Peter read on. A little further down he found the information Manfred had mentioned:
A carpenter working at the convent yesterday saw Melissa with a man by the moat. Whether the witness was able to provide a detailed description of the killer, I can’t share with you on these pages. But if you have seen or heard anything and if you feel you’re banging your head against a brick wall with the police, I am always happy to accept information here on my blog.
16
LISE WERGE PULLED the handbrake and leaned back in her seat to brace herself for a visit to her mother’s.
She had driven from Grenå to Sostrup with a growing sense that she would rather be anywhere else. But it was no use. There were some obligations in life you couldn’t escape, if you wanted to be able to look yourself in the eye. One of them was visiting your old mother, even if it was hard.
She sat for a moment taking in the view, with the engine still running, as if she wanted to have the option of a quick getaway. The house she hated more than anything else in the world stood in front of her. It was called ‘The Woodland Snail’ and, as its name suggested, was situated near a forest. It was a two-storey red-brick house with a dark, sinister basement that had always terrified her.
The story went that Lise’s grandfather had built it with his own hands when he came back from the war in southern Europe in 1939. For every brick he cemented in place, he buried some of the horrors of war, and when the house was finished at last, he was a new man: strong, bristling with energy and ready to set up his own business and provide for his family. From then on, he never said a single word about what he had seen.
He had died long ago, before Lise was born, so she had never met him. What she knew of him came from her mother, who had idolised him and particularly admired his strength, both physical and mental.
‘Don’t ever let yourself be intimidated,’ he had said, lifting her mother aloft, all the way to the ceiling. ‘In our family we don’t take any crap, remember that.’
In our family. It was a phrase he had been fond of. It was always followed by some statement about how their particular family was different from everyone else. It was also a phrase her mother liked to use.
Lise had spent most of her childhood wishing the opposite: that they were just like other people. Later it had become her life’s mission: to be utterly ordinary.
At length she switched off the engine, got out and slammed the door, suppressing her feelings of unease. The forest had always seemed like a carnivorous plant to her and the house a helpless insect. There were always branches swatting at the windows, birds building nests under the roof and creepy crawlies finding their way through every nook and cranny.
At this moment gusts of autumn wind were tearing at the tree tops and leaves were spiralling to the ground like kamikaze planes. Heavy clouds had gathered since the morning, threatening to burst open and make another concerted effort to submerge the house, which stood in a dip with a brook close by. Only a few hundred metres from here, separated by a single farm, was St Mary’s Abbey.
Lise was always reminded of the gingerbread house in the Hansel and Gretel story whenever she saw her childhood home. She had yet to decide who the witch in the story was, and that was something she really preferred not to think about.
She looked at her watch. It was early. Her mother was probably still having breakfast. But she had decided she had better look in on her in view of the drama that had taken place nearby. Old Alma might be one tough old lady, but elderly people tended to get nervous very easily and Lise took her role as next-of-kin seriously. At the age of forty-nine it was just one of the many roles she had assumed. She was also a care assistant at Grenå Nursing Home. And then there was the role of grieving widow of Jens Erik, who had died from cancer two years ago. Her role as mother, however, was not one at which she excelled. She was well aware that she had never played it to anything other than lukewarm reviews. A performance level that ran in the family.
Her mother, however, didn’t seem bothered by the previous day’s events at the convent. Quite the opposite, it struck Lise, seeing her mother sitting in the open-plan kitchen munching a slice of toast, her nose buried in the newspaper and her glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Fortunately, at the age of eighty-six, her mother was still lucid. And physically she had never had much to complain about. She was a strong, vigorous woman in every sense. That was what the doctor had said when Lise had had to call him one night last year when inexplicable stomach pains had overcome the old lady. Gallstones was the verdict. They were crushed with laser treatment and Alma was able to return to her Woodland Snail, defiant, it seemed to Lise, bordering on exultant.
‘I bet you hadn’t expected that,’ she gloated. And indeed, Lise had not. In fact, she had almost been hoping for another outcome.
After the gallstones it was as if the devil had got into the old woman and she had started bossing people around even more. Most recently she had decided she would dictate her memoirs to Lise. It was remarkable how she always knew exactly what Lise should be doing in her spare time. Like now, when she lowered the newspaper and looked at her with a glance that never doubted her own fine qualities.
‘So it’s to be today, is it?’
‘What is, Mum?’
Lise pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘My memoirs, of course. Didn’t you bring your tape recorder?’
Lise had hoped that project had been forgotten. Damn. She opened her bag and took out the cakes instead.
‘Raspberry slices. Freshly baked.’
Her mother rejected the offer with a wave of her hand.
‘I’ve just eaten. Go home and fetch a tape recorder.’
‘But Mum . . .’
The tape recorder was in the car. She had brought it just in case, but had hoped Alma had forgotten their agreement.
‘Terrible business about the dead nun,’ she tried.
Again her mother rejected the notion with a wave of her hand.
‘Why should nuns be spared? So someone killed her. It happens to young girls sometimes. When you have lived as long as I have, you know it’s one of life’s risks.’
She glared sharply at Lise.
‘After all, killing an old woman like me doesn’t present much of a challenge. Nor much in the way of satisfaction.’
‘Satisfaction?’
‘It’s their innocence that is killed, don’t you see? It’s the only thing that makes any sense.’
Without warning Lise started sweating all over. Surely her GP would have to prescribe her hormone pills now. She couldn’t believe how stingy doctors had become with HRT patches.
‘You read too many crime novels, you do,’ she said, and got up. ‘I’ll just see if that tape recorder might have found its way into the car somehow.’
She preferred her mother’s boring memories to her musings about murder. It was a bizarre hobby her mother had developed in recent years – she had started consuming crime novels at the rate of at least three a week. Reading was, of course, a fairly innocent pastime, but Lise was of the opinion that Alma’s imagination did not benefit from all the gore and the exotic ways in which the victims in these stories were bumped off. Perhaps there were bats in the belfry after all.
She went outside, took the tape recorder from the glove compartment and returned with it.
‘Would you believe it? It was there all along!’
Her mother’s gaze from behind the spectacles shone with scepticism. She buttered herself another slice of white bread.
‘What a surprise,’ she said. ‘It was probably your subconscious that made you put it in the car.’
She bit off a large chunk of her bread, which was now spread with blueberry jam.
‘Or perhaps you did it in your sleep. Is it on?’
Lise checked the voice-activated device and pressed Record.
‘It is now.’
Her mother swallowed her food and washed it down with coffee. She half-closed her eyes, watching Li
se under heavy eyelids, and Lise was reminded of an ancient tortoise, with leathery skin and growths and a thick neck, which could retract its head under the carapace or peer out bravely if necessary. Beauty wasn’t a feature that had ever troubled her family.
‘There are families with talents,’ Alma began. ‘Families with certain talents that run in the blood, that are passed on from generation to generation.’
Lise shifted on her chair and poured herself a cup of black coffee.
The next sentence tasted almost as bitter as the coffee:
‘Some families have a talent for playing music,’ Alma continued. ‘Others for baking or cooking or gardening.’
The old woman’s voice suddenly grew stronger and fuller, as if she was in a courtroom trying to convince a judge. She opened her eyes fully and looked at Lise and through the façade she always tried to maintain.
‘In our family we have a very special talent . . .’
17
‘DID YOU KNOW that Melissa’s mother was a journalist?’
Peter was spending the morning repairing a window in the large convent kitchen. Sister Beatrice had decided to keep him company and was currently kneading bread dough. She sat erect on a chair with a ceramic bowl in her lap. A thin layer of flour was sent up the sides of the bowl every time she ground the palm of her hand into the dough.
‘Yes, why?’
Peter was putting new sills on the casement window, having first removed a couple of the old ones.
‘Oh, nothing. It was just a strange combination: a journalist with a daughter who wants to be a nun.’
‘I don’t think Melissa found it strange.’
‘But her mother wasn’t crazy about her decision?’
‘Are mothers ever?’
He guessed not. Peter carried on working. It was ten o’clock and at eleven Manfred would turn up and they could start replacing the roof tiles.
‘What was she so scared of?’
Sister Beatrice paused for a fraction of a second, then carried on pounding the dough.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But she must have said something. There must have been something specific to cause the fear.’
She stopped and looked at him, a trace of flour on her cheek.
‘Someone threatened her. To begin with, she thought it was a joke.’
‘To begin with? When was that?’
Beatrice squirmed on her chair and turned the bowl in her lap. In her face Peter could see respect for past promises struggling with a determination to solve the murder. She breathed rapidly.
‘It started when she turned ten. On her birthday.’
Peter stopped sanding the sill.
‘But she was just a child!’
‘From then on it happened every year,’ Beatrice said. ‘I think she thought each time would be the last – until she turned fifteen and realised it would never stop.’
‘What kind of threats?’
Beatrice had recommenced kneading the dough. But it was as if she no longer put any thought or effort into her task.
‘When she first told me, I didn’t really believe her. I thought – as she had originally – that it was a coincidence.’
She looked up. The flour fell from her cheek and was lost in the white of her habit.
‘The first time, someone put a dead bird in her school bag. Melissa thought some of the children at school were bullying her, the ones she didn’t get on with. She didn’t tell anyone.’
‘And the following year?’
Beatrice shook her head.
‘I can’t remember the sequence exactly. But there was a cat disembowelled and left on the drive.’
She looked at Peter.
‘It was Melissa’s cat. It was ginger and its name was Mons.’
‘You said something about threats. Were there any letters?’
‘Not for the first two years. But the third year she found a note in her lunchbox along with a rotten mackerel. It was a warning. If she told anyone, her family would be harmed.’
‘And her family is?’
‘Single mother – the journalist – and there’s a younger brother called Jonas. She was especially afraid for him. And she knew her mother would just go straight to the police and the papers with the story and broadcast it to the world. She couldn’t run that risk. She was a cautious girl.’
‘Were there more notes after that?’
Beatrice nodded.
‘From then on, there was a note every year. Always on her birthday.’
‘What happened to the notes?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t say. But I imagine she destroyed them.’
‘They could be evidence,’ he said.
‘I don’t think she thought along those lines. She was just trying to protect herself and her family.’
‘She could have gone to the police.’
Beatrice’s voice suddenly sounded both weary and obstinate:
‘I’ve already told you. She was scared something would happen to her family. You’ve heard about abused children, that’s exactly why they don’t tell. In that sense Melissa was being abused.’
‘And then she got the idea of going to a convent?’
Beatrice’s eyes moistened. She put down the bowl and pulled a handkerchief from a deep pocket, then clutched it in her hands on her lap.
‘She had a friend online. She persuaded her. Melissa thought the convent was a place of safety, but she was still scared.’
‘With good reason, evidently.’
‘Yes, with good reason.’
Her answer was filled with regret.
‘How did she get the rosary?’
‘She was attacked last year, on her eighteenth birthday.’
Peter positioned himself so that he could see her face, which reflected her fluctuating emotions: concern, uncertainty and grief.
‘What happened then?’
Beatrice’s hands wrung the handkerchief. Her eyes grew round and big and seemed to fill her whole face.
‘He was waiting for her when she came back from school. There was no one else in the house. He was hiding in the carport and pulled her inside when she got off her bicycle. Melissa had her keys in her hand as she was in the process of locking it up. She jammed a key into his face and he ran off.’
‘And the rosary?’
‘It was left behind in the carport after he had gone. She thought he might have lost it in the heat of the moment.’
‘Did she see him?’
Beatrice shook her head and got up. She found a tea towel in a drawer, spread it over the dough in the ceramic bowl and set it aside.
‘Not properly. It was dark, November.’
‘And she didn’t describe him to you in any way? Height, weight, that kind of thing?’
‘All she wanted to do was forget him.’
She added: ‘Have you found out anything? About the rosary, I mean?’
He shook his head. Not just to signal no, but because the whole thing was a mess. She picked up on it instantly.
‘You will help me, won’t you, Peter? You won’t let down a friend?’
‘A friend who is putting pressure on me, who promises absolution in a dream world in return for breaking the law in the real one?’ He shook his head. ‘I still think you should go to the police with what you know.’
She pursed her lips. He recognised her stubborn expression and knew he would get nowhere. He told her about the police coming to his house and his futile search on the internet for something that resembled the symbol on the rosary.
‘I’ve been trying, Beatrice. But I’m not getting anywhere.’
‘You must be patient,’ she said.
‘I must be potty,’ he said.
The rain had eased now and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. Manfred was already on the top section of the scaffolding, busily replacing a couple of roof tiles, when Peter arrived in the convent courtyard.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and called
out.
‘Thanks for last night.’
Manfred gave him a quick wave.
Peter was about to start climbing when the scaffolding started to sway.
‘Watch out!’ he shouted and Manfred tried to counter the movement by stepping from side to side on the top. Peter did a quick mental calculation. It was eight metres to the top. He couldn’t climb it; he would only topple the scaffolding. All he could do was wait.
‘Get out of the way . . . Keep well clear . . .’
The composure in Manfred’s voice was surreal. Peter watched him. There was no time to get help. Could he catch him if he fell?
The moment froze in time. It was as if the scaffolding had gone completely still, as if the swaying had stopped, but it was only an illusion.
Then he heard an ominous creaking sound like a ship’s mast before it snaps. Peter tried to find a position which would allow him to catch Manfred. But suddenly everything, metal poles and planking, came tumbling down on top of him, and Manfred’s small body, which had climbed so many roof ridges, followed in its wake.
‘Nooooo!’
Peter’s scream was interrupted when a pole hit him and knocked him flat. It took a minute before his hearing and sight returned. Something warm dripped from his face and he tasted blood as the world spun around him.
‘Manfred!’
Peter heard groaning from somewhere under the collapsed scaffolding and started crawling on his hands and knees, struggling to get his bearings. He tossed the wreckage aside as he groped his way forward.
‘Where are you?’
‘Here, Peter. I’m trapped.’
‘Lie still. I’m coming!’
Peter worked like a madman to clear a path until he heard Manfred’s familiar voice, still calm and measured, but barely audible, nearby.
‘Lie still, was that what you said?’
Muted laughter.
‘That’s the only bloody thing I can do.’
Peter heard Manfred groaning, then he said:
‘I can’t feel my legs.’
The world jolted into place once more and Peter could see everything clearly again. Manfred was lying under a section of the scaffolding and looked up at him with shiny eyes. Peter was dripping blood onto his friend but was unable to tear himself away. He took off his jacket, scrunched it up and put it under Manfred’s neck, and then got to work on removing the boards and poles.
Dead Souls Page 9