Dead Souls

by Elsebeth Egholm

  ‘You can find out what it means. You live in the real world. You have access to information, to the internet, and you can talk to people,’ she said. ‘But be discreet, promise me that.’

  Before he could protest, she had closed her eyes and was mumbling a prayer. She made the sign of the cross in front of his face.

  ‘Help us, Peter. Help yourself.’

  7

  FRANDS NODDED BRIEFLY to Kir and they started their descent. He was holding the body bag; her hand was on the rope that went from the buoy down to Sister Melissa.

  Although they weren’t used to working together, they soon reached the bottom of the muddy moat. He unfolded the body bag. It was her job to manoeuvre the body inside it. Sister Melissa was lying on her stomach with her head at an odd angle. A couple of days later she would have surfaced by herself due to the gases death produces in the human body. But for now she was held down, especially by the weight of her habit.

  No one knew for certain if this was a murder yet. In theory, Melissa could have chosen to jump to her death in the moat. But from what Kir had sensed, Mark Bille wasn’t expecting this to be a suicide – and then there was Melissa’s tongue sticking out of her mouth. Kir knew what that meant. East Jutland Police would arrive from Aarhus with a team of investigators and take over the case. Grenå Police would be relegated to somewhere Mark hated being: on the sidelines.

  Perhaps she and Mark had missed their moment. She had emailed him from Africa, but his replies had dried up. And yes, he had been ill and undergone drastic treatment for cancer. But maybe it was more than that. She had heard from another source that his cancer had gone into remission after treatment. But he hadn’t even bothered to tell her that.

  Manoeuvring the body was difficult, even though it was weightless in the water. But after several attempts she managed to turn Sister Melissa over so she could get her arms underneath. She could immediately feel that the neck was limp in the water and the head floppy.

  Frands yanked at Kir’s arm. He seemed impatient and this made her nervous. She was struggling to get the body into the bag: the nun’s habit spread out in the water and made the task almost impossible. In the end, she had to use more force than she had wanted to push the body inside and zip up the bag. By the time they were finally able to signal to the dinghy on the surface, tie lines to the bag and haul the body up the side, she was cursing Frands. The heavy bag was transported to the bank and they carefully let out some of the water, then Melissa was heaved onto a stretcher. Frands raised his arms in triumph and Kir despised him for his lack of respect.

  ‘Good work,’ Mark Bille said, once they were back on land.

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ she snapped. ‘It went badly. I hope I didn’t destroy any evidence. I had to force her inside the bag.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a look.’

  But she was in no mood to let him get away that easily now.

  ‘You mean the forensic examiner will take a look. Anna Bagger will take a look. I don’t suppose Grenå Police will be looking at anything in this case.’

  He stroked his chin.

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘What’s happened, Mark?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean. You’re avoiding me.’

  ‘We’re here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Working, yes. But that’s all.’

  She had a head of steam up now. Though she often struggled to find the right words, she found them when her temper was at boiling point. Frands’s attitude had been the last straw. He had assumed a proprietorial air and was busy helping to get the stretcher with the body up to the Falck ambulance, together with a Falck paramedic. Both men were tall and broad-shouldered. Why did they have to look like two action-men clones? Shit. She was always being screwed over by men.

  ‘What happened to good manners? Such as replying to your emails?’

  Mark opened and closed his mouth. Then they heard the sound of tyres on cobblestones. Mark turned his face away.

  ‘Not now, Kir. Aarhus has just arrived.’

  ‘If not now, then when?’

  His voice betrayed no emotion.

  ‘When the moment’s right.’

  ‘Fuck you, Mark! You’re a wimp!’

  She turned to leave. She didn’t owe anyone anything. If Anna Bagger wanted to talk about finding the body, no doubt Frands would be happy to assist.

  Nevertheless, over her shoulder, she said:

  ‘In case they don’t let you have a look, someone had tied something tight around her neck. Her head was caught in a thin loop. Just for your information.’

  She drove home and was suddenly filled with self-loathing. She was thirty-two years old and pining for a police officer who wasn’t interested in her. Not any longer, anyway. He had been to begin with, of that she was sure. Something had happened to him. She didn’t know what, but she had to distance herself from him, and perhaps that was just as well. It was as if her love – or imagined love – was slowly but surely seeping out of her and making her see clearly: he was not the one. She had thought he was at one point, but she had been wrong.

  She drove up the drive to her old summer house, which was situated outside Grenå. She had bought it when she had completed her diving training at Kongsøre and was able to get a mortgage. It was cheap, but technically speaking she wasn’t supposed to live here all the year round.

  She quickly moved her gear out of her old Toyota pickup and carried it into the garage, where she dismantled it, dried it and hung it up in its proper place. She was happy to admit she was a kit nerd. Everything had a place of its own and she treated her gear with respect. The garage was neat and tidy. It was different in the house, where mess ruled.

  When she went in, she had a shower and washed away the foul smell of brackish water. She put on the kettle and grabbed one of the bread rolls she had baked the day before – every now and then she would succumb to a domestic-goddess moment – and sat down and searched her purse for a card from an old flame she had met recently.

  She was about to ring him and suggest a date when her mobile did a jig on the table.

  ‘Kir.’

  ‘Kir Røjel?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘My name is Per Jarmer, Institute of Forensic Medicine. It was you who brought in a box of bones back in August, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it was. We found it in Kalø Bay, in the shipping channel, twenty metres down. Anything wrong?’

  ‘No, I just wanted to let you know what we’ve found out.’

  ‘But you’ve already told me. It was for educational use.’

  Jarmer cleared his throat. He was the young pathologist to whom she had handed over the box on behalf of Allan Vraa and the police, as she was going to Aarhus anyway.

  ‘That’s obviously the information that was given to the police,’ Jarmer said. ‘But I’ve spoken to them and said I would contact you. It’s only fair.’

  ‘What’s fair?’

  There was something in the man’s voice she didn’t like. He gave a slight cough.

  ‘One of my colleagues took a closer look at the bones in the box,’ he said. ‘We were a little rushed when they were handed in. And, on the surface, they appeared to be certified for educational use . . .’

  Kir was bewildered.

  ‘But you were all so sure.’

  Per Jarmer continued.

  ‘Only now it turns out it wasn’t that straightforward. We’re running some tests, but it looks as if the box didn’t only contain bones for educational use, if you see what I mean . . .’

  ‘So there were others? Where from?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. But they’re not recent. Our samples say about sixty years old.’

  ‘Sixty-year-old bones? What’s so interesting about that?’

  ‘The matter has been referred to the police.’

  Such an old case. Even she knew what that meant. There was only one crime that never passed th
e statute of limitations.

  ‘What did you find?’ she asked.

  ‘A broken neck.’

  ‘Could it have been an accident?’

  Jarmer cleared his throat again. More vigorously this time.

  ‘Hardly. It’s a spinous process fracture. It doesn’t suggest death by natural causes.’

  ‘So we’re talking murder?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  8

  THE SUN WAS low in the sky as Peter finally drove home. When he turned off in Gjerrild and drove his van down the lane to the cliff, he gazed out at the landscape that he sometimes called his chosen sanctuary.

  Out here, nature was wild and windy and didn’t let just anyone in. He had chosen North Djurs for that very reason. He was a man of simple habits. Some people would call him a kind of hermit. He lived a modest, solitary life with his dog and did his work; that was it. He enjoyed nature, went for walks, followed animal trails and went hunting with his boss, even though he was no longer allowed to carry weapons. On rare occasions, a woman would visit. Felix had had an impact on him, but she had chosen a new life without him, and he understood why. The way his life was now, warring with bikers, he couldn’t ask anyone to be close to him.

  He reached a hilltop and looked out over the sea. The winding lane had turned into a gravel track. It terminated at the edge of the cliff, at the cottage which he had bought and done up himself. An old fisherman’s cottage, painted yellow with grey half-timbering. Once he had kept a key under a white stone, so friends and acquaintances could come and go as they pleased. But that was then. Now it was alarm systems and suspicion. It wasn’t how he wanted it. It was survival of the fittest.

  He parked, unlocked the door to the house and let the dog out. Together they went for their usual afternoon walk along the cliff. As a rule, whenever he worked for Manfred in his workshop, the dog would go with him. But he didn’t think convent life would suit the dog. It didn’t suit him very much, either.

  ‘Here, Kaj!’

  He hurled a stick through the air and it landed at the foot of the cliff. The dog raced down after it. He enjoyed watching Kaj’s finely tuned body in motion. He enjoyed his happiness and enthusiasm. He enjoyed his keenness to please him when he returned with his tail held high as he dropped the stick at his feet. It all helped to chase the day’s events to a remote corner of his mind.

  ‘Good boy,’ he praised him. ‘Clever dog.’

  They didn’t return to the cottage until an hour later. It was starting to get dark. A pair of headlights appeared on the lane from Gjerrild. He recognised Miriam’s little piss-pot of a car. He could see there were three people inside it. He switched off the bells and the vibrators.

  He was overcome by a sudden urge to flee, to jump into his car with the dog and head off into the sunset. But before he had time for anything like that, Miriam pulled up confidently in front of the cottage and she and another woman and a boy got out.

  The sight of the other woman sent his stomach into a downward spin. If he had met her in the cemetery at midnight, he would genuinely have believed that My had returned. My’s mother didn’t have My’s way of walking, but she did have her face and her elfin figure, and the indefinable quality that labels people as family. When he came closer to her, however, the family resemblance faded into the background and he saw an attractive woman, the size of Kylie Minogue, but without My’s questioning eyes. Not sexy in an obvious way, but with an erotic aura of the more innocent kind.

  She offered him a friendly handshake. He accepted it, but reminded himself that he hated this woman. She was one of the ghosts in his life. How often had he cursed her and his own mother to hell and beyond. There was no way she could just turn up thinking that everything was forgotten and forgiven.

  ‘This is Peter,’ Miriam said by way of introduction. To Peter, she said: ‘We were just passing.’

  Just passing. All the way from Aarhus to the furthest point in Djursland. He had a sharp retort on the tip of his tongue, but My’s mother smiled and he recognised the supple mouth and the tiny, elegant teeth.

  ‘I’ve really been looking forward to meeting you.’

  He had no idea what to say. So he just nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ My’s mother said, as if she had forgotten something very important. ‘My name is Bella. This is my son, Christian.’

  Addressing the boy, she said:

  ‘Go on then, say hello to Peter.’

  She grabbed the boy by his shoulders and shoved him forwards. Christian muttered something inaudible and held out a limp hand to Peter. He had long hair with a fringe that fell at an angle in front of his eyes. He was slim, like his mother and My, but with that came the gangly movements of his age, limbs that were too long in proportion to the torso.

  ‘How old are you, Christian?’

  The mother Peter had problems with. The boy he didn’t. He clearly felt just as awkward as Peter did.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘I bet you’d rather be at home playing computer games.’

  A little smile lit the boy’s face.

  ‘I’m all right.’

  His eyes flitted nervously and landed on the dog. He hadn’t patted it or gone near it.

  ‘Kaj won’t hurt you.’

  ‘It’s an Alsatian,’ the boy said.

  Bella intervened.

  ‘He got bitten once, by an Alsatian. But Christian, this dog looks harmless enough.’

  You can tell that to a frightened boy as many times as you like, but it won’t make any difference, Peter thought.

  ‘Do you like other dogs?’ he asked Christian, who nodded.

  ‘Kaj was My’s dog.’

  A glimmer of interest appeared on the boy’s face.

  ‘He went everywhere with her. She loved that dog. When she died, I took him in.’

  Peter called the dog and Kaj contentedly lumbered over. Peter and the boy squatted down.

  ‘Just let him sniff you. Turn your side to him, like this.’

  Christian did as he was told. Raw fear burned in his eyes.

  Kaj sniffed him as if his life depended on it and breathed into his hair. Christian giggled.

  ‘It tickles.’

  They sat like this for a while. Christian leaned his head into the dog, which started to whine.

  ‘You can touch him now,’ Peter said. ‘He’s decided you’re a friend.’

  ‘Well, I never,’ Bella said. ‘I wish Magnus could see this.’

  ‘Your eldest?’ Miriam asked. ‘We would have had room in the car for him too.’

  My’s mother hesitated before saying:

  ‘He wasn’t at home.’

  They exchanged a few more remarks. Peter had felt comfortable with the boy, but with the mother he felt like the victim of a conspiracy. Miriam had given him no warning. It was just like her to turn up and put him on the spot. As if the day hadn’t been bad enough as it was.

  He looked at Bella and his antipathy grew. He thought of My’s stubborn but desperate hopes that her mother would eventually take her away from the care home. ‘One day she’ll turn up. Just you wait and see.’ She would look so secretive and knowing that he had almost believed her. ‘It’s all a big mistake. One day she’ll come for me.’

  Miriam interrupted his train of thought.

  ‘Right, I’m sure the two of you have plenty to talk about, and I know Bella would like to visit the cemetery. Perhaps Christian and I should take the doggy for a walk. What do you say, Kaj? Walkies?’

  Kaj looked as if he couldn’t believe his luck. Two walks in one day! Christian looked like the dog, perhaps thinking this was one way he could escape the trip to the cemetery.

  ‘That sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it, Christian?’ Bella said. ‘Getting some fresh air. And how beautiful it is here!’

  The latter was addressed to Peter. Miriam grabbed his arm and pulled him aside.

  ‘Remember: everyone deserves a chance!’ she hissed between her teeth. ‘She’s actually ver
y nice.’

  Miriam, the boy and the dog disappeared into the twilight on the path along the cliff. My’s mother – he had decided that was her name – watched them as they left. When she turned to him, her personality changed like a gobstopper going from green to blue.

  ‘You must hate me.’

  He stifled his wish to agree. She continued.

  ‘I can see why you would. You must think I’m an evil woman. Miriam said you took care of My. She said you were like brother and sister.’

  She had made a choice and handed My to strangers. He, too, had made bad decisions, especially in the last twenty-four hours. But it wasn’t the same. He could have done nothing else. My’s mother had had years to change her mind, but she never did.

  ‘I know. You’re thinking that I could have visited My at the care home. I could have had second thoughts and taken her home.’

  He couldn’t be bothered to listen to her moral qualms.

  ‘Miriam told me earlier that you wanted to put something on the grave. We can drive to the cemetery,’ he said brusquely.

  She watched the three figures, who had now reached the cliff.

  ‘I had hoped that Christian would come. But he doesn’t seem particularly interested.’

  Peter was with Christian on this one.

  ‘Perhaps we should just go,’ she said, still wavering. ‘It’s not far, is it?’

  ‘It won’t take long.’

  9

  MARK WATCHED AS Sara Dreyer, the pathologist, straightened up after standing hunched over Melissa’s body. A forensic examiner would always be called to the crime scene to inspect the body. In this case it was the bank of the moat at St Mary’s Abbey where the ambulance crew, investigators, divers and CSOs were now at work.

  Sara Dreyer held a digital thermometer in her hand.

  ‘The body temperature is five degrees,’ she said into a handheld Dictaphone.

  She turned her attention to Mark and Anna Bagger, who was wearing wellies and a raincoat of the fancy variety.

  ‘When did she go missing?’