She approached the bed by the window. Gregers was snoring in it, peacefully and soundly. Esther brought her face down to his and felt his soft cheeks, his breath, his life against her skin.
“For crying out loud, Gregers, you can’t scare me like that,” she whispered.
She sat for ten minutes watching her friend sleep. Then she got up and tiptoed back out into the hallway. Two uniformed police officers were standing outside room eight talking to a nurse with red hair in a pageboy cut. Esther approached them.
“Excuse me. I’m Gregers Hermansen’s next of kin. He’s the other patient who was in room eight with John. I understand a crime may have been committed…?”
The officers exchanged glances.
“Okay, sure. You can’t tell me anything, obviously. I’m really only interested to know if Gregers is safe here or if I should take him home today?”
The nurse sought confirmation from the officers before responding.
“I can guarantee you that your friend is absolutely safe here. The person who constituted the risk has been… removed.”
“Thank you.”
Esther walked past them out to the elevator and took it down to the exit. To hell and back in thirty minutes, and all on a completely average fall Saturday.
Gregers was alive. She wasn’t alone. It would all work out.
She walked back to the Lakes on wobbly legs and headed home. Moving felt good and slowly reality returned. Home and listen to some music, cook some food, watch a movie, maybe open a bottle of red wine. She deserved it, needed a little self-indulgence at any rate. To feel alive. Around her everything was dying. The dry leaves of the chestnut trees hung dangling from the branches, nature was shutting down, preparing to hibernate. Esther wondered why she was so fond of this season when it actually ushered in the coming darkness and had a sadness as its core. They say that in heaven it’s always fall. Beauty and transience dwell in the same chamber of the heart.
When she came out of the tunnel that ran under the Fredensbro bridge, she saw him. He was walking along the water next to the little island people referred to as Fish Island, loping along in the same direction as her with all the time in the world. She recognized him right away. The tall body with the broad shoulders, the hair trimmed short on the back of his neck that she had kissed as recently as three days ago.
Esther shorted out. He had some nerve walking here along the lake, as if everything was just hunky-dory, when he had in fact conned most of Nørrebro!
She sped up and gained on him without really knowing what to do when she caught up. Yell at him? Demand her money back? Give him the cold shoulder?
She wasn’t sure what would pack the most punch, all she knew was that she meant business.
When she was only about five yards behind him, he suddenly cut across the path, heading for an empty bench by the water’s edge.
Esther hesitated. Was he planning to sit down?
But Alain didn’t sit. With a quick, practiced motion he lifted the lid of a trash can next to the bench and peered down into it.
Esther had seen that move many times before among the city’s homeless population, looking for glass bottles to redeem for the deposit.
He was collecting bottles from the trash.
Esther noticed the worn webbing on his shoulder, suddenly saw his shabby shoes and his grubby jacket. Alain wasn’t a cook or a mover, and he certainly wasn’t a concert pianist. Alain was poor.
For the last three days she had been picturing him in all sorts of situations; usually something involving a beautiful young woman and the lavish spending of her money, perhaps at a casino or behind the wheel of a sports car. At no point had she even fleetingly entertained the idea that he might have conned her out of necessity.
He had fooled her. And yet he had also redeemed her and given her back her will to live.
Esther’s thirst for revenge evaporated as if by magic. It simply disappeared, and all that was left behind was compassion and a modicum of the shame most of us feel when we come face-to-face with those who have less than we do. Maybe she had used him just as much as he had her.
She stood still, watching him tramp along the lakeshore, stopping at each trash can in turn. You broke my heart, she thought, but in that very moment, she knew it to be a lie. Her heart was bruised, but then it was also beating again. It was far from broken. In a little while she would be home in her lovely apartment, and he—whatever his name was—would still be walking around out here, collecting bottles.
And, Esther thought in an internal voice, which stemmed directly from her wounded pride, Someday he will make a good story.
* * *
THE FOUNTAIN IN the middle of Tivoli was full of pumpkins. Scarecrows with jack-o’-lantern heads loomed atop hay bales surrounded by heaps of orange gourds, which Jeppe strangely enough remembered to be the largest berry in the world. He turned his back to the display. Regardless of what was in it, he had had enough fountains to last him for a while.
For the first time in weeks, the sun was out, and Tivoli was crawling with families, waiting in lines, eating ice cream, and taking pictures of the gardens and of each other. Between the classic amusement park rides were strings of slap-up wooden stalls selling Halloween-sweets shaped like eyeballs and severed fingers.
Two amusement park attendants walked by in their black and red uniforms. When they turned their heads, fiery red eyes stared out of pallid faces and Jeppe’s heart skipped a beat before he realized that they were made up like monsters for Halloween. A weird twist on the cozy hygge that Denmark is renowned for, a sort of creepy-cozy un-hygge. After his experiences in Bispebjerg Hospital’s basement the day before, Jeppe wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
“Hi.”
Jeppe turned to the mellow voice that he would recognize anywhere and looked into those dark brown eyes. They beamed, making him feel twelve years old.
“This is Amina and this is Meriem, as you know,” Sara said, trying to drag her youngest daughter out from where she was hiding behind her legs. “She’s a little shy.”
Jeppe smiled down at Sara’s two daughters, heart pounding in his chest. Could it really be that a nine-year-old and a six-year-old made him nervous, after he had just bagged a serial murderer?
“We’ve met before. I’m Jeppe.”
The two girls peered nervously up at him with their mother’s brown eyes.
“And I have a bit of a problem. I won two balloons from that balloon guy over there, but I have no idea what to do with them. Do you two happen to know anyone who likes balloons?”
“Me, me!” Amina, the older one grabbed his hand and immediately started pulling him toward the balloon seller.
“Sneaky trick!” Sara said with a grin and followed them, holding her younger daughter’s hand.
“Hey, whatever works.”
The girls each chose a balloon, which they allowed Jeppe to hold for them, so they could concentrate on the lollipop he got them next and the ice cream that followed. Sara looked on with one eyebrow raised and a smile that suggested this sugarfest was a one-time event. They bought ride passes and agreed to push back lunch so the girls could go crazy on vintage car rides, carousels, and roller coasters.
Jeppe found himself in one of those parallel dimensions that occasionally opens up when reality becomes too surreal. Seventeen hours earlier he was being buried alive in a hole in the ground with Falck, while Anette bled to death across the room. Now he was roaming through Tivoli holding balloons for two children he didn’t know, while looking for a chance to kiss their mother. What a difference a day makes.
“What did you say?” Sara asked.
“Nothing, I was just humming.”
Jeppe realized that his ice cream was melting onto his hand and dutifully resumed eating it.
“The girls want to go to the playground.”
Sara let her daughters run on ahead, took the balloons, and interlaced her fingers with his so they resembled all the other couples walking along
the pond.
“Hey, did you hear that that nurse from Butterfly House was arrested for murdering a patient?” Jeppe asked, throwing away what was left of his ice cream. “This morning. They think they caught her red-handed. And they’re pretty sure it wasn’t the first time.”
“No way! Trine Bremen?” Sara stared at him, her mouth agape.
“Yeah, exactly. Peter Demant’s patient. That type of murder is usually hard to prove, so let’s hope she confesses. If she did anything, that is.”
“The Butterfly House seems to have gathered up quite a crew of shady characters. Come, it’s here.” Sara led him up the wide steps to the playground, where the girls were already absorbed in a game that involved running around a tree trunk.
They sat down on a red-and-white-striped bench from which they had an unimpeded view. Jeppe noted, not without a certain irony, that the playground was shaped like a storm-tossed sea with capsizing ships and driftwood floating on rolling blue waves. There was just no escaping the water in Copenhagen.
Sara glanced at him and inhaled, preparing to speak.
“I need to tell you something. This morning I got my neighbor to watch the girls so I could go in to headquarters for a couple of hours. You had just left when I got there… but Lisbeth Ramsgaard stopped by.”
“What in the world did she want?”
“I thought she had come to take out a restraining order against Bo. A man who’s been violent in the past doesn’t just stop all of a sudden. At any rate, Lisbeth told me a little about their marriage. The last few years haven’t been fun. You remember that there was a conflict between Bo and the son, right?”
“After Pernille’s death, right?”
“Exactly. Well, it was violent. Bo broke his son’s nose. It was a terrible time for the whole family. And it’s not over yet.… When Lisbeth signed the visitation papers, she used her maiden name. She’s gone back to that because of the divorce.” There was a slight twitch in the corner of Sara’s mouth. “Lisbeth Hartvig.”
“Hartvig?” Jeppe repeated, trying to understand. “As in…”
“She came in to see her son. Simon Hartvig is Bo and Lisbeth Ramsgaard’s son, Pernille’s older brother.”
Jeppe tried to let those words sink in. A suicide, a shattered family, a big brother’s act of revenge.
“He was avenging his sister’s death?”
“Yes,” Sara sighed. “He was avenging Pernille on the people who should have helped her, but instead let her down. Because they were too busy making money or just didn’t care.”
Jeppe leaned his head back and rested it against the playhouse behind the bench. Let the sunlight warm his eyelids. The butterfly effect. The minor indifference that leads to the end of the world.
Amina and Meriem came running over to the bench, rosy-cheeked and laughing.
“Mom, Mom, can we get ice cream?”
“You mean another ice cream? Definitely not. If you’re hungry, you can have an apple.” Sara looked self-conscious, like she just remembered that she was trying to project the image of an easygoing super-mom. “Too much sugar makes them nuts and then they don’t sleep well at night. That’s why I’m a little strict.”
She pulled two apples out of her bag. The girls took them without much enthusiasm. The little one eyed Jeppe skeptically.
“Mom, is that man from work coming home with us later?”
“Yes, he is,” Sara said without hesitance. “And he’s not some man from work. His name is Jeppe, and he’s my boyfriend.”
“Oh yeah, well then, kiss him!”
“Go play, you rascals!” she said, waving them away. “We’re leaving in ten minutes, so hurry up and do whatever last things you want to do.”
The girls ran off with happy shrieks, back to the capsizing boat structure, and started a new game.
“I have no idea what I’m doing, you know.” Jeppe looked at his girlfriend. “I’ve never brushed anyone’s teeth besides my own.”
“Don’t worry.” She took his hands and held them. “You’ll learn.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you!
This book was written with the deepest respect and gratitude to all the nurses, doctors, social workers, and teachers, who—under conditions that are not always optimal—tend to our sick, especially the children and teenagers, who have tough lives. You’re truly society’s heroes!
From the bottom of my heart, my most profound thanks to my readers, who spend time and money on my books. It’s a privilege I will never take for granted. To the many who have written to share their criticism, praise, and thoughts with me—I cannot express how much that means. Thank you!
Former Copenhagen Police detective Sebastian Richelsen helped me with the policework, and professor Hans Petter Hougen at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Forensic Medicine assisted me with details about bleeding to death and autopsies.
Thank you to curator Adam Bencard at the Medical Museion for his inspiration on the murder weapon and general knowledge of the humoral body.
Thank you to Henrik Stender for the tip about the arches by Vesterport Station.
Warm thanks to Dr. Helle Skovmand Bosselmann and nurse Lis Krahn for your help in depicting everyday life in the cardiology department.
To Signe Wegmann Düring, MD, PhD, psychiatry consultant, for being an excellent sparring partner on mental illness and psychopharmacology.
And to Mette Juul Rasmussen, charge nurse in the Pediatric Psychiatry Clinic at Roskilde Hospital, who was a huge help in the genesis of this book. Thank you for the thorough information and inspiration you gave me. It’s reassuring to know that competent experts like you take care of our kids.
Two people read this book long before it was done and provided invaluable feedback and support. My gratitude to Timm Vladimir and Sara Dybris McQuaid for taking the time when it mattered most. Thanks as well to Sysse Engberg and Anne Mette Hancock for their support and encouragement.
To the amazing Salomonsson Agency, for their diligent efforts to disseminate my writing. Special thanks to my agent, Federico Ambrosini, also for letting me “borrow” his name.
To my Danish editor, Birgitte Franch, whose sharp eyes and tough-but-gentle give-and-take is indispensable to my books. A deepfelt thanks to everyone at Scout Press for receiving me with such enthusiasm and making me feel absolutely at home—Jen Bergstrom and Jackie Cantor in particular for your trust in me and for all your hard work.
To Cassius and Timm for being the light and color in my life. I love you.
More from the Author
The Tenant
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A former dancer and choreographer with a background in television and theater, KATRINE ENGBERG launched a groundbreaking career as a novelist with the publication of her fiction debut, The Tenant. She is now one of the most widely read and beloved crime authors in Denmark, and her work has been sold in more than twenty-five countries. She lives with her family in Copenhagen.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Katrine-Engberg
SimonandSchuster.com
ScoutPressBooks.com
@ScoutPressBooks
@GalleryBooks
ALSO BY KATRINE ENGBERG
The Tenant
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Scout Press
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to
historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Katrine Engberg
Translation copyright © 2021 by Tara Chace
Originally published in Denmark in 2018 by People’s Press as Glasvinge
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Interior design by Jaime Putorti
Jacket design by Ervin Serrano
Jacket photographs by plainpicture/Hanka Steidle, Shutterstock And 123RF
Author photograph © Les Kaner
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Engberg, Katrine, 1975– author. | Chace, Tara, translator.
Title: The butterfly house / Katrine Engberg ; translated by Tara Chace.
Other titles: Glasvinge. English
Description: Scout Press edition. | New York : Scout Press, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020016876 (print) | LCCN 2020016877 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982127602 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982127619 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781982127626 (ebook)
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