Dead Souls

by Elsebeth Egholm

  He pressed the mobile to his ear.

  ‘Since when?’

  He felt dizzy. They had been manipulating him all along, but how long had they been blatantly lying to him?

  ‘Since yesterday. Magnus contacted Bella. He’d had enough of being on the run. Rico was pumping me and Lulu for money. They always want more . . . It was my idea to get Magnus to safety and keep you looking for him . . . That way we could also send the killer off on a wild goose chase . . . Peter, I know it looks as if . . .’

  ‘The convent. Who with?’

  She told him.

  ‘We’ll have to talk about this, Peter. Do you hear?’

  Peter was well aware that Rico could shut down Miriam and Lulu’s business with a snap of his fingers. Though less easily now. Grimme’s successor must have put pressure on her after his henchmen had been humiliated that night on the cliff. And Miriam – as he had already guessed – had in turn persuaded Bella.

  ‘What’s there to talk about, my lovely? About how you had to save your own skin? About how you had to sacrifice a friend?’

  Her protracted sigh wasn’t convincing.

  ‘I knew you would be all right, Peter . . . You always are,’ said Miriam of the mobile, who wasn’t the Miriam with whom he had once made love and with whom he had once been friends. ‘I owed them . . .’

  ‘Of course. Money matters more than your friends.’

  He had to vent his anger, even though it was painful to talk.

  ‘Perhaps you should start looking for another job and a new life, Miriam. And, while you’re at it, get yourself some new friends.’

  He pressed Off. Then he got up and looked down at the biker who had shot Kaj, leaving his ear hanging by a thread. He fished out the Stanley knife from his pocket, knelt down by the thug and held up the blade.

  ‘Do you know what happens to people who hurt my dog?’

  The biker stared hazily at him and shook his head.

  ‘They get a taste of their own medicine. Do you understand? Unless they say they’re sorry. And they really mean it.’

  The thug groaned.

  ‘Louder. I can’t hear you.’

  The groan rose in volume. Peter shook his head.

  ‘I think there’s a problem with my hearing. Here, let me show you . . . It won’t hurt very much.’

  He reached forward and grabbed the man by the ear. The Stanley knife flashed close to his skin. The man started to shake. Fear-induced sweat dripped from his forehead and into his eyes.

  Peter swiftly sliced off the ear. Ssshhht. Blood flowed. The guy passed out. Peter slapped his face until he came round.

  ‘Stay with me. I want you to see what happens next.’

  The guy blinked several times. Peter threw the severed ear to the dog. Kaj didn’t bat an eyelid. Not so much as a flared nostril to sniff the air for raw meat.

  ‘Would you look at that. Not even the dog wants you!’

  Peter left the man. He knelt down by his dog and felt a spasm of pain in his side. Kaj looked up at him and his mind was cast back to another day. Another life. He had loved Thor, his dog, the most beautiful Alsatian you could ever wish for. He had watched him bounding towards him when Hans Martin Krøll’s bullet hit him. His legs had still been running towards Peter when he keeled over in the yard.

  He shut down the memory and shovelled his arms under Kaj, who was whining in pain. Then he staggered to his car, still cradling his dog.

  82

  ‘YOU AGAIN, IS it?’

  Old Alma hissed through the crack in the door at the Woodland Snail. The security chains remained in place.

  ‘Are you going to let us in or do we have to let ourselves in?’

  Mark had no patience. An old lady wasn’t necessarily a good person or someone who needed protecting. Especially not this old lady.

  The tortoise-eyes hid under heavy lids. They zoomed in first on him, then on Anna Bagger.

  ‘Who’s she?’

  Mark introduced Anna.

  ‘We’ve come to search the house again.’

  Alma’s eyes bristled with hostility.

  ‘You won’t find anything.’

  ‘You may be right.’

  Mark showed her the search warrant. ‘But first we want to take another look at the basement.’

  The hate-filled eyes directed themselves first at Mark, then Anna. The three CSOs and two detectives from Anna’s team stayed in the background.

  Mark was wondering if they would have to break down the door when the old woman started removing the chains, one by one. Ultra slowly.

  The house seemed even murkier and less inviting than usual. It was as if the corners were darker and the electric light bulbs had less energy to emit the light required to see.

  They entered the kitchen. She had been doing her crossword again. Her daughter was missing, her son was wanted and she was cold-blooded enough to be able to sit there scribbling down her guesses for ‘repulsive’, seven letters, and ‘bog body’, six. Mark was about to offer a couple of sarky suggestions as she hunched over the table and masticated a white-bread sandwich. But instead he pulled out a chair and sat down, while the team and Anna Bagger disappeared down into the basement of the house.

  ‘The bones we found turned out to be those of a Resistance fighter called Allan Holme-Olsen,’ Mark said, taking the liberty of exaggerating the forensic examiner’s findings somewhat. The DNA result still wasn’t available, but a preliminary marker showed a high probability.

  Her reaction was unmistakeable and she didn’t even make an effort to conceal it. She froze in mid-movement and stared hard at her jam sandwich.

  ‘Who killed him, Alma?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Was he the man who killed your father?’

  Her eyes burned. For a brief moment her neck slid out of the carapace.

  ‘Two men came for him.’

  ‘And one of them was Allan.’

  She said nothing. She kept munching as if the jam sandwich was an enemy that had to be devoured.

  ‘You were fifteen years old,’ Mark said. ‘You knew your father’s methods. You knew about the garrotte.’

  She stared blankly at him.

  ‘I found the exercise book containing Lone’s notes,’ Mark explained. ‘Lise had hidden it in her freezer.’

  She sat for a long time without expression. Then she sneered:

  ‘That stupid girl.’

  ‘You killed Allan,’ Mark stated. ‘I don’t know how you tricked him into coming here. But you did trick him. My guess is you had help. But that detail is missing from the exercise book.’

  She looked at him in a moment of triumph.

  ‘I did it all by myself,’ she hissed. ‘He was easy. I was fifteen and he liked young girls.’

  ‘And then what?’ Mark asked. ‘How did his bones end up in a box at the bottom of Kalø Bay?’

  Her mouth became a pinched thin line. Mark could hear the defiance humming in her amorphous body like the current in an electric fence.

  ‘Who helped you? Was it Simon? My guess is you had the body lying in the basement for all those years until one day, Allan Holme-Olsen’s family started getting suspicious. Perhaps they even visited you?’

  The silence was eternal. Then she nodded.

  ‘His son.’

  ‘So you decided it was time to get rid of the bones?’

  Again she sat in silence. He wasn’t sure if she was keeping up. But then she suddenly picked up the pencil and scribbled a three-letter word in the crossword, down.

  ‘It was in 1990. Lone was working as a supply teacher in those days. They were told the school was to merge with another school. Some of the equipment became surplus to requirement.’

  ‘The box of bones from the biology lessons, for example?’

  She shrugged her heavy shoulders and her neck disappeared temporarily.

  ‘There were two boxes. It was easy.’

  ‘So you disposed of the original contents of the bo
x, took Holme-Olsen’s skeleton and distributed it between the two boxes?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You numbered the bones to imitate the original contents?’

  ‘It was so easy.’

  ‘And then, you dropped the boxes into the hollow made by the elephant mine that had exploded in 1969? A place where no one was allowed to sail or fish?’

  She made no reply. Mark could see she was squeezing the pencil. She forced yet another word down onto the page. He could guess the rest: Holme-Olsen’s family had given up their search. The secrets were safe. Alma had won.

  He looked at her. What would the consequences be for her now that she had been found out, an eighty-six-year-old woman? She was unlikely ever to go to jail. She had got away with it for all these years. And she would continue to get away with it. She could carry on eating her jam sandwiches and doing her crosswords.

  He heard shouting from below, got up and went down to join the team working away in the basement.

  They had pulled away the felt from the floor. Underneath there was a small trapdoor. Access to a basement under the basement – clever, Mark thought. The Cardinal had planned this den right from the start. Who would have guessed that the basement could have several levels?

  The CSOs were working with the full range of their equipment to prevent any evidence being lost. They eased open the trapdoor. A damp smell of earth, rot and excrement met them. Mark stepped closer. There was a narrow ladder down. Someone shone a torch into the darkness.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Anna Bagger exclaimed, covering her nose with her sleeve.

  ‘Lise?’

  Mark called down into the hole. There was no reply. He gripped the torch between his teeth and started climbing down into the depths. It was a long way. He counted twelve steps and the further down he went, the stronger the sensation that he was diving into an oxygen-deprived hell.

  It was like a primitive dungeon. The room seemed to be L-shaped. It had an earthen floor, and the walls and ceiling were strengthened with thick beams. Chains and fixings had been mounted on the wall. There were hooks for various instruments of torture on a crossbeam. They hung there, old and rusty, and Mark could hear the silent screams that must have rung out between these walls.

  The torchlight landed on the various decorations, one after the other. The flag stood out because it was spread across the middle of the wall. He recognised the symbols from Boutrup’s rosary: the halberd, the crossbow and the gun – the Spanish Legion flag. Other objects surrounded it: old photographs of General Franco, uniforms hung on display, antique weapons and Christ in agony on a crucifix. This was a collector’s holy shrine and it reeked of death: Viva la Muerte. The motto was printed in blood-red letters on a yellow banner hanging above the flag.

  Mark felt a chill penetrating the soles of his feet as he crossed the room with his head bowed. He shone the light further into the darkness and towards a corner where a high-backed chair was the only item of furniture. It stood with its back to the onlooker and the incumbent staring at the wall.

  ‘Lise?’

  Still no reply. He stepped closer. Anna Bagger and the chief CSO were right behind him.

  Lise Werge was attached to the chair by an iron ring that fitted closely around her neck. The garrotte itself was simple: a tall piece of wood mounted on a hard horizontal plank to sit on. The whole construction rested on a wooden stand reminiscent of an oversized, old-fashioned Christmas tree support. Thick iron shackles were secured to her ankles. Her hands were gathered in her lap and also shackled. Mark was immediately reminded of Oluf Jensen’s sketch. At the back of the wooden upright was a clamp. It could be tightened and the ring would strangle the victim as an iron spike bored into the neck from behind.

  Lise Werge stared at him without seeing. Her mouth was half-open and caked with encrusted blood. Her eyes were dull. Anna Bagger felt for a pulse in her neck.

  ‘It’s weak,’ she said.

  Mark called for an ambulance. He had just finished the call when his phone rang. It was Peter Boutrup.

  ‘I know who did it,’ the voice said. ‘And I know where Magnus and Ea-Louise are.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ Mark said. ‘We’re here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘We’re here,’ he repeated. ‘We’ve found the garrotte.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The killer’s name is Simon Falk Ørum. He was recently released after seventeen years in a mental institution.’

  There was silence down the other end. Then Boutrup said:

  ‘It’s not him.’

  Mark walked down to the far end of the dungeon while his colleagues freed Lise Werge and placed her on a blanket ready for the medics. No one was prepared to administer first aid. It was too difficult to assess whether the garrotte had already done its work and fractured her spine.

  ‘Of course it’s him,’ he said and explained that they had found Lise.

  But Boutrup insisted.

  ‘The man you’re looking for is Morten Kold. He and his wife lived in Elev in 1996 when Alice Brask and her followers boycotted the MMR vaccine and triggered an outbreak of measles. Two babies at the local nursery were infected. One child, a girl, was brain-damaged. The girl died last year.’

  ‘So you’re saying there are two of them?’

  ‘I don’t know if they’re working together. But perhaps they know each other.’

  ‘That seems unlikely,’ Mark said. ‘No family would share this hell-hole with anyone else.’

  He thought of the exercise book and the stories it contained. But then he remembered something. Simon’s file and the trial where Lise had appeared as a witness. What had she said? Something about an incident in her childhood?

  His mind started buzzing. The witness statement. But Peter had no patience.

  ‘There must be two of them,’ he said. ‘I can believe that. If you’re with one of them, I need to find the other one. I have the address. I’ll go there now and call you once I get there.’

  ‘Morten Kold? Who is he? I mean age, job, et cetera.’

  ‘Forty-two years old. Former Falck diver, but now works as a doorman at Club Summertime.’

  The pieces fell into place. Kir’s running partner. The sweat on Mark’s back froze and his tongue felt like a piece of leather. Between sharp intakes of breath he told Peter.

  ‘OK. I’ve met him,’ Peter said. ‘I know what he looks like.’

  ‘They had a date last night,’ Mark said. ‘Christ almighty . . . If only I had known . . .’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Peter said. ‘I’ll find them.’

  The medics moved Lise onto a stretcher. A doctor gave her an injection and spoke to her in an attempt to rouse her from her comatose state.

  ‘Wake up, Lise,’ the doctor said, patting her cheek. ‘Talk to me.’

  Time passed. Then Lise’s eyes sprang open and she gave a loud gasp. The colour of her face changed from waxen to pink. She blinked.

  ‘What’s your surname, Lise?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Werge,’ she said in a rasping voice.

  ‘Good. Listen to me. Have you been given any pills or injections of any kind?’

  She moved her head slowly from side to side.

  ‘Have you been given water? Food?’

  ‘Water,’ Lise said.

  Mark intervened before the doctor had time to protest.

  ‘Hello, Lise. My name is Mark Bille. We spoke at the nursing home. I initiated the search for you.’

  The doctor glared at him. But Lise nodded.

  ‘I have one very important question,’ Mark said. ‘In your brother’s trial, you spoke of an incident in your childhood. You were shackled. To the garrotte, is that right? You never said so directly, but you spoke about a high-backed chair.’

  She nodded. Mark carried on.

  ‘There were four of you in the basement that day. You, Simon and Lone. Who was the fourth child?’

  ‘Simon’s friend,’ she said.

  ‘I must protest,
’ the doctor said. ‘The patient is in no fit state to answer questions.’

  Mark leaned over the stretcher.

  ‘Can you remember the name of that friend?’

  Lise’s gaze brushed past the doctor, who had opened his mouth to voice another protest. She made a vague gesture in the air as if to signal it was OK.

  ‘Morten.’

  ‘Morten what?’

  He didn’t get a reply.

  83

  KIR’S HEAD WAS about to explode.

  She couldn’t open her eyes, but she registered the pain and the accompanying nausea. Together they were so overwhelming that she was tempted to let go and allow herself to be sucked into her own misery. Never to open her eyes again, simply to dive into the all-consuming black hole.

  But something prevented her. Distracting thoughts flailed around and beat against the shell of the pain. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. The black dots behind her eyelids became light, and she saw a flock of white cotton-wool animals gambolling against a background of blue. It took a moment for her to realise they were clouds chasing across the sky. It took even longer for her to be able to relate this moment to what had happened:

  The fishing boat. Morten. Diving down to the wreck of the Marie. Problems with her air supply. Morten, who hadn’t reacted to her tugs on the line. Her grim fight against the black dots in her eyes and the physical exhaustion. Then finally death, which had kissed and embraced her, and the sensation of letting go and allowing something bigger and stronger than her to take over.

  Where was she now?

  Her eyes started adjusting to the light and the breeze. A headache broke through into her consciousness, but she had to navigate around it. She tried to work out where she was. She could smell paint. Turned her face a fraction. The fishing boat. The deck. She was lying on the deck. Alone. Where were Skipper and Morten?

  Her throat was dry. She wanted to touch her body to check if she was in one piece, but she couldn’t move her arms. Realised that her hands were tied behind her back and that something had been forced into her mouth. But she couldn’t work out why anyone would have done it, or indeed who. Whenever a fragment of a thought attempted to emerge, it disappeared into an inner sea of lethargy.