Username, page 32
‘But to think Danny Cramer’s the drunk driver who killed Rasmus. It’s completely unbelievable!’
Kamilla nodded and again felt the hatred mingle with other emotions that were coming to the surface. But she couldn’t forgive a man who had killed her son. If she could, that would make her a bad mother.
‘Do you know how the murder cases are going?’ asked Anne, as if she could tell by looking at Kamilla that she needed to talk about something other than Danny.
‘The last I heard, they found Olga Halgren’s grandson. They think he has something to do with the murder. I haven’t heard anything about Gitte’s murderer, but Louise has been found, so maybe she can identify him,’ Kamilla said, relieved by the change of subject.
‘Thank God Louise was found. Is she okay?’
Kamilla didn’t have time to answer. She was interrupted by the officer who entered the room and closed the door behind him. He watched Anne and smiled broadly. ‘I have a message for you from Roland Benito. Torsten Lund has been arrested in Copenhagen. You can relax now.’
Anne took Kamilla’s hand. Her eyes shone with joy as tears of relief flowed down her cheeks.
‘Say hi to Roland, and tell him—tell him I love him.’ The mischief in her eyes was back.
The officer laughed and said goodbye to them both. He didn’t need to be there any longer.
79
In the fishing hut in the back garden, behind the stylish detached house in Risskov, they found Gitte’s bike, helmet and backpack during the search of Troels Mortensen’s home. There was no doubt Louise had been held captive in the shed. The remnants of the rope left around her wrist when she had stumbled into the judge’s garden corresponded in structure to the rope that had caused the marks on Gitte’s wrist. Forensics determined it was the same type of rope. In a drawer, they found Gitte’s mobile phone, the white tights stained with mud, and pairs of children’s knickers hidden as little trophies. Roland could see Troels sitting and sniffing at them in the sinister shed. It obviously wasn’t the first time he had been successful fishing on children’s chat sites on the internet. But it was the first time it had led to murder. Hopefully. He felt nauseous.
The girls probably hadn’t dared tell their parents about their experiences. The parents probably didn’t know the girls were chatting online. But maybe more girls would come forward now. That often happened when a case like this came to light—all the other reports followed in its wake.
There had been a couple of episodes recently of ‘date-rape’ drugs being used. Rape and attempted rape, where perps at various discos had spiked the victims’ drinks with drugs. It was a difficult crime to investigate, as it was crucial the trace took place no later than four days after the incident in the form of a urine or blood sample. But usually the victims couldn’t remember what had happened, so the urine trace test didn’t take place within the optimal timeframe. But when one episode popped up, more followed. The girls were made aware of the danger. Roland sighed, happy again his girls were now adults and not vulnerable as children and young people are today.
He looked at the pictures on the board, which he now soon hoped to be able to take down, and thought of Anne’s involvement in the investigation. He smiled at the thought of Dan Vang’s greeting from her, where she had said she loved him. He shook his head a little. Who would have thought that would come from someone like her? In the investigation of the case of Torsten Lund, he had discovered information on her past in Nørrebro. She wasn’t exactly a favourite of the Copenhagen police, but that was the past, and just as he believed you shouldn’t convict a suspect until the evidence was laid out, he equally believed you should never judge people on their past sins. We all have them.
It had been with great relief when he received the message from Copenhagen that Torsten Lund had been arrested. At first, Lund had pleaded not guilty and claimed he had never been to Aarhus. But when the evidence was presented to him, like the trail of blood originating from his shoes—which he was still wearing—his fingerprints all over Anne’s apartment, and the scrapings with his DNA from under her nails, he had broken down and confessed. Forensic science had come a long way in the years he had been behind bars.
The phone interrupted his rejoicing thoughts. It was forensics. They were investigating Troels Mortensen’s car. In the rear window, they had found the funny animal mentioned by Kristoffer Kjær. The tyre prints matched, too, but they needed to find more evidence if a conviction was to be certain.
‘We’ve finished investigating the Honda,’ said Gert Schmidt.
‘Did you find anything?’
‘We did. The girls were definitely kept on the back seat of the car. We found both light and dark curly hair, as well as some artificial hairs—probably from the doll. We also found a strange object on the back seat.’
‘What kind of object?’ Roland asked curiously.
‘I had no idea what it was. It kind of looks like a large screwdriver with a blade-shaped tip at one end and a half-hollow plastic tube at the other. But one of the technicians is an angler and told me it’s a rod holder for when you’re out fishing. The blade’s inserted into the sand, and the fishing rod’s placed in the hollow tube, so you’re free to hold the fishing rod yourself while waiting for a fish to bite.’
Roland thought for a moment to ascertain the importance of the rod holder for the case. He thought of it before Gert could remind him of it.
‘I have a picture of the mark on the girl’s back in front of me. Without doubt, it’s the same object that made the imprint. She must have been lying on top of it on the back seat of the car.’
Roland lit a cigarette. His hand shook a little.
‘Probably when he drove the dead girl to the skip,’ he mumbled.
‘The way the blood collected in the imprint shows it happened while she was still alive,’ Gert replied.
‘I wonder how long he was driving around with her in the car?’ said Roland absent-mindedly.
‘Everything found has, of course, been sent for further technical investigation, so I’ll be in touch again,’ concluded Gert.
Roland thanked her and hung up. They had him now. The long search and sleepless nights were at an end. They only needed to find him, and it couldn’t be that difficult. Troels Mortensen couldn’t be far away. They only had to find him before he panicked and did more harm.
80
She was locking the door when her arm was twisted behind her back and a weight pressed against her body, pushing her in towards the door of the surgery. Her jaw hurt from being forced against the door. A pointed object went through the thin fabric of her blouse and coldly touched the skin on her right side.
‘Unlock the door,’ he said softly in her ear. She smelled alcohol on his breath.
She obeyed and unlocked the clinic again. He pushed her in, closed the door and turned the lock.
‘Troels! What are you doing?’ Majken saw the knife in his hand. She wanted to say something, but couldn’t make another sound.
Troels pointed the knife at her while he went to the window and looked out through the blinds. ‘They’re looking for me,’ he said, as though to himself.
‘Troels, sit down. Tell me what happened.’ Majken realised she needed to summon everything she had learned about psychiatry. This was a clearly desperate and sick man. Something quite different to the children who sat and confided in her with big innocent eyes. The thought made her unsure whether she could handle the situation.
‘Stop your psychological shit. Sit down, Miss Thorup.’ He twisted around, walking along the wall towards the medicine cabinet, still with the tip of his knife pointed at her.
‘Give me something soothing.’ He waved her to him with the knife and pointed with it towards the cupboard. ‘Open it! You have to have something in there!’
She dared not do anything other than obey, first taking out a jar of Alprazolam sleeping tablets. He snatched the glass out her hand and read the label.
‘Very clever!’ He raised a finger and waved it warningly in front of her nose as if she were a naughty child. ‘I’m not going to sleep that fast. And what would you do, then? Call the police again?’
He pushed her so she fell back into the chair. He rummaged in the medicine cabinet himself, read the labels and found a couple of jars, then stuffed them in his jacket pockets. But she couldn’t see what they were. He sat down opposite her and looked intensely at the sharp blade of the knife.
‘Would you believe it, a police officer told me this knife would be perfect for a murder.’
Majken swallowed a few times as she saw the savagery in his eyes. The doctor in her wanted to diagnose acute psychosis, but she suddenly didn’t feel like a doctor. Was that why he had come? Did he know he needed help?
‘You didn’t ring to get the result of your blood test. Everything’s fine,’ she said calmly. An attempt to get things back to normal.
‘Fine,’ he snorted. ‘I don’t give a damn about that blood test. I know how I feel.’
She straightened up and took a deep breath.
‘Are you and Vera not doing any better?’ She tried again to get a normal conversation going.
He leaned back in his chair and put the knife into its sheath with a smile she couldn’t decipher. He didn’t respond immediately.
‘Things are never going to get better between us. I can’t give her a baby, can I?’ He sat with his eyes closed. Then he opened them quickly and looked directly at her. His eyes were pale and dull and had an expression she had never seen before.
‘You don’t need to have children to have a good marriage,’ she said, trying to smile encouragingly.
He got up abruptly and wandered restlessly around the surgery, slamming the knife against his thigh with each step he took. It was back in its sheath. That reassured her.
‘Children,’ he snorted with his back to her. She couldn’t work out what was in that comment.
‘You like children, don’t you?’ She said it gently, knowing the calm that had come over him now could quickly turn. But she had to get him to open up about his problem. If he had come to her for help, he was going to get it.
‘I’m not a paedophile,’ he said quietly, still with his back to her. She was amazed by that answer and felt all the alarm bells starting to ring. There was more going on here than she realised.
‘I didn’t say that.’
He quickly turned around and laid both hands hard on the table in front of her. The blood vessels appeared bluish under the white transparent skin on his thin arms.
‘Why’s it so important for women to have children? After all, they don’t want to know them once they’re born!’
‘Is that something you’ve experienced? Did your mother turn her back on you?’ Majken suddenly saw an opportunity to get him to talk.
‘They’re all the fucking same!’ he said savagely.
‘Who? Women?’
He sat down on the edge of her computer desk and let a finger wander along the rim of the screen.
‘Only children are good company. Little girls who don’t expect you to…’
He stopped and sat staring at the new window put in after the burglary.
‘Expect you to get it up?’ Majken dared, hoping her boldness would overpower him.
‘Only you know my problem,’ he snarled. ‘And Vera, of course, who has to go to someone else to feel like a woman.’ He began wandering again.
‘Tell me what happened. You won’t get rid of the pain until you let it out.’
‘The pain!’ He turned angrily to her. ‘I don’t feel any pain. Psychological drivel. But if you want to know, she offered it herself. It’s her own fault. She looked like her mother.’
Majken began to freeze. What was he talking about? Her mouth was dry, she couldn’t swallow.
‘Her own fault how? Who are you talking about?’ she asked hoarsely as he sat down opposite her again. He had drawn the knife again and was lovingly drawing circles on the tabletop without leaving scratches.
‘Little girls in tops cropped at the navel, and thigh-high dresses so you can see their little round buttocks. That’s what she was like—Gitte.’ He looked at her defiantly.
Majken froze and thought of the description of Gitte’s clothing in the newspaper. There had been no mention of a thigh-high dress or a crop top.
‘Do you mean Gitte Mikkelsen?’ she asked in a voice that barely answered.
He nodded silently and kept staring at her.
‘Did you see her like that?’ She wanted to get up to have a glass of water, but he pointed at her with the knife angrily.
‘Sit! You have to write something in my file. Write it like it is—that I don’t know what I’m doing because of my mental state.’
She sat down again and tried to think clearly. Tried to be the psychologist she was. But the desire to clarify things intruded more than the desire to help her patient.
‘Unfortunately, I can’t. I had a break-in last Friday. My records were stolen.’ She looked at him tentatively as she said this. His eyes flickered.
‘Not mine. Mine wasn’t stolen.’
‘Was it you? Why did you take Gitte’s file? Did you see it when you were here for an examination, or how else did you know Gitte was my patient?’
Troels didn’t answer, he didn’t even look at her.
‘You were afraid of what she’d said? The police discovered Gitte was afraid of one of her father’s friends—are you one of her father’s friends?’ She felt her courage slowly return.
‘Her foster father!’ he screamed angrily, so his saliva hit Majken in the face.
He got up quickly. A blood vessel protruded clearly on his forehead. Majken knew she had surprised him again. She had read in the paper that Gitte Mikkelsen had been adopted by Ida and Allan Mikkelsen. Now she was sure it was her he was talking about.
‘How did you find her?’
He turned to her and smiled broadly. ‘Piece of cake. I fish with Allan Mikkelsen! When you’ve had a crate of beers on a fishing trip filled with locker-room talk, you start to reveal a little about yourself. We’re very close, Allan and me.’ He winked provocatively at her.
‘Do you know who Gitte’s biological father is?’ She couldn’t believe the suspicion that had begun to sprout. He had to confirm it.
‘You should have been a police officer,’ he laughed.
She figured she wouldn’t get an answer.
‘You abducted Louise, too? Where is she?’
Troels grew serious and started pacing the floor again. ‘The little bitch, she saw me. She wanted to go running to the police.’
‘So you killed her, too?’ Majken’s voice trembled.
‘No! I didn’t murder anyone!’ he yelled. He sat down and put both feet up on Majken’s desk. He waved the black Lloyd shoes as he looked at them.
‘Do you know how grown-up ten-year-olds are today? They put it all out on the internet, their hairless little bodies, and even ask for it. They got their first screw!’
Majken shook her head and smiled indulgently. ‘You’re wrong. That’s just how you think it is.’
He shook his head, too. ‘She wanted it herself, she offered it to me.’
Majken got up without him protesting. ‘She had a doll with her. She was just a child,’ she said, shakily pouring a glass of water from the jug she always had on the table.
‘I gave her that doll,’ he said. It surprised Majken.
‘Because she was a child, right?’ She leaned against the cool wall and drank the tepid water. It moistened her throat and gave her new courage. He didn’t answer.
‘But why did she end up in a skip?’ She felt the tears in her throat. It dawned on her how close she had been to Gitte without being able to help. Troels sat staring petrified in front of her.
‘She made me want to, but I still couldn’t. She started screaming. Then I got angry. I hate that whingeing! She should have done as I said!’ He began to sob and hid his face in his clenched hands.
‘She looked at me, Majken,’ he sobbed into his hands and bit his knuckles. ‘Her eyes stared up at me, dead in the rain. And they keep staring.’
He curled up in the chair like an unhappy child. His body shook as he cried silently.
81
Kamilla was relieved Anne was doing well after everything, and that her stepfather was no longer a threat. The warm wind blew in through the car’s open driver window, causing her hair to fly around her ears as she drove back along Grenåvej. She felt free inside after telling Anne about the things that had always weighed heavily on her chest. And about Danny, too. Fate sometimes intervened in the most unusual of ways. Her mother would probably say it was God’s punishment. Kamilla believed more in an evil destiny.
Had Jan completed his mission? She quickly shooed the thought away. She wasn’t going to think of either Jan or Danny. Never again.
She turned on the radio and let the notes from Shu-bi-dua’s Midsommersangen fill the car and her head. Since leaving the hospital, she had planned to visit Majken. She wished she’d had the long talk with her. Suddenly she felt she knew Anne better than she knew Majken, despite them knowing each other for years. Only when you know another person’s innermost feelings, sorrows and joys do you truly know who they are. Then you know more than just the outer shell, Kamilla thought. Majken had never opened up to her like Anne had done today, and so she hadn’t told Majken much about herself either. Your private life was intimate and not something to be talked about. But something lay behind Majken’s strange behaviour on Saturday. They hadn’t talked to each other since. They needed to.
No one opened the door when she rang Majken’s doorbell. The house was strangely quiet. Kamilla looked at her watch. Surgery hours should be over. Maybe Majken was still at the clinic. She put on her jumper and walked around the house. The door was locked. The new window with the clear glass and neat frame looked out of place on the older wall.
