White Knight
The little mermaid looked sad. Perhaps it was because a pigeon had just defecated in her eye. Humphrey adjusted his binoculars and scanned back and forth between the bronze figure and a police launch moored nearby. Divers were in the water, wearing wetsuits with Search and Rescue printed on them in Danish. A man in a long dark coat was watching. Humphrey recognised him as the person who had told Kirstin to stop feeding bread to the birds because it was bad for them.
‘He’s here again, Mother.’
‘I’ve seen him.’
‘Do you think he’s spying on us?’
‘He’s adopted an unbeatable persona if he is.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Stupid, meddlesome old bugger.’
‘There’s a lot of them around.’
‘Yes, Humphrey. That’s why it is unbeatable.’
Kirstin returned her attention to Humphrey’s laptop computer. They had received another email from Olaf Magnusson. This one gave specific instructions. They were to go to a town called Foix in the Central Pyrenees. He would contact them there and arrange a meeting.
‘He is writing as if you are an old school chum.’
‘That’s what he wants his minders to think. Mother. He sends his emails out through a channel that is normally used for the transmission of digital data. They probably don’t know what he is doing but he can’t be sure so he makes them appear innocuous.’
‘You still hold to your little-boy-lost theory?’
‘I think Olaf was sucked into a world he couldn’t handle and is now trapped in it. He is crying out for help.’
‘And you see yourself as a knight in shining armour, galloping to his rescue, with me by your side?’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that, Mother.’
‘No. But it’s turning out like that.’
Kirstin suddenly felt tired. As a young woman she had been exhilarated by the thought of danger. Now, she wondered if she could cope with it.
The unfolding drama in the harbour didn’t help. The divers had found a body and were retrieving it from the water. Nearby, the man in the dark coat was talking into a phone. She wondered if he was an intelligence agent or some silly old bugger phoning his wife to tell her what had happened.