Life and Limb by Elsebeth Egholm

listen to me, Dr Death: I’ve told you, I have no family.’
    Kempinski shrugged. Yet again he marvelled at his own fascination with this obstinate patient.
    â€˜You must have some family. Perhaps they’re more supportive than you imagine. The hospital could contact them and invite them in for a chat.’
    The man bared his teeth, now in a low snarl. Kempinski was reminded of his cat as it lay dying – it too had retained the energy to hiss.
    â€˜Give a kidney to a prisoner? To a man who has killed another man? How naive do you think I am?’

R ight-wing extremist violence. Stadium unrest. Bottles hurled through the window of a socialist café. Riots at a Muslim wedding in Aarhus.
    Dicte reeled off the list to herself as she walked down Mejlgade looking for the right house number. She had been online and read up on extremist groups. Kaiser was right: it wouldn’t hurt to make enquiries and find out just how bad it was, especially in Aarhus, even though it was hard to imagine anyone being swayed by that kind of ideology. Seriously, how many people walked around the city raising their arms in a Nazi salute and smashing anyone with dark skin and black hair to a pulp with baseball bats? Was the problem really that big?
    She found the right stairwell and had to cross a courtyard and climb up a dusty, squeaky flight of stairs where tattered old film posters hung from flaking walls that dripped with damp. The last few steps up to the third floor were like mounting a ladder to a chicken coop. There was a stench of urine and rotting rubbish, and the light in the stairwell wasn’t working. She pressed the doorbell but couldn’t hear it ring. So she knocked on the glass in the door. The pane was grimy with dirt and grease, and held together with packing tape over the cracks. While she waited she thought about the killings. Kosovo and Aarhus. Both had been at stadiums and the second one was possibly connected to a man wearing Doc Martens. Would extremist right-wing groups really commit such brutal murders? And across borders?
    Dicte heard footsteps in the hallway and could feel herself being scrutinised as the sound of an angry male voice reached her:
    â€˜Who is it?’
    She cleared her throat.
    â€˜Dicte Svendsen. I’m a reporter. I called yesterday.’
    The security chains were removed after what seemed, to her, an eternity. Finally the door opened a crack and she was inspected by a man wearing a brown leather waistcoat over a potbelly. His shirt was voluminous and hung outside his trousers; once upon a time it had obviously been white. Frederik B. Winkler looked like a man who had spent most of his life indoors. He was pale and red eyed and he squinted at the naked light bulb hanging from the hall ceiling and revealing patterned ’70s wallpaper. A grey-striped cat appeared behind him. It rubbed itself first against him then against Dicte.
    â€˜You can’t be too careful,’ the man said finally. ‘Come in.’
    He quickly slammed the door shut behind her and she felt a tinge of unease as all the security chains were put back in place.
    â€˜Ah, well,’ he sighed on his way into the depths of the flat, Dicte and the cat following behind in single file. ‘If they really want to kill me, they’ll probably succeed eventually. Do you want some coffee?’
    â€˜Please.’
    The living room was like a student bedsit from another era. Brown velvet furniture, a tile-topped table, a foot stool in brandy-coloured leather and rustic pine furniture – a circular table and six chairs – fought for space under the sloping walls. An ancient standard lamp and a couple of green metal ceiling lights, suspended low above the coffee table, did their best to illuminate the room but failed to reach the corners.
    â€˜So, who is planning to kill you?’
    Dicte said it casually, as if it were a natural opening gambit. Privately she wondered if the man was