by Sara Blaedel
“But Sune?” he whispered. “What about him?”
“Your son is on the way to intensive care. He’s lost a lot of blood. His pulse is rapid, but very weak. He was very close to bleeding to death. We’re giving him fluids and oxygen while we prepare a blood transfusion.”
“Is he going to make it?” he whispered without looking at her.
“It’s too early to say,” the doctor answered. “He was in bad shape before he received treatment.”
Louise couldn’t handle it any longer. Tears ran down her cheeks as she stood up. “We’ve arranged for your wife to be taken down to his room, so they can be together,” was the last thing she heard before walking out.
* * *
At six thirty the butcher walked into the ICU’s family room, which the duty nurse had given them permission to use. Louise and Eik had been driving back to Copenhagen when Nymand called and said that the boy’s father had asked to speak with them.
He was pale when he sat down across from them, his eyes dark and red-rimmed. He seemed to be staring through them. “Right now the doctors think there’s a chance he’ll survive.” He folded his hands on the table, as if he needed support. “But Jane won’t. They pushed her bed up against Sune so she can reach his hand. I don’t know how much she understands, but she knows he’s there. She spoke his name.”
At first his crying was silent, then he began sobbing from deep within. He shook his head and stood up, walked over to the sink in the corner of the room, grabbed a paper towel, and blew his nose. He stood for a moment with his back to them before throwing the paper in the trash and returning to the table.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He breathed very deeply, as if to compose himself. “I told you that Big Thomsen’s gang isn’t your normal group of friends,” he said to Louise. “It’s like some sect that none of us can get out of. I want you to know I always respected Klaus, a lot, because he tried. After what’s happened today, I’ll never forgive myself for not having the same courage.”
Louise felt empty inside. What good was courage when you died because of it?
“I want to tell you how it started.”
She felt Eik’s arm around her shoulder, and she leaned back, tense now. She thought she’d heard the whole story.
“Do you remember Eline? Thomsen’s little sister?”
Louise tried to think: Thomsen had a sister? Then she remembered her, a pale, thin girl who had been in her little brother’s class. She had also been in a photo on Thomsen’s dresser. She nodded slowly; the girl had been sick, though she couldn’t recall what it was.
“It’s a really sad story,” the butcher continued, looking down at his hands. “When you’re young, being around sickness and death can overwhelm you.”
His expression and, in particular, the way he talked about Eline told Louise that something had affected him deeply.
He looked up. “I don’t know, maybe I’m just trying to justify what happened.”
“What was wrong with her?” Eik asked. He’d stuck a match in his mouth, a substitute for a cigarette.
He ignored the question. “I’ve thought about it a thousand times. Back then, none of us understood the consequences. You can’t, not when you’re just teenagers. We thought we could save her. It turned out we couldn’t.”
He was practically talking to himself now, Louise thought. He straightened up. “Thomsen had taken his sister up in this tree house he’d built. He wanted to show her the view. That was in 1983, when she was eight years old. A limb broke, she fell down on the left side of her back, but she kept on playing, she felt okay. After dinner that night she started complaining about pain. She got worse as the night went on, and they ended up taking her to the emergency room. The doctors told them she was bleeding internally, that she had ruptured her spleen.”
The butcher paused for a moment. “She had to have a blood transfusion, it was a matter of life or death,” he said, quieter now. “And that’s how she contracted HIV. The blood hadn’t been treated. Five years later she had AIDS.”
“But that doesn’t make it anyone’s fault that she died,” Louise said. “The girl suffered from a serious illness.”
The butcher shook his head. “Eline didn’t die from AIDS. Thomsen killed her. She’s one of the girls you found in the old graveyard.”
39
The butcher’s words hung in the air, but before Louise actually grasped what he’d said, he averted his eyes and continued. “She’d reached the point where the doctors thought she didn’t have long to live. A month, maybe two. At the end she was really sick; she just lay in her room and felt like hell. But she made a fight of it. It was strange for all of us who knew her; she’d been a real ball of fire. And there she was, wasting away from all that AIDS shit.” He looked up at Louise. “You know Roed Thomsen. He couldn’t handle his daughter having AIDS. Nobody talked about it. It was like they were ashamed, but it sure as hell wasn’t her fault.”
Louise knew exactly what he was talking about. Some people had panicked. They’d thought you could get the disease by kissing or drinking out of the same glass. It wasn’t hard to imagine that this locally well-known Hvalsø family had gone into denial about what the poor girl suffered from.
“You may not believe Thomsen can be sensitive, but he was just totally wiped out by all this. He was the one who’d taken her up in the tree. He adored his little sister; he’d have done anything to make her well. I can’t remember exactly when he called us all together. His folks were over on Fyn or in Jutland, visiting friends, staying overnight. Eline had asked him to drive her out to the sacrificial oak, so we could call upon the gods to take care of her. In a lot of ways it was really tough, but we didn’t think so much about it back then. The important thing was to support Eline, or maybe to feel we meant something to her.”
Louise leaned forward. “What gave her the idea?”
“Thomsen’s grandmother grew up at the old girls’ orphanage. Eline heard the stories about the girls about to die being taken out to the tree, to make sure the gods were ready to receive them. The stories made an impression on her. She wanted the same for herself.”
“I wonder, is it because of his grandmother’s childhood that Thomsen is Asatro, and did he pressure the rest of you to join?”
“He didn’t pressure nobody,” the butcher said, irritated at the question. “You become an Asatro because it gives meaning to your life, being one with nature. For Scandinavians it’s the most obvious faith there is.”
His aggressive outburst told Louise that he was used to defending himself. “All right. But how did it begin?”
“Like I said, his grandmother grew up with the faith at the orphanage. The director was a gothi. That’s what we call our priest. A lot from the old Nordic myths takes place right here in Lejre and Roskilde. It’s a part of the region’s history, and now we’ve made it a part of our lives.”
Louise nodded. She thought about Sune, only fifteen years old, yet these men had tried to force him into their brotherhood. The poor kid. The more his father talked about it, the more it sounded like a sect, however much they made it out to be a faith.
The butcher shifted in his chair. “I’ve never told this to anyone, but I guess there’s no reason not to anymore.” He looked first at Eik, then at Louise. “You know anything at all about the sacrificial oak in Boserup Forest?”
He looked surprised when they both nodded. “Anyway, it was a full moon the night we drove Eline into the forest. It was a coincidence, it wasn’t like it was something Thomsen could control. But it made the mood special. She wasn’t strong enough to walk, so we carried her. There was a lot more undergrowth back then. We hadn’t cleared off our bonfire area, either. Eline thought the moonlight looked like silver that fell from the sky. We put blankets out on the ground and built a small campfire.”
Louise couldn’t make herself ask if Klaus had been there.
“So she just sat there with her back against the tree, in the campfire’s light, wra
pped up in her white comforter. We sat in a circle around her and called upon the gods.”
His voice was gentler now. It sounded a few shades darker, as if the memory was fresh enough for him to remember the mood.
“Something very special happens when you’re in harmony with nature. When you stand in a circle with the heat from the campfire, the light of the moon, the stillness of the forest, you can feel the force of the gods. You feel their presence, spiritually and physically. You get the very strong feeling you’re not alone. It’s very peaceful.”
He looked at them hesitantly, as if he’d just exposed himself and was waiting to see how they’d react.
“I know, you’re right,” Eik said. “I’ve been at a winter solstice celebration. It’s a really special feeling.”
Louise looked at him but chose to not say anything.
“None of us had discovered it yet,” the butcher said. “Not until we opened up the circle to give Eline some cola to drink, and to sit for a while and enjoy it while the fire burned down.”
“Discovered what?” Louise said.
“That she was bleeding.”
He rubbed his nose and had difficulty continuing. “She’d brought along a pocketknife. She’d cut herself around her elbow—deep cuts—the blood was streaming down on the ground.”
Louise felt a chill; she remembered what Camilla had told her about Sune.
“Thomsen flipped out, he tried to stop the bleeding. He tried to bind her arm, but she kept taking it off, and at last he left her alone.”
Louise could almost sense how it must have felt that night in the forest.
“I don’t know what she and Thomsen talked about, and I never worked up the courage to ask.”
“And she died?” Eik asked.
The butcher shook his head. “Yes and no. She didn’t die right off. She died later at home that night.” For several moments they took in what they had just heard. Then he leaned over with his forearms resting on his thighs, his hands together.
“How did Thomsen explain this to his parents?” Louise asked. She could almost hear the old police chief’s voice as the butcher told them what happened.
“His father wouldn’t listen when he said it was Eline’s doing, or that we couldn’t prevent it. He didn’t believe Thomsen had tried to stop the bleeding, either. He never accused us of killing her, but we knew he blamed his son for her death.”
He bit his lip. “In a way it was his fault, of course. Our fault. We should never have taken her out to the forest when she was dying.”
He spoke quietly after a long pause. “Eline chose to take her own life, and we helped her.”
Eik broke the difficult silence that followed. “But I don’t understand how she ended up in one of the old graves of the girls.”
The butcher squirmed. Louise could hardly stand to look at him. He was allowing them access to what lay deepest inside, down where it was truly gruesome. “The police chief didn’t want it to be said that his little girl had committed suicide. As if he hadn’t been able to take care of her, or hadn’t loved her enough.”
“Why is this something no one talks about?” Louise said. “Why don’t I know anything about this story?”
“Because no one wanted it to come out. She was reported missing, and that was that. The police chief took care of it somehow; I don’t know how. No one dared to ask. Everyone was scared of getting on the wrong side of Roed Thomsen.”
“And then he buried her out in the forest?” Louise said.
He shook his head. “We buried her. He kept out of it. I mean, think of what it would have looked like if he’d somehow been involved with his own daughter’s death?”
“And then…?” Eik said.
“And then we passed the oath ring around. We’d all been Asatro for quite a while, but this was when we formed a brotherhood and took an oath of silence. Klaus did, too.”
He looked at Louise, but immediately she realized she didn’t want to know more.
“We promised each other to never say anything about it, and we swore to be each other’s brothers, no matter what.”
Suddenly he seemed drained; in despair. “I’ve failed Sune. I’ve never been strong enough to break free of what went on back then. I’ve been a shitty father. The brotherhood with Thomsen and the others has always been more important than my family, and it’s my fault anyway that they punished him. I should never have pushed him into it.”
It’s a little late for that, Louise thought.
He was clearly tired now. His forehead furrowed.
“You do know you’ll have to tell Roskilde Police what you’ve told us, don’t you?” Louise said.
He’d nodded even before Louise had finished speaking. Apparently he’d already realized that, which was a relief to Louise.
“Of course. I know I’ve kept my mouth shut way too long. That’s over with.”
40
Camilla poured herself a large gin and tonic in a beer glass. She sat on the terrace and looked out over the fjord at Ring Island, at the ducks rocking in the lazy waters. Her body still tingled with some exhaustion she couldn’t shake.
Frederik startled her when he yelled from the kitchen. She hadn’t heard him come home; she hadn’t even noticed that the wind was chilly now, that she had goose bumps on her bare arms.
She’d called him when she got home from the forest, after the ambulance had left with Sune. He still had a board meeting and a telephone conference with the American office, but she had been okay with that. She needed some time alone.
Jonas and Markus had gone into Roskilde to “hang out,” as they put it. She’d lacked the energy to determine how likely it was that beer and cigarettes were part of the plan. Or if they were just sitting innocently in the city park, listening to music.
Her thoughts had been with Sune after Louise had called. The latest report was that his condition had stabilized. She’d found him in time.
She caught herself feeling useless. Even though she didn’t know Sune, and she couldn’t help at the hospital, she felt close to him. Suddenly everything seemed empty.
“What the hell happened to the tree?”
Camilla turned, and she jumped up when she saw Frederik’s face. “The tree?”
“Someone disfigured the warden tree. They must have used a chain saw.” He was already on his way back to the courtyard.
She emptied her glass; the alcohol burned all the way down. She followed him through the kitchen and out to the front steps, where she stopped abruptly.
Large patches of white wood showed where the tree trunk had been ripped into. On the ground under the tree lay piles of wood shavings, like hair on the floor of a beauty salon. When she touched the exposed wood, it felt damp.
The defacing began half a meter above the ground. Camilla’s first impression was that it looked like graffiti on a newly painted wall. It enraged her. Slowly, she approached the tree while Frederik walked around it with his phone to his ear. Tønnesen, Camilla guessed.
Why hadn’t she heard it? Camilla counted twelve separate areas where the trunk had been damaged. That must have taken time. Then she thought about Sune.
“They were here while the boy was dying,” she said, shocked at the notion that someone was cutting here while she and Elinor were calling the ambulance. She’d returned directly from the forest without coming around front.
“Tønnesen is on his way,” Frederik said. “I want that tree taken down. I’m not going to let them think they can scare us this way.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” She hadn’t realized it before, but the old superstition in fact made Camilla nervous.
Frederik backed off and craned his neck, looking up at the treetops. He shrugged. “At least it will show people that we won’t be threatened.” From the way he spoke, she knew he’d already decided.
“Who knows we have a warden tree?” she asked. She noticed one mark on the trunk that seemed different from the others.
“Probably eve
ryone around here who believes in that sort of thing, who takes an interest in the old mythology,” he said.
She wanted him to look at something, and he joined her. “Has this always been here?” she asked, though the question was unnecessary—the exposed wood was fresh.
Frederik ran his finger around the carved circle, inside of which was a cross with small marks on the ends. “I think it’s a rune.”
Camilla took a picture with her phone. She assumed she could Google runes. At that moment, the manager drove into the courtyard and jumped out of his car.
“What the heck happened here?” he said, though Frederik had already told him everything. It was obvious what had happened.
Camilla walked back to the house in a daze. A week ago she would have thought role-playing and Viking markets if someone had mentioned Asatro. It would never have occurred to her that some people actually practiced it, truly believed in it.
Confused, she sat down in the kitchen. What were they trying to say? She didn’t understand why someone had turned against them. But she agreed with Frederik: The tree had to come down. They couldn’t let anyone intimidate them this way.
41
Pizza, cola, and French fries covered the table, like a cliché about how the police ate when they were working feverishly. They sat inside the Roskilde Police Station, Louise with half a pepperoni pizza in front of her. She felt as if she was mooching, because she and Eik had done their job: They’d found the boy and reunited him with his family. But there were a few details to take care of.
Every time Louise saw the image in her head of Jane lying in bed, holding her son’s hand, she swallowed. She’d thought she had control of her emotions; she shook her head at the memory of all the sessions with Homicide’s psychologist to learn how to separate her emotions from her work. At the same time, she could hear Sune’s voice. Homicide’s leader had always maintained that people without empathy could never be good investigators. They didn’t belong in his division.