by Sara Blaedel
“The truth is,” he began a little hesitantly, “that I only saw my daughter once after the terrible accident that disfigured her face. So it’s not so much the scar that I notice. I no longer recall the details, only that it marred her delicate features. But their mother’s beautiful cheekbones, which she passed on to the girls, are something I’ll never forget. The twins may not have been as bright as other kids but they were more beautiful than all of them combined.”
He smiled as if forgetting for a moment the reason why he had been asked to talk about his deceased daughter. But then it came back to him. The transformation from the tender moment, triggered by the memory, was clear.
He looked at Louise with so much sadness in his eyes that she struggled to meet his gaze.
“There’s no doubt that that’s my little Lisemette; I’m sure of that even after all these years,” he said. “But how? How can this be happening?”
He shook his head in confusion and stroked his chin.
“I didn’t take good enough care of them,” he said almost inaudibly. “I let my girls down.”
“Let’s turn back the clock a little,” Eik suggested. “Your daughters arrived at Eliselund when they were three years old, and you haven’t been in contact with them since?”
The man wrung his hands awkwardly for a moment and then nodded.
“Their mother died when the girls were just five days old,” he started and softly cleared his throat. “She wanted to have a home delivery instead of at the hospital in Køge. But we didn’t know there were two of them.”
His chin quivered, but then he braced himself and went on.
“The doctors said afterward that the problem was that the placenta detached. I’d just gone to get an extra pillow when green amniotic fluid suddenly came gushing out,” he recalled. “The midwife was there the whole time and reassured us until she realized that there were two of them and they wouldn’t turn.”
He fell silent for a moment.
“She was the one who sent for the ambulance. She told us she couldn’t handle a double breech delivery by herself. But it took far too long before we made it to the hospital. They didn’t get enough oxygen before they were delivered,” he told them.
“So their brains were damaged during the delivery?” Louise asked.
He nodded. “Mette got it worse because she was the last one out,” he said and blinked back a tear as he told them that the girls’ mother had died while they were still in the hospital. “So even though the doctors had told me, it took some time before I really realized how seriously the little ones had been damaged at birth.”
“But you were able to bring them home?” Louise asked quietly. She felt horrible about raking up such crushing memories.
“Yes, I brought them home with me after we buried their mother. In the beginning I got all the help I could ask for from the county, and when the girls were fussy I could usually calm them down just by singing to them.”
He got a warm look in his eyes, but a moment later it was extinguished.
“But it was hard for me to make the hours add up,” he admitted and looked down at the table as the difficult time he had put behind him caught up with him. “I had to work.”
He looked up at them as if he felt the need to explain his actions.
“I had to—there was the house and the fields. And I had no help. So I didn’t have much time to spend with the girls. I could see that, too. So the month when my girls turned three, I was summoned to the health visitor’s office,” he said, adding that she had usually come to their house.
He paused.
“And then the girls were put in the home,” Eik said, coming to his assistance.
“That’s how it turned out, yes.” Viggo Andersen pursed his lips as if the words were reluctant to be spoken.
“They advised me to forget about the girls and move on with my life. The health visitor made it sound so easy; as if that’s just what you did when your kids turned out to be different from the rest. ‘Just forget about them and move on with your life. We’ll take good care of them.’ ”
He pulled a large cloth handkerchief from his pants pocket and blew his nose.
“I didn’t want to turn my back on my girls just because they needed more care than other kids, but she told me about a small home in Roskilde with twenty-two mentally handicapped children and said that only three of them got visitors. The remaining nineteen never saw their parents. So that’s how she convinced me that this was how it was normally done.”
“So you had them placed at Eliselund and broke off contact with them?” Eik asked.
“No, not at first,” he defended himself. “I visited them twice, but they cried so hard when I had to leave that the staff asked me to stay away. They didn’t think the girls gained anything from the visits if they became so distressed when I left. They had a hard time calming them back down and also felt that the girls would only miss me more if I continued to come.”
He sat staring blindly ahead for a moment.
“I still sent presents for Christmas and their birthday, but I never got any response. And around the time of their confirmation, I sent money. I figured that perhaps they could throw them a small party but I don’t know if they did.”
He heaved a sigh and shook his head as if struggling to comprehend how he could have taken the advice of the staff.
“The supervisor encouraged me to start a new family and put the girls and their late mother behind me. He didn’t think it served any purpose to maintain a contact that wasn’t benefiting anyone. A few years later I remarried, which did bring a lot of happiness into my life.”
“So was that the last time you saw your daughters?” Eik asked.
Viggo Andersen shook his head.
“I was contacted right after the accident happened. They told me it was Lise’s sister who’d picked up the pot of boiling water and dropped it on her. Mette couldn’t do much on her own, and her motor skills weren’t great, so I was shocked that they’d even let her near boiling water. I drove down there that same evening but when I got to the sick ward, neither of the girls recognized me anymore.”
He clenched his teeth.
“And after that I never saw them again.”
He looked at them, a weary expression in his eyes. Obviously, what he had just told them took a lot out of him and now that the story was told, his body fell into a slump.
Louise felt awful for the old man, but tried to stay focused. She moved her eyes to a row of family photos hung side by side on the wall. She saw the twins’ father with his arm around a tall, gray-haired woman. Next to them were two couples who looked to be in their thirties. One was maybe a bit younger, she thought, assuming that they were new children and children-in-law.
“By then, I was a long way into my new life,” Viggo Andersen said as he followed Louise’s gaze. “That photo’s from when I turned seventy.”
“But in 1980 you were notified that both of your daughters had passed away?” she said, looking at him.
He nodded.
“Did you go to the funeral?” Eik asked.
“No.” The man shook his head. “That had already been taken care of when I received the boxes with what few belongings they had. They asked me if I wanted their clothes, too, but I declined.”
“Who notified you of the deaths?” Louise asked, although it might be difficult to recall after so many years.
“The folks down at Eliselund, of course,” he said promptly. “They called from the office one day. My wife was the one who answered the phone, and she walked all the way out to the field to tell me. A few days later they sent something more official, too. But I’m afraid I don’t have those old documents anymore.”
“Please, don’t worry,” Louise said quickly while trying to curb the uneasy feeling prickling under her skin. If one death certificate was forged, the other one could be as well.
“I was told that all the practicalities had already been taken care of by the undertaker wh
o usually dealt with the residents there,” he said. “But it wasn’t my impression that they got their own grave because they never asked me to pay for anything. I guess there was a communal grave that belonged to the place for the ones whose families didn’t bring them home.”
“So you never saw for yourself that your daughters were buried,” Louise pressed him, hating having to ask, and ignoring the piercing look from her partner.
“No,” Viggo Andersen admitted, “I didn’t.”
He asked if he could see the picture of his daughter again. Eik handed it to him and said he was welcome to keep it, although the quality wasn’t the best.
“Thank you,” he said, tenderly stroking the creased paper.
“So then she wasn’t put in the ground at all?” he quietly concluded after a moment, looking at Louise for confirmation.
She shook her head.
“We think your daughter was alive until last Thursday. Unfortunately, Mr. Andersen, we don’t know where she’s been staying or why she vanished from the system all those years ago—or how it was even possible.”
She had briefly considered showing him the death certificate in her bag, but now felt it unnecessary.
“Then she’s going to be laid to rest next to her mother,” he said. A small smile played at the corner of his mouth before he suddenly turned serious once again. “But what about my Mette, then, what became of her? Is she not dead, either?”
He looked at them with concern.
Louise gazed at the floor, unsure how to reply.
“She couldn’t possibly make it on her own; especially not without her sister. She became so agitated without Lise.”
The father nodded to himself. “I have to find her,” he mumbled. “I need to know if she’s still alive, too.”
VIGGO ANDERSEN WALKED them to the front door and opened it so they could avoid the dog.
“We’re so sorry for coming here and opening old wounds,” Louise said as they stood in the courtyard.
“Don’t be,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’m glad you came. Maybe now I can make up for some of what I’ve done. It’s always been hard for me to accept that I let them talk me into letting down my girls.”
He shook his head a little.
“They were always called Lisemette,” he said with a small smile. “The two of them belonged together even though they had different dispositions. Lise was the courageous one; the one to take the lead and take care of her sister. Mette was less independent but, like I said, she was in a worse state.”
He chuckled quietly.
“But there was never any doubt about her feelings when she flung her arms around you and held on.”
Then he caught himself and looked down.
“Could they have been alive all these years while I walked around believing they were dead?” he said as they reached the car. “Where have they been? What happened? It just seems incomprehensible…”
Louise took his hand.
“I know; it does. This has to be so difficult. We need to ask you to go to the Department of Forensic Medicine to identify your daughter,” she said. “So we can confirm that it is, in fact, her.”
“Of course,” he said quickly. “And maybe I can arrange the funeral?”
“I certainly don’t see a problem with that.” Louise smiled before saying good-bye and getting in the car.
13
THEY WERE BOTH quiet as they drove back on the freeway, until Louise’s cell phone started ringing.
“No, don’t bring raw food,” she said after putting the headset on. Camilla was in Copenhagen and had dropped Markus off at home with Jonas. Now she was offering to take care of dinner. “Melvin is making rissoles; I’m sure you’re welcome to join us.”
Louise felt like she needed to shake off the visit to Lisemette’s father before she got back to Frederiksberg if there was to be any chance of her being enjoyable company.
“And who’s Melvin, then?” Eik asked.
Louise turned off Kalvebod Quay and drove past the central post office without answering.
“I was just under the impression that you lived alone with your foster son,” he mumbled and got out his pack of cigarettes so he could sneak a few puffs.
She parked by the curb, trying to refrain from reacting to the fact that he had obviously been checking up on her. She definitely had not told him any of that herself.
“Melvin is our downstairs neighbor,” she answered, getting out of the car. “He’s seventy-five, and today is his turn to cook.”
“You live in a commune?” he asked with respect in his voice as he tucked his lighter in his pocket.
She laughed and shook her head. “Not at all. We just help each other out to make things run more smoothly. Melvin lends a hand with the practical stuff, and Jonas and I help him keep the loneliness at bay.”
“Well, no wonder there’s no room for a man in your life.”
Louise stopped. “What makes you say that?”
“What?”
“That there’s no room for a man in my life? Do people talk about that?”
He shook his head innocently.
“Who said that?” she demanded to know. “Was it Hanne?”
“Oh, stop it, it wasn’t meant as an insult,” he shouted after her as Louise turned her back on him and walked away. She hated being exposed and questioned; hated that Eik knew her private business after only a couple of days.
IT WAS LATE, so instead of going back up to the office, she walked over to her bicycle while she called the Department of Forensic Medicine to ask if they had set up an appointment with Lise Andersen’s father.
“Actually, he’s already on his way,” Flemming Larsen informed her. He also reported that one of her colleagues from the Search Department had tried to track down the woman’s dental records now that they had her civil registration number. “No luck, though,” he lamented. “In fact, they haven’t found anything. It would have been a different story had she been registered as dead within the last ten or fifteen years. Then there’d have been a better chance of the information still being there.”
“I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to identify her,” Louise said. She asked Flemming to call her once Viggo Andersen had been to see his daughter.
“I’ll accompany him to the viewing room myself,” the medical examiner said. “If he’s the least bit unsure, I’ll be able to tell and then I’ll be sure to react.”
Louise thanked him and got on her bike to go home.
MELVIN HAD MADE scalloped peas and carrots fresh from Grete Milling’s greenhouse. Louise smiled at him, appreciating the fact that he went all-out when he was in charge of dinner.
“If only I had a greenhouse like that,” he sighed and put the last rissoles in the pan.
“Maybe you could apply for permission to put one up in the yard,” Camilla suggested as she handed him a glass of white wine from a bottle she had brought. “It’s pretty big.”
“But that’s not the same,” Melvin mumbled while flipping the breaded meat.
“Or you could have your own vegetable garden at my place,” Camilla offered. “There’s plenty of room, that’s for sure. But I’m not going to take care of it for you.”
“That’s the whole point of it, though,” he retorted, “unwinding and caring for the things that grow. Nancy was always so good at that.”
Since meeting Grete Milling, he had been mentioning his late wife less frequently but when he did, his voice always filled with love even though it had felt like forever since they had lived together. For the last several years of her life, Nancy had been in a coma at a nursing home, but Melvin had gone every day to see her.
“Will you tell the boys that dinner’s ready?” he asked, nodding toward the closed door to Jonas’s room.
Louise walked over and knocked. They had been in there since she got home, and Melvin had only seen them when they came out to ask if there were any more Popsicles in the freezer.
There was a draft fr
om the open window. Louise was a bit puzzled. “Are you guys smoking in here?” She walked over to close it.
Markus was sitting on the bed and shook his head indignantly, offended that she would even ask.
Jonas was practically touching his nose to the screen as if on another planet and he clearly was not paying attention.
“Yeaaah!” he suddenly shouted, jumping up. “Ten thousand hits! Ten thousand people have listened to my new song!”
He pounded Louise on the shoulder and high-fived his friend on the bed.
Markus got up, and Louise joined them in looking at the YouTube page where Jonas had uploaded some of his own music.
“But they don’t even know you, so how do they find you?” she asked, shaking her head.
“Jonas has a crazy-high rating,” Markus said approvingly.
“It’s because the link to the song gets passed around,” Jonas explained. “People who like it share it, and that’s how it spreads.”
“Holy crap, it keeps going up,” Markus pointed out and sat down in front of the screen. “There’s two more now.”
“Are you guys coming?” Melvin called from the kitchen.
“I put the song on Facebook, too, and yesterday I had over two hundred comments and they were from people from all over the world,” Jonas explained once they were all seated around the table.
Louise smiled, pleased that Jonas was so absorbed in something that clearly made him happy. There had been a period when he’d been having problems with the other boys at school, who teased him because he’d lost both of his parents. Louise had found it difficult to deal with the cruelty of the kids’ teasing, and Jonas had tried to spare her by keeping it to himself until he ended up in the emergency room with a split eyebrow after a fight in the schoolyard.
“Maybe you could play something at my wedding,” Camilla said with a smile.
Louise appreciated Camilla’s generosity, even if her friend was mostly being polite. She looked forward to being the proud mama when Jonas performed a song or two on the big day.
“DO YOU THINK they’re smoking?” Louise asked after dinner when the boys had once again closed the door behind them. She looked at Camilla.