Fatal Crossing Read online

  FATAL CROSSING

  LONE THEILS is a former London correspondent for national Danish papers Berlingske Tidende and Politiken. During her 16 years based in London she also worked in television and radio. Lone now lives in Denmark and is focusing on being an author full time. Fatal Crossing is her first novel.

  CHARLOTTE BARSLUND translates Scandinavian novels and plays. Recent translations include: A House in Norway by Vigdis Hjorth, The Lake by Lotte and Søren Hammer, The Son by Jo Nesbo, The Wildwitch series by Lene Kaaberbøl, I’m Travelling Alone by Samuel Bjork, A Fairy Tale by Jonas T. Bengtsson, The Arc of the Swallow and The Dinosaur Feather by Sissel-Jo Gazan, Retribution, Trophy and When the Dead Awaken by Steffen Jacobsen, Machine and The Brummstein by Peter Adolphsen, and Pierced, Burned and Scarred by Thomas Enger.

  FATAL CROSSING

  LONE THEILS

  Translated from the Danish by Charlotte Barslund

  A

  Arcadia Books Ltd

  139 Highlever Road

  London W10 6PH

  www.arcadiabooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain 2017

  Originally published as Pigerne fra Englandsbåden by Lindhardt og Ringhof 2015

  Copyright © Lone Theils 2015

  English translation © Charlotte Barslund 2017

  ISBN 978-1-911350-03-3

  Lone Theils has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Typeset in Garamond by MacGuru Ltd

  Printed and bound by TJ International, Padstow PL28 8RW

  ARCADIA BOOKS DISTRIBUTORS ARE AS FOLLOWS:

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  in the USA and Canada: Dufour Editions

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  in Australia/New Zealand:

  NewSouth Books

  University of New South Wales

  Sydney NSW 2052

  FATAL CROSSING

  1

  The balding man looked like any other middle-aged, African schoolteacher. He wore light grey cords and a freshly ironed shirt. Calmly and methodically he poured Earl Grey tea into floral china cups. Nora caught a faint hint of almond oil and detergent as he leaned over the small, battered table with the tiled top and politely added milk to her tea. He dropped two lumps of sugar into his own cup and stirred it once. Then he started his account of executions, rapes, mutilations and murders.

  The stories swirled around Nora's head, one atrocity overtaking the next. Schoolchildren witnessing the gang rape of their teacher before they themselves were hacked to death with machetes. Massacres of villagers that went on until the murderers were too tired to lift their arms and so they locked up the survivors with the corpses until the next day when the killing resumed. The man, who for his own security could only be referred to as ‘Mr Benn’, resumed his monotonous narrative.

  Nora clutched her cup. The urge to throw hot tea into the face of the impassive man was overwhelming. To get a reaction, detect a hint of humanity in his expressionless face. Emotion. Regret.

  And yet she controlled herself. Because that's how Nora Sand, foreign correspondent for the Danish weekly magazine Globalt, operates: she listens, she gathers information, and she writes. She's a pro.

  ‘I have one final question,’ she said in a neutral voice.

  He gave her a look that had left humanity behind a long time ago.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why? Why did you do it?’

  He gave a light shrug. ‘Why not? It's what they deserved. They were nothing but cockroaches. All we did was clean out the kitchen.’

  Nora shuddered. She fumbled with a button on her Dictaphone. Then she switched it off and got up, a little too abruptly.

  Pete, who had been sitting in the corner, rose too, swapped lenses on his camera and got to work.

  Shadowy photographs of the man who now called himself Mr Benn. Blurred pictures of his face. Close-ups of his dark hands. And although Mr Benn's hands were clean and his nails well manicured, Nora thought she could still see traces of blood.

  They were the images of a man who had kept his liberty because he had chosen to inform on those higher up the chain of command. His evidence had enabled him to pass through the British asylum system and today he enjoyed a peaceful life in a southern English coastal town where the most exciting thing that ever happened was the annual fete. Nora wanted to throw up.

  X

  Pete appeared outside. Nora dug out the car keys and tossed them to him. He caught them in mid-air.

  ‘You drive. I’m knackered,’ she said, getting into the passenger side of his battered Ford Mondeo.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Tough?’

  He was a man of few words, but when he did speak what he said was weighty and uttered in an unmistakable Australian accent.

  Nora had a lot she wanted to get off her chest, but the words stuck in her throat.

  ‘There are limits to how much —’

  Pete quietly stowed his equipment in the boot, got in and started the car. Instead of following the road that would take them back on to the motorway to London, he chose the coastal route.

  Nora said nothing. They had worked together ever since she first came to London five years ago as a rookie journalist. After countless assignments and trips ranging from Africa to East European countries, they could practically read each other's minds.

  The sun cast its last rays of pale daylight across the landscape, as they reached the small fishing village of Brine and parked behind a pub.

  Nora shivered and pulled up her jacket collar around her ears.

  They strolled down to the beach where the grey sea merged with the mother-of-pearl sky. The wind nipped at their cheeks, and half an hour later Nora could feel the poison slowly leaving her system. Or rather, it was encapsulated, reduced to a manageable size and stored in a dark place inside her on a shelf with stories of similar contents and calibre.

  ‘Come on, let's head back into the village. They do great fish — I’ve been here once before with Caroline,’ Pete said.

  As always a touch of sadness crept into his voice when he mentioned the love of his life, who had long since gone back to Melbourne and married a surgeon.

  They strolled up narrow lanes that felt eerily abandoned during the working week before the onslaught of the tourist season.

  ‘Hey, hang on.’

  Nora had stopped outside a shop very different from the pastel-coloured motley of pottery shops and delis selling smoked fish that usually drew in the tourists. The paint on the front was peeling and the windows were filthy, but Nora could make out something behind the window pane: a scuffed, tan leather suitcase, the perfect addition to her collection at home.

  She tried the door, which, much to her surprise, opened.

  A smell of mould and dust wafted towards her from a room crammed full with so much stuff that the walls looked close to collapsing. Leather-bound books were stacked in tall piles along one wall, and against the other walls bookcases were laden down with crystal glasses and mismatched china.

  The few gaps between the bookcases were taken up with paintings of varying quality. Nora surmised that ships were a favourite subject.

  In a backroom a scratchy Glenn Miller record had just about finished being ‘In the Mood’. Behind the counter a man with a huge red beard w
as humming along to it while polishing a brass candlestick.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said with a smile.

  Nora smiled back and had a quick look around the shop. She was briefly tempted by a scallop-shaped, silver plate butter dish, but her attention returned to the suitcase she had seen in the window.

  ‘May I have a closer look at that, please?’ she asked, pointing to it.

  The man wiggled his way out from behind the counter. He was big, but moved with remarkable agility as he zigzagged between shabby second-hand furniture and tired-looking house clearance stock

  He removed a tin box and a stack of LPs and eased out the suitcase from under the goods displayed in the window.

  ‘It came in only last week. Excellent condition,’ he said.

  Nora reached out her hand to touch. Real leather. Dark brown, scratched. Just the right shabby appeal.

  ‘So, how much were you thinking?’ she said casually.

  The man grunted and narrowed his eyes. ‘How about fifty pounds?’

  Nora pulled a face. ‘I was thinking more like twenty.’

  ‘It's real leather,’ he countered.

  Nora tried the lock. It didn’t open. She frowned. ‘Is it jammed?’

  The man shrugged. ‘It's nothing that a hairpin and a bit of dexterity wouldn’t fix,’ he then said.

  ‘Yes, but there could be anything inside that suitcase. And it might be mouldy.’

  The man took it from her and shook it. It made a low thud.

  ‘Hmm. Could be paper. Listen, if you agree to forty quid, you’ll get the contents for free. Sold as seen. Who knows? You might find a winning lottery ticket. Chance of a lifetime!’

  Three minutes later Nora emerged, thirty pounds poorer, but holding the suitcase.

  ‘You’re incorrigible,’ Pete said, rolling his eyes.

  ‘I know, I know. But you have to agree it’ll be perfect for that spot under the coffee table next to the cabin trunk.’

  Pete shook his head and dragged her onwards up the hill.

  They ate freshly fried plaice with mushy peas and hand cut chips. When they were finally back in the car and Pete had put The Eagles on the CD player and programmed the satnav to ‘home’, Nora had recovered enough to start composing the article about the schoolteacher from Rwanda in her mind.

  When Pete dropped her off outside her flat in Belsize Park, she was bone tired and only just managed to drag herself through the door, clean her teeth and collapse into bed.

  2

  The sound of Big Ben echoed through her flat. It was the special ringtone on her mobile she had assigned to her boss, Oscar Krebs. Among his staff he was known as the Crayfish because of his knack for spotting weaknesses in a story and snipping away at it with his claws until it fell apart, or the journalist came back with more convincing research. Or so he said. Others at the magazine claimed the name matched the colour of his face when he was stressed.

  Nora respected his obsession with double- and sometimes triple-checking every story before it was published in Globalt. However, she was thoroughly fed up with the Crayfish's chronic inability to grasp the concept of Greenwich Mean Time. Forgetting she was one hour behind him in Copenhagen was bad enough. Insisting she was one hour ahead was even worse. Having tried repeatedly to explain it to him, Nora had come to accept that there are certain things in this world you’ll never teach your boss.

  ‘You’ve been up for hours, I imagine,’ the Crayfish said, sounding bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

  Nora squinted at the alarm clock on her bedside table. It was six thirty a.m. British time. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Excellent. When can you deliver Rwanda? We’ve scheduled you for page seven, and we go to print early this afternoon.’

  She muttered something about two o’clock Danish time, rang off and staggered into the flat's only decent room which she had turned into a living room/study/library/kitchenette. Still half asleep she observed her usual morning ritual — she turned on her laptop, then the TV to BBC News 24, switched on the kettle — and plodded towards the tiny bathroom.

  And that was where her routine was brought to an abrupt halt when suddenly she found herself sprawled on the hall floor, having tripped over the suitcase she had dumped there late last night. The lock had sprung open and a pile of Polaroids had spilled out of the gaping suitcase. Nora sat up on the floor and opened the suitcase fully.

  She picked up the Polaroids and flicked through them. All were of young girls, teenagers. Lone girls standing up against walls, inside and out, in a pose with few variations. They all looked straight into the camera lens.

  Some flirted openly with the camera, a smile on their lips. Others looked shy and awkward. Judging by their hair and clothes, Nora took the pictures to range from sometime in the 1980s, based on the MC Hammer trousers, hair gel and oversized sweatshirts, up until the 1990s, where there was one picture of a girl wearing a T-shirt with U2 on it.

  The collection must be that of an amateur photographer; this much she had learned from working alongside Pete. It wasn’t a professional portfolio, rather a quirky little insight into a provincial photographer's tentative attempt to master the difficult art of photography. A man who was fascinated by young women, but who had clearly never learned anything about choosing a subject or lighting, and didn’t possess an ounce of artistic flair. She shrugged and was about to close the suitcase when her eyes were drawn to an image that stood out from the rest.

  Two girls in the same picture. A smiling blonde, slightly chubby, but pretty. Next to her a petite, dark-haired girl scowled at the photographer. It must have been summer; they were wearing shorts and standing against a white background. She dated the faded ‘Feed the World’ T-shirt to one or two years after the Live Aid concert in 1985.

  But it wasn’t the T-shirt that had caught her attention. It was the sign with the big red arrow behind the two girls and the caption, in Danish, that read: Car Deck 2.

  She put the Polaroid to one side and went to the loo, cleaned her teeth and splashed water on her face. Made herself a cup of strong Nescafé, adjusted the colour with milk, sat down in front of the computer and turned on the Dictaphone.

  Mr Benn's emotionless voice filled the room, and in the hours that followed there was nothing but him and his horrors in Nora's life. Her fingers flew across the keyboard.

  X

  Nora had submitted her article and while she waited for feedback, she made a half-hearted attempt at tidying up the piles of paper on her desk. She checked the fridge and wondered if she had the energy for a trip to Whole Foods in Kensington. She could spend hours at their three floors stocked with exquisite foods and would always come home with an empty purse and her arms laden with Italian goat cheese, spelt crackers, organic blackcurrants or cheesecake from the bakery. But she could feel that today wasn’t one of those days.

  Something about the picture from the car deck kept troubling her; it evoked the sadness you feel when looking at old photographs of soldiers, grinning young men who thought they were immortal, but today exist only as letters carved on a mossy war memorial in Normandy.

  She tried to shake off the sense of tragedy. By now the two girls had probably been married and divorced several times over, and forgotten all about a ferry crossing made decades ago.

  Yet Nora picked up the Polaroid of the two girls once more. One dark, the other fair. The gaze of the blonde girl was hard, as if challenging whoever had been behind the lens: What the hell do you want? The dark one looked shy. Her head was tilted and her gaze turned downwards, as if she dared only peer up indirectly at the spectator.

  She turned over the picture. Nothing on the back.

  The hiss of her entryphone interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘Yes?’ she answered tentatively.

  ‘Good afternoon — this is the police. Someone has reported a domestic disturbance,’ she heard in Danish spoken with a broad north Jutland accent.

  Argh! It had com
pletely slipped her mind that she was meant to be having lunch with Andreas today.

  The two of them had been friends since Sixth Form, but at their leavers’ ball Andreas had too much to drink and declared her his undying love. When Nora had felt unable to reciprocate his feelings and asked if they could just stay friends, he had avoided her from that moment on.

  Soon afterwards Nora had gone Interrailing, then travelled to England for her gap year, and Andreas was accepted by the Police Academy. Since graduating he had worked his way up the ranks and was now with Violent Crimes. Nora had kept an eye on him from afar and now time appeared to have healed his wounded pride. He had found her on Facebook and sent her a message saying he would be in London for a couple of weeks as he was taking part in a Scotland Yard course on terror cells.

  Nora checked her diary, which had ended up under an old copy of the Guardian, a WHO report on child poverty and an article about immigration torn from The Economist.

  Quite right. It read: Lunch, Andreas 1.30 p.m.

  ‘So what's it to be?’ he said through the intercom.

  She buzzed him in. ‘Come upstairs. I’ll be ready in a sec.’

  The square shoulders and the corn-yellow hair over brown eyes were Andreas, just as she remembered him. And yet she could see that the years had left their mark on his face. He had grown up.

  He opened his arms without a word and she disappeared into his enormous embrace.

  ‘Still as lovely as a mermaid,’ he said with that crooked smile of his.

  Nora rolled her eyes.

  ‘At least you haven’t grown a walrus moustache like a cartoon copper. That would have been more than I could handle.’

  She flung out her hand and invited him into her flat, which seemed even more microscopic with a towering, muscular policeman inside it.

  ‘I’ve been working since I got up this morning. I need a quick shower before we go anywhere. Would you like some coffee while you wait?’

  ‘Really? I thought you were taking me to lunch in your Kung Fu dressing gown. You’ve grown rather dull in your old age, haven’t you?’ Andreas grinned and had a good look around her flat.