by Sara Blaedel
“It’s done,” he said. “I sent the statement listing the account’s movements to you. It’s attached to the email, along with the international court order. We’re hoping you can help us find out who made the deposits.”
Louise opened the attached file, which was a scanned copy of the bank statement from the Zurich bank. Curious now, she leaned forward. “The amounts are very different,” she said. One of the deposits was around twenty thousand euros, seven times larger than the next deposit. “Did you ask the husband what she might have been paid for?”
“He still insists he knows nothing about the account. And as he explained, his wife wasn’t particularly open about her past. All he knows is that she grew up in Jutland, and both her parents are dead. She told him her father died shortly after her confirmation, her mother about six months before they met. He said his wife was an only child, and I must say he sounded convincing when he claimed she had no connections to her homeland. And he knows nothing about her disappearance from a boat outside Rome.”
“But she must have had contact with someone here in Denmark.” Louise made copies of all the bank papers.
“We’ve confiscated her computer and cell phone, and our tech people have just picked up his stationary computer at his business to have a look. Maybe something there will connect him to the Zurich bank. Unfortunately, it will be several days before we hear from them.”
Louise glanced over the deposits. “No matter what, you should investigate what’s on his computer,” she mumbled. She couldn’t understand why the English police hadn’t confiscated the husband’s hard drive and looked closely at all the correspondence and websites he had visited.
“We’re going through his accounts,” Davies reassured her. “We’re looking for any irregularities. Perhaps his wife withdrew money and sent it to Denmark, to deposit in her own account.”
“Isn’t England one of the most tax-friendly countries? If they wanted to avoid taxes, wouldn’t it make more sense to use an English tax shelter instead of sending the money over here, where the taxes are so high?”
“We’re not thinking in terms of taxes,” Davies said. “We suspect she might have been pilfering her husband’s account. She might have been planning to disappear again.”
Aha, Louise thought, letting the idea sink in.
“We still lack a motive for the murder,” Davies reminded her.
“The deposits here aren’t from a single Danish bank. It seems that several are involved. I’ll look into this.”
“Good. If they aren’t her own accounts, we are, of course, interested in the identities of the people who deposited the money.”
“I would think so,” Louise said, hoping he could sense her smile. Of course, it would be nice to know who was depositing the money. She felt a devilish satisfaction at the thought that at least it wasn’t Eik who had given his missing girlfriend all that money. If he had been making foreign deposits, the bank employee would have said so.
“I’ll get back to you as soon as we contact the banks,” she said, as Olle walked in carrying case files under his arm and a cup of coffee in his hand. “You’ll hear from me,” she promised.
She smiled at Olle Svensson and welcomed him to the Special Search Agency, a small unit in the Search Department. Under Louise’s direction, the agency investigated the missing persons cases where illegalities were suspected.
“I hope you’re not in the middle of another case, because we’ve just received a list of banks we need to contact.” She handed him the printout.
“At your service,” Olle said, reading the list as he walked over to his chair.
Eik’s chair, Louise thought. She hadn’t seen him this morning, didn’t even know if he had come in. Maybe she should stroll by Rønholt’s office? Hell no! He had to take care of himself.
“What about if we just divide them up?” Olle suggested. “That would be six apiece. I’ll start from the bottom, you start from the top.”
“Great.”
“And I’m assuming we mail the court order and account numbers along with our requests, and wait for the banks to call us? Usually they want confirmation that they’re giving out information to the police.”
“Give them a call when you send out the requests, just to be sure. So they don’t keep us waiting. We don’t want these to end up with someone on vacation.”
A few people in the department always made excuses, said they were waiting on a call when they were caught taking a case too lightly, but that didn’t work in her agency.
“Of course,” Olle said, in a way that revealed he wasn’t one of those slackers.
“The account is part of the estate of Susanne Hjort Madsen,” the Nordea employee said.
Louise wrote down the bank customer’s personal identification number (PIN). She was told that the estate would end up with Susanne Madsen’s husband, just as soon as the tax authorities were finished.
“And how much is in the account?” Louise asked.
“When the account was closed, it contained about thirty-eight thousand kroners.”
“Which means that eight thousand is a large amount to transfer,” Louise said. She then asked to have the bank statement mailed to her.
“The money was transferred a week before the customer’s death,” the woman on the phone said, “and the husband was aware of the money transfer. It was a joint account. The transfer was made through our foreign subsidiary, but there were sufficient funds in the account, and we had no suspicion of wrongdoing.”
“There probably hasn’t been,” Louise assured her. “We’re simply interested in clarifying the relationship between the deceased and whoever received the money.”
She hung up and checked the CPR number. The family lived in Lynge. The widower was sixty-seven years old, five years older than his deceased wife.
Across the desk, Olle hung up. “An estate,” he said, when Louise gave him a questioning look. “Christine Løvtoft, forty years old. Died just under ten months ago. She transferred one hundred thousand a few weeks before her death. I have her husband’s name. They had separate accounts, and he didn’t have access to hers.”
After Louise had gone through four of the names, she raised an eyebrow at Olle. “Is there anyone alive on your list?”
He looked down at the paper and nodded. “Two of them. How about yours?”
She shook her head and said she was still waiting on the last two.
An employee at Sparekassen Sjælland reported that the account in question belonged to Kurt Melvang, an eighty-eight-year-old man living in a nursing home in Bispebjerg. “It looks like the account is being handled by a third party,” the man at the bank said. Louise had already punched in the elderly man’s CPR number and found the address. Rønnevang Nursing Home.
“For two of the names on my list, the survivor is dead, too, but the deaths occurred almost a year apart with one of them, and here”—Olle pointed at his monitor—“they were seven months apart.”
Someone knocked on the door. Louise watched Eik take a step into the room before noticing Olle sitting in his chair. An awkward moment followed before Olle glanced at Louise for some sign. She heard Charlie sniffing his blanket outside.
“You’re down in Olle’s office now,” Louise said. She glanced at Eik; he didn’t look hungover or suffering from lack of sleep, though it had been very late when she threw him out. In fact, he looked like himself. A slightly distant version of himself. He nodded quickly and said he was fine with that. He closed the door behind him.
“Is something going on here?” Olle asked. Fortunately Louise’s telephone rang at that moment. When she hung up, she told him that another account was part of an estate.
“Why are the people transferring money into the account dying?” she asked.
“Maybe the money is used for burials?” Olle said. “Or upkeep of grave sites?”
Louise nodded. “Expenses in connection with closing estates? But why a Swiss account for things like that? We need t
o find out what they paid for.”
14
They parked on Tuborgvej and walked up the uneven flagstones to Rønnevang Nursing Home, a three-story redbrick building. There were patches of snow on the left side of the building, in a small sunny niche with benches, a few tables, and shrubbery.
It was quiet when they stepped onto the entryway’s flecked terrazzo floor. The foyer was light and spacious, open all the way up to the ridge beam, exposing both upper floors. Galleries wrapped around the floors, all the room doors were visible. Green plants dangled over the railing at intervals. They stood for a moment and looked around, but there was no one in sight. Louise walked over and pressed the elevator button.
The second floor was a chaos of service activity. Coffee cups and lunch plates were piled onto wheeled carts just outside the elevator doors, and a young woman wearing a headscarf stood at a sink down the hallway.
She was sorting out dirty silverware under the running faucet, and she seemed friendly as they approached. “Hi. I just work in the kitchen, but Lis is coming.”
She nodded toward a woman with short, curly hair bustling around the corner, a set of keys in her hand.
“Police,” Louise said, as she stepped forward. “May we have a moment?”
Not really, the woman’s expression told them, but she stopped anyway. “Of course, what can I help you with?”
“We’d like to speak with Kurt Melvang,” Louise said. “Do you know where we can find him?”
“He’s usually in the TV room with the others during morning coffee, but I don’t think I saw him down there today. He’s in room sixty-four, down the hallway. What’s this all about?”
“Sorry, but I can’t say,” Louise said. Another staff member came along, watching in obvious curiosity from behind one of the wheeled carts.
“You should know that Kurt suffers from senile dementia. It might be a bit difficult to have a conversation with him.”
“That’s true,” the other staff member said, “but he can be clearheaded at times, and alert. I’m his contact person; let’s see if we can find him. Follow me.”
Farther down the hallway, several residents were sitting at a table drinking coffee; some were playing cards, some napping. A large TV on the wall was turned on. “Has anyone seen Kurt?” the staff member asked.
“He’s down with Inger,” one of the residents said. “They don’t want to share their cake with us.”
“Oh, here he comes now,” the staff member said, nodding toward a man bent over at the waist, pushing a walker. “Kurt, can we have a minute?”
The man stopped at the mention of his name and looked around in seeming confusion. Louise and Olle followed her over to him and stood discreetly behind her.
“I have to get to school here, now get out of my way,” Kurt said. Just before ramming into his contact person, she grabbed hold of him; the staff was used to this sort of thing.
“Yes, let’s go,” she said. “We’ll go with you.”
Louise and Olle followed them to a nearby door. The woman told him that two policemen had come by and wanted to talk to him, then she joked around a bit with him, asking if he’d been getting into any trouble.
“Yeah, dig around a little bit, you’ll find something.” He spoke lightly, a complete turnaround from his tone a few moments earlier.
The woman left, and Kurt Melvang slowly turned and dumped himself into his chair. “You come here to put me in the slammer?” he said, still joking around. His eyes were moist.
“Not this time,” Olle said. “We’re here to talk to you about the sixty-five thousand kroners you transferred to a Swiss bank account.”
“Ehhhhh,” the old man sneered, irritated with them now.
“Don’t misunderstand,” Louise was quick to say. “We’re not here to butt into your private affairs, but the person who received the money has been killed, that’s why we’re interested in knowing what she…”
The man struggled to get out of his chair, and before she or Olle could react, he had unbuttoned his pants and let them fall to his ankles.
Not knowing quite what to do, Louise said, “I’ll get an aide.” She hurried out the door.
“Unfortunately, things have been going downhill rather quickly; his wife died earlier this year,” the aide said, after pulling Kurt’s pants up and reminding him that he had guests.
Louise sighed. She considered what to do for a moment before asking the aide if she’d heard about a considerable sum of money Kurt Melvang had transferred to a foreign bank account.
She was crossing a line; she knew that, but they weren’t going to get anything out of Melvang. The question didn’t seem to surprise the aide, though she stuck her hands in her pockets, as if she felt uneasy about being involved in a resident’s private life.
“We can’t hardly not hear, when his two adult children curse him out,” the aide said sheepishly. “They’ve done it several times. I don’t know how much money they talked about, and I don’t know what he donated the money to, but they’re mad at him for giving their inheritance away.”
She pulled her shoulders up a bit. “This type of conflict shows up once in a while, when relatives realize they’re not going to inherit what they thought they would. It’s always very uncomfortable, but we never get involved in that type of family business.”
“Donations,” Louise said, after walking out of the nursing home. The sliding door closed behind them. “That explains why there’s a big difference in the amounts of the transfers.”
Olle got into the car. “Donations for what?”
“That’s what we have to find out. Do you have the address of the man up in Birkerød?”
* * *
The traffic was very light as they drove in silence up Kongevejen. It wasn’t so much the donations that dominated Louise’s thoughts. Mostly it was Eik and her frustration about how he dropped everything and ran off the moment the English police called him.
She didn’t know what to think. Of course, anyone would act immediately if something came up in a case concerning a loved one, but how close could you be to someone after eighteen years? Louise couldn’t make sense of it.
“We don’t go all the way to Birkerød,” Olle said, breaking into her thoughts. “We need to take the road to Bistrup after passing through Holte.”
Olle was easy to get along with. Louise admitted to herself that she’d been too quick to peg him as being so pushy. He was the senior policeman in the Search Department, and once in a while his cheerfulness drove her up a wall. Not to mention that from the first day Louise joined the department, he had flirted with her shamelessly. He’d seemed aggressive. And then there were the drawings. Olle had drawn a cartoon figure of everyone in the department, and she had problems taking a grown man with such a passion seriously. Though she had to admit he drew well.
“It’s number four,” he said, pointing when the GPS informed them that their destination lay a hundred meters ahead and to the right. Louise parked at the curb and glanced at the house set back from the road.
“The lawn must slope down to the lake,” she said, before getting out.
“It has to cost a fortune to live here,” Olle said. He slung his lanky body out of the car. “They must have serious money.”
“How much was it they paid in?”
“A hundred thousand.” He swiped his hair back when the wind caught it.
The black front door opened. The man who appeared looked athletic, with a well-trimmed full beard and bristly white hair standing straight up, not unlike a brush.
“Erik Hald Sørensen,” he said. He shook Louise’s hand. She recalled a few things about him in her head: sixty-one, widower, wife died about ten months ago. Christine Løvtoft had been much younger than her husband, and the account from which the money had been transferred to Switzerland had been in her name. “Come inside.” He stepped to the side.
Louise noticed the deceased wife’s coat still hanging on a hook in the hallway, her high, black boo
ts beside a row of men’s shoes. They followed him into his living room. Several empty vases stood around, as if the fresh bouquets that once had been part of the room’s furnishings had been forgotten. There were numerous signs of feminine influence. A copy of Eurowoman lay on the glass table beside the corner sofa and a modern designer blanket. Sørensen seated them on the sofa.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked, standing patiently.
They shook their heads and told him they wouldn’t take up much of his time; they just had a few questions for him.
He sat down in the armchair across from them. Photos of him and a woman Louise’s age stood on the windowsill. The smiling woman stood behind him, leaning forward slightly with her chin resting on his shoulder. Another photo showed them singing in a large choir, everyone standing in an open area. Louise noted framed vacation shots from the mountains of Norway; one showed them holding hands in a vineyard, mountains sloping in the background.
Sørensen’s face fell as he followed Louise’s eyes. “I miss her every single day,” he said. He managed a modest smile. “I left my first wife for Christine, and I never regretted it a single second, even though my sons won’t have anything to do with me now. They can’t forgive me for choosing a woman barely older than they were, but you can’t control love that way, now, can you?”
Olle shook his head. “No.”
“I met her at the clinic.” From the way he spoke, Louise sensed he was holding a great sorrow inside, with no one to share it with. “My ex-wife is a doctor, too. We had a medical clinic in Hareskovby, but Vivian left after we divorced. Later, when we found out that Christine had Huntington’s, I dropped my practice. I wanted to stay home to take care of her.”
For a moment he smiled broadly.
“And it’s been ten months since she died?” Olle said, trying to steer the widower onto what they had come to talk about.
“Nine and a half. Christine was the one who got me started singing. I’ve always liked to sing, but I’d never done anything about it. I was the eldest of three boys, and I was pushed hard to finish my education.”