by Inger Wolf
As he most assuredly had been. The dinner had gone well. They had touched on all sorts of fascinating subjects. He’d even talked about his time in Croatia and Sinka’s disappearance, without her going all psychologist on him and digging around for more details. She had in turn told him about her difficult childhood split between two parents, and her need to get out in the world. Which had led, or at least he believed had led—here his memory began to get fuzzy—to her traveling all over the globe. What had happened later that evening was shrouded in fog. What should have been thanks, see you later, turned into a shared taxi, followed by the ripping off of clothes and a wild, uninhibited lust meeting him head-on.
But. Now he recalled something, or thought he did, if his memory wasn’t playing tricks. A short sequence of events starting with the two of them kissing, walking up the street to the Town Hall Square to hail a taxi. Which was where an image of Lisa and Jacob popped up, holding hands on the way home from the movies. And there he was, Mr. Hotshot Lieutenant Detective, draped all over his young prey. Jacob’s smirk, now etched deeply onto the back of Trokic’s eyelids, was ample proof that this episode was far from over.
Abruptly, he sat up in bed and fought to free his tongue from the roof of his mouth. The hammer inside his head held nothing back. The yellow monster sun infiltrated the Venetian blinds and trained its destructive force on his eyes. Aspirin and cola for breakfast was the only strategy he could come up with to return him to the outskirts of the land of the living, where soon they would once again be speaking to Dennis Nikolajsen, Maja Nielsen’s ex-boyfriend. He stared at the woman beside him. She was still asleep, breathing deeply and peacefully. Her long eyelashes threw tiny shadows on her pale skin, and her dark short hair lay scattered on the pillow. She would wake up before long, and he sensed that she would resemble what he in all his foolishness had brought home. No makeup, just a natural quality that was sparking another round of last night’s lust.
Like a thief, he snuck past the mound of lace-infested clothes on the floor and out to the bathroom, where he hopped into the shower and stood under freezing water until he was more or less back inside his body. He fished some clean clothes out of the closet, looked for the painkillers in the medicine cabinet, grabbed a Coke out of the refrigerator, and wrote a note to her about the neighbor’s home-baked rolls in the cupboard, juice in the fridge, and cigarettes on the shelf. Then he raced out of the house.
He sat down in the cafeteria with a cup of coffee and the daily incident report. The coffee was a major risk. Either his head would clear up, or he would have to run outside and sacrifice his breakfast, half a banana he’d found in his office.
There was plenty going on these days. Several gay bashers were hunting for victims over in Memory Park, two gangs were at war somewhere in Hasle, and citizens expected to see police officers on the street, taking care of all the bad guys. The media was after the police for not doing enough.
Lisa plopped down beside him with an unusually smug expression on her face. A shameless smile let him know she had not forgotten last night’s brief encounter on the street. To his enormous relief, she chose the diplomatic path and began telling him about the greenhouse and her idea that Anja Mikkelsen had known something.
“I’m going to dig a little bit more into those girls’ past. I’ll try to track down Maja’s dreams about the horses.”
Trokic nodded. He rubbed his temple, hoping it didn’t tip off too much about his condition. He thought about his own nightmares, all the rabbits. The fertilizer of his dreams. His nightmares were unreal too, yet they had a source.
“Take a look at it.” Keep on her good side, he thought; otherwise, she might bring up the previous evening. “Jasper and I will take care of that lying ex-boyfriend Nikolajsen, the guy who forgot to tell us about all his conversations with Maja.”
After she left, he found a message on his answering service. Capt. Dragan Delic had tracked down Borislav Kosvonic. The Bosnian-Serbian policeman lived now on the outskirts of Beograd. Delic had called him and said he’d been told that Sinka had been handed over to a group of policemen on their way to Beograd. He had no idea what happened after that. Before hanging up, Delic said he had a few ideas and would get back to him.
Trokic went to find Nikolajsen, who was somewhere in the building.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Peter Laursen considered himself absolutely fearless. A man who would not shy away from any conflict in the Chess Club, who spoke his mind and never avoided a fight when the interests of justice were involved. And he had no fear of the city, even on the blackest of nights.
There was one thing, however, that he did fear. Something he’d told no one in his entire life of forty-seven years. And very few had noticed. A phobia, most would call it. Ornithophobia, a fear of birds.
Though that wasn’t exactly right, as it concerned only one specific type of bird: gulls. No matter how large or small they might be, he was terrified of them. Black hoods, silver feathers—it made no difference. These winged scavengers, rats of the ocean, simply scared the hell out of him. Which was a problem when living in a harbor town.
Several therapists, even one specializing in phobias, had tried to help him, but in vain. To rid himself of his terror, he would have to confront his irrational fears, they all said. Face up to the monster. But gulls kept their distance, floating at dizzying heights, screaming hoarsely. Which was why he’d never managed to deal with the phobia. He avoided going outside in the early mornings, when they flew low in the streets, looking for garbage.
As he drank his coffee late that morning at his window, he noticed how many there were outside. Far too many. Odd. Had the horrible creatures been hatching out their young? It was entirely possible. It was that time of year. Wasn’t it?
There was another possibility. Something might be drawing their attention. Something in the street underneath his window. Suddenly, he panicked; if this something—the remains of gutted fish, probably, from a spilled bucket—wasn’t immediately removed, all the screaming birds would attract even more of their kind. Maybe he should ask a neighbor to investigate, but then he would have to live that humiliation down from now on. He had only one option: take care of this situation himself.
Peter pulled himself up out of the chair, donned a thick gull-proof coat in the hallway, and walked down the long wooden stairway, shaking with fright all the way.
The sun was still low over the city roofs, its rays peeking through to reach scattered parts of the apartment complex. Through windows he could hear plates rattling, a radio blaring out the news, a mother yelling at her kid to wake up.
Now, he could hear them. The clattering of all their wings. The screeches echoing off the building’s masonry, sending waves of terror through his skinny body. And a smacking sound. He felt as if he were walking on the thinnest of cloth and any second could fall through into a bottomless pit. His stomach began knotting up.
He noticed the strange figure in the corner of the courtyard. Behind the trash containers and a bicycle. Sunlight had yet to reach there, and he had to squint to get a decent look. It must be some drunk who stumbled over the bicycle on his way home last night and passed out. He was covered in trash that stank of fish. And sure enough, five gulls were right in the middle of it.
His breakfast and coffee tumbled around inside his stomach like a centrifuge. He pulled his hat all the way down and looked for something to chase the birds away. He picked up a few rocks and tossed them at the gulls, who screamed at him angrily and flew up onto the cornice. Peter worked up the courage to walk over. And what he saw inspired more horror in him than a thousand gulls. A man in worn jeans and black T-shirt with an orange long-sleeved shirt underneath lay on his side. His hands were bluish and stiff, and flies were swarming on top of him.
But that wasn’t the worst. What should have been his face was a bloody pulp. Splinters of bone and teeth covered the ripped-up meat, and two empty holes stared out at him from within the crater. Though the body was
sullied by greenish-white clumps of gull excrement, and strips of meat, the gulls’ meal, lay around the body, Peter suddenly forgot his phobia. What for the past twenty years had been irrational anxiety had suddenly become something else: genuine reality-based fear.
Chapter Forty
Dennis Nikolajsen’s shoulders hung so low that they almost looked like an extension of his upper arms. Since being brought into the interrogation room, he’d been tapping his foot underneath the table, and the sound was grating on Trokic’s nerves. His face looked scalded; apparently Nikolajsen spent a lot of time in the spring sun. He was wearing a white T-shirt with a black sun printed on the front.
“Yeah, some of us work outside in the fresh air,” he said, when he noticed Trokic staring at him a beat too long. “What am I doing here? You got any idea how embarrassing it was, your boys picking me up at work? Now, I’ve got one hell of a lot of explaining to do.”
He smoothed his longish hair back and crossed his arms.
“You can practice on us,” Trokic said. “Because we think you have a lot of explaining to do too, starting with why you lied to us.”
Nikolajsen squirmed in his chair and pressed his lips together. “What do you mean?”
Jasper waved the sheet of paper with Maja’s phone records. “This is way too stupid of you, Dennis. Don’t you watch the reality crime shows on TV? Jesus, surely you could have figured out we’d check her phone calls. And now here you are, in the hot seat because we know you’ve been lying to us. You told my colleague and me you hadn’t spoken with Maja for several months. This piece of paper says different.”
He slammed the sheet of paper in front of young Nikolajsen. A long pause followed. The tapping underneath the table stopped. Maja’s ex-boyfriend looked very unhappy.
“Okay. We talked a little bit together. I know I should’ve told you, but I was scared what you’d think.”
“Well, how about that! So, you figured it would be a lot better if we found out about it ourselves?”
Jasper was on a roll, and Trokic leaned back and let him run with it.
“Not to mention the fact that you didn’t open your door the first time we showed up. So, tell us about these phone conversations.”
Nikolajsen sighed and bit his lip. “We talked about my new girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend. She dumped me. So, I called Maja to talk to her about it. I felt like a loser, and I wanted her to tell me what I was doing wrong.”
“So, she was your life coach? Is that what you’re saying? So you wouldn’t have to spend money on a therapist?”
“Yeah, more or less.”
“You’re working over at the harbor, right?”
“Yeah, we’re doing the electrical installations on some of the new office buildings.”
“And you know that Maja was killed down at the harbor, right?”
Nikolajsen nodded and stared down at the table. “I read it in the paper. And that made me even more nervous.”
“With good reason,” Jasper said. “Maybe you knew about the new buildings; maybe you were jealous and figured it would be a good place to do something about it. One little shove and away she goes, over the edge. No more pretty little songbird driving you nuts.”
“But I’m not jealous!”
“We’re always jealous. Aren’t we, Lieutenant?”
“Definitely,” Trokic said, though he’d never actually experienced that emotion. He thought about it for a moment: would he want the wild lover he’d had last night to be all over someone else? Not really.
“Okay then, let’s say I was a little jealous. That doesn’t mean I killed her.”
“So maybe, just maybe these telephone conversations also had something to do with how you wanted Maja back?”
It looked as if Jasper had nailed it. Nikolajsen sighed again.
“And she wasn’t interested?”
“No.”
“Perfect motive. A classic.”
“I didn’t kill her.” Nikolajsen looked small enough now to crawl out underneath the door.
“You are now our prime suspect. You have a conviction for assault, you had the opportunity, and you have a motive.”
Jasper threw out his arms. “I think you did it, simple as that. And, suddenly, we have enough on you.”
It was cloudy and cool by the time Maja Nielsen’s ex-boyfriend was gone, and Trokic closed the window.
“What about a late dinner at my place while we work?” Trokic said. “In a couple hours?”
He checked his phone. No messages from Dragan Delic or Christiane Bach.
“Sounds good, but you’re not having fish again, are you?”
“No, I can fix up a mixed grill. I took some meat out of the freezer this morning. If the cat didn’t eat it, it should still be there. I have plum brandy, too, we can do some work after. A man has to take good care of his hangover.”
Jasper grimaced. “Last time I passed out on your sofa, and it was like somebody was running a jackhammer in my head. I’d better think this over again.”
“We can hold it down to a few sips.”
Suddenly, the door flew open. Morten Lind, bursting at the seams.
“What do you want?” Jasper said.
“They found a body in a rear courtyard. And this one is going to be tough to identify.”
Chapter Forty-One
It was like driving all your life on Danish highways and suddenly finding yourself on the six-lane motorway around Frankfurt. Not only was Trokic heading up the investigations of two murders, but there was also a hit-and-run driver who in all likelihood had been blackmailed by an animal rights activist. And there was a lot more to keep track of in the other departments. Jasper sat quietly beside him, drumming his fingers on his thighs.
Trokic drove down Kystvejen. He’d guessed they were one Rammstein number from where they were headed. Despite Jasper’s gnashing of teeth, he turned the volume up on Till Lindemann’s nearly subsonic voice, happy that he could drive with the windows down as his thoughts ping-ponged between the song and the Colombian.
Their music had followed him ever since he’d seen a David Lynch film, Lost Highway, in 1996, after which he’d bought the soundtrack that included two of their numbers, “Heirate Mich” and “Rammstein.” They were still among his favorites, songs that made the past twelve years disappear. To his delight, the band had only gotten better, and in particular their last two albums, Reise, Reise and Rosenrot, had been played a million times. His attachment to the band wasn’t always met with the greatest understanding. “Nazis” and “glorifiers of violence” were common remarks. A shocked ex-girlfriend had left his living room after he showed her a DVD where Lindemann appeared naked from the waist down, wearing an enormous strap-on dildo that eagerly hammered away while spraying liquid on the back of another member of the band in chains. “Büch Dich,” was the number. So okay, maybe it wasn’t the wisest choice of DVDs. The girlfriend wouldn’t have hung around very long anyway.
Now, however, Rammstein was only a musical background as he mulled over the new developments in the case. They’d found another body in the Latin Quarter, and if they weren’t very mistaken, it was the man they’d considered to be a suspect since yesterday. Federico Carlos.
“It’s not a pretty sight,” Jan said when they entered the rear courtyard. The tech looked a bit queasy as he nodded over to what was left of the dark-skinned man.
Kurt Tønnies took over. “He was shot several times in the head. Looks like an execution to me. This town’s turning into a war zone.”
“How about the weapon?” Trokic asked. He had no desire to look at the blown-away face any longer than necessary.
“Hard to say right now. We’ve only found one cartridge, over behind the trash container. I’m no ballistics expert, but it looks like something with some heft to it.”
Tønnies pointed over at a spot marked by a small yellow arrow, where two dandelions had sprouted up in a crack in the asphalt. “That’s where we found it. Maybe the guy couldn’t fin
d it in the dark, or maybe he suddenly got in a hurry. He must’ve taken the other cartridges with him. And there’s also a bullet in the wall here.”
Part of a brick had been shattered, and a long yellow marker was sticking out of the hole to indicate the path of the bullet.
Jan was enthusiastic now. “So, he must’ve been standing right around here.” He took two steps off to the side. “And then he dragged the body behind the trash container. There’s blood on the ground.”
“What about the other bullets, are they in his head, or where?”
“Do I look like a pathologist?” Jan smiled. “You’ll have to wait for Torben Bach or whoever gets sent out today.”
The name made Trokic think of Christiane. He glanced discreetly at his phone. No messages. He would have thought there would have been one by now. One always came sooner or later when a woman was seeking a level of attention he was incapable of giving. And in her case, given her earlier obsession with him, he had expected something, if nothing else just a few words, a sort of invitation for him to write back. It wasn’t because he needed it; he wasn’t begging for anything, but surely, she could have at least thumbed out a short little message, nothing special. Maybe the story about the rabbits scared her off. He thought about their long night together. She’d been wild, passionate, and they hadn’t fallen asleep until the wee hours. And yes, she could send that message any time now.
Trokic was exhausted. After the few hours of sleep he’d managed to get in, he’d woken up to a chirping, chattering choir of blackbirds and crows and other creatures only some ornithologist would recognize. The thought had crossed his mind that this birdy musical hell was the reason for the spring spike in the suicide rate.