Read Online Next of Kin by Elsebeth Egholm - Free Book Online Page B

trap.
    â€˜Getting others to do just that has never troubled you,’ Otto Kaiser stated. ‘In fact, that’s what you do for a living.’
    Her palms were sweating so much the receiver nearly slipped out of her hand. He was right, but she wasn’t going to give up without a fight.
    â€˜And here was I thinking I was being paid to save the world,’ she said.
    She could hear his smile when he said, ‘I’ll hold some space on the front page. I’m counting on you, Svendsen!’
    â€˜And where did you say we were going? The Philippines? Outer Mongolia?’
    Dicte’s head was still spinning from too much wine and not enough sleep. She settled on the sofa in Bo’s photo lab where he sat gawping at the screen. The coffee table was covered with papers and she casually scanned them. Insurance papers, she noticed. That’s right, he’d mentioned that he needed to be re-insured, ready for his next trip abroad, but as far as she knew he had no actual plans.
    Discreetly she pulled a sheet closer while Bo sat studying something on his screen, lost in concentration. He had filled in most of the boxes, she could see. His age, height, weight, address, telephone number and email address had been added in his handwriting. One box read ‘Next of kin’. He had yet to fill that one in.
    â€˜Shit!’ he said in English.
    It wasn’t so much the word, more the intensity in his voice which made her look up, just in time to discover that he was zooming out. Suddenly she realised what he had been looking at.
    â€˜What are you up to?’
    He tore himself away from the screen. ‘I’ve been studying the details. But I’m probably not going to find anything Crime Squad or PET haven’t already found.’
    An image of the beheading was frozen on the screen. Dicte saw the sabre gleaming in the air on its way down to the man’s neck.
    â€˜Bloody hell,’ was all she said. ‘How can you bear to watch it?’
    â€˜It’s all we’ve got,’ he muttered as he zoomed in again, not on the weapon or the assailant, but on the background. ‘Can you see it?’
    â€˜See what?’
    He indicated something with his ballpoint. Far away on the horizon, squeezed in between two big broad-leaved trees, the sky had two hues. The upper hue a shade of blue lighter than the lower one where, if you looked closely, there was a small white spot.
    â€˜Water,’ Bo said.
    She pulled up a chair and put her face right up close to the screen. ‘The sea?’
    â€˜Hmm.’
    â€˜And that thing there?’ She pointed to the small white spot.
    â€˜It’s a ship.’
    â€˜How big can we make it?’
    â€˜Big enough.’
    She looked away from the screen, stared at Bo and then realised that he’d known all the time. And, indeed, he had a triumphant smile on his face as he let the information sink in.
    â€˜It’s the Vesborg .’
    â€˜The Samsø ferry?’
    â€˜Looks like it.’
    She had another look. The ferry sailed from Hov on the mainland to Sælvig on the island of Samsø; she had been there with Rose one weekend at the start of the summer while Bo had been away on a trip. She tried to recall the landscape around Hov. Not very hilly, as far as she remembered. A bit flat, in fact.
    â€˜It could be Samsø,’ she said. ‘There’s a ridge you can see the ferry from.’
    He nodded. She was already on her feet with her bag in her hand. A thousand thoughts cascaded through her head. The police had their IT experts, too. Of course they had studied the film. Of course they would have reached the same conclusion.
    â€˜Why don’t you call and make us a booking? Two passengers and a car?’
    Bo put on his cunning smile.
    â€˜We might still be lucky. Unless they’ve already sold every single car space on that ferry to the police.’

12
    Emergency services always rang at the worst