The Lake

by Lotte Hammer

  ‘I worked out that at some point you would check Frode Otto’s calls. But that was before I knew what he had done. I assure you, I would never have agreed to cover for a rapist.’

  ‘Only for a murderer?’

  The Chamberlain said miserably:

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Do you know why Frode Otto confessed to the rapes, but refused to talk about the au pairs?’

  ‘No, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Did you know where Jan Podowski lived?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does Frode Otto know?’

  ‘I would think so. They were friends.’

  ‘Who did Jan Podowski work for?’

  ‘Karina Larsen and Svend Lerche, a couple from Klampenborg, I think.’

  They carried on for a while without it producing much more in the way of results. When Konrad Simonsen finally finished, Adam Blixen-Agerskjold asked in a tired voice:

  ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ his lawyer replied. ‘You might be charged, but you’re under no obligation to incriminate yourself, and they have nothing on which they can convict you. At some point the charges will be dropped.’

  Sadly that was the truth.

  CHAPTER 73

  Konrad Simonsen spent an hour he didn’t have decorating his office with pictures of all of Jessica’s customers as recorded in Jan Podowski’s database. He knew by now that they were just a drop in the ocean; it had become clear that the database contained only the names of customers who were rich, famous or both. Jan Podowski had presumably planned to blackmail them to add to his retirement fund, but as they now knew, he never made it that far. Malte Borup produced the printouts, and underneath each face he had written the person’s name and position in big letters: Hans Tage Smidt, CEO; Peter Ertmann, first violinist; Niels Sværte, head teacher – Konrad Simonsen cheered every time he neatly stuck a piece of paper to the wall. There were fifty-four pictures, so it took some time. He had borrowed a ladder from the cleaners and at the very top he had placed the picture of the victim whose real name was still unknown.

  This changed about ten minutes after he had finished the wall, when Arne Pedersen entered. His deputy studied the wall in detail.

  ‘Impressive, Simon. You know a thing or two about rogues’ galleries.’

  ‘So, do you have her real name?’

  Arne Pedersen handed his boss a piece of paper. He had compared the passport photos from the au pair office to the women on the USB stick and now knew their real names and nationalities. Konrad Simonsen read it and said hesitantly:

  ‘Ifunanya Siasia . . . that’s a beautiful name. Please give this list to Malte.’

  ‘Yes, boss. And how about her description? May I suggest, “Nigerian, aged sixteen”?’

  Konrad Simonsen nodded gravely, it was a good suggestion. A damned good suggestion.

  CHAPTER 74

  Henrik Krag could smell lilacs. Lilacs and rum. He knew where the scent of rum was coming from, but he couldn’t see lilacs anywhere.

  He looked around: a big Japanese cherry tree immediately to his left, a hedge teeming with yellow flowers, whose name he didn’t know, but no lilacs. He had stopped without knowing why, maybe it was those sodding lilacs or maybe his body was objecting to his task and wanted to slow him down. His legs started to wobble, not as badly as when he had got up an hour ago, but no less irritating, not to say worrying.

  He took out the bottle of rum, held it up to a street light and could see that he had drunk less than a third of it. So he took a big swig, followed by another somewhat smaller one, and heat spread through him and steadied his knees. It was a balancing act: it was about reaching the point where he could still do what he needed to do, but not be afraid. Or maybe it wasn’t about fear, maybe it was because the rum chased away reality and made everything bearable. It enabled him to focus on one thing at a time, not to look back, not to think ahead, just do what needed doing right now. He walked on, turned right; the next road on his left would take him to his destination. His watch told him it was 1.55 a.m.

  Vallensbæk Village lies between the Holbæk and the Køge Bugt motorways, and Henrik Krag knew the area well. It wasn’t far from where he lived, and he had cycled there tonight, his bicycle being less conspicuous than his motorbike. He had left the bike behind a bus shelter a kilometre away and thought that when he next saw it all this would be over. He had already broken his task into stages; the bike ride was the first, and the walk to the house was the second. The two easiest, true, but at least they were done now, and every little helped.

  It was a square, red-brick house, neither big nor small, that almost bordered the road. It had a semi-basement and a raised ground floor, a mansard roof and a wide black-painted windows; an ordinary house, a Goldilocks house, was how he would describe it. Alongside the house was a paved driveway almost completely taken up by a truck, which Ida had told him about. The truck was facing the road and backed up to the house wall with great precision, ready to leave in the early hours when its owner would drive to the vegetable market.

  There was just enough room for him to squeeze his way between it and the wall of the neighbouring house. He waited for a while between the wall and the cabin of the truck, methodically scanning the windows in the houses across the road. There were no lights on in any of them, nor any signs of activity. He went back onto the road to inspect the house he would be entering, but were there no signs of life in there; everyone was asleep. He sidled up the driveway and past the truck. He stopped twice to listen, but only his own footsteps broke the silence; they seemed far too loud to him. He knew it was a trick of the mind, he was wearing trainers with rubber soles, but even so he started to tread carefully, slowly.

  Behind the house there was a small yard between a workshop of some kind and a back entrance to the house. Brick steps led up to the kitchen door, while others led down to the semi-basement. A blue Suzuki was parked in the yard. He checked the windows of the house for signs of life again and, finding none, walked down the steps and tried the door. It was locked, as he had expected it to be. He went back up and squatted down in front of one of the two semi-basement windows. It was roughly fifty centimetres in height, one metre wide and it was ajar; he slipped in his hand and checked that he could pull up the hasp. Then he took his torch, shone it through the windowpane and saw three removal crates stacked on top of each other, and a pool table with two cues lying across the surface. Right, he thought, that was the third stage. He turned off the torch, put it back in his inside pocket and swapped it for the bottle of rum.

  The next task had to be executed quickly. He couldn’t be sure that someone might not wake up in the neighbouring houses and glance out of the window. It was a question of speed now; there was no more time to waste looking around.

  He returned to the front of the house. An ornamental chain was suspended from a row of half-metre-high posts, dug into the ground at fifty-centimetre intervals. The chain was rustically rusty, presumably the intention. He tore it away from the first post; it was easy, fixed with only one staple to the crumbling wood, a child could have done it. As quickly as he could, he moved along the posts, freeing the chain from each of them, wrapping it around his shoulder as he progressed. It was heavier than he had expected, but not so heavy that it was a problem; he could easily carry it. When he had finished, he slipped into the shadows in his old spot next to the truck and studied the windows in the houses across the road again. As before: no one in sight.

  He suppressed the urge to have another swig of rum and proceeded directly to the next stage, unwrapping the chain and putting it on the ground by the front wheel of the truck that was closest to the house wall. He reached one end as far in between the wheel and the neighbouring wall as he could. Then he walked around the truck, lay down on his stomach and crawled underneath it. With some difficulty he grabbed hold of the end of the chain and carefully pulled it along as he reversed out. He rolled over, turned on his torch,
found a strut on the chassis frame, wound the end of the chain around it and managed to tie five knots before it ran out.

  When he was free of the truck, he allowed himself some rum, but only two little sips, plus another for luck. Then he went back to the front wheel to pick up the other end of the chain and trailed it along the foundations of the house until he reached the light-well of the semi-basement window facing the drive where the curtains were closed. Quietly, one metre at a time, he let the rest of the chain slip into the light-well, there was plenty of it, plenty . . . he prayed for rain, heavy rain, it would lessen the pain.

  CHAPTER 75

  Getting through the half-open semi-basement window at the back, which opened upwards and outwards, proved no obstacle for Henrik Krag. He wiggled through on his stomach, legs first, with his rucksack in front of him. Once inside, he pulled the rucksack on his back again, and briefly turned on his torch, before turning it off and then walking softly through the room, edging his way around an old television set and opening a door to a passage.

  The door’s brass handle squeaked loudly no matter how careful he was. He opened the door just enough to be able to slip through and took forever to close it again. Once he was at the bottom of the stairs, he disabled the lock to the semi-basement door, which faced the steps he had walked down earlier, while checking if the door was locked. Now he had a quick way out, should it become necessary, which he hoped it wouldn’t. If everything went according to plan, the idea was to leave as quietly as he had arrived.

  He waited until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, then he followed the passage, which turned left after a few metres, and ended at a white-painted door. He shone his torch into a laundry room with a washing machine, tumble dryer and a clothes horse with things drying on it. He walked on, then he took a couple of deep breaths, carefully pushed down the handle and opened the white-painted door, stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  Henrik Krag’s heart was racing, his pulse galloping, and his temples throbbing. It took him a few seconds to realise that he could see perfectly well. He hadn’t factored that in. A little light crept under the curtain – not much, but enough to see by. He sat down on a nearby chair, which stood opposite a desk with a pair of trousers lying on it that he shoved onto the floor. Then he took a big gulp of rum, which was very much needed.

  The couple on the bed were asleep, the young man on his back with his mouth open, his breathing calm and steady. The young woman lay on the other side of him with her face turned towards his shoulder. Her hair was flowing around her and she was snoring, a small, fine sound, which would occasionally turn into a grunt and break off, only to start up a few seconds later.

  Henrik took off his rucksack, slipped on his knuckle-duster and took out the knife. It was his biggest kitchen knife, and its primary purpose was to induce fear and hopefully to make them shut up. If he had to resort to violence, it wouldn’t be the knife, he vowed to himself. The knuckle-duster, yes, the knife, no. He studied the young man for a while; he was of slim build and presented no physical challenge. All that remained was what Henrik had always regarded as his biggest problem: they mustn’t scream. Neither of them.

  He pulled a balaclava over his head, flicked on the light switch and reached their heads in two steps, brandishing the knife. His eyes adapted more quickly to the light than he had expected. Lie very still, be quiet, don’t make a sound, and nothing will happen. Still they panicked, the boy squealed, Henrik hit him. Shut up! Make another sound and you’re dead. Then the girl clasped her hands over her ears and started trembling hysterically, so he hit her too. Neither of them screamed, they merely whimpered.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he snarled angrily. ‘And shut up! Just lie still, God dammit. Close your eyes, and if one of you opens them again, I’ll cut the other one’s throat.’

  They both squeezed them shut, reaching for one another exactly as they were supposed to.

  ‘I’m going to pull the duvet over your heads, and you’ll stay calm the whole time.’

  The girl gasped and clung to her boyfriend. Henrik Krag added:

  ‘No, not that. Nothing of that sort will happen to you . . . to either of you.’

  He pulled it up and over them, stuffing the end between the mattress and the headboard, so they couldn’t see anything. They were naked and both tried pulling the duvet back to cover their groins, stretching it as far as possible. His earlier assurances had had no effect. He found a blanket on an armchair next to the window, unfolded it and covered them with it, so that only their feet and calves were visible. The girl had wet herself, he could see a dark stain but smell nothing, oddly enough. They began to relax a little, he could see. Good. He turned off the light, and tried to work out how many stages he had now covered, but couldn’t remember. Then he drew the curtains and opened the semi-basement window. It tipped upwards and outwards just like the one he had climbed through earlier; it was the same type, only painted white. He lifted the coiled chain he’d left in the light-well and closed the window over it. Then he dragged the chain across the floor and placed it on the bed by their feet. From his rucksack, he took out a roll of gaffer tape.

  The waiting was terrible. He nearly fell asleep sitting on the chair, so had to stand up. From time to time he would fling aside a corner of the duvet and repeat his order for them to lie still, but apart from that he had nothing else to do. After all the rum, he needed to pee. What an idiot he was, he should have gone earlier. He held it in and suffered. At regular intervals he checked his watch. It wasn’t even 2.30 a.m. Time passed slowly, more slowly than he could ever remember it passing. Finally he heard activity upstairs: footsteps moving about above, then a gurgling of pipes somewhere, then footsteps again.

  The person upstairs chose to leave by the kitchen door, as Henrik Krag had hoped. Otherwise he would have walked all the way along the posts and couldn’t have failed to have noticed the missing chain. Whether he would also have worked out where it was now seemed less likely, but could definitely not be ruled out.

  However, he had chosen the kitchen door, and now Henrik Krag could stop worrying. He heard the door of the truck slam shut and soon afterwards the sound of the powerful engine starting up, mixed with music. The chain stirred, rattled, but didn’t tighten, the shadow of the truck from the street light slowly travelled past the window, and then . . . suddenly the two young people were yanked out of the window much, much faster than he had expected. They left their screams behind them, despite the gaffer tape, and Henrik Krag threw up. He couldn’t help it. He did so again outside in the yard, and realised that the police would now be able to trace him.

  Then he panicked and ran.

  CHAPTER 76

  Svend Lerche rang his daughter’s doorbell with some hesitation.

  Two quick presses. After all, it was only seven in the morning, but he thought he had heard her moving inside. Benedikte Lerche-Larsen opened the door and, when she saw who it was, turned on her heel and marched straight back inside the flat, but left the door open. Svend Lerche followed her and sat down at the dining table; she emerged from the kitchen, put a cup of coffee in front of him, still without saying anything, then sat down on the opposite side of the table with her own cup.

  ‘Is this going to take long, Svend? Because if it is, then I need to make a few phone calls first.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Tell me, are you ill?’ she asked. ‘You don’t look too good.’

  Svend Lerche looked what he was – a troubled man, a man who hadn’t slept all night. He dismissed her question with a wave of his hand. So-so, it was meant to indicate.

  ‘Your flat has been sorted; I’ll bring up the papers for you as soon as I get them, this afternoon at the latest. And I bought the place in such a way that you won’t get into trouble in the event of my death. We can review the paperwork tonight, if you have time.’

  Henrik Krag and she had finally opted for a loft apartment on Gråbrødre Torv in central Copenhagen.

&nbs
p; ‘Why are you being so nice to me? It’s not like you. And what kind of trouble might you be having?’

  Svend Lerche ignored her rudeness and partly deflected the question.

  ‘It’s Jimmy Heeger, the new man, the one whose eye you poked out. He’s no longer with us, I’ve sacked him.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Well, you were right, he didn’t fit in, and he’s screwed up big time. Don’t ask any more questions, it’s not something you need to know about. But other things have happened, and if it’s a pattern, I mean, if it’s all connected, it’s . . . very worrying.’

  He explained. Karina Larsen’s contacts in the Integration Ministry were no longer taking her calls; there was an inexplicable drop of more than twenty per cent in client numbers for their Nigerian staff and more than a thirty-five per cent decrease compared to last year’s turnover at the same time. Which couldn’t be explained by a random, statistical fluctuation, if she knew what he meant. She nodded, somewhat exasperated, it was he who had bottle-fed her probability calculations. He continued: six poker players and three host families had opted out of the programme, without warning, in the very same week.

  She let him finish, fetched him another cup of coffee, but none for herself, and drew the conclusion for him.

  ‘So I’m not getting any time off work? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

  He confirmed it, he needed her more than ever, and she accepted that. Tentatively, as if uttering the words was hard for him, he added:

  ‘We may be forced to shut down for a while, put everything on the backburner. Your mother and I may . . . go away on holiday.’

  Benedikte Lerche-Larsen nodded; she understood completely what he was saying.

  ‘You don’t think it’s a coincidence?’