Songbird (Daniel Trokics Series Book 3)

by Inger Wolf

  “Whatever the case, it’s consistent with the idea that she’d been sick recently,” Lisa said. “And I think we need to look into this more. Her dreams, the horses. What does it mean?”

  “It might just be some sort of psychobabble because she’d been having existential problems or trouble with the boyfriend,” Taurup said. “Maybe we ought to be careful about not reading too much into this.”

  “But it must mean something,” Lisa said.

  No one spoke, not even Trokic. Someone cracked a knuckle, and Folle tipped his chair back so far that he nearly toppled over.

  Lisa sat down, and Taurup took over.

  “I’ve been talking to people this morning who’ve contacted us. Nutcases, several of them, but also some who did know her to some extent. Several people also called concerning vehicles in the area within the time frame. We can compare them to the tire tracks and suspected type of vehicle, and we should be able to eliminate a lot of them. Then there’s a guy who played music with her a few years ago, and another who thinks he met her on the net.”

  “All this is going to take quite a bit of time,” Trokic said. “But we will check everything out. One last thing. We’ve been given the animal rights activist case, the young woman who was run over, Anja Mikkelsen. Kornelius, you’ve had a look at it. Do we need to call in more officers, or what?”

  Lisa stood up again and stuck a large photo of the woman on the whiteboard. “I spoke to her friend at the hospital, and apparently quite a few people have a bone to pick with the animal rights organization, in particular with Anja. She was the leader. I’ve made another list from the information the friend gave me, and she might have more potential suspects for us. According to the officer on duty, an elderly lady found her shortly after midnight. Several officers did a house-to-house in the area, but so far no witnesses to the hit-and-run.”

  “We’ll send out a witness appeal,” Trokic said. “What’s the word from Forensics?”

  “Several things point to it being deliberate,” Tønnies said. “The victim was obviously walking on the sidewalk, and the car drove up and hit her from behind. Then he backed up and drove on. Nothing on the road indicates the driver lost control of the car. It’s a straight stretch of road, and there’s practically no traffic at night. We have her clothes, but the only thing we found is a mixture of dirt and oil, probably from the undercarriage, since her body had been partly underneath the car. We found a tire track and we’re checking it, but it doesn’t look unusual.”

  “Those animal rights people are brain-dead,” Anne Marie said. “They do more harm than good.”

  “Really?” Lisa said. “Maybe we ought to know what we’re talking about before we stick all of them in one box.”

  After a moment, Trokic said, “We’ll be keeping the same teams. And as long as Agersund isn’t around, everybody will hand in their reports to me.”

  Agersund. Trokic was worried about his boss. True, he stomped up and down the hallways during cases like these and got on everyone’s nerves, yet somehow he was missed.

  When Trokic got back to his office, his head was aching from that stuffy, claustrophobic briefing room. All the information was rattling around in his head like numbered ping-pong balls in a glass bowl at a bingo hall. He’d taken one bite of a sandwich somebody had left on his desk when Taurup appeared in the doorway.

  “I called the guy who thought he talked to Maja on the net. It’s one of the more interesting calls we’ve gotten. There might be something to it; somebody should check it out.”

  “Text me his address. Lisa and I can have a word with him later.”

  “All righty.” Taurup vanished.

  Before he bit into his sandwich again, the phone rang. It was the front desk.

  “Someone else to see you,” the woman said. “A Clara Jørgensen is on her way up.”

  Trokic laid down his sandwich. Maja’s friend? The person who might have known her better than anyone?

  Chapter Seventeen

  A curtain of black locks hung down her back in waves, framing her long, elegant neck. Her eyes had a certain nuance, a storm moving across the sea. Her eyelashes were long and delicate, and her cheeks were rosy. Her tight blue dress emphasized the curves of her slim figure. Taurup stood speechless beside him, and he had to force himself not to stare.

  Clara Jørgensen seemed totally unaware of her effect on them. Her mellow voice held anger as well as sorrow. “I’m totally wrecked from jet lag, but I’ll try to answer your questions the best I can. I’m shocked too; I just can’t understand.”

  Trokic saw no sign whatsoever of jet lag on the woman. “When was the last time you saw Maja?”

  Her voice was more neutral now. “I’ve been in New York the last four months, so I haven’t seen her since New Year’s Eve. I’ve had very little contact with her. At first, we spoke online, but then we got away from that. Not because I didn’t want to keep in touch, but she was off-line most of the time. I felt bad about it, but I figured she was busy. She started a new job after Christmas. And of course, she was finishing school. How’s your investigation going? Do you have any idea who the psychopath is who did it?”

  “The truth is, we still can’t rule out suicide. But we have more than fifteen men working on the case. We’re doing our best.”

  “Suicide?” She looked back and forth between them, frowning. As if the word had an atrocious taste. “That’s strange. Or maybe not. I thought everything was okay with her until I found this horrifying email from her yesterday. The second one, in fact. The first one came a week earlier.”

  Trokic leaned forward in his chair. “Hopefully, you saved them?”

  She nodded and leaned over to pick up a brown leather bag with gold rings. “I made copies of both of them. Maybe she was just under a lot of pressure. I’ve had absolutely horrible nightmares myself when things weren‘t going well. But this seemed to be part of her day, too.”

  Clara handed the sheet of paper over to Jasper, who was sitting closest. Her voice broke as she clutched her arm. “I want you to know, honestly, this isn’t like Maja at all. If it hadn’t been sent from her address, I would’ve thought someone else wrote it. And that makes me feel terrible.”

  Jasper skimmed the emails and handed the sheet over to Trokic.

  “Our impression is that Maja was emotionally unstable before she died,” Trokic said. “These two emails are just a small part of the picture we’re getting. We can’t find out why she was having these problems, though. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about her, how long you’ve known her, things like that.”

  Clara settled back in her chair. “Where should I begin?”

  “At the beginning.”

  She took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I’ve known her since I was about fourteen. Her grandma was our neighbor, and Maja visited her a lot, so we saw each other on weekends and vacations. Her parents owned a cannery; they were always busy. Later on, we went to high school together. She moved away from home when she was really young; her parents bought her an apartment. They helped her sometimes, but not all that much. They believed she shouldn’t have too much given to her, but then, property is always a good investment. At least until a year ago.”

  Trokic and Jasper nodded.

  “What about her family? How did they get along?”

  “She never really talked about them. I think she felt her parents didn’t take good care of her when she was a kid. I was at their house a few times back then, but otherwise we were almost always at my place or her grandma’s. Grandma Johanne is such a wonderful old lady; she always had fresh-baked rolls and soda for us, that’s where we liked to be the most. As far as the rest of the family goes, she didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but there are quite a few cousins. I met a few of them at her grandma’s. At times, I wondered if she steered me away from her family because they didn’t want me hanging around with her. I mean, maybe they thought I’d turn her into a lesbian.”

  She looked down. “But I’m us
ed to that.”

  Jasper looked like he’d lost his tongue again. A hint of an expression moved across his face. Something like disappointment. Trokic was sure that after she left, Jasper would moan and groan again about the bad luck in his love life. He hadn’t had a single girlfriend in all the time they’d known each other. He went for women he thought were goddesses, women he didn’t stand an earthly chance with. And there was something of the goddess in Clara.

  “And then she started at the music school?” he asked.

  “Yes, she was very ambitious with her music, and busy, but usually she had time to get together. Anyway, until she met Martin. I left for New York soon after that, but I already had the feeling she was dazzled by that lifestyle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The look of distaste on her face appeared again. “I mean that Martin comes from a different world. Where people have insane amounts of money and love to spend it. Not that Maja’s parents were poor, absolutely not, but they were more conservative with their money, old-fashioned, something like that. And suddenly she was talking about these people flying off to Tokyo for the weekend, buying investment property in Dubai, spending fortunes on clothes and food. I remember her telling about going out for dinner one evening, and the bill for each person came to three thousand crowns. She didn’t even used to like caviar.”

  Trokic wasn’t wild about gourmet food either. It was all about experimenting with food nowadays, like it had turned into a worldwide competition. Camel cheese, mysterious mousses made from goat’s milk froth, whole miniature octopi, fois gras on vanilla ice cream.

  “But anyway, lately she seemed to be a changed person, and it just felt a little strange. Though, on the other hand, I never felt I knew everything going on with her. Not that she wasn’t a good friend, but in a way, she kept me out of her life. Surely, you know what I mean? People who never really open up? So maybe a more materialistic side of her came out when she met Martin. And we can all be blinded. That doesn’t make her a bad person, does it?”

  Trokic sensed something behind Clara’s words she was trying to disguise. A distaste. He studied the young woman, a good person, it seemed to him. One who had been truly worried about her friend.

  “But what about the boyfriend, Martin?”

  “I only met him a few times. He seemed a little bit slick, a little arrogant, but I think he was very attracted to her. And that’s the important thing, I guess. People were easily fascinated by her. In some mysterious way.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know much more about their relationship. Most of what I do know came from her, and like I say, she was wild about all of it, the lifestyle, so I don’t think there’s much I can help with there.”

  “Do you think he could have something to do with her death?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Any problems between them you might’ve heard about?”

  She shook her head.

  “What about her other friends?” Trokic said.

  “Most of them were from her music school. Especially a sister and brother she played with. I can’t remember their names. They were really nice, but I didn’t get the impression they were all that close to Maja. They played sax and bass.”

  Trokic glanced at Jasper. “Have we talked to them?”

  He nodded. “Yesterday. There should be a report on your desk. Nothing new there. She’d been letting things slide with them too. Hadn’t been showing up for jam sessions in town.”

  Trokic turned back to Clara. “We know she fell a long ways. We don’t know just what happened, though. Maybe it really was a suicide. Maybe she’d been with someone. Do you know anywhere it could have happened? Places she hung out?”

  Clara fished around in her bag again and brought out a pack of nicotine gum. After a few moments she said, “No, I don’t. I can’t think of why she would be up in a tall building because I don’t believe for one minute she killed herself. But maybe she was out on the town and someone followed her. She did hang out in a place called Buller Bar.”

  “Someone else told us that, too.”

  “You should check it out. Believe me; it’s not the classiest place in town.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The guy who claimed to have met Maja on the net worked in a clothing store on the pedestrian street, not far from police headquarters. After Clara Jørgensen left, Trokic and Lisa navigated the city’s busiest streets to the store. Spring had arrived; people were walking around with the season’s first ice cream cones in hand, and vegetable shops were selling strawberries and cherries. Imported, but still.

  He met them when they walked in, and after a few words with the other salesperson, he led them into a dim back room with a round table, a coffee machine in the corner, and a half-devoured roll of chocolate digestive biscuits. The place smelled of new clothes and coffee beans. Madonna was playing softly on a radio.

  The salesman was tall and thin, in his mid-twenties, with shoulder-length blond hair gathered in a ponytail, dark blue eyes, a strong jaw, and a pearly-white smile. He looked like he could be Viggo Mortensen’s son—the poor guy, Trokic thought. In his eyes, Viggo was unusually ugly. It annoyed him that Lisa smiled broadly at this guy. With a sparkle in her eye, as if he wasn’t at least ten years younger than she was.

  He shut off the radio and they sat down. “I can’t be 100% sure it was Maja Nielsen, of course. She never told me her real name. She called herself Trinity, on Forum’s open chat room.”

  “But it could very well have been her?” Lisa said.

  “Like I told the other policeman on the phone, she said some things that made me think it was her. Like, she was a musician, she was going to music school, she was twenty-one. And she said she lived here in town, and I got the impression she lived close to Jægergårdsgade. Anyway, she talked several times about places there. Buller Bar, for example.”

  Trokic nodded. Usually something mentioned several times in an investigation had some significance.

  “But she wouldn’t tell you her name, or what?” Trokic felt like cutting the guy’s ponytail off, the way he kept eyeing Lisa. The bastard.

  “Sometimes, when you chat, it’s not really important.” The smug bastard.

  “So how did you two hook up in the chat room?” Lisa said.

  “Once, when I was in the black, I said something about a jazz concert I’d been to.”

  “In the black?” Chat rooms were disgusting to Trokic; he’d never lowered himself to enter one, but he imagined they were filled with all sorts of shady characters.

  “That’s when you speak in a room accessible to the public,” Lisa explained patiently. “The text is black, and in a private room, the text is red.”

  “Okay.” Suddenly Trokic felt older than his forty-one years. What’s more, the conversation seemed absurd to him. Had this meeting actually taken place, had this person sitting across from him really spoken with Maja? Or was it smoke and mirrors; was he just making this up? It all seemed confusing.

  Viggo’s son was clearly in the driver’s seat. “Anyhow, we started chatting privately once in a while, and that’s how I know her. Like, we had the same taste in music. The same sense of humor. It’s nice having somebody to clown around with on chat.”

  “But did she ever tell you anything of a more private nature?” Trokic felt he had to ask, though he seriously doubted this guy’s story now. He might just want to feel important, to have something to tell all the other guys in ponytails at the training center. Or he wanted to get somebody in trouble. An unnamed somebody, granted, but maybe he just hadn’t gotten there yet. And every minute spent here was a minute Trokic could have been reading reports in his office. Doing something useful, in other words.

  The guy stood and picked up his cigarettes on the table. He lit one and cracked open a small window. Then he pulled up his jeans, the type that apparently had to be worn at half mast, exposing innocent people to the sight of gross underwear.

  “Only once, the last time I saw he
r on Forum. Like suddenly she sounded really down. She said she was involved in something, it was complicated, and it was really bothering her.”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t remember any date or the day of the week, but I’d say it was about three weeks ago.”

  “I don’t suppose you saved the chat,” Lisa said. “I know it’s unusual, but people do save an interesting conversation once in a while.”

  He shook his head; in fact, he looked sad, as if he’d made a big mistake. He blew smoke out the window’s small opening. “No, but I remember parts of it. Mostly we talked about music, film, that sort of thing. It was the only time she got into her personal life, and I got the feeling she really was hurting. She said there was something going on with somebody else, and she couldn’t get out of it, and there was going to be trouble. I got the feeling she was jealous, and mad, though she didn’t exactly say. And she also said, “That damn Louise,” that she couldn’t get rid of her. So, I figured it was something to do with a lover or ex-lover. Then she also talked about an apartment she was getting, there was some trouble with that. It was just a really strange conversation. Like she needed to get it all out with someone who didn’t know her.”

  Lisa nodded and glanced at Trokic, as if he should nod too. He wrote down “Louise” on his notepad.

  “I know what you mean,” Lisa said. “You feel free when you’re anonymous; you can say anything and everything.”

  “Exactly!” Son of Viggo looked as if he and Lisa were old friends. “When I started asking her about all this, she shut up. Later on, I thought about what she’d said, a long time, but she was so vague. And really, what could I do?”

  “Did she at any time talk about animals in her dreams?” Lisa said.

  He looked surprised. “Animals? No, why should she?”

  “It’s just something we’ve heard before.”

  “But she did say something that was totally bizarre. That her dreams were catching up to her and sucking up her soul. And that she’d had nightmares. That’s when I asked her what this was all about. But then she said she didn’t remember, that she was having trouble remembering things.”