by Sara Blaedel
Jørgensen nodded, apparently agreeing with her. He called the next person on the list. After talking to them for a few moments, he said, “Is there anyone else in the family who might remember the name?”
After hanging up, he said, “Looks like it wasn’t a topic of conversation. This woman explained that her aunt had wanted a home hospice nurse, so the rest of the family stayed away.”
“Damn it!” Louise was afraid the perpetrator was way ahead of them. “We have to talk to people in person, not just call them up. I’ll get Olle to help us. Otherwise it’ll take too long to go through the list.”
She called him and filled him in on why she needed his help. “Can you go back to the nursing home and talk to Kurt Melvang?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Sure. I’ve still got everything right in front of me on the desk here. It’s the senile old guy who dropped his pants, right?”
“That’s him. And if he doesn’t remember the name of the nurse, ask his two adult children. They were pissed off at the nurse service for robbing them of their inheritance. I’ll try to set up a meeting with him in Birkerød.”
“You doing okay?” Olle asked, as Louise was about to hang up.
His sudden concern made her pause, and she sank in her chair. “I don’t know. I think so.”
24
Camilla wasn’t about to wait for Terkel Høyer to return from his meeting or answer her text. She hopped in her car and headed for Jutland.
After arriving at work, she’d barely had time to pour a cup of coffee and sit down in the editorial office to get ready to work on the Switzerland story before Stig Tåsing called and asked if she could come by the manse.
“It’s not something we can talk about on the phone?” she said, thinking about her deadline. If the article about the suicide clinic was going to be in tomorrow’s paper, she had to get busy.
“No,” he’d said. “You have to come over here.”
She was on the Great Belt Bridge when her editor in chief called and asked where the hell she’d gone off to now.
“I had to leave,” she said. She explained what had happened. “He wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but I’m guessing he’s ready to say more.”
“And how did you guess your way to that conclusion?” Høyer didn’t sound all that confident in her judgment.
“I’ll pay the toll and gas,” she said, while passing a semi.
“Right now I’m more interested in hearing how you’re going to get that article written. I’m holding a two-page spread for tomorrow.”
“You’ll get your story. But if we can get something more out of the pastor, it’ll damn well be worth it. The Switzerland story won’t be any worse the day after tomorrow. What the hell’s wrong with you, Terkel, what’s happened to your nose for a story?”
“All right,” he mumbled. “I guess I just have to get used to you being back.”
* * *
From a distance she spotted the church and the beautiful, whitewashed manse with its red tile roof. The bare crowns in the tall trees surrounding it looked like thin, bony arms reaching for the sky. She signaled to turn off and slowed down.
Several texts had beeped in on the way, so she pulled over and checked her phone. Frederik asked if she had time to Skype. Camilla was about to answer that it would be a while, when she realized he was probably in bed. It must be night in Los Angeles.
Suddenly her stomach knotted, and instead of texting she called him, mostly just to hear his voice.
While waiting for an answer, she looked out over the brown fields. Snow clung to the hedgerows. She missed her husband, so much that her chest ached. Maybe it was all this talk about death, her imagining how it would be to travel to Switzerland and send the person she loved most on his final journey. She couldn’t shake her experience at the suicide clinic; she longed to snuggle up to Frederik and hear his thoughts about all this.
His answering service kicked in. She left a message, explaining that she was in Jutland and that she loved him and missed him very, very much. She would do everything she could to talk Markus into flying to L.A. during winter vacation, if it was humanly possible to separate him from his girlfriend. She parked in front of the manse. Otherwise she’d have to invite Julia to go with them. No matter what, she was going to spend a week over there with Frederik.
Stig Tåsing stepped outside. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, his chestnut-brown hair combed back. He still had his slippers on, as if he hadn’t really started his day yet.
They greeted each other. His mood was serious, and he seemed eager to get her inside. On the way, Camilla had tried to guess what was so important that he would ask her to drive over. Now he took her arm and led her to the manse, as if they were coconspirators.
“Early this morning,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “the doorbell woke me up. It was Sofie’s daughter. She thought I was her father. She came here to Denmark to find him.”
Camilla gaped in surprise. “I’ll be damned,” she said, forgetting that he was a pastor.
“She has the same way of looking at people as her mother, only her eyes are darker.”
His unexpected guest had shaken him up; she could see that.
“Of course I told her I’m not her father, but she’s very upset. And very determined to find him. Somebody simply has to help this poor girl, and I thought about you.”
Camilla nodded. “Good thinking.” She followed him inside, her thoughts racing—how much should she tell the young girl? She didn’t know for certain that Eik was the girl’s father, and also, how could she tell her that he was in jail in England, being held for the murder of her mother?
Maybe she shouldn’t say anything, maybe she should just call Louise. While taking off her boots in the hallway, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to hear what the girl had to say. Then she could call.
He led her through the house. The girl was sitting on the sofa in the living room, wrapped up in a blanket. Camilla stopped in the doorway and looked the girl over. It was almost comical, how much she resembled Eik. Or was it just because she was looking for it? She walked over and introduced herself. The girl surprised her by speaking Danish, asking if Camilla had known her mother.
“No, I didn’t, but I think I can help you find your father.” She nodded when the pastor asked if she’d like a cup of tea.
“Mum taught me Danish,” Stephanie said, after he left the room. Camilla’s surprise had apparently been obvious. “She didn’t have any ties left to Denmark, but it was important to her that we could speak Danish together.”
“A wise mother,” Camilla said. She studied the girl’s pale face, her dark eye makeup. On the surface, Eik’s daughter looked like a tough girl. If she were scared or crushed by her mother’s death, she was certainly hiding it well.
“I’m here to find my real father,” she said, without bothering to explain why she had shown up out of the blue at a manse in Jutland. “I ran off because I can’t stand the complete idiot my mother married, and I know he’ll never help me find my biological father. I don’t understand why they didn’t tell me a long time ago.”
“Tell you what?”
“That I had another father!” She threw up her hands. “They could have just said, then I wouldn’t have had to stay there and listen to him yell at me all the time. She just told me for the first time a month ago.” She shook her head and bent over, her fists under her chin as she stared straight ahead.
The pastor returned with a tray carrying a teapot, biscuits, and buttered rolls. Camilla wondered if he kept these things on hand, in case someone suddenly showed up needing to talk. “How did you find me?” he asked.
“I searched my mother’s office for some clue of where to look in Denmark.” Stephanie straightened up again. “I found your marriage certificate and the address here.”
“She kept it?” The pastor’s eyes clouded over.
“That’s why I thought it was you.”
“How did you get here?” Camilla as
ked. “Did you fly to Copenhagen?”
The girl looked at Camilla as if the question were ridiculous. “I’m sixteen. I’m perfectly able to buy a plane ticket. I took a flight from Bristol, and my mother had a lot of money stashed in her office. I can take care of myself for now.”
“Of course, you can,” Camilla replied quickly. How could she win a stubborn teenage girl’s trust in record time?
“Will you help me?” the girl asked, before Camilla had time to think out a strategy.
“I absolutely will.”
“Stephanie explained that her mother had plans for them to visit Denmark, so she could meet her father,” the pastor said. “Which didn’t happen. So now she’s here to look for him.”
“Steph,” the girl said. “My name is Steph, and I’m going to find him.”
“How much do you know about your father?” Camilla asked.
“Nothing.” A hint of vulnerability showed through her mask, which made her look very young. “I don’t know his name or where to look. But I’ll keep trying until I find him, I’m not going back to live with Nigel.”
“Has he done anything to you?” The girl’s utter contempt for him concerned Camilla.
The girl flashed a smile, and suddenly all the black shadows couldn’t hide how pretty she was. “No, he’d never do that, he’s just so…irritating. He criticizes me constantly, nothing I do is good enough. Mum promised me she’d talk to my real father, see if maybe I could live with him for a while, at least until I could move away from home. I think he irritated her, too, because she started defending me.”
Had she considered whether her biological father was as anxious to meet her as she was to meet him? It didn’t seem so to Camilla. At least until Steph said, “And if he didn’t want anything to do with me, she promised she’d find a boarding school for me.”
The pastor poured tea for all three of them. “Please, eat.”
“You were married to my mother. Why didn’t you keep in contact with her?” Steph sounded like a child who suddenly discovers that she’s completely alone.
The pastor laid the tray down without answering. Instinctively, Camilla sat down beside the girl, put her arm around her shoulder, and pulled her close. Had anyone even comforted the girl after her mother’s death? She should have been offered help from a therapist, after having gone through such a brutal, traumatic experience. Camilla’s impression was that she’d had to deal with everything herself, now that her mother wasn’t there to take care of her.
The girl’s body felt tense under her arm. Her breath was ragged, but she didn’t push Camilla away. After a few moments, her body slumped into Camilla. “I don’t know what to do, now that she’s gone.” Her voice was small, but she wasn’t crying.
“You can stay with me in Copenhagen while we try to find your father.” Camilla thought about all the empty rooms in their enormous Frederiksberg apartment. “But I want you to talk to the police. You can help them by describing the man who shot your mother.”
The girl looked surprised, but she nodded. Her stubborn expression had returned. “It’s a deal. Will you promise I won’t be sent back to England?”
“I can’t promise you that. But I know someone who will fight for you, that I can guarantee. She works for the Copenhagen Police. Her name is Louise Rick, and you’ve already met her.”
25
Revenge, triggered by economic loss, Louise thought, as she parked in front of the Birkerød home. Erik Hald Sørensen was the first of eight people on the list Louise was going to look up. On the way there, Jørgensen had called and asked if they should shuffle the list according to size of donation, with the families of the deceased who had donated the most at the top. Louise had rejected the idea; a small amount could mean more to poor families than a large amount to the wealthy. The only thing important now was finding the names of everyone involved in the home hospice nurse service, to prevent any more killings. Suhr had assigned an extra man to call and make sure the relative was home when the police arrived.
“I’ll only bother you for a moment,” Louise said, when the widower invited her inside. His wife’s coats were no longer hanging in the hallway, she noted. Her high boots were also gone.
“No bother,” he said. He asked her to follow him, as if he looked forward to having some company. He offered to make coffee.
“No thank you,” she quickly replied, though she didn’t feel she could let him in on why she had to hurry. She looked around the living room; something was different in there also. A box. She sensed him watching her.
“I’m packing up all the dog things.” He blinked his eyes rapidly a few times. “I found a good home for him in southern Zealand. I can’t keep him, I don’t seem to care much about anything anymore, and it’s unfair to him.”
His shoulders slumped; he looked lost standing there in the middle of the room, eyeing the dining room table and the lambskin, dog brush, tick tweezers, and heavy, black leather dog leash. “He’s a good dog, but he needs his exercise.”
Louise let him speak. He walked out of the room, and a moment later he returned with an elegant, heavy wool trench coat. “It’s a Max Mara. I gave it to my wife for Christmas last year. Could you use it?” He held it out to her.
Louise smiled at him. “Unfortunately I’m not allowed to take gifts.” She laid the coat over the back of an armchair. “I’m here in connection with an investigation. Someone was murdered early this morning in Hvidovre. It turns out the victim was a home hospice nurse, working for the service that helped you when your wife was dying. Right now I’m trying to find all the volunteers who work for the service, since we have reason to believe their lives may be in danger, too. So I’m hoping you can give me the names of those who helped you.”
Hald Sørensen rested his hand on the high back of a dining room chair and gazed out the window. He cleared his throat. “I don’t remember much about those days, I’m sorry to say. Christine’s last days are a blur. But I wasn’t happy about having a stranger in our house near the end.”
He paused for a moment, then took a deep breath. “I wanted to sit with her. Alone. But it was her decision, and naturally I went along with it. I believe she mostly wanted to spare me her body’s decay, as she called it.”
He looked sad as he stroked his full beard.
“So it wasn’t you who arranged things with the service?” Louise asked, steering him back to the subject.
He shook his head. “Christine took care of it all. But of course I called them when she asked me to.”
“Do you remember the name of the person who came?”
“Unfortunately not. But it was an older woman. She was my age, anyway.” He smiled.
“Did you speak with her?”
He nodded. “Not much, though. The first time she came was the day before my wife died.”
“Of course. Did she mention anything like where she lived, or what she did when she wasn’t working as a home hospice nurse?”
She was hoping for something, some tiny clue that could lead her to the woman’s identity. Her age suggested it was someone they hadn’t heard about. She could also be the Esther who had sat one night with Werner Moesgaard in Karlslunde. They still didn’t have her address.
“She didn’t sit there talking about herself,” he said. “We played music for Christine, but when I was in the room, mostly the nurse sat and read.”
“Did she have a car? Did she drive here herself?”
He shook his head. “She took the train, and I’m certain she came here from somewhere in Copenhagen. That would fit with her using a five-zone train card. I remember we talked about that.”
Louise’s phone rang. She excused herself and fished it up out of her bag. Suhr told her that a woman from the nurse service had shown up at Police Headquarters. “She thinks her life is in danger, and she’s begging to talk to someone who’s investigating the shootings. She also believes the homicides are linked to the work of her organization.”
“I’ll leav
e right now.”
Again Louise felt the elderly man’s eyes on her. “A witness has shown up. She’ll give us the names we’re lacking,” she explained. “Thank you so much for your time, and I’m very sorry to have brought up all these painful memories again.”
* * *
A thin, gangly, late-middle-aged woman with red-rimmed eyes was sitting in the office with a cup of coffee when Louise returned. Toft sat across from her.
The woman stood up and held out her hand. She seemed a bit uncertain of herself. “Else Corneliussen,” she said, to Louise’s great surprise. Her voice boomed, in contrast to Louise’s impression of her as a frail woman.
She gazed at the doctor who had helped Sofie’s mother die. Olle hadn’t been able to track her down, but no matter, now that she’d shown up on her own.
The woman sat down again; her dark brown eyes looked tired, and she clasped her hands on the desk in front of her. She seemed determined and eager to get started, though.
“I feel horrible about not coming in much earlier. Not only because I’m at great risk of being shot myself, but it might have prevented Margit’s death.”
She bit her lip before continuing. “It wasn’t until Sofie was killed over in England that I began to suspect a connection.”
Louise had already taken her coat off and dropped her bag. She pulled out a chair and grabbed the thermos that Toft slid over to her. He was at the computer now; she assumed he wanted her to do the talking.
“I just couldn’t understand it,” the woman said, trying to control her wavering voice. “It’s beyond me, what’s going on. But after hearing the news this morning, there’s no longer any doubt in my mind. There is a connection.” She threw her hands up in dismay.
“Can you explain,” Toft said, “how you’re so sure about who was killed. The name of the Hvidovre woman hasn’t been released.” He looked over at Louise, who shook her head.
“I don’t need to hear the name. I know it’s Margit.” She looked up. “I called her when I heard about the killing, and she didn’t answer. She didn’t answer the emergency service phone, either. So I called the cell phone we use only among ourselves. She didn’t answer that, either, and she never turns it off. It’s her personal emergency number. So I contacted the daughter of an elderly man; Margit was supposed to be sitting with him, starting at eight this morning. The daughter said she hadn’t shown up. So I came here at once.”