Dead Souls

by Elsebeth Egholm

‘What’s up?’

  Mark stepped across the bookcases to see what the man had found.

  ‘This looks a little odd,’ said the CSO, who was holding up a blue cardboard folder like the ones they sold in Bog og Idé, the stationery shop.

  Mark took the folder and examined its contents, but saw only a mass of lines and numbers. It took a moment before he realised what they were: drawings of a building, as if an architect had been involved, with the measurements and angles of each room.

  ‘What is it?’ Anna Bagger asked.

  Mark showed her. She looked at the drawings and flicked through them. There were some close-ups of specific details. And in several places circles had been drawn with a pen rather than a pencil, like a black marker.

  ‘Look here.’

  The other CSO handed her another folder from a removal crate.

  ‘Melissa,’ he said.

  In it was a series of photographs printed on specialist paper. Melissa could clearly be seen moving across the convent yard in her light habit, apparently unaware that she was being photographed. But there were also other, older photographs. Melissa on her bicycle with her school satchel on her back. Victor and the other teenagers. Grainy photographs taken without their knowledge.

  Anna Bagger shook her head.

  ‘Sick bastard. He’s been stalking them for years, it would appear.’

  She looked up.

  ‘We need a detailed profile of him. Where did he grow up? Where does his family live? Where might he go? Who the hell is he?’

  She pointed at the architect’s drawing. ‘And find someone who can make sense of this.’

  She scratched the paper with a fingernail.

  ‘That’s where he is.’

  86

  KIR STRUGGLED TO find her bearings. They had been under way for some time. Not so much as a crack of light seeped into the boot where she was lying, in a foetal position with her knees tucked under her chin. The silence was as complete as if she had been buried in a deep grave.

  She tried to reconstruct the journey from the beach until now. Probably fifteen minutes had passed. He drove the car first through Grenå – she had heard the engines of other cars and knew they had stopped at traffic lights a couple of times – and then to the other side of the town, where he accelerated and the car went round several bends and up and down gentle hills. The boot smelled of hairspray, which made her think of her mother.

  A moment ago, the car had almost come to a standstill, then turned sharply as if it was being slowly manoeuvred through an archway and into a courtyard. To her it felt as if they were driving over cobblestones, or at least a surface that wasn’t tarmac.

  And now they had come to a complete halt. She listened attentively. Almost total silence. Apart from the creaking sounds in the car as it cooled down after the engine had been turned off. A gentle breeze rustling the trees and the odd raindrop that landed on the stony ground or the car with a hollow clunk.

  The boot was opened and Morten pushed his great shovels of hands underneath her and scooped her up. They couldn’t be in a public place, she thought. It must be dark now, anyway, but even so. They were in the countryside. Unobserved. At the back of a warehouse, a farm or some other isolated place. Somewhere he felt in charge and at home.

  She was quickly carried down some steps. A heavy door groaned on iron hinges and she was taken into a room which smelled stale and mouldy. From here, they went down several more steps and the fresh air went from her nostrils and was replaced with a stuffy atmosphere, as if they were in an underground cavern. But the ground here was a stone floor. She could tell from his footsteps as he carried her.

  For a while she was deposited on the freezing cold floor while she heard him fiddling with something in a corner. Then he picked her up and she could feel herself being sat down on a hard seat. He made some adjustments and she felt cold metal around her legs and neck. Then he took the blindfold from her eyes without saying a word. She knew why. He had something to show her. And what she saw would frighten the life out of her.

  She was sitting on a garrotte. Her arms were attached to arm rests and her legs were enclosed in iron cuffs. The iron ring closed around her neck.

  And then something different and completely unforeseen happened. He started to rig something else up. It took time and he was very careful, and she heard him muttering to himself. She followed his every move. All the time, she knew what he would do next before he actually did it. She started trembling as he pushed an object under her bottom.

  He bent over her and with his lips touching her ear – she could smell his breath – he whispered:

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I have another, more urgent matter to attend to. Now don’t you go bombing off again.’

  He turned the clamp. The iron ring tightened around her neck, and she felt herself being strangled as the sharp steel spike bored into her neck. Coloured dots danced in front of her eyes. She couldn’t move a millimetre.

  She listened in the darkness for his footsteps, which receded down a corridor to her left. She strained to follow how far he went, but it was impossible. Instead, she heard another sound. Tick tock, tick tock. In her imagination it soon grew into a deafening noise and filled the whole room.

  The ticking was the bomb he had attached to the garrotte and to her.

  87

  THE FRONT OF the salon looked like something from the 1950s. A sign saying Salon Lotte hung above the door, and in the sole shop window, on a bed of distressed velvet, there was a display of faded photographs of women with elaborate hairstyles, along with a variety of hair products in a range of colours: shampoos, conditioners, mousses and other essentials. The opening hours printed on the door told him the salon was closed on Sundays, but Peter could hear voices inside and he knocked.

  A middle-aged woman opened. She had short, raven-black hair, which looked dyed. Her skin had spent the day in a tanning salon and her bust bulged in a tight black T-shirt. Everything about her looked artificial, except for the green eyes that observed Peter with curiosity.

  ‘Come on in. I’ll only be a minute.’

  Peter entered. A woman sat in the hairdressing chair. The black-haired woman picked up her scissors and resumed her work, holding a lock of hair and cutting it off. Blond hair fell to the ground, where there was already a huge pile.

  Peter sat down next to a young girl with black roots beneath her long, butter-coloured hair. Obviously a VAT-free haircut on an official day of rest was so desirable that you had to queue.

  ‘You don’t look like you need a trim,’ the hairdresser, whom he took to be Lotte, commented over her shoulder.

  ‘I’m looking for Morten Kold. I believe you’re his sister.’

  She turned around with the scissors in her hand. She was about to say something when there was another knock on the door.

  ‘Hang on.’

  She went to open it and a man of around Peter’s own age entered.

  Lotte motioned for Peter to get up and guided the new arrival into the chair where waiting customers were sitting.

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  She winked at Peter. He recognised flirting when he saw it.

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  She smiled and resumed her cutting.

  ‘I don’t know where Morten is. But I hope he turns up soon because he borrowed my car yesterday and he still has it.’

  ‘Doesn’t he have his own car?’

  ‘He said it was in the garage.’

  Peter decided to play up to the flirting she had started.

  ‘Nice place you have here. Perhaps I should consider getting myself a Sunday haircut.’

  He ran his hand over his short hair. ‘I mean, when it’s had time to grow a bit. I last had it cut two weeks ago.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Grenå.’

  She looked at him in the mirror. He saw the glint in her eyes.

  ‘I can do a better job. And probably cheaper.’

  ‘I’m su
re you can.’

  She sent him a smirk, still via the mirror, while the scissors snipped off a few more strands of hair.

  ‘I can give you my card.’

  She took one from a pile on the counter and handed it to him.

  ‘I imagine you do the whole family, don’t you? Your own family, I mean.’

  She giggled.

  ‘All of them.’

  He took a guess:

  ‘I bet Morten is one of those people who just wants a number three?’

  She made a half-turn.

  ‘Takes me two minutes. He has no patience. I’ve no idea why he’s always so busy.’

  Peter said in a friendly voice:

  ‘Perhaps it’s best to keep busy, given what’s happened to him.’

  She put down the scissors and ran her fingers through the client’s hair, which was still damp. He saw her sad expression reflected in the mirror.

  ‘Of course. Losing Liv hit him hard. It was hard for all of us.’

  In a flash, Peter understood the anger that could consume a man whose child had been subjected to what Liv had had to go through. How would Peter himself have reacted? He couldn’t know, but he imagined it would be hard to suppress the hatred and desire for revenge. And yes, it would be tempting to want to give those responsible a taste of their own medicine so they would know what it was like to lose the most precious thing in the world. It wasn’t a nice thought, and he wasn’t proud of it. But it would have crossed his mind, he had no doubt.

  ‘Where do I start looking, if I want to find Morten?’

  Lotte shrugged.

  ‘He’s in the process of selling his house, so he probably won’t be there. Have you tried the flat in Grenå?’

  ‘I’ve just come from there.’

  She mulled over the question.

  ‘Morten is the type to go missing and suddenly reappear. We’ve learned to live with that in our family.’

  ‘Ever since he was little?’

  She nodded, took a hairdryer and started drying the customer’s new haircut. She shouted over the noise:

  ‘He always found somewhere to hide. It was bloody irritating, especially when we had just been told to do the washing-up.’

  She added: ‘And there are plenty of places to hide out here in the country.’

  A hunch made Peter dig deeper:

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re a local girl? I thought I detected a touch of Copenhagen in your accent.’

  She clearly enjoyed being associated with the big city and life in the fast lane.

  ‘I lived there with my husband for seven years. But I come from the provinces.’

  She puffed up the client’s hair.

  ‘Out by St Mary’s, in fact.’

  Peter held his breath. She smiled.

  ‘Our dad was the gatekeeper there,’ said Lotte, now with her back to him while she let the hairdryer shape the client’s hair. ‘We lived in the gatekeeper’s lodge when we were kids.’

  Peter released the air between compressed lips. The convent. Beatrice. Magnus and Ea-Louise. Inside, he was like a sack that had been tied at the top with all the events of the last few weeks. Miriam and Bella. Simon and Morten. Old bones and fresh bodies. He hoped there wouldn’t be any more.

  He nodded to thank the hairdresser and held up her business card as he waved.

  ‘I’ll pop back some time.’

  He took her smile with him as he disappeared out of the door.

  88

  ‘AND YOU’RE QUITE sure?’ Anna Bagger asked.

  In the meantime, it had grown dark. They were sitting in Mark’s car, all three of them, outside the entrance to the convent beneath the tall trees. Mark passed on the question, with a glance at Peter, who was sitting at the back. Anna Bagger sent the man on the back seat a sceptical glare via the rear-view mirror. In front of them, in one of the police’s big vans, eight officers from the Armed Response Unit wearing visors and carrying specialist weapons awaited orders.

  ‘There are no guarantees,’ Peter said. ‘But yes. He must know these buildings inside out.’

  Mark was convinced Peter was right.

  ‘It fits with the drawings. We scanned them and emailed them to a local architect. He thinks they’re drawings of the crypt beneath the old chapel.’

  Peter nodded. Mark knew they were on the same wavelength. It made sense. The chapel was no longer in use. It must be possible to come and go unseen, especially if you knew the area well.

  ‘Everything leads back to the convent,’ Mark said, now primarily addressing Anna. ‘It fits with the discovery of Melissa, his first murder victim. Afterwards he grew more audacious with increasingly spectacular crime scenes.’

  ‘So the garrotte is somewhere inside the convent?’ Anna Bagger asked.

  Mark nodded.

  ‘Peter’s right. This guy knows his way around. He’s studied this place, recently as well as in the past.’

  Peter briefly met Anna Bagger’s gaze in the rear-view mirror. He wasn’t a huge fan of hers, but at that moment he could feel the responsibility that weighed on her shoulders.

  ‘Poor Melissa,’ she said. ‘She didn’t know it, but by moving out here she walked straight into a trap.’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t such a coincidence,’ Mark said. ‘He could have manipulated her in some way, we just haven’t found out how.’

  ‘On the Net?’

  ‘For example. The IT department hasn’t finished with her computer yet. They might have been in contact through some chat room, where he pretended to be someone else. Perhaps Melissa asked for advice.’

  Anna Bagger smiled thinly.

  ‘Something like this: I’m a young woman who just wants to be left alone. Where can I go?’

  Mark nodded.

  ‘Melissa might have thought she was talking to another young woman.’

  ‘And then that woman said: I once spent a year in a convent. I can recommend it?’

  ‘Something along those lines,’ Mark said. ‘He must have made contact with her somehow. Just like he stalked all of them, for years. They were his hobby. It kept him alive.’

  Anna Bagger wrapped her arms around her chest and gave a shiver, as though she were cold.

  ‘What does the drawing say? How about access?’

  ‘There are two ways into the chapel.’

  Mark unfolded the drawing and pointed. ‘And once we’re inside, there are two doors with steps leading down to the crypt.’

  He shone the narrow, precise beam of his torch on the map.

  ‘We need to cover both routes, of course. I suggest half the Armed Response Unit go through this door, with us . . .’ he pointed, ‘and the rest stay on standby outside the other door.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Anna said. ‘I’ll negotiate, if there’s anything to negotiate.’

  All great theory, of course. But if Morten had Kir and she wasn’t already dead, he might threaten to kill her. They might have to persuade him to give her up.

  ‘OK,’ Mark said to his boss. ‘Shall we go?’

  Anna Bagger gave the order to the head of the Armed Response Unit to move carefully through the terrain towards the target. Then she opened the car door and turned around to Peter in the back.

  ‘Thanks for the tip-off. You can go now.’

  Big words, coming from her. Mark heard Peter mutter some remark before he opened the car door and left, as if he couldn’t wait to put distance between them. At the back of his mind, though, Mark knew the carpenter had no plans to go home to his cliff. He was in much too deep for that. But Mark said nothing; he just watched Peter walk away until he was swallowed up by the darkness.

  The convent was located on a plot the size of six football pitches. The old chapel was situated roughly in the centre. They moved towards the target, through the convent gate, over the moat, and across the cobbled convent courtyard to the other side. It was like a computer game, Mark thought. Soldiers in the darkness. When you knew they were there and you were trying to be qui
et, the rustling sounded like a reverberating echo as they deployed into their positions.

  When they reached the chapel, they saw the Salon Lotte car parked discreetly under some foliage, close to the forest. Anna Bagger touched the bonnet.

  ‘Cold,’ she said.

  Mark put his hand on the wing and the cold went through him. The air temperature was around 3°, he guessed. How long would a car stay warm? How long had Morten been here, alone with Kir?

  They found the two entrances and split up in silence. After some time he heard Anna Bagger’s voice in the darkness:

  ‘Right, we’re going in.’

  89

  PETER STOOD AT the door to the church, which was about one hundred metres from the old convent. The church was a part of the new convent building, where the nuns lived. It was very quiet, but nevertheless he sensed there was life inside.

  He stopped for a fraction of a second to reflect that here he was, about to interrupt a sacred time of divine grace and shock people out of their rituals. It felt like bursting a beautiful soap bubble, but it couldn’t be helped. Then he stepped forward and opened the door to the church. Inside, wax candles flickered down the aisle and four nuns were kneeling by the altar. He recognised the small, round figure on the far right and set off up the aisle. She knelt there praying for the forgiveness of man’s sins, and thereby also his. He briefly considered the irony of the situation. Because while she was praying, while she had her life at the convent, she had indirectly pushed him into the arms of his enemies and was perhaps at this very moment exposing Magnus and Ea-Louise to danger. Nothing was ever simple in this world. What on the surface appeared to be good could turn out to have the opposite effect. What appeared to be an evil act could turn out to be good.

  He knew they would hear his footsteps, but no one turned around. He sensed that prayer books were being clutched and eyes were being pressed shut to maintain concentration and shut out the real world.

  He dropped to his knees next to her, not caring about the chaos he brought with him. His side was throbbing where the shot had nicked him and his whole body ached after the fight with Rico and his men at the old mill. He thought about Kaj, whom he had left at the vet’s. Kaj’s eyes had followed him, loyal and patient, as he left, and Peter had felt like a traitor. Anger was now raging inside him, spreading to his hands, which he rested on the brass rail in front of them. He could see and feel they were trembling and he had to restrain himself from grabbing Sister Beatrice by the shoulders and shaking the truth out of her.