Dead Souls

by Elsebeth Egholm

  ‘How much, Rico? What’s in it for Miriam and Bella?’

  ‘Keep them out of this, Peter,’ the answer rang out, above him now. He could make out a shadow on the wall. ‘They’re in a different league from you.’

  He couldn’t deny that. Their combined efforts to set him up were worthy of Machiavelli. Miriam was the brain, Bella the accomplice, as always. The Chief and the Indian.

  He heard footsteps on the iron stairs. One by one, they came down with their weapons at the ready. The dog growled.

  At least he had one advantage. They didn’t expect him to come armed. He took aim.

  Thwack!

  The gun wasn’t up to much, but he hit one of them in the groin, and the guy spun around on the bottom step.

  Thwack!

  Then a shot to the shoulder and the massive guy collapsed with a whimper.

  One down. Two to go. The second biker had time to take aim.

  Pee-ooww!

  Peter felt the bullet catch him in the side. He staggered and fell. The dog leapt up and stood whining over him. Rico called out:

  ‘Throw your weapon over here. Nice and easy now.’

  Peter looked up. There was a gun pointing at him on the end of Rico’s outstretched arm.

  ‘Fucking do it! Or I’ll shoot your dog!’

  79

  MARK RACKED HIS brain.

  Police officers and CSOs had searched the overgrown house in the forest without finding anything useful. They had discovered evidence in the attic that suggested someone had been living there recently, but of course old Alma had denied that Simon had been there. They had turned every piece of furniture and cupboard upside down, but now he was gone. Old Alma had made it quite clear that she was not best pleased.

  ‘Treat us like a bunch of criminals, they do,’ she had snorted, shifting her great weight across the kitchen. ‘Come here thinking they can do whatever they like!’

  They had brought a search warrant. From that point of view she didn’t have a leg to stand on. Still, Mark had a sense she was hiding something. And he had a hunch that some object here would point him in the right direction and link the two cases: the old bones in the box and the new garrotte investigation.

  He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. But there had to be something to do with the family and its bizarre history. A testament of some kind. A manifesto, perhaps. Or just a pile of photographs, letters or something that could shed light on the Cardinal and his descendants.

  There was a suspicious absence of documents in the Woodland Snail. It was as if everything had been hoovered up or someone had taken a pile of paper and burned it in the garden outside.

  He concluded he would have to look elsewhere, go back to Lisa’s flat.

  He thought about the family while driving to the apartment blocks on the outskirts of Grenå. All the way back to the Cardinal. He hoped Lise was different, that she wasn’t quite like the rest of her family.

  He had read the seventeen-year-old files of the case against Simon. Lise had undoubtedly believed she was doing Simon a favour by describing him in court as mentally abnormal.

  She had told the court of several threatening, dangerous episodes when she had feared for her own life or those of others with Simon around. She had described a specific incident in her childhood when Simon had forced her onto their grandfather’s chair, shackled her and put an iron ring around her neck. Even though her sister and a friend had been present during the game. Neither of the children had apparently had the courage to intervene.

  ‘He’s not normal,’ she had said in court. ‘A normal person would never do this. And he’s always been like that. I’ve always been scared of him.’

  It had clearly taken guts to speak out. But Mark guessed that Lise had taken a gamble: if she didn’t tell the truth, her life would continue to be in peril. If she was lucky, however, Simon would be locked up in an institution. It would give her breathing space. And that was what Lise Werge had had. A seventeen-year-long breathing space.

  Her picture of a brother with a personality disorder hadn’t been supported by her mother and sister, who presented Simon as a normal young man who’d had a breakdown when his heavily pregnant girlfriend fell ill and the child died in her womb. He had killed her by stabbing her in the stomach – and in the foetus – over and over and over again. Alma and Lone had no recollection of the childhood incident which Lise had described and both of them maintained she was distorting the truth.

  ‘Lise has always had a lively imagination,’ her mother said.

  But eventually Lise’s statement was backed up by a mental health assessment carried out by doctors and Simon was declared so dangerous that he had to be institutionalised. He was diagnosed as having a borderline personality disorder. He wouldn’t be sent to a mental health hospital, nor would he be in an ordinary prison. He ended up at a facility for highly dangerous inmates.

  Contrary to what Lise might have expected, Simon was not at all grateful for having avoided prison. It was as if being labelled with this diagnosis was a far worse punishment than an ordinary custodial sentence could ever be. He reacted with aggression.

  ‘You’re going to regret that, Sis!’

  That was what he had shouted in court after the verdict had been pronounced. It was seventeen years ago now. Why no one had informed Lise about his release was beyond Mark’s comprehension. However, this system was so fallible. Simon was regarded as harmless now, after all those years. And no one suspected that a harmless person would want to take revenge.

  Mark got the caretaker to let him back into the block. Lise’s flat was now a crime scene and the door had been sealed. The CSOs had been there with their various powders and tools that could reveal more blood traces, DNA material and fingerprints. They were looking for something, anything. If they couldn’t find it in Alma’s house, they might be able to find it here – in the home of the daughter who wasn’t quite like the rest of her family.

  Mark pushed open the door to the flat. Everything had been left as it was when he was here last, plus the CSOs’ trademarks: the bloodstains on the floor were circled with chalk and there was pink powder on all the surfaces and handles where they had hoped to find fingerprints. The mess was the same. The mirror in the hallway was still cracked and the broken pieces lay spread across the floor. Lise’s two framed family photographs were still standing with their backs to them.

  Mark stopped for a moment in the middle of the living room. He tried thinking, not like a CSO, but like a detective looking for hidden treasure. If Lise had had cause to hide something, where would she have put it?

  He started searching systematically, including the places where the CSOs had already been. Nothing.

  Then he started thinking laterally. If there was something to be found, Lise might have hidden it in an obvious place, such as a folder or a case, or in a desk drawer – or she might have done the exact opposite and been very crafty.

  He had checked all the cupboards and the space under the bed. He had squeezed the pillows and mattresses. He had turned her duvet, which still smelled of sleep, inside out. He had been through the bathroom cabinet, looked behind the cistern and even patted down the shower curtain. He had turned over every rug and knocked on the floor for hollow sounds. He had taken every picture off the wall and subjected them to the same scrutiny, without finding anything.

  Now he was in the kitchen. It was small and horseshoe-shaped. The fridge was almost empty. The kitchen cupboards were easy to search because Lise didn’t have much china. She appeared to live a simple, almost ascetic life.

  Mark looked up. The ceiling was white plasterboard. He had dismantled the lamp, again to no avail. He had run his hand along the top of every cupboard. The oven! He opened it, but it was empty. He straightened up and his gaze travelled from wall to wall. Then it stopped.

  The freezer.

  There was a small freezer on top of the fridge, just big enough for a plastic container and a bag of bread rolls.


  He opened it. And that was exactly what he found: two plastic boxes and two bags of bread.

  He took out the two boxes. One contained the remains of something that could have been bolognese sauce. The other contained an exercise book.

  He took it out carefully. It crackled with the cold, but the box had protected it and there was no ice on it. The handwriting was slanted, neat, bordering on punctilious. Dictated by Alma. Written by Lone, it said on the cover. Nothing else. He opened the first page, terrified that it would crumble into frosty powder. He read the first sentence and knew instantly that he had struck gold:

  Some families have a talent for playing music. Others for baking or cooking or gardening. In our family we have a very special talent. We have a talent for killing.

  80

  KIR DIVED TOWARDS the bottom. At once she felt the cold sea enclose itself around her like an icy glove. As always, visibility was poor, but it was better than the day she was last here. She encountered fish and tiny particles on her way through the muddy, grey-blue water as she followed the rope down to the wreck.

  Her body reacted by resisting. She was demanding a lot from it, she knew that. It was only a few days ago that it had protested so vigorously she had barely survived. Now what? it screamed when she pushed it on a run or lifted weights. Leave me alone. Let me rest.

  She felt the pressure in her ears and her whole head, as if she was about to explode, but she continued downwards. She had to. This was about Jens Bådsmand, Simon and Nils. And their families. They had a right to know what had happened.

  On reaching the wreck, she struggled to get her bearings at first. Which end was the stern and where was the bow? She swam into lines and hooks, and there were also remnants of the wreck protruding from the seabed. This was seriously dangerous, she knew, yet still she carried on.

  She was round by the port side when she realised that something was wrong. It was as if she couldn’t breathe properly. Even staying still in the water made her breathless. She tried to ignore it by concentrating on the hull of the boat, but then her heart started to race. She was hyperventilating, even though she was doing everything she could to calm herself down. What was happening to her? This was not good at all.

  Her anxiety continued to grow. Perhaps the events of the last few days were getting on top of her: the near fatal dive and the nerve-racking evening when she had searched Kasper’s house.

  She could usually handle stress. She could usually talk herself down and get her pulse under control. But not this time. She was in deep shit here.

  She stared through the muddy water to get a proper look at the boat and made a final attempt to finish the job when suddenly her eyes started flickering. It was like looking into a screen that was going blank.

  I have to get up now. She signalled by pulling the line to Morten, but received no response. Good-natured, solid Morten, who had sat on her sofa trying to defend Kasper until it was obvious that he was beyond defending. Slow, steady Morten, who couldn’t take the pace when they went running and invariably ended up making the coffee.

  What the hell was he doing? Couldn’t he feel her pulling the line? That had to be the explanation. She had almost no strength left now.

  And still she kept fighting. She kicked her way up, knowing full well she risked bursting her lungs by ascending too quickly. What had gone wrong? She had checked her equipment as she always did. Morten had filled the oxygen tanks. They were both professionals.

  She yanked the line once more, but felt all alone in the world. The sea was sucking the air and the life out of her. She tugged frantically at the line, but could feel her strength fading. Everything was dark. She couldn’t make out the light above. The cold penetrated her bones and paralysed her.

  She knew she was going to die.

  81

  PETER FELT THE freezing cold concrete beneath him. His thoughts throbbed in time with his pulse. Miriam and Bella had set him up. They were in cahoots. They had used Magnus’s disappearance to bait the trap. What did they get out of it? Peace, would be his guess. Miriam and Lulu already lived at the mercy of the biker gang, and they owed them protection money. Bella would probably be let off her debt to Gumbo and she had paid Peter with sex that she had wanted more than he had. Shit. While he was getting a taste of concrete, Magnus was almost certainly safe and sound somewhere, he was fairly sure of that. After all, they wouldn’t gamble with the boy’s life, would they?

  ‘Chuck your pistol over here,’ Rico repeated. ‘Now!’

  The pain from his flesh wound went from being distant to unbearable. Peter gritted his teeth and picked up the gun with two fingers. Then he threw it with a clatter across the floor towards Rico’s boot-clad feet, now firmly planted five metres away from him.

  ‘Get up.’

  He did as he was told, but nearly fainted from the effort. Kaj whimpered, crept forward to meet him and licked his hand. He wished he hadn’t brought the dog. He wished he hadn’t come.

  Rico gestured with a hand to his henchman.

  ‘Search him.’

  The thug came over. The dog growled.

  ‘Stupid mutt. Shut up!’

  He directed a kick at Kaj. Peter saw what was going to happen. He also saw that he could do nothing to stop it.

  ‘Sit, Kaj!’

  But Kaj interpreted the kick as an attack on his owner. He rocked back on his haunches and leapt at the thug’s throat.

  ‘Nooo! Kaj!’

  The weight of the dog hit the man in the chest and sent him tumbling to the floor. A shot sounded as Peter kicked the hand holding the weapon. Kaj landed on top of the thug with a yelp. Blood mixed with blood. Peter’s anger gave him strength. He wanted to rip the heart out of the man who had shot his dog. But before he could react, two gigantic hands closed around his throat.

  Rico’s hands tightened from behind. The enormous thug on the floor had got up and was pointing his gun at him. Peter would be a dead man if he was hit again. He leaned back into Rico and lashed out with a boot at the thug, smashing it into his genital area. The gun flew out of his hands and he sank to his knees like a felled ox next to the dog.

  Rico squeezed harder. Peter rounded his shoulders and pumped up his neck to resist the pressure. Rico tightened his grip still further. Peter’s field of vision narrowed and went black. He reached behind him and found Rico’s fingers. He broke them, one after the other, and heard the bones crack. Then he sent Rico reeling with an upper cut and a kick to the groin.

  In the meantime, the third man had staggered to his feet. He was big and solid and the bullets from earlier had only had minimal impact. He rushed towards Peter like a huge ball of fat – a massive lump of meat with bulging muscles, a bull neck, a shaved head and typical biker tattoos up his throat.

  Peter lunged forward and used one of the oldest tricks in the book: he sank his thumb into the man’s eye and his other fingers into his ear. These were the most vulnerable spots because everything else was armour-plated with fat. The man’s eyeball was almost out of the socket. He screamed and pulled at Peter’s wrist. Then there was a movement from below. Rico was recovering and had risen to his knees. Peter kicked him in the face and he went down for a second time. The man with the wonky eyeball was hors de combat. He staggered around like a roaring, wounded animal. The thug with the smashed nuts was no use to anyone and Rico lay groaning with his face a bloody mess.

  Peter hated himself. But he hated his enemies even more. Adrenaline was pumping around his body. He hadn’t wanted the confrontation, but he said a silent thank you for the years in prison where he had learned to stand up for himself. Rather that than die. He picked up his gun, which Rico had dropped in the heat of battle.

  He looked down at Rico, who sat leaning against an iron pillar, spitting out teeth and blood.

  ‘Where’s Magnus?’

  Rico muttered something inaudible. Peter pointed the gun at him.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘F . . . kd . . . f . . . I . . . know,’ the cra
ter of blood said.

  ‘Then who does?’

  There was a pause. Rico’s eyes burned with hatred and pain.

  ‘Answer me!’

  ‘M . . . m . . . MM . . . Mi . . . m . . .’

  ‘Miriam?’

  Rico nodded and gulped, his Adam’s apple going up and down like a lift. His face was pulp. One eye was dangling from the socket, his nose was broken. A section of white jawbone lay exposed under fibres of flesh.

  Peter pulled out his mobile and tapped in Miriam’s number. When she answered, he said quickly:

  ‘Hi, honey! One of your fans wants to ask you a question.’

  Rico’s broken fingers hung in the air, no good to anyone. Peter squatted down on his haunches and held the mobile to his ear.

  ‘Ask her.’

  ‘Mi . . . mmm . . .’

  The injured man strained. His lips moved as if chewing every single letter. Peter could hear Miriam:

  ‘Peter! Talk to me!’

  Peter spoke.

  ‘It’s your friend, Rico. He’s not feeling very well. But he wants to know where Magnus is.’

  ‘. . . Magnus . . . Peter . . . It’s not what you think . . .’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right. I bet it’s much worse.’

  Again, he held the phone to Rico’s ear.

  ‘I know it goes against the grain, but try telling the truth for once. If you can find your way around all your lies, that is,’ he shouted.

  Miriam’s voice blasted out. She, too, was shouting.

  ‘What have you done, Peter?’

  ‘What do you think I’ve done? What I always do,’ he shouted, still with the phone to Rico’s ear. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘The convent,’ she said, so quietly he could barely hear.