The Lost Woman

by Sara Blaedel

  “More coffee?” Louise asked. The woman shook her head. “What’s your connection to the home hospice nurse service?”

  Else Corneliussen closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if she were gathering strength. But when she opened them again, she seemed neither nervous nor unsure. She looked like a woman who was deeply unhappy and afraid.

  “I’m a doctor. I established the home hospice nurse service, along with Sofie Parker. I’m involved with assisted suicide. Please, let me explain everything from the beginning, and hopefully we can put an end to this insanity.”

  Louise nodded and glanced quickly at Toft. The doctor’s explanation was to be in the report.

  “I was Annelise’s doctor—Annelise, Sofie’s mother. She died many years ago.” She asked Louise if she knew what had happened back then.

  “Let’s hear your version.”

  “Annelise wanted to die. At the end her pain was intense, and she’d just come home from a long, exhausting stay in the hospital. There wasn’t much left of her, and several times I expected her to ask if I could help to end her life. And I would have done so, but she beat me to it.” The doctor looked up. Maybe to show that she still felt the same way, Louise thought.

  “Annelise emptied her medicine cabinet, and she was admitted to the hospital with serious damage to her liver and kidneys. But she didn’t die as she’d hoped. I offered Sofie my help at the hospital, so her mother could finally find peace. I knew it was what her mother wanted. Besides my practice, I had two shifts a week at the hospital, so I knew the staff, I was used to working with them. I knew which nurses shared my feelings about helping those who wanted help, and we decided to be generous with morphine in the drip. I doubt it would surprise anyone to know it’s a merciful way to free people of their suffering, and it’s often used.” She spoke the last sentence with authority; clearly she was prepared to defend her medical decision.

  “Later it caused a lot of trouble for Sofie with her husband. He was so set against our way of thinking. He wouldn’t tolerate Sofie’s wanting a dignified death for her mother, an escape from all her pain. On the contrary, he thought she should have talked her mother out of it. Then he made serious accusations against me in the local press; he believed that I misused my authority. And of course it was his right to believe that. We live in a country where the government and most members of the Danish Council of Ethics are dead-set against what more and more Danes now support. Assisted suicide and euthanasia aren’t allowed, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take place. Just not out in the open.”

  She reached for her coffee. “In the home hospice service we’ve formed a circle of well-educated, skilled people who help others die in peace, at home in familiar surroundings, without risk of something going wrong as it did for Sofie’s mother.”

  “And who are we?” Louise asked.

  “After going through her mother’s death, Sofie decided to help others in the same situation, the terminally ill and elderly, like her mother. People who don’t want to live any longer because they have no strength left, they live a life of pain and total dependency. She inherited a large sum of money from her parents, and she went to Switzerland to learn as much as she could. Not just the practical details, but how to support relatives who had to deal with the terminally ill person’s decision. There are serious ethical questions with assisted suicide, and she was very conscious of that.”

  “So you were a part of it from the beginning?” Toft asked from behind his computer monitor.

  The doctor nodded. “But I can’t provide the medicine. That would be far too easy to discover. We decided that Sofie would take care of that. Which is why she settled in England, where you can live without all the registration we have here. You could say she went underground.”

  “How did she get hold of so much medicine?” Louise asked.

  “There are pharmacies in Mexico that sell medicine normally not sold over-the-counter. It’s more expensive without a prescription, and you have to pay in dollars, but the medicine comes from the same pharmaceutical companies, the quality is the same.”

  “But that’s illegal,” Toft said.

  Else Corneliussen shook her head. “Over there you can walk in off the street and buy these products. Outside their stores they advertise Valium, Viagra, strong pain medication, sleeping pills, so it’s no more illegal than that.”

  “Sofie bought it and had it shipped over?” Louise asked. She thought about the package sent from Cozumel, Mexico.

  The doctor nodded. “Yes. The past several years I’ve gone to London about every other month to meet with Sofie and bring the medicine back to Denmark.”

  “So it started with just you two?”

  “And the nurse who helped that evening when Sofie’s mother passed away. Several others joined us, though some of them have stopped. How it happens is, the terminally ill have to be able to take the necessary dosage themselves, but we help them. That’s why most of the home hospice workers we accept are educated nurses. It’s not a requirement; the most important thing is, of course, that they share our ideals and offer their assistance.”

  “But the terminally ill pay you to help them?” Louise made no attempt to soften her tone.

  Again she shook her head. “You don’t pay to be permitted to die. No one in the organization receives money for what they do. No one profits. The money the terminally ill or their relatives donate to the home hospice service goes to buying medicine, the shipping, my travel expenses to get the medicine, our transportation to and from the homes of the terminally ill. There are also expenses in connection with the videos made at the deathbed, in which the person dying says they want to die. The income and expenses go through an account in Switzerland that Sofie took care of.”

  “How many are there in your service?” Toft asked.

  The doctor’s red eyes moistened. “Our group covers North Zealand, metropolitan Copenhagen, and mid-Zealand, and we have seven hospice workers, two doctors, and one undertaker. Or at least we had, until all this began.”

  She lifted a handkerchief from the pocket of her dark blue cardigan.

  “May we have the names of these people?” Toft asked. His expression when looking at the doctor told Louise that he didn’t at all care for the woman’s mind-set of helping people to die.

  Dr. Corneliussen took a piece of paper out of her bag. “Anita Nielsen, Fleming Sau, Lise Rasmussen, and Esther Larsen—all four of them have been with us for quite some time. Also there’s Tone Frost; he’s the undertaker, and he’s new to the group. And Erik Hald Sørensen and me, though we’re not on the regular schedule. Here are the names, telephone numbers, and addresses.” He laid the sheet of paper on the desk. “The last number below each name is their emergency phone. I’ve already left a message on the phones, to let them know you’re probably going to contact them.”

  “Erik Hald Sørensen! From Birkerød?”

  The doctor nodded. “He’s a doctor, but he hasn’t been with us very long. Do you know him?”

  “I just came from his house,” Louise said. “But he didn’t mention that he’d joined the home hospice service.”

  The doctor leaned her arms onto the desk. “Erik contacted us not long after his wife asked us to help her die. Everyone in our group has at one time or another been part of an assisted suicide. That’s how people hear about our service, and in fact they often volunteer afterward. We have to be able to trust people before we allow them into our network.”

  “It’s just that it sounded like Hald Sørensen was against his wife’s decision,” Louise said, thinking about the conversation she had with him.

  “Losing her made him very unhappy,” the doctor said, nodding. “But later on, when he offered his help, he’d reached the point where he respected her decision. What he didn’t like was her choice to die so early. He had trouble accepting that she didn’t want to be with him as long as possible—that’s normal for the people who love those who are dying.”

  “What do you
mean, so early?” Louise asked. “I had the impression she was exhausted from her disease.”

  “Christine would probably have lived another year, maybe two. But her condition would have worsened, diminished her abilities. She knew what was going to happen, she’d seen what her mother went through. And she didn’t want that for herself. That’s why she decided it was time. So even though Erik’s loss was difficult, he offered his help. He explained that it was his way of honoring the memory of his wife.”

  Louise nodded; it made sense. “It just puzzles me that he didn’t say anything; he knew I was there to try to find all of you, so you could be protected.”

  “We have a lot of members, not only active volunteers, but others who support us financially. They all want to show their sympathy for the work we do. But as long as it’s illegal here, they all feel sworn to secrecy. It also happens sometimes that someone dying doesn’t tell relatives of their decision, because they already know their family will be against it. The only reason I’m sitting here asking for your help is, I’m afraid that four of us have been killed for being in our group, and several more are at risk. I simply can’t be responsible for that happening.”

  Toft went out to find Lars Jørgensen, to help him send patrol cars to everyone on the list.

  “Will they all be brought in here?” the doctor asked, confused now.

  “Yes,” Louise said. “We need to talk with all of you, but our first priority is to get them out of their homes and find out if they have family or friends they can stay with.”

  Toft and Jørgensen came back in. “They’re being brought in now,” Toft said. “The only one we couldn’t get hold of is Erik Hald Sørensen. He didn’t answer any of the numbers. I contacted the North Zealand Police, they’ve sent a nearby patrol car to the address.”

  His phone rang, and he stepped out into the hall. A moment later he was back. “The patrol car is out there now. The house is empty, but a patio door is open.”

  “Damn it!” Louise stood up. She had a bad feeling about this. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  “Do you ever regret leaving Homicide?” Jørgensen asked, as they sped up Kongevejen, the road leading to Birkerød. Something in his voice made Louise think her old partner might be putting feelers out. They hadn’t seen much of each other since she transferred to the Search Department, but once in a while they lunched together. She just couldn’t recall him talking about leaving, only saying that he got tired once in a while of having a boss like Michael Stig.

  She shook her head, then she got in the right lane and signaled to turn off at the road to Bistrup.

  “Rønholt is a great boss, I haven’t regretted it one second.” She didn’t mention the times she’d been at a crime scene and had to withdraw because she was no longer an investigator. Sometimes she missed the rush that came with working in Homicide, but she kept that to herself.

  “Are you happy there?” she asked.

  Jørgensen had been left alone with his Bolivian twins several years earlier. It had been difficult for the chief of investigations at the time, Willumsen, to accept that one of his male investigators had to pick up his kids every day. For a while he had ridden Jørgensen so hard that he’d had to go on sick leave. Willumsen died soon after, and Michael Stig rose up in the ranks.

  “You probably never thought you’d hear me say this,” he said, looking out the window, “but I’d rather have Willumsen as my boss any day, no matter what, instead of Stig. I can’t even imagine how it’s going to be when he takes over from Suhr at the end of the month.”

  He shook his head. “Stig was a good investigator, no doubt about that, even though he got on everyone’s nerves. But he’s not a good leader. You know the type that when something goes wrong, he makes it look like it’s someone else’s fault?”

  Tell me about it, Louise thought. It was easy for her to imagine Michael Stig passing the buck.

  “It’s like he’s always a step behind, and he tries to make it look like we’re the ones not keeping him informed. I don’t understand how he gets away with it.”

  Louise sensed it was difficult for Jørgensen to speak up like this. Maybe he felt disloyal, but he had absolutely no reason to. She’d known from the start that Stig wasn’t a team player. She turned her head when Jørgensen pointed out a flock of ducks, rocking back and forth on a small lake they passed by.

  “That’s Michael Stig for you, right there,” he said. “Calm on the surface, but underneath he’s scrambling like crazy to stay afloat.”

  Louise turned onto the street leading to Erik Hald Sørensen’s house. At the corner she noticed the police car parked out in front of the hedge, and she tensed up again, sharpened her focus.

  She parked behind the North Zealand Police vehicle and spotted the two officers, waiting up by the whitewashed house. Before they got out, she checked her shoulder holster while Jørgensen called Toft to say they had arrived and were ready to go inside. They walked up to the black front door and greeted their two colleagues, a man and an unusually tall woman with short, blond hair.

  “Have you been inside?” Louise said.

  The male officer answered. “We were only told to show up here, so we’ve been waiting on you. But we walked around the house, the back door is open.”

  “Good,” she said. “And no sign of anyone having shot through the windows or doors?”

  The female officer shook her head. “No sign of a break-in, either.”

  “Stay here. We’ll look behind the house.”

  A couple out walking their dog stood staring at them from across the street.

  She walked around one side of the house, and Jørgensen walked around the other. Several times on the way, Louise cupped her hand to a window and peered in, but she couldn’t see anyone. She hopped over a low stone fence and went around the garage to the backyard. Before reaching the patio and the door to the utility room, she peeked in two windows, one of them a bedroom window. A pile of Christine’s clothes lay on the bed; apparently he had started sorting them.

  Jørgensen showed up and shook his head. “The house looks deserted to me.”

  He pulled out a pair of plastic gloves and handed them to her. Louise no longer carried them around with her.

  She remembered the dog that had been shut in the utility room both times she’d been there. “There might be a dog inside, be ready for that.” She opened the door the rest of the way and checked the utility room. A countertop with two sinks lined the wall, like in a scullery. A washing machine, dryer, and a large sack of dog food stood at one end of the room. The rest of the room was filled with storage shelves, and there was also a hook for coats. The slippers Sørensen had worn earlier that day were under the hook.

  “Hello,” she called out. She walked over to the kitchen door. Her skin crawled, and she sensed Jørgensen right behind her as she entered.

  Her breathing seemed to roar in the dead silent house.

  “Let’s go in,” she whispered, flashing on an image of Margit Østergaard on her living room floor with a bloodied head. Though Louise was reasonably sure that Sørensen had left, it was still possible he was lying inside.

  The house was empty. Everything looked exactly as it had several hours earlier. He’d been packing things up for the dog, but he hadn’t made progress.

  “The two rooms in back are empty,” Jørgensen said. He returned to the living room.

  Louise was in the kitchen. A coffee cup and buttering board had been laid out, as if he’d started making lunch but had been interrupted.

  “And the room on the other side of the living room is empty, too,” Jørgensen said. He followed her out to a short hallway with three doors on one side, leading to rooms facing the street. The first door opened to a bedroom with stacks of clothes and things waiting to be sorted. The next room contained a hospital bed and a tall night table; a wheelchair was folded under the window, two crutches leaned up against a wall.

  “This must be his wife’s sickroom,” she sa
id.

  The bed was without sheets, and a folded comforter and pillow lay at the foot. A blue pack of Ga-Jol licorice still lay on the night table beside a portable alarm clock. A few photographs had been thumbtacked beside the head of the bed; one of them depicted Sørensen and his wife, the other a woman—her mother, Louise guessed. The room had been emptied and cleaned, but it seemed as if he’d lacked the energy or will to take these final things out.

  Louise was about to leave the room when she heard steps in the living room. She glanced at Jørgensen, who already had his hand on his holster.

  “It’s only me,” a female voice said. The tall officer appeared in the doorway. “The car is still in the garage. We talked to the neighbors across the street. They just came home, so they haven’t seen anything going on over here.”

  “He must have taken his dog with him,” Louise said. It dawned on her that Sørensen might be out walking the dog, and he might have forgotten to shut the patio door. She looked around the living room. Her skin crawled again when she picked up one of the small, silver-framed photos on the windowsill.

  Sørensen stood on a hilltop, his arm around his smiling wife. Christine leaned on a crutch under her right arm. They were both tan, the wind whipped their hair.

  “Maybe after you stopped by, he realized he could be in danger, too,” Jørgensen said.

  Louise nodded and carefully slid the photo into her coat pocket. “We need to keep this house under surveillance. And if he’s not back in an hour, we’ll have to put an APB out for him. I want to be sure he’s under our protection the moment he shows up.”

  The house had a view of a large lake that disappeared behind a forest thicket.