Username, page 13
‘An orgasm lasts only a short second, yet people are murdered, raped and sold for that brief pleasure,’ he replied bitterly.
‘That’s just it. There’s no evidence of a sex crime, no semen or signs of attack. So what’s the motive? Does it mean the murderer may be a woman, as you mentioned during the autopsy?’ At long last, Roland opened the door and he followed him out the office.
‘I know you face a lot of questions. But maybe Kristoffer Kjær can answer some of them.’
‘But the circumstances make me wonder,’ continued Roland, as if thinking aloud. ‘Why wasn’t she wearing her tights anymore? It suggests she was undressed—and doesn’t that imply a sexual motive?’
‘Yes. Or a pervert. The murderer put her sandals on again. Maybe as a sign of regret? Did Gitte know her killer?’
‘Yes, that’s an interesting thought. Shit, there were no fingerprints on the sandals. Perhaps the water and mud destroyed whatever prints there were.’ Roland took out his car keys.
‘Are you going to interview the boy? Can he be interviewed?’
‘We have to do something. Maybe he’s worth a visit?’ Roland stuffed the photo of the boy behind the skip in his jacket pocket.
33
Today was the day she was going to see the horse. It had been hard to wait until school was over. Amalie had packed her backpack long before the bell, so she was ready to run out to her bike as soon as it rang. She had hurried home so fast that she had nearly gone through a red light. As soon as she was inside, she quickly changed into a tatty old tracksuit she hadn’t worn for a long time, but as she didn’t have horse riding clothes, it was the best she could find. She took biscuits from the cake tin, filled an empty bottle with water, screwed on the lid and stuffed it all in her backpack—then headed off. Luckily it wasn’t raining. He practically lived in the country. True Forest was close by. He had written it was a great place to go horse riding.
The wind made her shoulder-length fair hair dance around her ears. A smile broke out on her face. She was growing up. Just as grown-up as Sofie and Line. They did loads their mum and dad didn’t know about either.
She could have taken the bus, but when the weather was good, she would rather cycle; it wasn’t that far, and there was a bike path most the way. As long as she remembered to turn right at the roundabout, she would find it.
It was further than she had thought. The sweat made the sweatshirt of the tracksuit stick to her back under the backpack, so she pulled over to the side and took it off. It was better to cycle in the sleeveless top now the sun was in the sky. She took a few sips of lukewarm water from the bottle, stuffed the sweatshirt under the pannier rack and got back on the bike. That was better.
Her mood rose when, in an instant, fields were all around her. She caught sight of the brook. A little further along, she glimpsed the forest on the horizon. She would be there soon. It felt like she had been cycling for hours and hours. Her thigh muscles hurt and she began to regret not taking the bus. That would have meant getting home quicker—before Mum and Dad got home. But she would be there soon.
When she spotted the house, which he had described in the email, she increased her speed. But where was the stable? There was a large pasture behind the house, but there were no grazing horses. Maybe it wasn’t the right house. She tapped down the kickstand, set the bike on the gravel in the yard in front of the house and walked to the front door. Then she hesitated. Maybe it would be a good idea to look around a bit first.
Behind the house was a small garden that looked like it had never be kept. The grass was long and full of weeds. There was a greenhouse, too, like the one her grandma had, but all the plants were dead. A pile of old manure that was attracting a swarm of buzzing flies stank. The house looked empty. She must have taken a wrong turn, so there was nothing for it but to get back on the bike again and find the right house. A kitten that suddenly emerged from the bushes made her think differently. It meowed affectionately and seemed to be hungry. She squatted down and petted it. Her mobile pressed against her thigh in her trouser pocket. If she had just got his phone number, she could have called or text him. Stupid, she thought, talking to the kitten, who tensed and affectionately nuzzled her hand. She was about to pick it up and get up when she heard a voice behind her.
‘Amalie?’
She looked up. He was standing with his back to the sun—a dark shadow.
‘Yeah,’ she said, getting up. When she stood up, she could see his face. He was old, older than she had imagined. The dark sunglasses meant she couldn’t see if he had brown eyes like the horses as he had written in the email. The wind blew his hair down over his forehead. She could see he was going bald. He held out his hand, but she didn’t take it. The kitten was still rubbing against her legs.
‘Where’s the horse?’ she said.
34
Danny paid and walked through the entrance onto the cobbled streets of Den Gamle By, the old town of Aarhus. It was like landing in a completely different world. It smelled of old houses and horses. He heard sounds that brought him back in time, and he sensed what it must have been like to live back then in the nineteenth century. He peered in through the windows and felt like a peeping Tom glaring into people’s homes. It was all brought even more to life by the working women clad in old clothes and wearing bonnets, who he spotted through the kitchen windows, and the baker’s wife standing behind the counter in the bakery wearing her apron and brooch, as was the fashion over a century ago.
He sat for a moment on the low wall over the river, enjoying the sun, which was now beating down on them from a blue sky. He inhaled the atmosphere. It stank of stagnant water. The water was green and muddy and filled with ice lolly wrappers and cigarette butts. Probably not how it was back then, he thought, lighting a cigarette for himself. The sound of horses’ hooves mingled with children’s shouts and laughter. A horse pulling a rickety old carriage with a young couple on board passed him slowly on the cobblestones. He followed the coach and the couple with his eyes. Saw them kissing each other, how she laid her head on his shoulder before they turned the corner and he couldn’t see them anymore. He sighed and flicked the ashes of the cigarette against the wall as he continued to listen to the sound of horseshoes on cobblestones, which grew slowly weaker and was eventually drowned out by the children’s roars and screams.
He felt tired. Throughout the night, he had woken up bathed in sweat from the nightmare. It had been a long time since he’d had those nightmares, but last night he hadn’t slept much. Maybe it was seeing this place again. Maybe the psychologist was wrong about it being good for him.
He bought an old-fashioned ice cream cone and ate it as he wandered, lost in his own thoughts, between the yellow and red houses with timber-framing. A little girl ran into his legs and almost fell over. He managed to grab her by the arm and set her on her feet again. She had run after one of the geese drinking at the old water pump. Women walked around in clothes from bygone eras, fetching water in heavy wooden buckets. Though they seemed to be of a slightly more modern appearance.
Then he caught sight of her. She was standing with her camera, taking pictures on the other side of the water pump. Only when she took the camera away from her face and let her eyes glide around in search of new subjects was he sure it really was her. A white jumper was carelessly tossed around her shoulders and tied by the sleeves in front of her chest. Like himself, she resembled a relaxed tourist. When she caught sight of him, she stood looking at him as if he, too, were part of the scene. She put a hand in the pocket of her bright trousers, lifted the camera again with the other and focused on him. He smiled and saw her press the shutter button. She slowly lowered the camera again while still staring, seeming to measure him up. He hesitated. Then he walked over to her.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
It was almost inaudible, but she smiled. He loved that smile, he realised.
‘New assignment?’
‘Yes, fortunately,’ she replied, ‘this is a little more me.’
The sun shone in her eyes, making her close one a little as she looked at him. ‘Playing tourist?’ she asked with a mischievous smile.
‘I am a tourist!’ He gestured with his arms to emphasise it and ended up hitting an elderly well-dressed gentleman in the back. ‘Oh, sorry!’
The old man waved his hand in a ‘no problem’ way and walked on. She laughed and started walking. Danny followed her.
‘Who are you working for now? Still the newspaper?’
‘No, Aarhus Tourist Office. They needed some new pictures for a tourist brochure. I’d say I have enough now.’
‘Am I in them?’ he asked happily, pointing to the camera. She looked a little puzzled at first, but then remembered the photo she had just taken of him.
‘Maybe. A relic from the old days,’ she teased.
The girl has humour, too, he thought, but the notion she thought he was old caught him for a brief second. They laughed again.
They went into the old bakery with the beautiful sign hanging out from the yellow timberwork and the arched windows, the same shape as a characteristic Danish pretzel-shaped pastry. They bought two pastries and strolled on through the old town in the sunshine as they ate them. They saw the Mayor’s House. Visited the many booths. Stood by the railing of the old watermill and watched the water cascading into the green liquid, splashing small cold drops onto their faces. Every so often, Kamilla put the camera up to her eye and took a series of pictures. Behind them, The Prism office building seemed to merge with the firmament as its glass panes reflected the blue sky and the little white clouds. A stark contrast to the antiquated buildings and the modern world whizzing past, out there at the Ceres junction.
‘Do you feel like getting something to eat? I saw a restaurant next door.’ He suddenly had the courage to ask. He feared she was about to walk away from him now.
‘Prins Ferdinand!? No, it’s way too expensive,’ she said, still looking at him expectantly.
‘We’re tourists. Come on!’ he urged.
She hesitated. ‘I’m not dressed for it,’ she said, trying to get out of it again.
‘It’s my second-last day in Aarhus. Come on, Kamilla!’ He made his most persuasive face.
She followed, resignedly, as he pulled her with him.
35
Before Roland turned right and drove along Sønder Allé, he lit a cigarette. It smoked up between his fingers resting on the steering wheel as he deftly steered the car through the dense downtown traffic. There was a traffic jam on Amaliegade and towards Salling Car Park. He took another puff of the cigarette while he waited. A woman pushed a pram out onto the roadway, taking advantage of the traffic jam to get over to the other side, so she was free to walk down to the pedestrian area on Fredensgade. ‘You probably wouldn’t have done that, little lady, if I was driving a squad car,’ he said, tapping the ashes off in the car’s already overflowing ashtray. He wondered about mothers’ pram behaviour. Mothers should go first and pull the pram after them. Especially when it comes to assessing whether it’s safe to cross, he thought. He followed the woman with eyes narrowed due to the smoke from the cigarette. She ran the last stretch and reached the footpath on the other side just before the traffic started moving again.
The traffic accelerated slowly. He quickly shifted gears and followed the line of cars up to the Regina junction, where he had to stop again for a red light. A cyclist with earphones in both ears didn’t see the red light and was about to run down a couple of pedestrians before it dawned on him he wasn’t in the world of music. Roland shook his head and rolled his eyes. He knew how to easily disappear into another world by immersing himself in music, even though it probably wasn’t Pavarotti the long-haired guy was listening to.
He shook a new cigarette out the pack and rested it between his lips as he searched for the lighter in his jacket pocket. He felt bad about it. He knew it wasn’t healthy. But this case was getting on his nerves. He had spent most the night by Marianna’s cot, looking at her little sleeping face. Such innocence. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he had wiped her nose. The cold had made it run. What if it had been her?
He turned off onto Edwin Rahrs Vej and back onto Bentesvej. A pair of dark immigrant boys walked by in wide hip-hop trousers and hoodies. They didn’t deign to look at him when he got out the car. He didn’t exactly look very Danish himself—he looked more like them than anyone else. But he was happy for the unmarked police car. Had he driven in a squad car, a stone would probably have already been thrown through the rear window. They’d had many unfortunate call-outs to Gellerup. It was as if the white car with the blue stripes made people go crazy out here.
The foster family lived on the third floor. The stairwell smelled of minced beef with onions and garlic. Behind one of the doors, a child cried heartbreakingly. A woman scolded in Arabic. Roland was slightly out of breath when he reached the door. Mie and John Thorsen it said on the door sign. The boy wasn’t mentioned. He had already taken his police badge out his pocket when a woman in her mid-thirties slowly opened the door after he had pressed the doorbell a few times. She only glanced briefly at his ID.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ she said, gesturing for him to come in. When he saw the day’s paper on the table, he knew why.
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please. Thank you.’ It was part of the ritual, as he had learned after countless visits to all kinds of homes. Danes gathered around coffee when beer couldn’t be offered.
She placed two cups and a plate of biscuits on the table in the kitchen. He looked around the living room; it was nicely decorated with a mixture of new and old things that looked like they had been bought at a flea market.
Roland sat down on one of the chairs at the table in the kitchen’s dining nook. She sat on the chair opposite and poured the coffee. It looked thinner than the coffee at the police station, but he was used to drinking various strengths. Out of courtesy, he took a biscuit when she offered him the plate. He wasn’t particularly hungry, not even for something sweet—one of his weaknesses.
‘Unfortunately, Kristoffer won’t be home until three o’clock,’ she said. ‘He’s with my husband in his lorry, he loves it. John’s a truck driver,’ she explained, taking a bite of a biscuit, which crumbed into her lap. She had dark frizzy hair, which could well have been a failed perm, and wore modern glasses with a light titanium frame. They suited her narrow face. Her grey eyes looked out at him through the lenses. ‘You should have called first,’ she said with crumbs in the corner of her mouth. It was a reproach. He heard the tone, but the police didn’t call to give advance warning. He looked at his watch.
‘Well, I’ll just wait the fifteen minutes. Can you tell me a little about Kristoffer in the meantime?’
‘You can’t arrest him. He hasn’t done anything.’ She crumbled the biscuit on the plate nervously as she looked at him with eyes that had a touch of uncertainty. Maybe she was one of those foster mothers who had bitten off more than she could chew, caring for a mentally disabled teenager without fully knowing the responsibilities that came with it. It wasn’t just about food, a warm bed and a few goodnight kisses. Maybe they had taken him in for the money. You heard about that, too.
‘We don’t think so either. But we know he was near the skip at the time the doll disappeared, which you probably read about in the newspaper.’ He pulled the enlarged image of Kristoffer behind the waste container out his jacket pocket and placed it in front of her. She looked at it without much interest as she brushed the crumbs she had just discovered off her lap.
‘That’s why we’d very much like to talk to him. Is it normal for Kristoffer to go out on his own, without supervision? ‘
‘He can easily do so. On his good days, there’s no problem.’
‘And on his bad days?’ Roland drank from his cup and looked at her over the edge with a raised eyebrow.
‘I’m usually with him,’ she said meekly. She broke the biscuit into smaller pieces. ‘But he loves to go down to the playground and watch the other children. He can easily do that on his own.’
‘Hmm. Does he happen to have a computer?’
Mie Thorsen shook her head. ‘He’s not able to use a computer. Not even computer games,’ she sighed.
‘Does Kristoffer have a doll?’
‘No, he doesn’t!’ She looked at him in surprise, but then changed her mind. ‘I don’t know. We don’t go into his room very often.’ She pulled the worn blue cardigan around her more tightly, as if she was suddenly freezing. ‘We’ve agreed it’s his own private place where we don’t interfere. He’s a boy who’s nearly fifteen. He doesn’t play with dolls,’ she muttered, mostly to convince herself.
Roland crunched the last of the biscuit and rinsed it down with a sip of coffee. ‘Do you mind if I look around his room a little?’
She hesitated again. ‘What if he comes home?’
‘Then we’ll talk to him,’ Roland smiled convincingly.
He was allowed to walk around Kristoffer’s room by himself. He had read in the report that the boy was a little immature. His room reflected that. It wasn’t the room of an ordinary fifteen-year-old boy, where he would expect to see posters of Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson—or whoever the scantily clad young ladies were he occasionally caught a glimpse of on TV nowadays. Instead, posters of Disney’s The Lion King and The Little Mermaid adorned Kristoffer’s walls. By the bed hung an old Hans Christian Andersen Ole Lukøje lamp with a red umbrella adorned with gold stars as its shade. Probably found at a flea market. He walked around, carefully moving things without touching them with his hands. Instead, he used a pen he had in his pocket. On a shelf in the bookcase stood a large Homer Simpson figure. He smiled wryly as he remembered watching the cult cartoon with his daughters. They had teased him that he would end up looking like Chief Wiggum if he didn’t keep an eye on how much cake he had with his coffee. He shook his head slightly at the memory. As he moved the Homer figure, the row of books overturned. He hadn’t noticed it was being used as a bookend.
