Dead Souls

by Elsebeth Egholm

  He sat down again on the wooden chair that their grandfather had built.

  ‘Ahh. This is very comfortable.’

  He leaned back.

  ‘Don’t you remember, Sis?’

  She blinked. The funeral. She had returned home after the funeral and he had been there. How did he get the keys? How had he got in?

  Her mother, of course. Lise kept a spare key at her mother’s house in case she locked herself out. She had never imagined that this would happen. And here she was. Her punishment had arrived. The punishment for being different. For going against the family. For that was what she had done. She had betrayed her family, that was how they saw it.

  And now she was going to die.

  Once upon a time she had thought she had reconciled herself to the idea of death, but now panic gripped her throat and she heard herself whimpering.

  ‘Now you probably think Mum was in on this,’ he said chattily. ‘And in a way she was, in her own passive fashion.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Handy that she’s such a heavy sleeper. I made sure she was in a really nice, deep sleep when I moved you in here.’

  Sleeping pills. He had given their mother an overdose. And what about Lise herself? Somehow he must have got her into a car – her car? – and then driven her here.

  She remembered fragments now. He had held a knife to her throat when she locked the door. She had tried to resist. Instinctively she had thrust a sharp heel behind her and hit him in the shin. The knife had slipped to the side, but not before it had cut her. Blood had spurted out, although it was only a surface wound. She had fled into the living room. He followed. She remembered him saying:

  ‘Well done, Sis. Fight for your life.’

  She remembered seeing the thrill of the chase in his eyes. She had screamed and shouted in desperation and thrown things at him. But it was a small flat. He had trapped her in a corner of the bedroom.

  She didn’t remember anything else. Perhaps that was just as well.

  ‘You were so compliant, Sis, I almost got bored. I coaxed you down to the car. You walked next to me without any trouble at all.’

  That was because you were holding me at knifepoint, she wanted to say; his words had reminded her of more. The drive, her behind the wheel and him holding the knife. The house, which was dark and deadly quiet apart from Alma’s snoring in the bedroom. The staircase going down.

  ‘Anyway. We’re wasting time.’

  He jumped off the chair.

  ‘We’d better get started.’

  He lifted her up. She discovered that she couldn’t stand up.

  ‘Oh, that’s right. I think I broke your leg. Never mind, you’re not going very far, Sis.’

  He held her like a rag doll. She started to black out as blood from the cut ran down her leg and soaked into her tights and the taste of steel spread around her mouth. She could feel his muscles. He was strong. He had probably been working out all the time he had been incarcerated.

  ‘Please sit down, Sis.’

  He pushed her down onto the garrotte.

  72

  MARK LEFT THE cemetery with an uneasy feeling that the threads were coming together, not into a beautiful and logical pattern but something that looked more like the knot on a hangman’s rope.

  Viva la Muerte. Peter Boutrup had stopped in his tracks, just as Mark had at the sight of the memorial plate. Not because of the name – Peter obviously didn’t recognise it. But because of the rest. The inscription. Viva la Muerte. Long live death. The motto of the Spanish Legion, Peter had told him, after which he had at last gone on to tell him about the rosary which Sister Beatrice had given him and which Mark had seen on the day they had searched Peter’s house on the cliff.

  Viva la Muerte. Nothing was buried under the plate. It was purely commemorative. Kurt Falk’s body had never been found.

  Lise Werge lived in an apartment block in the northern part of the town.

  The area was quiet, curtains were closed and blinds were down, as if the buildings had also decided to heed the day of rest. He parked, located the entrance and rang the intercom, but there was no reply. Undeterred, he rang the neighbour’s bell.

  ‘Who is it?’ a crisp voice asked.

  ‘Mark Bille Hansen, Grenå Police. Please would you let me in?’

  There was a pause. He could actually hear the woman hesitating.

  ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘Lise Werge.’

  ‘She’s not in.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I’d still like access.’

  ‘Has anything happened to her?’

  How would I know? Now open that bloody door before something happens to you.

  That was what he was thinking, but he said something else.

  ‘Perhaps there’s a caretaker I could contact?’

  ‘He’s not here. It’s Sunday.’

  He was about to make a further comment when help appeared in the shape of an old lady and a small dog, who let him enter in their wake. Both of them subjected him to a critical glare.

  He felt ridiculous as he finally stood outside Lise Werge’s front door and rang the bell. There was no response. The neighbour came out.

  ‘She’s not in.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘She was here yesterday.’

  Mark tried the door. Nothing happened. Then he spotted the stain on the doorstep. And another one. He tracked an almost invisible pattern towards the lift. He had seen blood often enough to know what it was.

  ‘Who’s the caretaker?’

  ‘His office is closed on Sundays.’

  ‘I just need his name and address.’

  At long last something happened. She shuffled inside her flat and returned with a business card, which she was happy enough to show him. Judging by the holes in the corners, it had been pinned to her noticeboard.

  ‘Thank you. I promise you’ll get it back.’

  He took the lift down and found more bloodstains. By the exit he followed them out into the car park. He roused the caretaker – a man called Søren Alm – and enticed him away from the Sports Channel. Together they went upstairs to Lise’s flat, and Søren Alm unlocked the door.

  It took Mark two seconds to realise they were looking at a crime scene. There was blood on the carpet in the hallway, some of the furniture had been knocked over and a mirror had been smashed.

  ‘Lise?’

  He entered with caution and searched every room in the flat, counting at least three places where a physical assault had taken place and where there was a lot of blood. Not streams of it. Nothing to suggest an artery had been cut. But enough for him to call Anna Bagger to request assistance while he carefully explored the flat, taking care not to touch anything.

  He was reminded of the day Lise Werge had arrived in her car at her mother’s house. The family resemblance was striking. Why had she turned up at Melissa’s funeral? Did she know the girl? Nothing in the investigation had suggested any sort of link between the two of them, so what was going on here?

  Mark looked around. Lise Werge’s home looked like a perfectly ordinary flat inhabited by a single woman of around fifty. The decor was fairly austere, yet had an obvious feminine touch, the clean lines and bright colours of the furniture. Very little in the way of knick-knacks. That didn’t seem to be Lise Werge’s style. Nor did she care much for family photographs, it seemed. The ones he found were, for some strange reason, back to front on the window sill. There were two of them. One of her children, he presumed, a boy around ten and a girl around twelve – although he had no idea about children’s ages. Both had the same family features and the photograph looked as if it had been taken quite a few years ago. The other one was even older. It was of three children sitting on a bench. He took it and turned it round: 1972, it said. The boy sat in the middle, flanked by two girls, of which one had to be Lise aged twelve. She looked just like her own daughter when she was her age.

  He heard someone clear their throat.
The neighbour was standing by the living-room door.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he said at once.

  ‘You forgot to return my card.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  She came closer, even though he had told her not to.

  ‘What on earth has happened here?’

  Mark ushered her outside. In his haste, he forgot he was still holding the photograph of the three siblings in his hand.

  ‘Here you are.’

  He rummaged around in his pocket and gave her back the caretaker’s business card. She took it and nodded at the photograph.

  ‘That’s her brother and sister.’

  ‘Do you know where I can find them?’

  ‘Her sister’s in prison. She killed her husband. She never talks about her brother.’

  ‘Can you tell me her sister’s name?’

  ‘The surname’s Byriel. First name Lone. She used to work at a solicitor’s office before . . . it happened.’

  ‘How long has Lise lived here?’

  The woman pondered.

  ‘Let me see. I moved here in 1999. Lise came six months after me. She must have moved in at the start of 2000.’

  ‘And you’re good friends?’

  ‘Good neighbours,’ she corrected him. ‘We have a coffee every now and then. But we’re not in each other’s pockets . . . Lise values her privacy,’ she added.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mark said and flashed a smile. ‘You’ve been a great help.’

  Reluctantly, she returned to her own flat, but Mark noticed that she had left her front door ajar.

  Good neighbours, he thought. For over ten years. They had drunk coffee in each other’s flats and Lise had told her about her sister in prison, but never mentioned her brother.

  73

  KIR’S HOUSE STOOD in an enclosed field at the far end of the old summer-house area south of Grenå. It was from the 1960s, with black wood cladding and an asphalt roof. Her red pickup was parked outside.

  Peter rang the bell, but it didn’t work. One look at the property told the story of a house in charming decay. When something went wrong the response had obviously been: patch it up. Cracks and gaps in the rotting window frames had been filled with silicone, paint had been applied on the areas with the worst peeling, a loose gutter above the door had been tied up with a piece of string. Grey smoke poured out of the chimney.

  ‘Kir?’

  He knocked on the window. She came out.

  ‘Did I wake you?’

  She shook her head much too vigorously. Her hair was a mess of red curls and she looked bleary-eyed. She was wearing a grey tracksuit and had sheepskin slippers on her feet. He couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘Come in.’

  ‘I thought I would take a look at your house.’

  However, that wasn’t the real reason he was here.

  ‘Coffee? Tea?’

  She seemed flustered, possibly even nervous.

  ‘I can come back another time, if this isn’t convenient.’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine.’

  In a neutral tone of voice she started telling him about the house, highlighting the improvements she had in mind.

  ‘I’ve saved up thirty thousand kroner. I don’t know how far that will go.’

  ‘I can give you a quote, if you want.’

  She did want. They sat for a while. The silence wasn’t embarrassing, it felt cosy. The fire crackled in the wood-burning stove and the tea was hot. The house was cheap but nicely furnished, although she clearly wasn’t a born nest-builder. Her background as a soldier could not be denied. It showed in the posters displayed on the walls and the objects lying on the window sills. Where other women might collect glass figurines and exotic plants, she had military and diving treasures, such as barnacle-covered knives and seashells as big as your hand, old cartridge shells and photographs of a life above and below water.

  ‘Viva la muerte. Are you familiar with that expression?’ he asked.

  ‘Is it Spanish?’

  ‘Long live death.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You told me about the garrotte. I thought there might be a connection.’

  ‘With what?’

  She looked confused.

  ‘The Spanish Foreign Legion.’

  He could see her mind working overtime from the way she narrowed her eyes and averted her face slightly. He grabbed the opportunity to tell her about the rosary and his meeting at the cemetery with Mark.

  She nodded.

  ‘I think he’s checking out the family in connection with those bones in the box.’

  ‘Kurt Falk’s?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know any more than that.’

  She got up and fetched something from her bookcase. It was a family photograph album.

  ‘The Legion. I saw them marching once, in a Catholic procession in Malaga. They have strong links with the church.’

  She opened it and he saw photographs of a procession of priests carrying Christ in agony on the cross through the streets, flanked by soldiers in green shirts and trousers with black braces. On their heads they wore ‘chapiri’ caps with red tassels.

  ‘Their training is said to be the hardest in the world,’ Kir said. ‘I’ve heard live bullets are fired at their feet when they have to march or run, but that might be just a rumour. They call themselves “novios de la muerte”.’

  She met his gaze.

  ‘It means bridegrooms of death.’

  He looked into her eyes, which were always so intense. He remembered what he had thought about her, that she didn’t have an agenda. The question crossed his lips before he had time to think.

  ‘Why did you become a soldier, Kir?’

  He watched her struggling to come up with an answer which would satisfy them both.

  ‘Because it’s an honest trade,’ she said at length, which was entirely in keeping with his view of her. ‘Now, of course, there’s just as much bullshit in the Armed Forces as in the rest of the world, but being a soldier is ultimately a simple choice for each individual: kill or be killed.’

  ‘And the garrotte? How do you view that?’

  She thought about it again.

  ‘The garrotte isn’t a weapon like the ones you use on the battlefield or in any other kind of combat. The garrotte is what the gallows once were in Denmark: the ultimate punishment. The sentence you got for committing the ultimate crime. Murder.’

  ‘So there needs to be a trial?’

  ‘Of some kind.’

  ‘And then a verdict is pronounced.’

  She nodded. She seemed to be on the point of adding something, but stopped herself when a car pulled up outside her house. She got to her feet and ran her palms down her thighs as though they were sweaty. Though he didn’t know her very well, he could tell she wasn’t her usual self.

  He got up.

  ‘Anyway, I’d better get going. Thanks for the tea. I’ll sort out that quote for you.’

  She nodded absent-mindedly and opened the door. Changing the guard, he thought, when a man she quite clearly knew appeared in the doorway. He was taller than Peter and stronger, like a bear. Square-jawed. The face was square too; hair short and blond like Peter’s. He had a small scar near one eye and didn’t seem terribly enthusiastic about bumping into another man on the front doorstep.

  ‘Morten,’ Kir said. ‘This is Peter. He came to take a look at the house.’

  Morten nodded.

  ‘Hi.’

  Peter nodded and turned to Kir.

  ‘I’ll get you that quote.’

  There was something in her eyes he couldn’t fathom and for a moment he was tempted to hang around until this Morten had finished his watch.

  ‘Great. See you later.’

  It sounded deliberately casual. He turned and caught a glimpse of Morten’s broad back as he stepped inside the house just before Kir closed the door.

  74

  KIR WAITED OUTSIDE Kasper’s house. Tension lay like
a fine layer of sweat on her skin. She repressed the meeting with Peter. This was about now; now was what she was good at.

  She had been in far more dangerous situations than this. She had hunted pirates. She had killed. She had handled firearms and done close combat. She wasn’t scared. She was fired up.

  While waiting, she took the time to analyse her own motives. With every fibre of her being, she wanted this man locked up and rendered harmless. Yes, she wanted to wipe that smug grin off his extremely irritating, evil face. He had maligned and humiliated her. But uppermost in her mind was her intention to stop him carrying out his dark deeds. She needed to make sure he wasn’t in a position to kill innocent children any more.

  She sat in her pickup parked some distance down the street from the grey bungalow. She was wearing camouflage clothing. It was getting dark and fortunately the moon was covered by clouds. A street lamp gave off a pale light, but apart from that the illumination was nothing to shout about.

  The house seemed to be empty. There was only a single lamp lit above the front door, otherwise it was dark. Morten had picked Kasper up and they had gone into town together. Everything had worked out perfectly.

  She carried only a few tools and a small, powerful halogen torch. Everything was in the pockets of her camouflage vest. A penknife in her trouser pocket was her only weapon.

  Carefully she opened the car door and stepped out. Behind windows she could see figures milling around, and the smell of fried food was borne through the air by the breeze. Family Denmark was hungry tonight. No one cared what was happening in the street outside.

  She darted around the back and found the rear entrance, hidden from view by the garage. The old Ruko lock was a cinch. A small click, a twist of the universal key and she was inside.

  She softly closed the door behind her and located her torch in her pocket. It wasn’t much bigger than a pen, but it sent a strong light into the nooks and crannies.

  She was in a back hall. There was nothing here, apart from coats and boots, so she opened the next door and found herself in the heart of the house, which wasn’t very big: a small, old-fashioned kitchen from the 1950s; a small living room with a corner sofa and a dining table and a desk in another corner. All very neat and devoid of interest.