Where was the garrotte? Where was the smoking gun she dreamed of presenting to Mark? What was she actually doing?
Determined, she continued to search. She went through drawers and cupboards and made sure she left everything looking untouched. But it was all dull, impersonal and predictable.
The house had no basement. So where could he hide his activities? The thought struck her that he might have a bolt-hole somewhere. A summer house, maybe, or a cottage in the forest, or another house he had access to.
Then she remembered the garage. She kept all her stuff in the garage. Kasper was a diver. Where did he store everything to do with his job?
She had just decided to examine the garage when she heard a car in the street outside. She quickly turned off her torch and held her breath, hoping it was someone visiting the neighbour, but it sounded ominously close. The engine was switched off. The car was right outside the bungalow.
She tiptoed into the living room. A figure was coming up the garden path. Was it Kasper? Perhaps his plans with Morten had fallen through. Kasper’s temper could have flared up and led to a row.
The bell rang and her heart skipped a beat. She waited as the seconds passed. Then the bell rang again, followed by fists beating on the door. She heard a voice she recognised:
‘Kasper? Open the door. Are you there?’
Frands. Kasper’s brother. He shouted through the letterbox:
‘We need to talk about the rent, Kasper!’
Then she heard a key being turned in the lock and the door opened with a creak. The light was turned on. In one single leap she was behind the door, just before he entered the living room and turned on the light there too. She heard his breathing close by and she could see him through the crack. He stood still for a moment, as if deciding what to do. Then he marched across to the desk she had just inspected. He pulled out the drawers, looking for something. Money, she guessed. Frands had obviously rented the house to his newly divorced brother.
If he turned around, he would see her. She couldn’t run the risk. She took a deep breath, thanked the Lord the carpet had a thick pile and dashed into the passage.
‘Kasper?’
He had heard her. She headed for the front door. She couldn’t get there fast enough.
‘What the . . . Come back!’
His roar followed her all the way into the street. She sprinted. Her legs went like pistons and she was grateful for her fitness and the poor street illumination. She tried to shake him off by darting in and out of the neighbouring gardens. His heavy footsteps followed. She came to a stop in a hedge deep in the residential area, where she curled up behind some bushes. She heard him poking around. Neighbours came out and turned on lights; voices buzzed angrily.
She waited. Nothing happened. Eventually the voices died down and the footsteps faded away. No police cars came hurtling down the street with their sirens blaring. No spotlights swept the area to catch the burglar. He had given up. Maybe he had a reason not to involve the police. Perhaps he was Kasper’s sidekick.
She heard a car driving away and squatted on the damp ground for a while until she judged it was safe to emerge from her hideout.
He might come back, but she hadn’t completed her mission yet. She tiptoed back, with several glances over her shoulder and her ears pricked. The house now lay in darkness. Frands’s car was gone. She opened the door to the garage, which didn’t look all that different to her own. Diving gear hung from pegs or lay neatly folded on shelves. There was no room for the car. It was in the carport.
She shone the halogen torch into every corner, but found only what she would have expected to find: wetsuits, drysuits, boxes of flippers and snorkels and weighted belts. All sorts of measuring devices – he appeared to be just as much of a gear nerd as she was – coils of rope, masks, a harpoon, various knives. Murder weapons, yes, if that was what your mind was set on, but no worse than what she had lying around.
On the surface they were just a diver’s ordinary working tools. However, she was nothing if not dogged and she started searching with a grim determination. Every box was emptied and the contents put back in the same places. She felt every shelf. She turned diving suits inside out. Examined every last nook and cranny.
Nothing.
She was about to give up and leave the place without the evidence she had come for when she heard yet another car. This time it was Morten giving Kasper a lift home.
She had to get out. She looked around. She was loath to leave this place empty-handed. Then she spotted the shelf above the door. She hadn’t got that far yet. There was a bundle up there. She reached up, grabbed it and a plastic bag fell out. She opened it. She found a roll of gaffer tape, a coil of rope and some black clothing: a black tracksuit and a pair of dark plimsolls, size 45. But there was also something else. She unfolded the triangular piece of cloth and turned it over this way and that, trying to work out what it was for. Then she found the holes. Two for the eyes, a wider one for the mouth. It was an executioner’s hood.
With her heart in her mouth, she quickly stuffed the cloth into the bag, hearing Morten’s car go off down the road and Kasper let himself into the house. Then she slipped out through the garage door and walked down the garden path. She reached the street at the same time as a light was turned on inside the house, and she strolled calmly back to her pickup.
75
MØGELKJÆR STATE PRISON lay near Juelsminde in beautiful surroundings. A few years ago the women’s prison in Amdrup outside Odder had been closed and the women were transferred here. There were eight prisoners in the women’s ward, and for some reason, Mark found it depressing. Perhaps he was sexist. But in his view certain combinations didn’t work. It was just like food. You wouldn’t put mayonnaise on a roast pork sandwich, nor would you serve herring with red cabbage. It was like that with women and prison. They didn’t go together.
And yet here they were, the women criminals. And one of them was Lone Byriel, Lise Werge’s sister.
He skimmed her papers and saw the attached photographs, one full face and one profile. Without make-up and with a blank expression, Lone Byriel looked just like any other woman in her late forties. But her story was very far from ordinary.
As he read the file, it was hard not to admire Lone Byriel’s initiative. There was no doubt her marriage to Laust Byriel had not been a walk in the park. They had two – now adult – children together, but alcoholism and violence had entered the picture right from the start. Laust Byriel had two convictions for assault but had nevertheless managed to charm Lone into marrying him, and then the spiral of violence grew and the marriage took a nose-dive, hardly before it had begun. Lone had stayed for the sake of the children and taken the beatings. But one day when Laust was asleep in a comatose stupor on the sofa after a particularly violent episode, she had looked at him and made up her mind. In court, she had explained that killing him was her only way out. She knew he would stalk her and that she would be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life if she merely walked out on him.
She worked in a solicitor’s office and was perfectly aware of the punishment she could expect. But she had calculated that the children were old enough to take care of themselves and was hoping for a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder – in light of her husband’s threats, which she had recorded on tape, and the photographs she had taken of herself after the worst beatings.
So it was premeditated, but also in self-defence, the day she placed a pillow over his face, took the sharpest kitchen knife she could find and plunged it into his chest over and over and over again.
As she had said in court:
‘There was no room for half-measures.’
The judge was a woman and the jurors accepted her explanation. But she had to be punished, so she got five years in prison for manslaughter.
So far, she had served two and was likely to be released on probation within the next six months.
When the door opened and a woman entered, Mark was al
most certain he had made a mistake and that he was at a board meeting in a major company. He recognised nothing of the woman in the photograph. Except, possibly, the short neck – which on her was in no way reminiscent of a tortoise – and the guarded eyes. Everything else was different. She was wearing a light grey skirt that reached just above her knees with a matching tailored jacket and a pink blouse, and she could have been Anna Bagger on one of her super-efficient days with immaculate make-up. High heels clicked rhythmically across the floor as they came towards him and she held out her hand like a world leader receiving a colleague on an official state visit.
‘Grenå Police?’ Lone Byriel said, raising her brows mockingly. ‘It’s not every day we have such distinguished visitors.’
Mark nodded to indicate they should sit down. There was nothing world-leader-like about the decor, which had institution written all over the functional furniture and the hard-wearing upholstery.
‘I’ve come about your sister, Lise Werge.’
Mark noticed her eyes showed no signs of fear. There was only businesslike interest.
‘What about Lise?’
‘She’s disappeared. We think she was attacked in her flat.’
‘Oh, no.’
They were the right words, but they were not articulated in the right way.
‘You don’t seem surprised,’ Mark said.
Lone drummed her long fingernails on her cheek and looked at him.
‘That’s because I’m not.’
Mark leaned forward.
‘Care to tell me why?’
She sat considering her answer while she fiddled with the sleeve of her jacket.
‘I might as well tell you. You’re going to find out anyway.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘My brother. Our brother,’ she corrected herself.
‘I saw a photo of you as children in Lise’s flat.’
She laughed.
‘I’m surprised she has that on display. I wouldn’t exactly say that she and Simon are close.’
‘What can you tell me about Simon?’
She crossed her legs modestly and smoothed her skirt.
‘I’m afraid you’ll think we’re a family of criminals when you hear this. But if I’m frank, Simon is different. He has what they call a borderline personality disorder. He’s been locked up for the last seventeen years.’
Mark felt the adrenaline pump restless energy around his bloodstream. Seventeen years. He thought of the age of the teenage victims.
‘Locked up for what?’
She flung out her hand. This time it resembled more a helpless gesture than anything else.
‘He killed his heavily pregnant girlfriend. That’s the short version,’ she added.
‘And the long one?’
‘The long one is that she was infected with something nasty and that the child died inside her, and that triggered something in Simon.’
‘How did she die?’
‘You’d better check the files. I wasn’t there.’
Mark thought about the genes going back to the Cardinal. It was as if this family had played by its own rules right from the start. The thought of some kind of moral inbreeding wasn’t far away. Was it possible for an entire family to encapsulate itself and live according to its own laws?
‘What about Lise?’ he asked. ‘Could Simon have abducted her?’
Lone pursed her lips and shook her head slightly from side to side as if to suggest that she wasn’t sure about Lise and Simon.
‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘He’s unlikely to have forgotten that she told the truth in court.’
‘And the truth was?’
Pause. She studied her nails.
‘You’d better read up on that as well.’
He didn’t know how to shock her into giving him more. She didn’t seem like someone who had strong feelings for her brother or her sister. But perhaps she didn’t have strong feelings in general. ‘What’s Lise like?’
Now she smiled. It was a cool, measured smile, like a dental assistant’s or an indulgent consultant’s. He’d met more of those than he cared to remember.
‘Lise’s just like the rest of us. Only she doesn’t know it.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Her nails tapped on the table. Lone smiled, but only to herself.
‘She loves to polish her little halo. But she’s no better than the rest of us.’
‘Does she visit you?’
‘Oh yes. She loves it. She always brings me books.’
‘When was she last here?’
‘Only a couple of days ago.’
‘Did she want anything in particular?’
Mark tried to circumvent the businesslike façade, but no matter which approach he took, he hit a brick wall. And now she was casually rubbing the corners of her mouth with a finger.
‘The silly little creature was rattled by something she’d read in the newspaper. She wanted to know if I knew anything about it.’
‘About what?’
‘About the murder of that girl, of course. It happened close to Mum’s house, and then the method . . .’
‘What about it?’
She pursed her lips again and picked a piece of fluff off her skirt.
‘Nothing. I told her to forget it.’
‘Forget what?’
She looked at him with wide-open eyes.
‘Forget that Simon might have anything to do with it, obviously.’
76
POUL GERRICK LIVED modestly in a newish terraced house in Lystrup.
The retired doctor who opened the door was an elderly gentleman in slippers with tousled morning hair. Peter introduced himself.
‘How can I help you?’
‘I live in Djursland. I was the last person to see Melissa Brask alive.’
The doctor nodded.
‘Terrible tragedy. I knew her mother.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Peter said. ‘Because, years ago, you used to be the family’s GP.’
Poul Gerrick frowned.
‘Precisely, years ago. What’s this all about?’
The tone was not one of hostility, only a friendly curiosity. Peter seized the moment.
‘Childhood illnesses.’
‘What about them?’
‘I’m interested in the MMR vaccine and a measles outbreak which infected two babies at Elev Nursery many years ago.’
Poul Gerrick stood still for a couple of seconds, absorbedly staring at a point to the right of Peter. Then he said:
‘Why would that old story have anything to do with Melissa?’
Peter explained.
‘I believe Melissa’s death was some kind of revenge for what happened back then.’
He looked at the elderly man and wondered if this was the point where he would slam the door in his face, or cite patient confidentiality as the reason he could not discuss his patients, living or dead. But instead, Poul Gerrick said:
‘You’d better come inside.’
Peter followed him into a study with an old-fashioned gentleman’s desk and a couple of narrow armchairs either side of a small round table. The shelves were packed with books and a glance revealed most of them to be about medicine.
Poul Gerrick invited Peter to sit down in an armchair. He sat down in the other.
He gestured with his hand.
‘This is my den. If the world is against me – and this happens more and more often, even now, without any patients – I prefer to read my books here.’
‘You make it sound as though patients were a chore.’
‘Don’t get me wrong. On the whole, helping my fellow human beings was a privilege.’
He looked at Peter, as if trying to assess whether he would understand what was about to come next.
‘Only I discovered that not everyone wanted to be helped.’
‘Such as Alice Brask and Bella Albertsen?’
The reaction was hesitant.
‘You are
of course aware that I have a duty of confidentiality.’
‘I apologise.’
He could have bitten his tongue. They sat for a while in silence.
‘Actually the police should be here rather than me,’ Peter said eventually.
‘Perhaps,’ the doctor said. ‘But, as it happens, you’re here.’
Peter leaned forward in his chair.
‘There’s a killer out there. Killing young people. People whose mothers didn’t have them vaccinated. They infected the killer’s child. Does that make sense?’
Poul Gerrick stared at him. The movement of his lips suggested he was searching for the right words.
‘What makes you think that was how it was?’
Peter carefully outlined the case. The doctor looked as if he understood. At last he nodded.
‘You may be right. It sounds rather far-fetched, of course, but yes, something happened back then, which taken to extremes might conceivably have triggered a thirst for revenge.’
He shook his head, like someone who has given up trying to understand the world.
‘I’m retired now and I can say whatever I like. No one ever really asked me about the specific circumstances.’
‘I thought the local Health Authority was involved,’ Peter said. ‘I thought the whole thing was quite official back then.’
‘They spoke to me for two seconds and closed the case in three. It was bad publicity for the council and there was a council election the following month. It never made it to the press.’
‘But they closed the nursery?’
Poul Gerrick snorted.
‘Renovation was the official reason. No one cared a jot about the truth.’
‘I suppose nothing illegal had happened, had it?’
‘Lots of things aren’t illegal. But they can still be dangerous.’
‘Did anyone die?’
Poul Gerrick shook his head slowly.
‘But the actions of the parents who had started the spread of the infection were deeply irresponsible.’
Dead Souls Page 33