by Chris Ould
For a moment I thought he was going to tell me that he’d just been in contact with them and had found out that my status didn’t match the one I’d presented. Instead, he considered the card for a second, then slid it aside as if he’d made a decision.
“I have Inge-Lise Hoffmann’s missing persons record,” he said. “She was reported missing in June 1976 and has never been found so her file is still open. You have your photo?”
I summoned it up on my phone as he opened the folder and took out three or four sheets of old, printed forms, filled in with typewritten details. Stapled to the first sheet was a two-by-three photograph.
I didn’t need to put the two images next to each other to know that Inge-Lise Hoffmann wasn’t the subject of the photo I had. Friis’s picture showed a girl of about fifteen standing in a garden with a golden Labrador by her side. She was roundfaced and cheerful-looking, but rather plain despite striking, copper-red hair: dairy-maid looks. By comparison the girl on my phone was more waif-like and fragile. Even allowing for the circumstances of the picture and the difference in angle I was certain these were not the same girl, and to a certain extent I realised I was relieved.
Friis compared the photos for a little longer than me but he reached the same conclusion I had. “So,” he said flatly. “Not a match.”
“No.”
I thought I sensed a little disappointment in his voice, but then he folded the pages back to find a yellow half-sheet at the back. It wasn’t a form but a typed memo.
“This note has been added to the file at a later date,” he said. “It refers to two other cases. One is the victim of an unresolved homicide in 1975 named Rikke Villadsen, the other is a girl named Thea Malene Rask. I haven’t had time to locate their files in the archive because they haven’t been digitised.”
“Is there anything to say why they were linked to Inge-Lise?” I asked.
“No, I don’t know.” He ran a finger along a couple of lines on the sheet. “The dates of the cases are within nine months of each other and I think all would have been from the same area because Thea Rask is noted to have absconded from a placement in a rehabilitation facility.”
He’d guessed that would get my attention and it did. “Vesborggård House?”
“Yes, I would say so. It doesn’t give the name here, but as far as I know there was no other such facility in that area.”
“Can I look at the note?”
“Sure.” He turned it for me to see. “You read Danish?”
“Not really, I was just curious to see how the names were spelled.” I looked at the memo for a moment longer, then turned the paper back towards him as if I’d satisfied my curiosity.
“So, forty years ago someone thought the disappearance of the two girls, Inge-Lise Hoffmann and Thea Rask, might have been linked to the murder of Rikke Villadsen,” I said, stating the obvious.
He nodded. “Yeh, it would appear that way.”
“And there’s nothing in Inge-Lise’s missing person report to say why?”
“No, it’s just the standard personal details. If there is a case file from the time – if it was thought necessary to investigate further – the file will be in the archive.”
He picked up the papers, turning them back to their correct order before putting them back in the folder. I knew he was using the time to decide how he wanted to proceed. He had something on his mind – that much was obvious – but he still wasn’t sure about me.
“So, although the girl in your photo is not Inge-Lise Hoffmann, will you tell me where the photo is from?” he asked. He glanced at my phone. “Is it what I think?”
I didn’t know what he was thinking but I could guess. “She was being abused,” I said. “Badly. The images are pretty graphic.”
“It was sexual abuse?”
“Yeah.”
“How many images are there?”
“About twenty. They’ve been entered into evidence in the UK.”
“Okay, I see.” He looked away for a second, then back. “But they have a personal connection for you.”
It was a statement rather than an enquiry, but I’d already worked out by then that Friis wasn’t one of those people who thought they should disguise the evidence of their intelligence, so I nodded. “They were in a camera that belonged to my mother. She died in 1976 but I only got the camera the other day.”
“She died at Vesborggård House?”
“No, in Copenhagen. But she’d worked at the house until a couple of weeks before she died. That’s why I went there, to see what it looked like.”
“Do you think that the photographs from your mother’s camera were taken there?”
“I don’t know where they’re from,” I told him truthfully. “Like I said earlier, it was only when I was at Vesborggård House that I heard about Inge-Lise Hoffmann going missing and wondered if she could be the girl in the photos. It was just a long shot.”
“Okay, I see.” He processed that for a moment, then said, “Do you know why your mother had such images?”
I shook my head. “I’ve no idea. To me it doesn’t seem likely that she would have taken them, and if she didn’t, the only thing I can come up with is that she acquired the camera with the film already inside, or that it belonged to someone else and was brought away with her things by mistake.”
“You say the photographs have been entered into evidence in the UK, so would you be prepared to give me a copy of that photograph? If I have time and if I can find them, I would like to compare it with the photos of the other two girls mentioned this file.”
I’d already guessed he might ask that. It was a logical step, especially if you were as tidy as Thomas Friis appeared to be. And I had no basic objection, but before I committed I wanted time to reassess.
“Sure, I don’t see why not,” I told him. “I’ll email it to you when I get back to my hotel. Although for obvious reasons it will have to be the cropped version.”
He nodded. “Yes, I understand. Okay, thank you.”
“And you’ll let me know if you do make an identification?”
“Of course. In that case I think we would both have more questions, wouldn’t we?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I said.
It was the obvious place to end things, and I followed Friis out as far as the reception area where we shook hands and parted. Outside the building I dug out my notebook, writing down the date and the name I’d kept in my head from Friis’s file: Thea Malene Rask, the girl who’d absconded from Vesborggård House on 27 October 1976, just over two weeks before Lýdia died.
It felt as if there was more than a what if? to this now, but I didn’t rush to any conclusion. Instead I walked back to the car, mapping it out.
The fact that Thea Rask had absconded from Vesborggård House at around the same time Lýdia and I had also left didn’t prove there was any connection between the two events, of course. But yesterday Elna Eskildsen had said that she’d seen a teenage girl with Lýdia and me when we were back in Copenhagen. Her impression had been that the girl had come to the city with us, and if that was true then didn’t it imply that the girl had come with us from Vesborggård House? And in that case, didn’t it also suggest that this same girl could be the unknown teenager referred to in Bidstrup’s report on Lýdia’s death – the one thought to be living with us?
While I assessed the strengths and weaknesses of that logic I navigated the concrete stairwell and echoing floors of the car park until I found my car and let myself in. If Thea Rask was the girl from the flat then I wanted to talk to her, if only to find out about the last few days of Lýdia’s life, but I had no idea whether I’d be able to track her down forty years later. I did know that every Danish citizen has a civil personal registration number, though; and that it was linked to information like addresses and occupations – if you could access it. If Thea Rask was still alive she ought to be on it.
I sat for a moment, thinking it over, and then I called Hentze. I felt bad about asking him
for yet another favour – not bad enough not to do it, but enough to be apologetic when he answered.
I could tell he was walking somewhere, but rather than take up more of his time I cut to the chase. “How hard would it be to find a current address for someone in Denmark?” I asked.
“Oh, not so hard. If you’re in Copenhagen you can go to the city hall and make an application for the CPR entry. I think they will charge you seventy-five kroner. You get the result in a couple of days.”
“Any chance of doing it more quickly – say if I give you the seventy-five kroner?”
He made a dry grunt. “No, I don’t think that would be… proper,” he said. “But tell me the name and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Okay, takk. Her name is Thea Malene Rask. I think her date of birth would have been between 1961 and ’65.”
There was a pause, as if he was writing it down. “Do you know where she was born?”
“No. Does it matter?”
“No, I don’t think so, unless there is more than one person with the same name. I’ll see what I can find.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it, Hjalti. I won’t ask for anything else.”
“No, it’s not a problem,” he said, because he was that sort of guy. “But in exchange I’ll ask you a question, okay? Hold on.” In the background I heard a change in the acoustics and the sound of a car door closing, then he came back on the line. “So let me ask you: in your experience, if a man commits a sexual assault against a young girl, and then six months later he does it again to a different victim, is it likely that he would stop after that and commit no more crimes?”
“Hypothetically?”
“Yes, for the moment.”
“Okay, then I’d say it’s not likely he’d stop. A few do if they have a close call with the police – like being picked up for questioning – but in my experience, the longer they get away with it the bolder they become. The violence often increases as well, which is why if you get a rape/murder case you can usually work back through the perpetrator’s history and see each attack getting worse.”
“Okay, that’s what I thought,” Hentze said. “I just wanted an outside opinion. Takk.”
“Any time,” I said. “Is this connected to Múli?”
“Yeh, in a way,” he said noncommittally. “But at the moment I’m only pursuing a theory.”
I could tell that he didn’t want to go into more detail so I said, “Well, if you need a sounding board just let me know.”
“I might take you up on that. Where are you now? In Copenhagen?”
“Not yet, but heading that way.”
“Then I’ll speak to you later. And just remember, the Danes don’t drive as well as us Faroese.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” I told him, and rang off.
24
ON HIS WAY BACK TO TÓRSHAVN HENTZE ATE THE SANDWICH he’d picked up in Runavík: a late lunch, except that it wasn’t, he discovered; it only seemed late. Forty minutes later he parked at the station, let Annika know he was back and went to the toilet to sponge mayonnaise off his jeans: proof – not that he needed it – that eating while driving wasn’t only bad for the digestion. He met Annika in the corridor as he went to his office. She was carrying a notepad and pen.
“I tracked down Boas’s lawyer,” she told him. “It’s Nygaard in Klaksvík but he hadn’t made a will. The last time they did any business with Boas was twenty-two years ago when he bought the house in Fuglafjørður. He paid cash, by the way: no mortgage.”
“Really? I wonder where he got that sort of money,” Hentze said, but it was an idle thought and he let it go as he sat down at his desk. “It sounds as if Mikkjal Tausen and Selma Lützen will have to split his assets between them, then, such as they are.”
“Did you speak to Tausen?”
“Yeh, yeh, I did,” Hentze said. “He confirmed that Boas called him at around five o’clock on the 25th. He also said Boas was drunk and rambling on about being punished.”
“Punished?”
Hentze shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe by God. Anyway, Tausen says they didn’t speak for very long because he was waiting for a phone call from America.” He searched his pockets, then located a slip of paper and handed it to Annika. “That’s Tausen’s car registration. Will you check the toll records and see if it went through the Leirvík tunnel on the 25th? Tausen says his girlfriend was with him that evening, so could you check that as well? Her name’s Sigrun Ludvig and she works for Müller’s, the letting agency, so they should be able to give you her number if she’s not there. Dress it up as a general enquiry of some sort, though – just so she doesn’t get the idea that we’re checking up on Tausen, okay?”
“And are we?” Annika said. “Are you suspicious of him?”
Hentze shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t say that, but given that he seems to be the last person we know of to have had contact with Boas I don’t think it hurts to be sure he didn’t make a trip out to Múli that night.”
“Believe nothing and check everything?” Annika said.
“Exactly. Oh, and on the back of that paper there’s a name: Thea Malene Rask. Will you find her address in Denmark when you get the chance? Do the other things first, though.”
“Okay, I’ll get on it.”
Turning to leave, Annika almost bumped into Remi Syderbø as he appeared in the doorway. He stepped back to let her out, then remained on the threshold as if he refused to be confined by the broom cupboard’s walls.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked Hentze.
“I should think there are any number of things,” Hentze said with a shrug. “Do you have something specific in mind?”
“Well, I know you’ve been to see Gunnar and ruffled his feathers.”
“Ah,” Hentze said as if it all became clear. He didn’t bother to ask how Remi knew; a lot of birds flew between Nólsoy and Streymoy in the course of a morning.
“And Annika told me a second body’s been found,” Remi went on. “So, do you want to give me an update?” He gestured outside, so Hentze stood up and accompanied him down the hall.
“Is it Else?” Remi asked.
“It’s a child,” Hentze said flatly. “We won’t know the age or the sex until Elisabet’s done an exam.”
“But chances are that it is?”
“That’s what I assume. I don’t want to say hope.”
“No,” Remi agreed.
They went into Ári Niclasen’s office and as Hentze switched on the lights Remi looked at the whiteboards. Nothing much had changed except for one name.
“Who’s Sunnvør Iversen?” Remi asked with a frown.
Briefly Hentze told him the story much as Gunnar Berthelsen had told it to him on Nólsoy that morning, although for the sake of simplicity he didn’t bother to mention the dead end of Hans Jákup Olsen being a suspect. It was enough that Sunnvør Iversen had been brutally raped and no one had ever been brought to book for the crime.
“Jesus Christ, Hjalti,” Remi said with some exasperation. “What are you doing, trawling through the old files to drag in as many cases as you can?”
“Believe me, it’s not what I want,” Hentze said with some feeling. “But Sunnvør’s rape and the murder of Astrid and Else all happened within a few months of each other, and in the same area of Borðoy. On top of that both cases had young female victims.”
“What about Astrid Dam? She wasn’t a girl.”
“No, true,” Hentze acknowledged. “But I’ve been thinking that if Else was killed first – perhaps not even intentionally – then it may have been necessary for Astrid to die to stop her raising the alarm. Once they were both dead and buried it could have been said that they’d left the islands and gone home. No one would have been any the wiser.”
Remi frowned but didn’t argue the logic of that. Instead he moved away from the boards and sat down on a chair.
“You know, it’s unusual for you to talk about something like this in such a… such a
clinical way.” He looked up at Hentze, inviting a response.
“Really?” Hentze made a face, as if he didn’t recognise the description. “I’m simply trying to be logical about it.”
“Yeh, I know.” Remi took off his glasses and rubbed the side of his nose. “Maybe I should let you have someone else to work on this beside Annika. What about handing off most of the direct work to Dánjal and taking a step back?”
Hentze gave him a look. “How far back are you thinking?”
“Hjalti…” Remi started, but thought better of it. “I’m only saying that you went from the Tummas Gramm murder straight on to Erla Sivertsen and now this. So if you did want to slow down…” He let the thought hang for a moment until Hentze shook his head.
“No, there’s no need – unless you’re unhappy with the way things are going.”
“No, of course not,” Remi said. He stood up and put his glasses back on. “Listen, forget it. If you’re okay let’s leave that aside.” He moved back to the boards, as if drawing a line. “So, what you’re saying is that you believe Boas Justesen and an accomplice raped Sunnvør Iversen and then, a few months later, did the same thing to Else Dam, only that time it ended in her death. Is that right?”
Despite the rather clumsy shift of topic Hentze allowed himself to be drawn along with it. “Apparently an escalation of violence is common,” he said. “But essentially, yes, I think so. We can’t know whether it was one man or two who abducted and raped Sunnvør, but at Múli the differences between the two graves do suggest that two different people were involved in disposing of the bodies. We can be pretty sure that Boas Justesen was one of them now, so we need to find his accomplice – both for his part in the historical crimes and for Boas Justesen’s murder last week.”
“And if we do find him we clear the whole board, yes?” Remi asked. “Sunnvør, Astrid and Else.”
“Yes, I would hope so.”
“So how do we do that?” Remi said. “Is there anything more we can find out about Justesen’s murder, any leads we can pursue that we haven’t already?”
Hentze shook his head. “No, nothing substantial. The fire at the house wiped out any trace evidence and obviously there were no witnesses, so unless someone comes forward to volunteer information I think our only way in is to look at this from the other end.”