The Lake

by Lotte Hammer

  Svend Lerche and Karina Larsen had lived most of their lives in luxury while exploiting others and inflicting incalculable damage on many people. And yet they had a good, if rather premature death; they never knew what happened: one moment they were here, the next they were gone. Who wouldn’t want that? Now they were laid to rest together in a cemetery they didn’t know existed, in a grave paid for with money earned for them by their prostitutes.

  Once the bodies had been dumped in the grave, the gravedigger started shovelling soil onto them. He had been well paid and wouldn’t talk to anyone, and besides, it wasn’t the first time he had been party to an additional funeral. It had happened before, but never with two bodies. The Pole folded his hands and said a prayer in his mother tongue while he bowed his head and looked into the grave. He was a Catholic and respected death.

  CHAPTER 89

  Konrad Simonsen was depressed; no one had seen Karina Larsen and Svend Lerche since Tuesday. Today was Friday, and it was as if the ground had swallowed them up. He had issued Wanted notices for the couple across Denmark, and also Europe via Interpol, but with no luck – for now. Their daughter, however – he couldn’t remember her name off the top of his head – was driving around in one of Svend Lerche’s three luxury cars, while her own, newly acquired Citroën C5 was missing. Or rather missing in the sense that the police didn’t know where it was.

  It was an obvious deduction that she had swapped cars with her father, and Konrad Simonsen had demanded that video footage for the last few days from the Storebælt and Øresund bridges be examined, but that hadn’t led to anything either. He thought that ultimately he wouldn’t know when his work was done. Deep down he had never believed he would get a result, although he had always hoped.

  Arne Pedersen was dispatched to the daughter’s home to interview her, but the officer could have saved himself the trouble. She had stubbornly refused to utter a sound until her lawyer was present, so Arne Pedersen had had to wait for an hour on the stairs outside her front door; it was out of the question he was allowed in. When the lawyer did finally turn up, he had arrogantly informed Arne Pedersen that his client didn’t wish to answer questions relating to her parents. And under the current circumstances that should be interpreted in the broadest possible sense, the lawyer said, without explaining any further. Unfortunately it was – Konrad Simonsen remembered her name: Benedikte, Benedikte Lerche-Larsen, that was it – unfortunately that was Benedikte Lerche-Larsen’s right. According to the law, she couldn’t be compelled to testify against her parents. Arne Pedersen had no choice but to leave empty-handed and could report nothing on his return to Police Headquarters other than that she was incredibly good-looking:

  ‘I’m telling you, Simon, she’s gorgeous.’

  Konrad Simonsen was standing by the window in his office – his usual spot whenever the world turned against him – staring down into a street that gasped in the heat. Life had pretty much come to a standstill in protest at being treated in this Mediterranean fashion. Adding to his troubles was the fact that the African au pair girls were quietly leaving the country one by one, without him being able to do anything about it. He couldn’t legally detain them, and what would be the point? Forcing them to give evidence was obviously impossible, though essential if the host families were to be prosecuted for anything other than minor offences. But none of the women wanted to help the police; they were too frightened, and probably for good reason.

  However, there was one exception in the form of a young Nigerian woman who had married her host, an older banking executive from Vedbæk. The Countess was currently working on getting a permanent residence permit for the woman, a permit Helmer Hammer had paved the way for, though how the Countess had talked him into that Konrad Simonsen couldn’t imagine. But the woman refused to say anything until she got her residence permit, something with which Konrad Simonsen could fully sympathise. He had insisted on round-the-clock personal protection for her, knowing full well that the traffickers who had imported her into the country would stop at nothing to protect their business.

  But even so, the truth was that his investigation was crumbling by the hour without him being able to do anything other than stand by the window feeling sorry for himself. However, on that account at least he was doing really well, he thought bitterly, and took the few steps back to his desk after which he called Pauline Berg. He knew that she had been discharged from hospital yesterday, and he invited her out for ice cream. She was pleased, she sounded happy when she answered her phone, which was a relief, and they arranged to meet in Rødovre Centrum Shopping Centre, which was easy for her to get to, and where he hoped it might be a little cooler.

  CHAPTER 90

  Henrik Krag had a pleasant feeling of serenity when on Friday, 26 June, fifteen months after his fatal trip to Hanehoved Forest, he drove slowly across the pavement and parked his motorbike right outside Halmtorvet police station in Copenhagen.

  He placed his crash helmet on the saddle and thought, without regret, that it would be a long time before his next ride. He smiled at an older man who commented on his parking by pointing at a sign to the left of the entrance. ‘This is the dumbest place you can park illegally, mate.’ The man was right, but it made no difference to Henrik Krag, not in the situation he was in.

  He had insisted on saying goodbye to Benedikte in their flat. She had offered to accompany him all the way to the station, but he didn’t want that, which she accepted. They had made love and afterwards she had cried – it was just like it was supposed to be, exactly like that. Then suddenly she said in wonder, sounding like a little girl, between sobs:

  ‘I’m going to miss you. I can feel that.’ The next moment she added tentatively: ‘If you miss someone, does it mean you’re in love? You must know, Henrik, does it?’

  She so very much wanted to be in love with him, and it was by no means the only occasion when she had asked him such a question. It was endearing, but also encouraging for him. Here he was the expert and she the novice, and he would laugh at her, pat her indulgently on her cheek or maybe kiss both of her ignorant eyes. Yes, perhaps, perhaps you are. And when his answer made her sad because she had thought it otherwise, had hoped for more, he would teach her:

  ‘When it happens, you’ll feel it. Then you won’t be in any doubt.’

  Sexual desire was sexual desire, and he was crazy about her. He was crazy about her body, he loved it when she lay moaning underneath him, but most of all he was crazy about her beauty; it was so perfect and so complete that the first times they had been together, he had been frightened he might destroy it. It was terrifying and arousing at the same time, an intoxicating feeling he didn’t share with her, it was his secret. He was also a little worried that it might be morally wrong. However, possibly right from the start, his desire for her had turned into love. She had given him something he thought he would never get from her: equality. Respect for him as the person he was. And briefly she had let him into a world that he knew existed, of course he did, but which he had never imagined someone like him could ever be a part of. Not because it was a better world than the one he knew, far from it, but it was different, unobtainable, he had been convinced of that for a long time, and now it turned out that it wasn’t. Not with her.

  He straightened up, took in his surroundings with an open gaze and walked with his head held high into the police station. Utterly sure of his purpose.

  CHAPTER 91

  Pauline Berg and Konrad Simonsen were eating ice cream – fattening and delightfully, nutritiously wrong – in a café outside a bakery in Rødovre Centrum Shopping Centre. She looked good, Simonsen reflected, thinking that the same could not be said about him; he felt like he had been dragged through a hedge backwards. Pauline said cheerfully:

  ‘I don’t want to talk about the hospital, OK?’

  ‘Absolutely OK, hospitals don’t exactly feature in my top ten conversational topics.’

  She smiled, they had a deal. Then she sniffed her ice cream suspicio
usly. ‘I think it’s off!’ He smelled his own, but could find nothing wrong, yet she insisted, holding out her ice cream: ‘Go on, smell it.’ And when he did so, trusting her, she thrust her hand forwards, so his nose was buried in it. She roared with laughter like a teenager being tickled.

  ‘Haven’t you ever seen that one, Simon? It’s the oldest trick in the book.’

  He laughed along with her, while he wiped his nose with the napkin she had had the foresight to bring with her from the counter. It was liberating to see her so happy, though as usual she came out with impulsive remarks or brought up private subjects.

  ‘I’ve decided not to pick up random men any more.’

  ‘And I’ve decided to turn a deaf ear to things I don’t want to know about.’

  He knew her too well and it took more than a small provocation like that to shake him. Even when she said: ‘I’ve written my resignation, you’ll have it in the next few days . . .’

  . . . he would parry with, ‘Excellent, but it’s going straight in the bin.’ There was no way she would be allowed to leave them. He thought that he would speak to the Countess about finding a new role for Pauline that she would enjoy. There had to be something they could do.

  He was halfway through his ice cream when he got a call. He promised to be at Police Headquarters in half an hour; as soon as he had slipped his mobile back into his breast pocket, he got up.

  ‘Well, you know this better than most. I have to go back, one of the guys involved in the murder of Ifunanya Siasia has just turned himself in.’

  She got up along with him without any show of irritation. As he said, she knew better than anyone how things were. It had been great that he had made some time for her. They passed the bin and she chucked in the rest of her cone.

  ‘I didn’t want that rancid ice cream anyway. Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.’

  CHAPTER 92

  Henrik Krag was transferred from Halmtorvet police station to Copenhagen Police Headquarters; his first interview lasted about two hours and went well, from the perspective of the police.

  The interview was carried out by Konrad Simonsen and Arne Pedersen and in addition to Henrik Krag, an old lawyer from one of the city’s most expensive legal firms was present. The lawyer, however, threw no obstacles in the way of the interview; on the contrary, on several occasions he helped the police get his client to remember when he was asked a question to which he didn’t have an immediate answer. But not so that he directly worked against Henrik Krag, just helped things run smoothly.

  The young man’s account of the death of Ifunanya Siasia pretty much matched what the Homicide Department already knew. Krag explained how, on Wednesday, 19 March 2008, he and Jan Podowski had driven to the hunting lodge in Hanehoved Forest with the Nigerian girl, to punish her for not giving her clients a good time. The girl was undressed, tied to a stake, a form of torture known as the macaw’s perch, and was then hoisted with a rope looped over one of the lodge’s cross-beams. The plan was for Henrik Krag to beat the girl with a truncheon brought along for the purpose, but before that happened, the knot tying the rope to the wood-burning stove had loosened and she had crashed to the floor and broken her neck. The two men had carried the body down to the lake, which Jan Podowski already knew about, after which they had picked up the milestone from the road and transported it through the forest on a litter made from a couple of spruce branches they had found behind the hunting lodge. They had tied the girl to the stone and the branches with the same rope they had hoisted her up with, and then they had carried her as far out into the lake as they could, before letting her go. Before leaving Hanehoved Forest, they had poured petrol from a canister in their car over the hunting lodge and burned it down to eliminate potential evidence. On the way back Jan Podowski had told Henrik Krag that he could no longer work for Karina Larsen, that he had been sacked, and he had been given nine thousand kroner in compensation, money that Jan Podowski had had in his wallet.

  Henrik Krag’s story was simple and straightforward. Konrad Simonsen and Arne Pedersen went through it with him step by step, twice, and concluded that it sounded credible, except for the point about him not having beaten Ifunanya Siasia before she fell down. They pressed him, Arne Pedersen tough, Konrad Simonsen persuasive, and apart from a single, ‘Hang on, let’s calm down a bit, young man,’ directed at Arne Pedersen, the lawyer didn’t intervene. After ten minutes of this Henrik Krag admitted that, yes, he had hit her, which was why she had fallen down. He added:

  ‘But we didn’t mean to kill her.’

  The lawyer supported his client: killing the woman on purpose would have made no business sense. The two police officers agreed that it would not.

  After a short break, Henrik Krag was interviewed about his employment with Svend Lerche and Karina Larsen, and in this respect, he was also extremely co-operative. Among other things, he gave them details about the system for the purchase of prostitutes, which the couple had developed; he would make an excellent witness against them, if and when they were found. For example, on several occasions he had witnessed how host families were paid in cash at the end of the month. However, he knew nothing about the Poker Academy, nor did he know the couple’s current whereabouts.

  On only one occasion, at the very end of the interview, did Henrik Krag surprise the police officers. That happened when he announced that he was married to Benedikte Lerche-Larsen, Svend Lerche and Karina Larsen’s daughter. This opened the door to a long list of other questions, but they would deal with these later. Henrik Krag would now be brought before a judge and would be remanded in custody in solitary confinement for four weeks, so he wasn’t going anywhere soon, giving them plenty more chances to talk to him. Konrad Simonsen had one further question.

  ‘Does the name Bjarne Fabricius mean anything to you?’

  The lawyer burst out with an astonished, ‘Why drag him into this?’ But he wasn’t; Henrik Krag shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t know him. I dealt mostly with Jan . . . I mean Jan Podowski.’

  Arne Pedersen looked at Konrad Simonsen; surely that was enough for today? And yes, it was. Konrad Simonsen ended the interview. Or so he thought. But the lawyer said wearily: ‘There is another charge.’

  Henrik Krag explained.

  ‘It was me who tied the two kids to the truck in Vallensbæk Village last Friday morning.’

  CHAPTER 93

  The Hanehoved murder investigation could now be regarded as solved. So Konrad Simonsen announced – not without a certain amount of pride – to the Countess, Arne Pedersen and Klavs Arnold at his final briefing meeting. The Countess and Arne Pedersen smiled; it was a fine result of which they could be justly proud. Yet Klavs Arnold didn’t join in the celebratory mood. ‘For me personally, it’s a case I’d rather forget.’

  An awkward silence ensued until Konrad Simonsen apologised.

  ‘I’m sorry about my tone, Klavs. It was inappropriate. We all know that you’ve paid a high price.’

  The Jutlander accepted the apology and evaded his colleague’s questions. He would get over shooting Jimmy Heeger in time, but there was still no reason to rejoice. Konrad Simonsen continued, more formally, this time.

  It had now been established that Henrik Krag had also committed the crime in Vallensbæk Village, DNA tests proved it. He had further confessed to an attack on four young people at Skovbrynet Station in Bagsværd on the evening of Wednesday, 27 May. Those two crimes had been planned and paid for by Svend Lerche, though after Henrik Krag had ceased formally working for him. Police had found part of the payment hidden at the back of the kitchen cupboard in the home of Henrik Krag’s mother, exactly where Henrik Krag had told them the money would be. The notes could be traced back to Svend Lerche and had been sent to Henrik Krag through the post. However, the two men’s communication couldn’t be traced. Henrik Krag’s instructions were to call Svend Lerche from a public telephone booth on a number he unfortunately had thrown away after his last task, as he had been scared of
discovery and didn’t want to be a part of this activity any longer.

  Svend Lerche’s motives appeared to be a personal vendetta against the politician Helena Holt Andersen for her campaign against prostitution, and against an officer from the Revenue, whom he had threatened on previous occasions. Svend Lerche had punished both of them by hurting their children.

  So far, so bad. But there were still unexplained questions, and they increasingly centred around Henrik Krag’s wife, Benedikte Lerche-Larsen.

  ‘Why did Henrik Krag sell his motorbike, only for Benedikte Lerche-Larsen to buy back the same bike the following week?’ Konrad Simonsen asked. ‘And what did he do with the money, we’re talking about almost sixty thousand kroner, once he had paid off his bank loan? This is presuming we don’t believe his story that he gave it to a friend whose name he has forgotten.’

  The Countess backed up her husband:

  ‘Why were Benedikte Lerche-Larsen and Henrik Krag married in haste by her grandmother in Vangede? Henrik Krag claims it was so that she couldn’t be forced to testify against him, but that makes no sense because he has already confessed to his crimes. However, it makes a great deal of sense if this was really about him not being able to testify against her.’

  Arne Pedersen said:

  ‘And the biggest mystery of them all: what’s a loaded, stunning-looking, upper-class girl from Rungsted doing with an illiterate loser from Ishøj?’

  This became too much for the Countess, but she was alone in her opinion as Konrad Simonsen and Klavs Arnold both thought that Arne Pedersen had hit the nail on the head.

  They had many more questions, and there was much to indicate that Benedikte Lerche-Larsen had held a significantly more prominent position in her parents’ business than they had previously believed. Klavs Arnold asked Konrad Simonsen: