by Lotte Hammer
Both the Finnish and the Swedish police gave the assault high priority, partly because the attack was unusually brutal, and partly because something similar had happened before. About three years earlier, a seventeen-year-old Finnish girl had been raped on the same ferry under similar circumstances, a crime that had yet to be solved. But the odds of solving the rape of Randi Hansson were small: almost seven hundred people had been on the ferry during the crossing, but most of them were unregistered as no passport checks were required. Furthermore Randi Hansson had been blinded, as once he had gagged her, her attacker had sprinkled pepper in her eyes; six months later the investigation petered out and was shelved.
Swedish and Finnish media covered the attack extensively, but the Countess knew of it purely by chance: in the autumn of 2007 she was contacted by a Swedish colleague and friend, who asked to borrow her summerhouse for a couple of weeks to get away from it all. Her friend had been granted two months’ much-needed leave. The Countess’s summerhouse was near Blokhus on the North Sea coastline, and en route from Stockholm to Nordjylland, the friend stayed with her in Søllerød where she told her about Randi Hansson’s terrible fate on the Tallink Silja Line ferry. The Countess had never been able to forget it.
As soon as the Countess arrived for work the morning after visiting Victoria Blixen-Agerskjold, she contacted her friend and explained the situation. Then she sent her Frode Otto’s fingerprints, waited thirty tense minutes and bounced a couple of centimetres in her chair when the call from Sweden came in. It was a match. She was elated. Not because the match unequivocally linked the estate bailiff to the sexual assault on the ferry, because it didn’t, but because she now had the additional information on him needed for the Public Prosecutor to grant a warrant to access the man’s telephone records. She hoped. She took great care with her report and sent it to Big Bertha personally. Five minutes later she received a short, OK, I’ll try by way of reply. Her mood was therefore superlative when she discussed the case with Arne Pedersen later that afternoon.
‘I’m one hundred per cent sure that Frode Otto can’t stand up to scrutiny. Something or other will crawl out of the woodwork, just you wait and see.’
Arne Pedersen agreed, but only partly. He said tentatively: ‘Maybe he did kill the African girl, but I don’t think he dumped her in the lake. Or rather, helped dump her in the lake, because that would have taken more than one person. He would have had many better options for disposing of the body, the most simple of which would be to bury her deep in Hanehoved Forest.’
‘Or cut her up into little pieces and feed her to the pigs. It’s incredibly effective, they’ll eat everything.’
This from Malte Borup; he was sitting with his back to them struggling with a printer problem on Arne Pedersen’s computer. The Countess said dryly:
‘You watch too many movies and you’d make a hopeless killer, Malte. Stick to computing. Besides, they don’t keep pigs on the estate.’
The intern changed the subject:
‘I hate printers. Why can’t you write it out by hand, Arne?’
Arne Pedersen ignored him and spent the next two minutes convincing the Countess that the people who had concealed the African girl in the lake had done so because they didn’t have a spade – an argument which the Countess had long since accepted, so she patiently allowed herself to be convinced a second time. Arne Pedersen rounded off:
‘Has Simon decided when we’ll be interviewing Frode Otto?’
‘Yes, Monday afternoon.’
‘Has he made up his mind who will do it?’
‘Yes, you and Simon himself.’
‘And who will be watching him tomorrow? Klavs volunteered, didn’t he?’
The Countess couldn’t remember; he would have to ask Konrad Simonsen. However, there was no need: Malte Borup’s fingers flew across the keyboard.
‘He did, I believe. He has booked a civilian car for the weekend.’
The two older officers exchanged looks. The information society was terrifying; the student intern regularly breached pretty much every single security precaution the Department used to protect its databases.
CHAPTER 31
Melby Common is an abandoned army exercise area overlooking the waters of the Kattegat between Asserbo and Hundested, a conservation area and part of the Kongernes Nordsjælland National Park.
A young woman died there on 10 July 2008. Her name was Juli Denissen and she was a twenty-four-year-old technical college student from Frederiksværk. Her death was caused by a massive haemorrhage to her brain membrane and so it was a natural, albeit rare, occurrence. It had happened during tragic circumstances as the woman wasn’t found until the sobbing of her three-year-old daughter alerted a forester in a plantation further inside the national park. Shortly after the woman’s death, her family and friends had developed a conspiracy theory that her death was the result of criminal activity. They had formed a pressure group that tried to convince the police of their outrageous theories, but the only person the group had managed to persuade before it was dissolved was Pauline Berg. The death of Juli Denissen had become an obsession with her, one that should probably be viewed in the light of her own mental-health issues. There was also the fact that the woman had been an important police witness when Pauline Berg was kidnapped. Amongst her colleagues the death, which didn’t merit a criminal investigation, was known as the ‘Juli-non-case’, usually said with a knowing grin or a roll of the eyes.
On Saturday, 2 May, a sunny but cool morning, Pauline Berg and Klavs Arnold were waiting in the car park adjacent to Melby Common. They were alone, with no other cars or people in sight. Pauline Berg had a ten o’clock appointment with the forester who had found the woman and the child, but it was becoming increasingly clear that the man wasn’t going to show. Klavs Arnold took the situation in his stride. Firstly, because he found it difficult to see why she would even bother with the forester. Secondly, because he hadn’t come along for investigative reasons as, despite the forester, there was nothing to investigate. The day before he had borrowed a Skoda Octavia from Police Headquarters, and this morning at eight o’clock, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and bringing along a bag of fresh bread rolls, he had picked up Pauline Berg from her home in Rødovre.
She frowned out at the landscape and asked in a surly voice: ‘Why are you even here?’
‘Because it’s my turn. For one thing.’
He explained this to her, although she would appear to have understood him immediately. From time to time she became a burden, whom everyone in the department avoided if possible. However, a tacit agreement had been reached among her closest colleagues that they would take turns to look after her, outside work. And today it was his turn.
She didn’t say anything, simply processed the information and abandoned the subject.
‘Let’s take a look at the place where she was killed.’
She pointed to a path winding its way through the dunes. They walked, she in front to show the way, she claimed, a superfluous action as there was only one path. When they had walked for some time, she asked without turning around:
‘What was the other reason? You said, for one thing, so there has to be more.’
Klavs Arnold looked about calmly and saw heather, lyme grass and wild roses. Then he said slowly: ‘Because I once knew someone like you, but that’s private.’
She started to cry. Noiselessly, the tears trickled from her eyes as she looked at him. She was like that, hot and cold from one second to the next, and often without any sensible rationale for her actions, which just happened.
He embraced her, stood for a while pressing her head into his shoulder while he carefully stroked it. Then he turned her gently and led her onwards down the path with his arm around her waist. After a while, she said quietly:
‘I thought it was because you liked me.’
He didn’t reply, not even when she sniffled: ‘I really did.’
They sat down on a dune sheltered by a slightly bigger one beh
ind, and she stopped crying. The sun warmed them, and they both enjoyed it. He told her softly that he had had a friend once, a really good friend, someone who was always there when you needed them, someone who would always be there for you your whole life. She nodded. She had never had someone like that, sadly. She had thought that she had, but after she became . . . ill, it turned out that she didn’t.
‘Did you let him down?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I did. So did the whole country, including me.’
She took his hand, held it, almost squeezing it in her lap. Then she pointed to the hollow between the dunes down below in front of them.
‘She died down there.’
He squeezed her hand by way of reply, which could mean anything. He didn’t know what to say.
‘I’ve been here sixteen times already, this is my seventeenth visit. One visit was with Simon, by the way. I often dream about Juli. It’s as if she won’t let me go, and no matter what everyone else says, I’m convinced that she was killed.’
‘Yes, I know, we all do. And you also know that we laugh at you behind your back, and that everyone but you is convinced she died of natural causes, including crime technicians and pathologists.’
‘Perhaps she’s my friend and I am hers.’
He dismissed this.
‘No, Pauline, you can’t be friends with the dead.’
At her request they undertook an experiment. She walked to a clearing in the forest, which was about five hundred metres inland, exactly how far was difficult for him to estimate by looking. Once she reached the clearing, she held up her hands as a sign, whereupon he sat down in the hollow where Juli Denissen had died, and screamed at the top of his lungs. He got up, received another sign and repeated the process. They tried four times, before she was satisfied. When she came back, she was shaking her head: yes, she had been able to hear something, but it had been very faint.
‘I’ve also tried tying my Dictaphone to a branch and doing the screaming myself, but when I played back the recording, I couldn’t hear anything at all.’
‘Which means what?’
‘That the forester is lying when he says he was working in the forest when he suddenly heard a baby crying, and that was how he discovered her – or them, if you like. A kid can’t possibly scream that loud, I just don’t believe it.’
Klavs Arnold estimated the distance, now vaguely intrigued. He said reluctantly:
‘A child crying, not a baby, a three-year-old child isn’t a baby. I don’t know . . . evolution has ensured that children hit certain sensitive frequencies, something you’ll discover when you have children of your own, but . . . sound is complicated, determined by many factors. Do you know how far it is?’
‘About six hundred metres, according to Google Earth.’
He evaluated the distance again, critically. Then he shook his head.
‘No, it’s too far, you’re probably right, but it still doesn’t make any sense. Why don’t we call it a day now, Pauline? Let’s go back to my place and have some lunch, then you can help me watch Frode Otto later. That makes more sense. What do you say? Are you free?’
She agreed, somewhat taken aback. It was rare for anyone to talk to her like that these days.
CHAPTER 32
The surveillance of Frode Otto was a total disaster.
Klavs Arnold and Pauline Berg had already learned from Adam Blixen-Agerskjold that when he set off on his Saturday trip every two months, the estate bailiff tended to leave between five and six in the afternoon, and they were in place in plenty of time. At four-thirty they were parked on a side road to the main entrance to Kolleløse Manor, well hidden behind a closed down petrol station. From here, they saw the estate bailiff’s car, an easily recognisable green Golf, drive past around six o’clock. Klavs Arnold settled a hundred metres behind him and had remarked to Pauline Berg that Frode Otto was probably going to Copenhagen, when the car turned left and headed east around Hanehoved Forest. They passed the missing milestone and everything was going according to plan when their engine cut out. They rolled along in in neutral for a little while before coming to a halt.
‘What just happened?’
Pauline Berg asked:
‘Did you put petrol in it?’
Of course he had, he wasn’t a total amateur. He got out and opened the bonnet, and eventually identified the problem: the cam belt had snapped. He called Falck for breakdown assistance, and muttered grim curses at the waiting time: within two hours, was that really the best they could do? Then he called Konrad Simonsen and explained the situation. His boss took the news well, not that he had much choice, and asked Klavs to give his best to Pauline, which he did.
They sat in the car for a while chatting, before Pauline Berg pointed in the direction of the lake.
‘How long does it take to walk the lake where she was found?’
Her voice was shaking, and he immediately guessed why.
‘About three-quarters of an hour, do you want to give it a go? We can always turn back, if you get scared.’
‘Do we have enough time before it gets dark?’
‘Absolutely, we have ages.’
‘There must be daylight all the time, or I’m not doing it.’
‘All right, let’s just walk down to the hunting lodge and back again, then you can be sure it will be light all the time. I’ll keep an eye on you, and it’ll give you a chance to see the lodge you’ve spent so much time researching.’
She hesitated. Absurd scenarios sprouted in her mind. What if Klavs Arnold abandoned her in the forest? Or if they were attacked inside it? She decided to stay put, but by then he had already got out of the car.
The track down alongside the forest was good for her; it was a forest, and at the same time, it wasn’t. She could feel fear, but also that she could control it. They walked close together, that helped too, but when the road continued inside the forest itself, she stopped. It was enough for now, and yet it wasn’t. Possibly because he wasn’t pressuring her; she tried a few more steps, stopped again, proud of herself, walked a short stretch, and then a long one. They soon reached the clearing containing the hunting lodge. She was sweating, her heart was pounding like crazy, but she had done it, and the open area – roughly the size of a football pitch – gradually calmed her down.
She walked up to and around the lodge.
‘It was built, or rather assembled, in December 2007. That’s at least one month before the earliest date the African woman can have been dumped in the lake, so it was here when she was killed. But the technicians found no trace of her, not one.’
Klavs Arnold nodded, though he was already familiar with the information. Pauline Berg looked through a window while he squatted down on his haunches and examined one of the six staddle stones that supported the lodge. She said:
‘Frode Otto put them in place; he was sent a template from the construction company of all the things that must be done before they dispatched the lorry. It’s standard.’
‘How much was the shack by the way?’
‘Only twenty thousand kroner, he got it cheap, well below half-price, because the company had used it for a couple of years for display purposes. Otherwise it would have broken the two thousand and seven budget. Frode Otto has free rein when it comes to those activities he’s in charge of, but Adam Blixen-Agerskjold prefers each annual set of accounts to show a profit, even though the lodge is regarded as capital expenditure, which should be written off over time.’ She glanced anxiously up at the sky and said: ‘Shouldn’t we be getting back to the car?’
‘Yes, we should. But first tell me how the lodge was put together, if you know.’
She did, and the story was quickly told. The parts which made it up arrived on a truck along with three men, who assembled them as each section was hoisted off the back of the truck by its crane. The job could be done in a day. He confirmed this as if he wasn’t the one who had originally asked, but she the one who wanted to hear if she had understood the process correc
tly. Then he pointed to the clearing in front of them.
‘And it was put up towards the end of 2007 – do you remember the exact date?’
She couldn’t, but it was between Christmas and the New Year.
‘Yes, that’s also what I recall from your report. But that can’t be right. Come over here, let me show you something.’
He took a few steps into the area. It was overgrown with grass and weeds, clearly kept down from time to time with a scythe or something similar. Klavs Arnold squatted down on his haunches again. Pauline Berg said in an anxious, pleading voice:
‘Please tell me what’s going on. I can feel I’m getting scared. Don’t act weird, because . . . please don’t.’
He got up and put his arm around her, although she tried to get away from him.
‘There, there, I’m not being weird. It’s the tyre tracks, Pauline, you can see them yourself in the grass. See how the truck drove right up to the pine tree over there and then reversed up to where the lodge is now. Twin wheels, it’s clear.’
She looked and could see that he was right. It calmed her down, she didn’t know why, but it did.
‘Come on, let’s walk back to the car.’
It wasn’t until they had left the forest and turned onto the track alongside it, that he explained.
‘In December 2007, between Christmas and the New Year, it was hard frost, down to minus twelve. Overall the month had been grey and rainy, but on Boxing Day the weather changed, and it froze until the thirtieth, don’t you remember?’
‘Not really, and why does that matter?’
‘Those tyre tracks were left in soft soil, there can be no doubt about it. Spring or autumn, would be my guess, but definitely not while the ground was frozen solid, it’s quite simply impossible. The tracks were between five and ten centimetres deep, and the lodge wouldn’t have been that heavy. In terms of loading the truck that would have been regarded as a light load. So the ground must have been soft.’
He let her draw her own conclusion. It didn’t take her long.