by Chris Ould
“And you were arrested?”
“Yeh.” Olsen turned the sawn wood in his hands, then looked away. “They called me a monster and said I’d done horrible things. They showed me photographs… They were the worst things I’ve ever seen.” He shook his head, then stiffened resolutely. “But I didn’t do it. I told them over and over again but they wouldn’t listen. They shouted, calling me names. It went on and on, but I still wouldn’t admit it because it wasn’t true. Then, in the end, the big boss came in – the superintendent. He told the other two to go away and gave me a coffee and a cigarette. He talked for a bit and he seemed okay; friendly, you know? He says they’re just trying to do their job, and I say, yeh, I know that. So why won’t I admit it, he says and slams his hand on the table. He knows I did it and he’s had enough pissing about, so just tell him or I’ll really be in for it. He grabbed my wrist so I chucked the coffee at him and said he could fuck off: I wasn’t saying another word.”
Olsen put the wood aside now and looked directly at Hentze. “After that they took me back to a cell, but on the way across the courtyard this one bloke, he pushed me down the steps and I went sprawling. I hit my mouth on the concrete and while I’m still lying there one of them kicked me two or three times for good measure. Then they dragged me up and dumped me in the cell and left me there overnight. Next morning they take me back in to be interviewed again, but this time there’s a lawyer there – someone from the Prosecutor’s office. He takes one look at the state of my face and the blood on my shirt and he walks out. A couple of hours later they let me go. That was it. I never heard anything from them again. No apology, nothing. But it ruined my life. My wife left me – not that I was so bothered about that – and I couldn’t get work. People shunned me. For years.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Hentze said.
Olsen waved that away. “I don’t want sympathy, and I don’t care whether you believe me or not. That’s what happened.”
“Okay,” Hentze said. “So let me ask you about a couple more things and then I’ll leave you alone, all right? Did you know Boas Justesen from Fuglafjørður?”
Olsen considered for a second or two, then shook his head. “I know who he was, but that’s all. I didn’t know him.”
“And did you ever go to Múli when the Colony commune was there between 1973 and 1974?”
“That place? No.”
“Did you know anyone who lived there or meet any of them while you were visiting Norðdepil?”
Olsen shook his head. “You’d see them sometimes, in Klaksvík and other places, but I never talked to them. Why would I? Some of them tried to get odd-job work that might’ve come my way. Not many people wanted to deal with them, though.”
“So I’ve heard,” Hentze said. “Finally, then, where were you on Thursday evening last week?”
“Here.”
“On your own?”
“No. I was with Bogi and Kirstin Arge. On Thursdays we have a few beers together and play music.” He gave Hentze a sour look. “I can show you my violin if you want.”
“No, that’s not necessary,” Hentze said, ignoring the sarcasm. He was satisfied now. “Thank you. You’ve been a great help.”
“Huh,” Olsen said and turned back to his bench.
Hentze left him alone and walked back to his car. Across Kalsoyarfjørður the cloud was almost so low that it reached the coast road on the opposite island a couple of kilometres away. If Olsen was to be believed there had never been any real evidence against him regarding Sunnvør’s rape, although lying about his whereabouts in the first instance wouldn’t have gone in his favour. And with no other suspects coming to light it could certainly have been a temptation for Gunnar and his team to try and fit a square peg into a round hole, until it all went too far and the Prosecutor’s office stepped in.
From his attitude earlier that morning Hentze wasn’t sure that even now Gunnar Berthelsen would ever accept that they’d had the wrong man, but Hentze did. Which would be of no consolation to Olsen, of course; and nor was it of any real help to Hentze. It left him precisely where he’d been at the start of the day: there was no link between Olsen and Sunnvør and therefore no link to anything else.
He’d just twisted the key in the car’s ignition when his phone rang.
“Hjalti? It’s Sophie. I think you should come back to Múli,” she said.
21
THE WIND WAS COLD ON THE HILLSIDE AT MÚLI; THE SKY overcast and heavy as Hentze left the car. The sloping field on the higher side of the track was edged by a hay-drying fence and Hentze followed it up to where Sophie Krogh and Emil Kejser, the technician who’d brought the survey equipment from Denmark, were both on their knees, scraping at earth in the bottom of a trench.
Sophie stood up when she saw Hentze approaching. She took a couple of steps down the hill, took out a cigarette and lit it with her back to the wind.
“You made good time,” she said by way of greeting.
“Not really: I was on Kunoy,” Hentze said. Now he was here he could also guess why. “What is it you wanted to show me?”
Sophie turned and gestured back up the slope. “Emil spotted an anomaly on the GPR trace from yesterday,” she said. “It looked like a pit about fifty or sixty centimetres deep and a metre square, so we put in a trench first thing this morning. In the surface layer there’s a lot of ash and charcoal, mixed with a number of rocks, but when we got down about thirty centimetres we found bones.” She took a drag on her cigarette, then crushed it under her boot. “I wanted to have a clear idea what we’d got before I called you, but there’s really no doubt. It’s a child.”
“Right,” Hentze said flatly. “Well, I’d better look then.”
Together they moved closer to the rectangular hole in the ground. To one side there was a groundsheet where topsoil had been dumped and Emil stood up to let Hentze see better. Sophie tossed him her cigarettes and he moved away.
Hentze took in the outlined form in the bottom of the hole. The skeleton was half excavated, reminding him not so much of a body but of a sculpture, as if it was being delicately etched out of the soil. The fact that the visible bones were nested together in foetal form made it more abstract somehow.
“Can you tell the sex yet?” he asked.
“Not yet, but given everything else I’d be surprised if she isn’t the girl you’re looking for.”
Hentze considered the grave for a few seconds longer, then turned to cast a look back down the slope to the spot where the sheepfold had been. It was a good hundred metres. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why bury one body here and the other down there? Surely it would have been easier to put them together.”
“Doesn’t it depend on when they died?” Sophie said. “If they were killed at different times…”
“Yeh, possibly,” Hentze said, not fully convinced. He looked at the pile of earth on the plastic sheeting, and then at Sophie. “Are there any similarities between the two burials?”
“Apart from the fact that both grave sites were disguised in some way, no.”
“So it was either one person who did it differently each time, or two different people with different approaches.”
“I guess,” Sophie said. “But if it helps I’d say that this burial was more considered than the other – as much as these things ever are.”
“Oh?” Hentze frowned. “In what way?”
“Well, the first grave – Astrid’s – had the feeling of something done in a hurry,” Sophie said. “As if the most important thing was to get the body hidden from sight. But this grave would have taken some time and effort to dig, and it’s more or less square. To my mind that indicates that whoever dug it had put some thought into how they were going to position the body and the foetal position makes it more compact so you don’t need to dig such a big hole – unless rigor mortis has set in, of course; then you’re screwed. They call them ‘stiffs’ for a reason.”
She made this last comment deliberately upbeat, as if she�
��d decided they’d been sombre for long enough.
“You are the bloody limit, do you know that?” Hentze said, but mildly. He didn’t really mind – even appreciated in a way – the fact that Sophie Krogh wouldn’t give in to the inherent solemnity of her job for very long.
He took a last look into the grave, then turned away. “So, is there anything else you can tell me?” he asked. “What about this ash and charcoal you mentioned – is that significant?”
“Yeh, I think it could be,” Sophie said. She moved aside and picked up a plastic container with several pieces of charcoal inside it. “To me it looks like the remains of a bonfire. It’s hard to be certain yet – we’ll need to see how much there is and how far it extends – but my guess is that something was burned here after the body was put in the ground, possibly as a way of disguising the fact that a grave had been dug.”
Hentze considered the lumps of black material. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to tell how long after the burial the fire was lit, is there?”
“No, I can’t tell you,” Sophie said. “I don’t think anyone could with any degree of accuracy. Logically, though – if it was to disguise newly turned earth – it wouldn’t have been very long, would it?”
“No, I guess not,” Hentze said, just as his phone started to ring. “Excuse me a minute.”
He stepped away and answered Annika’s call. “Hey.”
“Hey. Can you talk?” Annika asked.
“Yeh, go ahead. What’s up?”
“Well, I’ve been doing some background checks on Boas Justesen’s personal life – his bank balances and so on. I also got his phone records and when I looked through the ones for the last month one number stood out. It’s a local cellphone registered to Mikkjal Tausen. Justesen called it twenty-three times in the two weeks before he died, and also on the night of his death at 17:54… Hello? Hjalti? Are you there?”
“Yeh, yeh, I’m here,” Hentze said. He pulled his attention back from the misty view towards Viðareiði. “You’re sure the phone number belongs to Mikkjal Tausen?”
“Yeh, absolutely. Because the number appeared so often I called the phone company to find out who it belonged to. Tausen bought a contract SIM card three weeks ago.”
“Okay, send the number to my phone, will you?” Hentze said. “I’ll give Tausen a call and see if he’s at home. If he is I’ll stop in and have a chat on my way back.”
“Right,” Annika said. “Where are you now?”
“At Múli. Sophie’s found a second set of remains.”
There was a pause and then Annika said, “Is it Else?”
“I think so.” Hentze glanced towards the excavated ground. “Listen, will you tell Remi about the find? I think we’ll need a case conference when I get back, and in the meantime can you also find out if Justesen left a will? If he did I’d like to know who the beneficiaries are.”
“Sure. I’ll get on to it now,” Annika said.
“Thanks.”
Hentze rang off and cast a look at the hillside down to the sea before walking back towards Sophie. “So, how long will it take to finish here, do you think?” he asked.
“It should be done by the end of the day.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No, I think we’ve got it covered.”
“Okay, I’ll leave you to it, then. See you later.”
He took a step down the hill.
“Hjalti?”
“Yeh?” He turned back.
Sophie hesitated, then shook her head. “No. Nothing. But a flask of fresh coffee’d be nice, if someone’s passing.”
“Sure, of course. I’ll sort it out.”
* * *
I’d driven through Ry on my way out to Vesborggård House: a small, quiet town, with high-gabled Victorian buildings along some of the side streets and a subdued but varied high street. The police station was on a residential road of neat, red-brick houses, but it was only a two-room affair in a shared municipal building with a young uniformed officer on duty. His nametag said Hans Schou and he was getting ready to leave.
What I’d hoped for was an “old rat”, as Hentze had described himself once: an old hand who’d worked in the area since the Creation and would know about the case even if he hadn’t been on it. But Officer Schou was too young to even have been born in 1976 and when I told him what I wanted to know he could hardly be bothered to exhibit any curiosity: I’d have to go to Aarhus for something like that.
“You can ask for Kriminalassistent Thomas Friis in CID,” he told me, almost certainly seeing it as the most expedient way to pass the buck. “I know him a little. He knows things from the old days – old files, yeh? Maybe he can find out about Inge-Lise Hoffmann.”
It was as much help as I’d get but it was probably enough. Having a name always makes it easier to get past the door, even if it’s just the first one.
Forty minutes later I found the modern, red-brick police station in Aarhus beside a main road lined with leafy trees turning yellow. It was a place that definitely didn’t share its facilities with the fire service or local authority: four storeys of windowless wall facing the road with the air of a place built to withstand a siege.
I couldn’t park anywhere close to the station, but eventually found a multi-storey five minutes’ walk away, which gave me time to assess how much I’d need – or would want – to tell Kriminalassistent Thomas Friis, or anyone else I managed to speak to. It would have been a lot easier if I’d still had a warrant card to show and without it I knew there was a danger that I’d come across as one of the walk-in nutters all coppers occasionally meet, ranging from the sad to the seriously deluded. To avoid it I’d just have to rely on talking a good game.
In the reception area, which was more like a ticket office in a train station, I spoke to a uniformed officer behind one of the screens. I told him my name, flashed a business card as if that was the accepted British way, and asked for Thomas Friis by name. The guy made a couple of phone calls, located Friis on the second, and after a brief conversation hung up.
“He says he will come. You can wait.”
“Okay, tak.”
I waited twenty minutes on an uncomfortable plastic seat before Thomas Friis appeared. He was in his early to mid-thirties, stocky and compact with unruly and very dark hair. Apart from a well-tailored suit – which looked as if he’d put it on for the first time about an hour ago – he seemed fairly laid back. We exchanged the usual greetings but he held off from asking the obvious question until he’d led me along a corridor to a small interview room. It was tatty and worn, as they usually are.
“So how can I help you?” Friis asked as we took a seat. “You asked for me by my name, is that right?”
“Hans Schou thought you might be able to get me some details on a missing person,” I said. “Her name’s Inge-Lise Hoffmann and as far as I know she disappeared from a village called Brørup in 1976.”
“Okay,” Friis said noncommittally. “And is this an official enquiry – a case you’re working on in the UK?”
“Actually it’s personal research,” I said. “I was told that when Inge-Lise went missing there was some connection to a place called Vesborggård House near Ry. It was some kind of centre for young people with criminal or behavioural problems, I think. My mother worked there, so I’m trying to find out more about the place. It’s just background really, but you know how it is: you get curious.”
I was trying to give him a sense that even if I was somewhere on the walk-in nutter spectrum I was pretty harmless, eccentric at worst. He didn’t seem to notice the smokescreen, though.
“So was this girl, Inge-Lise, known to your mother?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I just hoped I could get a look at the missing persons report – find out when she went missing, who her family were, what she looked like.”
“Just because you’re curious,” he said flatly.
“Yeah, pretty much.” I nodded as if I hadn’t picked up his tone.
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He took a moment, then shifted a little. “Well, I think you should probably contact the Missing Persons Department directly,” he said. “I can find the contact details for you and if you send them an email to say what you want to know…”
I still hadn’t got a clear read on the sort of copper Friis was, but I was pretty sure that if I tried any more bullshit I’d be insulting his intelligence, so it was a choice of leave it at that or take a risk and play it straight.
There wasn’t much to lose so I said, “Okay, listen, I won’t take up your time with a long story. One of the reasons I want to look at Inge-Lise’s file is because I have a photograph of an unidentified girl taken around 1976 and I’d like to see if they’re the same person.”
That gave him pause for thought, but not long. “And if they are the same, what does that mean?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t have enough information, that’s why I’m here.”
“Do you have the photograph with you – of the girl you want to identify?”
I hesitated for a second, then opened my phone and brought up the picture. It was a version I’d heavily cropped, but even so there was no mistaking that there was something unnatural about it, especially if you were a copper. I turned the phone to show Friis.
“Where did this photo come from?” he asked after a moment.
“Like I said, it’s a long story, and if she isn’t Inge-Lise it doesn’t matter.”
He looked at the screen again. “Can you show the whole picture?”
“I don’t think you’d want to see it.”
He took another look at the phone, then back at me and his tone became slightly harder. “Perhaps if you want my help you should let me decide,” he said. “Perhaps you should tell me how you have this.”