Username, page 23
‘Finally, there’s news!’ Anne said excitedly over the phone. ‘My contact says the police are apparently on the trail of the killer. He’s supposedly a friend of the family.’
Anne was chewing gum and rummaging noisily in some cardboard boxes. She continued eagerly: ‘It was a child psychologist in Risskov who made the discovery. She treated Gitte last summer. The girl’s medical records were stolen from her clinic last Friday.’
So Majken had checked her computer and found something important. Kamilla accepted the large cup and nodded her thanks to the waiter, who disappeared again with an apologetic smile when he discovered she was in the middle of a phone conversation.
‘I was thinking we should pay the psychologist a visit?’ suggested Anne.
‘I know her. The child psychologist. She’s a friend of mine. I think we should leave her be. The police will deal with it,’ said Kamilla firmly. She wouldn’t be party to intruding on Majken with a camera and a pushy reporter. Especially not after their quarrel on Saturday. A press photographer who didn’t want to intrude—it sounded completely wrong. But that was also why she had become a commercial photographer. She often thought journalists and press photographers must feel they are being invasive and thoughtless when intruding in people’s lives at the most inconvenient of times. Especially nowadays, when journalism was no longer just about disseminating information and news, but more about creating sensation and displaying the misfortune of others. There were even websites where accidents and violence were exhibited with photos taken on mobile phones. Images and stories put before human understanding and consideration. The worse, the better.
‘You know her!?’ Anne’s voice reflected the great opportunity she had just seen. ‘Well then, let’s take the other one first,’ she carried on chewing.
‘What other one?’ Kamilla really only wanted a day of peace and quiet. She stirred the white milk foam and cocoa powder into the hot aromatic coffee so it became creamy and golden.
‘I found out something about the doll,’ Anne said eagerly.
‘The doll?’ Kamilla took a mouthful of cappuccino as she watched the other patrons at the tables outside the café. Those sitting closest to the river were starting to move indoors. Drips were beginning to fall from menacing black clouds.
‘I got hold of Kristoffer Kjær—the intellectually disabled boy. My gut keeps telling me there’s something about that doll. He confirmed my suspicion. I’ve been allowed to do an interview with him this afternoon. Do you want to come along so we can get a few pictures?’ asked Anne.
Kamilla looked at her watch. ‘When?’
‘Can we meet in Brabrand at three o’clock?’
Kamilla reluctantly confirmed, hung up, then moved inside with the other café guests when the rain broke through with a force that threatened the parasols’ ability to withstand. She balanced her cup and the heavy camera bag and got a seat by the window. In front of her sat a young couple in love, French kissing. To her surprise, she didn’t feel the usual discomfort that probably came from sheer envy. She smiled instead and thought of Danny. Her gaze shifted to the rain behind the window, where umbrellas had been unfurled. Wet domes of various colours and with assorted logos paraded past. On the tables, the heavy rain plopped in the used cups and glasses the waiter hadn’t yet managed to collect. A boy in yellow rain gear jumped in a puddle between the tables. The water sent a dirty splash up on the window where Kamilla was sitting. His mother grabbed him by the arm and pulled him with her. Same age as Rasmus, Kamilla thought, emptying the cup and paying. Then she threw the camera bag over her shoulder and walked with her yellow umbrella over her head, back to the car parked in the Magasin department store. She should make it home in time to email the photos to Thygesen before she had to meet Anne.
It was still raining heavily when she drove past the water tower on Randersvej and turned onto Hasle Ringvej. The wipers threw cascades of water from side to side on the windshield. Dazzling summer, she thought. On the whole, it had been a terrible summer so far. Danny was the only good thing that had happened. He had repeatedly wanted to talk to her about Rasmus. But she wouldn’t talk to him about her son. Not yet.
She braked hard at a red light she had almost overlooked. The cars thundered ahead from the opposite side. She told herself to be more attentive for the rest of the journey.
The boy’s foster family wasn’t home. Kamilla was surprised to see him in real life. The picture she had accidentally taken of him behind the skip was blurred because of the distance. Now she could clearly see the crossed eyes under the heavy eyelids that gave him a tired look. His face was small and flat, his nose short. It pointed up over the very thin upper lip. The proportions were completely off. There was too much distance between the nose and mouth. This boy would have been born healthy if he hadn’t been fed drugs and alcohol right from the foetal stage, she thought and shuddered.
Anne was already there, as usual, and had probably been sitting talking to the boy for a long time to gain his confidence.
‘I’m so glad you want to talk to us, Kristoffer. Here comes Kamilla, she’s going to take a few photos of you for the paper. Is that okay?’ She spoke slowly and pedagogically as though to a small child. His development was also no further advanced, despite his fifteen years. He laughed with such intensity that his eyes almost disappeared in the short eye sockets. Was he capable of a serious interview, and did the foster parents even know about this?
‘Have you been here long?’ she whispered to Anne.
‘I live out here. I’ve just moved.’
‘Again! Didn’t you just move into your apartment?’
Kristoffer sat, following their conversation with his crossed eyes. Anne nodded and concentrated again on the boy.
‘We chatted a little about the doll before. Why did you take it from the skip after the police had taken Gitte?’ Anne started her interview.
Kristoffer grew serious. His lips became narrower and formed the beginning of words. ‘It wa-wa-was Gitte’s doll,’ he stammered. His face writhed with exertion at uttering the words.
‘Yes, it was Gitte’s doll, wasn’t it?’ encouraged Anne. The voice recorder was on the table. He nodded violently and saliva began to dribble from the corner of his mouth, but he realised it himself and wiped it on his sleeve.
‘Were you going to give it, the doll, back to Gitte?’ asked Anne.
He nodded again and pointed to the bookshelf. ‘Yes, hid it up there.’
‘Are you hiding the doll in the bookshelf?’ Anne asked, sending Kamilla a sideways glance as the boy nodded, apparently forgetting again that the police had retrieved the doll.
‘Did you give the doll to Gitte, Kristoffer?’
The boy shook his head and fiddled with his sleeve, which had a dark stain from his saliva.
‘Do you know who gave the doll to Gitte?’
‘A man!’ it erupted from his mouth.
‘A man? Do you know the man?’
Again, he shook his head quite violently. His hair was thin and cut short. ‘A st-st-strange man,’ he replied with exaggerated mouth movements. He bit his lower lip afterwards.
‘Can you tell us anything about the strange man, Kristoffer?’ Anne continued with an eager expression in her eyes. At the police station, the boy had clammed up.
Again, Kristoffer shook his head. He tried to get some words out, but gave up.
‘Did you see when Gitte got the doll?’
Kamilla didn’t want to disturb them by using the flash, so she sat waiting in a chair next to Anne. She looked around the room. It was messy and looked more like a little girl’s room than the room of a fifteen-year-old boy.
Kristoffer thought for a while, then nodded.
‘Where did she get the doll?’
‘At the p-playground. Gitte was scared,’ he sniffled.
‘Was Gitte afraid of the man at the playground?’
He nodded again and began to look around the room nervously.
‘Did you see what he looked like? Can you describe him?’ Anne became too eager and the questions were too difficult. He began to get restless. Kamilla feared he would refuse to keep going. She spotted the row of toy cars on the windowsill and thought of Jonas and Rasmus’ interest in cars, and how Kristoffer loved to ride in his foster father’s lorry. She had read it in one of Anne’s articles.
‘Should we take a picture now, Kristoffer?’ she asked cautiously, hoping it might help him regain his concentration. He nodded and looked expectantly at her.
‘Which car’s your favourite?’ she asked with a nod to the row of toy cars on the windowsill, getting the camera ready.
‘That one!’ Not surprisingly, he pointed to the truck.
‘Did you see the man’s car?’ Kamilla dared to ask, trying to sound as teacher-like as Anne. Kristoffer nodded again.
‘Do you have a car that looks like the man’s car?’ Anne followed up on Kamilla’s idea.
He searched among the cars and picked up a black passenger car.
‘This one!’ He offered it proudly to Kamilla and her camera. She pressed the shutter button. He was dazzled by the flash and blinked.
‘You go to the playground often, don’t you, Kristoffer?’ asked Anne to keep him concentrated.
‘Yeeaahhh,’ he laughed, clapping his hands once to show his excitement.
‘Do you also know Gitte’s friend, Louise? The one who disappeared?’
Kristoffer thought again, then he nodded. Wasn’t it unusual for him to remember names like that? Kamilla considered his face. Saliva had begun to dribble from the corner of his mouth again, but now he was too busy to notice it. Who knew what was going on inside that head of his?
‘Was the car there the day Louise disappeared?’ Anne continued.
Kristoffer remained silent. He bit his lower lip again, then he started laughing with a rattling sound that came from his throat.
‘It has a funny animal ding-ling at the back,’ he laughed and jumped in the chair.
‘Does the car have a funny animal dangling at the back? Where? In the rear window?’ said Anne, meeting Kamilla’s eyes over his head.
Kristoffer nodded eagerly, the grin stuck on his face.
‘What colour was the car? Did you see? Was it black?’
He thought hard, his eyes became even narrower.
‘Black,’ he said clearly. ‘No, blue.’
58
On the stairs, at the door of the house in Brabrand, Roland felt a kind of stomach cramp. He had called beforehand so his visit wasn’t a surprise. He hadn’t done that the first time he had spoken to them in this house. Of course, you have to consider the grieving family. The situation was different with criminals; there, it was an advantage to come unannounced.
Inside the house, the dog barked. Ida Mikkelsen was clearly nervous when she opened the door. On the phone, he had only said something new had come up in the case and he would like to discuss it with her and her husband, but she had probably already decided what it was. Allan Mikkelsen wasn’t home. He was a bricklayer and out working. They were busy at the moment, Ida had said on the phone. He could have waited to visit until later, but for some reason, he wanted to talk to Ida on her own. After all, she was the one who had taken her daughter to see a psychologist without her husband’s knowledge. He hadn’t really heard her voice the last time either. Allan had done all the talking.
‘Come in.’
Ida pointed towards the living room with one hand, as she held her big, pregnant belly with the other. It had to be any day now. Roland went in, getting the smell of dog again. It had struck him the first time he had been there, too. The dog’s basket was in the hall. Now it aroused curiosity in him. A kind of hunting dog, he judged without knowing much about dogs. The dog sniffed Roland’s crotch, and he dutifully patted it on the head. Ida took it by the collar.
‘My husband hunts,’ she said almost apologetically, banishing the dog to the utility room.
Roland took off his jacket and pulled the sleeves of his jumper back down.
‘I made coffee,’ she said; it sounded like a question.
‘Thank you.’ He sat down on the bottle-green velvet-like sofa where he had also sat last time. He heard her pottering about in the kitchen with cups and a tray, which she set down with difficulty on the coffee table. He immediately got up to help. She sat opposite, then waited for him with eyes that betrayed the grief she was carrying and the nervousness of what was about to come.
‘I don’t want to waste your time, so I’m going straight to the point. He poured coffee for both of them. She had a hard time leaning forward because of the way she was holding her stomach, as though afraid of losing that child, too.
‘We’ve spoken to a doctor—Majken Thorup.’ He didn’t need to say more. Ida Mikkelsen put the cup down hard, despite having just lifted it up.
‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Everything that happened last summer…’
‘It may be important. Do you know the content of the conversations Dr Thorup had with Gitte?’ he asked seriously.
Ida started laughing nervously. ‘It was nonsense. Gitte went through a period where she felt persecuted by everyone. Even my husband. She was afraid of her own father,’ she laid extra emphasis on the word ‘father’. ‘It must have been something she’d heard at school. Or seen on TV—a film maybe, I don’t know.’ She tried with the cup again.
‘You’re sure there’s nothing to what Gitte said? Could someone in your circle of friends have molested Gitte?’
Her eyes went dark, as if she hadn’t ever followed that thought through to its end before.
‘No, that’s impossible!’ she said firmly after a brief pause. She drank from the cup and put it back on the saucer. ‘We only have good, genuine friends. They wouldn’t do that sort of thing,’ she assured him. Still, there was a touch of uncertainty in her voice.
‘Your husband said on the phone that he doesn’t know Jesper Ingemann—a youth leader at the after-school centre Gitte attended for a short while. Do you know him?’
She thought about it and shook her head. ‘Was it him? Is he the one who…’
‘Did you know Gitte had a profile on an internet chat forum with her picture?’ Roland interrupted her.
Nervous, Ida pushed her hair behind her ears. It was dark and shoulder-length. The purple in the blue of her eyes was enhanced by her lightly flowered purple maternity top with a ribbon just below her large bosom. Her eyes were red from crying.
‘Not until you took her computer. Was she lonely maybe?’ The question sounded like it was being asked of herself.
‘Gitte didn’t need to have been lonely to chat on the internet. Most children have chatted,’ he replied with a little smile.
‘But the police now think it’s her own fault? When she posted there, I mean?’ Ida looked at him worriedly.
‘Of course not,’ he said quickly.
She sighed and straightened her coffee cup. It seemed as if she herself had thought that.
‘Gitte called herself Doll Child in the chat group,’ Roland said tentatively. ‘Could there be a specific reason for that?’
She smiled and her eyes welled up again. ‘He always calls her that. Allan. My husband. She’s his little doll child. Did she really call herself that?’ she said, obviously touched.
Roland considered it a somewhat derogatory name for a girl, but Gitte’s father apparently didn’t see it like that.
‘Did Louise come here often?’
Ida shook her head. ‘They were mostly at Louise’s. She has a bigger room than Gitte, and then there was Louise’s little brother. Gitte was crazy about the little boy.’ Her lower lip began to tremble.
‘Did Gitte have any other friends we can talk to? Did she see anyone other than Louise?’
Ida shook her head a little. ‘Gitte didn’t have many friends. She had a hard time fitting in on the whole. That was why we had to take her out the after-school club. Gitte and Louise were thick as thieves. She also hung out with Berit. They played badminton together. She’s a few years older than Gitte. Would you like her address?’
Roland nodded. She got up awkwardly, stretched with both hands on her lower back. She stood like that for a while before going over to a dresser and getting an address book. She sat down on the sofa again and flipped through the book.
‘Here it is. Berit Bjerre. She lives with her parents on Emmasvej.’ She made a note of it and handed it to him. He thanked her and put it in his trouser pocket.
‘I’ll speak to her. And you haven’t thought of anything else since I was last here?’
She shook her head.
‘I have to ask for a list of your male friends who come here regularly,’ Roland said cautiously.
The tears filled her eyes. It would be a difficult task. Hanging friends out to dry and maybe losing them forever.
‘I can’t. My husband…’
‘Is it mainly your husband’s friends who come here?’ Roland was familiar with families where the circle of friends consisted mainly of the husband’s friends. ‘I hope your husband’s just as interested in finding Gitte’s murderer?’ The words were a little harsh, but he had to make her understand it was important for solving the case.
‘He’ll be angry. He didn’t know I was taking Gitte to see a child psychologist. But her obsessive thoughts couldn’t continue.’ She began to cry quietly. Roland handed her the handkerchief he always had in his pocket for such occasions. She wiped her eyes.
‘Listen, we’ll be discreet about it. It’ll be between us. You give me the names. I’ll make a note. And your husband will never know,’ he said confidingly.
Ida nodded silently.
59
Berit Bjerre was fourteen years old, but looked like a young woman of twenty. When Roland sat down opposite her, he rejoiced that his daughters weren’t that age today, when reaching maturity dictated that girls show both cleavage and a bare belly. He would never have allowed his own girls to dress like this young lady, even though he knew well he probably wouldn’t have had much say on the subject. Berit’s father probably didn’t have much say either. He imagined the quarrels there had to be on the subject in their home. She was a beautiful girl and looked like the thin young models from the flyers that came through his letterbox. It probably wasn’t a coincidence. But she was very upset by the murder of her friend, and by Louise’s disappearance. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, despite them already shining with a thick layer of lip gloss.
