Username, page 17
Anne had managed to get hold of the inspector after the press conference, even though he had done everything he could to escape. Anne had told her about their conversation on the way home in the car. As Kamilla had got a lift from Anne, she’d had to wait until Anne had come back. She hadn’t wanted to intrude when no photos were to be taken, so she had looked at the police station’s art collection in the meantime. Forensics had found the blood by the latch on the edge of the skip, Anne had explained, as she had pushed her bristly hair back and steered the car through the traffic.
‘But couldn’t it be from anyone?’ Kamilla had asked.
Anne had nodded and stuffed a piece of V6 chewing gum into her mouth. Kamilla had accepted one, too.
‘Yeah,’ Anne had muttered as she shifted gears. ‘I asked that, too. But the blood was also found on Gitte’s clothes. So the police suspect the killer scratched himself on the door, or gave himself enough of a cut that it bled profusely. That’ll catch him—a cut like that is a wound.’
A teenager with learning disabilities has been released in the Aarhus murder case, the news anchor’s voice came from the TV. She turned up the volume. Tarzan looked up, annoyed at her for disturbing his sleep.
There were pictures from the press conference. She spotted the car with the TV 2 East Jutland logo in the car park in front of the police station, but hadn’t noticed them in the commotion of the press conference. Superintendent Kurt Olsen was announcing the boy’s release due to lack of evidence. Then the newscaster took over, sharing what the TV 2 editorial staff thought people should know. They also showed pictures of the skip where people had laid flowers, teddy bears, written thoughts and prayers on little notes fluttering in the wind, flickering tealights. Her gaze slid over to the photo of Rasmus on the bookshelf, but a picture of a girl with dark curls quickly pulled her eyes back to the TV screen.
Ten-year-old Gitte Mikkelsen disappeared on Monday afternoon at two o’clock when she left her home to attend a classmate’s birthday party a few metres away. She never reached her friend’s house. No one knows her whereabouts from two o’clock on Monday afternoon, when she was seen at Bazar Vest, until one o’clock Tuesday afternoon, when she was found dead. Police are looking for the driver of a dark car seen stopping at the waste container on Edwin Rahrs Vej on Monday evening at six o’clock, the news anchor summed up.
Kamilla stared paralysed at the girl’s face. Her eyes were full of life and joy. As a ten-year-old girl’s should be. It was the first time she had ‘seen’ Gitte, despite them probably showing her picture in every newscast. It moved her to see the person behind the assignment. Put a face on it. She had always avoided the idea that it was all about a person. A little girl who had once been full of life. Just like Rasmus.
A dark car is also wanted in connection with the abduction of Gitte Mikkelsen’s classmate, Louise Poulsen, who disappeared on Wednesday afternoon. Police suspect it may be the same car. Unfortunately, no witnesses have been able to give the make of the car, the newsreader continued, and a new image appeared on the screen. Louise Poulsen was a pale skinny girl with thin blonde hair and blue eyes. The photo was a private one of Louise sitting on a black leather sofa. She smiled crookedly and shyly.
Louise Poulsen disappeared on Wednesday afternoon between four and half past six after leaving a friend’s home. She was wearing a yellow raincoat, red T-shirt, dark blue jeans and white runners. Please contact East Jutland Police with any information…
Kamilla pulled a blanket around her. She was freezing, despite the living room being warm. Again, she looked up at the picture of Rasmus with the football in his arms. It was so unfair when life was interrupted so abruptly and meaninglessly.
An American sitcom began on the TV. The artificial canned laughter came in short bursts. The mechanical response seemed so out of place after the images of the two girls and their fates. As if life shouldn’t go on after such a tragedy. But it did. It had done after Rasmus, too. Though it was not life as before.
There wasn’t much on the TV that interested her. The wine had made her drowsy and she must have fallen asleep. It was almost dark outside when she woke up instinctively, thinking a sound had awakened her. Tarzan sat up on the couch, his ears pointed tense and stiff at the hall. Kamilla became aware of his behaviour. Cats hear everything, she thought—even a tiny spider crawling across the floor, the wind, or the woodwork creaking. She listened and muted the TV with the remote control. One of the cat’s ears turned towards her at the movement, but he continued staring at the hall. He grew restless and jumped down from the couch. Tarzan walked slowly, vigilantly and furtively towards the hall. He made himself as low as possible. Mouse? Rats? Did I remember to lock the front door? Thoughts whirled around her head, groggy from sleep and wine.
‘What’s up, Tarzan?’ Her voice revealed she was nervous. As she got up, the cat ducked quickly, turning his head towards her as if he was going to hiss at her. His eyes were black; the pupils filled them. But he continued stealthily towards the hall. Kamilla still couldn’t hear anything but the muffled bass of the music from a street party somewhere nearby.
All at once, the lights went out. Her heart raced in what seemed like a brief cardiac arrest. It’s just a blown fuse, she reassured herself, but it didn’t alleviate the panic. She could make out the furniture in the semi-darkness and quickly found her way to the hall and the cupboard with the fuse box. She couldn’t see Tarzan. She turned abruptly as she sensed a movement behind her, but there was no one there.
‘Is there somebody there?’ she whispered hoarsely. It sounded like a line from a bad thriller—she even felt like she was starring in one. As she approached the door to the hall, which stood ajar, she could feel the evening air. The front door had to be open. Had she had forgotten to lock it? Had it blown open? It wasn’t windy. With a quick movement, she pushed open the door to the hall and was greeted by the wide-open front door. The leaves rustled on the trees. The music from the street party became clearer. She hurried to slam the door and lock it, then she opened the cupboard with the fuse box and picked up the torch that lay inside.
To her surprise, she saw the fuse supplying power to the living room, kitchen, hall and toilet was loose. She dropped the torch with a gasp as a sound in the living room made her flinch. As she stepped backwards, she heard Tarzan’s heart-rending yowl and hiss. The cat’s dark shadow dashed into the living room, into the light from the torch on the floor, and it dawned on her that she had stepped on him. She picked up the torch with a breath more reminiscent of a sob. Her hands shook, so it was difficult to both hold the light and screw in the fuse. She felt like an eternity had passed before the light finally came back on.
Carefully, she went back to the living room. The curtain fluttered. The patio door was open. Had she not closed that either? As she stared out into the garden, she saw the red taillights of a car slowly disappearing up the road. Usually only those who visited her were on that part of the road. Someone who had taken a wrong turn, she thought, but things weren’t making sense. She could still feel panic in her body. She shook. The dark garden made her more uneasy. The trees were silhouetted against the bright evening sky. A breeze rustled the leaves, so it sounded as if someone or something was moving in them. She hurried to close the patio door and draw the curtains.
She jumped when the mobile phone rang as she was pouring a new glass of wine. She spilt it on the table and the red liquid ran like blood towards the edge. She had almost no voice when she answered, but Anne was too eager to notice.
‘I’m on my way to pick you up. There’s been another murder,’ she said feverishly.
‘Now!? So late!?’ Kamilla managed to stammer as she tried to keep the spilt wine from the edge of the coffee table so it didn’t run down to the floor.
‘Murderers don’t exactly work nine to five,’ Anne replied with an inappropriate restrained laugh. ‘I’ll be there soon. The murder was committed on your street.’
44
Anne turned from Grenåvej onto Mejlbyvej. She hated the country, with all the smells, fields and Morten Korch-novel atmosphere. Her grandparents had lived in the countryside in North Zealand. She had spent a lot of time with them, but the memories weren’t of the good kind and the visits hadn’t been voluntary. She wasn’t her grandparents’ favourite. Whenever she had spent weeks on end with them in the small dilapidated farmhouse, where she was forced to help in the stinking pigsty and driven to school by her grumpy grandad who smelled of chewing tobacco, they had called it a holiday. She had learned as she got older that it was when her stepfather was in jail that she’d been placed in care there. Her mother hadn’t been able to have all the children on her own, so as the eldest, Anne had been sent to North Zealand.
Thankfully she couldn’t see much of the landscape in the dusk, and it wasn’t really out in the country either. But she could smell the fields, and that was enough.
She parked in Kamilla’s yard, put her palm on the steering wheel and pushed three times. Kamilla came running out with the camera bag over her shoulder and sat down next to her in the passenger seat. She smelled of wine and looked exhausted, as if Anne had woken her.
‘Hi,’ Kamilla said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘What happened?’ Her anxiety shone through.
‘An old lady was found dead in her house here on this road.’ She looked at Kamilla’s face in the semi-darkness. ‘You look a little pale, Kamilla. It’s not too much for you, is it?’
Kamilla shook her head and fastened her seat belt. ‘No, I just had an unpleasant experience tonight. The lights went out and I felt like someone was in the house.’ She gestured uncomfortably with her hand. ‘But it was probably just a loose fuse. I’ve always been afraid of the dark.’
Anne put the car in gear and was about to turn out onto the road when she heard police sirens approaching. She let the cars with the blue flashes pass, then quickly followed.
‘We’ll let them show us the way,’ she laughed.
‘How did you suddenly find out something had happened out here so late at night—even before the police?’ Kamilla asked curiously.
‘I have my contacts,’ Anne replied secretively, winking.
‘But not that Roland Benito, right?’
‘The inspector? No, you have to pull everything out of him,’ Anne replied grimly.
‘I’m guessing you don’t like the police?’ Kamilla asked with a crooked smile.
‘The police have never done me any good,’ Anne said dryly. Her face showed Kamilla shouldn’t probe any further.
The squad cars turned off the road and stopped in front of a little yellow house hidden between tall trees. Anne parked on the roadside a little further ahead. The lights on top of the cars cast an eerie blue glow in the twilight. The blue flashes evoked mixed feelings. Anne had hated law enforcement authorities when she had lived in Nørrebro. The police didn’t always act tactfully during a demonstration. They often made it much worse. There was always an element among the protesters who weren’t there to demonstrate for a good cause, but who had a score to settle with the police and enjoyed watching them go straight into the trap and help escalate the unrest. But she also remembered the blue lights from when they had last arrested her stepfather. She had woken up in her bed to the sound of sirens and blue flashes flickering across the walls of her room. When she had looked out the window, she saw them put him in the back seat of the police car with a hand on his head so he wouldn’t hit it as they pushed him in. He had been handcuffed, and for a moment, she’d had the feeling he was looking up at her face in the gable window. Mum had shouted and screamed the police were pigs, and her siblings had yelled at each other. She had left home that night. Gone into the city centre and met other teenagers who weren’t happy with life either. They had all agreed the police were shits. Only when she got into the realities of crime did she realise they did some good, too. Both in terms of information for her work and solving crimes. Her stepfather hadn’t been innocent either.
They got out the car and went up to the house. The neighbours had begun to flock. Due to the late hour and the location of the house, there weren’t many passers-by. Some of the neighbours were in their nightclothes, but curiosity was greater than the need for sleep. Anne rigged her equipment and introduced herself to an elderly man in a dressing gown. No other journalists had arrived yet, so she took advantage of being the first to catch the story. Thygesen would be delighted.
‘Do you know what happened? Did you see anything?’ she asked in a voice encouraging the man to share something terrifying. He didn’t take his eyes off the house as he replied he hadn’t heard or seen anything. He only knew the old lady who had died had just returned home from the hospital after breaking her leg.
‘It was her, there, who found her—the home help,’ he said, pointing with a shaky wrinkled index finger to a middle-aged round-shouldered woman standing hunched by a car. She was white in the face. Anne went over to her, but she wouldn’t comment on anything, she was too shocked, she said. So not a sensationalist who would have loved to talk at length about her find to the media, Anne concluded.
Kamilla hurried to take pictures of the house with the squad cars parked in the yard. Anne waved her over to the house. They went in, both knowing they were doing something wrong again. The police hadn’t cordoned it off yet.
The inspector, who had showed up with a team of technicians and a forensic pathologist, paled before entering the house.
‘Did you touch anything?’ he asked in a sharp voice, which didn’t match his tired appearance, when he spotted Anne and Kamilla. They hadn’t. The forensics team and the medical examiner, who resembled a noble count, asked for space and peace and quiet to do their work.
‘Get out!’ said Roland Benito sharply, pointing to the door. But Kamilla managed to take a picture of the bedroom and the bed as Anne had ordered.
She smiled contentedly when they were standing in the garden again. It smelled of freshly cut grass and privet hedges. Only the drunken voices of the stragglers at the summer street party could be faintly heard through the hedges. Anne kept an eye on the house.
‘This time, we need a picture of the dead woman. As soon as they carry the body out, be ready,’ she whispered to Kamilla, who nodded as though hypnotised.
Roland was the first out the house, walking in front of the stretcher as soon as the initial examination of the body had been completed. Kamilla captured a series of images just before the stretcher was placed in the ambulance with its tinted windows. The woman was covered by a white bag and was fastened to the stretcher with two straps, so only the contours of her person could be seen. Roland did nothing to chase Kamilla away. After the ambulance had driven away, while forensics were still working at and in the house, he went over to Anne. She was standing out on the road behind the barrier tape some distance away from the nosey neighbours.
‘Hope you’re taking some pictures we can use,’ he said.
Anne immediately picked up the sarcasm in his voice. ‘Of course, just contact us if you need anything forensics missed,’ she smiled. ‘Was it murder?’
Roland nodded bitterly. ‘You’ll probably find out anyway, so I might as well tell you—the woman was suffocated with her own pillow.’
Anne took a cigarette from the packet he offered her and let him light it with his lighter.
‘Are we allowed to smoke at a crime scene?’ she asked, blowing the smoke out into the darkness.
‘As long as we stay here outside the tape,’ he said, looking like someone who couldn’t do without the cigarette much longer. She looked at his face in the flame of the lighter. She liked his features. They were rough and ready, yet he was charming for his age. It was something in the eyes.
‘Where in Italy do you come from?’ she asked, wanting to know.
‘Naples,’ he replied shortly.
‘Ah, the Mafia,’ she laughed.
Yes, and olives, oranges and lemon groves, the white beaches and the blue bay of Naples with Mount Vesuvius in the background, the scent of oregano, basil and espresso in the narrow streets of cosy restaurants and cafés, and the sun shining almost luminescent in red bougainvillea vines,’ Roland replied, firmly establishing he loved his homeland.
Anne fell silent, sensing she shouldn’t say more on that subject.
‘Do you think this murder could have anything to do with the murder of Gitte Mikkelsen?’ she asked instead after a short pause, while they followed the technicians’ examinations of the house’s doors and windows. A crisis psychologist who had been called in was talking to the home helper in her car.
Roland shook his head and removed a piece of tobacco from his lower lip.
‘I strongly doubt it, but nothing can be ruled out at present.’
‘How old was she?’ asked Kamilla, who had come over to them.
‘Didn’t you know her? You live on the same road,’ Anne said a tad reproachfully.
‘No. I never knew who lived here. The house always looked uninhabited.’
‘She was a little into her nineties,’ Roland interrupted. It wasn’t a nice case to get into on top of a child murder and a kidnapping. He looked at his watch. ‘There’s nothing more to do here tonight, so I guess we should see about getting home?’
Anne knew he was saying it in light of the work that still lay ahead of him in the house, along with forensics, and interviewing the home helper if she could face it tonight. But Anne didn’t protest. Something told her she was tuning into the brusque inspector’s wavelength, and he would certainly benefit from her more as a friend than a foe.
45
The water lay still in the summer night, evocative of liquid oil. His thoughts were the only thing disturbing the quiet evening. Danny inhaled the clean sea air and the smell of seaweed. The lights from the towns along the bay shone like a brilliant string of pearls.
Majken hadn’t realised he wasn’t interested in the kind of relationship she wanted. He had said it was because of the divorce. Not the full truth, but it had been all he could come up with when she had hinted at ending the evening in her bedroom. Her legs had been twisted around his on the sofa. Her lips had whispered enticing offerings close to his ear. It had certainly affected him. She was an attractive woman, and he wasn’t made of stone, but she didn’t turn him on sexually. That’s just the way it was. She had, naturally, been in shock from the burglary at the surgery. They hadn’t talked about anything else. But as the drink had slid down, the atmosphere had changed. He had even held back a bit with the drinks. Coffee had chased the last of the alcohol from his blood before he had decided to say goodbye and leave.
