by Sara Blaedel
Camilla was about to pour the warm mead out on the ground when the woman called out. “Wait!”
She jerked her hand back. “What?”
“Remember to warn the wights before you pour anything hot out onto the ground. They like a sip of beer or something to eat, but you mustn’t scald them.”
“The wights?”
“The small folk. We have to take good care of them. They make sure nature flourishes. They protect it. You must also remember to ask permission before you pick a flower.” She pointed out at the forest floor.
Hello, St. Hans Hospital, Camilla thought. She stood up, wanting to leave before she disturbed the forest. “Is that the way to the sacrificial oak?” She pointed.
The woman nodded and immediately closed her eyes. She appeared to have retreated into herself.
* * *
Twilight had deepened, shadows lengthened, and now it was impossible to make out anything in the trees.
Camilla continued toward the clearing, which lay a bit farther ahead. She didn’t know what to think about the woman. Apart from nearly scaring Camilla to death, Camilla didn’t think she would hurt a fly. Sitting out in the forest all night in communion with nature, to receive signs from the old Nordic gods, was hard to take seriously. But that was her business. Camilla stepped into the clearing and walked to the partly hollow tree.
She thought she heard a car, but when she stopped to listen, all she heard was the forest silence. The birds were quiet now, and the breeze had died down. She lay the blue sack on the ground. She thought about taking some things out so the boy could spot them from a distance, but the sky looked threatening. If it rained, a wet blanket would do him no good. Instead she wrapped two elastic cords around the sack to close it tightly, hoping he would be curious enough to look inside.
Maybe she should have written a note to him, she thought as she returned to the path she guessed would lead her back to the house.
Thoughts about the boy and the Asatro flitted around in her head. She came to a forest road she thought she recognized. A few meters down the road, she stopped. She heard the motor and spotted the headlights at about the same time: A car was approaching from farther in the forest. For a moment she was frightened, until she realized it had to be Frederik, out looking for her. She should have been back long ago. He teased her constantly about being the only person he knew who could get lost in a closet.
The headlights were close now, the engine growling. She waited. The car appeared from behind a rise and rolled silently down the road in neutral. She started waving.
The driver put it in gear and floored it, and a moment later Camilla was blinded by the headlights. She waved again even though it was less than fifty meters away, but instead of slowing down the car shot out, a dark shadow behind the twin lights.
“WHAT THE HELL—”
The car rammed into her and flung her off the road. Everything went black.
15
Sune hid behind the tree stump when the dark-haired woman with the basket and sleeping bag under her arm appeared in the clearing. For a moment he prayed that she had come to make a new moon sacrifice; his stomach began cramping up at the thought of the leftovers. But she walked by the bonfire site and back into the forest. It was twilight, so he didn’t dare follow her.
He was so hungry that sometimes it felt like worms were crawling in his guts, robbing him of vitamins, minerals, all nutrition. He’d just been down to the creek to drink. He missed being able to gulp down a whole glass of water. It wasn’t the same, scooping it up and drinking out of his hands. He’d tried sucking water up directly from the surface of the stream, but other stuff streamed into his mouth that he had to spit out constantly.
Just then a deer walked into the clearing, close enough for him to make out the three-pointed white markings on its chest. He loved the thought of being at one with nature; he recalled the old myths about the boy who was sent out into the forest to live with his father…
But his father wasn’t here. He was alone.
At first he imagined the animal had smelled him when it whirled around and sprang back into the forest. Then he saw the blond woman, the one who had tried to catch him when he was eating the leftovers from the last Asatro sacrifice.
She walked over to the sacrificial oak, slipped a big sack off her shoulder, and dropped it where he’d been sitting the first time he saw her. She stood around awhile as if waiting for something. He held his breath when she appeared to be staring directly at him, but then she strode off, leaving the sack behind.
Who is she? he wondered when his heartbeat returned to normal.
He waited until darkness fell to step out of hiding. He stood a few moments before sneaking over to the tree. He was in arm’s reach of the sack when he heard the car; it was close, very close. He ducked into some bushes, and instantly his clothes were soaked from the evening dew covering the long, thin leaves. He kept his face down while the car drove slowly by on the forest road. It stopped. A car door opened.
Sune pressed himself even closer to the ground and lay perfectly still. A snail crawled up onto his hand. The door slammed again, and they took off. He got up on his elbows and crawled over to the big tree and the sack on the ground.
Suddenly they were back, their flashlights searching around and between the trees. If they walked into the clearing, they would find the sack she’d left.
They came looking for him almost every night. Never in the daytime, when someone might see them. Sune knew he couldn’t keep hiding here forever, but he had nowhere else to go.
He missed his mother so badly that once in a while it overshadowed his hunger. He missed the evenings sitting with her in the living room, reading. Not saying a word. Just being together. But that was before her illness. Back then, she had taken care of the housework, reminded him of where and when he had to be somewhere, checked his homework. Everything.
It wasn’t like that anymore.
He couldn’t know if she still lay in bed with all the extra pillows. He wasn’t even sure she was still alive. He could barely swallow the lump in his throat when he thought about it. When he curled up inside the tree and tried to fall asleep, he prayed to the gods. Prayed that she knew why he had to keep hiding. If she was aware of everything that had gone on out here, he was sure she would understand.
He wasn’t afraid anymore to be confronted by what had happened. He didn’t mind being held responsible, either, even though he had nothing to do with the girl’s death. He knew he would have to pay; if you broke an oath, you would be held responsible. The others would turn against him. All of them.
The headlights disappeared and the darkness returned. The only thing visible was the clearing, where the silvery new moon cast a ghostly, surreal luminescence over the sacrificial oak. It looked like a giant rising up from the forest floor. Sune thought about Odin, the god who had hanged himself from Yggdrasil, the world tree, and had hung there for nine days to gather his strength.
He kept crawling toward the sack.
What was the blonde up to? He realized it could be a trap. Could she be in cahoots with them? But his stomach was screaming. He was driven by a hunger growing out of control.
He heard the car’s engine again, though farther away now. It revved up, the sound split the forest silence, and he decided to go for the sack. He ran as fast as he could, grabbed the sack, and ducked back into the bushes. Then he heard tires whining and a sound like an animal crying out, followed by a thunk. He thought about the deer with the markings on its chest.
The silence returned. He held the sack close to his body, which covered up his rapid breathing.
Far off through the trees, the headlights glared and moved away from him. Soon it was dark again. He groped his way back to the tree stump and knelt in a small pool of clear moonlight.
His fingers were stiff, but he managed to tear off the paper around the roll of sweet biscuits. He stuffed them greedily in his mouth, the crumbs flying. He felt around for the blanke
t with his other hand, then carefully pulled it out of the sack.
After wrapping himself up in the warm wool, he leaned back against the tree stump and sorted through the rest of what was in the sack.
16
Louise’s phone alarm startled her. She stared confusedly at the dark-gray ceiling for a moment before realizing she was in her childhood bedroom, in Lerbjerg. Slowly, everything came back to her.
She had taken the train from Holbæk after the meeting with René Gamst. Exhaustion had won out over anger as she walked to the station and sat down in the Copenhagen train, but when they reached Vipperød she called her father and asked him to pick her up at Hvalsø station. She wasn’t ready to go home just yet. First she had to stop by the Starling House and talk to René’s wife.
Louise swung her legs off the bed and sat a moment. She’d told her parents that Jonas was staying with a friend; that it was convenient for her to stay there because she had an interrogation in the area the next morning. She took a quick shower and hoped that Bitten hadn’t already left to drop her daughter off. René’s wife worked for Hvalsø Kommune, the local government.
She finished her shower at twenty past eight, and soon after wrestled her mother’s green bicycle out of the old horse stall and pedaled angrily into the forest, thinking about René’s scornful words.
Camilla could be right: He might have wanted to hurt her. At least that could be part of it. But Klaus’s parents didn’t believe he’d committed suicide, either. And others had to be punished if it turned out they were involved.
Louise hopped off the bicycle and leaned it against a tree. She walked down an uneven stone pathway to the old forest ranger’s house. Hollyhocks lined an outer wall with small-paned windows, their tops leaning over toward the thatched roof’s overhang. She knocked on the stable door and glanced around but saw no sign of anyone apart from the pink child’s bike lying on the lawn.
She knocked again and stepped back. She heard a noise inside the house, then Bitten opened the door and stared at her in obvious surprise. She was wearing one bath towel and drying her hair with another.
“Yes?” she said. She seemed uneasy about her unannounced morning visitor.
“I’d like to talk to you for a few moments,” Louise said.
The last time they had spoken together, a sort of confidentiality had arisen between them. But of course that was before Louise put her husband behind bars.
“This isn’t such a good time,” Bitten said, but Louise was already halfway in the hallway. She pushed Bitten into the living room. Before they reached the sofa, she noticed a dark shadow in the bathroom doorway. Big Thomsen stepped out. He had just taken a shower; a small pool of water formed at his feet while he wrapped himself in a dark-blue bathrobe.
Louise guessed that Thomsen had appropriated René’s robe, seeing that it barely covered his stomach and stretched tightly across the shoulders.
“What do you want?” he asked. He stood behind Bitten, acting as if he were master of the house.
“I just want to hear how Bitten is doing,” Louise ad-libbed.
“She’s doing just great,” he said. He grabbed Bitten’s narrow hips, pulled her back, and began grinding against her ass. He stared into Louise’s eyes. “I’m making sure she don’t get lonely.”
René’s wife turned pale. Her eyes darted over the furniture and the complete mess in the living room.
Louise followed her eyes and noticed several things that hadn’t been there before. An overnight bag beside the woodstove, a large, wide leather chair with footstool, an enormous flat-screen television.
So. Big Thomsen had moved in and taken over Gamst’s wife while he sat in Holbæk Jail. For a moment she stared at Bitten, trying to get a read on her thoughts.
“It won’t bother me one bit, you talking to her while I’m here,” Thomsen said. He walked over to the coffee table and picked up his iPhone. “But you can see for yourself that she’s fine.”
Bitten said nothing, her eyes glued to the floor.
Louise ignored Thomsen and kept watching her in the hope she would look up. She couldn’t believe that René’s wife had voluntarily allowed Big Thomsen to move in. On the other hand, it seemed as if she were resigned to the situation. But surely she had something to say. She knew Bitten had been having an ongoing affair with her husband’s friend, but it was her impression that the woman had been pressured into it, that Thomsen otherwise would have fired Gamst.
Thomsen worked for the Bistrup Forestry District besides owning three semis. Gamst drove for him. Louise had once asked Bitten why Thomsen even bothered working for the district. She’d explained that he just loafed around in the forest; he made his living from the trucks but was too lazy to drive long distances.
“Call me sometime today, okay?” she said. She headed for the door when Bitten didn’t answer.
“Why the hell should she?” Big Thomsen snapped at her. “Nobody here owes you a thing.”
“I’ve heard enough out of you.” Louise whirled around and glared at him. “Bitten can answer for herself.”
“You keep your nose out of our business,” he sneered.
Bitten’s expression was blank, her arms hanging limply at her sides.
“No!” Louise spat out. “There is no ‘our’ business. I will have nothing to do with you. You will not interfere with my work and you will stay out of my investigations. I couldn’t care less what strings you pull or who you try to shut up.”
She slammed the stall door and stood under the trees to calm herself. She breathed the morning air deep into her lungs. Damn it, she thought. She’d lost her temper. Not that she regretted it, but she’d just made things a little more difficult for herself. Especially if Thomsen started asking about this investigation he was supposed to stay out of. Her chances of asking Bitten about Sune, about why he was hiding in the forest, had also taken a hit.
The morning sunlight poured in from above the treetops. Louise was certain that Thomsen stood inside watching her, if he wasn’t already calling around on his phone.
She pedaled away, but her legs felt heavy, as if they held all her animosity toward him. She rode behind a mountain of firewood and stopped, leaned against the wood, and closed her eyes.
What the hell had happened to Bitten? She was thirty-one, with a young daughter. Despite that, she didn’t seem to realize she had the right to say no. Or was it Louise who didn’t get it?
What was going on around here? Not just with Bitten. Everyone seemed mixed up in something or with somebody, and Louise couldn’t connect the dots, didn’t understand the games they were playing. But even if she had to show up at Bitten’s job, she was going to pressure her and find out if there were problems between the butcher and his son. And if René’s wife knew anything about Klaus’s death, she would get that out of her, too.
Louise put Thomsen out of her mind and checked her phone to see how late she would be. She’d better call Eik, she thought. It annoyed her that he still considered a text to be something the devil thought up. If you needed him, you had to call.
Three messages. Two were from Jonas who, being the responsible boy he was, had gone home to be with Dina instead of sleeping at his friend’s, after Louise told him she was staying in Hvalsø. He’d walked the dog and was on his way to school now.
That warmed Louise’s heart. She missed him. Overnight, it seemed, he’d grown up into a mature teen. She knew it wouldn’t be long before parties and friends began to pull at him more strongly than the yellow Labrador, whom he’d taken good care of as he’d promised.
The last message came from a number Louise didn’t have on her phone. C was hit by a car, call. Frederik.
17
The asshole meant to hit me,” Camilla told Frederik again, in the car on the way home.
The X-rays had taken an eternity, and it had been the wee hours of the morning before the doctor finally examined her. Only then had he decided to keep her under observation for a day, to make sure she hadn�
�t sustained a concussion.
Camilla’s entire body had hurt too much for her to complain about waiting. Everyone in the emergency room had been in the same boat. Several slept on hard chairs, and a mother had left despite her son’s considerable pain from a fall on his trick two-wheeler scooter. She’d sat straight in her chair and waited patiently for eight hours as blood soaked through the tall teenager’s pants at the knees and tears ran down his acne-covered cheeks.
The emergency room nurse had walked around with her eyes on the gray linoleum floor, avoiding contact with the many people waiting. “These poor people,” Frederik had said, after trying several times to get someone to help. “My wife was rushed here in an ambulance and still no one has time to look at her. HEY! ANYONE HERE?”
But nothing happened, apart from an elderly lady with a scarf tied neatly around her head, who looked up from her magazine and said her husband had fallen down the stairs at the train station.
It had to be tough, working here every day under this kind of pressure, Camilla thought, when the doctor sent Frederik home and told him to come back for her the next day. They had waited for the doctor all morning, with compelling reasons to protest cuts in the national health care system going through her head.
* * *
“We can’t know he ran you down on purpose,” Frederik said. Without saying it directly, he was critical of her for not having reflectors on her bicycle. That, of course, annoyed Camilla even more.
“Oh we can’t, can we? Well, I can. I can goddamn tell when a driver turns his brights on right in my eyes. I was standing in the middle of the road. It wasn’t like it was dark when he sped up to hit me!”
Frederik nodded while concentrating on traffic. “Whether he tried to hit you or not, there’s no doubt he was driving way too fast,” he said. “And we don’t allow unauthorized vehicles. But right now, I’m just relieved you weren’t hurt worse.”