The Scream of the Butterfly

by Jakob Melander

Serafine gets up too and reaches out for the watch. The surgeon puts it in the drawer with a sweeping movement.

  “That stays here. I’ll take good care of it.”

  She bows her head and forces herself to think about tomorrow. Tomorrow, she will be free.

  OCTOBER 1999

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER with you, Arbën?” Mogens squats down beside the boy. They are alone in the lower-ground-floor cafeteria that juts out in front of the centre’s main building. But the windows overlooking the lawn are huge, and everyone walking past can look in and see them. The boy’s small body closes in on itself; he turns his back to him. Arbën hasn’t said one word to him all day. Nor did he come running this morning when Mogens turned up for work.

  Outside, the wind shakes the trees; the first autumn gale has started blowing. Mogens picks at some breadcrumbs left behind on the table. Søren cornered him when he turned up for work at ten o’clock, asking if he could try to find out what had happened. No one has seen the boy’s sister since last night. Could that be what’s upsetting him?

  Mogens puts his hand on Arbën’s shoulder; the touch makes the small body flinch.

  “Where is Afërdita?”

  Arbën’s shoulders start to tremble, but he doesn’t make a sound.

  Mogens rubs his palms on his pants. Then he gets up and holds out his hand. Kirsten and Sarah are visiting one of Kirsten’s old school friends. He has the apartment to himself.

  “Come on.”

  It must be his tone of voice that makes the difference. At any rate, the boy reaches out his hand, and continues to stare at the ground as they walk to the car.

  Mogens parks outside number 28 on Frederiksberg Allé.

  “This is where I live.”

  Arbën stares at the tree and the fountain. The autumn sun hangs low and red over Frederiksberg Garden at the end of the avenue. When Mogens opens the car door, the boy jumps out and starts kicking the big piles of yellow leaves.

  The leaves fly up, and are carried off by the wind before tumbling down the sidewalk. Arbën chases after them, trying to catch them in the air, and laughs for the first time that day. Then he stops suddenly, the light in his eyes extinguished, and he falls silent.

  Upstairs in the apartment, Mogens tries tempting him with chocolate, then Sarah’s computer games, but nothing seems to work for more than a few minutes before the boy sinks back into apathy.

  Mogens sits down on the sofa next to Arbën. Normally he has a knack for talking to children.

  “Are you hungry?” he asks. “Is there something you really fancy? I’ll cook it for you.”

  The boy actually turns his face toward him.

  “Pizza?”

  Pizza? That’s not something he can make right at the moment. “Know what? We’ll just order in.”

  Twenty minutes later the food arrives. Mogens puts the box on the small kitchen table, takes a bottle of cola from the fridge, and pours Arbën a glass.

  “There you go.”

  But Arbën has never eaten pizza before. He’s struggling, unable to hold the long, triangular slices properly. Mogens has to show him how to squeeze the pizza slices together in the middle to stop the melted cheese from dripping.

  “Do you know what I really like about Margretheholm?” Mogens says between two mouthfuls. “You. Every day when I wake up, I look forward to seeing you.” He presses a finger against Arbën’s nose.

  The boy looks down.

  “I like Moo-genz too.”

  Now, at least, he is getting through to the boy. Mogens is careful, slipping in the next question casually between two mouthfuls.

  “Are there some things you don’t like?”

  The pizza slice stops halfway between the box and the boy’s mouth. The apartment is quiet aside from the faint hiss of carbonated bubbles popping on the surface of Arbën’s cola. But Mogens controls himself and waits. He forces himself to chew, pretending that everything is all right.

  “I don’t like it when Ungji Meriton forces Afërdita to work.”

  Mogens separates a slice for Arbën and helps himself to another. Then, just as he is about to take the first bite, he asks: “What kind of work does Uncle Meriton want her to do?”

  Arbën picks up the slice Mogens is offering him and puts it in his mouth.

  “Strange men come to see her.”

  Mogens’s throat burns with the taste of undigested pizza and stomach acid on its way up. Only yesterday he was standing outside her door himself.

  “Is that why Afërdita has left? Because she doesn’t . . . want the strange men to come and see her?”

  Arbën puts down the pizza slice and chews repeatedly. Finally he swallows. It is a big mouthful. Mogens thinks he can almost see the food travel down the boy’s throat. His gaze is tuned to infinity. Whatever it was that was opened up a moment ago has been shut down again.

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

  42

  IT WAS LATE morning when Lars arrived at police headquarters. Sanne was sitting in his office with Lisa. She looked up when he came in.

  “Morning!”

  So she had been serious when she suggested starting over. He tossed his coat over his chair.

  “Good morning. Any news?”

  Sanne reached out, poured him coffee from a thermos flask, and put the cup in front of him.

  “Lisa and I have spoken to the police in Hamburg and gotten them to dig around their records. Serafine applied for asylum under the name Serafine Haxhi in 1999, but less than one month later she disappeared, along with her sister, Afërdita, and two people who are known to us — Ukë and Meriton Bukoshi.”

  Lars whistled.

  “So Ukë and Meriton are related to her?”

  “Her uncles.” Lisa rocked back on her chair.

  “Good work. Now all we need to do is find the link between her and the mayor. And work out why Ukë and Meriton want her dead.”

  “There’s more.” Lisa now looked uncomfortable. “I made a few calls . . . That Christmas party Malene Rørdam mentioned? The one where she overheard Mogens argue with Kirsten on the phone? Every Radical member of the city council practically denied they even held a Christmas party that year.”

  “It could have been a standard case of infidelity,” Sanne said. “Or maybe Mogens Winther-Sørensen had a bit too much to drink. Who says it has anything to do with his murder?”

  “No one.” Lars took a sip. The coffee was lukewarm. How long had they been sitting there waiting for him?

  “So what do we do?”

  “Right now we carry on looking for Serafine. What does Ulrik say?”

  A young man in a crumpled T-shirt popped his head around the door.

  “Are you Lars?” It was one of the guys from IT. Lars waved him in. “Toke says you want to know who’s behind this IP address?” He held up a yellow Post-it note.

  “That’s right.” Lars asked him to take a seat.

  “You gave us something of a challenge.” His face was practically beaming. “Most people just hide behind an anonymous proxy server, which hides the user’s IP address,” he explained. “But your guy used several HAPs.”

  “What’s a HAP?” Lars tried to rein in his impatience. Sanne said nothing.

  “A High Anonymity Proxy. It doesn’t identify itself as a proxy server, so it can be fairly complicated for the rest of us to work with. This guy took us to one in Dubai, then Manila, and finally to one in Vladivostok. We’ve been on something of a road trip.” He placed the Post-it note on the desk in front of Lars.

  It was an address written in blue ballpoint pen: Astersvej 16, 3rd floor, 4000 Roskilde.

  Astersvej 16 in Roskilde turned out to be a modern block of apartments with small, square windows, and a pale yellow facade decorated with a hopeless grey and green mosaic. Lars parked behind the building, walked up the tiled steps
to the third floor, and rang the doorbell.

  “Yes?” The door opened exactly two centimetres. A broad, pale face with a receding hairline peered out through the narrow crack.

  “Are you Niels Püchert? I’m Lars Winkler, Copenhagen Police. May I come in?”

  “What’s this about?” He could smell detergent coming from inside the apartment.

  “I think it’s best if I come inside.” Lars nudged the door slightly. The other man hesitated for a moment before he took a step back.

  “Right, if you . . .”

  Niels Püchert showed him into the kitchen, where strict order and white surfaces reigned supreme. There was a single drying rack with one plate, one glass, and one set of cutlery. A blue floral tablecloth on the table below a window with a view of the parking lot was the room’s only spot of colour. A local newspaper was opened to a page with job postings.

  “I’ve just made tea. Would you like a cup?” Niels Püchert folded the newspaper and threw it in the garbage.

  Lars shook his head.

  “May I please sit down?”

  Niels Püchert didn’t reply, pouring tea from a thermos flask. He held the cup with his slender hands and drank. Lars pulled out the only chair at the table and sat down.

  “Why do you keep changing Mogens Winther-Sørensen’s Wikipedia entry?”

  Niels Püchert looked at the floor and then put the cup on the table.

  Lars tried again.

  “Does anyone else have access to your computer?”

  Niels Püchert looked around the kitchen.

  “Does it look like it?”

  “So if you didn’t . . . ?” Lars let the question linger in the stagnant air. A faint squeaking sound emerged from the lid of the thermos flask.

  “I wondered how long it would be before you came.”

  Lars nodded.

  “I’m no expert, but our technicians say you did a good job of hiding.”

  A wry smile flitted across Niels Püchert’s face. He tightened the lid of the thermos flask.

  “I used to be an IT consultant with TDC, and I was posted abroad for several years in Dubai and the Philippines. I only returned to Denmark recently.”

  “You wrote repeatedly that Mogens Winther-Sørensen took leave from the council in . . .” Lars pulled out his notebook and flicked through it. “October 1999? And said that he was represented by a stand-in?”

  Niels Püchert nodded.

  “That’s correct.”

  “I’ve been through practically all the information there is, and I haven’t come across a single thing about Mogens Winther-Sørensen being on leave.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Niels Püchert said nothing and refilled his cup.

  Lars sighed.

  “Okay. How do you know that he went on leave?”

  “Because I was his stand-in.”

  Lars raised his eyebrows.

  “I used to be a member of the Radical Party,” Niels Püchert continued. “Ever since I was a teen, it had been my dream to do something for the common good, to help change society. So when I was asked to be Mogens’s deputy . . . Well, I’m sure you can imagine what that must have felt like.”

  Lars asked him to continue.

  “Mogens was supposed to be on leave for six months, from October to March. As far as I could gather from Mogens, he was hoping this would be a permanent arrangement. He wanted to study education.” Niels Püchert lifted his teacup with both hands. “Tell me, do you know who keeps deleting my editorial changes? Every time I update the entry, it takes two hours max before it’s changed back.”

  “Whoever he is, he’s more careful than you.” Lars made a note. “You said that Mogens’s leave might have become a permanent arrangement once the six months were up. What did you mean?”

  “What do you think? He didn’t want to return to politics. I spoke to him on several occasions before he went on leave. He hated it!”

  “So what happened?”

  Niels Püchert shrugged his shoulders. The way he did it, his attitude, everything suggested this was something he’d had plenty of practice in.

  “Mogens must have discovered he missed politics after all — or he got an offer he couldn’t refuse. In any case, he returned as mayor. I wasn’t informed, of course. I had to read about it in Berlingske Tidende the next day. It was less than a month after I’d started deputizing for him. When I took the liberty of pointing out that my contract was for six months . . . Well, I was fired and thrown out of the party. That was how they treated me. And then there was the financial aspect. I lost five months’ salary.”

  Lars made another note.

  “Do you know what Mogens Winther-Sørensen did during the four weeks he managed to take leave?”

  “Oh, yes. He volunteered for the Danish Red Cross.”

  43

  THE SMALL CLICK that sounded when Niels Püchert closed the door behind him echoed down the stairwell. Lars pressed his cell phone to his ear.

  “Lisa?” He stepped aside for a young woman lugging four heavy grocery bags. “Could you please check something for me? Niels Püchert claims that Mogens Winther-Sørensen worked for the Danish Red Cross in October 1999. I know today is Sunday, but would you be able find someone from the Red Cross who can confirm it?”

  Outside, Lars pulled out his keys and was about to unlock the car when a black Mercedes with tinted windows crept up alongside him.

  “Lars. Jump in.”

  Lars bent down and peered into the car. Kim A was in the passenger seat. A man in a suit with short hair and an earpiece was driving.

  “What’s this? A spy movie?”

  “We just need a quick chat.” Kim A gave him an irritated look.

  Lars looked across the car park. There was not a soul in sight. The wind tore through the open space.

  “Five minutes, Kim.” Lars opened the back door.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Kim A grinned at him in the rear-view mirror. “Drive.” The driver revved the engine and drove out between the apartment blocks, turning right to join Astersvej.

  “You PET guys have some nice wheels.” Lars put on his seatbelt. “But what am I really doing here?”

  “It’s the ministerial car, if you must know.” Kim A turned in his seat. “So I would appreciate it if you could refrain from smoking.”

  Lars let go of the cigarette packet, took his hand out from his inside pocket, and let his head rest against the seat.

  “The two of us have had our differences.” Kim A attempted to smile, except it ended up looking like a bizarre grimace. “But you know I’ve always had great professional respect for you and your work.”

  If that were true, Kim A had a funny way of showing it.

  The car drove through Roskilde. Outside the window, low apartment blocks similar to the one he had just left replaced residential areas.

  Kim A continued talking: “To cut to the chase.” He licked his lips. “The general election is in nine days. The last time we spoke I tried to appeal to your better nature, but it seems you didn’t listen.”

  The car returned to Astersvej. It appeared Kim A meant to keep his promise.

  “I’m telling you this because I’m your friend. If you keep sticking your nose into things that have nothing to do with you — and which you’ve already been told are of no relevance to your murder investigation — then be prepared to face the consequences. There are people out there with information that could harm you. Information they won’t hesitate to make public, if you persist. Do you understand?”

  The driver stopped the car. The tremble from the idling engine made Kim A’s cheeks quiver.

  Lars opened the door without replying and got out. His own car was a few hundred metres away. Kim A opened the window.

  “T
hink about it, Lars. It’s for your own good.” Then he gestured to the driver and the Mercedes accelerated away. Lars watched until it had disappeared around the corner.

  Once he was back at police headquarters, he only just had time to take off his jacket before Lisa dragged him through the maze-like corridors to an empty office in a remote part of the building.

  “I managed to get hold of someone at the Red Cross. She went through all of their records and even searched their payroll system. They never employed anyone named Mogens Winther-Sørensen. On an unrelated note, I think I have something else that might be of interest to you: our colleagues arrested a doctor this morning for selling banned steroids and hormones used by bodybuilders and the like.”

  “What does that have to do with us?” Lars tried to keep up.

  “He risks losing his licence, so he’s very keen to do a deal. I’ll give you three guesses as to what he’s selling? Oh, we’re here.” Lisa knocked on a door and opened it without waiting for a reply.

  Sanne and two officers, whose names Lars couldn’t remember, were sitting in the narrow room along with an older man in a blazer and a stained shirt. The man was sweating.

  Lisa shut the door behind them.

  “Tell my colleague here what you just told us.”

  The man moistened his lips; his gaze flitted around the room.

  “But that’s —” He stopped talking.

  “You were the one who wanted to make a deal.” Sanne sent Lars a weary look.

  “Right, late afternoon yesterday . . .” The man hesitated. “We agree that I won’t be prosecuted for anything I’m about to say, correct?”

  “Just get on with it.”

  “It’s true that I sell these drugs — only for personal consumption, mind you. But yesterday I met someone whose needs were a little more sophisticated.”

  44

  “WELCOME, MY FRIEND.” Meriton stood up from the radio in the corner and took off the headset. Calls from patrol cars and police codes crackled out into the room. He signalled to Elvir to take over.

  The lawyer had entered behind Valmir. He and Meriton shook hands.