The Forgotten Girls

by Sara Blaedel

  “It’s on the cake list,” Hanne informed her and let her know that it was posted on the notice board in the lunchroom.

  Nobody had bothered to tell Louise about any cake list. She suspected the “someone” who should have told her was Hanne.

  “I’ll run down to the bakery,” Eik cut in. “Just tell them I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  The meeting was scheduled to begin in five minutes but he had already put on his jacket and was heading out the door.

  “No, don’t,” Hanne said, quickly heading him off. “I’ve got a box of cookies as backup. We’ll have those today.”

  Eik gave her a big smile. “Honey, I’m all out of smokes, so I’ve got to go down there anyway,” he said, patting her cheek.

  Louise sighed wearily as she got up to go to Rønholt’s office. The hallway walls were painted a pale green, and apparently someone had a penchant for cartoons, because black-and-white drawings of all the well-known cartoon characters were displayed in varnished wood frames the whole way. Only now did Louise discover that a new one had been added right across from her door: Remy, the kitchen rat from the movie Ratatouille.

  Oh, funny! she thought, sarcastically at first but then she couldn’t help but smile. She didn’t recall the names of the three investigators down the hall. They were all guys, and the artist had to be one of them, she guessed.

  “You like it?” Eik asked from behind her.

  “Like it?” Louise asked. “I don’t think the point was for me to like it. Isn’t it just meant to remind me that I’m the one who got the office that was infested?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said as they walked down the hallway together. “Olle is the one who drew it, and I’m guessing it’s his housewarming gift to you. He’s really talented, and he’s made a drawing like that for everyone in the department. I got Goofy.”

  He pointed toward his old office, where the picture hung right next to the door.

  “Olle’s been in the department the longest,” he continued, “even though Hanne claims he could actually make a living selling his pictures. But he only paints on the weekends and when he takes time off for his overtime.”

  Louise couldn’t quite imagine who would actually pay money for the cartoon characters in the glossy frames, but perhaps that was just because she was not the target audience.

  “Well, then I’d better hurry up and go thank him,” she said. She was still smiling when Hanne suddenly came rushing toward them.

  “I’ve just put a phone call through to you,” she said. “It’s a lady who recognizes the woman you’ve been trying to identify.”

  10

  IT’S BEEN SO long now,” the woman on the phone began after Louise picked up the line.

  “But you recognize the person in the photograph?” Louise asked quickly, to help her get started.

  “Yes, I’m sure I do,” she said. “I once knew a little girl whose face became disfigured like that. I think I also recognize the features on the other side of her face.”

  “Then I’m glad you called.” Louise asked the woman for her name and phone number.

  “Agnete Eskildsen,” she said, adding that she lived on Hallenslev Street in Gørlev.

  “And you’ve crossed paths with the woman we’re looking for?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. Her name is Lisemette.”

  Louise asked Agnete Eskildsen to tell her what she knew.

  “Well, back then she was just a little girl,” she started. “I’ve just been trying to count the years. Lisemette must have come to Eliselund around 1965. I remember because I myself was on D back then, and that was the section for the little ones. The children were around three years old.”

  “Eliselund?” Louise interrupted as she noted that the deceased would have been born around 1962. “What’s that?”

  “Why, it was a home for the retarded,” Agnete Eskildsen explained. “They’re called mentally disabled now, of course, but that’s what they were called back then. It’s just outside Ringsted. I worked there as a care assistant.”

  She seemed to be thinking.

  “I can’t remember exactly anymore what the area is called, but there’s a pretty big lake that the institution was facing. You should be able to find it if you have a map.”

  “So she’d been put in a home for the mentally handicapped,” Louise confirmed. That was consistent with the results of the brain scan that Flemming had done. “Do you remember anything about her parents? Were they locals?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t recall.”

  “We would really like to find her next of kin,” Louise explained to emphasize the importance of the woman thinking carefully.

  The line was quiet, and Louise assumed that Agnete Eskildsen was probing her memory. But when the woman finally spoke again, her tone was a little sharper.

  “I’m sure you understand,” she said, “that many children like that did not have any contact with their parents once they’d been handed over to us. Several of them never saw their parents again so we didn’t necessarily know the names of their relatives. They were called ‘forgotten children.’ ”

  “But surely their families didn’t write them off just because they’d been put in an institution?” Louise objected.

  “Quite a few did.” Agnete Eskildsen explained that many parents preferred to hide or even forget the fact that they had a “flawed” child. “They didn’t want to visit the home. But there were also times when the parents were advised to break their contact with the child because their visitation led to nothing but trouble. The children became agitated and upset when their mothers and fathers left, so it was best for everyone if there was no contact.”

  “I see,” Louise said, trying to swallow her disgust. What Agnete Eskildsen was telling her sounded completely inhumane. She knew it happened every day—she’d seen enough horror on the job—but could hardly accept the idea that any parent would abandon a child merely because he or she did not live up to expectations.

  Breaking the silence, the woman seemed defensive as she went on. “I know it sounds terrible now, but that’s just how it was back then.”

  “Yes, right. So the girl had no contact with her parents?” Louise asked, her composure regained.

  “I’m not sure exactly,” Agnete Eskildsen admitted. “But as I recall, she never had any visitors. I could be wrong.”

  She fell silent for a moment.

  “Do you remember her last name?” Louise asked.

  “No, sorry.”

  “But someone must have known the names of her parents?” Louise tried, thinking of the Care Division or the facility supervisor.

  “Yes,” Agnete Eskildsen conceded. “It was in the records, of course, but that wasn’t something the staff paid much attention to.”

  “So there are records?”

  “Sure, those kinds of things are always archived, but I don’t know if the old files are still accessible. Back in my day, they were stored in the basement. We had records dating all the way back to 1860, when the first patients were admitted to Eliselund. Several of the really old case files are probably exhibited in the museum now.”

  “The museum?” Louise repeated.

  “Yes,” the woman replied as if annoyed that Louise knew nothing of the place at all. “When the Division for the Care of the Mentally Retarded ceased to exist in 1980, much of Eliselund closed down. Only the main building is still in use today, and it’s been set up as a day treatment center for the mentally disabled. Many of the other buildings ended up empty, but I read somewhere that the old washhouse has been converted to a museum with some of the devices that were used in the place through the years. I remember there was a Utica crib, and I’m sure that’s been brought over. Of course it’s been a long time now since the mad ones got locked up like that, thank God.”

  “I’m not really sure what a Utica crib is,” Louise admitted.

  “It’s a wooden box, maybe ten square feet, that was used to confine people. You always kep
t the worst ones locked up to have some peace. We used straitjackets and belts as well but at our place at least they were indoors in winter. The Utica cribs were outside or in the barn.”

  “But you think I’ll be able to find the old records down there?” Louise asked, shaken by the casual tone with which Agnete Eskildsen spoke.

  “Someone at the day center will probably be able to help,” she suggested. “I’m thinking you’ll find someone there in the main building all week. But what do I know? It’s been more than forty years since I stepped foot in the place. I just felt like I had to reach out when I saw that picture of little Lisemette.”

  After thanking Agnete Eskildsen once more for reacting to the police alert, Louise looked up Eliselund online.

  Day Center Eliselund, West Zealand County, it said, followed by a phone number. Louise dialed and waited while a mechanical voice offered choices: the business hours of the day center, how to contact a client, and which number to press to get in touch with the main office. She selected the last option and her call was picked up right away by a Lillian Johansen.

  “Records like that are very sensitive, of course, so we can’t just hand them over,” the woman said curtly after Louise explained who she was and why she was calling.

  “We’re not asking you to hand over the files,” Louise quickly pointed out. “We’d just like to see them—”

  “All records are protected by the Privacy Act,” the woman cut in.

  Louise tried again. She had just been so excited about possibly moving a step closer to an identification, and now this petty official was going to stand in her way.

  “We’re trying to identify a dead woman. We received a tip from someone who recognizes her, who told us that the deceased lived at Eliselund as a child,” Louise elaborated. “All I’m asking is if someone from your staff will go and see if her file is still there and give us a civil registration number or the names of the woman’s parents so we can get in touch with her next of kin.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the woman stated bluntly.

  “I guess I’ll have to get a warrant then.” Louise sighed, aware that she had missed her opportunity to talk her way through the bureaucratic wall. “But maybe you can tell me if the old records are still kept on site?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s not like we throw anything away,” the woman answered pointedly.

  Following this minimal opening, Louise quickly assessed that it would be worth it to give it another try, now that she had confirmed that the records were accessible.

  “But then I’d just like to ask you,” she tried again, “if someone could please go down to the archives and check the old patient records to see if a girl lived there by the name of Lisemette. She was born around 1962.”

  “Anyone could call and ask for something like that,” was her reply, and Louise was about to lose what was left of her patience when the woman added that the police might bother to show up in person for starters. “Then you can explain to us exactly who it is you’re looking for.”

  “I’m coming down,” Louise quickly decided. “Would there happen to be anybody I can talk to who worked at Eliselund in the mid-sixties?”

  “No, but we’ve got the yearbooks. They have the names and pictures of everyone who lived here during that period.”

  LOUISE QUICKLY WROTE down the address and ended the conversation.

  “Let’s go,” she said as Eik came through the door, holding a pastry in his hand. “In all likelihood, the woman’s name is Lisemette and she was placed in a home for the mentally disabled outside of Ringsted as a child. It’s closed down now but they’ve got all the records. If you’ve got nothing else, I think we should drive down and have a look at the yearbooks to see if we can find out if it’s her. Maybe then we can find her next of kin as well.”

  11

  THE WARM MAY sun had turned the roadsides lush and green, and the yellow dandelions had finished flowering and transformed into fuzzy gray spheres. Every corner was drenched in idyll as they rounded a turn in the road lined by a couple of thatched timber-frame houses and horses grazing right by the road. Ahead of them was a tree-lined avenue, more than a mile long and winding through fields running down toward Haraldsted Lake. The drive from the main road had almost made Louise forget their reason for being there. The sky was clear and the area was divinely beautiful. The road curved one last time before it descended toward the water, bringing Eliselund into view.

  The closed-down white buildings of the institution stood out like abandoned giants. The large structures formed a square around a courtyard in the center with several smaller buildings behind them. It must have all been enclosed by a tall wall, Louise thought, stopping on the hilltop to take in the old home. The remains of the peeling brickwork still bounded the area.

  Cars were parked on one side of the courtyard, and from the hilltop it was easy to see which building housed the day center. The main building was freshly limed and the plinth glistened black, in sharp contrast with the rest of the buildings, which appeared to be abandoned.

  Louise drove slowly down the hill.

  “At least she grew up in beautiful surroundings,” Eik noted as they continued through a gate that reminded Louise of Vestre Prison. It was the same kind of impressive red-brick arch; less pronounced, but knowing what had once been here it was nonetheless reminiscent of entering a prison.

  “Yes,” she conceded as she pulled in to park alongside the wall across from the main entrance. “It looks like the residents must have been completely isolated from the rest of the community, though.”

  Eik nodded. “I suppose they were locked up in this area,” he said, looking around as they stood in the courtyard.

  The place had a depressing effect, as if the past still clung to the battered walls of the abandoned buildings.

  There was no doorbell by the entrance to the day center so they let themselves in and immediately heard people talking.

  Louise walked in a bit farther to look around. They had entered a long hall with framed photographs of the place as it looked in the past. On the opposite wall was a row of portraits with small brass signs underneath: the consulting doctors for the institution through the years.

  “Are you looking for someone?” a voice sounded suddenly from above.

  Louise hadn’t noticed the stairs to the left of the front door.

  “Yes,” she answered and waited as an elderly lady with straight gray hair and a welcoming smile descended the stairs. Definitely not the unnecessarily difficult woman on the phone. A good start, Louise thought.

  Eik stepped forward to shake her hand while he explained who they were, and that they had called, were told the archives and records were kept either on-site or in the museum, and that they could come in to discuss gaining access.

  “We would really like to see your old yearbooks.” Louise took over, explaining that they had an unidentified woman who now turned out to have possibly stayed at Eliselund as a child.

  “I saw the notice in the paper,” she said. “Do you think she might have been a patient here?”

  “We were contacted by someone who used to work here at Eliselund.” Louise told her that the former care assistant thought she recognized the distinctive scar. “We would really like to get in touch with the deceased’s next of kin. We were hoping that you might help us find her civil registration number so we can locate her family.”

  The woman seemed to give their request some thought before weighing in. “I believe the yearbooks were mostly used to document full occupancy to the Care Division. They don’t say anything about the family relationships of the patients. That’s only in the patient records.”

  “And they’re in the museum?” Louise asked.

  The lady smiled and shook her head. “Only the patient records for the groups from the middle of the last century are displayed over there. The rest of them are archived in the basement.”

  Louise sighed. “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to ta
ke a moment and check whether the file we’re looking for can be procured?” she asked. “I have a first name and a year.”

  The woman waved them along. “I can’t see that it would be a problem if you want to just go down to the basement yourselves and look through the records from that year. As long as you don’t remove them.”

  “That would be very helpful.”

  “After all, it’s almost unbearable to think that the next of kin should find out about the death from the media,” the woman continued.

  Louise was well aware that you could not hand over confidential information even to the police, but in this case she did not see how it could do much harm, and was pleased to have found someone open to reason. And pleasant to deal with, as well.

  “Follow me,” the woman said, walking to the stairs, which continued down to the basement. “It’s a bit chilly down there and if you don’t have enough light to read in the archives, just go ahead and bring the files up here.”

  Louise had no intention of bringing anything back upstairs for fear of running into the shrew, who might throw a wrench in the works before they had a chance to obtain the information they needed.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine and we’ll be out of your hair soon,” she said quickly. To her satisfaction she saw that Eik had already pulled a notepad from the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

  A row of wooden doors with heavy iron fittings ran the length of the wide basement hallway on both sides, and the ceiling was high enough for them to walk upright without difficulty—even Eik, who had to be around six feet. The air smelled damp and musty, and it didn’t look as if the basement was used for anything but storage. Passing by the open rooms, they saw several beds with buckles and straps as well as an old dentist’s chair, which had been fitted to immobilize the patient’s arms and legs.

  “I know—it gives you the chills just thinking about the torment that’s been suffered in that chair,” the woman said, having turned around. “I’ve been told that the dentist who looked after the residents’ teeth here didn’t use any anesthetic. Instead he just tied down his patients before he got started.”