by Inger Wolf
Lisa stared. The desk was covered with clippings about Maja Nielsen. One had even been taped to the computer screen. Lisa began reading. “Young Female Singer found Brutally Murdered in Århus.” “Twenty-One-Year-Old Killed with Hammer.” “Who Killed Maja?” And there were photos. Maja at different ages, the parents, Trokic in front of police headquarters, even the two officers who’d found Maja in the park. Plus, a school photo of Dennis Nikolajsen and a slightly blurry shot of Martin Isaksen. They had all been printed from the computer. Lisa recalled that Anja had been run over the evening of the day Maja had been found. Impressive what the media could come up with in so little time.
“When I see this and remember her talking about all the money coming our way soon, I’m thinking she might have known something. And she might have been thinking about blackmailing someone. Maybe she’d already contacted whoever. Now that I think about it, she doesn’t usually get so excited about the donations we receive. Usually, it’s a few hundred crowns, maybe a thousand. Most people would rather donate to Animal Protection Denmark, so they can write it off on their taxes.”
Lisa looked over the computer table and noticed a small note. “Louise—greenhouse?” She jerked back; was it a coincidence that Maja had mentioned a Louise to the salesman in the chat room? Hardly. But who was this person who’d been in contact with both Anja and Maja? A mutual friend? Or enemy? And what was this about a greenhouse?
She could barely hide her growing excitement. “It’s possible you’re right. Of course, we’ll have to look into it, check her phone records and so forth. That can take some time. But wouldn’t she have told you if she was about to blackmail someone, or send them threats?”
“Definitely not,” Mette said. “She’d keep that to herself.”
“All right, I’ll take all this with me, and we’ll have to see what comes of it.”
She fished a paper bag out of her pocket and carefully swept all the clippings into it.
“I don’t really understand this business about blackmail,” Mette said. “Because if she was blackmailing someone anonymously, it doesn’t make sense that the person ran over her, does it? Unless he found out somehow who she was.”
“Blackmail isn’t necessarily done anonymously. Do you think Anja knew Maja?”
Mette shrugged and fingered her red scarf. “I don’t think so. Everyone was talking about Maja at the meeting, before Anja was hit, and I think she would have said something.”
“No matter how this turns out, thank you for calling us.”
Thoughts were flying through Lisa’s head as she drove back through town. Who could Anja have been shaking down or threatening? Lisa had the impression that Anja didn’t compromise. Would such an idealist be able to look the other way with a murder? If blackmail could raise enough money to fund several causes in the future? Mette’s list of suspects among the animal abusers now seemed totally irrelevant. She couldn’t wait to tell Trokic the news.
She smiled when she checked her phone; just past midnight, they had arrested the man they’d been looking for since finding Maja in the park. He’d been extremely drunk, and he was sleeping it off in a cell. A developer. A man with considerable financial resources, perhaps?
Chapter Twenty-Three
It’s a well-known fact that the more a person feels part of a group, the more the person will accept, adapt to, and defend the norms and values of the group. And a group will often be able to commit acts much more evil than an individual ever would. It creeps in, and suddenly a person is in the grip of nationalism, fascism, or religion.
Trokic was familiar with all this from the Balkan War. It was one of the explanations for the many horrific acts of cruelty that took place. He’d even had to acknowledge that he wasn’t at all immune to the phenomenon, as he gradually became part of a mindset, a reality in which everything was the fault of the Serbian bastards. Neutrality hadn’t been an option, for that would have meant turning away from those closest to him. And where would that have left him?
Trokic had been thinking about all this when Kurt Egebjerg was brought into the room. After finally tracking him down and arresting him at the harbor several hours earlier, he’d spoken only in terms of groups. We. Ours. Everyone’s interest. Something bigger than himself was being threatened here. The survival of the group. But what exactly was the threat? And now there was another aspect to the case. Anja Mikkelsen might be involved in what had happened to Maja Nielsen. What did this man have on his conscience?
They sat down in the interview room beside Trokic’s office. The sunlight entering the room revealed dust on every surface. Trokic scratched his arm, which was covered with small bumps and splotches that were spreading. The rash looked suspicious to him, but it had appeared out of nowhere, and it could disappear the same way. Couldn’t it?
He spoke into the microphone, naming those present and the time, ten past ten.
He turned to Kurt Egebjerg. The developer was in his early fifties, with a mouth drooping at the corners, reddish skin, and what once had been a carefully-combed part in his hair. The brown pullover covering his beach-ball gut looked just as shabby and tired as its owner. The man was sober, a condition Trokic suspected he seldom attained. Barely sober. He always wondered how deeply alcoholic a person could be and still seem to be functioning normally.
“Start at the very beginning.” Trokic leaned back in his chair and relaxed.
The past few years, he’d begun to appreciate interrogations. He used to hate them, and the patronizing comments from his boss about his interview-room talents hadn’t helped. He’d simply become better at it. Maybe he had matured. Become more patient. Whatever the reason, nowadays, he looked forward to some interrogations, because usually, more so than physical evidence, they held the key to solving a case.
Egebjerg began slowly, hesitantly. “I’m working on our new harbor project. I got to work at the harbor around four-thirty, that’s when it’s just getting light out. Usually, we start at sunup. But I’m always the first one there; I make sure everything’s ready every day. The others show up at six.”
Taurup butted in. “Your project? What exactly are we talking about here?”
“Baysite.” The developer spat that out as if it explained everything.
Now Trokic understood. The soil sample had been on the mark. The harbor area, so close to the center. The city’s new landmark, a visionary project of substance. In the next few years, a whole new district would be created at the harbor. Unique architectonic jewels embellishing the bay. A lively, diverse neighborhood would make the new city space an attractive place to live and work. Sun and harbor. Light, glass, asymmetry, air. Spectacular.
“We’re aware of several parts of the harbor project, though the value of the land where you found her isn’t important to us. We’ll get back to that later, but first tell us how you found her.”
“I saw her right when I got there, even though it was barely light. It was those light green flowery clothes she had on. Her legs were sticking out at a weird angle, and I knew right away she was dead. She was white as a sheet, and there were all those broken bones, plus she had blood in her hair.”
“How was she lying?” Taurup said.
Egebjerg appeared to think that over carefully. “Face down. Body turned to the east, the water. I walked down there to make sure she really was dead. Then I panicked; I couldn’t think straight. We only have two weeks to finish, and if we don’t meet the deadline, we’re talking daily penalties. It’ll be a tight squeeze as it is, and if the police barricade the area off for several days, well, we stand to lose a hell of a lot of money.”
He swallowed nervously. “I put a lot of my own money in the project. All my equity. The way the market is right now, it won’t take much for the bottom to fall out. I’ll be ruined.” He held out his hands, as if what he was talking about should be obvious.
“Do you remember if she was still warm?” Taurup said.
“No, not at all. She was cold as ice, and a little
bit stiff.”
“Can you be more precise? This is vitally important.”
“I don’t know what the hell else to say. But I did get the feeling she’d been laying there quite a while.”
“Then what did you do?” Trokic said.
“It still wasn’t really daylight, so I wrapped her in this blanket I keep in the car, then I loaded her up and just drove around. After a while, this new problem seemed just as bad as the old one. And I happened to drive by the park and the old gravestones there, and the street was practically deserted, so I stopped and drug her out as fast as I could and left her in the bushes. I mean, I wanted someone to find her, I didn’t want her to just lay around and rot. I just wanted to get rid of her, to get her out of the car. And move on. As fast as I could because I had to get back to work before six.”
Trokic tried to keep a friendly look on his face. He didn’t succeed, not completely. He grabbed the thermos on the table. “More coffee, anybody?”
Taurup twirled a pen around with his fingers. He shook his head, but Egebjerg held his cup out. The room was beginning to smell. Fear. The pungent odor of pheromones from an animal that perceives a threat, to warn the flock of danger.
Trokic poured coffee and scratched his throat. “How could you do it, though? It’s not just a routine everyday thing you did, is it? Picking up a dead human being and carrying her off, getting all the blood and filth and everything on you.”
The developer nodded desperately. He seemed to be on the edge of tears, as if he were reliving the unnerving experience with the dead woman.
“But it didn’t change anything for her. I mean, she was already dead. It wasn’t really so horrible. And for our project to be ruined by her jumping off right where she did, I just felt that would have been a catastrophe.”
Egebjerg shivered, and his hand shook as he raised his cup. The coffee sloshed around; having to steady the cup with his left hand embarrassed him. His face was gray as molten lead.
“Did you see anyone there at any time?” Trokic asked.
“No. I mean, I saw a few men farther down the harbor, working on some electrical installations. A few cars drove by. A drunk was stumbling around, or maybe it was a homeless person; I don’t know. Maybe he was lost. Or looking for somewhere to sleep. We’ve had a few of those.”
Trokic thought that over. Hadn’t he read in a report that the ex-boyfriend, Dennis Nikolajsen, said he was an electrician working at the harbor? Trokic was almost sure of it.
He turned back to Egebjerg. “But surely the construction site is fenced off?”
The man shrugged. “Not that part of it. We’ve had fencing around the site most of the time, but we were about to start digging right next to it, and everything’s been open several days now.”
He began a long, drawn-out explanation about layers of clastic sedimentary rock and bearing capacity and a lot of other technical stuff Trokic had no understanding of whatsoever. At the moment, he couldn’t care less about the earth underneath them, whether it came from four billion years of constant change or from somebody snapping their fingers.
“All that doesn’t concern us. So, anyone could have entered the site without any problems?”
“Well, yes, and a few snoopers have walked in, a few homeless people, poking around while everything has been open. There’s a lot still to be done, only half the windows are in, no kitchen or bathroom installations either.”
Trokic tried another angle. “Did you, by any chance, know Maja Nielsen?”
“I just told you what happened. Of course, I didn’t know her.”
“But you might know her boyfriend, Martin Isaksen. Don’t all of you real estate people and developers around here know each other?”
“I don’t know him personally.”
“But you know who he is?”
“Sure, yeah. Yeah.”
“And you’re still sure you didn’t know Maja Nielsen?”
“Yeah. It’s just a coincidence; I have no idea what she was doing there. How come you’re even asking me that? It’s not like I killed her or anything.”
“It’s possible you did meet her, you liked what you saw, and somehow you got her to come down to the harbor. And you got mad when she didn’t want anything to do with you, and you pushed her off the building.”
“That’s absolutely crazy.”
“What were you doing Tuesday evening?”
“Doing the books with my accountant.”
“All evening?”
“Until eight.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I watched Champions League on TV.”
“Which match?”
“Arsenal and Juventus.”
Taurup nodded at Trokic. “Yeah, it was on.”
“And is there anyone who can confirm you watched the match?”
Egebjerg shook his head.
“Did you go up to check for any sign that someone had been in the building?”
He shook his head again. By now, he looked as if his project was evaporating right before his eyes.
“Okay. Two officers are on their way out to seal the area off. One of them will make sure no one enters the building before our techs have finished.”
A small wave of Egebjerg’s coffee slipped over the edge of the cup and onto the table. He set the cup down, hard. “How long will it take? We’re busy, you know.”
Trokic’s brain froze a moment as he tried to take measure of this man’s utter insensitivity. He couldn’t. Egebjerg possessed zero empathy.
“You have any sort of act of God clause in your contract?” Taurup said. Not that he looked as if he cared.
“Yeah, but I don’t know if it covers this situation. I need to get ahold of a lawyer.”
“Not right now, you don’t,” Trokic said. “Not for your contract. You’re under arrest, if you remember, and the only lawyer you’re going to see is the one dealing with that.”
“But I didn’t kill her!”
“That’s something we need to be sure about.” This bastard was going to sit in a cell as long as they could legally detain him, Trokic promised himself that. Down to the last second.
“We’d also like to hear if you know a woman named Anja Mikkelsen.”
There was something in his eye as he stared at them. Surprise? “I don’t know anyone by that name. Who’s she?”
“A young animal rights activist who was the victim of a hit-and-run driver Wednesday evening. In other words, the evening of the day you were moving Maja Nielsen around. Where were you between eleven and midnight that evening?”
“At home, playing cards with a buddy. He’ll confirm that. But you can’t hold me here very long.”
That sounded more like a question than a statement. Trokic flipped down a photo of Maja Nielsen in front of Egebjerg, who jerked back in his seat. It was a close-up of her face, with blood at the corner of her mouth and hair that had been soaked in blood.
“Take a good look at her. We’ve got plenty on you. Indecent interference with a corpse. And you’ve obstructed our investigation. You’re not going anywhere, not anytime soon.”
“But there was something else.” Egebjerg was in full saving-his-ass mode.
Trokic looked skeptical. “What?”
“A business card in her coat.”
“Where is it?”
“I wadded it up and threw it in the water on the way to the park.”
“For God’s sake, man,” Trokic said. “You are absolutely unbelievable. Can you tell us what was on it?”
Egebjerg shook his head.
“Then what good does it do us?”
“I just thought I ought to mention it.”
“Okay. You’re going back to your cell, and you’re going to do whatever it takes to remember what was on that card, or whatever it was.”
The stench in the room lingered after Egebjerg was led away. Wind was blowing through the trees outside, and Trokic opened the window for some fresh air. His body was itching like
hell. He pulled his thin blue sweater off and reached up underneath his T-shirt. They were everywhere. Big red itching splotches—what in hell was going on? Just what he needed! He wiped up the coffee stains on the table and gathered his papers. The interrogation had only added to the mass of confusion. Now they knew how Maja Nielsen had ended up in the park, but everything else was still a mountain of conjecture balancing on tiny mounds of facts. He put on his coat. Time for a look at the harbor.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Trokic rolled into the level space in front of the construction, just as the radio host of a debate program summed up the circumstances surrounding Maja Nielsen’s death. “A tragic case, and where do we stand, with the rising number of homicides in Denmark?” The man immediately moved on to a new segment, as if progressing from homicide to an invasion of a new Asian species of ladybug was perfectly natural. The marauder consumed the eggs and larva of other ladybug species, when devouring aphids wasn’t enough. This could be critical, the grave radio host intoned.
All this about the Harlequin ladybug reminded Trokic of the case they had closed fifteen months earlier. The little boy who had been strangled and burned and dumped into Giber Creek in Mårslet had been fascinated by the small insects. The case had left Trokic with a sense of helplessness in the face of unfathomable evil.
The harbor stank that day. The factories sent out waves of smoke, spreading the sickly-sweet odor of ground grain mixed with soy protein and vitamins and minerals over the city. An invisible blanket of hovering, heat-treated animal food stench. Trokic surveyed the roped-off area, a small piece of land with a stack of poured concrete elements. She’d been lying there. Like the sinners in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Trokic thought, lying face down on the fifth terrace. As punishment for their greed and prodigality. He recalled Maja’s broken nose, pushed all the way up into her brain, and suddenly he suspected that it hadn’t happened with the fall. Nothing there would cause such an injury. Someone had tromped on her head or slammed it against one of the concrete elements in a final gesture of rage.