All That Man Is Page 19

  Does Ohmsen even know about the affair?

  What about we just phone him up and say, ‘Good evening, Mr Ohmsen. Do you know that your wife’s having an affair with the defence minister?’ See what he says.

  The woman’s husband, one of Denmark’s richest men, said he was ‘shocked’ …

  ‘Are you shocked, Mr Ohmsen? Are you dismayed?’

  The woman’s husband, one of Denmark’s richest men, said he was ‘shocked’ and ‘dismayed’ to hear …

  Soothed by the billowing cold of the air con, Kristian refocuses on the bright motorway, on the endless caravan of migrating Teutons in the slow lane.

  It’s an advantage, actually, to hold the name back for a day or two – extends the life of the story. It’s a major story, and very timely. The next few days they’re doing the monthly audit. That was what Elin was thinking about this morning, more than anything. Her job, it’s about those numbers. If they’re up, she’s winning. If they’re down, she’s not. It actually is that simple. Nothing else matters, in the end. Everything is fairly simple, in the final analysis, he thinks. Seeing the true simplicity of everything, that was important. That was how someone like him, someone who started out in social housing in Sundbyøster, made their way in this world.

  It is six o’clock.

  He is not far from Málaga. The first ugly signs of the city are appearing on the hillsides.

  The thermometer says 34°.

  He thinks of the shitty school he went to in Sundbyøster, patched with new paint where the latest graffiti had been obliterated. Barbed wire on the perimeter fence. The awful smell of the kitchen. Doorless stalls in the toilets.

  It just happened, is how it sometimes feels, that he has this life. Deputy editor of the top-selling tabloid in Scandinavia, laying down terms to senior ministers. It was always just one step after another. He discovered, when he was eighteen years old, that he loved working on a newspaper – a local paper, that he had delivered as a kid, took him on for work experience after he left school. That was the first step. They liked that he was keen, energetic, willing to do anything. And he had this instinctive understanding of what it was all about. Not until the last few years has he looked further than just the next step. When they made him deputy editor. Yeah, that was when he first looked down and saw how high he was, how he was nearer the top now, much nearer, than the place where he’d started – that flat. Fourth floor. Lift out of order. Hear every sound the neighbours make. His father still lives there, on his own. He drove that lorry all over Europe, his father, from Portugal to Poland he drove it. That was what he did with his life. Now he hardly ever leaves Sundbyøster. Hardly ever leaves the fucking estate. When was Kristian last there? More than a year ago. In spring, smell of pollen on the estate. And in the flat, cigarette smoke. TV on. Sports newspapers. Sit at the tiny table in the kitchen, talking about FC Copenhagen, what a shit season they’re having. Window open. Smell of pollen. Sound of the Øresundmotorvejen, leaking onto the estate.

  Shouts of kids.

  There’s this feeling he sometimes has that he’s a long way from home. That nobody’s there for him if it all goes wrong.

  *

  It is still well over thirty degrees when he returns the car at the airport. The heat still takes him by surprise – it’s like opening an oven – when he emerges from the air conditioning and walks across the soft tarmac to the office to hand back the keys and sign the papers. Then he heads for the terminal, where his flight departs in just over an hour.

  Departures is a nightmare. Thousands of people are travelling on this evening in August, thousands of sun-scorched northerners on their way home, to Dublin, Manchester, Hamburg, Helsinki. Holidaymakers. He hates holidays, personally. What are you supposed to do on holiday? He doesn’t understand. He would never go on holiday if it weren’t for the wife and kids. Ten days in Dubai, they did, this spring. And even then he was on his phone so much to people in the office, Laura eventually hid it. His phone. So they had a huge row about that. Where is my fucking phone?

  Where’s my fucking phone?

  He is in the security queue, untying his shoes, when it starts to whistle and throb. His phone. He answers it. It’s Elin.

  ‘No way,’ he says, when he hears what she has to tell him. ‘You’re joking.’

  He indicates to the people behind him in the queue that they should move ahead.

  ‘You’re sure?’ he says, shuffling out of their way.

  And then, putting his shoes back on, ‘Okay. Yes, phone him, tell him I’ll be there in about an hour. Okay.’

  A few minutes later he is at Hertz again. He says, frustrated with how slowly they are dealing with him, ‘It doesn’t have to be the same car. Any car.’

  It is a different car, a Seat.

  And then the same motorway, towards Córdoba, at over 140 kilometres per hour.

  It is nearly eight.

  29° says the thermometer.

  *

  He leaves the motorway, again, at Lucena. It is dusk. Exhausted, lurid hues in the west. There are people about now. Strip malls, the shops all still open, and supermarkets on the outskirts of the town, sitting lit up in darkening scrubland. Some sort of stadium. Football, he assumes at first. A match this evening. Floodlights. A traffic jam outside. Then he sees, from signs and posters, that it’s not football that happens there. And then he has passed it, is driving away into the dark evening, away from the lights of the town, towards the village where Edvard is.

  It seems strange to him, somehow, that bullfighting actually exists. He knows about it, obviously. It’s just that to actually see it like that seems strange. That something so savage, to his Nordic sensibility, takes place with all the trappings of modernity – the floodlights, the ticketing systems, the parking facilities. And in the middle of it all, slaughter. Slaughter. Slaughter as a spectator sport, as entertainment.

  What is sadder than the furious exhaustion of the bull? Than the bull’s failure to understand, even at the very end, that his death is inevitable, and always has been? Is just part of a show.

  The village is quiet in the deep dusk. Some sort of bar is open in the square where the church is.

  It is still oppressively hot.

  *

  ‘What are you doing here again?’ Edvard says, standing on the steps of the porch. ‘What do you want?’ He is still in his shorts, his flip-flops.

  ‘There’s something important you didn’t tell me, Edvard.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s pregnant, isn’t she.’

  Edvard looks amazed.

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m telling you – she’s pregnant. Is it yours?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Edvard says in a loud voice. He has been drinking. His lips are stained with red wine. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Kristian is at the steps now. Looking up at Edvard, who is a head taller than him even without the advantage of the two steps, he says, more quietly, ‘Mrs Ohmsen is pregnant. If you didn’t know, I’m sorry it has to be me who tells you that.’

  ‘How the fuck do you know?’

  Elin had Mrs Ohmsen followed, and Mrs Ohmsen led two journalists to a private antenatal clinic where she spent more than an hour. That was what Elin told him on the phone.

  ‘I just know,’ Kristian says. ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘No,’ Edvard says, pathetically.

  ‘Do you think it’s yours?’ Kristian asks him.

  ‘Will you just fuck off,’ Edvard says. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here. This is my life we’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, it is …’

  ‘It’s my life. Not yours.’

  ‘I know …’

  Edvard says, ‘Why don’t we talk about your life? Would you like that?’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about my life …’

  ‘There are some things I know about your life.’<
br />
  ‘I’m sure you do …’

  ‘I know about you and Elin Møllgaard,’ Edvard says, speaking more quietly, ‘your editor.’

  After a momentary hesitation, Kristian says, ‘I’m not interested in that.’

  ‘You and Elin,’ Edvard says, sensing that he has, if only very slightly, unsettled Kristian, and liking it. ‘Does your wife know about that?’

  ‘Edvard …’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘Edvard, nobody’s interested in that. They’re interested in you. They’re not interested in me. You are the defence minister of Denmark. You have been having an affair with a married woman, Mrs Ohmsen. Mrs Ohmsen is pregnant. It might be yours. That is a matter of public interest …’

  ‘It is not a matter of public interest,’ Edvard says from the step, a silhouette against the dim light which is on in the porch. ‘There’s no public interest there.’

  Kristian says, ‘It’s my opinion that there is.’

  ‘No, there isn’t. That’s just a pretence. It’s just a way for people like you to have power over people like me.’

  ‘People like me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you mean by that.’

  From the step, Edvard eyes him furiously, woundedly.

  ‘You’re upset, Edvard,’ Kristian says. ‘I understand that. And I’m truly sorry to have dropped this on you like this. I assumed you knew. You probably want to phone Mrs Ohmsen, don’t you, and find out what’s going on. Why don’t you do that? Okay? I’ll wait here.’

  Edvard stands there for a few seconds. Then he turns and enters the dark house, and Kristian waits on the path in the hot twilight. He does not sit down on the porch. There is, he notices, the debris of a solitary meal on the table there. He is hungry, suddenly. He hasn’t had anything to eat himself since a sandwich on the plane this morning. He often forgets to eat when things are moving fast.

  It is dark when Edvard emerges from the house again, into the shadowy electric light of the porch. Kristian, left waiting for nearly half an hour, has finally sat down.

  Now he stands. Edvard, he thinks, has shed a few tears. Something about his discoloured nose, the evident fragility of his self-possession.

  ‘Did you speak to her?’ Kristian asks.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She doesn’t know how you could know about it. She hasn’t told anybody. She thinks you must have bribed somebody at the clinic where she went.’

  ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘You say that.’

  ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer that.’

  ‘No, you don’t. The question will be asked. You will have to address it at some point.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘It would better for you,’ Kristian says, ‘to put everything out there now, rather than have it trickle out over a longer period of time. It will be less damaging that way, and less painful.’

  ‘Are you my media advisor now?’

  ‘I’m trying to help you, Edvard.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  There is a prolonged silence, only the implacable throbbing of the insects. Then Edvard says, ‘It’s mine, she says. She isn’t keeping it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Now please leave.’

  *

  ‘This,’ he says to Elin, travelling south again on the dark motorway, the air conditioning still purring, ‘is a sensational story now.’

  ‘It is,’ she says. ‘Well done.’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ he says, ‘do the basic story tomorrow, without naming her, without saying she’s pregnant. Then hope someone else names her during the day. Then Friday we do the full story, with names, pictures, everything. Don’t do the pregnancy, though – save that for Saturday.’

  ‘Sounds fine,’ she says. ‘Unless someone scoops us on it.’

  ‘They won’t.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Should help with the audit,’ he suggests.

  She laughs. ‘That is the furthest thing from my mind at this point.’

  He laughs too. ‘If you say so.’ He says, ‘I’m hoping I haven’t missed the last flight. I should get to the airport at tenish. So office some time after two.’

  ‘We’ll be waiting for you,’ she says.

  He has missed the last flight. When he phones Elin to tell her, she suggests he stay in a hotel and take the first flight in the morning.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘There’s an Air France flight to Paris in about half an hour, and then one to Copenhagen at fourish. It gets in at five forty-five.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ she says. ‘It sounds totally exhausting. Everything’s okay here.’

  ‘Yeah, I need to do that,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Okay. If that’s what you want. How long do you have to spend at the airport in Paris?’ she asks.

  ‘Two or three hours.’

  ‘That sounds fun.’

  ‘I’m going to love every minute of it,’ he says.

  And indeed the exhilaration he is feeling – the thrill of feeling that he is smack in the middle of things, major news events, things that everybody is talking about – takes him through the flight to Paris and the hours at Charles de Gaulle, the hours from one to four in the morning, when more people start to arrive in the huge lounge where he has been sitting and looking at the stuff Elin sent him. The first edition:

  DEFENCE

  MINISTER’S

  SECRET

  LOVE

  A picture of the minister looking shocked that they found somewhere, archive. Another, on the inside pages, of him looking sad.

  The stunning brunette, 40, is refusing to leave her husband, one of Denmark’s richest men …

  He finally falls asleep on the flight to Copenhagen.

  It is already light. Paris, familiar, in the little oval window.

  He does not see it. He is asleep.

  And then, mild Danish air.

  He is aware, taking his seat in the Audi, that he stinks. He literally stinks.

  4

  Every morning he takes his daughters to school, or in the summer holidays to their tennis lesson. It is something he has promised to do. It is a promise he has kept so far.

  When he parks in front of the house in Hellerup it is just after seven. He has time to shower and shave, to eat a bowl of Alpen, to drink two Nespressos: a Ristretto and then a Linizio Lungo with some skimmed milk in it.

  ‘You look shit,’ his wife says.

  ‘I feel wonderful,’ he tells her.

  ‘Have you slept?’

  ‘An hour on the plane from Paris.’

  ‘You were in Spain?’

  It seems strange now. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Málaga, place near there.’

  Tine and Vikki are looking at the paper’s iPad app, the front page:

  DEFENCE

  MINISTER’S

  SECRET

  LOVE

  And the minister, open-mouthed with shock.

  The TV news have picked it up. The TV is on in the kitchen, as usual, and there it is, the same picture, as the newsreader talks about the ‘allegations’ that have been made.

  ‘Who is she?’ Tine, eleven, asks.

  Her father, eating Alpen, shrugs. ‘It’s a secret,’ he says.

  ‘Who is she? Tell us! Who is she?’

  ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow,’ he says, with a jolly wink.

  ‘Tell us now! Tell us!’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he says.

  On the Internet, the story is proliferating. Speculation about who the minister’s ‘secret love’ might be is spreading on social media. Among the many names mentioned so far is that of Natasha Ohmsen.

  They leave the house at the usual time, he and his daughters with their tennis stuff. Though he looks pale, he feels eerily fine.

  Hellerup is serene in t
he morning sunlight, chestnut trees full and green in quiet streets of detached houses. Tall beech hedges against prying eyes. No shops. He is one of the youngest householders in the area, not yet forty. Most of the neighbours are older than that, well into middle age.

  Somewhere, in an even more exclusive part of the suburb, where tennis courts and swimming pools are standard, the Ohmsens have their house.

  *

  Once, two years ago, when Kristian was still the showbiz and TV editor, he went with David Jespersen, the deputy news editor and his erstwhile schoolmate from Sundbyøster, to a pub in town to watch FC Copenhagen on the telly. It was a Sunday afternoon. They had been in the office, working. David was spending more time in the office than he usually did, especially at weekends. His wife had thrown him out of their flat after one ‘indiscretion’ too many and David was staying with friends and didn’t want to be there all the time at the weekend. Kristian was in the office every Sunday anyway, so they were seeing more of each other than they had done for a while.

  They arrived at the pub with about ten minutes until kick-off.

  David had a Carlsberg. Kristian a tomato juice – he was going back to work after the match.

  They talked a bit about David’s situation, about the thrills and spills of his private life – the nannies he’d showered with, the hurried unions in nightclub toilets.

  Then David said, ‘What about you? You don’t play away sometimes?’

  ‘I don’t have time, mate,’ Kristian said.

  ‘What about Elin? Any truth in that?’

  Kristian just trickled some peanuts into his mouth and turned to the TV, up near the ceiling in a corner of the room. The team sheets.

  David was smiling. ‘I know it’s true,’ he said. ‘Lucky you, mate. She’s sexy, Elin.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Kristian admitted, taking a gulp of tomato juice. Then he said, holding his glass out to the barman, ‘Oi, Torben – put some vodka in that, will you?’