by Sara Blaedel
“It sounds like you’ve been out at the sacrificial oak,” he said. “Which means it’s probably pig’s blood you slipped in. They buy it from the butcher.”
“They? Who in the hell are ‘they’?” Camilla bellowed. She began ripping off her jogging pants.
“The people who make sacrifices to the gods. They believe in Odin and Thor, and once in a while they meet out in the forest and perform rituals.”
“Are they some of the people from over at the Viking Ship Museum?”
“No.” He laughed and shook his head at her. “These people are believers. They’re Asatro.”
“Actually I think I saw one of them.”
She tossed her blouse on top of the wet pile of clothes and grabbed a blanket off the Chesterfield sofa. The office looked exactly the same as it did when Frederik’s father moved out and left the house to them. Immediately they’d changed the property’s name to Ingersminde, in honor of Walther’s deceased wife.
“This old lady appeared out of nowhere and looked me straight in the eye. I almost had a heart attack—I hadn’t at all heard her walk up behind me. It seems to me she could be one of those people. She had this long braid hanging down over her shoulder.”
Frederik laughed harder this time. “That’s Elinor. She lives in the gatekeeper’s house; she has most of her life. She’s completely harmless, and definitely not one of the Asatro or wights.”
“Why do you let them run around and pour blood all over our forest?” Camilla asked. She nestled into the couch to get warm.
“The old Asatro has deep roots in this region, though no one in our family ever believed in it,” Frederik said. “It attracts people interested in the Nordic gods and sagas. A lot of our country’s history comes from this area.”
Camilla struggled to remember some of what she had learned in history class.
“This is where Skjold drifted to shore in an unmanned ship the gods sent,” Frederik continued. “He grew up and became king in Lejre. His was the strongest and bravest army. Did you know that?”
She nodded. Everyone who had gone to high school in Roskilde knew that story. They had heard a lot about King Skjold and his descendants, including the tale of his departure. When he died at a very old age, his body was carried aboard the ship he had arrived on as a baby and laid on his shield, together with piles of gold, jewelry, and valuable weapons. The ship was launched from shore; only the gods know where it ended up.
“I met a boy out there, too,” she said. “I think he’s about Markus’s age. He was eating some food on the ground by the tree. But he could have been one of them, of course.”
Frederik frowned. “I don’t think the kids come by themselves. Usually they all meet down by the gate where they park their cars, and then they all walk in together. But I’ve seen their food lying around on the ground, several times. They share it with the gods or something, and that’s fine. The animals out there can have at it, as long as there’s no plastic or other garbage.”
Camilla smiled at him and gathered up her clothes. “We certainly didn’t have heathen worshipers like that when I was a little girl in Frederiksberg.”
She kissed him. “At least not in my part of Frederiksberg.”
7
Someone knocked on the office door and immediately Charlie was on his feet, growling. Louise jumped; she’d forgotten about the big German shepherd on the folded-up gray dog blanket beside Eik’s chair. She waved and shook her head, warning Rønholt not to come in.
“Can I have a few minutes?” he asked, stepping behind the door.
The dog was still growling, even though Eik grabbed his collar and tried to force him back on his blanket. “Settle down. Down now; it’s okay for them to be here, too,” he said. Louise rolled her eyes and walked out into the hall.
Rønholt put his arm around her shoulder. “It’s nice having you back,” he said. “We’ve missed you. So how are you doing?”
“You’re going to have to explain to him that he can’t bring that dog in here. It’s totally crazy,” she said, niftily avoiding the question, as they walked down to Rønholt’s office. “I’ve tried to tell him, but it goes in one ear and out the other.”
“That’s not going to be so easy,” Rønholt mumbled, staring down at the gray linoleum.
“What do you mean? You’re not going to allow this!”
Rønholt still didn’t look at her. “You have to admit he’s being very decent.”
“The dog?” Louise was incredulous. “You couldn’t even walk into our office! If that dog’s staying, Eik’s going to have to move back to his old office.”
“Not the dog. I’m talking about Eik offering to take care of it while his friend is dealing with his very unfortunate situation.”
Ragner Rønholt closed his office door and gestured to her to drag the chair over to his desk. Louise could see he was finished talking about the dog.
“I’m having second thoughts,” he began, looking a bit apologetic now. “I sent a case from Hvalsø over to you.”
She broke in. “I’ve already talked to Mik.”
“You’re too close to it,” he continued, ignoring her remark. “I was just thinking that coming back to a case would be good for you. You know, right back up on the horse, that sort of thing.”
He was wringing his hands, so hard that Louise thought it must hurt.
“But not in Hvalsø. Of course you shouldn’t be going back down there. Especially if the father of the missing boy is one of the…”
He seemed to search, in vain, for the right words. “You’re too close,” he finally repeated. “I’ve told Olle to take over.”
Louise studied her clenched hands. “You can’t do this,” she said. “I have no problem with working in Hvalsø.”
And she meant that. She hadn’t seen Lars Frandsen in twenty years, and she could hardly imagine what he looked like now. Back then, he had been rangy with thick, light hair, round cheeks, and a broad nose that wiggled when he laughed. A happy boy with a certain status, he was the butcher’s son and lived in a large residential home on Præstegårdsvej, with an indoor pool and access to his parents’ bar in the basement, where there were pinball machines and a billiard table.
Louise knew all of this because he was the guy Klaus hung out with the most back then. They had finished their apprenticeships at the same time, Lars with his father in Hvalsø, Klaus with the butcher over in Tølløse. When they attended butcher school in Roskilde, they took the morning train together, which was how Klaus had become part of Big Thomsen’s gang.
“I just thought it might not be good for you to meet one of them after what happened,” Rønholt added in a nearly fatherly tone. “It’s better that I send one of the others to poke around.”
Louise shook her head. “If anyone’s going to poke around over in Hvalsø, it should be me. It doesn’t bother me one bit to meet the butcher or anyone else there.”
She gave him her stubborn look. “If I was that way, I couldn’t walk around Copenhagen for fear of running into someone from the Eastern European mafia, not to mention the gang members I’ve put behind bars. If I’m scared or have problems confronting people, I should go into private security instead of holding on to this lousy-paying job.”
She paused for a moment, then leaned forward. “I’ll find that boy. Tell Olle the case is mine.”
* * *
She met Olle in the hallway as he walked down from their office, carrying the few case files that Mik had mailed them. “Welcome back!” he said, and spread his arms.
He was about to keep chattering, so she broke in to tell him that Rønholt had changed his mind: She would continue with the case. “But it could very well be that we’ll need your help,” she added, smiling at her tall, balding colleague before walking past him.
Louise was about to open the door to the Rathole when she remembered the dog. “Can I come in?” she called out. She felt like an idiot, standing there waiting for the green light to enter her own office.
A moment later Eik said, “Come on in.”
She hurried inside and sat down at her desk while Eik held the German shepherd’s collar with one hand and pushed three dog biscuits across her desk with the other.
“Try giving him one,” he suggested.
“Come on, Eik! You’re the one who has to deal with this dog. He shouldn’t be here. It’s not right that I can’t work without worrying about a German shepherd biting my ass.”
“Charlie’s not aggressive. He just has to get to know you. Give him a chance.”
Eik went on to say that the photographer who had set up the camera blind in Boserup Forest had called while she was talking to Rønholt. “He’ll call back.”
Reluctantly, Louise grabbed one of the square dog biscuits and held it out. The dog growled from deep in his throat.
“Come on, give it to him!” Eik said. “Or else he’ll think you’re stringing him along!”
“This is bullshit!”
Eik broke out laughing. It flustered her that he looked so great when he laughed; she ignored Charlie’s growling and held out the biscuit, which disappeared in a second. The dog began licking her hand.
“What did I tell you?” Eik said, gesturing for her to give Charlie another one.
The dog rested his big head on her lap. “Here!” She pushed him gently and dropped the biscuit on the floor to get him away, but as soon as he ate it, he was back.
“Oh, look. He loves you,” Eik said. He folded his arms and looked on with obvious contentment as she gave Charlie the last of the goodies. Louise shook her head.
The phone rang. She wiped her dog-slobbered hand on her pants. “That’s perfect,” she answered when the photographer offered to meet them in the forest and show them the camera that had captured the boy. “We can be there in an hour.”
Eik caught her attention. “Is the boy in any of the photos we haven’t seen?”
Louise repeated the question to the photographer, and thanked him when he offered to look through the pictures before meeting them.
8
Charlie was asleep in the back of Eik’s rattletrap Jeep Cherokee when they entered the forest west of Roskilde forty-five minutes later. They had passed the driveway to Camilla and Frederik’s place, but trees blocked all views of the big manor house.
“You think this is it?” Eik asked as he signaled with his blinker. A red barrier closed off the forest road, and a sign expressly forbade all vehicles on the private property.
“I think it’s a little farther,” Louise said. She reached into the front pocket of her bag and pulled out the scrap of paper with directions. “There’s a parking lot and a path leading to a small area with benches.”
Several hundred meters down the road they saw the parking sign and pulled in.
“Don’t even think it,” Louise said when Eik made a move to let the dog out. Instead of opening the door, he reached out for Louise and pulled her close.
“Don’t you think you two can be friends?” He hugged her, his odor filling her nose. She closed her eyes for a moment and enjoyed it, until she heard a car on the road slowing down. She broke away from him just before a light-blue Fiat 500 pulled in and parked beside Eik’s dirty four-wheel-drive.
The photographer was in his late fifties and partially bald, his gray hair like a wreath gracing his round head.
“You’re early,” he said, smiling as he tapped his watch. “I thought we were meeting in two minutes!”
“Right, you’re right, you’re not late,” Eik said. He walked over and introduced himself.
The photographer slung a camera over his shoulder and locked his car. Something about him made Louise think of her father, an ornithologist, who had the same energetic look when he took off with a pair of binoculars around his neck.
“You never know what you’ll run into, so I always carry a camera with me,” he explained.
Louise smiled at him. He took off, waving them down a slope instead of following the gravel path. “This way,” he said, holding back a few limbs for them. “We’ll circle around the edge of the forest until we hit a stretch that juts out into a field. That will take us to the camera.”
Louise followed Eik. She swore when she stumbled over a root.
“I have three bases here in the forest,” the photographer said. “They’re placed to capture specific animals. For instance, the boxes I use to photograph birds are in a clearing farther in the forest, much higher up than the camera that caught the fox cubs.”
He pointed around at the different types of trees and chattered about them as they worked their way around the forest.
“Can you tell us when the photo was taken?” Eik asked as they stopped.
The photographer pulled a folded-up sheet of paper out of his pocket. “I can tell you that it was taken on June eleventh at precisely six forty-seven a.m. The time is registered automatically when a photo is taken.”
Eight days ago, Louise thought. “Did you find him in any of the other photos?”
The photographer nodded. “Five. I’ve written it all down for you.”
He handed her the paper. “The first time he showed up was a week before the photo used in the paper. June sixth. But you have to look closely to see him. Let’s go down here.”
He walked onto a path hidden behind the exposed roots of a fallen tree. “The camera is right over there.”
Louise approached the metal box screwed onto a tree stump. The hole for the camera lens was on the other side.
“It’s focused on the fox den over there,” the photographer explained, pointing to a thick tree trunk on a slope, its open roots just above the den’s entrance. Eik headed for the small hole while the photographer checked the lock on the box holding the digital camera.
“The fox cubs were born in March, so they’re three months old now,” he continued. But Louise wasn’t listening. Eik waved her over, and before she got there she spied the remains of a small campfire.
“Do you want to look through my photos?” the photographer called after her; she thanked him when he offered to mail them to her.
“And thank you very much for helping us on such short notice,” she said. She gave him her card so he could call if he happened to see the boy again.
“What is it about this boy?” he asked. “Did he do something stupid?”
She smiled and shook her head, impressed that he had waited so long to ask. “We just want to find out why he’s staying here in the forest and not at home with his parents.”
“He’s been here, no doubt about that, but not recently,” Eik said as he squatted down beside the fire. “Him, or at least somebody.”
The fire had been extinguished before burning out. A small pile of limbs lay beside it, along with an old can. Eik sniffed it.
“I think he was making soup out of stinging nettles,” he said. He dropped the can back onto the ground. “But he didn’t finish.”
“Maybe he slept over here,” Louise said, from the other side of the tree. The trunk was split, and when she leaned in close she saw that part of the tree was hollow. The hole wasn’t big, but a boy could curl up and lie in it.
She got down on her knees and crawled halfway in, groping around on the ground. She found a few small limbs for the fire, but when her fingers touched something soft, she pulled her hand back and banged her head above the opening.
“There’s something in there,” she said when she backed out.
Eik pushed her aside and squeezed into the hollow space while flicking his lighter. He came out carrying a dark-blue sweatshirt, which he unfolded on the ground. Inside was a small pocketknife, a lighter, and a set of keys.
“It’s cold and damp from the ground,” he said. “But we can’t know how long it’s been here. Possibly only one night. It’s not much use to us.”
He studied the knife. “It’s his,” he said, handing it over to her. “His name is engraved on it.”
He sat on the ground and studied the small, primitive cam
p.
“Let’s take these things back with us,” Louise said. She began packing it all in the sweatshirt.
“No, wait,” he said. “If he still lives here, he’ll need his knife and the warm sweatshirt. There’s no reason to make things harder for him.”
Louise brought out her phone and took a picture of the engraved name on the knife. Then she rolled up the old sweatshirt with everything inside and laid it in the hollow tree. “Let’s drive over to his parents and give them the news before we inform social services.”
9
Neither of them spoke until they arrived in Hvalsø.
Louise gave him directions at the roundabout, steering him out of town and over the hill before the asphalt road turned to gravel.
“Why oh why is that boy living out in the rain and mud instead of relaxing in his nice, warm room at home?” Eik asked.
She shrugged. It wasn’t unusual for kids to run away from home. Or for them to return, either voluntarily or when they were found.
The butcher’s house was one of the last on the road. An old friend from school had lived in the first house, and they had often ridden horses on the gravel road leading into the forest.
She motioned for Eik to pull in. On the right side of the driveway stood a big chestnut tree, like a giant parasol shading most of the farmyard. The three-winged house had stable doors on every wing and a thatched roof overhanging the windows, like thick hair over a forehead. A white van was parked by the green front door.
Louise took stock of the place a moment before walking up to the door. She was fairly confident that the butcher didn’t know who had turned him in about the meat back then, yet she had butterflies in her stomach when she grabbed the heavy knocker and let it fall against the brass back plate.
A moment later the door opened. There he stood, only slightly taller than her. His ranginess had vanished and his round cheeks had spread to the rest of his body. The open expression on his face suddenly closed; clearly, he’d been expecting someone else. He casually stepped back and looked expectantly at her without speaking. She could tell he didn’t recognize her.