by Chris Ould
“Course he did,” Kass said without any doubt. “Well enough to know it was me who was duty sergeant, too, which I wouldn’t normally have been. I was living on Suðuroy at the time and I’d only come over to Streymoy to cover somebody’s holiday leave. I don’t remember whose.”
“But you do remember an enquiry about Astrid and Else Dam from the Norwegians?” Hentze asked.
“Well, to be honest, no, I didn’t,” Kass said. “If you’d come to me yesterday and asked if I remembered a missing persons report from 1974, I would have laughed. But when Gunnar said they were Norwegian and had been out at Múli, that rang a bell.”
“So what can you tell me about it?”
“Not much,” Kass said. “I mean, as far as I recall it was just routine. There must have been an enquiry from Norwegian police I suppose, so I sent someone to Múli to see if they were still there.”
“And they weren’t.”
“I suppose not,” Kass said. “I mean, I don’t remember who I sent or what they said when they came back. But because I don’t remember anything happening, I’m pretty sure Astrid Dam and her daughter can’t have been there.”
“And that was it?” Hentze asked. “Nothing else happened?”
“Not as far as I know. Sorry. Like I said, if old Gunnar hadn’t jogged my memory I wouldn’t even have been able to tell you that much, but I thought you might want to know that he’s covering his back, or at least trying to.”
Hentze thought about that for a second or two. “Did he say why he thought it was a bad idea for anyone to talk about the missing woman and her daughter?”
“No, he just said that with hindsight it’s easy to criticise and point out things that could have been done differently,” Kass said. “He tried to make it sound as if he was concerned for the good of everyone who was on the force at the time, but I reckon he’s just worried that something will come up and show he wasn’t the great superintendent he always claimed to be. You remember what he was like to work for.”
“Yeh, I remember,” Hentze said. “As a matter of interest, did you ever have anything to do with the commune at Múli?”
“No, not really,” Kass said. “I heard gossip about it, of course, but like I said, I was living on Suðuroy then, so what they really got up to out there I don’t know.”
“Right,” Hentze said. “Okay, well thanks for tipping me off about Gunnar. It’s useful to know.”
“You’re welcome,” Kass said. “I don’t see why the old sod should think he can still hand down orders from on high. But listen, if you want to talk to someone about the commune you should try Uni Per Heinesen. He’s my brother-in-law, married to Noomi’s sister. He was a reporter before he retired: worked for Dimmalætting and never threw anything away, if his office is anything to go by. Papers and files up to the ceiling.”
“You think he’d remember the commune?”
“Sure. He wrote about it, I think, went out there a few times.”
“Do you have his phone number?” Hentze asked, reaching for a pen.
17
“I OWE YOU SOME MONEY,” I SAID WHEN TOVE HALD ANSWERED her phone. “And there’s something I’d like to talk about. I’m in Copenhagen, so could we meet? This evening if you can.”
“Sure, okay. Where are you?”
I told her.
“I can be there at seven thirty.”
“Takk. I’ll be in the bar.”
I nursed a bottle of Tuborg in the library bar of the hotel, listening – because it was impossible not to – as three American guys at an adjacent table bickered about how long it took to fly to Cancún from various places in the US, resorting to smartphones to settle the matter. When Tove walked in I saw them clock her immediately. It was hard not to, given her striking half-Faroese, half-Danish looks and her white-blond cropped hair. She had a canvas satchel over the shoulder of a leather jacket and she was wearing skinny blue jeans with ripped knees. She also had more flat confidence than a twenty-two-year-old had a right to, if it was just self-assurance.
I hadn’t known Tove very long but the few times we’d met I’d had a sense that some of her social skills were rehearsed. She was very smart and very focused, but not necessarily very savvy when it came to personal interactions, so I suspected she might be somewhere on the autistic spectrum. I liked her quite a bit; not least for the fact that she never shied away from saying what she thought.
I picked up my beer and went over to greet her. I was expecting her usual businesslike handshake, but instead she made a brief air-kiss by my cheek – still slightly formal – which I returned before asking if she wanted a drink. She opted for coffee and once that was sorted we went to sit at a table away from discussions about flight times and conference hotels. The rest of the place was quiet.
“So, is there something else to translate?” Tove asked, straight to the point and with a nod at the envelope I’d brought.
“If you’ve got time. Are you busy?”
“No, it’s not a problem. This is my final year for my Master’s degree, so I can work when it suits me. I have very good time management skills.”
It was the first even semi-personal thing she’d told me about herself.
“Okay, if you’re sure,” I said. “But there’s something else I should tell you first: it’s a police file for a death, so if you’d prefer not to do it I’d understand.”
“This is your mother’s death?”
“Her suicide, yes.”
She thought that over, as if making sure she’d understood what I’d said. “Are there photographs?” she asked.
“No, just the report.”
“Okay, so it’s not a problem,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It’s just words.”
The barman came with her espresso and a second beer for me, which I hadn’t really wanted but had ordered anyway. When he’d gone I took the sheaf of papers from the envelope. They were copies of the photos I’d taken of the police file and printed in the hotel’s business suite at an inflated cost.
“I’ve got this on a flash drive you can take with you,” I said. “But can I get you to look at something now?”
“Sure, of course.”
One of the first pages in the file seemed to be a summary of the incident and I turned to it now. “I think it’s the start of a statement. Can you tell me what it says?”
Tove gave the page a quick, appraising scan, then focused in on the section I’d indicated. “It says he – the police officer – came to the apartment because of a call from the ambulance service. When he arrived he and his partner were shown to the dead person in the bathroom. In the bath.”
“Tak. That’s what I thought. It doesn’t say who made the first call to the emergency services, though?”
“No, not here.”
“It may be somewhere else then,” I said. “So you’d still be okay about translating the rest?”
“Sure. It’s interesting. I’m studying the history of commercial law, so this is a different thing, but still history.”
“Thanks. You just made me feel old,” I said, not very seriously.
She gave me a puzzled frown. “Why? Because you were there?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
She shook her head, rejecting my premise. “History can be from a few minutes ago to thousands of years; it makes no difference. The past can’t be changed, only learned about more until you find the whole truth. That’s why I like it.”
She had a habit of making flat statements like that, without requiring a response, so I let it go when she picked up her espresso and knocked half of it back.
“There’s one other thing you might be able to help me with,” I said. “If you’ve got time. It’s research rather than translation, but there’d have to be some of that, too.”
“Wait a moment. Recording is easier than making notes.” She took her iPhone from her pocket, tapped an app, then inclined it towards me, interview style. “Okay, go ahead.”
Feeling slightly put
on the spot, I regrouped my thoughts through a sip of my beer, then said, “In the mid 1970s there was a place called Vesborggård House near Skanderborg. Lýdia, my mother, worked there for a while and I’d like to know more about it. I think it was some kind of institution for young people with behavioural problems.”
“So you only want general information?”
“Well, I’d like to know what information there is. If there’s anything specific I’d be interested in that as well.”
“For what reason? It will help me to know what to look for.”
I still hadn’t fully made up my mind whether my half-formed idea was worth pursuing, but one thing about Tove was that she made you decide, so I said, “After Lýdia died my adoptive father went to her flat in Christiania to collect her personal possessions. While he was there he met a teenage girl who was living with Lýdia and me, and from talking to a friend of Lýdia’s today I think this girl may also have been at Vesborggård House.”
“So if you can find her you want to ask questions about your mother’s suicide.”
“Yes, in a nutshell.”
“But you don’t know her name.”
“No, but if there are any records from Vesborggård House in 1976 it might be possible to find out who she was.”
She thought about that, but not for long. “Okay, I’ll see what I can discover,” she said, then tapped the app on her phone to stop recording. “It’s the same rate of pay, 120 kr an hour, yes?”
“If you’re happy with that.”
“Yes, it’s fair,” she said with a nod. “How long are you here?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know yet. As long as it takes – or until I run out of leads.”
“Okay, then. I will do it as a priority.” She cast a look at the room. “I don’t think this hotel is so cheap.”
“Not so much, no. Speaking of which, you’d better let me settle what I owe you for the other stuff you did and finding Rasmus Matzen’s address. How much is it?”
She referred to her phone with the deft finger strokes of the e-generation. “It was one and a half hours, but I think we can leave it on your account until I’ve done this work too. I trust you.”
For a moment I couldn’t tell if she was making a joke, but when she didn’t look to see if I’d got it I knew that she wasn’t. “Takk fyri,” I said.
“You’re welcome. Is there anything else?”
“Not unless you want another coffee.”
“No, one is enough.” She knocked back the last half of her espresso and stood up. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Have a good night.”
And with that she was on her way out.
* * *
The last of the light had left the sky when Hentze emerged from the tunnel between Streymoy and Vágar. He’d already called Sóleyg to say he’d be late, yet again. He tried not to dwell on the fact that over the last two – no, three – weeks, his work had taken precedence over – well, most things. It was more than a month since he’d sung in the choir and nearly as long since he and Sóleyg had settled in for an evening in front of a movie. Half the time when he was supposed to be relaxed and off duty he knew his mind hadn’t really left work and he felt guilty for that. Not that there was much he could have done about it, but even so…
The one consolation was that recently Sóleyg had regained some of her old social network, as was the case this evening. Karin Jensen had asked her to come over and help her with planning the menu for Bjarta’s wedding, she told Hentze. She was going out now but wouldn’t be late.
“Okay, but just don’t let her talk you into making the cake,” Hentze said, suspecting Sóleyg’s reputation for good baking had not been forgotten by their neighbour.
“Oh, no, of course not,” Sóleyg said, sounding bright. “She wouldn’t want that. I haven’t made one for ages.”
“Yeh, well, just remember that’s no reason to do it for free when she does ask.”
“Oh, you’re so – so distrustful,” Sóleyg chided.
“Am I?” Hentze asked, genuinely surprised that she had this view of him.
“Well, no, not always,” Sóleyg conceded. “Only where Karin’s concerned.”
“And with good reason,” Hentze said. “Just remember the christening two years ago.”
Of course she wouldn’t, he knew. Sóleyg was too kindhearted by half, and after an evening of gossip and chatter she’d come away having promised to produce the cake for the wedding, no doubt about it.
Ten minutes later he drew the car to a halt on a side street in Miðvágur, outside the red house where Uni Per Heinesen lived. Kass Haraldsen had called to tell his brother-in-law that Hentze was coming and Uni Per greeted him at the door, waving him in. He was a tall man, as bald as a rock, wearing a sweater and corduroy trousers that looked to be two sizes too large, cinched in at the waist by a broad leather belt.
Inside, the house smelled of cooking – a meal recently eaten – and Hentze accepted Lise Heinesen’s offer of coffee, then followed Uni Per through to his study; a shed, more or less, tacked on to the back of the house. As Kass Haraldsen had described, it was a room stacked floor to ceiling with files, papers and books.
“Well, I don’t know anything about Astrid Dam,” Heinesen said when he and Hentze were seated and Hentze had described briefly why he was there. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of her, but there were a lot of people at the commune – especially the first year. When I visited there might have been thirty or forty.”
“As many as that?” Hentze said, surprised.
“Oh, yes. That was part of the problem,” Uni Per said. “Well, part of what people thought was a problem. You’re old enough to remember how it was back then, right? So I’m sure you can imagine what people thought when a bunch of long-haired young Danes arrived and all started living together. Some of the older people didn’t like the idea at all. There were some wild ideas about what they got up to, and because no one was willing to visit the place, the stories got wilder. The paper got letters saying all sorts of ridiculous things, so in the end I asked my editor if I could go out there and do a story about what the commune was really like and what they were trying to achieve. I didn’t expect him to say yes, but he did, so I spent a couple of days there and wrote an article. It was quite a big piece,” he added, as if he still remembered it with pride.
“And what were they trying to achieve?” Hentze asked.
“Oh, the usual stuff for the time: self-sufficiency; a fairer society; life without regulations except those they made for themselves. I’ll admit, I rather liked their ideas but of course, it was all pretty naïve, especially because they had no real idea of what it was like to live out there. I think that’s what finished them off in the end.”
“Right, I see,” Hentze said. He sipped his coffee, using the moment to think about that. On the face of it there was nothing in what Uni Per Heinesen had said that would explain Gunnar Berthelsen’s reaction to Annika’s enquiry about Astrid Dam. But maybe there had been a connection between Astrid and something else.
“While the commune was at Múli do you remember any sort of incident that might have involved the police?” Hentze asked then. “I’m not sure what sort of incident it would have been, but something that might not reflect well on people now.”
“People?” Uni Per queried.
“Police officers at the time.”
“Ah, you mean Gunnar Berthelsen, right?” Uni Per said. “Kass told me he’d stuck his oar in.”
“It could have been Gunnar, or someone else,” Hentze said diplomatically.
Uni Per frowned as he trawled through his memory. “Well, the only thing I can think of is Sunnvør Isaksen – no: Iversen,” he corrected himself. “Sunnvør Iversen.”
“Oh? Who is she?”
“She was a young girl at the time – about eleven, I think. She went missing from home in Norðdepil one afternoon. Her parents called the police and search parties were sent out but there was nothing until the next morning when
she was found wandering on a hillside. From what I was told she was suffering from exposure and had no idea where she was – as if she’d been drugged. I was also told that she’d been raped, but she couldn’t remember anything about it; nothing at all from the time she disappeared until she was found.”
Hentze had his notebook out now and he wrote some of this down. “When did it happen, do you remember?”
Uni Per worked it out. “It must have been April or May of 1974,” he said after a moment. “It was kept out of the papers to spare the girl, but you know how things are. Pretty soon people knew that something had happened – something more than the fact that she’d just gone missing overnight – and that’s when the rumours started.” He made a gesture. “You can guess, right? The commune was only a few kilometres away from Norðdepil, so who did suspicion fall on? The police went there and asked questions, of course, but I don’t think there was ever any evidence that anyone from the Colony had been involved.”
“So there were no firm suspects at all?” Hentze asked.
Uni Per drew a dissatisfied breath. “I did hear that at one point they had someone in for questioning. They were excited about that, but then – suddenly – it all went away.”
“Do you know who the suspect was?”
“No.” Heinesen shook his head definitely. “You have to understand that most of what I know about this is – was – unofficial. At the time there was a strict embargo on anyone from the police department talking to the press. It came from the top – from Gunnar Berthelsen, I guess. Anyone who talked out of turn would lose their job, and they took it seriously.”
“So no one was charged for the attack on the girl.”
“No. As a reporter I kept asking about progress, but as time went on Gunnar Berthelsen made every effort to play down the whole thing. Of course, he did it on the pretext of protecting Sunnvør, but in reality that was just a good cover for the fact that they didn’t find out who was responsible.”
“So the case was just put aside?” Hentze asked.
“In the end, yes, as far as I know. But by then there were other stories going round about the Colony and what went on there: all sorts of things from satanic rituals to… Well, you name it. And it all fed into the prejudices that were already there, so from then on the Colonists were frozen out. No one would give them work, the shops inexplicably ran out of the supplies they wanted to buy, and so on and so on. By that autumn – 1974 – the place was finished. A lot of people had already left because of the hostility and in the end the last few diehards packed it in as well. It was a shame really, at least I thought so at the time. I thought they got a rough deal and I wrote a couple of articles to put a more balanced view, but my editor wouldn’t publish them. The articles were spiked and when I complained I was told not to argue with editorial decisions. What can you do?”