low building. For most of his life women had been deciding things for him. Now he wanted to make his own decisions. But there was no getting away from it: within a few years, the majority of judges would be women, the majority of prosecutors and lawyers, the majority of civil service chiefs, the majority of…yeah, you name it. That’s just how it was.

  He waved hello to one of the guys from Traffic, all dressed in his motorbike gear and looking as if he couldn’t wait to hit the road on such a beautiful morning. Per’s headache was gone, and although his throat was still as dry as that of the ale-hound in the old music-hall song, he was actually feeling not too bad. He was ready for anything. Or anybody.

  Jytte Vuldom had him shown straight in. Per saw that she was in a good mood, she made no comment about his rather bloodshot eyes. Merely said she was sorry to call him in on his day off. She was a fine-looking woman, Per thought, even if she wouldn’t see fifty again. She had an attractive face, a slim figure, bright brown eyes and a melodious voice. Her only flaw, as far as he was concerned was that she was forever smoking those long menthol cigarettes of hers and never asked whether he minded. She stubbed out her cigarette, offered him coffee. He nodded in assent; she poured him a cup from the white thermos jug that was a permanent fixture on her desk, along with a picture of her husband and her two grown-up children. Strong women like her, Per thought to himself, they’ve had to fight harder than the men, but they’ve come a long way, they’re hungry for power and they know how to wield it.

  She passed him his coffee, then handed him a picture. It was a colour photograph of a youthful-looking, dark-skinned woman with short curly hair. She was staring gravely at the photographer, unsmiling. She had dark eyes, a plump little mouth in a round face framed by a pair of gold earrings. She must have been about forty.

  ‘Recognize her, Per?’

  Per studied the picture.

  ‘Yes. She’s been in the news quite a bit. Some writer. Sara something or other…’

  ‘Santanda.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it…Santanda. Bloody Iranians have a contract out on her. She’s in hiding in England. Like Rushdie.’

  ‘Only worse, Per. Because she’s a woman.’

  ‘What has she written?’

  He wrinkled his nose as she lit another cigarette. She curled her lip at him but said nothing about the look on his face. She was the boss, and in the boss’s office she called the shots. The anti-smoking fanatics had soon learned to keep their traps shut.

  ‘Five years ago she published a collection of essays in which she described the way in which women are oppressed by the fundamentalist clerics in Iran. How the ayatollahs misinterpret and misuse the Koran. She smuggled herself and her manuscript out of the country, but it’s doing the rounds in Iran on tape and in print. She’s becoming a political animal. She’s western in her thinking, like Tansu Çiller in Turkey. The daughter of an English businessman and an Iranian woman. But she’s an Iranian citizen. Sentenced to death in absentia for high treason. In her latest novel she tells the story of a corrupt mullah, his pathological lust for power and his abuse of his mistresses. If they don’t do what he says, he punishes them – by making them eat pork, for example. The Iranians want her out of the way, although that’s not the official line, of course.’

  Per smiled and said:

  ‘Kind of ironic, isn’t it?’

  ‘What’s ironic about this business, Per?’

  ‘That’s how Khomeini undermined the Shah. Had tapes of his speeches put into circulation. A highly effective ploy in a country where so many people are illiterate.’

  ‘Sara Santanda will be coming to Copenhagen in a month’s time. It will be your job to protect her and take care of the security arrangements for her visit.’

  ‘Who has invited her? The government?’

  ‘Politiken. Your contact there is Lise Carlsen.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘Don’t you read the arts pages, Toftlund?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Vuldom shook her head, as if he was a child who hadn’t done his homework, but Per didn’t care. He read the political and economic news, crime reports and the sports pages. He wasn’t interested in the arts. Most Danish artists did nothing but whine about money and only appeared to be interested in sticking their trunks into the state coffers and siphoning off as much as they could. When he did read a book, it was usually an international thriller in English, but he’d really rather see a film.

  ‘Lise Carlsen is chair of Danish PEN. One of the youngest chairs in the organization and one of only a handful of women in the world to hold that post. She’
s very bright. She also happens to be a reporter on the staff of Politiken. And in this matter she will be playing the hostess.’

  ‘But the host is in charge, right?’

  ‘Host and hostess have to work together to ensure that their guests feel welcome. Is that clear, Toftlund?’

  ‘Yes, quite clear.’

  She leaned across the desk between the two neat little piles of green files. Lowered her voice. Per loved that voice. It was deep, husky from the cigarettes and reminded him of Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep.

  ‘It’s a complex surveillance operation, Per. I know that. For one thing, our resources are limited. We’ve got this summit meeting in the autumn. Preparations for that are already eating into what we have…and for another, you’ll have to be prepared for the fact that Danish PEN, the writer and the newspaper will be looking for as much publicity as possible. That’s the whole point of the exercise. As far as they’re concerned, that is. We, on the other hand, want maximum security. So keep Sara Santanda under wraps, Toftlund.’

  ‘Maximum security and maximum publicity. The two don’t equate.’

  ‘Well, it’s your job, along with Lise Carlsen’s, to make them equate. But we don’t want to lose her. Is that understood? Safety first. Then the press.’

  ‘There’s also another side to this,’ Per said.

  He took a sip of his coffee. Vuldom waited. This was one of her good points. She gave an order, presented you with an assignment and expected it to be carried out, but she also gave people time to think before answering. She liked good answers, not smart ones. Per took another sip and continued:

  ‘The politicians will be up in arms. There’ll be a helluva row…’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘Well, Denmark makes somewhere in the region of a couple of billion kroner a year from exports to Iran. There have been reports in the paper about a company in Randers receiving an order for railway rolling stock. From Iran. And this is a company that’s in financial difficulties. So…’