by Sara Blaedel
Eik broke into her thoughts. “A Vivian Hald Sørensen is also registered at the Virum address.”
Time stood still as Louise struggled to take in all he’d said. After a moment she came back to life and ran to her office. She’d just grabbed her coat when Eik showed up in the doorway. “It’s his ex-wife’s place,” she said. “He’s hiding out there.”
“It’s for sure where Stephanie’s gone to look for him,” Eik said, as they ran down the hall.
29
He drove all the way down the dead-end street and parked with two wheels over the curb, just outside the house. For a moment he eyed the imposing home, then he grabbed the bag in the front seat and got out. He opened the familiar front gate.
The driveway was empty, but the entire first floor was lit. He walked around to the backyard; wet grass clung to his shoes when he stopped. Against the wall of the house, behind the naked lilac bush reaching all the way up to the terrace, he unpacked his rifle and hitched it up over his shoulder. He grabbed the bag and walked up the steps of the terrace that faced the forest.
The lawn furniture was stored inside for the winter. A few pots held boxwood trees, and a broom stood in a corner. She sat at the dining room table, behind the tall terrace windows. She was facing him, but she was absorbed in the ring binders and papers spread out in front of her.
He put his rifle to his shoulder and zeroed in on her. He aimed, and when she was in his sight, he checked his emotions.
His cheeks were moist now from the gloomy, gray fog, but he didn’t notice it while he lowered the rifle and picked up his bag. He headed back down the terrace steps, continued around the house, found his keys, and unlocked the garage. Her car was still inside, but otherwise it was almost empty. He walked over to the basement door but stopped when he heard footsteps above. Shortly after, someone flushed the toilet and walked back across the floor. A chair scraped, and then it was quiet.
He started up the basement steps, opened the door to the hallway, and entered the dining room. Standing in the doorway behind her, he recognized her perfume. The odor hung over the room, cloudlike. He noted her hair, cut in a short page. Her neck. The slender hands, the ring on her finger.
He laid his bag down and again put his rifle to his shoulder, and suddenly she turned and stared silently into the barrel.
“Shh,” he said. He took a step forward.
“Are you completely out of your mind?” she shrieked, and started to stand up.
“Stay in your chair. You’re going to do something for me.”
“No I’m not! What in the world are you doing, barging in here like this? And with that rifle, what is this? I’ll call the police if you don’t leave this house at once.”
He shook his head. “I’m not leaving until you’ve helped me.”
Reluctantly she sat back down. Her eyes wandered over to the terrace door, then the kitchen door.
“It won’t take long if we get started,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you, as long as you agree to do this for me.”
“What is it you want?” She clenched the thin arms of the dining room chair in panic.
He laid the rifle down and unzipped the gym bag. He felt her eyes glued to him as he unpacked a small video camera. But he knew she’d do what he told her to, because she in turn knew he would keep his word. As long as she agreed to help.
She sat motionless, watching him unfold the tripod and mount the small, silver camera on top. It would be the same procedure as when he had sat with the dying. His confession would be documented the same way the nurse service, without his knowledge, filmed Christine’s wish to die. And Vivian had to listen. She must understand why he’d had to leave her. And why he’d acted the way he did.
He carried everything into the living room and set it up in front of the low, two-person leather sofa, so he could sit with his back to the dining room with the camera in front of him.
“Come on,” he said. He dragged a dining room chair over to the tripod, so they would be facing each other. Without a word, she stood up and followed him.
“All you have to do is push the red button to record. And don’t interrupt me. You’re going to be my life witness.”
She nodded, she understood, but just to be safe he grabbed the rifle and laid it on his lap after he sat down. He breathed deeply and thought about everything he had planned to say. He didn’t need to start at the very beginning, but anyway he would try to cover everything important.
He nodded at her; he was ready. “I never loved anyone like I loved Christine.” For a moment his voice thickened. He got a grip on himself before continuing. “I’d never believed all that business about finding a soul mate. But Christine was. She was my soul mate.”
His ex-wife shivered and looked away. But his testimony was more important than sparing her. “My name is Erik Hald Sørensen.”
He gave his CPR number and address, so no one would be in doubt about his identity, or that he was in his right mind during the recording.
“What is it you want? Why do you…?” Vivian’s voice shook; her eyes were wide and full of fear.
He stared straight at his ex-wife. She shut up.
“When I met Christine almost five years ago, she changed my life. I found a joy and an enormous lust for life I’d never experienced before. Even though Christine was twenty years younger than me, she was the wiser of us. She filled her life with what was good for her, while I’d always filled my life with what was expected of me.”
His ex-wife looked down, as if she were ducking invisible punches. But this wasn’t about her, nor was it a reckoning between them; that had happened long ago, and he had moved on. This was about making people understand how much he had lost.
“I loved to sing when I was a child, but later on I stopped because there was always so much else I was expected to spend my time on. I got an education, I got married, started the clinic. We had children, they grew up, I worked. Took care of my responsibilities and earned money.”
“That’s enough!” His ex-wife was enraged, but as she stood up, he grabbed the rifle.
“Sit down.” He aimed at her, and finally she sat back down on the chair. “Everything was work and responsibilities. Sure, there were also good times.” He nodded at her. “But I never did anything for myself. Alone. I did things for us, for my family, the ones I loved.”
He paused a moment. “Christine was referred to the clinic, because her doctor was on vacation.”
Again he spoke directly to the camera. “It’s hard to say exactly what happened between us. It was just there. Like something binding us together we’d suddenly discovered. We began seeing each other. Two months later I was divorced. And I’m sorry about that.” He looked over at Vivian. “I know I hurt you, and the kids, too. And I’m very sorry, you know that. But it couldn’t be helped, because I loved her from the moment we met, and that’s the type of thing that can’t be explained or even understood, if you haven’t experienced it.
“When your own adult sons refuse to try to understand your choices, when they turn their backs on you, that’s a terrible price to pay. They thought it was sleazy to leave their mother for a woman barely older than them. And that’s understandable. But I paid that price, because the joy that came from the love I’d found was that great. A life I’d never known existed opened up for me.”
He leaned forward, closer to the camera; this was important. “And I’m not talking about sex. It’s not about an older man finding a younger model to prove he can still perform. It was a love that made me feel like a human being someone found worthy of loving unconditionally.”
He leaned back again. His ex-wife seemed to have retreated into herself, as if she didn’t want to hear any more.
“Then Christine became ill. She’d prepared me for the possibility. It was inherited. Her mother died of the same disease when she was sixty-six. No one can know how long it will take for it to get the upper hand, but she was diagnosed when she was thirty-eight. We talked a lot ab
out it. She was very realistic. A meter had been put on her life, and it was running, was how she put it. She noticed very little the first year after the diagnosis, but then the symptoms began showing up. And shortly after her fortieth birthday, she had difficulty walking up stairs. It went fast. Way too fast.”
He choked up again, and he reminded himself that he had plenty of time. Saying what he had to say in a decent manner was the most important thing. He took a deep breath. “By then I’d already quit my practice to take care of Christine. We spent our money doing everything we wanted to do together. We’d dreamed of traveling, seeing the world. All the things couples dream about when they fall in love. And we had the opportunity. We’d talked about selling everything and joining Doctors Without Borders, but we had to put that idea aside when the disease struck. But we did travel some, and it was an enormous experience for me to see new places with her, and to share places I loved with her.”
He felt his ex-wife’s eyes on him. She was listening again, now that he had reached the part of the story she didn’t know about.
“Little by little her spasms worsened, and finally she couldn’t control her body. Six months later she was in a wheelchair, and we couldn’t travel. She wouldn’t, I should say. She didn’t like being limited. But I adapted our lives to that. It didn’t matter to me, I was happy to stay home, because I enjoyed so much just living our everyday lives together. And I insisted on continuing to do all the things she loved to do. We bought a van with room for her wheelchair in back. It wasn’t complicated, we just had to organize everything. Many people are dependent upon special equipment, it’s a necessity of life. She just had to get used to it. It wasn’t easy, but she handled it because she wanted to. But then her voice disappeared.”
Vivian made a move to stand up again. “Erik—”
“Be quiet! Sit down!” Immediately he pointed his rifle at her. “Let me speak!”
Suddenly he slumped, his emotions getting the best of him as he returned to his memories. He’d been hunting on Helleby Estate, with Lars and Merete. He hadn’t told his old childhood friend about Christine’s illness; he simply excused her absence by saying she had influenza. When he came home, she lay in bed with her back to the room. She could only whisper, though he didn’t find that out until that evening; at first she wouldn’t say anything. She lay quietly and unmoving in her shell. He realized the disease had finally broken her, and he’d cried so much that he had to get out, walk the dog down to the lake.
He pulled himself together. “Things turned really bad for her after she couldn’t sing. And she became aggressive. But that’s natural, it’s a process you have to go through. It goes quickly for some, slower for others. I’ve seen it many times. It’s never easy to come to terms with a fatal disease. She was forty, she wasn’t at all ready to die. Of course not. But her life wasn’t over, either, I tried to explain to her. It was just difficult to convince her.”
He smiled. “She wasn’t the type to hold back what she was feeling or thinking. And she hated the thought of being confined to a bed, where someone else had to wipe her ass, as she put it. She didn’t want to end like that, she’d seen it all with her mother. It didn’t bother me that we couldn’t make physical love, when she’d given so much of herself, but now she wouldn’t let me touch her in any loving way. She felt her body had let her down, betrayed her. It was so horrible for her. So sad.”
An evening he’d completely forgotten suddenly came back to him. That afternoon he’d stopped by the Daniel Letz Shop in Østerbro to buy smoked salmon, which she loved. He arranged everything on a tray, lit candles, opened a bottle of wine, and carried it all to her bed. They ate together every evening; they had furnished the guest room with all the things she wanted to be surrounded by. He’d suggested they move her hospital bed into the living room, but she refused. She preferred being carried to the sofa and lying there in the daytime. And then being returned to bed. She felt there should be variety to her day. That evening he told her about the oldest of his younger brothers, who had played in a dance band after he was thrown out of school. Most of the stories from his childhood were off-color, but Christine loved them. He did, too, now that so many years had gone by.
“I don’t know exactly when she contacted the hospice nurse service,” he said. “She didn’t tell me about it, she knew I wanted to take care of her to the end, with all that would involve. She did it to spare me, I’m aware of that. She thought her disorder would be a burden to me. Even though I kept telling her I saw it differently, that I wanted to be there for her all the time. I wanted us to go through it together. And I’m trained to handle such things. But of course it was also about her dignity, and all she could see was her life falling apart. So I decided to step aside when she asked for outside help.”
Now came the worst part for him. He pulled a letter out of his jacket’s inner pocket and unfolded it. “This letter arrived a month after she died. Christine wrote it, long before she drank the medicine that killed her. She must have asked the hospice nurse to send it to me after her death, so I would have some perspective to it all when I received it.”
He took a deep breath. “She explains in the letter why she decided to end her life. She might have lived a few years longer, we could have had a little more time together, but she wanted to leave this world with dignity. She put it this way: ‘My beloved Erik, you are the very best part of my life. You know that. I hope with all my heart that one day you will understand why I decided to do what I’m going to do. I wanted to be able to choose when I would die. I’ve lived the fullest of lives, but I can’t go on. I know you want to be there for me until it’s over, but I can’t follow you to the end. I’ve seen what this illness did to my mother, and I respected her wishes to end her life when she lost the will to live. Now I’ve chosen to do the same. You must understand that I didn’t want to hurt you…”
He dried his eyes. “I’ll leave the letter here, so all of you can read the rest of it.” He looked directly at the camera. “Is it still running?”
His ex-wife leaned forward, checked the camera, and nodded.
“It was only after reading the letter that I realized an organization had helped her end her life. At the time I didn’t know the home hospice nurse service was such an organization. Had I known that, I would have reported them and put a stop to it. But as I said, she was gone before I found out. I was angry. First with her, for leaving me, but then with them. Not because they helped her. That was her wish, and of course I had to respect that. Because I respected her. But it was much too early. She could have lived several years longer, without any worsening of her condition. That’s what really angered me. They took her from me before it was necessary.
“I decided to join the organization, to find out how many people were involved and how well planned everything was. Christine had donated more than one hundred thousand kroner to them. I found out about that later. And of course it was her right to do so, for as she writes in the letter, it meant so much to her to know she could contact them when she felt her time had come. But…”
He glanced at Vivian. “I’m a doctor. I could’ve given her an overdose, and I could have sat with her and held her hand. We could have done this ourselves, without others being involved.”
His ex-wife spoke quietly. “But you wouldn’t have done it. You would never have let her go.”
He shook his head. “No, I probably wouldn’t have. And Christine knew that, of course. She was smart. And she would never have asked me to help her that way, because she knew me, and she knew what a terrible dilemma it would have put me in.”
Once more he looked directly at the camera. “It wasn’t difficult to join the nurse service. Often the family or friends of someone who has used them offer their help. And they knew I was a doctor. At first I was allowed to watch, to see how they help people die. To be fair, it’s all done in a very orderly manner. Everything is recorded on video, like now, where the person dying expresses her wish to end her life, so eve
ryone knows it’s voluntary. The recordings were sent to Sofie Parker in England, and she stored them. It took time for me to realize a woman over there did all the administrative work. But then it wasn’t hard to find her address.”
He kept his eyes on the camera, away from his ex-wife. “I killed them. I’m the one who decided to put a stop to it, to outsiders helping people die. How can they grant themselves the right to take strangers, people they have no relationship to, from those who love them.”
His wife cut him off. “Erik!”
He heard something behind him, and he glimpsed Vivian’s eyes locked onto a point behind his left shoulder. He grabbed the rifle, turned, and shot as he saw a shadow approach him.
Vivian screamed, and he fired the rifle again. Immediately he recognized the mute, dark-haired girl, the daughter he’d made eye contact with right after he shot her mother. She rushed him with fists raised; he missed her with a third shot but managed to knock her down with the stock of his rifle, then he jumped up and ran past her, out the terrace door and into the forest.
30
Have you checked your holster?” Eik asked, as they turned off Kongevejen at Virum. He wasn’t looking at her, and it was the first thing he’d said since they left.
Louise nodded, sensing the weight under her jacket. She had also ordered more officers be put on standby, in case Sørensen was at his ex-wife’s house. “I sure as hell hope you know I could be in serious shit for bringing you along.” Louise eyed the tall trees and large homes.
“That’s why I love you, honey,” he said mildly. “You’re the type who takes chances.”
“Shut up!” she hissed. But it felt good to ease the tension. All the way there, Louise had waffled between fearing the worst and assuring herself an English schoolgirl couldn’t get to a random address in a suburb like Virum quicker than a speeding patrol car. But she could have given a taxi driver the address, in which case she would have a big enough head start.