Dead Souls

by Elsebeth Egholm

  ‘The key?’

  ‘In the car.’

  Still pointing the gun at the man, Peter snatched the key from the ignition. He pushed Gumbo towards the entrance to the house, unlocked the door and shoved him inside.

  It was a very small, dilapidated cottage. Everywhere there were overflowing ashtrays, porn magazines, free newspapers, pizza boxes and empty cans. It reeked of fetid air and stale sweat.

  Peter shoved Gumbo into a chair and heard the sound of a beer can being crushed under the man’s weight. Then he took the roll of gaffer tape and taped the dealer’s legs to the chair, one after the other. Afterwards he wrapped tape around Gumbo’s chest so that man and chair became inseparable.

  He took the bolt cutters out of his pocket and put them on the table between them. Gumbo stared at the bolt cutters. Sweat poured from his forehead and down his face. His eyes rolled in panic.

  ‘OK,’ Peter said amicably. ‘Time for you and me to have a nice little chat.’

  36

  LISE WERGE CLUNG to the edge of the lifeboat. The sea was rough. Behind her the fire roared on the burning ship. Around her passengers from the ship were sinking beneath the waves. A woman clutching a child reached out to her with a pleading gesture for her to take the child. Lise stared at the baby. She saw a small, wet bundle and a lock of dark hair sticking out. The child’s cry rent the air. Lise looked away.

  She felt a push as she lay there in the icy water. Someone was trying to force her to release her grip. It was the man from the restaurant. She had seen him drinking beer in the bar. He had a beer gut and wore a checked shirt and a jacket which was far too tight. Now he was fighting for his life in the water. If he could have pushed her away and climbed into the lifeboat himself, he would have done so. But she fought him off. She kicked and punched and bit. Eventually he gave up. She saw him sink with a sigh. Then she pulled herself up and landed on top of the others in the boat. She was so cold and wet that she could barely feel her body.

  She woke up soaked in sweat and with a throat that rasped like a man’s unshaven cheek. For a moment she just lay there staring, aware she was somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness. She still had the baby’s cry in her ear when it mutated into the ringing of her alarm clock.

  It was five o’clock in the afternoon. Her nap was over and that was just as well.

  She got up and showered to rinse off the sweat. The Scandinavian Star had been the lowest point in her life. She had been to Oslo to visit a friend who was working there. It was 1990. She was young and in love and busy planning her move to France. The future had looked bright and she had been lying awake in her cabin and relishing being alive when she heard shouts from the corridors. There was a fire on board.

  Afterwards, when it was all over, she realised how lucky she had been. Most of the passengers on the lower decks had succumbed to toxic fumes from the ship’s ceiling panels. People died as they lay in their cabins. After thirty seconds of smoke inhalation you lost consciousness. Three minutes and you were dead.

  Lise had staggered out into the corridor in her nightdress and followed the stream of people heading for the lifeboats. Everything was chaos. The panic-stricken crew had no idea what they were supposed to be doing. They issued contradictory orders and so it was every man for himself.

  She could clearly remember the moment when her grandfather’s motto suddenly went through her head: ‘In this family we don’t take any crap.’

  It was like winning the jackpot on a one-arm bandit, the sound of coins spilling out in the form of a crystal-clear truth: she was not going to accept dying.

  It was that truth which had kept her going that night in the lifeboat. Yes, she had pushed others out of the way to save herself. Yes, she had averted her face from the crying child. She had done the only thing there was to do: she had survived.

  ‘Have you had another nightmare?’

  Her mother knew her too well. Lise wished she hadn’t agreed to look in on her today, but she was working nights and had promised to turn up at six p.m. exactly and continue working on the family history. Besides, she had a bone to pick with her mother.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  She placed the tape recorder on the kitchen table in the middle of the bread, butter and cheese. Her mother was already busy sating her boundless appetite. Slice after slice disappeared between her lips, washed down with mouthfuls of black coffee.

  ‘You’ve always been a softie,’ Alma said as she munched. ‘There was nothing else you could do, you know that. You did the right thing.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  Her mother reached out and grabbed her wrist hard. It was so rare for them to touch that Lise jumped.

  ‘Don’t you humour me.’

  Lise wriggled free.

  ‘Moral scruples are the devil’s work,’ Alma continued, and broke off another chunk of bread and dipped it in her coffee. ‘The road to hell is paved with guilty consciences.’

  Lise said nothing. She had heard it all before. Alma’s head stuck up slightly from under her carapace. The tortoise looked at her.

  ‘Be proud that you come from a family that doesn’t allow itself to be dictated to.’

  Lise found her voice.

  ‘A family of murderers and collaborators?’

  But it took more than that to provoke her mother. She smiled at the coffee cup before draining it and immediately pouring more pitch-black liquid into it.

  ‘A family that knows how to survive and doesn’t allow itself to be bossed around – not by rules and regulations, nor by people’s folly or any other idiocies.’

  Lise thought her mother was going to grab her wrist again so she flinched when the cardigan-clad arm shot out. But it was for the butter dish. She held it with a firm grip. The knife went in and she buttered the white bread with great precision, all the way round the corners.

  ‘I went to see Lone yesterday.’

  The knife froze in the air.

  ‘You could have taken me along.’

  ‘It was a spur of the moment thing,’ she lied. ‘I got off work early. I told her about your project of dictating the family history to me.’

  Alma said nothing. When it suited her, she would pretend she could hear nothing and knew nothing. The knife started buttering again.

  ‘Lone said there is already a version. She said you dictated it to her. Is that true?’

  Her mother nodded while her jaws chomped on a mouthful of white bread.

  ‘So why do we have to do it again?’ Lise demanded. ‘Why repeat it when we’ve already got the story – where, incidentally?’

  Her mother sat in silence for a while. Then she said:

  ‘It does you good to have it laid on thick.’

  ‘Having it forced down my throat, you mean?’

  Alma shrugged.

  ‘Call it what you like. Besides, we never finished.’

  ‘Because Lone killed Laust?’

  Another shrug.

  ‘He was a moron.’

  Lise couldn’t disagree. Nevertheless, a protest welled up in her.

  ‘You don’t kill other people just because they’re idiots.’

  ‘No,’ her mother said. ‘Most people don’t. They just put up with it.’

  She packed away the butter and the cheese with emphatic movements.

  ‘Most people get what they deserve.’

  37

  PETER TOOK OUT the photograph of Magnus and held it in front of Gumbo’s eyes.

  ‘Do you know this guy?’

  Gumbo nodded.

  ‘Did he owe you money?’

  The sweat trickled down the man’s face. His head shook a no, followed by a nodded yes.

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘We had a deal.’

  His voice was hoarse with nerves.

  Peter opened the gun and made sure it was loaded. He pointed it at Gumbo, who stared back, wide-eyed. His body squirmed in the chair, but to no avail.

  ‘Didn’t your mother ever teach you it�
�s not nice to threaten people?’

  Gumbo just stared at him.

  ‘You went to see Magnus’s mother.’

  The eyes blinked. The mouth opened, but Peter cut him off.

  ‘You won’t ever do that again, have you got me? Or else I will personally chop your bollocks off and force you to eat them.’

  Gumbo nodded and looked nervously first at the gun, then at Peter. As if to emphasise his willingness to cooperate, he nodded once more.

  ‘Good, I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out,’ Peter said. ‘Then there’s Magnus. What did he buy from you that meant he ended up owing you twenty thousand kroner?’

  Gumbo paled. Peter took aim and smiled with his finger on the trigger.

  ‘He bought some coke for his friend. He often did that.’

  ‘Without paying?’

  ‘He paid.’

  ‘So what was the twenty thousand about?’

  Gumbo squirmed again, making the tape crackle.

  ‘My silence,’ he mumbled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I promised to keep my mouth shut about something I’d seen, know what I mean?’

  Peter tried to hide his surprise.

  ‘And what had you seen?’

  ‘I saw him with a girl one evening,’ the dealer said, in a voice that came out too quickly from sheer terror. ‘It was in the gardens behind the school. It was obvious they didn’t want to be seen together.’

  ‘What were they doing?’

  Peter was completely baffled. Magnus and a girl. How could that be worth money to anyone?

  ‘Just sitting close together.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Talking.’

  ‘Who was the girl?’

  ‘It was that . . .’

  Gumbo nodded towards the pile of free newspapers on the tiled table. Peter picked up one of them. Melissa’s face was all over the front page. He held it up.

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Yes. She was murdered. Strangled, I think.’

  Peter lowered the newspaper and hefted the gun. He got up and pressed the muzzle against Gumbo’s temple and the stench of urine hit his nostrils as the man’s bladder opened.

  ‘What was your original deal?’

  ‘One thousand.’

  ‘One thousand kroner for you not to tell anyone that you had seen him and Melissa together?’

  Gumbo nodded.

  ‘And then you spied a chance to raise the price to twenty thousand when the girl was found dead?’

  ‘I knew that Magnus had gone missing. I just put two and two together,’ Gumbo mumbled.

  ‘And you used these to make your point?’

  Peter picked up the bolt cutters and weighed them in his hand while still holding the gun in the other. He got up again and stood opposite Gumbo, who was shaking like a dog.

  ‘Or perhaps you just wanted to check they worked?’

  He pulled the man’s body forward, grabbed hold of his hand, forced his right forefinger into the jaws of the bolt cutters and closed them.

  ‘Did you tell Magnus’s mother what the debt was about?’

  ‘Yes. But she already knew.’

  ‘From you?’

  ‘Yeees, fuuuck that hurts!’

  His howling sounded like a fire alarm, but Peter knew that no one could hear them and maintained the pressure.

  ‘So it wasn’t the first time you’d been to see her?’

  ‘No . . . Jeeeesus Christ . . .’

  ‘Who are you working for?’

  The lie was expelled in a gasp:

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Funny, I was sure I recognised your methods from somewhere.’

  Peter squeezed the bolt cutter even harder and heard the bone crunch.

  ‘Rico,’ Gumbo cried out, confirming Peter’s suspicion. He swore under his breath. As if he didn’t have enough problems, he was now doing his best to create even more conflict with the Midnight Cowboys than he already had. The biker gang controlled the East Jutland drugs market. They had their hangers-on and their supporters among small-time dealers like Gumbo. It wouldn’t be long before Rico learned that the man from the cliff had been causing trouble on his turf. So he might as well try to turn it to his own advantage.

  ‘I know Rico well,’ Peter said, squeezing harder. ‘Give him my regards and tell him to deal with me from now on. Not Magnus.’

  He released the bolt cutters. The finger hung limply from Gumbo’s hand. Peter pushed him back in the chair. The man’s head flopped down and he was close to passing out from the pain.

  ‘And not his mother, got that?’

  No reaction. Peter placed the bolt cutters under Gumbo’s chin and pushed his head up. The eyes rolled around in their sockets before disappearing under his eyelids. Saliva and mucus bubbled from his mouth and nose. Finally he made flickering eye contact.

  ‘My name is Peter. Say it.’

  ‘P . . . e . . . ter,’ came the feeble response.

  ‘Do we have a deal?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Then say it.’

  Gumbo’s face was drained of blood and he had stopped sweating. He looked like someone on his last legs. He had several stabs at forming the words with his lips before he was able to squeeze them out, almost inaudibly:

  ‘We . . . have . . . a . . . deal.’

  Again, the eyes went walkabout and the man’s head flopped the way it had when Peter removed the bolt cutters. He reached for the keys lying on the table.

  ‘Good. I’m going to borrow your car to get back to town.’

  He got up and dangled the car keys in front of Gumbo, who didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘You’ll find it where you left it. We’ll have to do the coffee bit some other time.’

  38

  ‘I WAS STUPID. Unprofessional.’

  ‘Shhh.’

  Mark stroked her hand.

  ‘Anyway, you have better things to do than sit here. You, of all people, must surely hate hospitals.’

  Kir felt embarrassed. She had never been so embarrassed in all her life. She had no idea what had come over her, but she had definitely been affected by the pressure and had been as light-headed as if she had drunk champagne. She had felt invincible. Which could be fatal for a diver.

  ‘They put me in the pressure chamber. I showed symptoms of the bends.’

  She hated saying the word. Hated that she hadn’t shown better discipline.

  ‘But you were right,’ he said. ‘You acted on your instinct and you were right. The Marie af Grenå had an important cargo, which we probably weren’t supposed to know about.’

  ‘A stowaway?’

  ‘A dead stowaway.’

  ‘Of course he was dead. They all were.’

  ‘But this one was dead from the start.’

  ‘I don’t understand . . .’

  She stared at him.

  ‘What do you mean, Mark?’

  The operation had been interrupted after her dive. But the following day Allan Vraa had gone down with Niklas and salvaged the three bodies. The third one, the unexpected stowaway, turned out to be the body of Simon’s friend, Nils.

  She knew from looking at Mark that he was wondering how much he could tell her. It irritated her.

  ‘Come on, out with it!’

  ‘Nils had been garrotted.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  But she could see from his face that it was true. Nils Toftegaard, son of Hans Toftegaard, who was the brother of one of her old school friends. Nils, who had wanted to be a fisherman, but had got a job in Kvickly.

  ‘We think he was killed in the same place and in the same way as Melissa. Later his body was hidden behind crates and coils of rope on the fishing boat.’

  The killer must have known that the Marie af Grenå was going to sea. The body would go on a trip, but it would also return home. Unless . . .

  ‘The Falck diver,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kasper Frandsen. He’s the
brother of one of the mine divers. He was down by the harbour diving around Jens Bådsmand’s boat, freeing the propeller of pound net.’

  ‘And?’

  That was it, of course. It was obvious. She had seen him before, not just his brother.

  ‘I believe he was also one of the Falck men who collected Melissa’s body.’

  ‘That could be a coincidence. All part of his job.’

  ‘It still seems too much of a coincidence to me,’ she insisted.

  Mark looked dubious, but she could see he was following her train of thought. It was well known that certain killers got off on appearing close to the crime scene and watching the police at work. There were even cases where killers had been interviewed on TV. The TV stations loved replaying such footage once an arrest had been made. However, this mostly happened when there was a sexual motive for the crime. She remembered a case from England where a school caretaker had turned out to be the killer of two girls he had persuaded to come to his home, where he had drowned them in his bath tub. He had been very keen to talk to TV reporters.

  ‘OK, we’d better check him out,’ Mark said.

  ‘He could have put Nils on the boat during the night,’ she said.

  ‘But why? What’s his motive?’

  ‘What’s anyone’s motive?’

  Four people had been killed in the space of a few days, but the victims were very different. Melissa and Nils were roughly the same age. Was that the link? But then there was Jens Bådsmand and Simon, who was also a teenager. Why did they have to die? Or were they just collateral damage?

  ‘Perhaps the boat was sabotaged,’ she said. ‘Remember the scaffolding. Perhaps someone tampered with it.’

  ‘That happens all the time,’ Mark grunted.

  ‘No, it doesn’t. But it might be what happened here,’ she said. ‘We may never know. No one is going to raise a boat lying at a depth of forty-five metres. Unless you dived down and . . .’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Mark, who had read her mind. ‘That’s police work. You focus on getting better.’