The Running Girl

by Sara Blaedel

  “Vigdís, you need to tell us what happened,” she said, then shook a little harder and raised her voice.

  Still no reaction came, except her eyes, which closed yet more tightly.

  Louise shook her again, but Vigdís Ólafsdóttir held desperately to her knees and pressed her face against her pant legs like a child trying to hide.

  “Where is Jón?”

  Louise had stood up.

  Lars Jørgensen came over and put his hand on the white sweater and spoke calmly to her.

  “This is the police,” he said in an authoritative voice. “We need to find out how badly you’ve been injured, so we can decide whether to call an ambulance.”

  Something happened with the woman’s shoulder—it collapsed a little, like a suit of armor being taken off.

  “Help him,” Vigdís whispered, and her moaning turned into sobs. She shook and had difficulty speaking. “Be nice and help my boy.”

  Louise leaned closer.

  “Is Ulrik Jón’s father?” she asked.

  Slowly Vigdís began to nod.

  “Ulrik came. He was so angry that I’d told you about our relationship, and that we were together the night his daughter died. He hit me, and while I was lying on the floor Jón suddenly appeared in the door.”

  She cried so quietly now that Louise’s heart constricted.

  “It’ll end badly, I know it’ll end badly,” she whispered and kept rocking from side to side.

  “Where are they now?”

  Louise had straightened up and looked at the kitchen door. That’s what was open and made the curtain flap.

  She pushed the chairs on the floor aside and ran over to the door and out onto the kitchen stairs.

  The sounds rose from the stairway, hollow sounds and blows that landed. Two people in a fight, where one was in control and the other defended himself.

  Louise took the stairs in bounds, and Lars Jørgensen was right behind her.

  53

  Ulrik lay at the bottom of the stairs with his back to the cellar door and his head against the gray concrete floor. Next to him was a cavity under the stairs, and it looked like he’d tried to find shelter there. But Jón held him tightly and pressed him against the floor.

  Louise had stopped short at the sight, but slowly took one more step down.

  “Stop, stop, stop,” begged Ulrik.

  She could see his eyes from the light that came in through the window above the door to the yard.

  The boy had a heavy lead pipe in his right hand, and he’d raised it up for yet another blow, but was checked by the sound of running footsteps on the stairs.

  Louise took one more step and saw the vibration in his shoulder as his muscles tensed. She recognized the iron pipe. It was the one she’d seen up in his room, a fighting weapon that had lain ready to be used.

  “Don’t do that,” she said quietly behind his back. She reached out her hand and laid it on his shoulder, feeling him stiffen.

  “Jón,” she repeated and gave his shoulder a careful squeeze. “He’s not worth it. Don’t make yourself a murderer on his account.”

  She spoke neutrally and quietly, calm and controlled. Suddenly grateful for the experience she’d had from the time when she was trained as a negotiator. It had been Willumsen’s recommendation when, after a case that ended in a dramatic hostage situation, he’d decided that she possessed the necessary abilities and qualities to be part of a negotiations group, and had granted her the extra training.

  Down on the floor, Ulrik looked up at her desperately, but Louise only had eyes for the boy, who slowly turned.

  “Don’t let him make you kill,” she repeated when he finally looked at her.

  A twitch ran across his face, and something shifted in his dark eyes. Despair that was so abysmal that it didn’t at all fit with his young age.

  “It’s too damned late,” he whispered hoarsely, as if his throat had closed. “He’s already done that!”

  The hatred was so penetrating that for a moment Louise was fixated by the feeling that enveloped the boy. She wasn’t able to react before he’d suddenly straightened himself up and hammered the iron pipe across his father’s chest. Then he let it drop, so it lay over Ulrik’s body. He took a couple of steps back and collapsed on the stairs. With his eyes on Ulrik, he whispered:

  “I hate you, you fucking psychopath!” Then it was like something had ended, like the air and anger had gone out of him. The boy hid his face in his hands and cried.

  An odd void took over. Ulrik lay unmoving, and there was a dull sound when the iron pipe rolled off his stomach and struck the concrete floor.

  Louise nodded to Lars Jørgensen when he signaled that he wanted to go down to the boy’s father. She’d already heard him communicating with the control center at Headquarters, but now he stepped carefully around Jón on the stairs and took the last step down to Ulrik.

  A sound came from above, and through the white bars of the stair landing Louise saw Vigdís looking down. She had the hand towel pressed against her forehead, but her eyes were free.

  Louise concentrated on the boy. She went a couple of steps down and kneeled in front of him.

  “Tell me, how did he already make you kill?” she asked.

  He cried like a child who’s lost perspective and can only see the darkness and the dangers.

  Louise reached her hand out and took hold of his shoulder. Calmly stroked the soft fabric of his sweater.

  “It was him,” he said and took a deep breath. “It was him who made me burn down the boathouse. I didn’t know they were in there, you know?”

  Louise had difficulty understanding what he said. The words flowed in between each other, but she’d understood enough to help him up and support him as he walked up the stairs to the apartment.

  She registered that Ulrik was stirring, heard his voice from down on the floor. He yelled aggressively up to his son, but she walled him out. Let Lars Jørgensen take over, she thought, and noticed that Vigdís had gone back into the apartment again.

  Up on the fourth floor, Louise lifted the chairs that were knocked over, pulled them to the table, and told Jón to sit down.

  His face was completely closed, and his eyes saw nothing but the abyss that seemed to have opened underneath him.

  “Was it you who set fire to the boathouse?” Louise asked when she’d sat down beside him.

  Vigdís kept herself in the background, probably because she couldn’t bear to hear more, Louise thought when she saw her standing over by the window behind the kitchen counter.

  “I didn’t know they were inside,” he repeated and shook his head. “No one was supposed to be there. We’d moved everything. No one was supposed to get hurt. He just wanted all the shit burned down, with the warehouse and everything.”

  Louise nodded.

  “Was it also him who wanted to make it look like Britt had done it?”

  The boy didn’t look at her, didn’t answer at first, but stared straight ahead, as if a remnant of the toughness he otherwise hid behind had come back again.

  “Was it him?” his mother asked sharply from over by the window and took a couple of steps toward them.

  The armor cracked again and with tears and despair he shook his head.

  “No, it was me. He didn’t say anything about how he wanted it done, just that it should be taken care of while you were in Iceland.”

  Vigdís crumpled a little and supported herself with both hands against the kitchen counter.

  “But why Britt?” Louise asked, although she’d already guessed the answer. If she no longer stood in the way, Ulrik and his mother could get together and be the family the boy longed for.

  Jón straightened himself up a bit, so his long body seemed lanky and fragile. He pulled himself together, took a deep breath, and glanced at his mother in the kitchen.

  “After what happened with Signe, he suddenly didn’t want to see my mother anymore,” he began. The anger rose again. “She’s arranged her whol
e damned life around him. We’ve never been able to do anything ourselves, because he decided for her, but then all of a sudden she’s not good enough anymore.”

  “He found out that you were there that night at the party?” Louise asked, trying to bring him back to the beginning.

  “She’d written on Facebook that it was going to be down at the harbor, and I just said to the others that we should drop by and see what was happening.”

  He started to cry again. His mother had come over, but kept herself at a distance.

  “I told the others we should leave. That they should stop it and leave them alone.”

  He slouched, quickly dried his tears with the back of his hand.

  “Did you know that Signe was your half sister?” Louise asked after letting him sit for a moment.

  He nodded.

  “But I didn’t know her.”

  He tried to get himself together, man up. But right now, he was a little boy of seventeen who was fighting to keep his head above water while his world caved in.

  “He tossed us out of his whole fucking life, and still it was me he came and asked for help when the warehouse had to be set on fire.”

  In those last words, Louise heard so much craving for acceptance that she had to look away. His mother stood still and listened, couldn’t say anything. Seemed pale and frozen.

  “You used Britt’s car and stole firewood from behind the house,” Louise concluded.

  “He gave me the keys and said I should just take it.”

  “You’re only seventeen!”

  Jón nodded.

  “I’ve driven a car since I was fourteen. I learned how in Iceland. We drive out on my grandfather’s fields in his old Land Rover.”

  “What did Ulrik say when he found out that you’d made it look like it was his wife who set the fire?”

  Louise scooted forward in her chair and heard voices out on the kitchen stairs. Michael Stig stuck his head in, but kept from interrupting.

  The boy shook his head.

  “Nothing. He couldn’t really say anything, either, because then he’d reveal that it was him who’d ordered me to do it.”

  Finally, a slight glimmer came into his black eyes.

  “He could have denied that he asked you,” Louise pointed out. “It would have been your word against his, and you would have been in for it alone.”

  Jón shook his head as she continued to talk.

  “He could easily as anything have turned his back on you and fought to get his wife cleared of the police charges.”

  The boy kept shaking his head and fished a cell phone out of the pocket of his tight jeans.

  “I told him I recorded our conversation.”

  “Do you have it on your cell phone?”

  Louise reached out her hand.

  Jón laid his Nokia on the table.

  “Nope, but he believed it.”

  Louise leaned back in annoyance and heard Toft tell Vigdís to grab a coat so she wouldn’t end up freezing inside Headquarters.

  “But I recorded the conversation where he said there was no reason to confess anything, now that his wife was sitting in prison and the police thought it was her. He wanted to move with us to Iceland when I was finished with school.”

  54

  Dearest Camilla,

  I’m sorry, but there’s a terribly sad thing I need to tell you. Britt has taken her own life. I’m the one who found her. It is so sad, but at the same time it was beautiful.

  After the arrests out on Strand Boulevard, I was given permission to drive out to Vestre Prison and release her. She seemed both glad and relieved, but she was very unhappy to hear that the goddess of vengeance turned out to be a seventeen-year-old boy who’d craved Ulrik’s recognition and love so much that he was driven all the way out there where the heart turns cold and reason runs out, as she put it.

  It must have been all the classical music that made her think so poetically. Others would probably say that the boy suffered so much hurt that he became a cold and calculating shit. But that’s not how he seems now. He’s desperately unhappy and thinks a lot about his mother, who he feels he’s let down. Now she’s alone while he sits in prison.

  Vigdís has decided to stay in Denmark, and she’ll try to find a place to live close to where Jón will serve his time, so she can visit him. It’ll most likely be on Jutland. That’s where most of the high security juvenile prisons are.

  Britt was sorry that Signe was never allowed to meet her brother. And if she had decided to keep on living, she would never have been able to forgive him. Ulrik, that is. Jón she mostly felt bad for, and she was very sad when I told her that he’d end up serving his sentence for many years to come.

  But Ulrik also got his punishment. He’s in prison and already confessed during the first interrogation that he’d known for several years about Nick Hartmann’s business with replica furniture. He even named the two people Hartmann entered into a business agreement with, both full-fledged members of the biker club. One of them is that Tønnes, who you must know from the media and who was a complete stone face the times I talked with him. But that’s how they are!

  It turned out to be Ulrik himself who suggested that he and Hartmann get together and split the profit if he brought an extra container home. But he got scared when Hartmann was killed, didn’t want to do anything with the goods and was planning to just let it all sit there until things calmed down again. But then everything with Signe happened, and when the police could suddenly connect him to the warehouse and started looking at what was in there, he went into a panic. He can’t explain how he could let Britt take the blame. He’s completely silent on that matter.

  When Britt and I drove out of Vestre Prison, we stopped and did some shopping along the way so she wouldn’t come home to an empty fridge. No one had lived in the house for several weeks. She said she was looking forward to coming home. To her music and garden. She seemed glad and talked about everything she had to do.

  She fooled me.

  I called her the next morning. Several times. When she didn’t answer her phone, I decided to drive out there. But she didn’t answer the door either, so I smashed a window pane on the weather porch. She lay up in her bed. She’d plucked the last roses from the garden and tied them in a little bouquet, which she held on her chest along with a picture of Signe. Next to her bed was the cello.

  In a letter, she asked that there not be any formal funeral service, just wanted to be placed in the earth next to Signe.

  I am terribly sorry to have to write this to you.

  Warm greetings,

  Your Louise

  * * *

  The sun cast a sheen over the thin leaves of the palms. Camilla sat on the beach and cried. Markus was out in the water on his boogie board and bobbed in the waves. She still hadn’t gotten herself together enough to tell him what had happened at home.

  The tears rolled even more when, in the middle of feeling powerless over how it had ended, she admitted that it was probably best for Britt to end things that way. She couldn’t go on living. Why should she? There was nothing more for her, nothing to live for. Even though her thoughts and grief overwhelmed her, still Camilla understood her decision.

  She’d taken a chair from the terrace with her down to the beach and for a long time just sat and looked out over the Pacific Ocean, letting her thoughts rest.

  Kauai was so lush and filled with greenery that she’d immediately understood why it was the one out of Hawaii’s seven islands to be called Garden Island, and the one Frederik Sachs-Smith had chosen for his vacation paradise.

  They’d arrived in the morning on a plane from Honolulu, so she hadn’t managed to see much yet, except for what they drove by when they crossed the island from the airport. When she’d unpacked, she borrowed the computer that was in the living room to check her e-mails, and there was the e-mail Louise had sent the previous evening.

  * * *

  Camilla wailed like a child, the tears dripping fr
om her cheeks down onto her chest. On the edge of the water, Markus practiced jumping up on the short surfboard and riding along when the waves crashed toward the beach.

  She was startled and jumped when she heard a deep, male voice behind her. When she turned around, the sun was in her eyes and she only saw the shadow of the person who came walking toward her from the house.

  He seemed concerned, solicitous, and a little puzzled to find an unknown woman sitting in a chair from the house and crying.

  Camilla dried her cheeks, embarrassed. Felt herself caught, had thought she was alone with her grief.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone else was here. My son and I arrived this morning, and we have permission to borrow the house.”

  He looked older and taller than she’d imagined.

  “A death,” she said in explanation. “I just found out about it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Walther Sachs-Smith reached out his hand and said that she really didn’t need to apologize.

  “I’m the uninvited guest,” he said. “My son owns the house, and he doesn’t even know that I’m here.”

  Camilla took a step back, didn’t entirely know how she should react or what she should say.

  Behind her Markus called for her to look and see that he’d just about gotten it. He was about to put his feet on the waves, but when she turned to see, he was already in the water, patiently preparing himself for yet another attempt.

  “I know who you are,” she said and smiled as she turned her eyes from her son to the head of the Sachs-Smith family. “But it’s a bit of a surprise to meet you here. Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

  He smiled at her and laid his hand on her shoulder to get her to walk up to the house with him.

  “We can see your son from the terrace,” he said and gallantly pulled out a chair for her.

  He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of white wine and two glasses.

  “Right now, I’m happiest letting people think that I’m dead,” he said.

  “I’m not sure that Frederik believes the story. At any rate, he didn’t seem convinced when I visited him.”