Dead Souls

by Elsebeth Egholm

  Peter asked:

  ‘So if no one died, then what did happen?’

  The doctor crossed his arms and bobbed a slipper-clad foot up and down.

  ‘In rare cases measles can lead to nasty complications. One of the children got encephalitis and another suffered permanent hearing damage.’

  ‘What happened to those children?’

  ‘The child with encephalitis developed very slowly and had permanent learning disabilities.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘At the time we assessed that she would never get beyond the mental age of a five-year-old. I don’t know what happened later. The parents eventually moved away. The other escaped with her mental faculties intact, fortunately, but lost hearing in both ears.’

  ‘What were the names of the parents of the first child?’

  ‘Do you seriously believe they’re the ones killing other people’s children now? After all these years?’

  ‘I think it’s a possibility. I think they feel they’re punishing the parents by killing their children.’

  The doctor looked unconvinced.

  ‘But the girl didn’t die. And why wait until now, after so many years?’

  It was a question that had also occupied Peter.

  ‘Caring for a disabled child is hard work,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the killer has been waiting, planning the murders all the years he was looking after his sick daughter.’

  ‘You’re suggesting she’s dead now,’ the doctor said.

  Peter nodded.

  ‘She might have died recently. But for the killer, she died many years ago. The way I see it, it’s the only explanation for the seventeen-year delay.’

  The doctor studied his hands in his lap. Then he raised his head.

  ‘The father was absolutely distraught. As well as angry, obviously. The mother reacted differently. She retreated inside herself. They were divorced a couple of years later, that I do know.’

  He looked at Peter.

  ‘The parents agreed that the father would have custody.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives now?’

  The doctor shook his head.

  ‘Would you at least give me his name?’

  Time passed. Peter could see the contradictory feelings at work in Poul Gerrick’s face: consideration for patient confidentiality and the Hippocratic oath and everything he had worked for and believed in. And consideration for the young lives that had been taken and those it might still be possible to save.

  Finally, he nodded. He opened his mouth and closed it again several times, sighed, and looked out of the window before standing up and letting in the fresh air. He deliberated further, while inhaling and exhaling deeply. Then he turned to Peter and gave him what he had come for. Due process. Followed by a verdict.

  On his way home Kir’s words kept churning around in his head. He was convinced that this was what it was all about: one man who found it acceptable to appoint himself police, judge and – ultimately – executioner.

  77

  IT WAS A beautiful day and the weather was perfect for a dive.

  Kir stood by the gunwale and let the breeze catch her hair and lash her skin with salt. She listened to it and the steady chug-chug of the engine and could make out Skipper’s figure in the wheelhouse, as seagulls followed them over the last stretch out of the harbour.

  She studied Morten, who was by her side. He stood with an inscrutable expression on his face as he looked towards the coast. Here, in the clear light of day, she had a little twinge of doubt in her stomach. What were they actually doing?

  They had both been high on adrenaline when they met at her house after the events of Saturday night. She had shown him what she had found and had finally managed to convince him, even though it had been an uphill struggle. Morten was a man who was prepared to give the accused the full benefit of the doubt, she sensed that plainly, and she respected him for it. But the bag with the executioner’s hood and the other objects told their own story, even he had to admit that.

  Kasper was guilty. And his brother Frands might be guilty too. Brothers working in concert had been seen before. Not least in Kir’s own family, where her two brothers had stepped outside the law and plunged into the abyss together.

  ‘But why?’ Morten had continued to insist. ‘Why would they do it? Kill teenagers like that . . .’

  Kir had turned it over in her mind yet again, all too aware that her reply was influenced by her personal experiences.

  ‘To demonstrate their power.’

  Frands and Kasper were both macho types who liked to flex their muscles. Kasper beat his ex-wife and had made obscene suggestions to a female colleague. Frands had been condescending towards her, to put it mildly, while they were struggling with Melissa’s body. She elaborated.

  ‘To demonstrate the power they can’t show in their everyday life when they have to work with others.’

  Morten had taken a sip of his wine and said:

  ‘And they get their kicks by showing up in the eye of the storm when the bodies are found?’

  Kir nodded.

  ‘It’s been seen before.’

  ‘But why teenagers?’

  Again Kir had her answer ready.

  ‘Jealousy, perhaps. Because they have a future.’

  ‘And that is what has to be destroyed?’

  ‘Something along those lines, I think.’

  They had been sitting on her sofa. It was such a long time since she’d had a man in her bed. I could ask him to stay, she thought. I could have him tonight.

  Nevertheless, she dismissed the thought. It was too complicated.

  ‘Perhaps it’s tied up with his divorce,’ Morten had then suggested. ‘And him not living with his children any more.’

  Kir had heard and seen enough twisted motives to wallpaper an entire railway station. People did crazy, stupid, terrible things for reasons very few would understand. She was ready to buy his explanation.

  ‘Kasper clearly has an urge to play executioner. Jeanette says so herself.’

  ‘But then why doesn’t he kill her and the kids?’ said good-natured Morten, playing devil’s advocate.

  ‘Perhaps he will. Later,’ Kir said after further reflection. ‘When he’s had enough practice.’

  It had grown late and they had drunk some more wine. Morten had reckoned she should call Mark Bille immediately and brief him on this latest development in the case, but she held back. Partly because it didn’t look good that she had broken the law to secure evidence. And partly because she knew perfectly well that even a bag with an executioner’s hood, some rope and a roll of gaffer tape wasn’t enough. More concrete evidence was needed.

  Early the next morning Svend Skipper had called to say that he was up for a trip to Læsø if she was still on. He had talked to the other fishermen and everyone agreed it was worth taking advantage of the opportunity to dive down to have a look at the Marie.

  ‘For everyone’s sake,’ as Svend had put it on the telephone. ‘And the weather is perfect.’

  And so here they were, on what was effectively their own diving ship. They had lugged their gear on board in next to no time, and she had given Svend the location of the Marie forty-five metres down. For extra security they had towed a rubber dinghy with an outboard motor, which they could dive from. It couldn’t go wrong.

  She gazed at the waves and the foam crests rising with calm regularity, as if on a conveyor belt. All of a sudden she couldn’t rid herself of the notion that she had acted hastily. Yes, she had found a bag of circumstantial evidence, yes, Kasper was a violent, unpleasant man, and yes, there were grounds for taking a look at the boat on the sea bed. But she had no authority to back her up. She had exceeded her powers and ignored everything she had been trained to respect. She was in overdrive, pushed there by a frustrated love life and enforced idleness after her visit to the pressure chamber, she knew that. And with Morten standing so close to her she felt uneasy, but she was painfully aware that this wasn’t hi
s fault. The fault was entirely hers. She had got them into this mess. She had to try to finish this in the best possible way, preferably with useful evidence to show for it, then get it back to dry land and get Morten out of her life.

  ‘Are we going down together?’ Morten asked.

  She had thought it through. There were pros and cons with every option because the reality was that they were embarking on an unauthorised dive, which would have horrified her colleagues in Kongsøre if they had known.

  ‘I think you should stay up here,’ she said. ‘Be on standby with the line so you know if I’m in trouble.’

  ‘OK.’

  He was as compliant as always. She was the expert. She had much more training under her belt than he had. But she had also just been treated for nitrogen narcosis and was still on sick leave.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to go down?’ he offered as she had expected. ‘I’d be happy to.’

  She shook her head. They both knew that the offer was just for form’s sake. He hadn’t been trained to dive so deep or so quickly.

  ‘I’ll go down,’ she said decisively.

  ‘OK.’

  He pushed himself away from the gunwale. ‘Right, shall we get cracking?’

  They rigged up the equipment. Kir turned all her attention to checking her instruments. Morten filled her diving tanks with compressed air from the compressor they had brought with them, mounted on the deckhouse.

  Everything was done by the book. After sailing for an hour and a half, Skipper had found the location and they could see the small orange buoy with the rope attached to the sunken fishing boat. Kir got into her drysuit. Once again, she checked the air pressure and all the measuring devices. Everything was in order. Morten was on standby in full diving gear. They could communicate through the line using Morse code, and in an emergency, he was suitably equipped to jump straight in. The weather was as it should be.

  She looked down into the water. On the surface it was a perfect diving day. She met Morten’s gaze and he gave her a thumbs-up. Images flickered inside her mind from her last dive, when she had lost control. She pushed them aside. It wasn’t going to happen this time. Everything would be all right. Why shouldn’t it be?

  She signalled to Morten and let herself fall backwards into the sea.

  78

  THE FACEBOOK MESSAGE shattered all of Peter’s plans. It was clear and ultra-brief:

  2 p.m. Grenå Cotton Mill, Magnus wrote.

  Yes! His fist shot up in a gesture of victory. Kaj looked on in astonishment as Peter danced a jig.

  He glanced at his watch. Shit! It was ten minutes past two. He quickly donned his jacket, thought about leaving the dog at home, then ended up taking him.

  ‘Time to go, Kaj.’

  He put on his boots and let the dog into the drive. The dog had proved useful before. Magnus was a young man who knew how to play hide and seek. Peter didn’t expect major problems tracking him down since Magnus had given him the time and location, but you could never tell. For the same reason he made sure his gun was in place in the glove compartment. He was already running late. He hoped he wouldn’t be too late, but the risk was there. What he would find inside the old mill if he was late didn’t bear thinking about.

  He started the car and drove much too fast to Gjerrild and onwards to Grenå, to the city centre and over a roundabout. After a kilometre, on his left, he passed the big Kvickly supermarket where Nils had worked before he had ended up being garrotted and later dumped at the bottom of the sea.

  The mill stood opposite Kvickly. It was a derelict red-brick factory that hadn’t been in use for a long time. A giant chimney reached high into the sky and most of the windows had been smashed. There was something oppressive about the place, big as it was. Peter had never been inside.

  Why had Magnus chosen the mill of all places, so close to where Nils had worked? It didn’t fit in with his strategy of living in shelters and camping outdoors. Perhaps he had been forced to change his plans since Ea-Louise had joined him. Or had the killer already captured Magnus and was the Facebook message not written by him at all? It was a possibility he couldn’t afford to ignore.

  He stuffed the gun in his inside pocket and grabbed a handful of ammunition, which he tipped into his jacket pocket where he always kept his Stanley knife. He looked at his watch. He was thirty minutes late.

  He let the dog out and carefully made his way around the building.

  Kvickly was closed on Sunday afternoon, so the car park was deserted. There wasn’t a soul to be seen, yet he soon had a sense he was being watched.

  He began his circle to the right of the building. It was impossible to see in through the high-up windows and the inside of the factory lay in shadow. There was a fence all the way around the perimeter to keep out trespassers. But there were holes in the fence, probably made by bored local youngsters on a Friday evening. Peter sent the dog through one of the holes and followed after him. From there it wasn’t far to a tumble-down gate which led into a yard that echoed with emptiness.

  Once there had been a beating heart inside the factory, with workers from Grenå and the surrounding district operating the different types of loom and the boiler rooms. The chimney had spewed gigantic smoke plumes across the town and the sea, and the smoke was a sign that there was life and work to be had in the area.

  Peter and Kaj crossed the yard and found a peeling green door, which wasn’t locked. Carefully they stepped into the darkness and the somewhat cooler air, which smelled stale and fusty, mixed with the stench of oil. After an ante-room and a couple of offices they came into a large hall with iron pillars and pipes going up two floors.

  Peter stopped and listened. No Magnus. Occasional drips from a leaking pipe pricked holes into the silence.

  ‘Magnus?’

  He shouted into the empty space. The echo rebounded off the walls and from under the iron staircase.

  The reply came from nowhere.

  Pee-ooww!

  The bullet danced between the iron pipes and the metal steps. The shock spread through his body as he instinctively threw himself to the concrete floor, scraping his jacket as he did so. The first shot was quickly followed by two more:

  Pee-ooww. Pee-ooww.

  Whoever was shooting either missed the dog or he wasn’t the intended target. Kaj crept behind him and lay flat on the ground at his master’s command. Peter’s brain went into overdrive as he tried to get his bearings and suss what was happening. He pulled out his gun and flicked off the safety catch. This was an ambush. He had walked into a trap and it wasn’t Magnus who had set it.

  He saw a shadow flit between the landings. Then another. There were two of them. At least. Judging by the noise, they were armed with powerful handguns.

  This had nothing to do with Magnus or the killer. This was about Peter.

  His thoughts were in a whirl. He wanted to kick himself for being so naive, but there was no time to be angry. He strained to get an overview of the situation. What weapons did he have? A small, fairly useless pistol and a Stanley knife in his pocket. And if he had to include absolutely everything: a killer dog, or at least on the face of it.

  He would have to be resourceful.

  ‘Where’s Magnus?’

  He hurled the question into the hall in the hope of opening communication. But the answer came in the form of yet another bullet, which ricocheted between the metal pillars, swirling up dust only a metre away from him, and the dog started to bristle and growl. Bollocks! He had thought this was all about finding Magnus, but Miriam and Bella were playing a different game. Or they were playing two games simultaneously. This was exactly what he had feared: they had other agendas. Outdoing each other to manipulate him. They had sold him to his enemies.

  ‘Rico!’ he called out. ‘Can we do a deal?’

  A long time passed. The silence resonated like the draught through the old factory building. Then came a hoarse voice:

  ‘You haven’t got anything to sell, Peter.
Unless you’re offering us your head on a platter in exchange for a bullet.’

  ‘Grimme got what he deserved. It was an old feud,’ Peter shouted. ‘It had nothing to do with you.’

  ‘You know I don’t calculate in the way you do,’ Rico said, sounding closer now. ‘And Grimme wasn’t your only victim.’

  ‘Grimme or Grimme’s henchmen. Same thing. And they would have loved to see the back of you – preferably with a bullet in it,’ Peter answered. ‘You’ve only benefited from Grimme’s death. Think about it!’

  ‘You’re a dead man, Peter. We haven’t forgotten Gumbo either.’

  ‘Gumbo was small fry.’

  ‘But he was our small fry.’

  They stepped forward, one after the other. Peter heard the metal construction above him groan. There were three of them. They had the usual biker gang attributes: big, bulging bodies, probably pumped full of anabolic steroids and artificial muscle. They had strength and they had the upper hand. But in close combat they would be slow.

  However, being slow wouldn’t matter much if there were three against one, barring a miracle.

  ‘I don’t have any beef with you lot any more,’ Peter said. ‘There’s no need for this.’

  ‘I think you’re forgetting that we have a beef with you,’ Rico said in his falsetto voice, the result of excessive use of performance-enhancing drugs in the fitness centre.

  ‘Don’t go there,’ Peter said. ‘If you try anything, the whole police force will be down on you like a ton of bricks. And you know, it’s one thing beating up a gang member, but quite another dealing with someone like me.’

  He tilted his head back to see where the three of them were. But they had spread out above him. There was no point wasting bullets.

  ‘Use your napper, Peter. That’s why we’re here today,’ Rico sang in his falsetto. ‘It won’t be us who mash you to pulp in the blender. It’ll be him. Your garrotte villain.’

  They had planned it carefully, he had to admit. That was why he had to be tricked into going elsewhere. If they simply took him out in his house, the police would be after them in no time at all because they knew who Peter’s enemies were. Now someone else would get the blame and they could walk free.