The Woman from Bratislava (32 page)

I looked at him. That may have been the moment when my life acquired meaning. At any rate, when he took me in his arms and held me I burst into tears. There in the bare, hushed clearing in the woods I knew that I would never let this man down.

PER TOFTLUND WOKE
before the alarm went off and lay in the morning gloom listening to Lise’s slow, laboured breathing. She was lying on her back, her enormous stomach swelling like a great hump under the duvet. Her face was faintly blotched and covered with a fine layer of sweat which plastered her thick hair to her temples. He did not know why, but he felt very tired and a little off-colour, almost as if he were coming down with a spring cold. Or maybe he did know. There had been small signs at work: how the time seemed suddenly to disappear; someone would say something to him and he would not catch it. Little lapses of memory which disturbed him. Maybe it had been like this ever since he made a mess of the assignment at Flakfortet, or maybe he was simply afraid that he was not up to the job to which he had returned? During the working day he would also find himself
worrying
about becoming a father. He felt bad for not looking forward to it wholeheartedly. That, after all, was how it was supposed to be. Maybe it was just that he did not know what he was getting himself in to. There was no denying it, he was over forty now, and he could feel it. That alone ought to be a clear sign that, from a purely biological point of view, tying the knot had been the right thing to do. But tying the knot meant being tied down and maybe that was what made him nervous. There was no doubt in his mind that he loved Lise, but marriage was also a daunting business and coming home this time had not been easy. The image of the blood slowly running onto the floor of the restaurant kept coming back to him, awake and in his dreams. Sometimes it was vividly
realistic
. Other times the blood was bright orange, almost fluorescent. And on a couple of occasions he had been the man on the floor,
with another version of himself looking down on him, notebook in hand. Lise had been angry and hurt. At first he had thought she was mad at him for not calling home to ask how things were with her and the baby, but then it had dawned on him that she felt let down. She felt he was selfish, thinking only about himself and what she called his bloody work. ‘Talk to me, damn you!’ she had screamed and then burst into tears. He had stood in the kitchen, staring out at the bare, loamy garden like a fool, instead of going to her and putting his arms round her. He loved her so much, so why was he so emotionally inept? They had had a couple of weird days when they had circled around one another like two strangers. They had still not had a proper talk about his trip or his failure to keep in touch while he was away but the air appeared to have been cleared by the unborn baby when she kicked one evening while they were watching the news and they saw the contours of a tiny foot under the smooth stretched skin of Lise’s stomach. They had both started to laugh and Lise’s great belly had bounced up and down like a huge basketball. The mood had changed, they had kissed and his penis had swelled hard and tight. There was nothing to be done about that, though.

Lise sighed and made little snoring sounds. She lay with her mouth half-open in the faint, grey April light and he was overcome by a great sense of love and a rush of old-fashioned protectiveness. He knew himself well enough, though, not to lie there in the
semidarkness
making promises he could not keep, either to Lise or to himself. He was the way he was. From Lise’s point of view he could probably shape up a bit, but deep down there was no changing him. Or so he felt, at any rate, although he was certain that women always believed they could alter a man to fit their image of him. Make him the man they wanted him to be. There was something missionary-like about this constant urge women had to transform and improve upon their men. Was the same true of Lise?

Toftlund did what he always did whenever he found himself thinking too much. He resorted to physical activity. He stroked
Lise’s stomach gently and kissed her on the cheek, making her sigh luxuriously. He went for his morning run in the misty dawn which, with its light and its delicate tones held the promise of spring. After his shower he went through to the kitchen and gave Lise a nice, big morning kiss. She was standing with one hand in the small of her back, her big belly bulging under her blue dressing gown. In her other hand she held a mug of tea, resting it on the flat top of the hump under her heavy breasts.

‘Won’t be long now,’ he said.

‘Oh, I can’t wait. Everything’s ready.’

‘You’ve been a proper little nest-builder.’

‘Who would have thought it – a career woman like me,’ she said with laughter in her voice, and he was happy because she was in a good mood this morning. The house smelled fresh and clean. The baby clothes – those they had bought and those passed on by friends and family – were all freshly washed and ironed and arranged in neat piles in cupboards and drawers; the crib was made up, the linen and the lovely little duvet smelling faintly of soap. And out in the carport the pram waited as eagerly as them. Lise had spent the past eight days cleaning and making everything ready, as if driven by her biological clock. The cleaner had been asked to come in for an extra day and the two women had scrubbed the house from top to bottom, until there was not a speck of dust or fluff to be found even in the remotest corner. Women were in so many ways a mystery to Toftlund.

They had breakfast together, read the paper, listened to the radio news. NATO was still conducting daily bombing raids, weather permitting, on Yugoslavia and Kosovo, both of which were still sending thousands of refugees to the neighbouring countries of Macedonia and Albania. The refugees arrived there wet, cold and hungry with appalling tales of murder, arson, torture and mass rape. The newsreader announced that despite being the poorest country in Europe, Albania had now taken in over half a million refugees. The situation there was chaotic. Meanwhile, in Denmark,
there was fierce debate concerning the government’s proposal to grant asylum to two thousand Kosovo Albanian refugees. Per noticed the old light of battle flicker in Lise’s eyes, but instead she asked:

‘How’s it actually going with that case of yours?’

He looked up. She rarely asked him about his work. She knew there were so many things he could not talk about.

‘So-so.’

‘It says here that you’ve got nothing on this woman you’ve arrested. That you’ll have to let her go.’

‘That’s not altogether untrue.’

‘And what then?’

‘She’ll get a nice fat sum in compensation.’

‘That’s fair enough, don’t you think.’

‘Yeah, but she’s mixed up in it somehow. I’m sure of it’

‘But you can’t prove it?’

‘Not as things stand at the moment. The lead isn’t strong enough.’

‘Well, then it’s only fair that she should be released. I mean, as far as I know in this country one is still innocent until proven otherwise.’

‘Of course.’

‘And that being so it’s only fair that she should receive
compensation
, right?’

He looked up again:

‘Are you trying to pick a fight?’

‘Not at all. I’m just asking.’

‘It doesn’t matter what I think. By law she has a right to
compensation
. That’s just how it is.’

‘Fine,’ she said a mite snippily and turned back to her newspaper.

‘There’s something about her. I know it. She’s betrayed her country. She’s indirectly responsible for the deaths of a lot of people. She should be behind bars,’ he said.

She glanced up from the paper. She had simply pulled her hair
back into an elastic band, but he thought he had never seen her look lovelier, even if her eyes did look dull and a little tired. She wasn’t getting enough sleep, he told himself.

‘So what’s the next move, Per?’

‘Well, we’ll just have to see what else this line of inquiry turns up. But I haven’t given up yet.’

‘More overtime?’

‘It’s all part of the job. That’s what you get for marrying a policeman.’

‘Bullshit. I know all about irregular working hours. I used to be a journalist – remember?’

‘You’re still a journalist.’

‘I’m a pregnant cow,’ she said and went back to the article she had been reading, although he had a feeling her mind was not really on it. She looked up again.

‘You promised, Per …’

‘I’ll be there, don’t worry.’

‘It’s due in less than a fortnight.’

‘I’ll be there, Lise. Trust me!’

‘It’s our baby, Per. Our own little miracle. It’s ours. Ours. I didn’t think I could have children. But I could. With you. It’s ours, Per.’

Now he saw the tears in the corners of her eyes, he got up, went round behind her chair and wrapped his arms round her, kissed her on the back of the neck, little pecks, while gently stroking her breast and her stomach. He felt movement and kicking feet beneath the skin, as if the unborn baby was playing football with his hand. Lise winced, both laughing and crying.

‘She’s got a helluva kick,’ she said. ‘Per, for God’s sake. Hand me a Kleenex. I can’t bear to see myself like this.’

He let go of her and fetched her a tissue. She dried her eyes and blew her nose. He handed her a fresh tissue and she repeated this sniffling process. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face a little swollen too.

‘I love you, Lise,’ he said.

‘How can you possibly love me when I look like this and act like a stupid cow.’

‘Goose.’

‘Cow!’

‘Moo.’

‘Oh, Per, you big idiot. Or no, it’s me – I’m an even bigger idiot. I’m looking forward to it so much, but obviously I’m dreading it too.’

‘I’m here for you, Lise.’

‘It’s okay. I’m okay now. It’s just these mornings, with you running out the door and being gone all day. But I know – it’s your job. So off you go and catch your spies.’

‘My paternity leave is all arranged. I’ve told Vuldom about it.’

‘Even if you have to let her go? Because then you’re really going to be kept busy, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. That’s probably true.’

Lise pointed to the newspaper.

‘This mate of mine says you’ve got fuck all.’

‘It says that in the paper?’ he said, genuinely surprised, although very little of what appeared in the papers surprised him any more.

‘Not in so many words, but that’s the drift of it.’

But those were exactly the words Jytte Vuldom used an hour later, announcing through a blue haze of cigarette smoke:

‘The newspapers are right. You’ve got fuck all, Toftlund. I doubt very much if we’ll get an extension. And our Irma is a sly little devil. She’s spelled it out for you loud and clear: she won’t talk. She knew we couldn’t prove anything, and the fact that we can’t
establish
that she had access, means – DCI Toftlund – that we have a very flimsy case. But do, please, give me a rundown and we’ll take it from there.’

Vuldom had been sympathetic when he got back from Prague with his terrible story, but she had not got where she was on the strength of her maternal instincts. After he refused to take a couple of days off to digest the experience and laughed off her
only half-serious offer of counselling, Vuldom wasted no more time on what she referred to as the ‘personal aspects’. The
information
from Prague was written up in a report and added to the steadily growing case file in which Irma’s outward and secret lives were charted and uncovered. Search warrants enabled them to delve into the most private and intimate sides of a person’s life with the full blessing of the court, in order to find the proof, or a body of circumstantial evidence, which would lead first to an extension of the isolation warrant and later to a conviction. That was pretty much the whole point of the exercise. Society’s
reckoning
. Society’s revenge. Often in the course of an inquiry innocent individuals would also disclose aspects of their lives which they would have preferred to remain secret until the day they died. But in a criminal investigation there are always other victims besides those directly involved. In this case, however, it looked as if the perpetrator was going to cheat society of its revenge, even though, by detaining her in custody for so long the state had already let the general public know, through the offices of the press, that this particular citizen was, in all probability, guilty as sin.

The core investigation team had gathered for a status meeting in Vuldom’s spacious office. Outside the sun was providing more assurance that spring was just around the corner, and Toftlund found himself looking forward to the holidays he still had coming to him and the paternity leave for which he had applied, even though his older male colleagues had sniggered at the notion. The younger men simply took it for granted. He rose, stepped up to the front and looked around him. He could not sit still when he had to speak. Present in the room, besides Vuldom and her trusty secretary Lene Nielsen, were the middle-aged Bjergager, who coordinated and collected their reports, and Toftlund’s second-in-command Charlotte Bastrup, whom he had come to respect and, he feared, to fancy. She was small and slim: at the time when she applied to join the force she must only just have managed to fulfil the then height requirement of 165 centimetres.
She had very short, sleek, black hair and took great care over her appearance, from her discreet make-up and little pierced earrings to the practical, but stylish clothes she always wore. Her face was on the round side, her lips straight, narrow and unexceptional, but her eyes were fabulous: a bright, subtly shifting greyish-brown. Her Polish forebears had settled down south in the flatlands of Lolland, where she hailed from. She carried herself with seductive self-assurance, confident of her sexual allure and the analytical gifts which had helped take her well up the career ladder. Most of the others from her year had been left far behind. She lived alone. Somewhere in Østerbro. She cycled to work, that much he knew, but she never said much about her private life. He also knew that she was thirty-two and a hell of a good detective, conscientious and thorough, and it was a privilege to work with her. Toftlund had not the slightest thing against female police officers. But he did not like the thought that he might have fallen for one of them. He tried to concentrate and keep his eyes off her. He was afraid that Vuldom would see through him. She had a knack for reading people’s minds. He was a married man, for Christ’s sake, with a heavily pregnant wife. But he was also a normal man and it was weeks since sex had been possible for Lise and him. The last time they had done it she had bled afterwards. It had stopped by the time they got to the casualty department, frantic with worry, but the doctor had advised them against having intercourse. There was no point in taking any chances. It had sounded so simple and straightforward, but they both missed the physical closeness. There it was again. That sudden, fleeting state in which he was lost to the world, his surroundings seeming to fade away until some outside element roused him and brought him slap-bang back to reality.