by Chris Ould
“So you made friends with her?”
“Yes, I guess so,” she said, although she qualified it. “Not close friends, not at that time because she was an adult and a member of staff. But whenever we spoke she was always friendly and cheerful. I remember she liked to have a radio so we could listen to music.”
Thea’s expression showed some genuine fondness for this memory so I had no reason to think she was polishing the truth, but I was still curious about the other aspect of life at Vesborggård House: more so in light of what she’d already said.
“Some of the information I’ve seen on Vesborggård House says that the treatment they used was some sort of drug therapy. Is that right?”
“Yes, yes, it was,” she said. “But it wasn’t a big part of what we did there. Most of the time we just did usual things: working and some lessons if we wanted to pass our exams. The only part that might be called a treatment was that once every week we were called to have an ‘assessment’ in another part of the building away from the rest. It was always in a large, empty room with only a camping bed and some chairs. You would sit down on the bed and the nurse would give you a drink – orange juice, always. We called it our vitaminer – our vitamins – just as a joke because we knew it wasn’t only that. A few people didn’t like the taste but after you drank it no one felt bad. You felt very comfortable – very light – and the doctor would talk to you while you lay on the bed and you just had to listen and sometimes say what you felt. It lasted perhaps half an hour and then you would feel yourself coming down and a little time later things were normal again. They told us it would make us better people to be with, but we didn’t think about that. We just liked the sensation, you know?”
I nodded, but it was still hard to imagine how any part of what she’d described hadn’t raised questions from someone, even forty years ago. I could only suppose that the same reluctance to question authority or rock the boat by expressing any doubts must have applied in Denmark as much as it had in the UK at the time.
“Did you have any idea what they were giving you?” I asked.
Thea exhaled smoke over her shoulder. “No, at the time I didn’t know, but now I think it must have been something like LSD. It was faster to work, though, and to wear off.”
“So not the same drug you were given the night you were attacked?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said, thinking it over. “The ‘vitamins’ may not have made me a better person, but I don’t think they could have been used for something like that. And for a long time I was a pretty good expert in that sort of thing.”
Her slightly wry, self-possessed sense of humour was easy to go along with, but as she took a final draw on her cigarette and then flicked the butt expertly into a flower bed I sensed the subject was about to change. Before it did, there was one other thing I wanted to know.
“So while you were at Vesborggård House was there anything that seemed unusual or out of the ordinary?” I asked. “Even just rumours or stories, maybe about a member of the staff?”
“No… No, I don’t think so,” she said, casting back. “I don’t think there was anything – except maybe for the time when they searched the woods. Someone was missing from a village nearby so there was a search around the lake and in the woods.”
“By the police?”
“Yeh, and local people. We were told to stay away. I hadn’t been at the house very long so I didn’t want to do anything wrong, but some others went out through the gardens so I went with them to watch.”
“Did the police find anything?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Thea said. “I remember they had dogs – German shepherds – and we watched them looking around the Blue House, but then a policeman shouted at us and we ran away.”
“What was the Blue House?”
“Oh, it wasn’t really a house,” Thea said. “It was an old building of stones near the lake. It had a blue door – a large one – so we called it the Blue House. No one was allowed in there but nearby there was a small beach where sometimes we were allowed to go for a party – if it was a birthday or something like that. We’d make a fire and sing and tell stories, you know?”
From the tone of her voice it sounded as if there was some genuine affection for the memory – in fact, for the place as a whole – and I wondered how she was capable of that, in light of what else had happened before Lýdia took her away.
Some of what I was thinking might have showed on my face because now that we were back at the corner of the church Thea stopped and turned towards me seriously. “So, now I’ve told you all this, can I also say something about me? I want to tell you because you’re a police officer and I think you must see a lot of people who are victims and need to be helped, yes?”
“Sure, of course,” I acknowledged.
“Okay,” she nodded. “So I wanted to say that what was done to me in the past doesn’t define who I am now. I haven’t allowed it to do that. It didn’t make me an alcoholic and an addict: that was my own way – my own road – and came from inside, so I don’t blame other people, or even God. Taking responsibility for yourself and what you become is what we each have to do with God’s help. That’s how I stepped off my old path and found the new one. That’s how I am here. So even if I could, I wouldn’t change that. Do you understand?”
She gave me an intense, direct look to see if I got it, and I did. I knew she believed it and whether I did or not was entirely irrelevant.
“I understand,” I told her.
She looked at me astutely for a second more, then nodded. “Yeh, I think you do,” she said and then smiled. “The sermon is over. You’re lucky; for me it was very short.”
“Tak. I appreciate that,” I told her, which made her laugh.
We moved on again, coming round to the main door of the church where she stopped. It was the natural place to part.
“So, will we see you on Sunday?” Thea asked. “Morning mass is at ten and you’d be very welcome.”
“It’s tempting,” I said. “But maybe not.”
“No? Well, okay,” she said with a smile. “But you know where we are now if you change your mind.”
She held out her hand and I shook it, a strange formality after the intimacy of what she’d told me, but maybe that was part of the reason she did it: to put a seal back on her story.
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it.
31
LEAVING RASMUS MATZEN’S HOUSE, HENTZE DROVE AS FAR AS the next village where he found a petrol station with a minimarket and post office adjacent to it. He parked there and switched off the engine before evaluating the names and other details he’d written down in his notebook.
There was no denying that Christine Lynge had been right; trying to locate any of these people from the sketchy details Rasmus Matzen had been able to recall seemed like a very long shot. Still, Hentze went through the list, picking out the people who not only had first and last names but also a vague location. There were four – three men and a woman – and with his notebook propped on the steering wheel Hentze rang the kriminalbetjent, Will Snedker, whom Christine Lynge had assigned to help him should he need it. Snedker was affable enough, if not particularly sparky.
“They’ll all be aged between sixty and seventy now, I suppose,” Hentze told Snedker once he’d given the four individuals’ names. “So you can discount anyone younger than that if you get several hits for a name. I’d also like addresses and phone numbers, too, if possible.”
“Sure, I’ll do it now,” Snedker said. “Shall I email you the results?”
“Yeh, if you would.”
With that settled, Hentze left the car and went to the minimarket to get something for lunch. He’d just returned to the car with a road atlas, a somewhat pallid sandwich and a bottle of fruit juice when Annika called.
“Hey, how’s it going?” she asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” Hentze said. “I think it’ll depend on whether I get lucky.”
>
He told her what Matzen had said about his relationship with Astrid, and the fact that he hadn’t been the only man with whom she’d been friendly. He used the euphemism because to say that she’d been promiscuous seemed somehow prejudicial, even if it had been the case. As Matzen had said, those were different times.
“So could Rasmus Matzen be a suspect?” Annika asked. “If he was jealous…”
“Yeh, it’s possible,” Hentze said. “Except that he’d have to have gone to the Faroes to kill Boas Justesen last week and there’s no evidence that he did. He says he hasn’t been out of the country for over five years.”
“I’ll check to be sure,” Annika said. “But if it is, and if Astrid slept around at the commune, it might put a different slant on things, don’t you think? I mean, if she was killed by someone she’d had sex with, or who wanted to have sex with her, then Else would have been—”
“Collateral damage?” Hentze said, remembering Jan Reyná’s turn of phrase the previous evening. “Yeh, that’s possible I suppose, but I’m not convinced of it yet. And speaking of Else, have we got any more information on the second set of remains?”
“Yeh, we have,” Annika said. “Sophie finished her excavation last night and I just spoke to Elisabet Hovgaard. She says the remains are of a child about ten years old based on the dental development, but it will need DNA tests or a forensic anthropologist to make an assessment of the sex. Apparently at that age it’s very hard to tell the difference between boys and girls.”
“So we still can’t be sure that it is Else.”
“Not sure, no, but Elisabet does think she can tell us a probable cause of death. There had been a blow to the side of the head causing a fracture that would almost certainly have been fatal.”
“A deliberate blow?”
“She thinks it’s likely, yes: something irregular in shape – maybe a rock. Sophie’s going to take both sets of remains back to Denmark for a forensic pathologist to examine. We should know some more after the weekend.”
“I hope the same will be true from this end as well,” Hentze said as his phone chimed to alert him to an email from Will Snedker. “But it sounds as if you’re on top of things there so let’s talk again later, okay?”
Hentze rang off and opened the email. Even at first glance it was depressingly long. The first name on the list, Simon Gregersen from Horsens – if Matzen had remembered correctly – had five possible hits. It could be a long afternoon.
* * *
Silas and Majbritt Thygesen’s apartment was in a four-storey building on a cobbled street off Magstræde. Tove left her bike in the entrance and took the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
Silas had left the door open for her when she’d buzzed the intercom and she went in without bothering to call out. It was an affluent and tastefully decorated flat, with stripped wooden floors, light blue walls and airy windows, all of which Tove was both familiar with and completely oblivious to on an aesthetic level. What she did appreciate about the place was the fact that there was no shortage of books. Every room had them and she appreciated the range of their subjects, and the fact that they were mostly non-fiction.
Silas greeted her in the corridor to the kitchen, coffee in hand. He was in his early forties; a stocky man, and a professor at the university. He’d known Tove since she was ten, part of her parents’ social group before they moved to Aalborg, and he’d looked out for her in a circumspect way once she’d come to the university in Copenhagen to study. Despite her blunt manner she was not always as tough as she appeared, he knew, so he and Majbritt invited her round to the flat at least twice a month. Sometimes she came, sometimes she did not.
“Hi, Tove. How are you?” Silas asked.
“Hi. I’m good. How are you?” Tove said, because Silas was known to point out her lack of social graces and correct them.
“I’m good, thanks,” he said. “Would you like coffee?”
“No. I’d rather get on – if that’s okay,” Tove added when she saw Silas draw a breath.
Silas chuckled and nodded. “Okay. Come in and sit down.”
They went into his study; a comfortable room with good light. “So, you want to know about Juhl Pharma, right?” Silas said. Tove had told him about her interest in Vesborggård House and its connection to the pharmaceutical company when she’d called him the previous day.
“Yeh, as I said.” Tove dropped down on the sofa and took out her phone. “This morning I had a meeting with them.”
“Who did you see?”
“Rakel Poulsen of their legal department who wears too many rings, and Oscar Juhl.”
“Wow, that’s impressive,” Silas said. “When I was researching my thesis I couldn’t get past their PR department. You must have touched a nerve.”
“Yeh, that’s what I think, too,” Tove said with a definite nod. “There was no need for two senior people to meet me unless they were concerned about what I wanted to know.”
“And did they tell you anything about Vesborggård House?”
“No. They said all information was protected for reasons of medical and commercial confidentiality. It was their default position.” She pushed off her shoes and drew herself into a cross-legged position on the sofa. “So, can you please tell me what you know about Juhl Pharma? The company background would be useful. Then I’d like to look at your thesis and notes for the details.”
* * *
Once he’d told Tove what he knew about Juhl Pharmaceuticals in general Silas dug out his research notes and his thesis: Patent Medicine: The History and Ethical Challenges of Synthetic Drug Manufacture. It was heavy reading, even he would admit that, but Tove didn’t demur at its weight as he ushered her into the sitting room next door so he could work while she read.
There was no sound from the sitting room for the next couple of hours. The door was closed when Silas went to make a coffee and when he looked in Tove was sitting cross-legged in the centre of a rug surrounded by neat piles of papers. She was making notes on her phone.
“Would you like something to drink?” Silas asked.
“No. I’m still reading,” Tove said without looking up.
Silas went away and closed the door but around mid-afternoon he took a break from grading his students’ work to make a start on the evening meal. Majbritt, a lawyer, wouldn’t be home until six but the stew he had planned needed time in the oven. He started on the onions and a few minutes later Tove padded into the kitchen on shoeless feet.
“Who is Dr Carl Sønderby?” she said. She had papers in one hand and her phone in the other.
Silas frowned. “I don’t know. In what context?”
“You’ve written a note – Vesborggård House – on a medical paper and circled the name of Dr Carl Sønderby, who’s listed as one of the authors.” She read from the front paper. “It’s called Experimental Trial of Resolomine in Psychedelic Therapy to Modify Antisocial Behaviour and Emergent Addiction in Adolescents.”
Silas craned his neck to look. “Oh, yeh, I remember. I don’t know where I came across it now, though.”
“Why did you link it to Vesborggård House? The paper doesn’t say where the drug trial took place.”
“No, that’s to avoid identification of patients,” Silas said. “But I knew Dr Sønderby was employed by Juhl Pharma at Vesborggård House so I think that’s why I made the connection.”
“And this drug, Resolomine, was a Juhl product?”
“Yeh, but I don’t think it was ever put into general production.”
“Okay, I understand now.” Tove nodded. “And what is psychedelic therapy? Does it have anything to do with psychedelic drugs like LSD?”
“I don’t know a lot about it,” Silas said, going back to the chopping board. “But in the sixties and seventies there was some interest in using LSD to modify different forms of behaviour. Until it got a bad name and was banned, then all the research was stopped.”
“Was it effective as a treatment?”
“In some cases, yeh, I think so.”
“I see.” She thought for a second. “Did you speak to Dr Sønderby about his work?”
Silas shook his head. “No. I found his address but his wife told me he’d died. She confirmed that he’d worked at Vesborggård House, but beyond that she didn’t want to talk any more. His death was quite recent so I left her alone.”
“I think I should talk to her,” Tove said, flat and decided. “Her husband may have kept records that could still exist.”
She made a note on her phone, then turned and started away.
“Are you staying to eat later?” Silas called after her. “There’ll be enough if you’d like to.”
“No. I’ll be finished by then,” Tove said over her shoulder. Then remembered. “Thank you for asking.”
“You’re welcome,” Silas said with a shake of his head.
32
IT WAS AN HOUR’S DRIVE, WEST AND THEN NORTH TO Vesborggård House and the traffic was light: nothing to distract me from thinking about what Thea had said.
Memory is fluid; it shifts and rearranges events and details to a greater or lesser degree, but despite that I was as sure as I could be that Thea had told me what she truly remembered. What most took up my thoughts wasn’t a matter of veracity but of significance, and that was harder to judge.
Thea’s confirmation of what had happened to her was simply that – confirmation and detail. It was the one piece of new information she’d given that I was having trouble with, though: the Faroese man she’d known as Mickey. From forty years’ distance the problem was one of perspective, like looking half a mile ahead on the road. Had Mickey’s visit to the flat in Christiania been close enough to the events around Thea’s rape to make it significant, and if so had he played some part in our leaving Vesborggård House?
This was what bothered me most. Mickey had come to the Christiania flat as a friend, Lýdia had told Thea. He was going to help them, she said, and the implication was that there was a way forward, the promise of change.
So why had Lýdia killed herself then? Why had she abandoned the girl she’d already saved once and – come to that – why had she abandoned her own son as well?