‘Alice Brask,’ Pia Thorsen said. ‘Her blog. She must get her information from somewhere.’
A strange silence descended over the officers. Who had leaked information? Anna Bagger broke the silence:
‘Number one: let’s not forget that Boutrup is a man with enemies. There’s last winter’s events and the burned-out motorbikes in August. In theory, the scaffolding could be the handiwork of the biker gang and might have nothing to do with the murder of Melissa. Number two: other people apart from us know that Peter Boutrup is a witness. The nuns, for example. And perhaps the divers, depending on what we’ve told them.’
Her gaze landed on Mark, who looked at his watch. He had wanted to be a part of the team and the investigation, but as of now he was desperate to get out. He didn’t like Anna Bagger’s insinuations, and besides, he had an important appointment, but not one he felt like sharing with her. She was resentful enough as it was.
He made his excuses as soon as possible, promised to have a talk with Alice Brask later the same day, and then put the ruins of the investigation behind him.
He half-ran through the rain to get to his car and drove to the other end of town. A few minutes later he pushed open the glass door to the nursing home and stepped out of the rain, but stopped abruptly. The smell alone was enough to send him straight back out. There was a sterile smell of hospital and it filled him with unease, and he had to force himself to stand still.
Children and old people were far from his speciality, he was happy to admit that. He wasn’t good with anyone weak. He knew why. It was his deep-rooted fear of becoming dependent on others, and he had come dangerously close.
‘Can I help you?’
The woman wore a blue smock and seemed friendly in a busy sort of way.
‘I’m here to visit my grandfather, Hans Mortensen. I called earlier.’
She went over to a counter and looked at a computer screen.
‘Mark Bille Hansen?’
‘That’s me. We met at his birthday party in August.’
‘Lise Werge.’
She held out her hand. His unease continued as she accompanied him down the corridor to his grandfather’s room.
‘He’s been a bit lethargic today,’ she warned him. ‘But he’s fine apart from that.’
‘Does that mean his memory is still OK?’
Mark hadn’t seen his grandfather since the birthday.
‘Oh yes. He’s got a memory like an elephant.’
She glanced at him as she walked alongside him. She was sturdy and had short legs, but her eyes were striking and they distracted the observer from her looks, which she could have been luckier with. He estimated her to be in her mid-fifties. One of those anonymous women men never really saw or thought much about. But then again . . . There was something vigilant about her, as if she noticed everything about him, Mark thought.
‘Here we are.’
She knocked on the door and opened it.
‘Hans . . . Your grandson has come to see you . . .’
She looked at Mark, who repeated his full name again.
‘Mark,’ was all she said.
The man in the wheelchair was watching an old-fashioned television mounted on the wall: TV2 News. He reached out and switched it off and then turned to them and Mark saw a lucidity in the blue eyes and good humour in the curve of his mouth. His body had crumbled pitifully, but his hands suggested what the rest of him had once been: strong, muscular and capable of hard work.
‘Hello, Mark. It’s been a while.’
Mark felt rebuked.
‘But then why enter the ante-chamber of death, if you can avoid it?’ his grandfather said.
Lise Werge cleared her throat.
‘You two have a nice chat and I’ll bring you some coffee and biscuits.’
She withdrew and left them alone. His grandfather followed her with his eyes.
‘She’s nice enough. But she has secrets . . .’
He looked at Mark and gestured that he could sit down on the chair opposite. ‘Then again, don’t we all?’
Mark pulled out the chair and sat down. He unbuttoned his jacket, feeling hot. He looked at the old boy with the sharp eyes and remembered their day trip to Tirstrup. His grandfather had insisted on getting out of the car and going in his wheelchair in the blustery conditions to remember his dead comrades.
He had loved seeing his grandfather outside, his hair flapping in the wind, but now he was back here, in the ante-chamber of death, as the old man himself called it. Was this the fate that awaited Mark himself one day? Rotting in a nursing home while his body slowly gave up and his thoughts kept churning around as incessantly as always?
‘You look a bit wan,’ the old man said. ‘Open a window, if you like. A draught never did anyone any harm.’
‘I’m a police officer, Grandad. You remember that, don’t you?’
Mark got up and opened the window a crack.
‘Of course. I’m not totally senile yet.’
The old man smiled wryly. ‘I imagine you’re here on police business, aren’t you? Though I can’t imagine how a geriatric like me can help you.’
Mark caught himself wishing he had got to know his grandfather better. But he had lived in Copenhagen for many years, and in the year he had spent here in Grenå his illness and work had taken up all his energy.
‘You told me about Tirstrup Airport during the war. I need to know more.’
The old man’s face darkened.
‘Bastards.’
‘The Germans again?’
Hans Mortensen chuckled.
‘Them too, of course. But our own were much worse. Collaborators, who got rich at other people’s expense. There were workers who had to provide for large families. One man had eleven kids at home. If we didn’t accept the jobs at the airport, they took everything from us – support, social help.’
His hand tightened into a fist on the table.
‘We were forced labour. Slave labour for the Germans.’
‘What kind of work was it?’
‘Clearing trees to begin with. It was a plantation before and the whole lot was expropriated by the Germans. Then there was the landing strip. Later we had to dig underground hangars where they could keep the German planes, so they couldn’t be seen from the air. We dug up enormous mounds of earth deep into the trees, along the south side of Grenåvej.’
‘But the British still found them?’
A big grin spread across the old man’s face, wreathing it in a countless number of creases.
‘Damn right they did! I saw it with my own eyes.’
‘What happened?’ Mark asked.
‘Some massive explosions, that’s what happened,’ his grandfather said. ‘Later, the farmer next door said his thatched roof had literally jumped a couple of metres. At first people thought the Brits had hit some underground fuel tanks, but it turned out a bloody elephant mine had exploded. Boom!’
He was gripped now, Mark could see. The light switch in his eyes was fully on and his brain was obviously engaged. It was sixty-six years ago, but Hans Mortensen was back at Tirstrup Airport with his comrades the day the Brits came.
‘It was one Wednesday in February. 1945. There were a few of us digging, another underground hangar, when we heard the air-raid alarm. We heard shooting. Then we saw planes flying low across the area, just above the treetops, with their machine guns strafing the ground. We legged it into the forest and hid behind the earthworks, from where we could see horses bolting in all directions, still harnessed to carts and with men on top. I ran over to help one who had been thrown off. He thought he was trapped under his own cart, but it had flown through the air and landed on top of the horse in a ditch.’
The old man’s head nodded at the memory. His hands were trembling.
‘The Germans had anti-aircraft guns everywhere. Bullets were whistling around us. But the Brits had flown in below the radar and caught the Germans with their pants down.’
His body sho
ok in a mixture of coughing and glee.
‘They even managed to take out one of those bloody father and son planes.’
‘A Mistel plane?’
Mark’s grandfather nodded and appeared to be chewing some mucus that he had brought up.
‘Yes, that was their name. Mistels. Bastards, they were. The plane caught fire and exploded. None of us could hear a thing for days afterwards.’
His eyes met Mark’s.
‘That was the end. After that, it all fell apart. The workers sabotaged production. We didn’t turn up; we just let it all go to hell. We knew the end was coming.’
‘What about old scores? Liquidations? After all, you knew the people who made money from collaborating with the Germans.’
His eyes wandered. Mark knew he had pushed too hard.
‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ the old man said.
‘Perhaps someone you know would remember?’ Mark suggested. ‘Or someone you used to know?’
The silence lasted. It was as if the man in the wheelchair had fallen asleep. Mark resisted the impulse to glance at his watch but was saved when Lise Werge came in with a trolley.
‘Coffee and biscuits for you. Just help yourselves.’
The old man’s head jerked. Then, looking out of the window where the rain was still lashing down, in a burst of indignation, he said:
‘Someone had to pay, didn’t they? The others took care of that.’
‘Who had to pay?’ Mark asked. ‘What were their names?’
The old man flung up a hand.
‘Look it up in a history book.’
30
PETER DROVE IN a red mist. The incident at the café was still eating at him and his faith in the world. Miriam, of all people. Miriam, in whom – being the idiot that he was – he had confided about everything that had happened since Melissa’s death. Miriam, who had waltzed in with My’s mother, who had given him good advice after Manfred’s fall. Miriam, who purred in ecstasy when he caressed her and came in an explosion when his fingers found her innermost core. Only it had been a while since he had done that. Felix had arrived on the scene and he had lost interest. And so Miriam had taken her revenge. Of course he had known it all along, but it was hard to admit that their friendship had foundered.
Her car was parked below the flat in Anholtsgade where she and Lulu had their massage parlour. How often had he come here for an hour of peace and quiet and relaxed companionship? He had been here with My and Kaj. Here he had thrown off his mental rucksack and enjoyed the atmosphere of easy-going sensuality; here he had sought refuge when the world threatened to push him over the edge.
He had thought they were friends. But you couldn’t be friends with a hooker; experience should have taught him that long ago.
He took the stairs in long strides. He knocked, but then pushed open the door. The chain was on. It rattled when he shook the door handle.
‘I’m coming!’
She was wearing high heels and the red corset cinched her waist. The leather skirt was short and revealed black suspenders and stocking tops. She was expecting customers.
Her eyes widened.
‘Peter!’
She removed the chain and he roughly pushed his way past her.
‘Come on in, why don’t you?’ she called out after him.
‘I saw you! In Randers one hour ago!’
He found it hard to control his voice. She bundled him into the living room where Kaj had so often spread out on the carpet by the coffee table and enjoyed a false sense of family.
‘Sit down. I’ll get you a drink.’
‘I don’t want a drink.’
‘Fine, but I do.’
She disappeared and quickly returned with two glasses and a bottle of sparkling wine.
‘Look at the state of you! You look like a stray dog.’
She inspected him and poured him a glass despite his protests.
‘Who beat you up?’
Once he would have welcomed the concern in her voice, but he wasn’t falling for it this time.
‘Surely you already know.’
‘Me?’
‘Me,’ he sneered in a high-pitched voice. ‘That’s what happens when you go running to the press. It gives people ideas: why not knock the shit out of XYZ?’
‘I didn’t go running to the press.’
‘So what do you call meeting the journalist who constantly blogs about me? A local carpenter saw a man at the moat . . . Blah blah . . .’
‘But I met her to tell her to stop!’
‘You did what?’
Miriam sipped her drink. She was sitting up straight with her knees together. Always a lady. Never vulgar despite the provocative outfit that came with the job.
He leaned forward, towards her. He was aware it might seem threatening and in fact she did jerk back.
‘What did you just say?’
She got up with the glass in her hand.
‘Calm down, will you?’
She paced up and down. ‘I can explain. That is, if you’re interested in anything other than your own preconceived ideas.’
She sat down again. A finger with a long red nail ran around the rim of the glass. She sighed.
‘Perhaps I should start somewhere else.’
He didn’t say anything, but his rage continued to simmer. She got up again and went over to a shelf where her and Lulu’s private photographs were displayed in silver frames. There weren’t many, but those there were told the story of the life they had ultimately chosen to live.
Miriam took the photograph of My and Kaj and looked at it with her head tilted. Half-turned to him, she said:
‘OK. It was a lie, about My and the grave. We made it up to get you on board.’
‘A lie? How was it a lie?’
‘Well, I suppose in time it became a kind of truth, but . . .’
She turned round fully with the photograph in her hands.
‘Bella came here to find work. As people do from time to time when they’re hard up.’
Of course that did happen. Some women turned to the world’s oldest profession as a temporary solution to earn money.
‘I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me or Lulu.’
She held out a palm. ‘It was a coincidence. We weren’t the first place she tried.’
He had never believed in coincidences. The very suggestion made him sceptical.
‘I spotted the family resemblance immediately.’ She returned the photograph to its place. ‘It was obvious. I just wanted her to leave, but then she noticed the photograph, and . . .’
Miriam slumped back down onto the sofa with her arms down by her sides as if she had suffered a defeat.
‘Bella could see it too. Her face went all white and I had to let her sit down.’
Miriam swallowed. She drank a little more wine, but it didn’t appear to be to her taste and she returned the glass to the table.
‘Then I told her about My and she broke down totally, right here on the sofa.’
Miriam’s eyes took on the dark shadow that sometimes came when she got involved with other people. Which she did only with great reluctance because, as she always said, it usually gave her nothing but trouble.
‘And you told her about me?’
He could hear his menacing tone. He had yet to be convinced.
‘About you, yes. And then it was as if she saw hope. I could tell from looking at her, the way she sat up and composed herself.’
Miriam looked at him, hesitant.
‘I’m sorry, Peter. Sorry that we lied to you. But she told me about the divorce and how her older son, Magnus, had disappeared. She was desperate . . .’
The pieces started falling into place. Two women with a scheme. Two women who had used My for their own advantage.
‘I wanted to help her. She couldn’t go to the police. Magnus is eighteen and there was no suggestion of a crime. After all, he had taken his rucksack with him.’
Her hand closed arou
nd the glass again, but she let it remain where it was.
‘I could think of only one person who could find him for her.’
Miriam looked him in the eye.
‘And so you concocted that story about My? The reality is she doesn’t give a toss about My.’
He had to struggle not to let his anger boil over.
‘My, whose only crime was to be born to a calculating bitch of a mother and fall into the hands of a naive hooker whose heart bleeds for children and dogs.’
‘That’s not how it is, Peter.’
She said it so quietly that he barely heard, which only made him turn up the volume.
‘So how is it then? Can you tell me that?’
‘After the divorce, Bella wanted to reach a stage where she could go out and find My. She had no idea that My was dead. But Magnus took priority . . . She was scared it was to do with a drug debt . . .’
Again she spoke so quietly he could barely hear. Even so, the words echoed in his head. A drug debt. That was why he was useful. That was why they hadn’t battered down the police doors.
‘If the boy’s a drug addict, perhaps you should ask yourself why,’ he said.
She reached for his sleeve. He pulled away.
‘You’re too hard on her, Peter. It was her husband who made her give up My. Now he has left her. My is dead. Her son has disappeared.’
She grabbed him again and this time she didn’t let go.
‘If you think she ought to be punished, then that’s exactly what’s happening to her now.’
She sent him a determined look:
‘Talk to her. Give her another chance.’
‘Don’t you think I have enough trouble as it is?’
She nodded.
‘Yes. But you’re the type who can handle it.’
‘And Bella isn’t?’
Miriam’s eyes softened.
‘In a way she’s like My. She might be “normal”, whatever that is, but she’s fragile, Peter. And she’s scared.’
‘And what about Alice Brask?’
Miriam picked up the glass again and this time she took a decent swig before she put it down.
‘I contacted her. I read her blog and didn’t like what I found about you. I asked her to meet me and told her I had something she would find interesting.’
Dead Souls Page 15