“Malene Meisner.” Sanne kept her voice controlled. “Ring any bells? Or Malene Rørdam? That would have been the name you knew her by. For a very brief period she was Mogens’s head of communications, just after he was elected mayor.”
“I kept as far away from politics as possible.” Kirsten Winther-Sørensen turned her gaze inward. “Now, please may I —”
But Sanne pressed her. “Malene Meisner was fired after a Christmas party in 1999. Allegedly after a smear campaign orchestrated by Merethe Winther-Sørensen. Still not recalling that fight?”
“What’s wrong with you people? My daughter just lost her father. She’s falling apart, and you . . .” Kirsten Winther-Sørensen looked away. “You don’t give a crap. You’re just like Merethe. All she cares about is getting Sarah into the party’s line of succession. Surely you can see . . .” she said, trailing off.
Kirsten Winther-Sørensen left police headquarters with her daughter, without answering any more questions. In light of the situation, Sanne didn’t feel she could detain them any longer. Now she and Lisa were sitting in Sanne’s office. Peter Egethorn sat on a chair on the other side of the desk with his face in his hands.
“I’ve tried to convince Kirsten to be frank with you.” He exhaled slowly. “But she refuses.”
Lisa was ready with pen and paper. Sanne stared at Peter’s fingers.
“Then perhaps it’s time you start telling us what you know.”
The lawyer took a deep breath and took his hands off his face.
“You can never be sure about the Winther-Sørensen family. But I knew Mogens. There was never anything inappropriate between him and Sarah.”
Sanne nodded.
“What’s your relationship with Kirsten Winther-Sørensen?”
Peter Egethorn took a sip from the glass of water Lisa had put in front of him. Today’s edition of Ekstra Bladet had been tossed in the wastebasket. He glanced at it.
“It was all over the front page . . .”
“Perhaps that makes it even more important to tell the truth?”
Peter Egethorn nodded. Slowly.
“Kirsten was thinking of leaving Mogens. That’s why she went for a drive last Monday when he was . . . We had spoken on the phone a couple of times during that afternoon and evening. My advice to her was to wait until after the election. They had been together for years, and it would be damaging to the party if . . .” He paused. “If she left Mogens in the middle of the election . . . Merethe would destroy us.”
“How long have the two of you been seeing each other?”
“Kirsten and I . . . We’ve been together since high school. When she started her company, I took care of the legal side, patents, that sort of thing. Her father was a Conservative member of Gentofte Council, so politics is in her blood. Only she picked the wrong party.” Peter Egethorn’s mouth took on a bitter expression. “Merethe Winther-Sørensen spotted her in the Copenhagen branch of the Radical Party in the mid-1990s and decided that she would be perfect for her son. And what Merethe Winther-Sørensen wants, she gets. I never heard it from Kirsten herself — the minister’s private secretary took me aside and explained the situation to me.”
“And you just accepted it?” Lisa made a note.
“You don’t understand — it wasn’t like I had a choice. And at the time, I believed it was what Kirsten wanted. But a few months later, she started calling me again.”
“And you’ve been together ever since?”
“More or less.”
“So Mogens and Kirsten . . . ?” Sanne tried to catch his eye, but Peter Egethorn avoided her.
“Well, they have Sarah. But apart from that . . .” He shrugged his shoulders.
“There is a period of time we’ve been unable to shed any light on. It’s the autumn of 1999. Can you help us?”
“Yes — 1999 . . . At some point during that autumn, probably late September or early October, Kirsten told me she wanted to end our relationship. She was going to give Mogens another chance. He had changed.” Peter Egethorn fell silent and stared into space. “There’s still a lot I don’t know. Please understand, we had a tacit agreement: we never discussed her life with Mogens. Ever. So I didn’t see her for about a month, and I guess I thought it really was over. But then suddenly — it must have been early November — she called me out of the blue. She was in a state and said things between her and Mogens were worse than ever. It was just after he had been elected mayor.”
54
THE SUN IS high over the main building. The air quivers inside the narrow room between the urine-coloured walls. She lies in the bed with the blanket pulled right up to her nose, sweating in the cool room.
She has been given a single room at Ellebæk, the secure unit next to Sandholm — in a ward for single men. Because now they know, the staff — know what she is.
The residents know it too. They watch her. They prowl up and down the corridor, on the other side of the window, casting long glances at her.
She rolls over and curls up. Hunger gnaws at her stomach. She turned down the food the female police officer tried to give her. She has not eaten since the night the street-doc introduced her to the surgeon. That was Saturday. She’s gone almost two days without food. She weighs so little that the slightest gust of wind threatens to carry her away.
The jar of pills she got yesterday is empty. She took the last ones early this morning. Zits have started erupting; her face is covered with infected craters. And hairs — she has hairs everywhere. The beast rears its head inside her and roars.
Outside, the men wander back and forth outside her window.
She hallucinates from hunger. From time to time she drifts off, her body releasing its hold on her. The room dissolves and she is elsewhere — in the bright room, a space with no walls or ceilings. She doesn’t feel hungry. She has no acne. Only white butterflies everywhere. She sees her sister’s figure between the butterfly wings. Afërdita glances over her shoulder, then turns her back on her.
And then the hunger returns, eating her up. She is back in the narrow bedroom. She clings to the dream, and tries to contain it in the bed under the blanket, every muscle locked in spasm. She tries to hold on to it, but it slips away and dissolves. What remains is a void demanding to be filled. She is dripping with sweat. She checks her cell phone. Yes, it is time. Dinner is being served in the cafeteria. She untangles herself from the blanket, staggers out into the bathroom, and splashes some water on her face. Her makeup is smeared; her face streaked. But that can’t be helped right now. She needs something in her stomach before she disappears completely.
They grab her as she turns the corner, right before the open square of the cafeteria. Hands yank her into the darkness between two barracks. Their excited voices in the alleyway. She knows what comes next even before they tear off her clothes: hands on her, dicks inside her. It is the alien body they take — yet her they take it from.
She has no idea how much time has passed. It is not until the voices ebb away that she becomes aware of the damp ground underneath her, the grass tickling her left ear. Her mouth is sticky; something oozes out of her backside. The pain is everywhere.
Small clouds drift across the blue sky, high up between the roofs. The sun is shining. She lies gasping for a long time, trying to touch it, but every time she reaches out, it retreats — the sun is rejecting her, too. She closes her eyes, waiting only to disappear.
It is not until the hunger becomes unbearable that she forces herself to get up and lean against the wall for support. She tries wiping herself down with handfuls of grass and washes her mouth and chin with saliva.
The sun bounces off something in the grass near the building at the end of the alleyway. Some kids have thrown stones at it. Perhaps one of the residents got drunk and smashed it against the corner of the house — the shards of a broken glass bottle. But it’s her way out, to the b
right room and to Afërdita.
OCTOBER 1999
THE KEY IS in the ignition, but he has yet to start the engine. The wheelhouse on the roof of the old naval base is almost hidden in the fog. A resident passes; their eyes meet. Then the man disappears, swallowed up by the grey mist. Mogens leans over the steering wheel and closes his eyes. His grip around the steering wheel is so hard that it hurts. The wheel is his only point of reference — without it he will be dragged down into the maelstrom that has opened up beneath him. How long will it be before Søren calls the police? Perhaps he is talking to them at this very moment. Everything is floating, falling apart, except for Kirsten and Sarah. Kirsten has to listen to him — she must.
Mogens starts the car and pulls out onto Forlandet. His thoughts turn to Kirsten, but all the way through Holmen and the city of Copenhagen, he can’t shake the image of Arbën’s terrified face.
“Where have you been?” Kirsten shoots up from the chair when he enters her office. Her dark hair is a mess and the bags under her eyes speak volumes, but anger simmers under the thin varnish of concern.
A garment rack with spring’s must-haves stands in a corner. A petrol blue, A-line blouse lies across the desk on top of fashion magazines and catalogues. The rich silk shimmers in the glow from concealed spotlights. There is a single gladiolus in a glass vase next to the telephone.
Mogens flops into the armchair in front of the desk and buries his face in his hands.
“Hornbæk — the cottage. Kirsten . . .” Everything is spinning and it is impossible to think straight. “It’s all so horrible.”
Kirsten folds her arms across her chest and stares at him for long, terrible seconds. He can imagine only too vividly what she must be thinking. Then she turns around, rummages in a cupboard behind her, and takes out a bottle. She pours a few fingers’ worth of the amber liquid into a glass and pushes it across the desk.
“Here. Drink.”
Mogens drinks, clutching the glass with both hands. Southern Comfort, the excessively sweet liqueur, burns all the way down to his stomach. He sets down the glass, letting Kirsten refill it.
“I kept calling . . .” She puts down the bottle and takes a seat. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”
“I needed time to think. It’s all so messed up.” He looks down at his wet clothes. And then the words pour out. He tells her about the scene at Søren’s office, the accusation, and the uncles’ triumphant smiles.
Kirsten lets him talk without interrupting. Once he’s finished, she perches on the edge of the desk and takes his hand.
“Do you think Søren will call the police?”
“It sounded as if they would carry out an internal investigation first . . . before . . .” Mogens rubs his temples with his forefingers.
“You should never have brought that boy to the apartment.”
“I would have never got him to talk otherwise.” He leans his head back and stares up at the ceiling. “But you’re right, of course.”
Kirsten tries again. “You say that his sister is missing?”
“The other day I went to their room to fetch Arbën. He wasn’t there. Do you remember the man I told you about? The one I saw leaving their room? You thought they were dealing drugs. But they weren’t.” Mogens buried his face in his hands. “I asked Afërdita who he was. And then she started to kiss me.”
“Kiss you? But she’s just a child.”
“She was totally dolled up. She looked . . .” His fingers scrunch up the pattern on the A-line blouse. The thin white paper crackles against the fabric.
Kirsten makes a strange sound. Then she pours herself a double.
“So they’re pimping their own niece.” She gulps down almost all the liqueur. “Christ almighty.”
“Kirsten?” A young assistant in a very short skirt opens the door without knocking. “I’ve got the Danish Design Centre on the phone. They would like to confirm that booking.” The assistant, whose name Mogens has forgotten, looks from one of them to the other.
Kirsten ushers her out with a well-placed “later.”
“Well, you haven’t done anything.” Kirsten puts the cap back on the bottle and returns it to the cupboard. Mogens desperately wants to rip it from her hands and chug it back in one long gulp. But he controls himself. He needs a clear head. And then he can’t keep it in any longer; the words just spill out of his mouth.
“When I was about to leave the other day, I suddenly found myself standing outside her door. I tried to leave, but . . .” The words almost choke him, but he cannot suppress them any longer. “I’m not like that, but my body. It . . . Kirsten, you know me . . . I didn’t do anything!”
There is silence, broken only by the static crackling of Kirsten’s shoes as she glides across the carpet, away from him.
“What are you saying? That you wanted to . . . ?”
Then she explodes. She snatches his glass and smashes it at his feet. “You sick —” The other glass is ready in her hand, but he ducks in time. It hits the wall behind him and shatters. The rest of the Southern Comfort and the shards of glass slide down the white wall. The smell of sugar and alcohol stings his nose and throat.
“Kirsten . . .” He hides behind the armchair. “But I didn’t go into her room.”
“You bastard. You’ll never see Sarah again!”
She spits at him, then turns on her heel and marches out of the office. Out in the corridor he catches a glimpse of her staff’s terrified faces, before she slams the door shut. The vase holding the long gladiolus is knocked over, a dark stain spreads across the silk blouse.
Then his phone rings.
“It’s your mother. We have quite a lot to talk about. Why don’t you come by. After midnight, okay?”
55
“YOU JUST NEED to sign here, then you can take him with you.” The Red Cross worker pointed to a dotted line on the document. Sanne scribbled something illegible and pushed the form back across the counter.
After interviewing Peter Egethorn, she had told Ulrik about Allan leaking information to Ekstra Bladet. Ulrik had been livid and summoned Allan immediately. After a tongue-lashing that could be heard throughout the whole department, he had been escorted out of the building; his cell phone and computer sent to IT. Ulrik wanted to make absolutely sure that Allan hadn’t leaked anything else. Shortly afterward, they got a call from Ellebæk. Serafine had tried to kill herself.
Now Serafine was slumped against the counter next to her. She had yet to say a word. Her left hand was resting on the countertop, hidden under a thick bandage. She looked exhausted and wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her skin was grey and pale, almost transparent. Her dress was practically reduced to threads below the waist.
“Do you know how it happened?”
The Red Cross worker, a well-upholstered guy in a charcoal-grey T-shirt and black jeans, took the form with Sanne’s signature and filed it in a ring binder, which he then put back on the shelf.
“Sorry, no. One of the cafeteria workers found him outside the door to his room. He had lost quite a lot of blood. If you’re referring to the dress . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess he fell or something.”
They had reached the Hillerød highway. Serafine leaned her head against the window and gazed out at the rush-hour traffic. Sanne chewed her lip.
Serafine had blinked once when Sanne repeated the conversation with the Red Cross worker, but said nothing. Sanne continued: “And do you know what he said? That you must have fallen. If you want me to help you, you have to tell me what really happened.”
Serafine turned her head. Was she smiling? If so it was a strange, lost smile.
“No one can help me. It was already too late, many, many years ago.” It was the longest sentence Sanne had heard escape from Serafine’s lips. Was she finally lowering her guard?
“There’s always someone wh
o can help,” she tried to explain. “No one should be alone.”
“Do you take me for an idiot?” Serafine’s voice was so sharp in the little car that Sanne’s hands yanked at the steering wheel out of sheer fright. The car skidded. She straightened out, forcing herself to concentrate on her driving. Serafine continue shouting with her eyes closed. A spray of saliva coated the inside of the windshield. “People like me, we’re killed and raped. And those of us who survive commit suicide — half of us before we turn twenty.” She sat back in the seat and smoothed out the remains of her dress. Her voice settled into a calmer tone. “And I’ve tried all three.”
Sanne forced herself to breathe deeply and slowly. She was getting somewhere. She tried reviewing all the bits of information they had gathered in the last few days over in her head. She rubbed her face with one of her hands.
“You’ve been to Denmark before — with your uncles, Meriton and Ukë, and your sister. Am I right?”
Serafine didn’t react. She appeared to have said all she wanted to on the matter; now she just stared at the Ring 3 beltway.
“Oh, come on. If you won’t help yourself, then at least help me. Mogens Winther-Sørensen practically died in your arms. What happened?”
Serafine gave her a quick look, a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. She was on the verge of loosening up and letting go. Then her gaze died, and she looked away.
Sanne had to try to tempt her and reel her in. They drove past Utterslev Mose park and overtook a silver Škoda.
“We know that you and Mogens met at Margretheholm.”
Serafine closed her eyes.
Sanne was getting desperate. She sifted through the information yet another time.
“Okay, you said you had tried all three. You’ve just tried to kill yourself. There has to be a reason why you slit your wrist.” She paused when she realized what she had just said. “They raped you.”
The Scream of the Butterfly Page 22