An Old Debt

by Doriana Cantoni

  AN OLD DEBT

  DORIANA CANTONI

  Copyright © – 2019 Doriana Cantoni

  All rights reserved

  Original title: Un vecchio debito

  Copyright © – 2017 Doriana Cantoni

  Tutti i diritti riservati

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to facts, places, events or actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is dedicated to my family, especially to my mother who left us a few years ago. I keep you in my heart always, Mom.

  An Old Debt

  (An Inspector Petersen Mystery: Book 1)

  It's the beginning of 1972 in a Denmark beaten by the icy winds of the northern winter and upset by the sudden death of King Frederik IX.

  In the little town of Torslunde, a few kilometers from the capital, the brutal murder of a Lutheran pastor reopens the doors to a past that seemed hidden in the folds of historical memory.

  Inspector Petersen, sent from Copenhagen, will have to hunt down a murderer with a thousand faces, revealing a network of complicity that makes everyone a suspect.

  An Old Debt is the first in the Inspector Petersen Mysteries series.

  Inspector Petersen will return in The Recruiter.

  A Note from the Author

  I originally wrote this novel in Italian in 2017. Last year I decided to start translating a small part of my books into English by myself, having studied the language for many years. I hope the result meets your expectations.

  It was hard work, a kind of long journey, but I enjoyed every moment of it, and now I’m ready to keep going!

  Have a good reading!

  Table of Contents

  An Old Debt (An Inspector Petersen Mystery: Book 1)

  A Note from the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  Thank You

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  "Are you sure you’re feeling all right?" Ingrid repeated to minister Jesper Knudsen who, sitting in the kitchen on his usual chair to eat lunch, had been watching the soup for a few minutes with a look of extreme suffering, as if eating had become impossible for him.

  "I'm not hungry, I must have gotten sick," replied the man who decided to move the dish away.

  Although he was six feet tall and strongly built, he hadn't swallowed anything solid for two days. He only drank a little water, because at least his thirst was still there. He was in that state since they had returned from their trip to Copenhagen to see the coronation of Queen Margrethe.

  He didn't seem himself anymore, only a faded copy that made the same gestures as always but without any conviction. Furthermore by now he remained seated in church for hours, watching the carved wooden crucifix behind the altar with maniacal attention, as if he really hoped in his heart that the Christ on the cross could answer him at any moment.

  When someone approached him, he widened his sunken eyes so full of anguish and terror that some devoted had already privately asked her what was wrong with the pastor.

  She knew how much they knew about it, that is absolutely nothing, yet something must have happened in the big city in that abundant hour when he left them alone, immediately after the ceremony was over and the queen had gone out in a carriage to greet her people gathered in the square.

  He had run away because of a sudden commitment, he said escaping as if he had just seen a ghost, so she and the other parishioners had found shelter in a pastry shop nearby, where they had waited for him, because in mid-January to stay outdoors for a long time was not good, as the cold was intense.

  And to say that he had so much insisted that they were present at the queen's proclamation. Otto Krag, Prime Minister of the current government, would do it from the balcony of the Christiansborg Palace, in that beginning of 1972 which nobody had supposed would be so troubled.

  Ten of them had gone, with the train that every hour connected the town of Torslunde to the capital, even if usually only few people took advantage of it and only for urgent business. Those thirty kilometers registered the distance between a still rural civilization and the metropolis projected towards the future.

  The event was epoch-making, one that many would tell their grandchildren about, because Frederick IX had just died, after only fourteen days of illness, and Denmark had a queen again.

  More than five centuries had passed since Margrethe I took the throne, the first queen of Denmark, and a change in the constitution was needed twenty years earlier, with a new succession law desired by both the monarch and the entire population to allow his daughter to become queen.

  When they had arrived at the station, after a quiet journey that lasted only half an hour, Pastor Knudsen, Ingrid, and the other eight faithful who made up the small group had followed the crowd that had poured into the streets to attend the event. Only a few had decided to accompany him with such short notice; they were four couples of parishioners, the most observant that he had married himself several years before.

  No one had taken the children with them, despite the fact that some of them had considered this carefully, but they had concluded that such a chaotic situation could prove dangerous for their still young children, who would risk getting lost in the crowd or even sick from the cold.

  The old people did not feel like going for the same reason, believing it was better to stay safe in the warmth of their homes, from where they would turn a loving thought both to the old king, who had just gone to heaven to enjoy a well-deserved rest, and to the new queen.

  At that time the pastor was fifty years old and for twenty years he had led the small parish that on paper counted almost a thousand souls, even if no more than eighty people went to the service on Sunday. It was a small number that dropped dramatically during the coldest months of the winter or when there was the harvest season.

  Jesper Knudsen had been made minister of the Protestant Evangelical Church of Denmark in the capital Copenhagen, where he was born and had lived until he received his vocation.

  To follow that imperious voice that he had suddenly heard one day on his way home from work, he had left a secure job as an accountant in a company but no close relatives, since his parents had been dead for years.

  Once he had become a pastor, he had asked to be assigned to a minor reality, as if the capital had become too big for him. He had never moved from the village where he had arrived on a late summer Saturday, with few things and a desire to start a new life. Over time he had absorbed the rhythm of the countryside, becoming a strenuous defender of that land and its traditions.

  Ingrid, on the other hand, was not even 30 years old, even though she felt much older. She had been the victim, some years before, of a terrible accident in the chemical factory just outside the town where she had been working since she was a girl. The liquid, which had escaped from a tub like a fiery serpentine, had centered her in the middle of the face, leaving her with the right side, up to the shoulder, terribly burned.

  In order not to have to pay her any compensation, the owners of the firm had declared that the accident had been caused by her carelessness. They had also found one of the other workers willing to testify in court against her, in exchange for a future promotion.

>   Fortunately, the doctors had managed to save her eye, but after all that time the inner scars still struggled to heal, while instead the external ones, perhaps the worst for others, were always visible. She tried to hide them with the help of a whitening cream that the pharmacist of the village prepared for her every month, but they were so deep, especially in the neck, that they forced her to wear scarves in all seasons.

  From then on she wore her hair out in front, so it hid her right ear till the junction of her cheek, where the flesh seemed to have been torn to shreds.

  She had been serving the pastor for a couple of years, since the old housekeeper Hanne retired recommending her for the job. She had started out as a maid, with the task of keeping his house tidy and preparing his meals, but little by little her duties had also included caring for the church, and she had not backed down.

  She had to clean almost every day both the floors and the banquets, paying particular attention to the sacred furnishings. She also had to change the flowers on the altar, as soon as they withered, and make sure that everything was always in order.

  The faithful, at least those who attended the church assiduously, over time had begun to treat her a bit like a sort of deputy of Jesper, a handyman sacristan, and they often turned to her in case of need.

  For the exterior of the building the pastor had relied, since he had arrived, in Jonas Krogh, the old farmer of a property outside the village. He cared in a perfect way for the burials that took place in the cemetery located just behind the church, helped by his three sons, and he also provided the relatives of the deceased, if requested and paid for, all the services that preceded the burial.

  He mowed the lawn when necessary, and then he arrived with a bag full of tools, in case something had to be fixed too, but in church, since his wife had died, Jonas did not set foot. It was something between him and the Lord, who had wanted to take her away too soon, even if with Jesper he always stopped to have a chat, in case the weather was fine outside.

  The minister's house was a small brown cottage not far away from the church, with a little garden that the religious personally cared for, even though he lacked the classic green thumb and the plants often remained timid experiments failed.

  Jesper was aware of the failure, though he persevered anyway, beginning to hoe the earth carefully as soon as time allowed, because that harmless occupation served to distract him from his too many thoughts.

  The faithful knew that they could knock on his door at any time of the day or night, if his help was needed. They rarely did so, only in cases of extreme necessity, such as for the seriously ill or for the few misfortunes that sometimes still occurred in the fields outside the village, due to carelessness or sudden breakdown of one of the means.

  Ingrid lived in the little attic, a room with an en-suite bathroom, measuring just twenty meters, with a single dormer window right in the middle of the ceiling that gave little natural light to the environment, but the girl did not complain, because she did not have to pay for anything.

  Food, lodging and a salary that she partly saved in her bank account and partly sent to her family who had moved to the Jutland, where they came from, when her father had retired years earlier, these had been the pacts between her and Knudsen.

  That day, immediately after refusing his lunch, the minister stood up from the table and went to his private studio located on the ground floor near the living room. He resurfaced after almost an hour with a tired face. Ingrid had just finished tidying up the kitchen and was counting on going to rest up in the attic, but as soon as she saw him, Jesper put a large envelope in her hand. From the thickness of the envelope, he must have put in three or four sheets, if not more.

  "What do you want me to do with it?" she asked him, uncertain.

  He refrained from answering her that it was clear she had to mail it, instead he said, "You should take it for me to the post office."

  "Could I do it tomorrow? For today I don't have to go back to the village and the office is about to close," she replied, hoping that he wouldn't make her go out again, since she had already gone to buy some food in the morning.

  The center of Torslunde, with its shops, was not even half a kilometer away, in all about ten minutes on foot, but with that bad weather she didn't like to go back and forth more than once a day.

  "There's still half an hour before they close, and the letter has to go out today," he replied.

  There was something strange in his voice, an urgency she had never heard before, so she peered at the recipient and saw that it was addressed to the bishop, at his residence in Copenhagen. That convinced her that it was really important.

  "How am I supposed to send it out?" she asked him, wearing a padded jacket and a wool cap.

  "With the fastest and safest service possible," said the pastor, taking a banknote out of his wallet and passing it on to her.

  When she opened the front door, Ingrid was hit by a gust of icy wind. It came from the north and kept the temperatures extremely low, despite the fact that that year the snowfall had been scarce. She was tempted to ask the pastor why he had decided to entrust her with a task that he considered so important, instead of going in person, but she didn't, since the answer became obvious to her immediately after.

  Jesper had dressed himself, deciding to go out, so he accompanied her for a short while. He greeted her just before the turn that led to the main road and quickly headed towards the church.

  He needed to pray in a consecrated place and could not wait any longer; it was evident by the way he held the crucifix with force in his right hand, while his lips started to move with an accentuated rhythm, repeating incessantly the Our Father.

  Ingrid came back half an hour later, satisfied that she had done her best to accomplish the task she had been given by Pastor Knudsen with so little notice. Jutta, the post office employee, assured her that the letter would be sent within a few minutes, and in fact the mail van was already out there, ready to head to the sorting center of the region, carrying all the mail of the day.

  She had chosen the fastest shipping service, as the minister had wanted, so the letter would arrive at its destination the next day.

  Ingrid had carefully put the receipt and the rest of the money in her pocket, because she was always accurate about those details, and no one could say that she was less than correct in managing the little money she was entrusted with on a daily basis.

  For a moment she was undecided whether it was appropriate to disturb the pastor while he was praying, but it seemed right to tell him of the letter that would leave shortly afterwards. Considering that he had rushed her out so quickly to send it, it was something he clearly took at heart.

  Thinking back about it, when the worst had already happened, it wouldn't have made any difference, even if she had decided to lead home in that precise moment. The man would have reached her anyway, since he was spying on her arrival from one of the windows of the church, but at least she would have been spared the sight of the dead man.

  Entering from the main entrance, it seemed that the church was deserted, as there was no one between the naves, and even the banquets were empty. Jesper used to sit on the first left, a few steps from the altar.

  The rare faithful who felt the need to go out to pray during the week almost always seated further back, as if they wanted to leave an escape route free, in the event that Jesus Christ decided to come down from heaven to ask them for the sins they had committed. They stopped few minutes, just the time for a quick prayer or perhaps a supplication that was often unanswered.

  No one was there that day, so Ingrid thought the minister had already returned home. She was about to go out, but at the last moment she became attracted by something lying just at the foot of the altar. From that distance it seemed like an heavy bag to her, even though the thing made no sense.

  As she approached, she was astonished to see that it was a man. She didn't even have the time to wonder why the minister felt the need to prostrate him
self on the ground, because she was suddenly attacked by someone who grabbed her from behind, immobilizing her.

  The man had come out of nowhere, but his presence was real, like the blade pointing to her throat.

  "What happened to the pastor?" she asked when she saw that he was not moving.

  "You're so brave, you care about him and not about your fate," her attacker replied. He had a hoarse voice, as if he had smoked too many cigarettes for too many years, but that day he didn't smell of smoke. She could not see him, because he kept behind her, but she could feel a hint of beard next to her face.

  "Is he dead?" she asked again. Looking better, she had glimpsed a dark patch that was spreading from the side of the head that was in contact with the floor.

  "I didn't want to go that far, believe me," replied the man without too much conviction in his voice, "but he wasn't reasonable, he wouldn't listen to me. Where's the letter?"

  That last sentence hit Ingrid like a punch in her stomach.

  "How do you know?" she asked incredulously.

  "Jesper has always loved to talk, you should see the fervor he put in, he was a fine speaker. It may be one of the reasons why he became pastor, to have an audience again. He thought he could convince me to leave without causing him any problems, saying that it was too late for me now, but I am a tenacious guy who never gives up."

  To make even clearer what he was capable of, he pushed the tip of the blade against Ingrid’s neck, injuring her superficially.

  "I mailed it in the central square of the village, the office was already closed," she said lying.

  Her attacker had just brutally killed Pastor Knudsen. It was clear to her that he would not let her live, once she had told him what she had done with the letter he was interested in. That's why it was important that he didn't find out how it was sent.