Free Trophy by Steffen Jacobsen

Lene waited until the strangled sobbing finally ebbed out.
    ‘Louise?’
    The head nodded.
    ‘Where are your children?’
    ‘With my mother.’
    ‘Would you like to go and see them?’
    ‘Yes, please.’
    ‘Then that’s what you should do. Can I ask you a question before you go?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘You were married yesterday?’
    The air was quickly sucked in. Louise Andersen used her asthma inhaler again and wiped her cheeks with the palms of her hands.
    She sent Lene a terrible smile. ‘And put asunder today.’
    ‘They tell me you cut down Kim yourself and tried reviving him. You did really well, Louise.’
    ‘Thank you …’
    ‘Have you seen the handcuffs before?’
    Louise Andersen curled up again.
    ‘They were a joke,’ she sobbed. ‘One of his friends gave them to him because he was getting shackled to me for life.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Someone or other. I don’t know.’
    ‘Okay. Where is your computer?’
    Louise Andersen gestured in the direction of an antique bureau between the windows facing the garden. Lene noddedto the officer, who got up and raised the lid. She held up a couple of unplugged cables.
    ‘The computer, Louise, what kind was it?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘What make was it?’
    ‘Toshiba. It’s a laptop. It’s old. Is it not there?’
    ‘No, but I’m sure we’ll find it.’
    ‘Can I go now? I want to see my kids.’
    ‘Of course. We’ll take you.’
    Louise Andersen quickly got up, ran through the living room and disappeared into the bathroom.
    Lene looked at the police officer. Young. Very young. And completely out of her depth, though she tried to exude a quiet competence.
    ‘You can take her to her mother’s, can’t you?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I think you need to get her seen by a doctor,’ Lene said. ‘One who can give her a sedative.’

Chapter 7
    A secretary had booked her a room in a small hotel outside Holbæk. It looked like every other hotel room where Lene spent roughly two hundred and fifty nights a year: tidy and sterile.
    She ordered the dish of the day – which five minutes later she couldn’t remember – and ate in the almost empty restaurant with a fine view of the fjord. A small white ferry glided across the dark blue water towards the island of Orø. The slow-moving lights of the ferry and the cultivated voices of the other diners had a calming, almost soporific effect on her. Lene started nodding off over her plate, until the waiter gently asked her if she would like some coffee.
    She had received a preliminary report from Arne, the senior CSO. The CSOs had drilled open the gun cabinet and found a shotgun and a hunting rifle with a telescopic sight. Though the weapons were well-maintained, there was a fine layer of dust on the butts, bolts and barrels, and they showed no signs of having been fired for a long time. A couple of unopened boxes of shotgun and rifle cartridges were also covered in dust.
    They had searched the bathroom and found a bottle of Sertraline, an antidepressant, and a blister pack of sleeping tablets, a brand Lene sometimes took herself. Both prescriptions were in Kim Andersen’s name. The seals on the packaging had been broken and Lene looked forward to the results of the forensic blood tests.
    Arne had given her the prescribing doctor’s name and address.
    Apart from that, he said, the place had been unremarkable, furnished like thousands of other Danish homes.
    Lene drank her coffee in the deserted hotel bar while she studied her notes and sketches and pondered the inconsistencies. There was more to Kim Andersen, the super-fit carpenter and highly decorated ex-Royal Life Guard, than met the eye. And though the young widow was distraught at her husband’s death – her emotional outburst had seemed completely genuine to an experienced and cynical observer like Lene – her actions after finding his body were downright improbable.
    Having drunk yet another cup of coffee at the taxpayer’s expense, she left the hotel via a side