The Night Ferry Read online

  BY THE SAME AUTHORS

  The Hanging

  The Girl in the Ice

  The Vanished

  The Lake

  CONTENTS

  By the Same Authors

  PART I: The Canal Tour Boat

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  PART II: The Man in the Wood

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  PART III: The Trial

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  PART IV: The House in Bosnia

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  EPILOGUE

  Note on the Authors

  Note on the Translator

  PART I

  The Canal Tour Boat

  CHAPTER 1

  Sunday 22 August 2010, Central Copenhagen

  The man on the bridge looked across to the rococo marble church whose gilded cupola and dome reflected the sunlight. It was years since he had visited a city and the setting unnerved him. He liked empty places, preferably forests.

  He turned and peered as far up the canal as he could before it turned east. The banks were grassy beneath scattered shrubs. A solitary birch had gained a foothold and was now growing in an unnatural curve. A few children were swimming at least fifty metres away, judging from the sound of their laughter. They wouldn’t be able to describe him. He watched them for a while, then turned away.

  The next time he looked up the canal, the tour boat had come into view. He took a sharp intake of breath. There were children on board, lots of children. They weren’t supposed to be there, he hadn’t been told about them. For a brief, heretical moment he considered abandoning his task, before gritting his teeth and clenching his fists. He owed her; it was his turn to help her, that was the deal. Loyalty, solidarity, friendship – nothing else mattered.

  The jump wasn’t significant and it was much easier than he had expected. He landed smoothly on the roof of a cabin at the back of the tour boat, leaped down onto the deck where he swiftly rolled under two rows of seats. Shortly afterwards he saw the three masts of the Georg Stage training ship glide past high above him while the tour boat’s female guide explained in English the ship’s purpose to the tourists. He wiped sweat from his brow with his forearm and slowly counted to ten as his pulse returned to normal. Then, with some difficulty due to the tight space, he wriggled his arms out of the straps of his rucksack, retrieved his knife and waited patiently as the boat started rocking. It was heading into Bomløbet from where it would change course with a broad sweep to starboard and sail north. The guide continued wearily to talk about the legendary submarine, The Seal, visible to their right, now a museum ship but once the Danish Armed Forces’ contribution to the conflict in Iraq when Denmark supported the coalition by sending a submarine to a desert war. She repeated the scathing punchline with overemphasis: a submarine to a desert war!

  The man lying between the seat rows knew his military history. He was aware that the proud Seal was over forty years old and largely junk when it was deployed in 2003. On its way to do battle – or at any rate while en route – the submarine’s cooling system had broken down and the crew suffered several claustrophobic days of forty-five-degree heat. As soon as The Seal had completed its mission, it had been sent back to Denmark on a German freight ship as cargo. The Danish government, however, was happy and grandiose statements were made: Denmark had done her bit in the war on terror and dictatorship. Bravo. The political rhetoric was in the Premier League, the military hardware in the fourth division. It made him sick.

  He pushed these thoughts aside and focused instead on an elongated cloud formation in the sky. When it had rotated by about ninety degrees, he stood and quickly moved up the centre aisle of the boat. He had killed his first two victims before the guide noticed him and started to scream. The captain managed to turn his head before he, too, was murdered, slumping over the wheel as his blood flooded the controls. The attacker then silenced the screaming guide by first gutting her and then stabbing her in the neck as she curled up, stunned, hugging herself inwards. He looked around and caught sight of the only other living adult on board, apart from him. She was Asian, Japanese or Chinese, he couldn’t tell, and he didn’t know whether to kill her or not. He wasn’t going to harm the children, but he was in two minds about hurting her. She solved the problem for him by jumping overboard, but from her flailing arms and incoherent screams she would appear to be unable to swim. He chucked his knife into the water, thinking it was a waste of a good blade and that he had been fond of it.

  He returned to his rucksack and quickly undressed, revealing the swimming trunks he had on underneath his clothes. The horrified children stared at him, many clinging to one another, but none of them said anything. He avoided making eye contact, put his clothes and shoes into his waterproof rucksack, swung it onto his back and adjusted the hip straps. He put on the flippers he had taken from the rucksack, popped the snorkel into his mouth and had one last look around before he let himself fall backwards across the gunwale into the canal.

  He swam quickly away from the boat. When he reached the southern breakwater at Trekroner Fort, he scaled the rocks, plunged into the water on the other side and swam effortlessly onwards. He had a long haul ahead of him, approximately eight to ten kilometres, but the water was fifteen degrees Celsius so there was no risk of hypothermia. Besides, he had a supply of bananas, energy bars and drinking water, and he loved swimming.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sunday 22 August 2010, off The Port of Copenhagen

  The captain of the DFDS Pearl Seaways was tired. He rubbed his eyes to chase away the dots that danced at the edges of his field of vision, making minor adjustments to the wheel with his other hand to keep the ship on the right course. The ferry would turn before reversing up to the nearby DFDS Terminal quay, a manoeuvre he had executed so often that it had long since become routine. Even so, it was never a task he left to others. He suppressed a yawn and asked the first office
r standing behind him, looking across the harbour, for another cup of coffee.

  It had been a long night since they left Oslo, and the captain hadn’t had enough sleep.

  He had been woken at three a.m. One of the passengers, a four-year-old boy, was ill with a fever, headache and suspicious stiffness to his neck. The captain had got dressed in a hurry and rushed down to deck seven to see the child. After a brief conversation with Radio Medical Denmark, he decided to call for a doctor via the ship’s public address system. His appeal disturbed the sleep of over one thousand passengers, but it was successful. Four doctors turned up at the Information Point soon afterwards, and one diagnosed the boy as having meningitis and insisted that he be admitted to hospital immediately. A helicopter was dispatched from Gothenburg while the captain stopped the ferry and positioned it so the helipad was in the optimum position for the evacuation. The operation went without a hitch, and although there was nothing more he could do, he had stayed on the bridge until just before five a.m. when he received a message from Gothenburg that the boy was out of danger, but that it had been touch and go. When the captain finally returned to his bed, he couldn’t sleep; touch and go was a distressing thought and hard to dismiss.

  He reached for his coffee only to discover that the cup was empty. For a moment he wondered whether he really had asked for more or whether the request had stayed unspoken. Then he glanced over his shoulder and saw the first officer frozen like a statue.

  ‘Are you daydreaming? What’s wrong?’

  ‘The canal boat, can’t you see it?’

  Of course he could. His reply was somewhat sharp: ‘What about it?’

  ‘What’s it doing out here? It shouldn’t be this far out.’

  The captain stared at the canal boat. It was coming straight at them and would need to change course soon. Without turning to him, he instructed the first officer: ‘Use your binoculars.’

  The bridge was five decks up with a semi-circular view out through the sloping panoramic windows. The first officer stepped closer to the windows and took his time with the binoculars. The captain waited impatiently. The canal boat was approaching quickly; he didn’t need binoculars to see that. He blasted five short warning signals on the horn, which even behind the inch-thick glass sounded brutally loud. A couple of stevedores in yellow hard hats and workwear standing on the distant quay turned around, but there was no reaction from the canal boat itself. The captain sounded the horn again, but there was still no response.

  The first officer said: ‘It looks like the captain is slumped over the wheel and …’ His voice trailed off and he continued to look through his binoculars.

  ‘And what? I want facts.’

  ‘There are children on board.’

  ‘Time, distance, how fast is it approaching?’

  ‘They aren’t Danish children, they’re Asian.’

  The captain was forty-five years old and had reached the pinnacle of his career at an early age. He was in charge of a crew of almost two hundred, responsible for a million-kroner business, but more than anything he was a sailor, an exceptionally talented one – or he would never have been entrusted with this ship.

  ‘Send a bosun with a walkie-talkie down to the front deck, and tell me how far away we are from that boat.’

  Later, during the marine accident inquiry, the captain was praised to the skies. In an extremely stressful situation, he had realised that if he turned the wheel to starboard while increasing his ship’s speed to the maximum possible, he would gain the few knots and degrees needed to allow the ferry to cut across the canal boat’s direction of travel seconds before a collision occurred. In the event, however, things played out differently. The captain hadn’t factored in the canal boat’s leeway. The current and the waves meant that the boat’s random course took the form of a curve rather than a straight line, and furthermore its speed had increased significantly in the last minute. No one could have foreseen that.

  The bosun came back to report: fifty metres to impact, soon afterwards: forty metres, possibly less, and then: shit, we won’t make it!

  The canal boat disappeared below the captain’s field of vision and all he could do for the last thirty seconds was wait. Both his hands clutched the wheel and he racked his brains for a prayer.

  The bosun’s announcement of the disaster was surprisingly subdued at first: we cut it in half, then it became hysterical, bordering on unintelligible: turn off the propellers, for fuck’s sake, they’re being sucked into the propellers!

  The captain cut off communication. He knew that the two propellers were almost five metres in diameter each, but couldn’t remember what they weighed.

  There was no way he could comply with the bosun’s plea. The laws of nature didn’t work like that. For those in the water, it was too late.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sunday 22 August 2010, Port of Copenhagen

  Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen narrowed his eyes and looked across the harbour. The sea was teeming with activity. Fifteen to twenty vessels were taking part in the rescue operation. Most were RIBs with a crew of between two and four, drawn from organisations such as the Naval Home Guard, Falck Emergency Services, the Maritime Police and the Royal Danish Navy. Two pilot boats from the Port of Copenhagen were hauling major sections of the canal boat to the quay, while the RIBs concentrated on rescuing survivors or bringing bodies ashore.

  On the quay half a dozen ambulances were parked, while two helicopters hovered over the harbour basin. One was a Sikorsky from the Coastguard, easily recognisable from its canary yellow entrance section and the oversized rescue symbol above the door. It flew approximately ten metres above the water, monitoring the area. High up above it, towards the Øresund, was the second helicopter, this one from a TV station. A woman from the Port of Copenhagen Authority was coordinating the operation. She was standing near the ambulances and every now and then he would hear her bark orders into her walkie-talkie.

  Konrad Simonsen was in his early sixties, tall and broad with a calm demeanour and a direct manner, someone who looked exactly like what he was: a leader used to being obeyed in tense situations. He started towards the head of operations, but stopped a short distance away and waited without disturbing her. A few minutes later she found time to speak to him, her voice hoarse.

  ‘Your forensic technicians and officers will have to wait until we’re done. I don’t want them going in now and adding to the confusion.’

  ‘How much time are we talking about?’

  ‘An hour, maybe two. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Any survivors?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘How many fatalities, children and adults?’

  ‘Don’t know. The propellers acted like a giant food processor, so we can’t tell yet.’

  Konrad Simonsen nodded sympathetically, although he knew that it was rare for a ship’s propellers to slice bodies into pieces. It had been known to happen, but it was unusual. The woman’s exaggeration was a sign of the pressure she was under, he had seen it before.

  ‘When I arrived it was chaos, even worse than it is now, but at least all the bodies or body parts have now been taken to Rigshospitalet. I hope. It’s been a while since we last found … found anything. And I’m sorry for not having more time for you. Please join your colleague and wait with him.’

  She gestured to the man at the city end of the quay, before she returned to her work.

  Arne Pedersen was forty-three years old and had been working as an investigator with Copenhagen Police for the past ten years, and for most of these he had acted as Konrad Simonsen’s right-hand man. This role had recently been formalised and he had been appointed Deputy Homicide Chief, which made him feel more proud than he was willing to admit. He was lost in thought, and didn’t immediately notice his boss.

  ‘Oh, hello, Simon. Yes, I know I’m just standing here twiddling my thumbs, but we can’t start yet. They were willing to let me in, but only me. Our people are having to wait o
utside the harbour area until it’s been cleared. How about the TV photographer, did you get any more out of him?’

  Earlier that day a cameraman had handed in some footage to the Homicide Department. He had been a passenger on the doomed Oslo ferry, and had gone out onto the deck for a cigarette while the ferry docked. From there he had noticed the canal boat and wondered what it was doing out in the harbour basin. Fetching his camera, he had zoomed in on the boat and seen at least three dead adults. He had continued filming roughly up until the collision with the ferry, and once he was ashore, he had gone straight to Police Headquarters. Konrad Simonsen had dispatched his deputy to the port the moment they had watched the film.

  ‘No, he didn’t have anything else. It’s obviously breaking news on TV, but no one is calling it a crime yet. The Countess is at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, Klavs is coming back early from his course because of what’s happened and will be back on duty tomorrow. Pauline is on holiday, as you know, and she isn’t answering her mobile.’

  These officers made up the inner circle of the Homicide Department and were the staff with whom Konrad Simonsen preferred to work.

  The Countess, whose real name was Nathalie von Rosen, was Konrad Simonsen’s wife. The marriage was relatively recent, and they had so far managed to combine their work and private lives without any major problems. Klavs Arnold had joined the Homicide Department a few years ago when he moved from Esbjerg to Copenhagen, and was currently away at a seminar in Odense. At barely thirty years old, Pauline Berg was the most youthful member of the inner circle, but her behaviour had been causing problems ever since she had been the victim of an abduction in 2007. There were long periods where she struggled at work or simply didn’t work at all.

  ‘Can’t we just let Pauline enjoy her holiday?’ Arne Pedersen asked. ‘I’m sure she needs it.’

  It was tactfully put, but his meaning was clear. Konrad Simonsen snapped back: ‘If I thought so, I wouldn’t have tried phoning her. But enough about her. Do you know if the canal boat has sunk?’

  Instead of replying, Arne Pedersen took the few steps towards the water’s edge and pointed.