The Woman in the Hotel

by Sara Blaedel

  H.C. was writing an anniversary article about the local sawmill. He nodded to her absently but looked up from his monitor when she started spreading out papers on the editorial table in the middle of the room.

  It was her father’s series of articles. The last one was to be published this week, and that suited Camilla just fine. Following Annette’s murder, her intense indignation at the scam artists had dwindled somewhat. Of course, she would follow through with the investigative articles, but right now she had a hard time thinking about anything other than the man the police had released.

  “This week, the municipality will be completely stripped bare,” she said, catching H.C.’s eyes. “They’ll have to find out who’s behind the scams.”

  “Honestly, don’t you think that you were investigative enough when you wrote about the prostitution?” H.C. asked, looking away.

  The blow struck her like a fist when she realized that he was indirectly accusing her of causing Annette’s death.

  “You don’t think this matters, do you? Don’t touch anything that soils your fingers,” she ordered angrily. She got a cigarette going and exhaled the smoke with a snort. “Is that what you think?”

  He ignored her, and Camilla knew that she ought to let it go. She was in charge, so there was no reason for discussion if she wanted to print the story.

  H.C. mumbled something but still didn’t look at her.

  “What was that?” She approached his desk.

  He finally looked up when she was right in front of him and quietly said, “If you want to root around in the filth, it’s wise to clean up your own dirt first.”

  “You imply that I’m responsible for the death of Annette,” Camilla raged, dropping some ash as she leaned toward him, so that he had to move back a little.

  “No, definitely not!” he quickly defended himself.

  “Then what is it you’re trying to say?”

  “I’m just saying that if you poke your nose into other people’s business, then you risk that they’ll start poking their noses into your affairs.”

  “And you think I don’t want to be scrutinized myself? Scrutinize away, I’ve no problem with that.”

  “I’m not quite sure Anders feels the same way.”

  Camilla straightened up a bit and put out her cigarette in a saucer while she looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  “I really don’t think my brother is hiding any big secrets. His life is too goddamn boring for that.”

  He had turned back to the monitor.

  “Come on, tell me what you mean, H.C.!”

  “Doing all these exposés might tempt somebody to investigate what the fishermen do with all the fish they net but can’t land at Skagen,” he finally said. “No one believes that they voluntarily throw several hundred kilos of perfectly fine fish back into the sea.”

  H.C.’s face closed, and Camilla knew that he had said what he wanted to say. She also knew that there could be something to what he said. If her own stepbrother had fiddled with his catch, and someone started calculating the amount of undeclared money made this way, she would have to write about that in the paper, too.

  * * *

  Anders smiled in surprise as he opened the door and invited Camilla in. He told her that he had just picked up her father in Frederikshavn, and that a hospital bed was being installed in their bedroom.

  “I didn’t figure we’d get it all squared away so quickly,” he said and asked her if she wanted some coffee.

  Camilla shook her head. “No thanks. I want to know how much you’ve tampered with your catches, and how much undeclared money you could be accused of having made over the years.”

  He had come to a halt mid-step and turned around to face her, mouth agape.

  She had expected some kind of defense or attack, but instead he went and sat down at the dining table.

  “Actually, I’ve wondered whether it would surface eventually,” he said and folded his hands before looking at her. “I guess it’s better to beat them to it before somebody starts talking about it behind our backs.”

  Camilla nodded.

  “When I go out to sea to catch my quota, I’m allowed to land a certain number of kilos of cod here in the harbor, but that’s not the only kind of fish I net. Maybe there are three or four hundred kilos of salmon in the catch, so I have an arrangement with this guy in Vedbæk. When I get close, I call him up, and then he sails out and loads. Those are the fish they serve at the good restaurants in Copenhagen. Otherwise, those damn Copenhageners wouldn’t be able to get salmon at that price.”

  He finished with a dry laugh, but his serious mood soon returned.

  “And you consent to my writing about it?” Camilla asked.

  Anders nodded slowly.

  “Everybody does it. It’s good, big fish and we can’t avoid netting them. Should we just throw dead fish back into the sea where they’re no good to anybody?”

  “How much do you make?”

  “Between seven and ten thousand. Nothing much. And now that the oil has become so expensive, it’s hardly worth doing the trip anymore.”

  Camilla had expected much more money to be involved. It was difficult to reason with what her stepbrother had been doing, even though he was legally in the wrong.

  They sat for a while in silence before she shook her head. She couldn’t decide what to do about potential accusations against a member of her own family.

  “Just write the story,” Anders said, interrupting her chain of thought.

  “You sure?”

  He nodded and saw her out when she got up. By the door they met Sofie, who quickly dodged into her room. Camilla got just a glimpse of the silhouette of a young guy sitting on the bed.

  * * *

  She went straight back to the editorial office and wrote the article. When she was done, she asked H.C. to make room for it in the paper before deadline.

  “Nest all cleaned up,” she tersely notified him on the way out the door before hurrying home to make it in time for dinner.

  * * *

  “I still don’t understand how Annette could think of it,” Camilla repeated after dinner. “What did she want all that money for?”

  Her dad sat at the end of the table, where they had made room for the wheelchair.

  “She probably had her reasons,” Eva said quietly.

  Camilla was about to say something but was interrupted.

  “I have a great deal of sympathy for your sense of justice,” her stepmom continued, “and all the things you notice and understand. But sometimes you can’t see beyond the tip of your own nose.”

  She was about to protest, but she fell silent when her dad nodded.

  “Who do you think paid to make sure her mother has stayed alive so far? Where do you think the money came from? The money that made it possible for her to go on extended stays at private clinics in Germany? And who do you think paid for those expensive radiation treatments? Did you think it was the municipality or our health care system? Because I can tell you it wasn’t. Annette paid for her mother, and Hanne never asked where she got the money from, because she didn’t want to hear the answer.”

  The silence lay so heavily over the kitchen that it was a relief when, a moment later, there was a knock on the door and Michael entered to welcome John back home.

  * * *

  “The DNA matches. And we’ve found a single fingerprint to go with it. We’ve got it all except for those damn teeth,” Michael told them when Eva had poured coffee for him and the conversation had turned to the recent murder. “The tooth that made the bite mark has a big piece missing, so there’s no mistaking it.”

  Camilla looked at her dad, who listened attentively. He still couldn’t speak, but he was able to communicate in writing via his laptop.

  Not once had he inquired how the investigation to find the culprits, whose fault it was that he was now in a wheelchair and had to communicate in this way, was coming along. It didn’t seem to hold his interest. It seemed that he
had resigned himself to the circumstances and realized that nothing much would improve even if the guilty party were caught and punished.

  “Did you check if the man has been to his dentist to fix the tooth after the killing?” he now wrote.

  Michael nodded. “He hasn’t.”

  Again, fingers scuttled across the keyboard: “He could have looked up one of the local dentists!”

  Michael nodded again.

  “But he hasn’t; that’s already been looked into.”

  John wrote again: “Maybe he took a little trip across the border down south?”

  Michael sat for a moment before he got up and left the kitchen and the steaming cup of coffee without saying a word.

  8

  The executive vice president of The Media House in Aarhus and his financial manager had invited John Lind for lunch at Brøndum’s Hotel to settle the last details concerning the sale of SkagensPosten.

  After coming home from the hospital, his condition having improved substantially, he and Camilla had sat down and worked out the additions they would try to put into the contract. He had decided to establish a fund to ensure that a small percentage of the paper’s profits would go toward the production of exclusive art books, and he hoped that, in time, he would be able to oversee this enterprise.

  They had held a family council the night before the meeting. And the crucial difference from the last time they had discussed the future of the paper around the table was that now it was John himself who decided that his life’s work and workplace since 1971, when he had founded SkagensPosten, would from now on work together with the seventeen other local papers of The Media House. “This must be the proverbial offer you can’t refuse,” he wrote on his laptop. But Camilla sensed the sorrow behind his smile. It wasn’t as easy for him as he pretended.

  * * *

  Much to Camilla’s surprise, the editorial office was empty when she returned after having seen her dad to the hotel. H.C. had never left early in all the time she had known him, even though he was an avid golfer. She turned on the radio and absentmindedly started tidying up her desk. Her thoughts were with her dad and the meeting with The Media House. In the morning he had seemed distant and had shut himself in with his computer until they left. Therefore, the announcer was well into the local news before the words caught her attention.

  “After massive investigations from the local press, the person behind the straw man deals, which has kept the real estate market in Skagen alive in recent years, has just turned himself in to the police.”

  Camilla listened in suspense, but nothing more came. Only a promise that there would be a follow-up in the next news bulletin.

  She looked over at H.C.’s empty chair and spotted the note lying on his desk: “Off to clean up nest / H.C.”

  She remained immobile for a moment while the picture came into focus. She thought about how H.C. had wanted her to leave her dad’s series of articles alone, and how he had reacted to the demonstration in the harbor. The division between poor and rich, locals and tourists, and wedged in between, his own attempt to strike it rich.

  Camilla located a backup pack of cigarettes in the drawer and sank into the editorial office’s deep armchair. She ought to have picked up the signals. At the same time, she was shaken by the fact that the quiet and boring H.C. was the man who had been juggling millions of kroner.

  Through the window she saw Michael coming. He waved and started talking even before he was inside the editorial office.

  “We got him,” he shouted. “He’s down at the station and has just pleaded guilty.”

  Camilla nodded toward H.C.’s desk.

  “No, not H.C., that bloody con-artist. I got so mad when he dropped by that I had to let a colleague take over to prevent me from slapping him around.”

  Just then Camilla realized how conveniently the tip about high-end prostitution had emerged. It could have been H.C. No matter what, it had diverted the attention away from the real estate scams.

  That shit. That mean, little shit, she thought furiously.

  “Then who’re you talking about?” She looked inquiringly at Michael.

  “The contractor!”

  She raised an eyebrow. She didn’t understand what Michael was saying.

  “But the tooth?”

  “He was in bloody Germany, like your dad suggested.”

  Michael shook his head and told her that the contractor had fallen and hit his tooth against a rock while he was out jogging some days before the murder.

  “When he realized that he was on our list of suspects, he didn’t dare contact his own dentist and instead crossed the border and had it fixed there.”

  Camilla nodded and drew in her breath to say something when Michael shook his head.

  “No, it had nothing to do with your article,” he said, obviously trying to soothe her. “As you know, he had been one of Annette’s regular customers for many years. He knew that his money paid for her mother’s cancer treatment. And when she told him that her mother had fully recovered and that she wanted out, he became so happy that he proposed to her.”

  Camilla listened, dumbfounded.

  “He claims that he loved her, and apparently, he imagined that his love was returned. According to him, he never saw himself as a paying customer, but rather as someone who was helping Annette out economically. However, she turned down his proposal and made it plain that their relationship had been on a purely professional level. Now that she no longer needed the money, the relationship was over. It seems that the murder took place in the heat of the moment, and that he lost control and strangled her. He doesn’t remember biting off her nipple nor trying to burn down the summerhouse.”

  * * *

  Camilla was still talking to Michael when a call came from Brøndum’s Hotel. John was ready to be picked up.

  He smiled when she stepped into the restaurant. The Media House had accepted the family’s terms, including the passage about the fund, and they had offered John the position of executive chairman, with the right to decide which art books to print.

  Even though Camilla wanted to, it was difficult for her to feel happy. After several attempts, she finally told John about H.C. But when he only reacted with a few small nods and a sad look in his eyes, she realized that her dad must have suspected all along.

  “Did you know from the start?” she asked, motioning for the waiter to bring some water.

  He nodded and typed on his computer: “If he’d taken a broad hint, he’d have emerged unblemished. But he was greedy and hoped that he could pull it off, and so I couldn’t do anything else but print the series.”

  The waiter brought the water while her dad typed on: “When I received his letter of resignation this morning, I had a feeling he’d turn himself in one of these days. I’ve contacted our lawyer and asked him to take on the case.”

  Camilla looked at him in surprise.

  “I won’t put up with his dirty tricks, but now that he’s ready to take responsibility for his actions, we can’t very well abandon him.”

  They sat for a while in silence before John started gathering up his papers.

  * * *

  That night Tina had invited everybody over for dinner at her hotel to celebrate that the sale of the paper was now final. Also, because it looked as if the summer would never end, as she somewhat cryptically put it over the phone.

  When Camilla arrived with Markus by the hand, she discovered to her delight that the restaurant was crammed full. Tina led them into a small, separate dining room where champagne was waiting for them.

  “It’s great that you’ve got a full house! And outside the weekend, too,” Camilla exclaimed when they were both holding a glass of bubbly. She looked at her stepsister.

  Tina smiled.

  “It’s because of Henrik,” she said and glanced toward the kitchen. “I took out a loan in the bank and hired him for the rest of the summer. His restaurant in Copenhagen has been awarded a star in the Michelin guide, and the
rumor that he’ll be here all summer has spread, so reservations are pouring in.”

  “What happens when he goes back to Copenhagen?”

  Tina shook her head.

  “This year, the summer’s never going to end,” she said, smiling. Camilla’s jaw almost dropped when a man she recognized as a celebrity chef from television came over and gave Tina a loving peck on the cheek before saying hello to the rest of the family.

  The age difference had to be at least ten years, but that didn’t seem to bother the younger chef as he sat down next to Tina, after everyone else was seated.

  The first course had already been served when Camilla spotted an empty place at the table.

  “Where’s Sofie?” she asked and looked at Anders and her sister-in-law.

  Susanne got a tired look in her eyes. “She’s locked herself in her room. The door was locked when we left, and we haven’t seen her since this morning. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. But her bad mood isn’t going to ruin my evening.”

  Camilla was puzzled. This didn’t sound at all like the Sofie she knew.

  “Lend me your car keys, I’ll drive back and try to talk to her,” she said to her stepbrother and discreetly got up from the table.

  * * *

  “Sofie,” she called out in the hallway. “Please let me in…”

  Silence. But Camilla sensed that her niece was in there.

  “Did you know that Tina’s got a boyfriend? It’s the guy from TV, have you met him?” she asked, just to say something. “Open up!”

  When the door finally opened, she could hardly recognize her niece’s face, which was so swollen from crying that it looked deformed.

  She drew the girl toward her and led her back to the bed, where she had been crying.

  They sat together for a long time without saying anything.

  “I heard about H.C. on the radio.”

  Her voice was just a whisper.