She continued to lie there, staring into the sky, recovering – how long she didn’t know.
What on earth was going on? Why would anyone want to do this to her? She wasn’t at war. She wasn’t hunting pirates in Africa. She was in quiet, peaceful Denmark.
So who?
It boiled down to two options. There were only two other people on board. Her brain slowly turned over their names. She had known Skipper since she was a child. Morten . . .
Morten! Could it be him? Could that really be true?
It took her a while to grasp the truth. Meanwhile the clouds drifted across the sky above her. Time passed as calmly and inexorably as the waves she could hear splashing against the hull.
She could have kicked herself. She had been wrong. All her instincts, all her antennae had been pointing in the wrong direction. It was her own fault. There was no one she could blame. She had been stupid enough to believe he was a good-natured, lumbering giant. The reality, however, was quite different.
But why? What could be his motive for wanting to kill her?
She scraped her cheek against the painted deck, which smelled of fish and the sea. Slowly reconstructing the past, she went all the way back to the start, but still she couldn’t make it add up. She calculated. It was eight years since they had met for the first time. At a fitness centre in Grenå. They discovered they had a shared interest in diving. He had been working as a Falck diver. She was dreaming about training as a mine diver. He was divorced now, but he had a child, a seven-year-old girl, she never got to meet. She had the impression the child had some kind of disability.
It had only ever been an innocent flirtation. When she moved to Kongsøre, their paths went different ways. Then one evening, not so long ago, she had seen him in the doorway at Club Summertime, obviously working as a doorman. She had been out with a female friend. That was roughly a week before Melissa was found in the moat. They had talked about meeting up for dinner and resuming their friendship. She had been a little vague because she was still pining for Mark. But when Mark gave her the cold shoulder that day at the moat, she had been going to ring Morten when she was interrupted by the pathologist calling her about the bones in the box. Then she and Mark had agreed a truce, and she finally called Morten and arranged to go for a run with him because she wanted to pump him for information about his colleague, Kasper Frandsen. That was the day Mark turned up and interrupted their breakfast with his hissy fit.
She had used Morten to get information about Kasper and to irritate Mark. But Morten had also used her. Through her he had gained snippets of information about the investigation. Whatever his role in this case – and for the moment she couldn’t see what it was – he would have regarded it as useful.
And now she was lying here. Through her own fault. She was a soldier, she was a professional and yet she had let her judgement become clouded by other issues.
The deck reverberated with the sound of approaching footsteps and she saw the tips of his shoes right by her nose. He prodded her with his foot. She peered up at him. He looked even bigger from below, but she was not afraid. She was angry, mostly at herself.
‘My big heart got the better of me,’ he said. ‘Your grave was meant to be down below where you would have been eaten by the fishes, but I couldn’t really come to terms with that.’
She tried to say something, but her mumbles were stifled by the rag in her mouth. He bent down and took it out.
‘It’s not as if anyone can hear you anyway.’
‘The compressor,’ she said, suddenly joining the dots. ‘You filled my diving tanks on the deckhouse.’
‘You should have noticed,’ he said. ‘But you were too busy playing with all your sophisticated gear. Some mine diver you are, hah!’
He snorted with contempt. ‘You lot are so besotted with your fancy equipment that you don’t see what’s going on around you.’
‘You let the compressor suck exhaust fumes in from the funnel,’ she said as more dots joined. ‘You deliberately let me inhale exhaust fumes!’
The thought was chilling. She looked at him with fresh eyes. She had dived down forty-five metres with her tanks filled with CO2 and CO, gases with no taste or colour, which had nearly killed her. That had been his plan. To kill her. Yet he had fished her out. Why? Was this her one chance?
‘Where’s Skipper?’ she asked.
‘He’ll be busy in the wheelhouse until we’re a couple of miles off shore. Then he won’t be busy any more, and the two of us will take the dinghy.’
‘Why, Morten? What’s all this about?’
He stared vacantly into the air.
‘You’ll never be able to understand.’
‘Try me.’
He shook his head.
‘I don’t need a therapist, but I can tell you this much: it was a good idea to throw suspicion on Kasper. A great move, I’ll grant you that.’
‘And you helped by planting evidence in his garage.’
He executed a small bow, as if accepting applause.
‘I aim to please.’
‘But why me?’
‘You’d have worked it out sooner or later. You were all fired up with your talk about the garrotte and the bones in the box. Like a terrier, you were.’
‘Worked what out?’
He gazed across the sea.
‘Forget it.’
But as long as she didn’t know what was really going on, she had no chance of finding a way out.
‘The garrotte? That was you? Is that what Kurt Falk used?’
He pursed his lips as if giving weighty consideration to the question.
‘Yes and no.’
‘What does that mean?’
He squatted down and studied her closely, as if to record every one of her movements.
‘I was just a friend of the family, I suppose you could say. No one ever really noticed me.’
‘But you noticed them?’
He nodded.
‘I went to school with Simon. Alma’s son.’
‘Alma . . .’
‘Kurt Falk’s daughter. She’s old now.’
‘And there really is a garrotte?’
She had never quite believed it. An ordinary Danish family with a killing machine in their home.
He nodded.
‘I saw it when I visited Simon and I’ve never forgotten it. The simplicity of the construction. It was so straightforward. For years I toyed with the idea of building my own, just for the fun of it. And then one day I found I needed one . . .’
His voice was swallowed up by the breeze.
‘Why?’
But clearly, he wasn’t ready to tell her.
‘What’s going to happen to me?’
He shrugged.
‘You’ll get to meet my good friend, the high-backed chair.’
He left her lying on the deck. She tried to crawl up and look over the railings to see where they were, but it was impossible, so instead she checked the position of the sun in the sky. They were sailing due west. Heading back to Grenå. The afternoon was drawing in and soon they would be in darkness.
After about an hour – she followed the length of the shadows and the angle of the sun’s rays – the engine cut out and all she could hear was the waves lapping against the side of the boat and the screeching of the seagulls. They were near land.
He came back. With a gun, which he pointed at her. He also had a knife. Without saying a word, he cut the ropes. She struggled to her feet. Everything started spinning and her head felt like it was bursting, but the worst was almost the dryness in her mouth. He pushed her towards the ladder. Down in the water, the dinghy was waiting. Her brain was working at fever pitch exploring possible escape routes, but for now her only option was to do what he demanded and hope that an opportunity would present itself later. She teetered down the ladder on wobbly legs and into the dinghy. He followed. She wanted to ask about Skipper, but knew there was no point. Either he was dead or rendered harmless in some other
way. She hoped for the latter.
Morten let her do all the work. She started the small outboard motor. It wasn’t far to the shore. She could see the beach, it wasn’t far from her summer house. This was all planned, she realised with a jolt. There would be no mistakes. Whatever he was up to, it was an operation that he had planned down to the last detail.
She steered the dinghy towards the beach until it hit a sandbank. He gestured for them to wade ashore through the water. On a November day like this there wouldn’t be a soul on the beach. No strangers she could alert.
He jammed the gun into her back as they waded through the shallow water and found a path which led them to the road. A hundred metres ahead there was a green Toyota. Salon Lotte, it said on the side in looping gold letters.
He tied her hands behind her back again, stuffed a rag into her mouth and blindfolded her. Then he pressed the remote to open the car and forced her into the boot. The darkness around her, after he banged the boot shut, was total. Then she heard the door on the passenger side open and felt the car sink on its suspension as he got in. He slammed the door on the driver’s side and started the car with a roar.
84
KIR’S SUMMER HOUSE was empty. Peter checked the garage. He didn’t know her very well, but it looked as if some diving equipment was missing from the pegs on the wall. She was a dedicated diver. She had probably just gone out for a dive. Mark could stop worrying.
He drove on. A quick call to the Summertime Club had informed him that Morten Kold lived in a flat in Nørregade. But he wasn’t at home.
‘He moved in a month ago,’ said the caretaker, whom Peter found in the laundry room in the basement where freshly washed clothes wafted the scent of detergent through the building. Peter pretended to be Morten’s cousin. Luckily he’d had a spare jacket in the van, so he could cover up the bloodstain on his shirt.
‘After his daughter died, you know,’ the caretaker said. ‘He’s selling his house because he can’t bear to live there any more.’
Peter nodded and tried to show sympathy.
‘It must’ve been a terrible time. I’ve been living abroad for the past ten years, so I haven’t kept up.’
‘Morten was distraught.’
‘Remind me again where the house is?’
‘Somewhere in Ørum.’
‘Do you know him?’
The caretaker nodded. He turned on the tap and water gushed into the deep sink, but it didn’t drain properly. He bent over the sink with a red plunger and started pumping.
‘But not well,’ he said, with his sleeves rolled up and the plunger held in two hands. ‘He was in the year above me at school. But I did hear he’d got divorced. And then his daughter died. Don’t forget, this is a small town.’
‘Do you know where I can find him?’
‘It’s Sunday,’ the caretaker said. ‘So he’s probably not working.’
‘At the club?’
The caretaker nodded. ‘But he has a day job as well . . . As a gardener or something like that. I don’t know where . . .’
The caretaker pumped away and some black sludge came back up. ‘You’ve got to take what you can get to make ends meet.’
‘What about his family?’ Peter asked, hoping the question was broad enough not to rouse the man’s suspicion.
‘There’s his sister. She owns a couple of hairdressing salons. My wife goes to the one in Glesborg.’
‘Nice girl, as I remember. Where’s the other salon?’
‘In Ramten, I believe.’
Peter thanked him and made to leave. Then the caretaker said:
‘I saw him carrying some equipment to his car earlier. He used to be a Falck diver, you know, so perhaps he was going diving . . .’
Peter turned his van around and drove down to the harbour. It was late in the afternoon now and the sun was shining on the harbour from a low angle. He saw activity near the fishing boats where several fishermen were hosing down or mopping their decks. He had spoken to one of the fishermen previously on another matter.
‘I was very sorry to hear about the accident,’ he said tentatively to the man on the deck, who recognised him and raised a hand to his cap by way of greeting.
‘Yes, it’s a terrible story,’ the fisherman said.
‘I’m looking for a former Falck diver,’ Peter said. ‘His name’s Morten Kold.’
‘A big, broad fella?’
Peter nodded. It had to be the same Morten he had met at Kir’s.
‘He’s got a scar over one eye,’ Peter said.
‘That’s the one. They went out in Svend Skipper’s boat to look for that wreck out by Læsø. But we haven’t heard from them since and we can’t make contact with them.’
‘Who’s the they?’
Peter’s premonition was confirmed when the fisherman said:
‘It was Kir Røjel’s idea, as I understand it.’
Peter was aware that everyone at the harbour knew Kir.
‘She brought along a helper,’ the fisherman said. ‘The fella you mentioned. Morten. They wanted to see if the Marie had been scuttled deliberately.’
Peter turned over the information in his mind. Kir was at sea with Morten as her helper and an old fisherman as the skipper. He didn’t like the sound of it. Nor did he like it that they had lost contact. He gave the fisherman his mobile number.
‘Please call me if you hear anything. It’s important.’
The fisherman nodded and stuffed the number in the pocket at the front of his overalls.
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ the fisherman said, voicing what Peter was mulling over. ‘They should have been back long ago.’
‘Perhaps you should contact SOK?’ Peter suggested.
The man spat out a gobbet of saliva. ‘They don’t give a toss about us.’
Peter phoned Mark Bille and outlined the situation. The policeman sounded composed, but Peter could clearly hear the underlying tension in his voice.
‘I’ll get a patrol boat sent out,’ Mark said. ‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll try to track down the sister and her hairdressing salons.’
‘But if they’re at sea . . .’
‘If Morten is the killer, he must have a place where he keeps the garrotte. He needs to return home to complete his work.’
‘Complete?’
‘This is about a trial,’ Peter said. ‘He sees himself as judge, jury and . . .’
‘Executioner?’
Peter hesitated.
‘Executioner, yes.’
‘And Kir?’
‘She got in the way of his plans. She risks being dragged into them and being judged.’
‘What about the skipper?’
‘Morten’s not interested in him,’ Peter said.
‘But his boat isn’t there.’
‘Not in Grenå, no. But perhaps it’s somewhere else.’
‘Have you been to his flat?’ Mark asked.
Peter smiled through the pain from the superficial gunshot wound in his side. He had patched it up as best he could with a bandage from the first aid box he kept in his car.
‘I can’t just wave around search warrants, you know. That’s what we’ve got the police for.’
There was a tiny pause. Then Mark said:
‘OK. We’ll take a look at it. Perhaps it’ll give us a clue as to where to go next.’
They hung up. Peter got in behind the wheel of his van and pulled a face as the pain shot through his body. He didn’t have the time to feel pain. Morten had to be found before he killed any more people. And what about Kir? If she knew anything, and the evidence suggested she did, she was in mortal danger right now. The very idea that someone might hurt her caused him to squeeze the steering wheel. He reversed and turned the car around with the image of her at the petrol station with the nozzle in her hand and a gleam in the corner of her eye. There were so many options and loose ends that it was almost hopeless. The house in Ørum. The sister’s salons. The club. He decided that the sa
lons would be easier to find. They would be closed, but there had to be neighbours he could ask.
He had almost got as far as Ramten when his mobile rang. It was the fisherman from the harbour:
‘Something’s not right. Skipper’s boat is drifting in the wind three miles offshore. One of the lads from here has gone alongside.’
‘Does that mean there’s no one on board?’
‘There’s certainly no one steering the ship.’
Peter hit the accelerator.
85
MORTEN KOLD’S FLAT looked barely inhabited. It was attractive and had been painted recently, but he had yet to put anything up on the walls, and in terms of furniture, there was only the basics: in the bedroom a bed, in the living room a sofa, a coffee table and a television in the corner. Flat-pack bookcases waiting to be assembled lay in a pile on the floor. A desk had been put up, but a place had yet to be found for it, so it stood all forlorn by the sofa.
Mark and Anna Bagger and two CSOs walked carefully around the limited space wearing blue plastic shoe covers and latex gloves.
‘Not much of a home,’ Anna commented as she glanced at the unopened removal crates in the hallway, living room and bedroom.
‘He probably has other things on his mind,’ Mark said. ‘We need to take a look at those crates.’
Anna told the CSOs to search the crates. She had her sceptical face on; Mark could tell from the way she moved about stiffly and her pursed lips. Everything told him she regarded Simon as the prime suspect, and that they should be looking for him rather than wasting their time on an old school friend of his. She had already deployed a lot of manpower on the search for Simon and involved several other police forces. Anna Bagger’s money was clearly on him.
But now they were here. They checked every cupboard and kitchen drawer, but found nothing. They also searched the desk drawer: again, nothing. So far, the flat was devoid of anything that could link Morten Kold with the murders of Melissa and Victor or the old Spanish execution method.
Suddenly an exclamation came from one of the two CSOs going through the removal crates.
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