The Butterfly House

by Katrine Engberg

  He gestured nonchalantly with his hands.

  “Well, you’re going to be popular in this building. But unfortunately I don’t have a car.”

  “Okay. Voilà, then I’ll have to figure something else out.” He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth, languidly sensuous, before releasing her and standing up. “I need to run, chérie, but we’ll see each other again soon, very soon.”

  She pulled the covers up around her.

  He turned around in the doorway.

  “Chérie, you don’t happen to have any cash I can borrow? Five hundred kroner, a thousand? I have a friend who drives a pirate taxi. Maybe he could help me with the dresser.”

  Esther got out of bed, dragging the blanket with her.

  “It would just be until I can get to an ATM.”

  She found a thousand-kroner bill in her purse in the hallway and handed it to him. He accepted it and stuck it in his pocket.

  “You’re a gem, thank you! You’ll get it back later.” He kissed her gently on the cheek and let himself out.

  Esther stood in the echo of the door closing, the heavy blanket around her naked, newly kissed body and felt her heart beating so hard she could hardly breathe.

  CHAPTER 15

  By the time Svend and the baby came home from the pool, Anette had finished her shower. She took a deep breath and told him about the case. She couldn’t keep lying; after all, there was a limit to how many times a person could drive to BabySam without actually bringing home diapers.

  Svend was not thrilled.

  She certainly couldn’t blame him. Still, she tried to explain how it was just an idea she wanted to pursue, that she wasn’t seriously investigating the case. She just needed some adult time, and for her adult time meant work. She promised to be back before dinner. When she went to kiss him goodbye, Svend gave her his cheek instead of his lips.

  Fredens Havn was one of Copenhagen’s lesser known illegal settlements, located right next to the most famous one, namely Christiania. In the shallow waters of Erdkehlgraven along Refshalevej, small enclaves of old boats, driftwood, trash, and mobile homes floated on the sea, about fifty yards from shore. The haphazard, makeshift assemblage housed a handful of residents, who were on their tenth year of defying the Coastal Authority’s orders to vacate the harbor and instead doing their best to make it flourish. Potted plants climbed up colorful sheets of corrugated metal, and pirate flags fluttered over the ramshackle floating “homes.”

  It wasn’t until Anette had parked her car on the grassy shoulder that it dawned on her that she would need a boat to get out there. Or swim. She walked down to the shoreline and peered out over the water. After a few minutes a young man turned up at the shoreline about ten yards away. He was carrying an instrument case on his back containing what to Anette’s untrained eye had to be a cello or a contrabass, and an inflatable Spider-Man boat and a paddle in his arms. He tossed the tiny boat into the water, knelt carefully on its wobbling surface, and started paddling.

  “Hey, hey, you there!”

  The young man with the instrument case looked around.

  “Do you have room for one more in your rubber-ducky thing?”

  He spotted her and squinted.

  “Who are you looking for?” he asked skeptically.

  “Marie.”

  He hesitated, looking rather ridiculous kneeling in the inflatable kiddy boat.

  “Does she know you’re coming?”

  Anette threw her hands up in the air and said, “I was just supposed to be here on the bank at five p.m.” When lying, it was usually best to keep things fairly vague.

  “It’s going to be tight,” he said, turning his Spider-Man boat around and paddling back to shore.

  “That’s fine.” Anette walked down to the water’s edge. “How should we do it?”

  “Get in on your knees behind me, and hold on to my case. Spread your legs a little, as they say.”

  Anette managed to install herself behind the young man and his case without capsizing them. As he paddled them out to Fredens Havn, she realized how ludicrous they must look and couldn’t help laughing.

  He laughed, too.

  “Hey, knock it off or we’re going end up in the water for crying out loud.”

  Anette stifled her chuckles against the instrument case and tried to remember when she had last laughed.

  “Here we are! Welcome to Donkey Island. Marie lives over there.” He pointed to a small graffiti-covered camper and headed off in the opposite direction toward an aging wooden boat. The pontoon-supported dock was covered in artificial turf and in raised wooden beds tidy rows of neatly pruned edible plants sprouted.

  Anette walked cautiously across the unstable dock toward the camper. Murder She Wrote was written across it in pink paint.

  When Anette was a few yards from the camper, the door opened and a skinny girl scowled out at her.

  “You have thirty seconds to explain who you are and why you’re here, before the Count releases the dogs.”

  “The Count? Wait, what is this? Sesame Street?” Anette gave her a smile, although the bubbly elation from the boat trip was waning.

  “Twenty seconds.”

  She seemed to be serious in her threat, although she was no more than five foot three and didn’t look very strong as far as Anette could tell under the woven blankets she was wrapped up in. Her hair looked like something that had been pulled out of a cat brush.

  “My name is Anette Werner. I’m a detective with the Copenhagen Police, but I’m here on private business, no gun.” She opened her jacket to show that she wasn’t armed. “That being said, the police are looking for you. They want to talk to you about the murders of three former employees of the Butterfly House.”

  “I have nothing to say to the police or to you. Goodbye!” The girl shut her door.

  Anette stayed put for a bit, wondering who the Count was and what kind of dogs he had. Then she called to the closed door that looked thin enough that everything must be audible from inside, “Uh, also I have something for you, a folder. From your tattooed friend.”

  Silence from the camper. Then the door opened ajar and a skinny hand appeared. Anette handed the folder she had received from the blue giant to the girl. The door closed; a minute went by. Then it opened again.

  “Come in.”

  Anette stepped into the diminutive camper, feeling it bobbing under her weight. It was pretty primitive on the inside, but surprisingly tidy and pleasant; someone had put the effort into building a custom bench into the corner and making cushions for it.

  “Who did you say gave you this?” the girl asked, standing with the folder in front of her.

  “I’m just going to have a seat.” Anette slumped onto the bench. “First tell me: Are you Marie Birch?”

  The girl nodded brusquely.

  “You’re wanted in a murder investigation. As I said, I’m not here to officially interview you, but I can’t withhold my knowledge of where you are. The police will surely come pay you a visit.”

  “They won’t find me here when they do.” A shadow slid over Marie’s face. “I won’t talk to them. Where did you find the folder?”

  “I got it from a guy I met down in the Colony by Vesterport. He asked me to give it to you when I found you. What is it?”

  Marie smiled fleetingly but didn’t respond. Instead, she opened a little cupboard under the table and took out two avocadoes, which she halved, peeled, and started cutting into slices on a plastic cutting board.

  “What are you doing?”

  “As a gift for your bringing my folder. You’re breastfeeding, right?”

  “How did you know?”

  Marie kept slicing, and said, “You need vitamin D and good fats. That’ll stop it feeling so tight and hurting so much.”

  For once in her life, Anette didn’t know what to say. The gesture was bizarre and at the same time, oddly touching.

  Marie set a plastic plate of sliced avocado in front of her.

&nbs
p; “It means a lot to me, that folder. Thank you for bringing it.”

  Anette, who wasn’t a big fan of avocado, dutifully took a piece. Marie Birch was not what you’d call the conventional type.

  “How did you end up living out here?”

  “Fredens Havn isn’t just a place to spend the night. It’s a place where you can really live. You can shut out all the noise here.” She spoke the words mechanically, almost like a slogan. “Don’t forget to eat!”

  Anette took another piece and said, “But before this you lived in the Colony under Vesterport. Down there’s quite a lot of noise, isn’t there?”

  Marie again didn’t respond to Anette’s question. Perhaps better to start with something else. Anette pulled her phone out of her pocket, pressed the Photos app, and showed the screen to the young woman.

  “Did you write this?” she asked.

  Marie recoiled a little at the sight of the picture from the residential home, clearly uncomfortable.

  “Why?” Anette put the phone away.

  “Invisible Marie. What’s there to explain? When no one sees you, you don’t exist.”

  Anette swallowed a slice of avocado with growing discomfort.

  “I met a woman named Bettina Holte. She worked at Butterfly House while you lived there.”

  Marie stared at her blankly. Then she blinked deliberately and sighed as if making a decision.

  “I’ll talk to you, but only to you… Bettina made fun of what I wrote: Invincible Marie, ha-ha.” The memory did not appear to amuse her.

  “And now she’s dead, along with Nicola and Rita.”

  “I thought you said you were here on private business, not as a detective?” Marie’s voice grew hostile again.

  Anette changed tactics.

  “Was Butterfly House a good place to live?”

  “No. The owner, Rita, was old-school, as she put it. That means hard-nosed and cheap. No expenses spent.”

  “Can you give me an example of what that meant? Just so I can understand…”

  Marie explained with a patronizing look, “It meant that she hired people who weren’t trained in how to take care of us, people who had no idea how to deescalate a situation with a kid who was acting out. People who were promised sleep when they were on the night shift even if that meant giving large doses of sedatives to the patients. Having staff that’s awake at night costs extra. It only got worse when the psychiatrist came, Peter Demant.” Marie’s cheeks were flushed, glowing red in her otherwise ashen face.

  “How did he make things worse?”

  “Peter increased the dosage of antipsychotics we were being given… radically. Apparently it was a part of his theory, that the health officials’ recommendations are way too conservative. I also suspect that he was switching between different types of antipsychotics. Several of us started having panic attacks and horrific hallucinations. When we complained, he always had an explanation and just brushed us off.”

  Anette looked down at what was left of her avocado. It glistened on the plate.

  “He introduced the restraints. Do you know what those are?” Marie held out one arm and grasped her wrist tightly with the other hand. “You are strapped down to a gurney with leather straps so you can’t move. And then you lie there until you’ve calmed down. Or until the social worker has time to come and unstrap you again. Sometimes it takes half an hour. Other times you lie there all night.” The words poured out of her, like smooth skipping stones over a stormy sea.

  “But…” Anette protested, her body tense with a growing sense of high alert, “isn’t that legal?”

  “Not in private residential programs.” Marie smiled sadly. “And definitely not the way it was done to us. We were left unsupervised, without help. Sometimes restraints really are the only way to calm a psychotic patient down. Care has a different face in psychiatry than it has in the rest of the world. But it’s supposed to be done by the book, records kept…”

  “Couldn’t you complain to someone? A government official…”

  “Private treatment facilities get a lot of wiggle room. And besides, who believes a schizophrenic psych patient?”

  Her last statement sounded so resigned it left a lump in Anette’s throat. Things didn’t usually get to her like this.

  “But… didn’t any of the grown-ups say anything, do anything?”

  “Most of them didn’t know any better. They were up against a smooth-talking director and a big-name psychiatrist. What were they supposed to say? Some of them agreed with the iron-and-brimstone approach—Bettina, for example. Others just didn’t want to interfere, like Nicola. The only one who tried to change things was Kim.”

  Anette didn’t know who Kim was but decided to wait and hope the girl would explain in her own words. It paid off.

  “Kim was a trained social worker and knew right from wrong. He wasn’t afraid of Rita; he confronted her, explained how wrong it was to be so reckless with our lives. I think he even threatened to go to the police. But conveniently enough he drowned before he got that far, so we’ll never know.”

  “And you don’t believe that he drowned by accident?”

  Marie looked out the camper’s little window and said nothing for a full minute. Then she shook her head.

  “But I still don’t know. Ask Tanja, our nurse. I have the sense that she knows something.…”

  There was a knock on the door, and the young man with the instrument case peeked in, smiling at Anette.

  “I’m heading back to shore now. Do you want a ride?”

  Marie got up, and Anette took that as a sign that the meeting was over.

  “Yes, thank you. Just give us two minutes to say goodbye.”

  He shut the door, and Anette sought out Marie’s eyes.

  “I’m guessing that you know you’re in danger, and that’s the reason why you’re hiding in places like these. But no matter who you’re running from, they’re going to find you. The only people who can protect you are the police. I understand why you don’t have a lot of confidence in the system, but won’t you let us help you?”

  Marie walked past Anette, out onto the pontoon dock and waited for her to follow. Looked up and took a deep breath.

  “There’s more rain on the way, don’t you think? Wind and thunder and a lot more rain…” She nodded to herself. Then she walked back into her camper and shut the door.

  * * *

  JEPPE OPENED THE kitchen window, lit a cigarette, and smoked while he regarded the dining table with its dirty plates and dinner leftovers. He had brought lasagna home for his mother, and she had been so delighted that Jeppe had chewed himself out for not doing so more often now that he was even living at her place.

  Still she had hardly eaten a thing. His mother wasn’t a big eater, had never been, but it was getting worse. She was thinner than ever. There used to be strength in her long limbs, a toughness, tenacity. Now she was frail, delicate, and brittle like glass.

  Jeppe stubbed out his cigarette, tossed it out into the rain with a hypocritical Pardon me to the universe and started clearing the table. Everything seemed brittle and crazy right now, particularly these murders, which, according to Mosbæk, might be the work of someone mad at the health-care sector. The superintendent had stepped up surveillance in the city. Police officers were stationed by the city’s fountains, along the canals, and around the Lakes. Downtown Copenhagen had been declared a temporary stop-and-frisk zone, and patrols were stopping cargo bikes, vans, and other suspicious vehicles throughout the city.

  When the leftover lasagna was in the fridge and the dishes washed by hand, Jeppe sat down at the dining table and lit another cigarette. The last of the day, he promised himself. Across town Sara was tucking the kids in, but in a little while he would drive to her place and hope that she wouldn’t smell the smoke on him. He needed to be close, to calm down, and sleep next to her, but knew that it wasn’t an option right now. Well, then he would just have to make do with sex. He smiled at the thought and inhaled th
e smoke fully into his lungs.

  “What the fuck, Kørner? Did you start smoking again?”

  Jeppe practically fell out the window. Anette Werner was standing in his mother’s kitchen, her arms crossed, and his mother by her side. Instinctively he ditched his cigarette without stubbing it out and hoped it didn’t land on anyone’s head. Apparently you never get too old to try to keep your mother from catching you smoking.

  “What are you doing here, and unannounced?”

  “I was in the neighborhood. Your mom let me in. Didn’t you hear the doorbell?” Anette gave his mother a conspiratorial wink.

  “Your sweet coworker stopped by,” his mother cooed.

  Jeppe hopped down from the table and asked, “Could we have a moment alone?”

  “Of course, Snuggles. I’ll go and watch the news.”

  His mother closed the door behind herself, and Jeppe shot Anette a warning glance to ward off any potential jokes about his nickname.

  “What brings you to Nørrebro?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m only staying a minute,” she said, glancing at her watch. “I have to get home and breastfeed. But I found Marie. I wanted to tell you right away.”

  “Marie Birch?”

  A key witness, whom they had been urgently searching for, and Anette found her just like that? Jeppe felt annoyance surging through his body, pumping in his bloodstream.

  “Can’t you just be on maternity leave for five minutes already?”

  Anette raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Okay, I didn’t realize you would be so angry. If I had, I would have called instead.” She walked over and held out her hand. “Let’s have a cigarette.”

  “Uh, are you allowed to smoke when you’re nursing?”

  “It’s when you’re pregnant that you can’t smoke. Besides, I don’t smoke, not really.”

  Jeppe sighed.

  “Knock it off, Jepsen. I just had an idea and pursued it without knowing… Yeah, well. Anyway, I found her. I know I should have talked to you about it before, but I’m here now.”

  Jeppe handed her a cigarette and lit it without setting her eyebrows on fire. All things considered, he thought that showed restraint.