She walked closer. “Where did you find it? Is it okay?” she asked. She was really putting on a show. Did she really think they would buy it? That they wouldn’t think it odd that she never questioned the fact that two policemen had sought her out here just to inform her that they had found her car?
“Yes, so you must be Anne-Line Svendsen? It was a blue and black Ka,” said Carl in order to lure her closer while he watched her every movement. Was her hand in the canvas bag? Was she turning something in her hand? Was all that rubbish she had just spouted off only meant to distract them?
Carl took a few steps forward to seize her, but this time Assad stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“I think we’d better let her go, Carl,” said Assad, nodding toward the metal cap she demonstratively let fall into the canvas bag.
Carl stood absolutely still. Now he could see her slowly pulling a wooden shaft out of the bag. At first he couldn’t make out what it was but suddenly realized that it was a hand grenade of the sort used by the Germans in the Second World War.
“I have the ball in my hand,” she said, holding a small white ceramic ball between her fingertips. “If I pull it, this place will look like a slaughterhouse within a few seconds. Do you understand?”
They certainly did.
“Move away from the door,” she said, walking over to the mechanical door opener hanging down from the ceiling. She pulled the black ball-shaped handle, and the door opened.
“If you come anywhere near me, I’ll detonate this and throw it at you. Don’t even walk up the stairs. Just stay where you are until you’re sure that I’m far away. I might just be waiting for you up at the entrance.”
She really looked like she meant it. The grey woman from before had transformed into a devil who was capable of anything. Her eyes shone with genuine madness, determination, lack of empathy, and, most of all, a completely incomprehensible absence of fear.
“Anne-Line Svendsen, where will you go?” asked Carl. “Everyone will be looking for you. You won’t be able to go anywhere without being recognized. I don’t think any disguise will be able to conceal your identity. You won’t be able to use public transport or cross borders. You won’t feel safe even if you hide in a summerhouse or out in the open. So why not just let go of that ball in your hand before something goes wrong? We will—”
“Stop!” she shouted so loudly that everyone looked up. She pulled the automatic door opener once again and stepped out into the stairwell.
“If you follow me, you’ll die. And I don’t care how many others join you. Got it?”
And then she slipped out of sight.
Carl immediately grabbed his cell phone and nodded to Assad to open the door so they could follow her.
In a matter of seconds, Carl had informed HQ about the situation and hung up again.
They heard the sound of her running at the top of the stairwell, and when they almost couldn’t hear her anymore, they nodded to each other and sprinted up the stairs two steps at a time.
When they reached the top, they looked out through the glass doors of the main entrance at a green wooden fence and the side of a blue container. But Anne-Line Svendsen was nowhere to be seen.
Carl pulled out his pistol. “Stay behind me, Assad. If I can get her in range, I’ll try to hit her in the leg.”
Assad shook his head. “Don’t try to hit her, Carl. You have to hit her. Give me the pistol.”
He put his hand around the barrel of the gun and pulled it carefully from Carl’s hand. “I won’t try, Carl,” he said calmly. “I will hit her.”
What the hell? Was he a marksman all of a sudden?
Then they rushed out the door and down the narrow passage between the fence on one side and a low stone wall on the other. Of course, the woman was already far ahead of them, but what they hadn’t bargained for was that Olaf Borg-Pedersen was waiting at the corner of the fence with his cameraman and sound technician already recording.
Borg-Pedersen smiled at them. “A little sweet talk and an incentive convinced the secretary to tip us off that we might find you out here somewhe—”
“Get out of the way!” shouted Assad, and they did when they saw the pistol pointing straight at them.
Carl and Assad turned the corner and caught sight of Anne-Line Svendsen down at the far end of the fence, where she was lunging at an old woman who was just about to secure her bicycle on its kickstand.
“She’s stealing the bike!” shouted Carl. “She’s going to get away.” Carl’s lungs were wheezing when they came to a halt at the end of the fence. They stared at the waiting taxis, the traffic on Blegdamsvej, and a mass of frightened people who had come from the direction of the main hospital entrance only to be suddenly confronted with the sight of a frantic-looking brown man with a firearm in his hands. Some of them screamed spontaneously and ran for cover, while others stood paralyzed.
“Police!” shouted Carl, jumping out into the road, followed by Assad.
Borg-Pedersen came running up behind them, his crew in tow, encouraging them to make sure they recorded everything, and telling them that this was live action at its best.
“She’s down there,” said Assad, pointing toward a side street about a hundred meters down toward Ryesgade.
Then the woman stopped on a street corner and laughed maniacally and unashamedly in their direction. It was obvious that she thought she was safe now.
“Can you hit her from this distance?” asked Carl.
Assad shook his head.
“What’s she doing?” asked Carl. “Is she waving the hand grenade?”
Assad nodded. “I think she’s trying to tell us that it’s a dummy. Look, she’s pulling the ceramic ball and letting the grenade fall. Shit, Carl. It was just a dummy, it—”
The sudden explosion shattered all the windows on the corner, and while it wasn’t exactly deafening, it was enough to make the taxi drivers who were standing chatting at the taxi rank instinctively fall to their knees and look around in confusion.
They heard Olaf Borg-Pedersen let out a satisfied sigh behind them. Station 3 had their footage in the bag: the remains of the banknotes rising like a mushroom cloud above Blegdamsvej, mixed with particles of the flesh that had once been a woman by the name of Anne-Line Svendsen.
EPILOGUE
Tuesday, May 31st, 2016
Olaf Borg-Pedersen was spluttering with rage through his red beard when Lars Bj?rn coldly informed him that even if they were to be dragged through a complaints procedure with the ombudsman, internal investigation, press complaints commission, court orders, abuse from the press, political pressure, and all kinds of obstacles, Station 3 would never obtain permission to use the last half hour of footage. They would just have to hand over the memory cards immediately.
Carl smiled. So there were limits to Lars Bj?rn’s willingness to cooperate. Was he already thinking about how the police commander and head of communications would react if they were forced to explain on national TV why an unauthorized policeman had threatened a TV crew with a firearm to get them out of the way, not to mention the subsequent downpour of flesh and banknotes?
“Have you arrested James Frank and Birgit Zimmermann?” Carl whispered.
Bj?rn nodded.
“And have they confessed?”