The Susan Effect

  ‘We talked Oskar into driving us,’ says Thit. ‘It took us all night to convince him. This morning he gave in. We stopped at an Indian grocery on Nørrebrogade and bought mangos and lemons. From there we drove to the Defence Command on Holmens Kanal. We go into the Ministry of Defence and ask to speak to someone senior. We tell them we’re biologists from the Plant Physiology Research Centre. A woman comes down immediately. She knows Oskar. We say we’ve got some very important fruits with us that missed the last consignment by mistake. They’re a breakthrough, we tell her. Especially the lemons. Absolutely crucial, in fact. But highly perishable. They need to be delivered right away so they can be properly refrigerated. We stand so she’s in the middle, under pressure. Eventually she gives in. Oskar’s lost his tongue, so we do the talking.’

  Laban and I refrain from exchanging glances. We’re on the run, and still the twins have turned left, to invade the Ministry of Defence.

  ‘She gives us the address. We ask for her card and she gives us one. We’re there in ten minutes. Rosenørns Allé. Nice place, they’ve even got a statue outside. Oskar’s too scared to go in with us. A security guard leads us inside, to four ladies in reception. We close in, with our mangos and lemons, waving the ministry official’s calling card. One of them gets to her feet and shows us upstairs.’

  The perils from which one wishes to protect one’s children exist perhaps not only in the outside world, but also more immediately as forces of darkness within them. In either case we parents have our work cut out. It must be years since Thit and Harald first discovered they could manipulate others. And just as many since they began to abuse the fact.

  ‘His office is on the top floor. It’s got the most brilliant view. Out front there’s a secretary’s office first, but we breeze through. The lady at the desk just looks up and lets us pass. The door opens and there’s Hegn.’

  ‘He doesn’t recognise us,’ says Harald. ‘Adults never recognise kids if it’s more than an hour since they saw them last. We tell him we’re messengers from the Ministry of Defence. We flash our official’s business card again and put the fruit down in front of him. And then Thit sits down on the edge of his desk and pulls her skirt up.’

  I look over towards the children’s play area. Mothers parade their prams in the spring sunshine. Inside the prams, babies coo and gurgle. Not one has even the slightest suspicion of what lies ahead: that in only a very few years from now the girls will be pulling up their skirts and wriggling onto the desks of elderly men, while the boys will be looking at four years in prison for attempting to smuggle antiquities.

  ‘He’s got a photo of his grandchildren on his desk. I tell him his girls must be proud of such an attractive grandfather. And then I pretend to have an epileptic fit. I stagger out through the secretary’s office. Hegn comes after me. He stuffs his handkerchief in my mouth to prevent me biting off my tongue. It gives Harald loads of time to nose about.’

  ‘I start with his desk,’ says Harald. ‘But there’s nothing there. Predictably, he’s got a built-in safe behind a picture on the wall, but it’s locked. All the cupboards are locked too. I’ve only got a couple of minutes at most, so I’m starting to panic a bit. But then there’s a door. I try it and it opens. And in the next room there’s …’

  He hesitates, as if still gobsmacked.

  ‘In the next room there’s an island. Or at least a model of one, like an architect’s mock-up. But this is a whole island, and it’s huge. The room is as big as a hall and the mock-up would take up half a handball court. It shows the island above and below the water. There’s a tall volcano in the middle, and coral reefs all around. There are two harbours. And what look like military barracks: two separate clusters like little towns. There are swimming pools, and fields full of vegetables. It’s all very carefully done. There’s a name on it, too. It says Spray Island. That’s as much as I see before I back out into the office again. Thit’s feeling better by then. Hegn gives us a five-hundred-kroner tip. But that would be mostly for Thit, I reckon. We ask to use the phone and call our official at the Ministry of Defence to tell her we’ve made the delivery. It means we buy time and can be sure she and Hegn won’t cotton on for a while. And then we’re gone.’

  I look out across the park and realise the first beech trees are in leaf, their foliage as yet so delicate, the colour so intensely green the phenomenon seems hardly material at all, more like light than matter.

  ‘It’s not even ten o’ clock by then. So we find an Internet café and google Spray Island.’

  Harald closes his eyes, as if retrieving word by word the article he read on the screen.

  ‘Named by Joshua Slocum, the first man to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe, after his home-built yacht, Spray. Having rounded Cape Horn, he encountered a storm and ran aground off the island. He discovered it wasn’t on any map. Most likely because of an error in the nautical tables, an error that led all the major sailing routes east of the island. Administratively, Spray Island belonged to the Viscount Islands until twenty fourteen, when it was purchased by the Danish government as part of the world’s most comprehensive conservation project under the auspices of UNESCO. The idea is to close off and protect a series of island groups in the Pacific and turn them into an international nature reserve along the lines of the Galapagos Islands. Having sorted that out, we go off and tuck into some breakfast courtesy of Hegn and his five hundred kroner. Oskar joins us.’

  ‘Oskar is a man of the system,’ I say.

  ‘He helped us escape.’

  ‘That was a moment’s weakness: the Effect. He works for Hegn.’

  Thit turns to face me.

  ‘Oskar is a man of potential.’

  I look away. It’s something new that’s started these last few months. A time limit on how long I can withstand my daughter’s gaze.

  ‘We’re meeting him in half an hour,’ says Harald. ‘He’s promised to take us to the pictures. In the basement of the Meteorological Institute.’

  6

  THE MAIN ENTRANCE of the Meteorological Institute is closed. As we approach, Oskar steps out of the shadows. He uses his walking stick for support, his face is pale and deeply lined. He opens a little door for us next to the gate. As we cross the courtyard I make a point of not glancing at my reflection in the windows. I don’t want to know what I look like.

  We’re met by a man at the basement entrance. He doesn’t introduce himself. All he does is shake Oskar’s hand, and from that gesture alone I know he’s a soldier, most likely sent home after some terrible war-zone experience and now living in a bivouac in the woods where he can be alone with the trauma.

  He avoids eye contact and leads us through a series of doors he unlocks along the way, until we come to a small auditorium with perhaps fifty seats, equipped with a screen and projector. Everything is set up and ready. The soldier presses a button and the film begins.

  It’s raw stock, unedited and without sound. It starts suddenly with images of a distant coast shrouded by rain clouds, filmed from a boat tossing on a leaden sea with waves as tall as multi-storey car parks. Some captions tell us in English that what we’re seeing is the coast of Argentina close to the 40th parallel south. If the film’s anything to go by, it’s a place as inhospitable as they come.

  The scene changes: now the ocean and the sky are blue, the bow wave and the seabirds white, and out of the swell a violet paradise appears, with coral reefs and the rising cone of a volcano. Suddenly the sound kicks in, a commentary spoken by a voice of the kind every woman on earth would wish could come and sing lullabies to her at bedtime.

  The voice says in English that this is Spray Island. That it measures some fifty by fifty kilometres in area, of which a quarter is taken up by the geologically unique volcanic cone. That the island is protected by a conservation order. And then it says no more. Footage passes across the screen without sound. Then comes a computer simulation, apparently demonstrating what the island is going to look like once the biologists have a
ll gone home. All that’s left is the jetty, the landing strip, the control tower and a few small buildings dotted about. On the sea is a sailing ship. The camera zooms in. Only it’s not a sailing ship, it’s the amphibious craft from Thorbjørn Halk’s whiteboards. The sail uppermost. Beneath it the balloon. And then the long keel hull.

  The animation is over: now we’re on a flyover of the island. The volcano seems to rise up out of the sea, its purple tinges turn green, and then we see the azure waters within the reef, white sandy beaches, coconut palms, a small harbour area, a crane. The volcanic cone then dominates the picture, filmed from a helicopter, the shadow of which is clearly visible on the slopes of the peak. Rainforest glistens with dew or rain. It’s morning, the sun low in the sky. The light is slanting and intense, casting long shadows.

  The voice returns and all of a sudden I recognise it. It belongs to Falck-Hansen, the foreign minister. It says the island has been purchased for a symbolic one billion kroner.

  Then comes footage of the island’s flora and fauna. Lizards the size of cats, frogs fat as footballs, mountainsides covered by great, unbroken carpets of orchids. Brightly coloured spiders with legs fifteen centimetres long, hirsute as a gorilla.

  Some more graphics. There’s a caption, though nothing explanatory: The Atlas Registration. A square grid is cast across the island, each square 100 metres in area.

  I raise my hand in the air. The film stops.

  ‘What’s an atlas registration?’

  The soldier steps up to the screen and points to the grid.

  ‘This is what’s called a UTM grid. In the case of particularly intensive biological surveys of a given locality, a square grid comprising UTM lines is laid out across the area, these lines being used locally in place of latitude and longitude specifications. The survey is then conducted within that grid. In Denmark the technique was first used for a bird count back in nineteen seventy-one. This is the third time. It kicked off last year and won’t be finished until twenty twenty-two.’

  He looks me in the eye.

  ‘Which makes the Spray Island survey one of the most minutely detailed biological studies ever undertaken.’

  The film starts again. The helicopter passes slowly over the landing strip, in the opposite direction this time. Men in blue uniforms are seen unloading a truck, and at the quayside a small container vessel is moored. The foreign minister is standing on the quay. The scene changes, and now he is speaking straight to the camera. At first there’s no sound. Then comes the voice. He speaks of the importance of preserving the unique biotopes of the Pacific.

  Abruptly, the film ends. The soldier switches the lights back on. He ignores us and speaks directly to Oskar:

  ‘UNESCO are due to launch an extensive documentation study of conservation projects next year. This is to be Denmark’s contribution. The educational unit here has been asked to see it through. Most of it’s still on the drawing board—’

  ‘I’d like to watch it again,’ I interrupt.

  What at first seemed whole appears more fragmentary on the second viewing. The film is an amalgam of footage taken at various points over a period of time. Initially, the shadow on the volcano is a helicopter, only then it’s a light aircraft. The sun keeps changing position. The first aerial shots of the landing strip show a building that isn’t there later on.

  ‘Can we freeze the picture?’

  I approach the screen.

  ‘Now slowly forward a bit.’

  The camera moves over the landing strip in the direction of the harbour. It passes along the jetty. Furthest out, at the beacons, are six people. A woman in a waistcoat of the kind used by fly fishers, consisting of little else but pockets, stands with a camera on a tripod. Next to her, a man is rigging a boom mic. In front of them, the sleeves of his white shirt casually rolled up, is Falck-Hansen.

  The three others, two men and a woman, are walking away. As they do so, they turn their faces from the helicopter to avoid being seen.

  The foreign minister speaks. There’s something fascinating about multi-talented individuals. Not only is he an experienced and highly regarded politician, his slightly nasal English is also as perfect as a native speaker’s. Moreover, he possesses the physical confidence of a trained performer.

  ‘It’s a long way from Denmark to Spray Island. This unique and fragile habitat. But my country’s resolve to make a difference is unconstrained by time or geography.’

  ‘One frame at a time,’ I say.

  The camera pans towards the sea. In the bottom corner I see the three individuals from before.

  The woman is in profile. Her skin is brown as mocha, smooth and inviting.

  The sequence will be cut out of the final film, being nothing more than accidental. Most viewers would take the woman to be a minor ethnic detail. But some would recognise her. And for that reason she will soon be removed.

  ‘That’s her,’ says Thit. ‘Hegn’s assistant! From Kronholm!’

  ‘If we could go back a bit …’

  The film moves backwards.

  ‘And freeze just there. Can we zoom in?’

  The image of the three is magnified, gradually beginning to break up into pixels. Now we can more clearly see the men at her side.

  One is in a blue three-piece suit and tie. Hegn.

  The other has sensibly donned a wide-brimmed hat, ostensibly to protect against the tropical sun. And yet it has nothing to do with being sensible in warmer climes. We watch as he spots the camera in the helicopter. We see how he retreats, taking Hegn and the woman with him. He says something to them and demonstrates with his hands that they should shield their faces and turn away. They follow his movements as if strings were attached to their limbs and he were their puppeteer. Even Hegn allows himself to be led in this way, however briefly.

  I don’t need to see any more. I don’t need close-ups or a DNA test. The man in the hat is my father.

  7

  THE SOLDIER ACCOMPANIES us back through the courtyard. Oskar peers round the main gate, then ducks back.

  ‘There’s a car pulled up next to yours. Two men are investigating it.’

  He nods to the soldier, who turns round and leads us back the way we came.

  I glance over my shoulder and see Oskar proceed in the direction of our car. There’s something ominous and aggressive about the way he moves.

  We follow the soldier inside to the main reception. The place looks like it’s being vacated. Offices stand empty, furniture is abandoned in the corridors. He opens a side entrance for us. It faces out towards the National Gallery. On this side of Sølvgade there’s a taxi rank.

  Only one taxi is waiting, with a paint job spangled with fractions and integrals. The lettering across the doors says Maths Taxi. I hesitate.

  ‘Science taxis. They started last year. So many academics are out of work now. You pay the normal fare, but you can ask for a short popular-science lecture along the way.’

  I look at the soldier. And then at Laban.

  ‘Maybe they could do the same for out-of-work composers,’ I muse. ‘They could hum a song.’

  He doesn’t answer me. I open the door of the taxi and we climb in. The driver makes a U-turn and we head off in the direction of Sølvtorvet.

  The driver is silent, hiding himself and his unemployed academic merits behind wraparound sunglasses. Fortunately, he offers no lecture.

  We turn onto Evighedsvej. Outside Villa Chez Nous, a hearse and two dark cars are parked. The hearse’s engine idles. We’re just in time to say goodbye to Ingemann.

  I get out and rummage for some cash. To be deprived of credit cards is to feel helplessly exposed and robbed of identity.

  Then I see Dorthea. She’s standing on the balcony in front of Ingemann’s cabin. She sees us, and yet she looks straight through us, without sign of recognition. She raps her fingers twice on the railing. I get back in the taxi.

  ‘She’s got company.’

  Harald indicates the taxi’s display. A message ha
s gone out with a description of all four of us. The tone is objective, undramatic. It ends with a phone number to contact.

  ‘Pull up ahead,’ I tell the driver. ‘Next to those cars.’

  The taxi moves slowly forward. The hearse is empty.

  I get out and open the door.

  And that’s when I make my big mistake.

  I do so with the intuitive feeling that we need to keep an eye on the kids. We need to keep them close. But all sense tells me that what Laban and I have to do now is far too hazardous for them to come with us.

  I hand Thit and Harald my last thousand-kroner note.

  ‘Take a long ride,’ I tell them. ‘Until we phone you.’

  Laban and I get into the hearse. The taxi is already gone.

  8

  ‘KIRSTEN KLAUSSEN IS our last chance. With a bit of luck we can talk her into helping.’

  Laban just nods.

  We pull in and park at the rear of the church.

  The former churchyard is enclosed by a wrought-iron fence whose railings are pointed in the manner of spears. We follow the fence in search of a gate. Ten metres on, a Dobermann stands on its hind legs, its snout through the railings.

  We approach and its eyes stare lifelessly.

  ‘Oh no,’ says Laban.

  The animal’s head has been pressed down over one of the spears. Its point has entered through the jaw and now protrudes from behind its ears like a little crown.

  We find the gate, only it’s locked. Laban throws his leather jacket on top of the railings and we clamber over.

  The churchyard is overgrown, separated from the church itself by means of a provisional-looking wire-mesh fence. On the other side is the swimming pool Kirsten Klaussen dreamed about in the miserable brown-coalfield of her childhood.

  We pause at the edge. The water is the colour of rust. I lean forward over its shimmering surface. At the bottom lies the other Dobermann. Its throat is slit, the head attached only by slender shreds of fibre.