‘Is that important?’ she asked.
‘Very. What’s a P-party?’
He noted some resistance in her voice.
‘There’s no law against it.’
‘Is it a pox party?’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘How did it work?’
She launched into an explanation:
‘When I was a child, everyone got childhood diseases as a matter of course. Rubella, German measles, chickenpox and mumps. You had them, and afterwards you were immune to them. But in the 1980s some boffins discovered a vaccine which protected children against all of them,’ she said.
‘My was one of the first children in Denmark to be vaccinated. It really was a revolution. But then some doctors thought they had discovered serious side effects, in the form of autism. There was something in the research to suggest a link.’
She hesitated.
‘Some parents – the better informed ones – decided to opt out of the vaccination.’
‘And instead they organised these so-called pox parties?’
He could hear her walking about, on bare feet. He repressed the memory of her skin on his and listened to her defence.
‘It wasn’t illegal, Peter. We just believed children should have as natural a life as possible . . . I couldn’t risk the same thing happening to Magnus as had happened to My.’
This was not an area he had much experience of, he told himself. He didn’t have any children. However, he didn’t think for one second there was a link between the vaccination and autism and he was sure he had read that the theory had been disproved: there was no link. But in 1994 many people had believed there was. Bella had acted in what she thought was her children’s best interests.
‘Thank you,’ he said at length. ‘You’ve been a great help.’
Like so many before her, she had been well-intentioned, he thought. It must have been difficult, being bombarded by information that pulled you in every direction. But goodwill and best intentions were twins, and they had a habit of turning into disaster and tragedy. He was living proof of that.
She hesitated. He could hear her accelerated breathing.
‘What just happened, Peter . . .’
‘Forget it.’
‘I know you regret it.’
He made no reply.
‘I haven’t had a man since my divorce,’ she said. ‘I just want to say thank you.’
Said by the Bella who had wanted a job with Miriam. His scepticism reared its head to warn him. Yet again the thought surfaced that she wasn’t someone he could trust.
‘Thank you,’ he said and ended the call.
67
‘THIS HAS NOTHING to do with animals,’ Anna Bagger said. ‘In that respect, last night’s raid was a waste of time. We’ve got the activists and we’ve spoken to the respective mink farmers. Yes, it’s illegal. And yes, it’s irritating when somebody lets out your mink. But it doesn’t give us our killer. We have to look elsewhere.’
She paced up and down for a little while. Then she pointed to the board where photographs of the key players were displayed. She rapped a knuckle on the photograph of Melissa’s mother.
‘Boutrup is right about the following: Alice Brask and her network is the target for our killer. So we need to go through everything Brask has written in the last eighteen years with a fine-tooth comb. We need to find every single person who could be the common denominator for these five mothers.’
‘We have three dead teenagers and two missing ones. And there could be more we have yet to identify in the killer’s spotlight. This is urgent. It’s a race against time.’
This was after Melissa’s funeral. They had wasted valuable time observing the crowd of mourners at the cathedral and later at Skovmøllen Restaurant. Mark and Anna had subsequently spent two hours questioning Alice Brask in a room at Aarhus Police Station. They had little to show for it except Brask’s feigned politeness and detachment, and Mark had thought she seemed remarkably unconcerned about whether her friends’ children were in danger or not. She had lost Melissa and no investigation, no matter how successful, could bring her back. Alice Brask denied having planned the mink farm operation and had stressed that the activists involved acted ‘completely on their own and on their own initiative’. She regarded it as no more than a coincidence that some of them were co-signatories on the 2005 letter to the editor.
‘We might move in the same circles,’ she had said. ‘We’re people with opinions about what’s happening in society. That’s all we have in common. We don’t see each other socially. We’re not close friends. Every individual is responsible for his or her own actions.’
‘We’re still looking for a motive,’ Anna Bagger said to her team. ‘Revenge seems to be a strong candidate. The killings do not suggest an overtly sexual theme. And yet there is an element of sadism.’
‘What about pure and utter evil?’ Pia Thorsen suggested. ‘Is that a possibility?’
‘Mental health issues?’ Martin Nielsen proposed. ‘Paranoia. Maybe he sees the young people as some kind of threat.’
‘There’s no harm in checking with psychiatric hospitals and prisons about who is currently on release,’ Anna Bagger said. ‘But these crimes require great patience and considerable planning. I find it hard to believe that the killer could be a very sick person.’
‘A psychopath,’ Mark suggested.
‘He definitely has a deviant personality of some kind,’ Martin Nielsen said. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily make him insane.’
‘Right, Martin,’ Anna Bagger said. ‘Perhaps you could look into that and possibly contact the relevant institutions . . . Mark, any news about the bones in the box?’
Mark nearly fell off his chair in surprise. It had been days since she’d last asked him about the old bones and he had deliberately stopped briefing her. But now she was desperate and willing to try anything.
In broad strokes, he attempted to summarise what he and Oluf Jensen had discovered, but for some reason he omitted to report back that he had seen Lise Werge outside the cathedral. He couldn’t quite account for this himself. Perhaps he wasn’t sure that it really was her. Or maybe the real reason was that he was still confused about the photographs Marianne Holme-Olsen had let him keep.
‘So it’s likely to be a Resistance man, someone killed right after the war?’ Anna Bagger asked.
‘Looks like it. We took a blood sample from a cousin on the maternal side, so we’ll know soon. The widow gave us another important piece of information,’ Mark said.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Her husband broke his right leg in an accident with a horse and cart. The fracture healed and it fits one of the bones in the box.’
‘And the Cardinal, as he was known, could be the killer? Using a home-made garrotte?’
‘Perhaps. But if the timeline is right, he had already disappeared when the murder was committed, so it’s possible he isn’t the killer after all,’ Mark said. ‘But yes, we believe he had a garrotte which he built himself. Someone could have used it.’
‘All sounds a bit thin to me,’ Anna Bagger remarked.
Mark couldn’t deny that.
‘Nevertheless,’ Anna Bagger said. ‘We can’t ignore the fact that it was the same MO, both then and now. Let’s take a closer look at the family, from a present frame of reference,’ she added. ‘Mark. Can I leave that one with you?’
Present frame of reference. It wasn’t the first neologism she had used. Nor was it likely to be the last, Mark thought.
He nodded.
‘I’ll look into it.’
From the police station he drove straight to the nursing home.
He found his grandfather in his wheelchair in front of the lounge TV. At first glance it looked as if the old man had fallen asleep, but his head jerked when Mark gently placed his hand on his shoulder.
‘I wasn’t asleep,’ Hans said, blinking.
‘Of course not.’
He nodded towards the T
V. A few other residents were sitting there, a couple with relatives who had come to visit. But it was a big lounge and they could easily talk undisturbed.
‘That’s an interesting programme. I always watch it.’
Mark glanced at the screen. He never watched television himself, but he recognised the grainy black-and-white images from the Second World War. How appropriate.
‘It was a difficult time,’ he said, pulling out a chair.
‘The worst,’ his grandfather answered.
Mark couldn’t think of a better opportunity. He was dying to show him the three photographs he had in his pocket. He took them out.
‘I spoke to Allan Holme-Olsen’s widow,’ he said and instantly noticed that the old man had pricked up his ears.
‘Haven’t you got bored with digging up the past yet?’ Hans mumbled. ‘It’s so long ago.’
Mark nodded towards the television.
‘As you said. It’s interesting . . . love and war,’ he added. ‘It fascinates us all.’
His grandfather let out a dismissive snort, which sounded like an incomplete sneeze.
‘You should be spending your time on those killings. The girl in the moat and all that.’
He was remarkably well informed, Mark had to give him that.
Mark placed the three photographs on the table.
‘She let me borrow these.’
His grandfather impatiently wafted his hands around.
‘I can’t see anything without my glasses – not that I need to look at them anyway. I’m not interested in the past.’
‘But you were just watching a film about the past.’
‘That’s different,’ Hans grunted.
Mark offered to fetch his glasses, but the old man brushed aside his offer with a show of annoyance. Mark pointed at the photograph of the three friends.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were in the Resistance, Grandad?’
The old man made no reply. He just sat staring, unseeing, at the photograph.
‘After all, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You were regarded as heroes.’
‘Heroes! Pah!’ Hans spluttered. ‘I had no need to be a hero.’
‘But the war was over.’
The old man looked at Mark.
‘For a police officer you’re very naive.’
His grandfather pointed to the two other men.
‘Allan Holme-Olsen. Bent Engelbreth.’
‘What about them?’
‘Well, what do you reckon?’
His grandfather hissed.
‘I didn’t want that picture to be taken. Bent’s wife took it.’
His breathing sounded laboured.
‘I got angry. I told her to give me the negative.’
He jabbed the photograph with his finger. ‘That picture is the reason we fell out.’
He looked at Mark.
‘They didn’t understand that it was still too dangerous, that it would always be dangerous. We should have left it well alone. We should have slipped quietly back into society and taken our places in it and looked after our families.’
The relatives in the corner of the lounge were starting to turn around and send looks in their direction. Hans pointed at the two men, Allan and Bent, and spoke more quietly:
‘Two months later they were both dead.’
‘Two months after the end of the war?’
Hans nodded. His eyes were limpid as he looked at Mark.
‘And I know who did it.’
68
POX PARTIES. MMR vaccines. Unconvinced parents who refused to have their children vaccinated.
What was the link with the killings?
Peter tried to assemble the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. If he really was hot on the trail of something here, it had to be because their decision to reject the vaccinations had had consequences for others. For the killer.
Measles was one of the most infectious viruses in the world. He had read about it on the Net. Scientists hoped one day to completely eradicate the measles virus which claimed so many lives every year, especially in developing countries. A reluctance to use the MMR vaccine contributed to the fact that the virus still existed.
And some people not only refused to have their children vaccinated, the more proactive of them arranged pox parties. Whenever someone’s child fell ill with measles or rubella the whole network was stirred into action. Parents could turn up with their children, as far as he had gathered, and expose them to infection so that they would develop antibodies against the disease in a ‘natural’ way.
The world’s most infectious virus. Peter wasn’t a doctor and didn’t have a clue about such things, but if it was that infectious, was it really possible to contain the disease within the network? Didn’t you risk giving measles to lots of other people?
Of course, most would be unaffected because they had been vaccinated or would have had the disease as children. But surely some people would be at risk, wouldn’t they?
Peter was reminded of his visit to the nursery where the head teacher, Annelise McPherson, had hinted that Bella had had poor advisers. Was that what this was about? Had Bella’s attitudes had consequences for other families?
It was a Sunday. The nursery would be shut, of course, so he would have to find another way to contact her.
He found her easily on Yellow Pages and thanked his good fortune that people were no longer content to be called plain old-fashioned Jensen or Petersen but preferred more exotic surnames.
She lived in Trige. Ian and Annelise McPherson, Directory Enquiries informed him. He could have chosen to ring them, but something told him it was better to meet face-to-face.
He started his car and drove to Aarhus.
Charm wasn’t going to work. He realised as much when he rang the door of the 1980s house and a beefcake of a man appeared. He was wearing a vest and black jogging trousers and his muscles bulged like a professional wrestler’s. Grizzled hair curled on his chest and had spread to other places.
‘It’s her day off. Come back during working hours,’ the man said in accented Danish, rolling his r’s and revealing his Caledonian roots.
‘It’s important.’
The man sized him up.
‘It’s also important to have time off.’
A voice called from inside the house.
‘Who is it, Ian?’
She appeared behind him. Her hair was a mess and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. Annelise McPherson looked at Peter, and he could see her sifting through her memories, one of which soon clicked into place.
‘You again. Haven’t you found him?’
She pushed up her hair. It was steel grey and shoulder-length. When he had seen her at the nursery, she’d had it pinned up.
‘Magnus is still missing. Three teenagers are dead.’
He had to shock her; otherwise he would never get anywhere.
‘Dead?’
‘Melissa Brask, Nils Toftegaard and Victor Nimb. They were all eighteen.’
‘I knew Melissa, of course.’
Annelise shook her head. ‘I’ve read about it. There’s a whole page in the paper today about her funeral.’
She eyed him sceptically. The Scottish guard dog sent him a fierce stare.
‘You said you were a friend of Bella’s?’
‘It’s complicated. I knew Bella’s older daughter.’
‘Older . . . I didn’t know she had a daughter.’
‘Bella gave up on My. She had autism. According to Bella’s husband, it was due to the MMR vaccine.’
Her eyes widened.
‘My and I grew up at the same care home. Perhaps you’ve heard about Titan? Near Ry?’
‘That awful place?’
Peter didn’t like playing the Titan card, but it usually worked. Everyone had heard about the care home and the atrocities that had taken place there. And her face did indeed quickly change. She opened the door.
‘You’d better come inside.’
The Scottish gu
ard dog padded happily away and went somewhere else in the house. Annelise showed Peter into a living room with an open fireplace and exposed brick walls. Abstract art hung on the wall behind the sofas.
Peter asked his question before they had time to sit down.
‘I’ve been wondering if you ever had a measles outbreak at the nursery.’
She took a log from a wicker basket, knelt down by the fireplace and put it on top of the others.
‘And what if we did?’ she said with her back to him. ‘Do you think it has anything to do with what has happened?’
She wedged the log solidly in place, then sat for a while gazing at it as the fire took hold.
‘I think so,’ Peter said.
Annelise got up and sat on a leather stool near the fireplace. She scrutinised him as though trying yet again to figure him out. Who was he really? A murderer was at large somewhere out there. How could she know it wasn’t him? Obvious doubt made her look away. Then she appeared to make up her mind. Her eyes were back on him.
‘There was a measles outbreak,’ she said.
‘When?’
She counted on her fingers and furrowed her brow.
‘It must’ve been in 1998.’
‘What happened?’
‘Some of the nursery children were carriers. It spread. Three children in the Under-Two unit went down with it.’
Of course. The nursery also had an Under-Two unit for the very youngest. Babies. Some of them too young to have had the MMR vaccine.
Annelise rubbed the side of her neck with one hand while resting the other on the leather stool.
‘It was awful. People were very angry and frustrated. We were closed for two weeks.’
Her hand was now sliding up and down her throat, up and down, up and down, as if trying to smooth out the skin.
‘But the worst was the children, of course. Two of them were very ill.’
‘Then what happened?’
She shook her head.
‘Actually, I don’t know. We were never told. The sick children didn’t return to our nursery. I think the council found other places for them . . .’
‘But none of them died?’
‘Not as far as I know. But you’ll probably have to check with the local Health Authority. Or rather, don’t bother; they won’t tell you anything.’
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