Found Wanting

NINETEEN

Copenhagen central station was the disorientating mix of stairways, walkways, neon-lit signs and swirling crowds to which Eusden was now becoming inured. He had been to the city once before, in the summer of 1989, with Gemma and her niece, Holly, who had begged to be taken to see the Little Mermaid on her home turf (or surf) after repeated viewings of the Disney film. Holly had enjoyed herself, undismayed by the modest scale of the Mermaid’s statue and revelling in the carnival delights of Tivoli Gardens. Unfortunately, she was the only one who had a good time, Gemma and Richard’s relationship having entered a fractious phase which wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen had proved powerless to resist.

At least, however, it had been warm and sunny. The afternoon into which Eusden emerged from the station was bleak and grey and sleety. An entrance to Tivoli met his gaze on the other side of the street, but the park was closed for winter. He was alone. Squabbling with Gemma did not seem such a bad memory when set against his problems of recent days. And the queue for a taxi looked long and cold.

The Phoenix was at the smart, sophisticated end of town, near Kongens Nytorv and the royal palace. Gleaming marble and glittering chandeliers greeted the weary traveller. Eusden supposed Marty had stayed there during his research visit, true to his policy of dying in comfort. It was hard to imagine Vicky Shadbolt feeling at ease in such opulent surroundings, but love, especially the hopeless, unrequited kind, works many a wonder, as Eusden well knew.

Nor, as it dismayingly transpired, had Vicky lingered long in four-star luxury. ‘Ms Shadbolt checked out earlier, sir,’ the receptionist announced.

Eusden booked himself in because he was, for the moment, too frustrated and confused to know what else to do. His top-floor room, set in the mansarded roof, gave him a wide-ranging view of numerous other roofs, but nothing else. The panorama of louring sky, domes, gables, slates, gutters, chimneys and fire-escapes was a metaphor for his plight. He could see a lot, but none of what really mattered.

He had no choice now but to contact Marty and tell him the worst. Where Vicky might be he had no idea. What had become of the attaché case he did not care to ponder. The situation was about as bad as it could be.

But putting Marty in the calamitous picture was far from straightforward. Århus Kommunehospital did not connect callers with its patients at the caller’s say-so. A message would be passed. Hr Hewitson, if he was well enough and if he wanted to, would phone him back. The urgency of the message was noted. But nothing could be guaranteed. Hr Hewitson was, for the record, ‘reasonably well’.

Nearly an hour passed, during which Eusden raided the mini-bar, flicked through innumerable brain-rotting TV channels and stared out at the slowly darkening roofscape. Then the telephone rang.

‘What gives, Richard?’ Marty asked, sounding disconcertingly chirpy.

‘She’s not here, Marty. I’ve lost her.’

‘I know. Because what you’ve lost I’ve found.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Vicky’s here. With me. Well, not with me at the moment, as it happens. She’s gone to find a hotel. But she’ll be back.’ Marty sighed. ‘I have her word on it.’

‘Vicky’s in Århus?’

‘When neither of us showed up this morning in Copenhagen, she phoned the Royal again. They told her where I was. As I predicted, she reacted by rushing straight to my bedside. Chairside, I should say. I’m feeling – and moving – a lot better today.’

‘You sound better too.’

‘Yeah. Which is quite some achievement, considering I’ve had to worry all day about what the hell you’ve been up to. What kept you?’

‘Burgaard. He slipped me a Mickey Finn and left me to sleep it off at his flat. I assumed he’d planned to drive here and try to persuade Vicky to hand over the case. Hasn’t she seen him?’

‘Nope.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense. He knew she was here and he had a head start on me. What was the point of drugging me otherwise?’

‘I don’t know. But we’ll obviously have to find a new translator. I told you Burgaard was a wrong’un.’

Eusden could not actually recall any such warning, but he was in no mood to argue. He was merely relieved that chance and circumstance had somehow contrived to rescue them. ‘What do we do now, Marty?’

‘We keep our heads, Coningsby, that’s what we do. Everything’s under control, thanks to my powers of foresight. Vicky deposited the case, as per my instructions, with a lawyer in Copenhagen I primed before I left. I’ll phone him and say you’re authorized to collect it on my behalf.’

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that before I set off?’

‘Because I reckoned the less there was for you to let slip to Burgaard the better. And I reckoned right, didn’t I? Now, listen. The lawyer’s name is Kjeldsen. Anders Kjeldsen. He’s got an office in Jorcks Passage, off Strøget. Y’know? The main pedestrian street through the centre.’

Eusden sighed. ‘I know it.’

‘Right. Wait till the morning. I might have trouble raising him this afternoon. Then pick up the case and sit tight till I arrive. Book me a room at the Phoenix.’

‘You’re coming here?’

‘Why not? The doc seems to think I should be well enough to leave by tomorrow. Besides, they know there’s nothing they can do for me. I’m a model of mobility for someone thirty years older and I’m back elocuting like a BBC announcer. I’ll get Bernie to order Vicky home and then I’ll train it to Copenhagen. Oh, and I’ll ask Kjeldsen to recommend a translator. We need to make up for lost time.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be taking it easy?’ Marty’s buoyant tone was beginning to worry Eusden. He sounded positively exuberant, like a man given a second chance – or a last one.

‘Don’t worry about me, Richard. I’ll be fine.’

But Eusden was worried. And not just about Marty. The thrill of the chase was wearing thin. Every step they took to uncover Clem’s secret past seemed to leave them just as far from doing so as they had always been. He could not justify extending his absence from the office beyond a week, even to humour a dying friend. Despite Marty’s disdain of his Civil Service career, there actually were working commitments he had to honour. It was already Thursday and he could not devote more than another couple of days to Marty’s escapade. An end, of some kind, was fast approaching.

Until the next day, however, there was nothing for Eusden to do but wait. He struck out into the Copenhagen dusk on foot, hoping to walk off his fretfulness. He had to maintain a stiff pace just to stay warm. His route took him through the palace square, where Holly had hooted with laughter when he was bawled out by one of the guards for trespassing over the chain round the statue of yet another Danish king on horseback (Frederick V, this time), and out along Amaliegade to the waterside park where the Little Mermaid was to be found, perched on her rock. The fountain at the entrance to the park, where they had lazed in the sun, was frozen solid and the moat round the old citadel further in was iced over. Flecks of snow were drifting down from a darkening sky. It was cold enough to deter all but the hardiest.

A couple of joggers were nonetheless doing circuits of the citadel’s protective earth rampart. Eusden set out to walk a circuit himself before returning to the city centre. As he progressed, he noticed another man walking behind him, keeping pace with him more or less exactly. Casting his mind back, he realized he had seen the same man loitering in the palace square while he had read the plaque on the plinth supporting Frederick V’s statue. He was a stockily built fellow of thirty-five or so, dressed in jeans, leather jacket and woolly hat. Eusden told himself the idea that he was being followed was absurd, but when he stopped to gaze out over the harbour, so did his shadow. When he moved, the shadow also moved.

Disquieted but still keen to believe it amounted to nothing, Eusden cut short his circuit and hurried back out of the park. On his way in he had spotted a ferry heading across the harbour from a nearby jetty, so he took a hopeful turn in that direction as he left and was rewarded by the sight of another ferry easing in towards the jetty. He quickened his pace.

Turnaround was swift on the 901 harbour bus, destination – for Eusden – immaterial. He paid his thirty kroner and took a seat. There were only two other passengers aboard, a couple of tourists in day-glo parkas. But a breathless latecomer joined them at the last minute.

The man pulled off his woolly hat as he sat down and glanced round at Eusden. His hair was short-cropped blond, his face wide, eyes blue and watchful, jaw square. He slid a rolled newspaper out from his jacket and began to study a front-page article. It was the same pink business paper – Børsen – that Burgaard favoured. Eusden glimpsed a familiar name – Mjollnir – in a headline.

The ferry made two stops on the other side of the harbour in Christianshavn, before crossing back again, to Nyhavn. If Eusden stayed on beyond Nyhavn, it meant a longer walk back to the Phoenix. He debated with himself what to do, then yielded to impulse. ‘I’m getting off at the next stop,’ he said, tapping his shadow on the shoulder. ‘What about you?’

The man turned and looked at him with an ironical tilt of one eyebrow. ‘The same,’ he said softly.

‘You’ve been following me.’

‘Have I?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK.’ The admission was casual, as if the fact was self-evident. ‘I have.’

‘Why?’

‘I thought you might be meeting Karsten.’ There was a brittleness in his voice Eusden felt sure he recognized. ‘I’m Henning Norvig, Mr Eusden. We talked earlier. And now we need to talk again.’

TWENTY

The river bus moved away from the jetty through a slush of half-formed ice and headed south. Eusden and Norvig stood watching it go, Eusden’s mind racing to calculate what he should or should not admit. Norvig smiled at him, as if sensing his indecision.

‘For fanden, jeg fryser.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t speak Danish, Mr Eusden?’

‘No.’

‘I said I’m fucking freezing. Why don’t we talk over a drink?’

The Nyhavn canal was lined with bars and restaurants – a colourful, crowded scene in summer, as Eusden well recalled, with diners and drinkers massed at outdoor tables, admiring the elegant yachts tied up along the quay. A cold late afternoon in February provided a different, bleaker scene, relieved only by the reds and yellows of the house fronts and the enticingly twinkling lights of those bars that were open for business. They went into the first one they came to after leaving the jetty.

‘This morning, Karsten was supposed to be here in Copenhagen, but wasn’t, and you weren’t supposed to be in Århus, but you were,’ Norvig opened up as they settled at a table. ‘Now he’s still not here. But you’ve arrived instead. What am I supposed to make of that?’

‘How did you know who I was?’ Eusden countered, aware that this was to be a game of who could learn more from the other.

‘Karsten said he had to meet a woman at the Phoenix this morning before coming on to meet me. When I still hadn’t heard from him this afternoon, I went there to see if they knew anything. The name Burgaard meant zip to them. But Eusden? That was different. You left while I was standing at reception. The guy on the desk pointed you out to me.’ Norvig lit a cigarette, proffering the pack to Eusden, who waved it away. ‘So, I’ve answered your question. How about answering mine?’

‘Well, like you say, Karsten’s gone missing. I’m… trying to track him down.’

‘Because…’

‘He’s a friend.’

‘Yeah. Right.’ The barman approached. Norvig ordered a beer. Eusden nodded his assent and he made it two. ‘How’d you meet him?’

‘Economics conference… at Cambridge… last year.’

‘Uhuh. And since then you’ve become… an item?’

‘An item?’ Belatedly, Eusden caught Norvig’s drift. ‘No. I-’

‘Karsten’s bøsse, Richard. Gay. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. As a friend of his.’

‘How do you know?’ It was the best retort Eusden could manage.

‘We’ve met a few times. It was obvious.’

‘Maybe you’re just his type and I’m not.’

‘Stop fucking me about, Richard. Where’s Karsten?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, that makes two of us, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes. It does.’

The arrival of the beers imposed a brief truce, which Norvig extended by sitting back in his chair to savour his first swallow and following it with a thoughtful pull on his cigarette. ‘What do you do for a living, Richard?’

‘I’m a civil servant. I work at the Foreign Office in London.’

‘The Foreign Office?’

‘That’s right. What about you?’

‘Freelance journalist.’

‘Were you meeting Karsten… about a story?’

‘Yes. I was.’

‘Did it involve… Tolmar Aksden?’

Norvig smiled. ‘There it is. That name. Tolmar Aksden. The Invisible Man. Yup. He was on the agenda, all right. Are you interested in him… officially?’

‘Officially? No. I’m on leave.’

‘Which you’re spending with your not very close friend Karsten Burgaard in Århus. In the middle of winter. That’s great. That’s so likely.’

Eusden did not react. He was beginning to feel he might actually win out in the trading of points. ‘Have you written about Aksden before?’

‘Most Danish journalists have. Tell me, Richard, do you ride?’

‘What?’

‘Do you ride? Horses, I mean.’

‘No.’

‘Well, I do. And when I was a boy I worked weekends at a stable. It means I know what horseshit smells like. So, stop shovelling it in my direction, OK? Karsten told me two Englishmen had shown up in Århus with access to highly sensitive information about Tolmar Aksden. The sort of stuff that might knock a couple of digits off Mjollnir’s share price for starters. I’m guessing you’re one of those two Englishmen. Let me finish before you deny it. Karsten’s given me titbits about Mjollnir quite a few times. It’s his specialty. He made it clear this was something big, something… shattering. He needed to collect some documents from a woman staying at the Phoenix. Then we were to meet. He never showed. Now, I don’t know what you had going with him and I don’t necessarily care. If you’ve got the documents, I might be in the market for them, no questions asked. You understand?’

Eusden stared Norvig down as calmly as he could before responding. ‘I don’t have the documents.’

‘Do you know where they are?’

‘I-’

A phone began ringing in one of Norvig’s pockets. ‘Skide,’ he said, pulling it out. ‘Unskyld. Hallo?’ His face was a mask during the conversation that followed, to which he contributed little beyond ja, nej, okay and tak, interspersed with sighs suggesting that something other than unalloyed good news was being conveyed to him. He said nothing at first after ringing off, gazing at a point in the middle distance somewhere over Eusden’s shoulder. Then he murmured, ‘Karsten’s dead.’

‘What?’

‘He hit the wall of a flyover on the motorway near Skanderborg early this morning. High-speed crash. No other car involved. Apparently.’

The shock was followed for Eusden by the sickening realization that if Burgaard had not decided to go it alone, they would have been together in his car. ‘What do you mean – “apparently”?’

‘It was around four thirty. Empty road. No witnesses.’

‘You’re suggesting… he was run off the road?’

‘Did I say that? Fuck, this is serious.’ Norvig contemplated just how serious over several nervous drags on his cigarette. ‘No, no. They wouldn’t. It must have been just… an accident. Maybe there was ice. Maybe he was… careless.’

‘But you don’t think so.’

‘I don’t know.’ Norvig grabbed his phone again, as if intending to make a call. Then he thought better of it and clunked it down on the table. ‘You got here safely, didn’t you?’ He glared accusingly at Eusden as he stubbed out his cigarette.

‘Look, I know nothing about this. I came by train.’

‘Who’s the woman at the Phoenix?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t matter.’

‘The other Englishman, then. Who’s he?’

‘Marty Hewitson. He is a friend.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Århus. But he’ll be here soon. Probably tomorrow.’

‘OK, Richard. Let’s be cool. Accidents happen. Business is business. You get these… documents. You have them in your hand. They deliver what Karsten promised. Then I’m interested. Anything less – any more horseshit – forget it.’ Norvig scribbled a number on a corner of the front page of Børsen, tore it off and passed it to Eusden. ‘Call me. If there’s something to talk about. If not, we never met. Understood?’

‘Understood.’

They left separately, at Norvig’s insistence. Eusden would actually have been glad of his company, rattled as he was by the news of Burgaard’s death. An accident was credible enough. He had probably been speeding, his head full of plans to smooth talk Vicky into handing over the case. Or maybe he had just fallen asleep at the wheel. Oh, yes, an accident was the obvious explanation. And yet… And yet.

Eusden walked up Nyhavn to Kongens Nytorv, the broad square at the eastern end of Strøget. He was in no hurry to return to his cramped room at the Phoenix. He knew he ought to eat something but had no appetite. His senses were alert, his nerves jangling. He felt exposed and helpless and foolish for feeling so. Marty needed to be told what had happened, but there was no way Århus Kommunehospital was going to put a call through to him at this hour. Eusden was trapped between the urge to act and the certainty that for the moment there was nothing he could do.

He remembered there was a quaint old bar on the square where he had passed a carefree hour one summer’s night back in 1989: Hviids Vinstue. He went in, found it reassuringly unaltered and drank several glasses of the house schnapps. Alcohol soon began to take the edge off his anxiety. Burgaard had killed himself in a car crash. That was all there was to it. There was no second car, no van speeding past, then swerving in, causing Burgaard to swerve and skid. It was-

A van. Marty had nearly been run over by one before collapsing at the bus stop. Maybe there really was a plot. And maybe the plotters had banked on Eusden being in the car as well. Maybe they had only just – or still not – learnt that Burgaard had left him behind. His mouth dried as he found himself actually crediting the possibility.

He decided to go back to the Phoenix. Cramped or not, his room promised safety if nothing else. He finished his schnapps and left.

A short distance round the square was Copenhagen’s grand hotel, the d’Angleterre, where he and Gemma had taken Holly for tea one afternoon, earning the girl’s highest accolade: ‘Ace.’ Eusden paused to gaze in at the hotel’s warmly lit windows. It was to occur to him later in the evening that if he had lingered at Hviids just a little longer or alternatively pressed straight on in that instant, he would not have been standing there when a couple emerged from the d’Angleterre into the chill night air.

The woman was fur-coated and -hatted, amply proportioned in height and girth, dark-skinned and statuesquely poised. She stopped, instantly aware of Eusden’s astonished gaze and that the cause of his astonishment was not her, but her companion, a tall, middle-aged man in a dark-green overcoat. ‘Do you know this gentleman, Werner?’ she asked in a lilting American accent. ‘He certainly seems to know you.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Straub gave Eusden a wintry smile. ‘We know each other.’

TWENTY-ONE

‘Richard Eusden. Regina Celeste.’ Straub managed the introductions with measured aplomb. Eusden had already guessed that the lady was the moneybags from Virginia Straub had been planning to sell the contents of the case to. What he could not guess was who he planned to say Eusden was. But he did not have to wait long to find out. ‘Richard’s a friend of Marty Hewitson’s.’ This was a surprise. Did he propose to continue by explaining how he had treated Marty? No, of course not. ‘Is he here with you in Copenhagen, Richard?’

‘It would be so convenient if he was,’ said Regina as Eusden hesitated over an answer. ‘The man’s been leading us quite a dance.’

‘Has he really?’

‘I’m afraid it’s the kind of thing I’ve gotten used to since I became an Anastasian.’

‘A what?’

‘A true believer in the Grand Duchess. Anastasia Manahan. Maybe you don’t call yourself that over here. But I guess you must be one if you’re a friend of Mr Hewitson’s. So, where’s he hiding himself?’

‘I… don’t really know.’

‘What has brought you to Copenhagen, then?’ asked Straub.

‘The same as you, perhaps.’

‘Why don’t you join us for dinner, Mr Eusden?’ Regina trilled. ‘We were on our way to a restaurant. Close by, you said, Werner?’

‘Very.’

‘We could talk there. And from what Werner tells me, we have plenty to talk about.’

‘Indeed,’ said Straub. His guarded expression revealed some scanty hints of alarm mixed with determined opportunism. He obviously did not want Eusden to tell Regina what he had done to Marty, though it was equally obvious he would merely utter a horrified and doubtless credible denial. But nor did he want Eusden to melt away into the night. Happenstance had given him the chance to probe his opponent’s defences, albeit vicariously. But it was a chance that cut both ways.

‘I’d be delighted to join you,’ said Eusden.

The Restaurant Els was indeed close by, only a short step away across the square, a candle-lit haven of mirrors and murals presided over by the prominently mounted head of the eponymous elk. Or, as Regina described him, ‘My Lord, a moose.’

They were settled at a table and supplied with menus. Aperitifs were declined on the grounds that champagne had already been quaffed at the d’Angleterre. Eusden was happy to go along with this. His head was clear despite the amount he had already drunk, but he needed to keep it that way. He and Straub had embarked on a battle of wits, with Regina as unwitting referee. Predictably, Straub sought to seize the initiative, by creatively refashioning the circumstances of their acquaintance for Regina’s benefit.

In this version of events, Eusden had been visiting Marty in Amsterdam after hearing of his friend’s illness, and had accompanied him to Hamburg at the time of Marty’s initial discussions with Straub about selling his grandfather’s archive of Anastasia-related documents. ‘I had intended we would both meet you in Frankfurt, Regina,’ Straub continued, ‘but Marty was too ill to travel. Then came our great surprise, Richard. When we arrived at the Vier Jahreszeiten yesterday, we found you and Marty had left.’

‘Destination unknown,’ put in Regina, who had discarded her furs to reveal a helmet of tightly curled gold-grey hair, a dramatically cut purple dress and an extravagant amount of cleavage. With her huge eyes and vast, ever-present smile, she seemed cast as cheerleader for Straub’s artfully ad-libbed cover story. He had clearly done a lot of thinking on his feet over the past couple of days. And now it was Eusden’s turn to do the same.

Supplied with extra thinking time by the taking of food orders and Straub’s theatrical agonizing over the wine list, Eusden embarked on what he reckoned was the least implausible of many improbable explanations for his presence in Copenhagen. ‘Marty persuaded me to go home on Tuesday. He said he was feeling a lot better and I had work commitments to deal with in London, so it seemed to make sense. I booked a flight and set off for the airport. But I had the impression Marty was trying to get rid of me. I don’t know why. It worried me. In the end, I couldn’t go. I thought he might be sicker than he was letting on. So, I doubled back to the hotel. To my surprise, they said he’d just booked out. The porter said he’d put him in a taxi to the central train station. I headed off there. It’s a big place, as you know, Werner. Logically, I stood no chance of finding him. But, as it happened, I did spot him, boarding a train to Copenhagen. It pulled out before I could make it to the platform. I had no idea what he was up to. I still haven’t. I followed by the next train. I’ve been trawling the hotels since I arrived, trying to track him down. So far, without any luck.’

‘You’ve rung him, of course,’ Straub prompted.

‘No answer. It’s very strange. I’m seriously concerned about him.’

‘Of course.’ Straub nodded sympathetically. ‘I was annoyed, I must admit, that he left Hamburg without warning, but from what you say he may be in some… difficulty.’

‘What kinda difficulty might that be?’ asked Regina. It was undeniably a good question.

‘Who can say, my dear?’ Straub took on an air of stoic puzzlement. ‘We must be grateful, however, that chance has come to our aid so… remarkably. Perhaps we will be able to reach an agreement with Marty after all.’

‘It’s certainly remarkable that you decided to come to Copenhagen,’ Eusden observed.

‘I insisted,’ said Regina, sailing once more in her full-rigged fashion to Straub’s rescue. ‘I couldn’t pass up the chance of taking a look at Hvidøre.’

‘The Dowager Empress’s home in Klampenborg.’ Straub shot Eusden a triumphant little smile. ‘We plan to visit it tomorrow.’

‘You might like to come along,’ said Regina. Eusden was beginning to sense she thought he could prove a more agreeable companion than Straub. ‘How’d that be, Werner?’

‘It’s up to Richard. He may have… other plans.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Eusden, thinking rapidly ahead. ‘Could I let you know?’

‘It’d be great if you could make it,’ said Regina. ‘I’ve read such a lot about the place. There’s a tower on the roof where they say Dagmar used to sit and look out to sea – east, towards Russia. So much scheming and intriguing went on there. It’s where all those grand dukes and duchesses put their treacherous heads together and signed the Copenhagen Statement denying Anastasia her birthright. I see the month of Dagmar’s death – October 1928 – as the turning point in the whole conspiracy against my cousin. Wouldn’t you agree, Werner?’

‘I would,’ Straub replied, breaking off from a carefully considered appraisal of the wine.

‘By your cousin,’ Eusden began, ‘you mean…’

‘Anastasia. Well, cousin-in-law, I guess I oughta say.’

Regina set off without the need of further encouragement on an animated but not always coherent account of the intertwined genealogies of the Bonaventures of North Carolina (Celeste was merely her married name) and the Manahans of Virginia that carried them through their starters and some of the way into their main courses. Eusden eventually deduced that much of her vagueness about assorted aunts, uncles and cousins once, twice or thrice removed was designed to obscure the year, indeed the decade, of her birth. The impression she gave of her age fluctuated bewilderingly. Sometimes she seemed no older than forty, sometimes no younger than sixty. Exactly when she had married her late husband, Louis Celeste, of Celeste Ice Cream Parlors fame, was far from clear. What was clear was that she had applied her well-funded widowhood to a pursuit of proof positive that Anna Anderson, late-life bride of her distant cousin Jack Manahan, was in truth Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaievna.

‘I had the pleasure and honour of attending her eightieth birthday party, in June 1981, and her very last birthday party, two years later. There never was a doubt in my mind she was who she said she was. You know true royalty when you meet it.’ (Eusden idly wondered how extensive Regina’s experience of true royalty actually was.) ‘I had my suspicions about the whole DNA thing right from the start, let me tell you. The Martha Jefferson Hospital finds a sample in a jar of Anastasia’s intestine they’d supposedly had standing on a shelf in a cupboard since an operation back in 1979. We don’t have any way of knowing how securely it’d been stored over the intervening decade and then some, but there surely were strange things going on in Charlottesville in the fall of 1992, when the hospital came out and said they had no sample, then changed their mind and said they did after all. I dug out a report in the Daily Progress of a janitor at the hospital being knocked cold by an intruder one night in November of that year, a few weeks before the change of mind. Now, what do you make of that, Richard?’

‘That’s the Charlottesville Daily Progress,’ Straub smilingly clarified.

‘Poor cousin Jack was dead by then, thank the Good Lord,’ Regina proceeded, sparing Eusden the need to say what he made of anything. ‘If he hadn’t been, I reckon the rank injustice of that whole proceeding would have finished him. The Romanovs saw their chance to foist that Polish peasant identity on Anastasia and they grabbed it. You can’t deny their thoroughness. They must have thought they had her right where they wanted her for all time. But now we might be able to turn the tables on them. If we can find your friend Marty Hewitson, Richard.’

‘You’ve no idea where he is?’ pressed Straub.

‘None at all, I’m afraid. I’ll just have to… keep looking.’

‘He didn’t happen to open the case in front of you, did he?’ asked Regina.

‘No such luck. I actually know less about the contents of the case than I imagine you two do.’

‘There will come a time to put that right if you can locate it,’ said Straub, holding Eusden’s gaze.

‘Amen to that,’ said Regina, gulping some wine. ‘It could be the answer to our prayers.’

Regina ordered a dessert after the main courses were cleared, then adjourned to powder her nose. It was a moment Eusden had been preparing himself for, when he and Straub could drop the pretences they had both been maintaining. And Straub had obviously been preparing for it as well. The second the door leading to the loo had closed behind her, he launched in.

‘Are you about to repay me the ten thousand euros, Richard?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Marty did not leave the money at my mother’s apartment. Therefore he accepted it. But he did not deliver his side of the bargain. Where is the real attaché case?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘Not really. But it is true. He told me the real case would be waiting for him in Amsterdam and he encouraged me to go back to London, just like I told you. But I’d been put through so much by then, thanks to the tricks the pair of you were playing on each other, that I decided, after setting off for the airport, to go back and demand a slice of whatever the contents of the case were worth. I reckoned I was owed that.’ Straub’s expression suggested he found this credible. Eusden was gambling that a confession of greed on his part would be more convincing than anything else. ‘I’ve been ripped off by Marty a good few times over the years. The ten thou is obviously nothing to what he and you think the letters will fetch. So, why shouldn’t I get a cut of the action?’

‘It is a… an understandable point of view, I would have to admit.’ Straub’s tone hinted at relief. He was comfortable with venality. He knew how to deal with it.

‘I thought I’d be able to catch up with Marty at the station, but he wasn’t waiting for the Amsterdam train. It was pure luck I was in the right place at the right moment to see him leaving for Copenhagen.’

‘And where was that place, Richard?’ The question, apparently trivial, was actually a vital piece of fact-checking. Straub knew Hamburg central station as well as a native of the city would.

‘I was on the walkway above the platforms. The train had pulled out before I could get down there. I came after him by the next train. I think it’s pretty clear he had the case sent here, not Amsterdam, don’t you?’

‘It would seem so, certainly.’

‘If I can find him, I’m sure I can persuade him to rope me in. But into what? He’s a dying man, Werner. I doubt he has the energy, the resources or the contacts that you do. In other words, I doubt he can get such a good price as you can.’

A smile flickered around Straub’s mouth. ‘Are you proposing some kind of deal, Richard?’

‘I’ll track him down sooner or later. When I do, I’ll contact you. After all, you’re the one with the buyer in place, aren’t you?’

‘True. And here she comes.’ Straub dropped his voice to add: ‘Very well, Richard. We are agreed. But find Marty soon, no? The quicker the better, for all of us.’

‘You two are looking kinda conspiratorial,’ said Regina, as she shimmied back into her seat. ‘Should I be worried?’

‘Not at all,’ Straub replied. ‘Though perhaps disappointed. Richard has decided he cannot visit Hvidøre with us. He must continue his search for Marty.’

‘That’s a real shame. But… I guess I understand. Lord knows, we want you to find him.’

‘We do,’ Straub glanced intently at Eusden. ‘Indeed we do.’

TWENTY-TWO

Eusden woke early the following morning. He made some coffee and drank it gazing out at the roofs of Copenhagen, wondering whether it was better to wait for Marty to call, or try his luck again with the Århus Kommunehospital switchboard. There was a lot Marty had to know before he arrived in Copenhagen. If he arrived in Copenhagen. The news that Straub was lying in wait for him might put him off the idea altogether.

In the event, Marty rang before Eusden had finished his coffee. ‘I’m getting out of here today whatever the sawbones says,’ he announced. ‘I spoke to Kjeldsen yesterday. He’s expecting you at eleven o’clock. I also spoke to Bernie. He’s going to insist Vicky returns to London. When he snaps his fingers, his daughters jump, so that’s a problem solved. I guess it’ll be mid- to late afternoon before I make it to Copenhagen. No need to come to the station. I’ll meet you at the Phoenix.’

But that was not a good idea, as Eusden set about explaining. And Straub’s presence in the city was not the only cause of concern. Eusden also had to report Burgaard’s fatal so-called accident. Marty was singularly unfazed, however.

‘You’re getting better at this, Richard. You seem to have played Werner like a fish on a line. Well, you’re right, of course. The Phoenix is obviously out. I’ll tell you what. There’s a Hilton at Copenhagen airport. I’ll book myself in there. It’s only a quarter of an hour from the centre and it’s the last place Werner would think of looking; he knows I won’t be coming or going by plane. He’ll be out at Klampenborg with Regina when you collect the case and you can take a taxi to the Hilton later. I’ll call you when I know what time I’ll be arriving. As for Burgaard, good riddance. It’s bloody lucky you weren’t in the car. But don’t overreact. It sounds like it was an accident to me: cocky Karsten putting his foot down when he should’ve been watching out for black ice. Serves the treacherous little bastard right. No sense getting paranoid at this stage, hey?’

‘There’s a big difference between paranoia and commonsense cautiousness.’ Marty’s unquenchable optimism was beginning to worry Eusden. Did the doctors have him on happy pills? ‘What about Straub’s hired heavy? Shouldn’t we be asking ourselves if he might start tailing me now his boss knows I’m in town?’

‘He was Hamburg muscle, Richard. Werner will have paid him off long since.’

‘You’re sure of that, are you?’

‘OK, OK. Keep a look out for a bald-headed seven-footer built like a wardrobe. You see what I’m saying? He was taken on for enforcement, not surveillance. You’d spot him a mile off. Werner would have to buy in local talent and he can’t do that while he’s got his hands full with the widow Celeste. Everything’s going to be fine. I’m feeling heaps better and Kjeldsen’s going to give you the name of a reliable and discreet translator. We’ve got this in the bag, Richard. All we have to do is hold our nerve.’

It sounded simple and straightforward as Marty put it. Eusden could not decide whether it was merely the pessimistic nature Marty had always attributed to him that accounted for his suspicion that the day would somehow turn out otherwise.

Marty would certainly not have been surprised that he arrived absurdly early for his appointment with Kjeldsen – and without a single glimpse of a mountainous German dogging his footsteps. Jorcks Passage was an old, narrow arcade of shops, with offices on the floors above, linking Strøget with Skindergade. A board at the Strøget end listed the occupants, among them Anders Kjeldsen, advokat. Eusden whiled away half an hour in a nearby coffee shop, then went up in a tiny wheezing lift to the lawyer’s third-floor lair.

The door was ajar. Eusden tapped and pushed it further open. A heavily built man clad in a baggy grey suit was standing by the window of a disorderly, paper-strewn office, smoking a cigarette and gazing down into the arcade. He had long hair matching the colour of his suit tied back in a ponytail and a doleful, jowly, pockmarked face. The creak of the door seemed to catch his attention where the tap had not.

‘Mr Eusden?’ His voice was gravel mixed with treacle.

‘Yes. Hr Kjeldsen?’

‘Yes. I am Kjeldsen. Come in.’ He moved to a desk piled high with paperwork, propped his cigarette in an ashtray and turned to offer his hand. They shook. ‘Sit down. Please.’

Eusden sat as directed. Kjeldsen flopped into the chair on the other side of the desk and shaped an awkward smile. His manner suggested they were meeting to discuss a divorce or the death of a close relative. Eusden smiled himself, seeking to lighten the mood. ‘Marty spoke to you yesterday?’

‘Yes.’ Kjeldsen gave an exaggerated, donkeyish nod. ‘He did.’

‘So, can I have the case, please?’

‘Do you have ID?’

‘Sure.’ Eusden pulled out his passport.

‘Tak.’ Kjeldsen examined it briefly. Then his face crumpled into an apologetic grimace. ‘There is a problem, Mr Eusden.’

‘What kind of problem?’

‘A serious one. I do not have the case.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I am sorry.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Last night…’ Kjeldsen broke off for a drag on his cigarette, then began again. ‘Last night, someone came in here, opened the safe’ – he waved a hand towards the safe in question, which stood, stout and apparently secure, in a corner – ‘and stole some money, some jewellery I was storing for another client… and Mr Hewitson’s case.’

Eusden was at first too shocked to respond. Apart from anything else, there was no sign of a break-in or of any damage to the safe. For this at least Kjeldsen was swift to supply an explanation.

‘As I told the police, it is obvious who is responsible. I had to dismiss my secretary last week. She had become… unreliable. She knew the combination of the safe. She must have made a copy of the keys. So, she stole the money and the jewellery and took the case… hoping it contained something valuable. I did not mention the case to the police. I wanted to speak to you or Mr Hewitson first. Did it, in fact, contain something valuable – something easily converted into cash, I mean?’

‘Not easily, no.’ Eusden shook his head at the thought of how he was going to break this to Marty.

‘Then, she will probably get rid of it. She has probably already got rid of it. She knows I will send the police after her. Do you want me to tell them about it?’

‘Why not?’ Eusden threw the question at Kjeldsen like an accusation, though technically the only thing he could accuse him of was poor choice of secretarial staff.

‘There are sometimes reasons why people do not wish such things to be told to the authorities. But I will make sure the police know about the case, now that you have… cleared up the matter.’ Kjeldsen shrugged helplessly. ‘Though, as I say, she will almost certainly have thrown it away by this time. A canal; a skip: anywhere. There is nothing to say who owns it, so-’

‘How do you know that?’ The Foreign Office had honed Eusden’s analytical nature even if it had stifled his soul. There was a flaw in Kjeldsen’s logic. And he sensed it might be significant.

‘Know what… Mr Eusden?’ Kjeldsen asked, blatantly prevaricating.

‘How do you know there’s nothing to say who owns the case? Your former secretary will have broken it open before discarding it, won’t she? How do you know Marty’s name and address aren’t inside?’

‘I believe…’ Kjeldsen resorted to his cigarette to win further thinking time, but it had burned down nearly to the filter and he was obliged to content himself with a protracted stubbing-out. Then: ‘I believe Mr Hewitson said so. Or perhaps it was… Ms Shadbolt.’

The man was lying. That was clear. But just how big was the lie? ‘Where does your ex-secretary live, Hr Kjeldsen?’

‘I cannot tell you that, Mr Eusden. It is… a police matter. But they have promised to be in touch. And I will contact you as soon as I hear from them. You are staying at the Phoenix, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, wait for news, then, Mr Eusden. I am sorry. I am… professionally embarrassed. For such a thing to happen is… awful. I blame drugs. I suspect my secretary had… an expensive habit. Employing the right people… is so difficult.’

‘That’s certainly true.’ Eusden looked Kjeldsen in the eye, letting him understand exactly what he meant.

‘Please give my… personal apologies… to Mr Hewitson. All we can do now is… hope the police get lucky.’

‘You’ll let them know about the case?’

‘Most certainly.’

‘What’s the name of the officer handling the inquiry? I’d like to speak to him myself.’

Kjeldsen smiled unreassuringly. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘To make sure every effort to find the case is being made.’

‘You can leave that to me, Mr Eusden. I am sorry to say many of our police officers speak rather poor English. There would be confusion, miscommunication. I will ensure they do everything they need to do. And I will keep you informed of progress.’

‘If there is any.’

‘Let us say when there is any.’ Kjeldsen’s smile remained fixed in place. ‘We must try to be positive.’

TWENTY-THREE

Eusden was angry and frustrated. Angry because he was convinced it was Kjeldsen, not his phantom former secretary, who had stolen the case. Frustrated because he could hardly go straight to the police and confirm they had received no report of a burglary in Jorcks Passage, then lodge a complaint against Kjeldsen, since Marty had made it very clear police involvement in his activities was something he wished to avoid at all costs. Kjeldsen probably knew that and was trading on it. He must have broken into the case and judged he could make a lot of money out of the contents. How was an open question; how soon the more pressing issue.

Eusden had to speak to Marty. That at least was certain. But he would not be able to do so for several hours. A message was waiting for him at the Phoenix. Catching 11.54 train. Meet you at the hotel 4 p.m. Marty. Marty had been phoneless since Straub had stolen his mobile and would probably have kept it switched off even if he still had one. It would be mid-afternoon before Eusden could speak to him, out at the airport Hilton, a long way from Jorcks Passage.

That could not be helped. Or could it? Eusden suddenly realized there was a way to bring forward their meeting by an hour or so. Marty would have to change trains at Copenhagen central station and Eusden could be waiting for him when he stepped off the 11.54 from Århus.

That still left him with time to kill, which he resolved to put to good purpose by harassing Kjeldsen. He returned to Jorcks Passage and phoned the slippery lawyer on his mobile while loitering in the entrance to the arcade.

‘Any news from the police, Hr Kjeldsen?’

‘I regret not, Mr Eusden. But it is only… just over an hour… since we met. These things take time. Have you spoken with Mr Hewitson?’

‘Not yet. He’s arriving in Copenhagen later today. I’m sure he’ll want to hear your explanation of what happened in person.’

‘Bring him to see me, then. What time will he be arriving?’

‘We could be with you by five.’

I will expect you then.’

Eusden continued to loiter and was rewarded, twenty minutes later, by the sight of Kjeldsen emerging from the entrance to his office’s stairway at the other end of the arcade, muffled up in loden coat and scarf. He ambled off along Skindergade and Eusden followed at a discreet distance. There were enough shoppers about, and office workers taking their lunch breaks, for him to blend into the background. Kjeldsen appeared wholly unconcerned about the possibility of being tailed. An Italian restaurant in a small square nearby turned out to be his destination.

There was a café opposite, where Eusden nabbed a table with a suitable eyeline and washed a toasted sandwich down with a couple of Tuborg Grøns while monitoring Kjeldsen’s activities. He emerged from the restaurant after forty minutes or so, patting his stomach contentedly like someone who had put away a table d’hôte lunch with expeditious relish. Eusden had already settled up and exited with the lawyer still in view. Kjeldsen popped into a secondhand bookshop for a few minutes on his way back to Jorcks Passage, rounding off an entirely convincing performance in the role of a man going about his customary lunchtime routine.

Eusden had learnt nothing of the remotest value. He decided to head for the station.

The 11.54 from Århus, it transpired, ran through to the airport. Marty would not be getting off; Eusden would be getting on. He eked out an hour sipping Americanos in a coffee shop, watching the sky darken over Rådhuspladsen. Sleety rain began to fall. Eventually, the time came for him to return to the station.

He bought his ticket and went down to the platform. The Københavns Lufthavn train rolled in on schedule at 3.20. He did not catch sight of Marty as the carriages decelerated past him, but there were lots of people rising from their seats to disembark. He would find him soon enough.

The train had an eight-minute lay-over before proceeding. Eusden waited to see if Marty would get off for a smoke. He did not. Eusden boarded at the front and started working his way through the carriages. He reached the other end before the eight minutes were up. Marty was nowhere to be seen. He started retracing his steps. The train left the station. Still he could not find Marty.

It was a twelve-minute run to the airport. Long before the train arrived, Eusden knew what he could not quite bring himself to believe: Marty was not aboard.

He lingered in the foyer of the airport Hilton until gone four o’clock, clinging to the frail hope that Marty would still turn up. He did not. And it became bleakly obvious to Eusden that he was never going to. He phoned Århus Kommunehospital, who confirmed Marty had discharged himself earlier in the day; he was no longer any concern of theirs.

But he remained of great concern to Eusden, who could think only of sinister explanations for his friend’s failure to make it to Copenhagen. He phoned the Phoenix. There was no message for him, from Marty or anyone else. But Marty’s earlier message had been clear. Catching 11.54 train. Yet he had not caught it. Or if he had, he had got off somewhere along the way. Why would he have done that? He had been intent on reaching Copenhagen that day. Hence his insistence on leaving the hospital. He would surely not have got off the train unless compelled to do so.

Eusden thought about the van that had nearly run Marty down and the car crash that had killed Burgaard. He wondered, chillingly, if he had made it to Copenhagen himself only because whoever had run Burgaard off the road thought he was in the car as well. That made his survival an oversight, a discrepancy to be corrected as soon as it was deemed convenient.

He walked out of the hotel into the airport, his legs rubbery, his mind scrambled. He felt like a ghost, drifting through the bustling crowds of travellers: the businessmen, the tourists, the family groups. Everyone was going somewhere, except him. He gazed up at the departures board. Every destination offered him an escape route. He could return to London. He could jet off to Bangkok or New York or… anywhere he chose. He had the means. He had the opportunity. And he had the reason. All he needed to do now was walk up to one of the airline desks, flash his credit card… and fly away from all this.

But the only ticket he bought was back into Copenhagen. He would face down Kjeldsen and offer him a stark choice: surrender the case, or answer to the police. And then… he did not know. But he did know it was time to act.

It was only just gone five when he reached Jorcks Passage. Night was falling, icy cold and cellar-damp. He hurried up the stairs to Kjeldsen’s office, unwilling to wait for the lift. The door was closed and locked. There was no answer to his knock. He was barely late for their appointment. But Kjeldsen was gone – probably long gone.

Eusden hammered on the door and shouted the lawyer’s name. It made no difference. There was no response. He stood on the drab, dully lit landing, breathing heavily, sweating despite the chill of the air. He was enraged as well as frightened. He either fought back now or he fled. It was as simple as that. And for Marty’s sake, if not his own, there was really no choice.

But he stood little chance of accomplishing anything on his own. He needed help. And he needed it fast. He pulled out his phone, squinted at the number written on the scrap of pink newspaper in his hand and stabbed at the buttons.

TWENTY-FOUR

‘Tell me again what’s in the case,’ said Henning Norvig.

They were sitting in Norvig’s car in a quiet residential street in the well-to-do suburb of Hellerup, parked in the deep shadow of a silver birch tree a short distance from the large semi-detached house where Anders Kjeldsen lived alone, following the break-up of his marriage. Norvig was, as Eusden had hoped, very well-informed. Though not quite as well-informed as he would clearly have liked.

‘I’m only helping you because you promised me dirt on Tolmar Aksden, Richard. So, are you sure you can deliver?’

‘Doesn’t the fact that Kjeldsen’s stolen the case prove the contents are hot stuff?’ Eusden responded, coughing in the stale, smoky air. Norvig had worked his way through half a pack of Prince cigarettes since they had stationed themselves outside Kjeldsen’s house. The lights were on and the lawyer’s Volvo was parked in the drive, but of the lawyer himself there had been no sign. His telephone number had been engaged on the two occasions Norvig had dialled it, suggesting he was not passing an idle evening in front of the television. Beyond that, Norvig had nothing to go on but what Eusden had told him. And it was cold, dark and late.

‘Hot stuff,’ he murmured. ‘But can it burn Aksden?’

‘The case contains letters, sent to Marty’s grandfather before the War by Aksden’s great-uncle. Who else but Aksden could such letters damage?’

‘I don’t know. And you don’t know.’

‘But Kjeldsen knows.’

‘Ja. I guess so. And he’s what I’d call… hensynløs. Without scruple.’

‘How in God’s name did Marty come to choose him?’

‘He advertises in the Copenhagen Post – the English-language paper. Plus he’s cheap.’

‘How do you know so much about him?’

‘He works for people I write about.’

‘And what sort of people are they?’

‘Crooks in suits – cheap suits, naturally.’

‘Who hire a lawyer to match?’

‘Exactly.’

‘What’s he up to, do you think?’

‘Agreeing a sale. Negotiating. Fixing a price.’

‘Who with?’

‘Someone who doesn’t like Tolmar Aksden. A rival. An enemy. There’s quite a queue.’

‘What can we do?’

‘Nothing. Until he moves. It could be a long wait.’

‘Why don’t we just knock on his door?’

‘Because if he doesn’t have the case with him, we’re fucked. OK?’

‘OK.’

Eusden sighed and stretched his neck back against the headrest. Fatigue had sucked all the fury and much of the anxiety out of him. There was a chance – a reasonable one, given his track record – that Marty had simply changed his plans without telling him. And there was an even better chance that Norvig could turn the tables on Kjeldsen. Local knowledge was a precious commodity. All that was required to deploy it effectively was patience. He took out his phone and reread the message he had found on it earlier. Phone me asap, timed a few hours ago. It was terse even by Gemma’s standards. Presumably she wanted to rebuke him for keeping her in the dark about what he and Marty were up to. Actually, he thought, she ought to thank him. But putting her right on that, like so much else, would have to wait.

‘What do you know about Mjollnir’s takeover of Saukko Bank, Henning?’ he asked, determined to learn as much from Norvig as he could.

‘Not as much as I would if Karsten had made our meeting, I reckon. The deal didn’t seem so big when it happened, but it’s… kind of grown since. Saukko’s St Petersburg subsidiary gives Mjollnir a slice of more Russian companies than anyone realized at the time. That’s partly why their share price has gone up like a rocket. First Scandinavia. Now Russia. They just keep expanding. There’s no stopping the Invisible Man. But anyone can read that in the papers. Every fucking day you can read it. What I need is-’ Norvig broke off. Eusden sensed his sudden tension. ‘Look.’

A pair of headlamps threw their light into the street from the driveway of Anders Kjeldsen’s house. The lawyer’s Volvo eased into view, took a stately right turn and moved away from them. Norvig started up and followed at a cautious distance.

‘He’s heading for the main road. Going back to his office, maybe?’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘To pick up the case. I’m guessing it never left the safe. I doubt he had anywhere so secure at home. The question is: why pick it up now?’

‘Because whoever’s buying it won’t wait until tomorrow?’

‘Has to be. But they’ll meet on neutral ground, for sure, so we should be able to catch Kjeldsen on his own at Jorcks Passage. Easy, no?’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do, Richard, I do. Trust me.’

Eusden had no option but to trust Norvig. Kjeldsen joined the main road, as predicted, then followed a link road to the expressway into Copenhagen. Traffic was thin, visibility good. Keeping the Volvo within sight but hanging far enough back to avoid attracting the driver’s attention was a straightforward task. It became more complicated when they neared the city centre, with its light-controlled junctions. But Norvig knew what he was doing, judging any stops behind Kjeldsen perfectly so as to keep to the shadowy stretches between streetlamps. Besides, as he pointed out, the lawyer had no reason to think he might be followed. He was probably confident he had thoroughly outwitted Eusden.

But confidence can easily become complacency. Kjeldsen steered an undeviating course for Jorcks Passage, driving down past the old university buildings and the cathedral to Skindergade, then turning into the service yard next to the northern entrance to the arcade.

Norvig drove blithely by, glancing into the yard as he went. He pulled over a short distance further on and stopped. ‘Wait here for my signal,’ he ordered, then climbed out and jogged back along the pavement. Eusden turned round to watch him.

Norvig slowed as he neared the turning into the yard. Hugging the wall, he peered cautiously round the corner, then waved for Eusden to follow and vanished from sight.

Norvig was standing with his back against the service door into the building, holding it open, when Eusden caught up with him. The yard was full of shadow and silence, broken only by the tick-tick-tick of the Volvo’s cooling engine. Norvig smiled, his teeth gleaming ghostly pale through the gloom.

‘Kjeldsen was in a hurry,’ he whispered. ‘He left the door to swing shut and didn’t wait to check. Come on.’

They took the stairs two at a time to the third floor. The landing was in darkness, but light glimmered at the edges of the lawyer’s office door.

‘I doubt he’s locked himself in.’ Norvig’s fingers curled cautiously round the handle. ‘Shall we join him?’ Without waiting for a response, he jerked the handle down and flung the door open.

Kjeldsen looked up in alarm from behind his desk. His mouth dropped open. The only light in the room was from a green-shaded reading lamp to his right that turned his face into a pantomime-mask of horror. In front of him, on the desk, stood a battered old leather attaché case. The lid was half-raised, casting towards them a crooked shadow that began to waver in time to the trembling of Kjeldsen’s hand.

‘Skide,’ he said numbly, staring at Eusden. Then he let go of the lid. It fell shut. And on it, revealed by the light from the lamp, Eusden could see the stencilled initials CEH.

TWENTY-FIVE

Kjeldsen flopped down into the chair behind his desk and spread his hands in a gesture of helpless admission. ‘What can I say, Mr Eusden? I know this… looks bad.’

‘It looks what it is,’ said Eusden, advancing across the room. ‘Theft. Which you’re not going to get away with.’

Kjeldsen started to say something to Norvig in Danish, but the journalist cut him short. ‘Speak English.’

‘If you prefer.’ He smiled uneasily. ‘Norvig and I know each other, Mr Eusden. We’ve met… in court.’

‘And we’ll be meeting in court again after this.’ Norvig smiled back at the lawyer. ‘You’re in deep shit, my friend.’

Kjeldsen shrugged, as if he regarded that as an open question. ‘You know what the case contains, Mr Eusden?’

‘Letters from Hakon Nydahl to Clem Hewitson, written in the nineteen twenties and thirties.’

‘Ever seen them?’

‘Not till now.’ Eusden raised the lid. There they were in a slewed stack, resting on the faded green baize lining of the case: cream notepaper, filled with black-inked writing in a copperplate hand, the separate sheets of each letter held together with old paper clips that had begun to rust. Eusden picked up the topmost letter. There was an address: Skt Annæ Plads 39, København K, Danmark; a date: den 8. marts 1940; and a salutation: Kære Clem. Beneath, sentences in Danish swam across his gaze. It was bizarre but self-evidently true. Clem could read Danish.

‘That’s the most recent,’ said Kjeldsen. ‘The first one’s at the bottom. They cover fourteen years.’

Eusden shuffled through the stack to check. He glimpsed dates in receding order through the thirties and twenties until he came to the first: den 3. januar 1926. The handwriting was slightly more precise than fourteen years later, the strokes of the pen slightly stronger. But Nydahl and Clem had been on first-name terms from the start. That had not changed. Kære Clem…

‘You’ve read them?’ asked Norvig.

‘Ja.’ Kjeldsen nodded. ‘The whole lot.’

‘What are they about?’

‘Who are they about, you mean.’

‘OK. Who?’

‘Peder Aksden. Tolmar’s father. The letters are a record of his life, from sixteen to thirty.’

‘A record?’

‘Ja. Everything about him. What work he did on his parents’ farm. The girls he dated. The books he read. His hobbies. His opinions. His health. His… personality.’

‘That’s crazy. Why would Peder Aksden’s uncle write letters about all that to a retired British policeman?’

‘They’re not really letters to a friend, Henning. They’re reports. For posterity.’

‘Why should… posterity… be interested in Peder Aksden?’

‘Good question. Listen to this.’ Kjeldsen gestured to Eusden for permission to handle the letters. He was behaving meekly and contritely, like someone who accepted that the game was up – or like someone secure in the knowledge that he had the ace of trumps up his sleeve. ‘Is it OK… if I read to you from one?’

‘Go ahead.’

Kjeldsen eased out a letter from the stack, checked the date, then pulled it free. ‘November, 1938. Nydahl is worried about Peder’s engagement to a local girl. This is what he says. Henning can translate for you, Mr Eusden.’

Kjeldsen read the words in Danish, pausing at intervals to allow Norvig to catch up in English. ‘He is determined… to marry Hannah Friis… in the spring… Oluf and Gertrud are worried… and want me to decide…if I should stop him…I remember you and I discussed… the problems a family might cause… and whether we should ever allow him… to have one.’ At that Kjeldsen stopped reading and slid the letter back into place.

‘What “problems” is he talking about?’ asked Eusden.

Kjeldsen smiled thinly. He seemed to be growing more confident, despite the lack of obvious cause.

‘They emerge when you work your way through the letters,’ he replied enigmatically.

‘Why don’t you just tell us?’ demanded Norvig.

‘There’s not enough time.’

‘Bullshit.’ Norvig leant across the desk and looked Kjeldsen in the eye. ‘We’ve got all night.’

‘No. I’m supposed to meet the buyer in less than an hour. I’m already supposed to have phoned him to find out where.’

‘Bad luck.’

‘For you also, Henning. And for you, Mr Eusden. Very bad luck. I’d be willing in the circumstances to share the proceeds with you.’

‘There’s not going to be a sale,’ Eusden declared, reaching for the case.

But Kjeldsen was quicker. He grasped the handle tightly and declared bluntly, ‘Twenty million kroner.’

For a second, no one moved or spoke. Kjeldsen looked at Norvig, then at Eusden. He moistened his lips with his tongue.

‘Twenty million kroner,’ he said softly. ‘A little over two million pounds at the current exchange rate. That’s the price I’ve agreed. So, what do you say, gentlemen? Is it still no sale?’

‘Who’s your millionaire buyer?’ demanded Norvig.

‘It’s safer if you don’t know.’

‘It’s never safer for me not to know something.’

‘In this-’

The burbling of Kjeldsen’s mobile, which lay on the desk next to the case and began circling on its axis as it rang, cut him off. He looked enquiringly at Norvig and Eusden.

‘My buyer must’ve got tired of waiting for me to call.’

‘Let him go on waiting,’ said Eusden. He pushed the lid of the case down and let his hand rest on the rim, a few inches from Kjeldsen’s grip on the handle.

‘If I don’t answer, he’ll send his people to look for me.’

‘Answer it,’ said Norvig.

Eusden glanced round at him suspiciously, wondering for the first time whose side the journalist was on. Norvig shrugged.

Kjeldsen picked up the phone. ‘Ja?… No, there’s nothing wrong.’ He was speaking English, Eusden noticed, not Danish. Perhaps that meant his buyer was not Danish. ‘OK.’ Kjeldsen let go of the case, grabbed a pencil and scrawled something – a single word – on a notepad. ‘OK… Yes, I can find it… I understand… See you there.’ He rang off and glanced at his watch. ‘I’m due to meet them in half an hour.’

‘You can meet them whenever you like,’ said Eusden. ‘But you’re not taking this with you.’ He swung the case round and grasped the handle.

‘Hold on.’ Norvig slammed the flat of his hand down on the lid of the case. ‘Let’s all just… take a moment.’

‘Good idea,’ said Kjeldsen, sounding like the very embodiment of honey-toned reason. ‘Twenty million kroner in cash is something to take a moment to think about, no? A lot of problems solved. A lot of pleasures bought. Ours to share three ways.’ He glanced at Norvig. ‘Or two.’

‘This case belongs to Marty Hewitson,’ Eusden declared. ‘There’s no-’

‘What do the letters tell us, Anders?’ put in Norvig. ‘What exactly do they tell us?’

‘A secret. With a twenty million kroner price tag on it. Ten for you. Ten for me. The clock’s ticking, Henning.’

‘I’m taking this,’ said Eusden, tugging at the case. ‘Don’t try to-’

The blow took him unawares. Norvig’s fist landed sideways under his jaw, jerking his head back. He staggered away from the desk, the case no longer in his grasp. Before he had recovered, Norvig was between him and the desk.

‘I can’t let you fuck this up for me, Richard,’ he shouted, pushing him against the wall. ‘Twenty million’s too much to say no to.’

‘The case isn’t yours to sell,’ Eusden gasped. He was pinned by the shoulders and unable to move. Norvig was evidently stronger than he looked. ‘You agreed to help me.’

‘I am helping you. Give it up, Richard. Take your share.’

‘I don’t want a share of anything.’

‘Then take nothing. It’s up to you.’

‘You bastard.’

‘Karsten’s dead. Your friend Marty’s probably dead too. It’s time to get smart. Time to cash in.’

‘Let go of me.’

‘OK.’ Norvig released him. ‘OK.’ The journalist took a step back. He was breathing through gritted teeth. A rivulet of sweat was trickling down his temple. There was sorrow in his gaze. But it was not enough. Every man has his price. And Norvig’s was on the table. ‘Like you say, Richard, I agreed to help you. But now I’m helping myself. Don’t try to stop me.’

‘Give me that case.’ All Eusden could cling to was a stubborn assertion of his rights as Marty’s representative. He lunged towards the desk. Kjeldsen grabbed the case and jumped up from his chair.

Suddenly, Eusden’s leading foot was whipped from under him. Norvig added a shoulder barge to the trip. Caught off-balance, Eusden fell. He glimpsed the shadow-etched rim of the desk, closing fast, as he pitched sideways. Then… nothing.

TWENTY-SIX

Eusden was swinging gently in a hammock. His head ached. A glaring sun threatened to dazzle him if he opened his eyes. He did not know where he was, except that it was pleasanter by far than the alternative he sensed he would become aware of if he roused himself. Something was pushing him, setting off the sway of the hammock. His head throbbed. The threatening sun turned cold. His recent memories began to reassemble themselves into a more or less coherent knowledge of time and place. Then full recollection flooded into his mind like blood into a starved limb. He opened his eyes.

A slightly built, sad-faced Asian man in a boiler suit, wearing a baseball cap with the New York Yankees logo on it, stopped nudging him with the toe of his grubby trainer and stared down at him. He said something in oddly accented Danish. Eusden could only respond with a groan.

He pushed himself up on one elbow and blinked about him. They were on the landing outside Kjeldsen’s office. There was the door to his right, firmly closed, and the sign: A. KJELDSEN, ADVOKAT. Pallid overhead light fell on the bare walls and floor and the nervous expression of the man in the boiler suit – the office block’s caretaker, presumably – who repeated what he had just said, to no more comprehensible effect.

‘Do you speak English?’ Eusden asked, in a slurred voice he hardly recognized as his own. There was a smell of whisky in the air and it seemed to be coming from him. His gaze drifted to an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker lying by his elbow. It looked like Kjeldsen had raided his filing cabinet supply of the hard stuff to set him up as a drunken intruder. No doubt his appearance fitted the bill. He raised a hand to what felt like the epicentre of his headache. The area around his left eyebrow was damp and tender. The dampness, he saw as he withdrew his hand, was blood. A hazy memory of being dragged to where he now lay floated to the surface of his turbid thoughts. He looked at his watch, focusing on the dial with some difficulty, and was surprised to see that only twenty minutes or so had elapsed since Norvig had turned on him. ‘Do you speak English?’ he asked again.

‘Yes.’ The caretaker frowned down at him. ‘You should not be here.’

‘I expect you’re right there.’ Eusden levered himself slowly and painfully to his feet, the caretaker taking an apprehensive step back as he did so.

‘I must phone the police if you are not leaving now.’

Eusden stooped forward as a wave of nausea swept over him. It did not return as he stood upright again. But his head throbbed painfully. Anger stirred within him. He had been as stupid to trust Norvig as Marty had been to trust Kjeldsen. They were both as treacherous as each other. And they had played him for a fool. They were at the rendezvous now, waiting for their fat pay-off, dreaming of how they would spend the money. If only he could catch up with them, he might still retrieve the situation, though how he could not imagine. Besides, he did not know where the rendezvous was. There was nothing he could do. Except-

‘Please go, mister. I’m not wanting any trouble.’

‘Nor me. But I’ve got it. In spades.’

‘I cannot help you.’

‘Actually, you can. I need to get into this office.’ Eusden pointed to Kjeldsen’s door. ‘I bet you’ve got a pass key.’

‘I cannot let you in there.’

‘Sorry…’ Eusden bent down, picked up the empty whisky bottle by the neck and smashed it against the wall. The caretaker jumped in alarm. Glass scattered across the floor. ‘I’m going to have to insist.’ He was between the other fellow and the stairs. He had blood on him and reeked of alcohol. He probably looked like a man it was unwise to defy. ‘Open the door.’

‘I cannot do that. I will be losing my job.’

‘Better than losing your life.’ Eusden held the broken bottle in front of him like a weapon. He could not believe he was behaving like this. But he would achieve nothing with politeness and appeals to reason. The caretaker was frightened. And his fear was Eusden’s only hope. ‘Open the door.’

‘Please, mister. I-’

‘Open it.’

‘OK, OK.’ The caretaker gestured submissively and fumbled in his pocket. Out came a massive bunch of keys. He sorted through them with trembling hands, sweating and breathing shallowly as he did so. Eusden hated himself for putting the man through such an ordeal. But it had to be done.

‘Hurry up.’

‘OK, OK. I have it.’ The caretaker moved to the door, unlocked it and pushed it ajar.

‘Switch on the light and go in.’

The poor fellow obeyed. Eusden followed him into the room and pulled the door shut behind them. Stark fluorescent light made the office look different. But the biggest difference was that Clem’s attaché case was gone from the desk.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Wijayapala. They call me… Wij.’

‘OK, Wij, just do as I say and you’ll be fine. Is that clear?’

‘Please, mister. Don’t hurt me.’

‘I won’t. If you do exactly what I tell you.’

‘Yes, yes, I will.’

‘Go over to the desk and sit down in the chair.’ Eusden prodded Wij between the shoulderblades and he started moving.

They reached the desk. Wij walked slowly round behind it and sat down.

‘Turn on the lamp.’

Wij reached up and engaged the switch. A pool of mellower light spread across the desktop.

The notepad was where Kjeldsen had left it. And he had not bothered to tear off the sheet he had written on. Careless of him – and considerate. Eusden did the tearing off instead. Marmorvej was the word Kjeldsen had scrawled. ‘Yes,’ he had said, ‘I can find it.’ So, the location had not been instantly familiar to him. And to confirm that, lying on the desk where it had not been lying before, was a Copenhagen street atlas. Eusden slapped the sheet of paper down in front of Wij. ‘Find that street in the atlas,’ he ordered, hardening his tone as well as his heart.

Wij’s general state of alarm turned the exercise of consulting the index and finding the right page into an agony. But Eusden could not do it himself without putting down the bottle, at which his captive kept casting anxious glances, so he had no choice but to stick with it. Eventually, after several long, uncertain minutes of searching and squinting, Marmorvej was located. Wij’s trembling finger pointed to the spot: a dockside street away to the north, beyond the Citadel.

Eusden snatched the atlas and shoved it into his pocket. Marmorvej was probably no more than a couple of miles off but he certainly did not have time to walk there. ‘How do you get here from home?’

‘Sorry?’

‘How do you travel?’

‘Oh, on my… my scooter.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Down in the yard.’

‘Give me the key.’

‘Oh, mister, no. I need that scooter badly.’

‘You’ll get it back. I’ll leave it there for you to find.’ Eusden pointed to the piece of paper with the word Marmorvej written on it. ‘Now, give me the key. And hand over your mobile phone as well.’

Wij undid a couple of buttons on his boiler suit and reached into an inner pocket for his mobile and the scooter key. He laid them on the desk and Eusden picked them up.

‘I’ll need the key to the door as well, Wij. I’m afraid I’m going to have to lock you in here. Sorry, but there it is. You’ll be able to call for help from the window in the morning. Oh and unplug Kjeldsen’s phone.’ He pointed to the landline receiver. ‘I’ll also have to take that. I’ll leave it downstairs with your mobile.’

‘Why you doing this, mister? You don’t look… like a crazy man.’

‘I don’t have time to explain.’

‘I got no money for a new scooter.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll ride carefully. Believe it or not, I am sorry.’ Eusden sighed. ‘This isn’t the start to the weekend I had planned.’

TWENTY-SEVEN

Eusden’s most recent experience of two-wheeled transport lay many years in the past and even then it had not been motorized. His wobbly ride through the mercifully empty streets of Copenhagen on Wijayapala’s scooter would ordinarily have been a nightmarish ordeal. As it was, its hazards and difficulties paled into insignificance compared with the other anxieties his mind was grappling with. Marty had vanished and Clem’s attaché case had been stolen. It had very possibly already been sold to a sinister and anonymous buyer. Certainly Eusden’s chances of preventing the sale were negligible. Logically, there was no point even trying to prevent it. So far, the attempt had involved behaving despicably as well as criminally. And he was still breaking the law by riding without a crash helmet – not to mention jumping a succession of red lights.

He could not simply give up, however. An admission of defeat at this stage would be more painful than pressing on until he had done everything he could, even if it was to no avail. The blow to his head had scrambled his thought processes and he was aware he might be acting irrationally, but he felt helpless in the grip of his determination to hit back at Kjeldsen and Norvig. One had cheated him. The other had betrayed him. He could not simply let them get away with it – and pocket their ill-gotten half shares of twenty million kroner.

The docks were separated from the city centre by a dual carriageway and a railway line. The route into them by road involved a double-back after passing Nordhavn S-tog station. This brought Eusden out on to one of the harbour basins, with a vast warehouse complex between him and Marmorvej. He left the scooter there, conscious that he could not afford to advertise his arrival with the mosquito-whine of its engine, and jogged along the narrow road between the warehouse and the dual carriageway.

Beyond lay another basin, with a huge car ferry moored at a jetty on the far side. Marmorvej was the quay to his left and he heard the thrumbling note of a boat’s engine as he turned on to it. A launch was moving away from the quayside, heading out into the harbour. And two men were walking towards a car parked in the lee of the warehouse. Widely spaced security lights cast a jumble of deep shadows and shallow reflections across the snowmelt-puddled wharf and the launch’s ghostly wake. For a second, Eusden could not be sure what he was actually seeing. His perceptions were sluggish, his reactions slow. Then the scene became clear and obvious in his mind.

The two men were Norvig and Kjeldsen. They were walking towards Kjeldsen’s Volvo. The lawyer was carrying a case that was marginally the wrong size and shape to be Clem’s. They had handed his over, of course, in exchange for this case, containing their pay-off. The buyer was leaving in the launch. Eusden was too late. It had always been likely he would be. His heart sank. He strode forward, unsure of what he meant to do but set on doing something to sour the pair’s victory.

Clunk, clunk: the doors of the Volvo slammed shut as Kjeldsen settled behind the wheel and Norvig in the passenger seat beside him. The engine coughed into action. The headlamps flared. The car was facing towards the sea, so they would not yet be able to see him. As Kjeldsen forwarded and reversed into a multi-point turn, Eusden broke into a run.

Almost at once, however, he stopped, confused by other movements and noises intruding on his senses, swifter than the manoeuvring car, louder than its muffled engine – or that of the departing launch, which by now had left the basin. An unlit motorbike sped into view round the seaward flank of the warehouse. Its rider and his pillion passenger were black-leathered, sleek-helmeted shadows. The machine closed on the Volvo, fast and dark. Eusden guessed Kjeldsen and Norvig were unaware of its approach. And he also guessed its approach spelt danger for them. ‘Look out!’ he shouted.

The warning was in vain. Time was about to slow yet accelerate in front of him. Kjeldsen had reversed towards the warehouse wall as the motorbike reached them. It braked sharply. Its rear light bled into the night. The pillion passenger jumped off as the bike halted, wielding what looked like a gun in his hand. Doubt on the point was snuffed out by the sharp cracks of repeated shots. Glass splintered. The gunman yanked open the driver’s door and unloaded more shots. Six, seven; ten, twelve: they came in rapid succession. The car horn blared. Eusden glimpsed slumped figures behind the windscreen. The gunman leant into the car. He pushed one of the figures aside. The horn died. Then the engine stopped. And the headlamps faded. Several more shots followed, less rapidly. They sounded calm and deliberate: a fail-safe guaranteeing of a specified result. The gunman recoiled from the car, holding the case, and climbed aboard the bike.

The flight response kicked in belatedly for Eusden. It was only now that he turned and ran. As he did so, he separated himself from the stationary shadows on the quay. To flee was also to become visible. He heard a shout from behind him, in a language that was neither Danish nor English. The motorbike engine revved, then roared. They were coming after him. At best a witness, at worst a confederate of the men they had just killed, he could not be allowed to escape.

Granted more time, Eusden would have cursed the instincts that had brought him to this place. If he had not been so obsessed with striking back at Norvig and Kjeldsen, he might have foreseen that they too could be double-crossed. But murder? The clinical executions he had just watched? His foresight would never have stretched so far. There was more at stake than he could ever have envisaged. And now that included his own life.

He turned the corner into the narrow road that led back to the other quay, where he had abandoned the scooter. A glance over his shoulder confirmed he would be overtaken before he got there. He was running to the end of a short leash. He had nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.

Then he saw the gate in the fence. It gave on to a path that led to a footbridge over the dual carriageway. They could not use the bike to pursue him over that. He dodged through the gate and sprinted for the steps, not daring to look behind him.

He ran up the steps and out along the span of the bridge. There was enough traffic on the road below to blot out the noise of the motorbike. He let himself believe for a moment that they might have given up the chase. But a sharp ping against the parapet of the bridge told a different tale. He crouched forward as he turned on to the steps down, ducking and dodging as he descended. He thought he heard a second shot, then a third.

There was a subway ahead of him, leading under the railway line. It was a brightly lit tunnel in which he would be a clear target. But only to someone at ground level. His pursuers would have to cross the footbridge to reach such a position. He could not afford to hesitate. He plunged along it, bracing himself for the jab of pain that would herald the shot that did not miss.

It never came. He emerged from the subway on Østbanegade, the road he had ridden along earlier before entering the docks. He risked a backward glance as he jinked right. There was no one coming after him. Maybe they had given up after all.

A short distance up the road was the bright-red hexagon of the S-tog station. Eusden did not know when the trains stopped running. If one happened to be due, it would be as quick and safe a getaway as he could hope for. But it was a big if. On the other side of the road there were apartment blocks and residential streets where he could hope to lose himself. Maybe they were the better bet. He stood on the pavement debating the point with himself as he panted for breath. His heart was thumping. Blood was singing in his ears. He did not know what to do. He took a chance with another glance into the subway. It was still empty. It was beginning to look as if-

Then he heard the familiar growl of the motorbike. He whirled round and saw it heading towards him down Østbanegade. They had taken the road route out of the docks, calculating – correctly – that they could cut him off. He had delayed too long. They would be on him in a matter of seconds.

To retreat along the subway was to become a rat in a maze. Eusden’s only chance of escape was to make it to the street opposite and pray one of the residents would open their door to him. He launched himself across the road.

He heard the blast of its horn before he saw the lorry thundering towards him from the left. He had forgotten Østbanegade was one-way at this point. But he could not stop now. He lowered his head and lunged on, reaching the pavement in a vortex of rushing air as the lorry swallowed the space behind him, its horn still blaring, its brakes squealing.

In the same breath there was a screech of tyres and a deafening thump of metal crunching into metal. Eusden shrank from the sound, stooping so far forward that he lost his footing and fell to the ground in three stumbling strides. The sound grew and extended itself into a yowl of squealing rubber and crumpling steel as he tumbled against the nearest wall and looked back, winded, into the road.

The lorry had struck the motorbike with crushing force as it crossed in front of it. The rider must have gambled on making the turn before the lorry could shield Eusden from the gunman. But he had misjudged fatally. Now, as the lorry slewed to a halt, jack-knifing slowly across the road in the process, the bike was a twisted shape juddering beneath the cab, the rider and passenger broken dolls bouncing and rolling to rest along the pavement ahead of it. The case had broken free and been split open. Fistfuls of kroner were whirling like autumn leaves in a gale.

The bikers did not move once they had come to rest and the lorry was thirty or forty yards away by the time it stopped. The driver pushed open the door of his cab and commenced an awkward clamber out, moving numbly, like a man in shock. Eusden could see the gun lying in the gutter, glimmering coldly in the lamplight. He rose unsteadily to his feet and edged back into the shadows as the lorry driver looked vaguely in his direction. A Transit van was braking to a halt as it approached. Windows were opening in the apartments nearby. Soon the alarm would be raised.

Eusden headed down the side street, away from the scene, moving as fast as he dared without breaking into a run. He did not know where the street would lead. But it did not matter. It led away. It led to safety.

TWENTY-EIGHT

What the night porter at the Phoenix had thought of his bloody-browed and dishevelled appearance Eusden could not imagine. Waking in the morning after several hours of unconsciousness that could only technically be called sleep, he could remember little of his return to the hotel. He had not even undressed and was aching in every limb. His head throbbed painfully with every movement, he had developed a black eye overnight and generally felt as if he was engaging with the world through a thick curtain of delayed shock.

He showered, put on some clean clothes and headed out to a nearby 7-eleven for antiseptic and plasters. He suspected he should be checked by a doctor for the effects of concussion, but he also suspected drawing attention to himself in such a way would be unwise to put it mildly. Wijayapala had probably given a description of him to the police by now and they were bound to tie him to the carnage out at Nordhavn because Kjeldsen was among the dead. The only sensible thing he could do was lie low until he left Copenhagen. And he should leave soon. The longer he remained, the greater his chance of being dragged into a murder inquiry.

But he could not simply scuttle back to London and abandon Marty to an unknown fate. He had to find out what had become of his friend, even though that friend had been responsible for transforming his comfortable and predictable life into a raw struggle for survival. ‘Fuck you, Marty,’ he muttered several times under his breath as he plodded back to the Phoenix through the gnawing chill of a bleak Copenhagen morning. It was a sentiment he had often expressed before, of course. And one he had never quite succeeded in drawing the obvious lesson from.

He had banked on a quick ascent to his room, with a breakfast delivery to follow, strong black coffee being the self-prescribed medicine he proposed to dose himself with. But he was intercepted halfway across the marbled lobby by an unexpected visitor: Regina Celeste.

‘There you are, Richard. I guessed it might be worth waiting to see if you’d be back soon. Well, where are you gonna go on a morning like this, after all?’ She seemed even louder in manner and dress by day than night. Or perhaps, Eusden thought, he was simply more vulnerable. ‘Say, what happened to you? Get in with the wrong crowd last night? That’s quite a shiner.’

‘I slipped in the bath.’

‘Really?’ She looked understandably sceptical.

‘What brings you here, Regina? I’m afraid I’ve still no news of Marty.’

‘You haven’t?’

‘No. Like I told Werner, I’ll let you know as soon as I do.’

‘But that’s just the point, Richard. Werner has heard from Marty.’

‘What?’

‘I think you’ll agree with me: we need to talk.’

They found a café over the road on Bredgade that had just opened for business and was only otherwise being patronized by a group of Japanese tourists intent on photographing their breakfasts. Eusden contented himself with coffee. While Regina fussed over the infusion of her herbal tea bag, he wondered just how monstrously Marty had misled him with his carefully presented plan to evade Straub. For misled him he surely had. It was only a question of scale. Regina’s announcement had struck a chord in him that was wearily familiar. It seemed Marty had taken him for a ride yet again.

‘Where’s Werner now?’ he asked.

‘That’s just it, Richard. I don’t know. He was gone when I surfaced this morning. He left this note for me at reception.’ She took a sheet of Hôtel d’Angleterre notepaper out of her portmanteau-sized handbag and passed it to Eusden.

Dear Regina,

I am sorry to leave without warning. Marty has contacted me. I am going to meet him. I hope to get answers to all our questions. Wait for me here. I will call you later today. We will settle our business in Hanover as soon as possible after I return.

Best wishes,

Werner.

‘Best wishes, my sweet behind,’ Regina continued as she retrieved the note. ‘He must have known last night he was gonna take off like this. The only reason he didn’t tell me then was that he knew I’d insist on going with him. Or at the very least on being told where he was going. I don’t like being strung along, Richard, especially not by a lounge lizard like Werner. Know what I mean?’

‘Yes. I certainly do.’

‘Everything was sugar and sunshine when we went to Klampenborg yesterday morning. Hvidøre’s been turned into a conference centre, but he’d fixed it for us to have a proper guided tour of the place. You could imagine the rooms as they’d have been in Dagmar’s day, stuffed with clumpy furniture and kitschy statues and dusty aspidistras. It gave me a real feel for the old lady, let me tell you. Especially the turret room she’s supposed to have spent so much time in, looking out to sea. Anyhow, Werner couldn’t have been a much more attentive host short of offering me his hand in marriage, resounding “no” though he’d have got if he had. We had a nice lunch at a restaurant just up the coast road from Hvidøre, then we went on to Rungsted to visit the Karen Blixen Museum. Well, it was too good a chance to miss. I just loved that movie, didn’t you?’

There came into Eusden’s mind a memory that was both alluring and painful of going to a cinema in Guildford with Gemma some time in the mid-1980s to see Out of Africa, the film Regina had proclaimed her love for. He had been a contented husband then, Gemma a secretly discontented wife. Time, he often thought, was more of a tormentor than a healer.

‘Werner got a call on his cell while we were looking over the exhibits. He came over kinda coy and went outside to take it. Told me when he came back the call had been from his mother, which I didn’t buy for a second. But what’s a girl to do? He was different after that. Edgy. Distracted. All the way through to dinner back at the d’Angleterre. Excused himself straight after. Said he needed an early night, which seemed way out of character. I didn’t know what to make of it.’ She smiled grimly. ‘I do now, of course. The scheming weasel.’

‘What time did he take the call?’

‘Not sure. Around… three, I guess.’

Three o’clock was tantalizingly close to the time when Marty was supposed to have arrived in Copenhagen. Though what the timing signified – if anything – Eusden did not know.

‘Any inspired thoughts?’

‘I’m afraid not. I’m sorry, Regina. I’ve no idea what Marty’s up to. Or Werner.’

‘Cooking up a private deal between themselves, that’s what.’

‘I… suppose so.’ Regina was right, of course. Nothing else made sense.

‘The question is: are you and I going to let them get away with it?’

‘What else can we do?’

‘Pool our resources for starters.’ That did not sound like a good idea to Eusden, though he did not propose to say so. He certainly had no intention of volunteering any details of his recent activities. ‘Do you really have no idea what Clem Hewitson’s archive contains?’

‘None at all.’

‘That’s kinda… disappointing.’

‘What’s your “business in Hanover”?’ Eusden asked, keen to switch topics.

‘Well, I guess I may as well tell you. Werner’s forfeited all confidentiality rights with this little escapade as far as I’m concerned. He’s been negotiating with a collector of Nazi curios in Hanover called Hans Grenscher for the purchase of a cache of Gestapo documents supposedly including something crucial about Anastasia. She lived in Hanover throughout the Second World War, at the Gestapo’s insistence. They didn’t want her wandering around the country for some reason. She was taken to Berlin on one occasion, though, to meet the Führer. What Hitler had in mind for her is unclear. Maybe he saw her as a potential bargaining chip in his dealings with Stalin. Anyhow, I don’t rightly know what Grenscher has on her, but Werner claims it can be matched with something Marty’s grandfather preserved to prove Anastasia truly was Anastasia. Evidently, Grenscher isn’t willing to split his hoard. We have to buy the whole lot for the sake of the one Anastasia-related item. In fact, I’ve already had to put up a hefty deposit just to get first refusal on it.’

Eusden could not help wondering if Regina’s deposit was the source of the money with which Straub had tried to buy off Marty. It seemed typical of the man to use someone else’s cash rather than his own – assuming he had any. It also seemed typical of him to strike side deals whenever he needed to: with Regina, with Marty and, in all likelihood, with Grenscher too. ‘How can Werner be sure this matching whatever-it-is is amongst the stuff Marty inherited from his grandfather?’

‘Beats me, Richard. But he’s been adamant on the point the whole way along. That’s why I flew over here. Because he was so confident we could nail that DNA lie about the lady I met in Charlottesville being nothing but a Polish peasant once and for mercy’s sake all. Now I’m wondering if Werner didn’t overstate how much money we had to put up front to fix himself up with negotiating capital. You see where my thoughts are leading? Maybe he plans to put this proof together for his own profit. Write a book, sell the film rights and freeze me out. I might be nothing more than the cash cow he plans to milk in the meantime. Well, this is one cow that can do more than swish her tail, let me tell you.’

‘What have you got in mind?’

‘A trip to Hanover. A one-on-one with Hans Grenscher. I can do my own negotiating if I have to.’

‘I’m sure you can.’

‘But I need to know what’s happening this end while I’m away. That’s where you come in.’

‘It is?’

‘Werner’s bound to turn to you when he gets back here and finds I’ve flown the coop. Well, I want you to point him in the wrong direction. Say I’ve vamoosed to St Petersburg to catch up with Dagmar – pay my respects at the last resting place she now shares with the Tsar, the Tsarina and some of their children. I reckon he’ll swallow that considering how tearful I came over during our visit to Hvidøre. Well, I’m an emotional person, Richard. I’m sure you appreciate that. But the emotion I’m in closest touch with right now is suspicion. So, I also want you to figure out if you can exactly what he and Marty are up to – and to let me know. What do you say?’

Now was definitely not the time to mention that the clinching document Clem’s archive supposedly held – along with the archive as a whole – was conclusively out of reach of all of them and that no amount of intrigue and double-dealing could retrieve it. Eusden doubted if he would still be in Copenhagen when Straub returned. But he could not explain why to Regina Celeste. He regretted having to deceive her on the point, but there were other things he regretted far more. He gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll certainly do my best, Regina.’

Eusden finally made it to his room at the Phoenix half an hour later. He patched himself up and ordered breakfast, then lay down on the bed to await its arrival. He was too tired to ponder the full depth and meaning of Marty’s latest abuse of their friendship. All he knew was that it marked a new low – and an end of his involvement in Marty’s tangled affairs. It was time to cut himself loose.

He checked his mobile to confirm there was no apologetic or exculpatory message on it from Marty. Since, as far as he was aware, Marty did not even have the number, it was even more unlikely than would otherwise have been the case. But Eusden felt obliged to give him the benefit of the negligible doubt.

Sure enough, there was no message from Marty. But Gemma had phoned again. To Phone me asap had been added Very urgent. Eusden relented and rang her, despite his reluctance to face questions about what he and Marty had been doing for the past few days. He was at least relieved when Gemma, not Monica, answered.

‘It’s me.’

‘Christ, Richard, why haven’t you called before now? I’ve been going out of my mind.’ She certainly sounded distraught, though Eusden could not begin to imagine why.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘What do you mean, “what’s the matter”? You’re in Copenhagen, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Even as he replied, Eusden wondered how she knew that.

‘So, why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to hear it from a Danish policewoman?’

‘Hear what?’

‘About Marty, of course.’

‘What about Marty?’

‘Are you playing games with me, Richard?’

‘No. Marty isn’t with me. I’m not sure where he is at the moment, to be honest.’

‘Of course he isn’t with you. He’s…’ She broke off.

There was a heavy silence. Dread formed a cloud in Eusden’s mind. ‘

Gemma?’

‘You really don’t know?’

‘Know what, for God’s sake?’

‘Oh Christ.’

‘Know what?’

‘I’m sorry, Richard.’

‘Sorry? What the hell-’

‘Marty’s dead.’

TWENTY-NINE

‘You’ll miss me when I’m gone.’ Looking back, Eusden was surprised Marty had not said this at some point during their few days together in Hamburg and Århus. Perhaps he had not needed to. Perhaps he had thought it self-evidently true. And so it was, though there had been several occasions when Eusden would vehemently have denied it. But all the grudges and resentments and irritations, even the numerous breaches of faith, fell away in the face of death. And it was the face of death that Eusden looked into when he gazed down at Marty on the mortuary slab at Roskilde Amtssygehuset later that morning: a cold, pale, vacant face – no longer really Marty’s at all.

A hovering administrator was anxious to establish whether Eusden would be arranging Marty’s removal – to a local undertaker or back home to Amsterdam or England. Eusden prevaricated. He could not afford to commit himself to remaining in Copenhagen for the week or more he suspected such arrangements would take. He was going to have to offload the responsibility on to Gemma. And he was goingto have to find a way to explain that to her.

But he could not summon the effort to concentrate on such stark practicalities as he left the hospital and wandered towards the centre of Roskilde, past the railway station where he had arrived from Copenhagen a couple of hours earlier. The death of his childhood friend was like the amputation of a limb he had not realized until then he possessed. He kept remembering Marty’s most characteristic expression, by which all his mischief and humour and daring – his ineluctable spirit – were magically conveyed. Eusden could see it now, clear and golden in his mind’s eye. Richard would jump off the bus from Newport at the Fountain Arcade in Cowes on a Saturday morning and Marty would be waiting for him, chewing gum and smiling and assuring him, just by the look on his face, that life for the next few hours was going to be fun. Some trace of that had still been there when Eusden pulled the tape off Marty’s mouth at Frau Straub’s flat in Hamburg. ‘Good to see you, Coningsby.’ And the feeling, despite everything – the forfeited surety, the rivalry for Gemma, the disputes and deceptions – had been mutual. It always had been. But it never would be again.

There was an old cemetery next to the station that had been turned into a park. Eusden had the benches to himself, thanks to the dank chill of the day. He sat and gazed towards the red-brick gables and copper-tiled spires of Roskilde Cathedral, its shape blurred by the tears that were in his eyes. According to the information Gemma had been supplied with, Marty had collapsed in the cathedral at about 3.30 the previous afternoon and been pronounced dead on arrival at the local hospital. Cause of death was a massive stroke. He had not been carrying a passport and had been identified from a prescription in his pocket issued by the pharmacy at Århus Kommunehospital. He had recorded Gemma as his next of kin on admission there. The oncologist had evidently strongly advised him not to discharge himself specifically because of the likelihood of a second stroke, but Marty had insisted. And Eusden knew just how insistent he could be.

The 11.54 train Marty had said he was catching from Århus would have got him to Roskilde just before three o’clock, the time of his supposed telephone call to Straub. Half an hour later, he walked into the cathedral – but did not walk out. The unanswerable question was why he had got off at Roskilde at all. He must have changed his mind about travelling through to Copenhagen for some reason. Regina Celeste would say it was to fix a rendezvous for his covert meeting with Straub. But that rendezvous was clearly not Roskilde. Straub’s note had implied somewhere farther flung. Eusden preferred to believe Marty had sent Straub off on a wild-goose chase so he would not be in Copenhagen when Marty arrived there after a strategic stop-over in Roskilde – only for sudden death to prevent him carrying through his plan. If Eusden was right, Marty had died while trying to protect both of them.

Eusden had been to Roskilde once before with Gemma and Holly, to visit the Viking Ship Museum. The cathedral had played only a bit-part in the day’s entertainment, though Holly had enjoyed hunting for the tomb of Harold Bluetooth. Dagmar’s tomb must have been somewhere in the crypt then, but Eusden had not gone looking for it. It was no longer there, of course, so exactly what had drawn Marty to the cathedral was hard to say. He was an avowed atheist and no fan of ecclesiastical architecture. A mausoleum catering for umpteen centuries of Danish royalty would ordinarily have elicited little more from him than a shrug of indifference.

But gone there he had. And Eusden followed. He stepped into the entrance porch and was greeted by a volunteer guide. When he explained he was a friend of the man who had died there the day before, he was directed to the woman behind the sales desk. She, he was told in hushed tones, ‘knew all about it’.

This, it transpired, was because it was in the porch, rather than the main body of the cathedral, that Marty had collapsed. The sales lady, a kindly middle-aged woman with a ready smile, identified by her badge as Jette, had seen it happen.

‘He had just come in and bought a ticket and a guidebook. He asked me about Princess Dagmar, mother of the last Tsar of Russia. She was Danish, you know, and was buried here. Until last September, that is, when she was moved to St Petersburg. He wanted to know where her coffin had been. I showed him on the map inside the guidebook. We have postcards of it.’ She plucked a card from the rack and showed it to Eusden. Dagmar’s large, handsomely carved wooden coffin was pictured in its appointed corner of the crypt, flanked by icons and glowing candles. ‘He bought one of these also.’

‘How did he seem?’

‘A little… shaky. I noticed he was… sweating, although it was really quite cold. And he kept rubbing his head, as if it ached. But he had a lovely smile. You knew him a long time?’

‘From childhood.’

‘Oh dear. You must be very upset.’

‘Yes. I am.’

‘Is your name Coningsby?’

‘Sorry?’

‘He wanted to send a message to someone called Coningsby. It was the last thing he said, while he was lying there.’ She pointed towards the door into the nave. ‘He had only gone a few steps from here when he stopped and bent his head. He reached out as if he was trying to find something to hold on to. But the wall was too far away. I realized he was not well and went to help him, but he fell on to the floor before I could get to him. Some other visitors came over to help also. We held up his head. I’m not sure he could see us. His eyes were… strange. And it was difficult for him to speak.’

‘But he did speak.’

‘Yes. He asked us to give a message to Coningsby. Then he… died.’

‘I’m Coningsby. It’s not my name. But… it’s what he sometimes called me.’

‘Then the message is for you.’

‘Yes.’ Eusden nodded. ‘What is it?’

‘“Tell Coningsby the babushka was right.” ’

The babushka. Of course. Eusden had forgotten all about her. Until now.

‘Does it mean something?’

‘Oh, yes. It certainly does.’

THIRTY

September, 1976. The burnt-out end of a blazing summer. Gemma suggested a trip to Paris as an enjoyable way to fill the gap between their holiday jobs and the start of the Michaelmas term at Cambridge. She roped in a schoolfriend of hers called Pamela and made all the arrangements. They were to meet at Portsmouth and catch the ferry to Le Havre.

The day before setting off, Richard accompanied his mother, for want of anything better to do, on one of her monthly shopping trips to Southampton. Browsing in Gilbert’s Bookshop, a multi-floored repository of literary riches to which he always gravitated, he made, as usual, an impulse buy. The File on the Tsar by Anthony Summers and Tom Mangold, hot off the press.

Marty picked up the book whenever Richard put it down during the Channel crossing and rail journey to Paris. Soon they were both talking of little else, much to Gemma’s annoyance. Foot-slogging round the Louvre at Pamela’s insistence, they were taken to task for neglecting the artworks in favour of arguing about whether the women of the imperial family could have been secretly evacuated from Ekaterinburg to Perm, as the authors suggested, before the night of the alleged massacre.

Marty rapidly developed a conspiracy theory fingering Lord Mountbatten as orchestrator of a plot to deny Anastasia her inheritance: millions of pounds supposedly salted away in the Bank of England by the Tsar. He was excited to discover that Mathilde Kschessinska, the elderly ballerina who had been the Tsar’s mistress prior to his marriage and had subsequently married one of his cousins, lived in Paris. She had given an interview on French television in 1967, when she was ninety-five, supporting Anna Anderson’s claim. Gemma, forced to read the relevant passage in the book, pointed out that if Mathilde was still alive she would have to be well over a hundred, but Marty was undaunted in his enthusiasm for tracking down the old lady.

Gemma had earmarked their last morning in Paris for a visit to Les Invalides, but Marty had other ideas. In the end, the girls went to see Napoleon’s tomb on their own, while he and Richard headed for Little Russia, the area around Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Cathedral where Russian exiles had settled after the Revolution. There was nowhere better, according to him, to ask after surviving Romanovs and gauge opinion.

The results were disappointing. The haughty proprietor of a Russian bookshop informed them that the ‘Grand Duchess Mathilde’ was dead. He cast a scornful eye over their by now dog-eared copy of The File on the Tsar and said there were ‘many, many lies’ told about the imperial family. Marty had also failed to check the opening times of the cathedral. They had come on a day when visitors were not admitted.

Recrimination threatened to break out as they stood in front of the cathedral, gazing at its golden domes and firmly closed door. Then Marty noticed an old woman dressed in threadbare clothes pinning up an advertisement on the noticeboard attached to the wall of the diocesan office. She was clad entirely in black. Her face, peering out from a tightly fastened headscarf, was lined like a dried riverbed. Her advert was in Russian and French. It offered her services to the local community as a clairvoyant. Marty tackled her in English to no avail, but he and Richard managed to communicate with her eventually in rudimentary French. Had she known the Grand Duchess Mathilde? Yes. Also Mathilde’s son, her husband and assorted cousins. Did she know anything about the woman who claimed to be Anastasia? Yes again. She knew much, which she was willing to share with them – if they were willing to stand her a meal. She was poor, hungry, neglected – and a fount of information.

Information the babushka, as Marty later dubbed her, undeniably possessed. And she purveyed a great deal of it while slurping soup and sipping vodka in a nearby bar, where she was clearly viewed with well-entrenched suspicion by the staff. Unfortunately for Marty and Richard, the portion they could actually understand of what she said added little to the sum of their knowledge. Mathilde’s husband, the Grand Duke Andrei, had also expressed his belief in Anna Anderson and that was good enough for the babushka, who had once shaken his hand and held it long enough to sense, as she had informed him, that his son would betray him. Sure enough, the son, Vladimir – ‘la vipère Vova’, as she called him – had gone over to the other side and denounced Anna as an impostor. Why? ‘Pour l’argent. Toujours pour l’argent.’ It was, she flatly declared, the real ruin of the Romanovs. ‘La cupidité.’ Greed. ‘Thanks for the startling insight,’ murmured Marty as she downed another vodka.

Sensing perhaps that she had inadequately repaid their generosity, the babushka concluded by offering to read their palms. Richard declined, but Marty submitted gleefully. He was rewarded with vague predictions of good fortune and wealth which so dissatisfied him that he demanded to be told how long he was going to live. Longer than her, the babushka cutely replied, adding, almost as an afterthought: ‘Vous mourrez dans un endroit sacré.’

Marty laughed at the idea that he would die in a holy place. Gemma, when told the story later, remarked that he would be lucky to be buried in a holy place, let alone die in one. They were at the top of the Eiffel Tower at the time, admiring a smudge on the horizon that Pamela insisted was Chartres Cathedral. ‘I hate cathedrals,’ Marty whispered to Richard, ‘and now I’ve got the perfect excuse to avoid them.’

Eusden walked out of Roskilde Cathedral into the cold grey Danish afternoon. But his mind lingered in the dazzling sunshine of Paris thirty years ago. He saw Marty smiling at him across a café table in Montmartre. He felt the heat flung back at him from the stone wall above the quay on the Île St-Louis. He heard the past calling to him. And he could not answer.

‘Mr Eusden?’

A chubby, shaven-headed man in a grey suit, white shirt and navy-blue tie was standing in his path. Behind him, a gleaming black Mercedes was parked at the roadside. Eusden’s thoughts were suddenly wrenched back to the present. ‘Yes,’ he said weakly.

‘I have instructions to drive you to Mjollnir HQ.’

‘What?’

‘Mjollnir. Birgitte Grøn wants to see you.’

‘Who?’

The chauffeur smiled wanly. ‘My boss.’

‘I don’t know her. And I don’t think I want to meet her.’

‘Hold on, please.’ The chauffeur took out his phone and made a call. He spoke a few words in Danish, then passed the phone to Eusden. ‘It’s her.’

‘Hello?’ said Eusden cautiously.

‘Richard Eusden?’ The voice was clipped and brittle enough to hint at impatience.

‘Yes.’

‘I am Birgitte Grøn, CFO of Mjollnir. We need to talk.’

‘What about?’

‘Things that cannot be discussed on the phone. Jørgen will bring you to my office.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to be brought.’

‘And maybe I don’t want to be here on a Saturday afternoon, Mr Eusden. But I am. And you’ll come and talk to me. Because, if you don’t, the police will get a name to put to the description they have of a man they wish to question about the murders last night of a lawyer called Anders Kjeldsen and a journalist called Henning Norvig. My office is much more comfortable than an interview room at police headquarters. And nobody will be recording what you say. So, I suggest you get in the car. I’ll expect you shortly.’

THIRTY-ONE

An entire second city appeared to be under construction south of Copenhagen. Eusden gazed out through the tinted window of the Mercedes at the office complexes and apartment blocks rearing up between clusters of cranes and mountains of earth where their neighbours were soon to be. This was the future. And at its heart, raised like a finger pointed to the sky, was what Jørgen informed him was called Det Blå Tryllestav – the Blue Wand: an ultramarine-louvred tower of glass housing Mjollnir AS.

Jørgen drove straight into the underground car park and escorted Eusden to the lift. An ear-poppingly high-speed ascent took him to the top of the tower. The lift doors opened to a scene of deserted open-plan workstations through which strode a snappily trouser-suited woman who greeted him as she approached. ‘Mr Eusden. I’m Birgitte Grøn.’

She was small and slightly built, about forty-five, with shortish blonde hair, a sharp-featured face and slender letterbox-framed glasses. Beneath her pink shirt she wore an austerely wrought platinum necklace. She looked brisk and business like and spoke in a tone that suggested their meeting was no different from half a dozen others she might expect to manage in an average day.

‘Come through to my office,’ she said after a perfunctory handshake. ‘We have the place to ourselves this afternoon. Mjollnir doesn’t encourage weekend working. But this is an emergency.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes. For us as well as you.’ She marched back the way she had come and Eusden followed. ‘I wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

They entered a large glass-walled office carpeted and furnished in restful pastels and pale wood. A man was waiting there for them, dressed in a black suit and open-necked white shirt. He looked about fifty, balding and neatly bearded, with a melancholic blue-eyed gaze.

‘Erik Lund, CSO,’ said Birgitte.

Eusden shook the man’s hand. Lund’s grip was strong, his expression unsmiling.

‘What does the S stand for?’

‘Security,’ said Lund.

‘Ah.’

‘Would you like tea or coffee, Mr Eusden?’ asked Birgitte.

‘Coffee would be nice. Black. No sugar.’

‘A man of your own tastes, Erik,’ said Birgitte. ‘Pour him a cup, would you? Nothing for me. Let’s sit.’

They sat at a broad maple conference table angled towards a corner of the building and commanding a chevroned view of the vast construction site that stretched away towards the centre of Copenhagen.

‘Please accept my condolences for the death of your friend.’

‘Am I supposed to take that seriously?’

‘I said it seriously.’

‘You’ll be telling me next Karsten Burgaard’s death really was an accident.’

‘As far as I know, it was.’ Birgitte gave him a faintly sympathetic smile that hinted at a vivacious persona she left at home every morning. ‘You’ve had twenty-four rough hours, I think. That looks nasty.’ She acknowledged with a nod the combined effect of the plastered gash on his forehead and the black eye below it. ‘You look tired. And a little desperate. If you don’t mind me saying.’ Lund delivered the coffee and sat down next to her. ‘Maybe that’ll help.’

‘Maybe.’ Eusden took a sip. And it did help – a little.

‘If you have any questions…’

‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me why I’m here soon enough.’

‘I am.’

‘Then this’ll do to be going on with: where’s Tolmar Aksden?’

‘Helsinki.’

‘Saukko Bank taking up a lot of his time, is it?’

‘No more than he expected.’

‘But he’s… authorized this meeting?’

‘He trusts me, Mr Eusden. I act with his authority.’

‘Is that a yes or a no?’

Lund muttered something in Danish which Birgitte appeared to ignore. ‘This is what you need to know,’ she proceeded. ‘The police have already matched the bullets found in Kjeldsen and Norvig with the gun found near the bodies of two motorcyclists killed in a collision with a lorry on Østbanegade late last night. The motorcyclists themselves haven’t been identified yet. They were carrying millions of kroner in cash. The lorry driver thinks they were chasing a man who ran across the road in front of him. Earlier, a caretaker was locked in Kjeldsen’s office at Jorcks Passage by a man he thinks was English and who said he was going to Marmorvej – the quay where Kjeldsen and Norvig were shot dead. The police don’t have a very good description of this man. Their chances of finding him are poor. He probably left his fingerprints in numerous locations. But I doubt they’re held in the Europol database, so, unless they’re given a name…’

‘You’ve made your point.’

‘Good.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘Help.’

‘My help?’

‘Yes. We have a… situation… we need to deal with.’

‘What kind of situation?’

‘We’ve been contacted by the people we believe employed those two motorcyclists to kill Kjeldsen and Norvig and take back the money they’d been paid. We don’t know who these people are. Let’s call them… the Opposition. They have material that could damage our CEO and therefore the company… quite severely. They’re willing to sell it to us. And we’re willing to buy it. Frankly speaking, we have no choice. We face… a potential disaster.’

‘What is the material?’

‘Don’t you know, Mr Eusden?’

‘Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t.’

Another Danish mutter from Lund elicited a tight frown of irritation from Birgitte. ‘We’re not here to discuss the nature or detail of the material. We believe it originated from your late friend’s grandfather, Clement Hewitson. Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Marty Hewitson left it with Kjeldsen for safekeeping. Kjeldsen stole it and contacted Norvig, a journalist who has written several articles hostile to this company. Between them, they set up a deal with the Opposition, who then double-crossed them. Is that how it was?’

‘More or less.’

‘You were lucky to survive, Mr Eusden.’

‘I know.’

‘And that’s lucky for us. Because you’ve seen the material. You know what it looks like in its original form. Yes?’

‘Yes. So?’

‘The Opposition may try to sell us fakes. They’ve already demonstrated they can’t be relied on to deal fairly. We need someone who can authenticate the material. We need you.’

‘I may have seen it, but I haven’t studied it. I wouldn’t necessarily know whether it was all there.’

‘You’ll have to do the best you can. We have no one else we can use.’

‘You mean you have no one else you can blackmail into taking the risk that these people may do what they did to Kjeldsen and Norvig all over again.’

‘That’s unlikely. Kjeldsen and Norvig were selling. We’re buying.’

‘Nice distinction.’

‘An important one. Besides, the Opposition won’t want to lose any more men. I doubt last night’s… exposure… will have pleased them.’

‘It didn’t exactly please me.’

‘We appreciate that, Mr Eusden. You have my personal apology for involving you. I regret there’s no alternative.’

‘There is for me. Maybe I’d rather take my chances with the police than a faceless bunch of hoodlums from who knows where.’

‘I wouldn’t advise it. Think of your career, Mr Eusden. Think of your pension. Think of the months of uncertainty about what charge you’d face – or what sentence if convicted. We’re offering you a much better deal.’

‘It doesn’t sound like it.’

‘That’s because I haven’t finished. We’re not asking you to pick up the material on a deserted quayside in the middle of the night. Everything will be done in controlled surroundings. There’ll be no danger.’

‘So you say.’

‘To prove it, we’re sending someone with you.’ Eusden looked doubtfully at Lund. ‘Who?’

‘Not me,’ growled Lund.

‘Mjollnir can’t be linked with this, Mr Eusden,’ said Birgitte. ‘We have to have… deniability.’

Did Tolmar Aksden know what his subordinate was doing? Eusden was still uncertain on the point. Birgitte Grøn had been at pains to emphasize that it was Mjollnir’s interests she was serving. Maybe she saw a crucial distinction between them and those of the company’s founder. ‘I suppose this conversation isn’t actually taking place.’

‘You suppose correctly.’

‘Who are you sending with me, then?’

‘Pernille Madsen.’

‘Tolmar’s ex-wife?’

‘Yes.’

This was a surprise, to put it mildly. And one which only heightened Eusden’s suspicion that Tolmar Aksden himself had been left out of the loop. ‘Why her?’

‘Interesting question. It suggests you really haven’t studied the material. The damage would be to all members of our CEO’s family, particularly his son. Pernille is a loving mother. She wants to protect her child.’ Birgitte delicately cleared her throat. ‘I would do the same in her position.’

‘And what exactly is it you expect her – expect us – to do?’

‘Pernille has been fully briefed. She’ll tell you all you need to know when you need to know it.’

‘Marvellous.’

‘Erik has pointed out to me that we need to minimize the possibility of third-party involvement.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Straub,’ said Lund, in a tone that suggested it was Danish for a drain blockage.

‘He flew to Oslo this morning,’ said Birgitte. ‘Do you know why?’

There seemed no point pretending not to. The effort of deciding how much to reveal and how much to conceal had already exhausted Eusden. ‘I knew he’d left, but not where he’d gone. As to why, I think Marty agreed to meet him there, but I doubt he meant to keep the appointment. It was a way of getting Straub off our backs until we could reclaim the… material… from Kjeldsen.’ He shrugged. ‘A lot of things went wrong.’

‘Straub’s American friend, Mrs Celeste, has also left Copenhagen.’

‘She’s not important.’

‘We’ll have to take your word for that. But you’ll agree Straub is – or could be – a nuisance.’

‘Not in Oslo.’

‘He’ll be back soon, though, won’t he? And he’ll expect you to explain why Mr Hewitson didn’t show up. So, we need you to be… out of his reach. We’d like you to phone the Phoenix Hotel and tell them you’re sending someone to collect your belongings and settle your bill. We’ll supply the someone.’

‘Where am I going?’

‘Tonight, Stockholm. Jørgen will drive you to the airport. You’ll catch the train there. You have to change at Malmö, where your belongings will be waiting for you. We’ve booked you into a hotel in Stockholm. Pernille will drive up tomorrow and meet you there. You’ll be travelling with her on the overnight ferry to Helsinki.’

‘Helsinki?’

‘Yes. The exchange will take place there on Monday.’

‘But Tolmar’s in Helsinki.’

‘Yes. The threat is clear. If we don’t meet the Opposition’s terms, they’ll give the material to the Finnish media. That would put our CEO – and us – in an impossible position.’

‘Shouldn’t you warn him to leave?’

‘The deal requires him to stay.’

‘He doesn’t know, does he?’

Lund plucked an envelope out of his pocket and slapped it down on the table. ‘Your travel documents,’ he said baldly, as if that was the only kind of answer to his question Eusden could expect.

‘The documents include a Finnair club-class ticket for a flight from Helsinki to London on Tuesday,’ said Birgitte. ‘Our business will have been safely concluded by then.’

‘How confident are you of that?’

‘Very.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

Eusden sighed and looked down at the envelope, then up at Birgitte. ‘I wish I was.’

‘We’re grateful for your cooperation, Mr Eusden.’ She treated him to another of her fleeting smiles that was like a shaft of sunlight through a blanket of cloud. ‘And now… we need to make a start if you’re going to catch that train.’