An Old Debt

by Doriana Cantoni

  "So the husband knew about it."

  "He has always protected his wife from everything," said Holst.

  "I get it. I'm gonna need a clearer picture of the lady, to see if she has anything to do with our investigation. Now I go with Poulsen to check the church, instead you start to ask around the neighbors if they saw yesterday that black pick-up she told us about and then reach us."

  "You will need the key to open the church's door. Yesterday afternoon, as soon as the forensic team had finished their job, we put the tape all around the perimeter and closed the front door with a double lock. We wanted to prevent curious people from being tempted to enter," said the cop, beginning to search inside the pockets of his jacket. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, he finally pulled out a keychain in the shape of a cross and handed it over to the inspector.

  "Where did you get this?"

  "We found it in a drawer in the church, during the forensic inspection."

  "It may be a duplicate that the pastor kept there for safety. Do you know if another set of keys was found on the body?"

  "Our colleagues only found his wallet. We thought that was the only set."

  "Are there also the pastor's house keys in there?"

  "I think so, but we haven't checked."

  "You mean that no search was carried out on his house?"

  "It was not requested by the Central Department and we were waiting for your arrival, Inspector, to understand how we should move."

  "All right. Go and ask for the pick-up and then join us at the church as soon as possible. Once we're done, we'll go check out Pastor Knudsen's house."

  Officer Holst walked slowly away to some of the other cottages, swearing for the snow, the cold and also for the colleagues who had just come from Copenhagen, while Petersen began to walk with Lene Poulsen in the direction of the religious building.

  In the Mertens' house, at the entrance window, Else had been spying on the whole scene.

  "I wonder what they've had so interesting to say to each other," she said as she pulled the curtain over.

  "You and your curiosity," her husband said snorting.

  "Don't you mind figuring out what happened?"

  "The only thing I want to understand is why you lied to that inspector."

  "What do you mean?" asked Else.

  "You know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm sure you didn't go to bring out the garbage at 1:00 p.m. yesterday, like you said. I don't really understand what the story about the pick-up means."

  "You're wrong, you confuse yesterday with the day before, I couldn't invent such a thing. I just wanted to be of help in the investigation," said the woman and then she retired to the kitchen very upset.

  Mertens waited for her to close the door, then he went into his studio, picked up the phone and dialed the number of a private residence in Copenhagen. When the person on the other side answered, he just said, "I'm afraid we have a problem. You have to get here as soon as possible," then he hung up.

  CHAPTER 7

  The church was immersed in silence, it was the first thing that Petersen noticed on entering. Unlike Poulsen, he came from a religious family of strictly Catholic faith, not Protestant, as his father Elbert always said when someone touched on the subject in his presence. It was his way of marking the distance from the majority of the Danish people who instead professed, although often with little conviction, Lutheran evangelism.

  His grandparents had emigrated to Denmark seventy years before, at the beginning of the new century, escaping with all their belongings from a place in the mountains still under Austrian rule, a small town that was right on the border with Italy at the time, even though the majority of the local population was Italian-speaking and suffered from foreign domination.

  Despite their origin, no one would ever identify them as Italian, since all the members of the family, father, mother and four children still teenagers, a girl and three boys, had somatic characteristics similar to those of the Danes with light blue eyes and blond hair.

  Their Nordic aspect had facilitated the integration and subsequent marriages of the young people of the newly emigrated family with inhabitants of the capital, in addition to the change of name that had passed from ‘Petrosini’ to ‘Petersen’, had soon given rise to a mixed lineage that now could be defined as entirely Danish. Lars was a perfect example of it.

  His grandparents had brought with them their love for food which materialized a few years after their arrival in Denmark in the opening of a restaurant in the capital, still active nowadays and very popular, and also their strictly Catholic faith.

  In Copenhagen there were several Catholic churches where they could go to pray, respecting their beliefs, but in the rest of the country, especially in the northernmost regions, the presence of Catholics was scarce and places of workship practically non-existent.

  On the other hand, statistics clearly indicated that ninety-nine per cent of the Danish population was Protestant, even though there was complete freedom of religion and there was no discrimination against other religions.

  Lars had been christened, a few days after his birth, in the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus located in the center of Copenhagen, near the railway station, where a large number of Italians met and mass was celebrated every week in their native language, but he had not managed to convince his wife to do the same with their daughter, and he was still suffering from it.

  Hege was a convinced Protestant, so they decided after months of heated discussions in which they had come to no acceptable conclusion, perhaps because no compromise was possible, to wait for their child to grow up and become mature enough to be able to freely choose her faith without being influenced by anyone.

  The church in Torslunde had been the spiritual home of Pastor Knudsen who had led the faithful from that pulpit for more than twenty years, until he died near the altar at the hands of a ruthless murderer. It was a classic example of a place of evangelical worship and for this reason it was totally bare of any statue or other religious symbol.

  It was similar in essence to all the other churches scattered throughout Denmark, clean in form, a mere envelope designed to stimulate the individual encounter between the believer and God which, however, according to the belief shared by all Protestants, did not need a specific place to happen.

  Solitary behind the altar, a large carved wooden crucifix seemed to stare at visitors to ask them to account for the sins they were going to free themselves of. It was the only image allowed or rather tolerated by people who hoped to practice asceticism already on earth, continuing to live the life of always.

  Petersen thought smiling that if his mother Jette had ever entered that place to pray, she would shake her head, not seeing any statue of the Virgin Mary to whom she was very devoted.

  Although her family of origin had been Danish for so many generations that their roots were lost in Denmark's late Middle Ages, when Jette married Lars' father she renounced Protestantism without excessive regrets. In reality she had never been particularly religious, but she had discovered little by little in the different liturgy of Catholics, among which the veneration of all the saints and of Our Lady stood out, not just an old folklore, but instead a new sap for her still shaky faith that in that way had blossomed.

  The cold Nordic rationalism, devoted to deductive synthesis rather than faith, in which subtraction seemed the only way to reach the divine stripped of all human representation had capitulated in her heart before a human world populated by tangible divine presences, which were depicted in statues of all shapes and sizes, or in paintings, frescoes, or even sacred icons.

  As Petersen remembered his mother standing at the entrance, Poulsen walked along the central nave that divided the church in two, checking if there were any places where the murderer could have hidden while waiting for the entrance of Ingrid Skov.

  On either side of the wide corridor several rows of benches with kneeling chairs welcomed the faithful every Sunday, while on the righ
t wall some containers, similar to letterboxes, confidently awaited the offerings of the faithful.

  The ceiling was not high, about four meters, and housed between the exposed beams some neon lamps that were used to illuminate the room, helped in the task by the windows placed both near the entrance and at the sides of the church.

  Lene quickly calculated that from the church door to the high altar, which was reached by passing a row of steps covered with dark velvet, there must have been about forty meters, then she stopped in front of the pool of blood.

  "They haven't cleaned it yet," she said in a neutral tone.

  "Consider that, since it happened, no one has been able to access this place," replied Petersen, joining her.

  "She must have entered when the minister was already on the ground and the attacker was hidden from her sight, probably near the entrance, otherwise the woman would have had plenty of time to flee," said Poulsen, increasingly convinced of the hypothesis she had made about the dynamics of the attack, when the inspector had spoken to her for the first time of the case.

  "Or it could be that she entered the church while the two were talking normally, then maybe things quickly degenerated, the other hit the pastor making him fall, Skov tried to escape and was reached at this point," replied Petersen.

  "This is also possible. Do we know what Knudsen was hit with?" asked Lene.

  "With a heavy object that has not been found, almost certainly metal according to the medical examiner, but he will be more accurate after the autopsy. In all likelihood the killer took it with him, perhaps to get rid of it later."

  "Do you think the pastor knew his murderer?"

  "Quite possibly, since we ruled out the robbery. In my opinion there are only two possibilities, or he's part of the group of people that Pastor Knudsen frequented here in Torslunde, or of a group that he knew before consecrating himself to the Church, about twenty years ago. I asked the superintendent to have the criminal records of both the minister and Ingrid Skov checked in the archives, to see if by chance they are included in some old file even if only for marginal facts. Something interesting might come up."

  "I understand, but if it was a revenge for something that happened more than twenty years ago, why would the killer act right now, after all this time?"

  "That's a good question that's currently unanswered. Maybe we don't have to go far back in time to find the motive. This village seems to me to be full of suspects, starting with Mrs Mertens," said the inspector.

  "But she could never act alone, while her husband seems a little too old to be the man who went to Skov in the hospital."

  "You are right about this and it is unfortunately a real pity, because otherwise his military training would have made him jump to the top of the list of suspects," said Lars, dismayed by that detail that did not fit.

  That case was definitely not easy at all and it would not be quickly solved, as he had told Superintendent Nielsen when he had entrusted it to him.

  "Do you trust Officer Holst?" Poulsen suddenly asked him, following a thread of reasoning that the inspector struggled to interpret.

  "What do you think?" he asked her.

  "I wouldn't let him or Toft watch my back, not to mention Sergeant Lassen whom we haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet."

  "I have the same feeling, they both have something I don't like, even if I still can't focus on what it is. Maybe it's nothing, but don't let your guard down and don't say anything, because we need someone from the place who can guide us for now."

  "Don't worry, I'll be very friendly, unless we need to act differently," replied Lene with a strange smile, and then added, "Here comes our cicerone," pointing with one hand to Holst who had just entered the church from the front door.

  "Today, all of your quotes are cultured, I'll have to adapt," said the inspector, then he instructed Holst to approach.

  "I checked with the neighbors, at least the ones who were in the house. Out of four families, none of them noticed yesterday the black pick-up that Else Mertens told us about before," the cop said as soon as he joined them.

  "I'd bet on it. I think that woman is hiding something from us," replied the inspector.

  "Do you think Else Mertens wanted to send us off the road with a false lead? This would mean that she is involved in the murder and I sincerely do not see her as the murderer," said the cop.

  "It is a possibility that I do not feel to discard right now, although she could not commit it in person, but she could be involved in another way. Maybe she's just a bit weird, or she really saw that pick-up, however we will have to listen to her again more calmly, maybe at the precinct. I'll talk to Sergeant Lassen about it as soon as he shows up, and we'll see what he thinks about it."

  "Do you want to stay in church or are you done?" Holst asked him then, looking with apprehension at the pool of blood.

  He was clearly uncomfortable, almost terrified, and for a moment Petersen suspected he was going to throw up.

  "Does blood impress you?" asked Lene.

  "Since I was a child. I know that with my work is not the best, but until yesterday nothing so serious had ever happened here in the village," replied the man, turning his eyes away.

  "For now, we're done here. Let's go to the pastor's house, and then we can go back to your colleague," said Petersen, and the cop followed them off the building.

  "Knudsen's house is located in the first side street on the right, about twenty meters from here, it is the only house completely painted in brown," he reported as he began to start walking, and after a few minutes they arrived at the residence of the pastor.

  The other houses were at a certain distance, scattered around sparingly, in order to respect the privacy of the owners, but not so far away that they could not be easily reached in case of need. The center of the village was about fifteen minutes away on foot.

  As they were about to reach the front door, Petersen came up with a detail about the church that he had not yet asked about. He stopped suddenly and said, "Where's the cemetery?"

  "Right behind the church," replied the officer.

  "Who's in charge?"

  "Jonas Krogh. He is a farmer who lives with his three sons on a farm just outside the village. In addition to cultivating the land, he's been our undertaker for years, if I may say so, at least for the simplest funerals. The people here in the village do not have great needs, and he builds the coffins quite well, with a good wood that does not rot in the ground. His sons take care of the burials, all at a reasonable price."

  "How old is he? Give me a description."

  "I don't know the exact age, but I think he's in his sixties. He's a sturdy man, six feet up," Holst said.

  "How were the relations with the pastor?"

  "Very friendly, the two had known each other since he arrived in town as a minister, twenty years ago, and as far as I know they had never had a flaw. Knudsen gave him some money to keep the lawn in place and clean the gravestones, or to do some other small jobs, if necessary. I used to see them chatting friendly outside the church during the summer season, even if it's a year now that things have changed and Jonas no longer went inside to pray."

  "How come?" asked the inspector concerned.

  "His wife died of cancer at the end of last year, a few days before New Year's Eve. He was very fond of her, more than what he wanted people to see, and since then he has never fully recovered. Like many in that situation, not knowing where to turn, he had asked God to work a miracle, and he became mad at the Lord when it was clear that he had not answered him," said Holst.

  "Was he mad at Knudsen, too?"

  "Not with him, he's not stupid and he knew it wasn't in his power to heal her."

  Petersen asked for nothing else and opened the door of the house.

  "What are we looking for?" asked the officer on the way in.

  The inspector pointed out to Poulsen to answer for him, and she said, "Any sign of the killer passing by. Do not take off your gloves and be careful not t
o move anything, in case we are forced to call the forensic team."

  "But how could he have got in and why?" asked Holst astounded.

  "The answer to the first question is obvious, with the missing set of keys from the pastor's pocket. As for the reason, if we knew it, perhaps we would have already solved the case," replied Lene.

  Petersen smiled to himself. Poulsen had easily passed that small unexpected test, proving to be a good detective.

  On the ground floor, the dining room, the kitchen, and the internal living room seemed to be in place, while one last room, which had to be the pastor's studio, was locked.

  "The key is not in this keychain," said Petersen after checking all of them.

  "If we don't find it, I'm afraid we'll have to call our colleagues," concluded Lene, looking around.

  "We'll do it anyway, but in the meantime you go upstairs and check the bedrooms. Holst and I will see if we can find a copy of the key around here. If the pastor didn't take it with him, he must have put it here somewhere," said the inspector.

  "Unless it was in the set of keys that we suspect is missing," objected Poulsen on her way.

  "Your colleague is really good at reasoning," said the cop once she was gone.

  "That's why I brought her. I'm sure she will help me find the killer. She's not the kind of person who thinks she can fail," replied Lars, looking him right in the eye.

  The man immediately lowered his embarrassed gaze, uncertain whether the inspector was serious about his granitic confidence in the woman, or whether he just wanted to test his reaction in that way. He started checking the shelves for the missing key, keeping silent.

  About ten minutes later, it became clear the key was nowhere to be found. Petersen did not want to open the drawers of the few pieces of furniture in the kitchen or in the living room, so as not to erase any fingerprints that forensics could find.

  Lene came back almost at the same time from the inspection she did upstairs.

  "On the first floor there is the pastor's room, a bathroom, and a guest room, all clean. Then a wooden ladder leads to the attic where Skov lived. It's one room with a small bathroom inside, and maybe I found something there," she said to her superior, lowering her voice so Holst wouldn't hear her.