The Forgotten Girls

by Sara Blaedel

  “Jørgen’s girls live out here.”

  Apparently she won’t try to hide anything, Louise thought. She seemed to be aware that the game was up and now merely waited to see what was about to happen.

  “I’ve had to give her some of Jørgen’s medicine to keep her at rest so she wouldn’t keep harming herself.”

  “Have they been living out here in the barn since 1980?” Louise asked, appalled, and retreated from the pen.

  “Yes,” was Bodil’s only reply.

  Louise was conflicted. While the mother in her wanted to protect Viggo Andersen, she had promised to keep him involved and aware of every bit of movement in the case as it pertained to his daughters. He’d been through so much, and wanted only the truth now. And he deserved that respect. Already holding her cell phone, Louise walked into the courtyard to call him, leaving it to Eik to contact Mik.

  “We found your daughter,” she began and quickly added: “She’s alive, I can tell you that. But that’s all I can say for now. Do you want to come?”

  He did. She gave him the address, explaining that the house was right by the woods.

  “Bukkeskov Road,” she repeated, figuring that it should take him about fifteen or twenty minutes to get there. It was eerie to think that he and his children had been that close to each other through all those years.

  “Did you write the twins out of the system so your brother would have something to screw after he couldn’t get his needs met at Eliselund anymore?” Eik asked, standing by the barn door, each word vibrating with anger. “And so you could escape his assaults?”

  Bodil looked at him with puzzlement.

  “Yes, but we always took good care of them. They’ve had it better here than they ever did at Eliselund.” His anger seemed completely lost on her.

  “Was it your brother who raped and killed the child care provider in the woods?” Eik continued, breaking the filter off a cigarette before lighting it.

  Finally he got a reaction. Bodil’s eyes wandered and she started pulling away, but Eik grabbed hold of her.

  “Why did he take the runner?” Louise asked, walking over to them. “Mette was still here after all.”

  “He never laid a hand on her; she’s just a child. It was always just the other one,” Bodil answered as if that made perfect sense. She told them that it was like the time many years ago when Lisemette had some feminine trouble and was bleeding all the time. “That summer I worked the night shift at the Saint Hans psychiatric center during the weekends, which was lucky because that way I was able to bring home antibiotics for her.”

  “The summer of 1991?” Louise asked.

  Bodil nodded. “He would steal out into the woods in the morning before I got home. Even though I told him not to.”

  “And then he raped the women he came across,” Louise said.

  Bodil’s eyes shifted once again before she looked away.

  “So how come Mette is in such a state?” Eik asked, gesturing toward the pen. “What did you do to her?”

  “She has been difficult ever since her sister disappeared,” Bodil answered, looking at them again. “Unless someone is standing over her, she’ll hit her head against the wall, and she refuses to eat or drink. But that’s what they do when they miss someone.”

  “How did her sister get away?”

  “Jørgen must have forgotten to close the door. I’m always on him about it because they’re not used to being outside. But when he’s raking, he sometimes opens up the door.”

  Louise looked inside the empty pen where the comforter was smoothed neatly across the narrow bed. On top of the white linen were two yellow roses like the ones Jørgen had cut for her on their last visit to the gamekeeper’s house.

  The pen was decorated the same as Mette’s with simple antiques and things from Bodil and Jørgen’s childhood home. It was a stark contrast with the rough brickwork of the barn and the peeling wood boards of the horse pens—but the furnishing was undoubtedly well intentioned, Louise thought. At the end of the corridor was an old saddle rack and on the wall behind it were bridles, which must have been there when Bodil and her brother took over the old farm.

  She walked back in to see Mette, who was still lying motionless on the bed, and squatted down next to her. She looked like her sister with the same long, dark hair. Her age did not seem to be taking a toll on her yet. From what Louise could tell, her features were as delicate as her sister’s beneath the bloodied wounds and the swelling that distorted the shape of her head.

  Louise checked the woman’s pulse: weak. Then, as she was about to stand up, Mette suddenly started thrashing her head around as if invisible forces were pulling at her from every direction. Her eyes were still closed but her entire body was twitching.

  A car pulled into the courtyard. Louise had overheard Eik calling an ambulance and the Holbæk Police Department, but she thought it most likely that Lisemette’s father would be the first to arrive. She went outside to greet him.

  Viggo Andersen had left his house so quickly that he was still wearing his slippers.

  “Your daughter is in there,” she said, showing him into the barn. “I’m afraid I have to warn you that she has caused herself quite a bit of injury.”

  He followed her hesitantly without asking questions, staying tentatively behind Louise as they walked to the horse pen.

  “She’s asleep, but I think she might be waking up.”

  Just then some restless sounds rose from the bed. Mette thrashed her head to the side again, hitting it hard against the wooden planks of the partition wall. Her arms jerked under the comforter and she emitted a series of mournful sounds as her head fell back once more, her long hair covering her face.

  “We’ve already called for an ambulance, and it’s on its way,” Louise said quietly. She stepped aside when Viggo Andersen asked if he could go in.

  His eyes were full of tenderness as he laboriously knelt down next to his restless daughter and put a hand on her shoulder. Softly he started to sing:

  “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are.”

  He gently stroked his thumb over the fabric of the yellowish nightshirt that Mette was wearing. Her chest rose with heavy breaths before she flung her head against the wall yet again.

  “Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.”

  From where Louise was standing, it looked as if her breathing was becoming somewhat calmer. She didn’t want to get any closer and risk ruining the father’s attempt at soothing his daughter.

  “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.”

  It was as if sleep embraced Mette once more. Her tense body settled into the mattress a little deeper, and her cheek rested on the pillow.

  The father’s smile was heartbreaking as he told Louise he always used to sing that song to the girls at bedtime.

  “You found her,” he said and looked down at his daughter again. His hand was still on her shoulder as he quietly started to cry. He let his eyes wander across the clock and the small table. “Someone has been taking care of them.”

  Louise swallowed an outburst; this was not the time to share with the father what his two girls had lived through in the past thirty-one years. She realized that the horse pens at the gamekeeper’s house probably seemed like a preferable alternative to death. She could tell that Viggo Andersen had yet to notice that a similar box had been furnished next door, and so she decided to wait to tell him more. He would know soon enough what had happened to his two little girls after they were erased from history.

  “The ambulance is here,” Eik said from the doorway.

  Louise heard footsteps in the gravel and someone opening the tailgate. Soon after, one of the paramedics stepped into the barn.

  “She’s in here,” she said, pointing into the pen. The young man opened his eyes wide and dropped his jaw but Louise stopped his outburst by shaking her head sternly and putting a finger to her lips.

  Outside in the courtyard more
cars were arriving. She made room as they carried the stretcher across the uneven concrete floor of the barn corridor and indicated to Viggo Andersen to do the same.

  “Has she been conscious in the time that you’ve been here?” the young paramedic asked when Louise came back into the barn.

  “She’s sedated at the moment,” she explained. “But when she wakes up, you’ll need to be aware that she can get quite restless and…”

  “My daughter is severely disabled,” Viggo Andersen took over. “As a child, she would always react very strongly to any situation that felt unfamiliar or unsafe to her. I’d like to ride along with her if that’s possible?”

  The young guy was unfolding a blanket, and his older colleague nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Just get in the back next to her.”

  The two men wheeled in the stretcher next to the bed and very carefully lifted Mette onto it. She was slight, almost bony, Louise noted when her legs were uncovered. Her body was devoid of muscle tone, atrophied like that of a patient who’d been bedridden for a long time.

  As they were about to edge the stretcher back out of the pen, she started moving about restlessly again. The sound that rose from her throat sounded like an angry growl. The young paramedic shot a startled look at the father, who stepped forward and put a hand on his daughter’s arm. Louise was standing right next to them when Mette opened her eyes and started screaming. Her eyes were darting around the room and she balled up her hands in front of her chest.

  Her father started mumbling soothingly, but she swatted at his hands and thrashed her head while the screaming continued.

  “Let’s get her in,” the older paramedic announced firmly. He asked Viggo Andersen to step back a little while they pushed the stretcher into the ambulance.

  “I’ll strap her in,” said the young paramedic and jumped into the back.

  Mette was flailing and her sounds were angry and rejecting. Two long safety belts were fastened around her on the stretcher.

  “What medication has she been given and how much?” the older paramedic asked Louise.

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked around for Eik and spotted Mik.

  “Mik,” she called. “We need to know when Mette received her last dose of medication and what it was.”

  After they put Mette in the ambulance, she heard Mik inform the driver about the medication. Viggo Andersen had settled in the low seat next to the stretcher. He appeared unaffected by her violent behavior. He gazed unwaveringly at his daughter’s face as he started to sing to her again.

  Louise leaned against the timber frame of the barn and watched thirty-one years of captivity come to an end. Behind the father, an IV was being prepared and the young paramedic struggled to place an oxygen mask across Mette’s nose and mouth. They closed the back, and soon after the ambulance pulled out of the courtyard and left.

  MIK WAS GIVING the group of police officers a quick briefing by the white fence. Louise made eye contact with Eik before he walked over to tell them what they knew about Jørgen Parkov.

  “We have confirmation that he was keeping the female runner here until just a few hours ago, when he brought her into the woods. She was alive when they left the gamekeeper’s house but she’s probably in pretty bad shape.”

  “We’ve already warned the residents of the woods against Jørgen Parkov and asked them to contact us if they see the young woman,” Mik said, taking over. “And you need to be aware that René Gamst is most likely somewhere out there with a loaded firearm. So be sure to identify yourselves clearly whenever you run into anyone.”

  39

  LOUISE STOOD FOR a minute and watched them as they disappeared into the woods. Then she slowly started walking toward the main house. She had seen Bodil’s back as a female officer led her, and knew that the most difficult interrogation of her life was waiting for her inside.

  She stopped on the stairs and closed her eyes for a second. How many times had she driven by the house? She had sat in their large yard, drinking lemonade. And all that time, Lise and Mette had been in the barn. Louise tried to shake it off but it was too surreal; too devastating to accept.

  Then she went inside, closing the front door behind her. They were sitting in the living room, the officer in an armchair and Bodil on the couch.

  Louise didn’t know what to say as she pulled up a chair at the head of the coffee table and noted that the police officer from Holbæk had gotten out her Dictaphone. She suddenly had difficulty thinking of an opening and was grateful when the female officer started to read Bodil’s rights to her while Louise got herself situated.

  “Do you want to proceed?” the officer asked and turned toward Louise.

  “Yes.” She looked at Bodil, who focused on her, waiting for her to speak.

  “You’ll probably have to take me back in time, Bodil, if I am to try to make sense of some of the things I’ve seen out here today,” she began. “I’ve spoken with your old neighbor, Edith Rosen, who told me about what happened to Jørgen when he was a child.”

  “What I did to him.” Bodil corrected her without flinching. “Mother was right. I should have watched out for him better.”

  Louise tried to hide her disgust. Their speculation about Bodil was right. Looking into her eyes, she continued. “Edith Rosen also told me what happened in 1958. Were your parents aware of what your brother did to you?”

  Bodil nodded and her eyes darkened. It took her a minute before she was ready.

  “The first time, I cried so hard that I accidentally ran to Mother’s room. My father wasn’t home,” she started. “I was frightened and I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. My mother just said that I was lucky to have a life. And she told me not to mention it to my father because it was my own fault that Jørgen turned out that way.”

  “She couldn’t possibly have meant that you should continue to be victimized because he couldn’t control himself,” Louise objected.

  “We didn’t really talk about that. I knew he couldn’t help it. He became like that when he hurt his head. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt me.”

  “What about your father?” Louise asked. “Didn’t he ever find out?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But that wasn’t until later.”

  “Your mother didn’t say anything to him?”

  Bodil shook her head. “Father never blamed me for the accident, and when he realized what was going on, he and one of my teachers arranged for me to go into service as a maid for a doctor at Ebberødgård. I saw my father now and then but even once Jørgen was gone, after our neighbor complained, I couldn’t come home because Mother couldn’t come to terms with him being sent away.”

  She paused for a second, staring into the wall across the room.

  “Then when my father died, she brought Jørgen back home. And I’ve often thought that things probably weren’t easy for her, either, in the subsequent years.”

  Silence descended. The ticking from the wall clock boomed.

  “When Mother fell ill and was on her deathbed, I received a letter from her, asking me to come,” Bodil continued quietly. “She wanted me to promise that I would take care of Jørgen after she was gone, and that I would never put him in a home. If I didn’t agree, she would disown me. But her threats were unnecessary because I always knew that one day it would be my turn to take care of him. So I was prepared. By that time I was working at Eliselund, and the consultant doctor and I had come to an agreement that my brother could secretly move into the basement when the time came.”

  “We spoke with Lillian Johansen. She told us how you used to let him use the girls at Eliselund,” Louise said. “But she couldn’t explain how you managed to remove the twins from the institution.”

  Bodil looked at her quizzically as if she didn’t quite understand.

  “We drove them, of course,” she said with a sweeping gesture. “Ernst had a car. We always used it when we wanted to get away together for a bit.”

  “Together?” said Louis
e. “Were you and the doctor having an affair?”

  Bodil folded her hands back in her lap. “I guess you could call it that. We benefited from each other in various ways. He helped me with my brother and I was there for him. But I broke it off after we moved out here with Jørgen’s girls. He became very angry and accused me of abandoning him.”

  “Did he take his own life because of the breakup?”

  “I don’t believe so,” she said dismissively. “He was never good at standing on his own two feet. But he probably also realized that things were bound to get difficult when his paperwork was reviewed in connection with them closing down Eliselund.”

  Louise was dumbfounded at how easily Bodil had sacrificed the consultant doctor.

  “Weren’t you worried that he would reveal your secret?”

  “No,” Bodil answered, “why would I be? He was the one who put his name on the death certificates. And besides, he knew just as well as I did that they would be better off here,” she went on. “After Eliselund closed down, the residents were to be transferred to other institutions. Who knows how things would have been for them, or if they would have been allowed to stay together?”

  She was quiet for a moment before continuing in the same neutral voice.

  “We’ve always been able to offer them security and stability. These people just function best like that, and as long as Jørgen gets his psychological and physical needs met, he is a picture of good nature. Just the way you know him.”

  Louise opened her mouth to say something but didn’t have the chance before Bodil went on.

  “Mette never progressed past being a little girl, and my brother always took good care of her. After he finished with the other one, he always went to sit with Mette and would brush her long hair. He was always so gentle, making sure that he didn’t hurt her. They got along well, the three of them.”

  “He never touched Mette?” Louise asked.

  Bodil shook her head.

  “She wasn’t a woman. She didn’t arouse the urge in him.”

  “Not even after Lise disappeared?”