by Inger Wolf
Lisa looked out over the fields. Was Louise’s body out there somewhere? Eight years had passed. Was there any chance at all of finding some answers here? It was getting dark, but a brisk walk wouldn’t hurt her one bit.
”Is there a flashlight here I could borrow?”
”Sure,” Sanne said. ”Just a sec.”
A minute later she returned with an old, smaller model. Lisa pressed the button; it worked fine. She thanked Sanne and headed for the tractor tracks.
Chapter Fifty
Just like the rest of Sabro, the small residential street was quiet. The sidewalk was slowly relinquishing the last of its heat, and small clumps of weeds stuck up several places between the slabs. Gnarled trees in the small yard swayed in the evening breeze. Except for a beat-up boy’s bicycle and a roll of plastic, the garage was empty. The house looked dark and closed up; Trokic was afraid he was too late.
But the door was open a crack – should he ring the doorbell? That would tip off Isaksen if he was inside, and he might run out the back door. Trokic stepped back and looked around. Nothing. Then he checked out the yard and terrace behind him, but again, nothing. He listened at the door a few moments before nudging it open and stepping inside.
He walked through the small entryway into a dim living room. Only a thin sheet of the day’s dying light made it past the closed heavy curtains. The room looked like it had been furnished thirty years ago without anyone touching it since then. Brown and gray, small porcelain knickknacks on the windowsill. A row of books from Gyldendal’s Book Club on a shelf. Simon probably hadn’t changed a thing since taking over the house from his mother. Maja had spent much of her childhood here. Abandoned by her parents.
Trokic strode across the heavy carpet while glancing around at the walls. Apart from one faded painting, a landscape, they were completely bare. Suddenly he caught a faint whiff of aftershave; instinctively he reached for his Heckler & Koch in his shoulder holster and slowly pulled it out. He recognized the odor, and for a fraction of a second he heard Robbie Williams and Eternity in his head. It was the same aftershave he’d smelled when he first met the real estate agent. Martin Isaksen had been in this room, Trokic was sure of it – had he showed up too late?
He walked through the dimly lit kitchen and back to the entryway, then he started up the dark narrow stairway. He cursed to himself when he rammed his foot into a hard riser. The second floor was engulfed in silence. He tried to filter out the odors; was there still a faint smell of Eternity, or was it a leftover from downstairs? Two doors stood open, a third one was closed. Cautiously he sidled along with his back to the wall and glanced inside the first room. A bedroom. The mother’s, apparently. Another thirty-year-old time capsule. The photo hanging over the dresser revealed a stern-looking woman with long gray hair and cold eyes. The bed had been neatly made, a yellow nightgown lay draped over a chair. The curtains were closed, and the room smelled stuffy, of old, scruffy rugs. He caught a glimpse of himself in the floor-length mirror, his tense expression, his gun raised and ready. Silently he walked out backwards and to the next room, where the open door revealed a white, cold bathroom. He walked past and grabbed the doorknob of the third door.
The room was pitch black. He felt around to his left for the light switch and found it. The room was spacious, over twenty square meters, with thick curtains covering a window across from him. Trokic focused on the wide bed in the middle of the room. It had no sheets or comforter, which made it look hard and uncomfortable. Like a bare wooden bench. Then he glanced around, and his heart stopped.
The room was filled with stuffed mounted animals. Shelves, glass cases, walls were covered with dull, dry fur and stiff limbs and tails. Owls, deer, squirrels, ermines, badgers. Glass eyes and yellow bared teeth. Like an evil biology class. Trokic shivered when he looked at the far end of the room. A gray striped cat and two dachshunds stared emptily at him, each with a ribbon around their neck. And at the end of the row was a stuffed head from what had once been a gray horse. Its teeth were barely visible. Suddenly he knew; it hadn’t been the horse from the local legend Lisa had described that had been haunting Maja. This room had a history. Where did this horse come from? Whose horse had it been? It was as if Maja’s nightmares were streaming out of the big brown glass eyes, yearning to tell him something. How could anyone sleep among all these stuffed animals, night after night? All the eyes following you around. Beloved pets, now stiff and unmoving. His throat turned dry. Whose pets?
Then he remembered what Lisa had told about Anja. Her obsession with animals. She’d mentioned stuffed animals. The girl had been in this room. And something had frightened her.
His mind wandered for a moment, only a few seconds, but long enough for him not to sense the movement behind him. He jumped when he heard the calm voice and smelled the aftershave, an overpowering odor now.
”This is really something, isn’t it?”
Chapter Fifty-One
Twisted limbs and fallen trees cast the final shadows of the day over the orchard. Lisa veered off the tractor ruts and followed the path trampled down among the trees by the hooves of countless horses. The odor of earth and manure from the nearby fields hung heavily in the air as she wondered about how seldom she left the asphalt jungle nowadays. She glimpsed the growing city not far away; soon it would gobble up these fields and crowd out the last remaining small farms.
She held onto the flashlight and followed the path farther into the orchard. Her thoughts turned to Trokic’s cousin. She’d wanted to ask him more while they were eating pizza together, but something held her back. Maybe she didn’t really want to know, maybe she just wanted to stay in her bubble as long as possible, living with Jacob. On the other hand, she would soon turn thirty-six. Last call for Diaperland, as her mother so considerately had called it last week. Lisa wasn’t going to waste her time on someone who didn’t want to have children with her.
She began thinking again about the Maja Nielsen they’d found in the park not all that long ago. The journey of exploration they’d taken across her life. The Maja totally involved with her singing, a normal young woman, yet one full of secrets they’d only caught a glimpse of. Who was she, really?
She was so lost in thought that she almost didn’t notice the old wall hidden behind a big thicket. Some old busted-up bricks, the girl had said. This must be what she’d been talking about. Suddenly Lisa felt like a kid again, playing in secret hideouts. But this time she wasn’t looking for treasure.
She stepped through the tall grass and immediately cut herself on the thorny blackberry canes sticking out. Finally she made it through. The old wall was a remnant of what might have been a small house, left to crumble away. The roof was gone, and the concrete floor was covered with dead leaves, a few old beer cans, and a few pages of a porn magazine. Did the local kids play hide-and-go-seek here, was it the setting of imaginary adventures? It would have been for her. The old ruins seemed to blend into its surroundings. Climbing vines covered the walls teeming with snails and spiderwebs and ants. She looked around; if anything had happened here, unfortunately there was no way of knowing it now. She crossed over to the teetering remains of a door frame. By now she’d seen most of the orchard, and it would have been difficult to conceal anything done to Louise. Further on, another thorny cane caught her sweater and pulled her back. In her struggle to free herself, she lost her balance and fell into the blossom-covered, murderous brambles. The thorns pierced her clothes and dug into her thin skin.
”Oww! Goddammit!” The canes were stuck to her clothing, top to bottom and front to back. She swore she’d never go near a blackberry bush again, ever. As she was about to stand up, she noticed a rusty, round grate surrounded by ivy further in the blackberries. It covered a circle of old stones. Slowly she rose to her feet, the thorns leaving long red scratches on her skin, painful scratches, but her curiosity got the best of her. Though it was only two meters away, the brambles guarded it well.
The sound of a large limb cracking star
tled her, and for a moment she froze. Were some other girls riding nearby? Or maybe an animal had stepped on an old, half-rotten limb? But she heard nothing more and turned back to the stones and grate.
She studied the situation a few moments then pulled off the shirt she’d been wearing over a black top. She wrapped the shirt around her hand and began pulling blackberry canes aside to clear a path.
The loose, rusty grate covered an old well. She remembered what the elderly lady had told her: Maja had been afraid of the horses and the well in the legend. But could it have been this well? A place where they might have played, might have believed a spirit lived? The thought made her shiver. She glanced around; the orchard seemed deserted. Her heart was pounding as she swallowed and trained her flashlight into the well. There was something down there.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Trokic whirled and looked straight into Martin Isaksen’s cool eyes, then he drew his pistol and pointed it at him. The sneering real estate agent held a large, heavy meat knife, and he looked tense. His black suit jacket was covered with cobwebs and dust.
Trokic waved his gun at him. ”Drop it. Now.”
Isaksen’s eyes gleamed with pure hatred. ”You’ve got this all wrong, but okay, I see you’re in charge.”
He threw the knife down on the carpet.
”What are you doing here?” Trokic spat out. ”You’ve been lying to us, and now you’re poking around here with a knife.”
Isaksen gestured around the room at all the stuffed animals. ”This must have been Simon’s room. Creepy, isn’t it? I think you and I share a common interest at the moment. Let me show you something.”
He reached in under his jacket. Immediately Trokic feared he might have another weapon, but a moment later he brought out a photo of Louise Sørensen tied to a bed in that room, a rag stuffed in her mouth. Her eyes showed pure terror, and there was blood on her throat and one cheek.
”I found this when I was in here earlier. Let me show you something else.”
He walked over to the far window and opened the heavy curtains. ”Take a look.”
Trokic joined him and looked down into the yard. The sun was setting, and a film of dew glittered in the dying light. And there was something familiar beyond the yard: waving fields of rapeseed and farther on a few buildings with gray eternit shingles, surrounded by pastures. The Horse Farm.
”It’s true, I knew Maja when we were younger, but not well at all. She was only a kid back then. I saw her when I picked my sister up at the farm. When we started dating, I knew there was something familiar about her. It took me a while, but when I recently read the paper, I remembered they rode at the farm.”
Trokic still was having problems understanding the horrible truth Isaksen was revealing. ”But why didn’t you tell us you were Anja Mikkelsen’s boyfriend at one time?”
”Would you have believed me? Me, who’d been involved with both girls? I was in total shock when I read that Anja had been run over. And what do you suppose the media would have done with that?”
”So what are you doing here?”
”After the shock wore off, I started wondering if the hit-and-run really was another coincidence. The obvious thought was that someone else besides me knew them both. Maja’s cousin, maybe. So I called Simon and confronted him with my suspicion. Of course he denied it. So then I thought I’d drive over here and look around. Luckily he wasn’t home.”
Trokic took another look at the photo of the young Louise. The horror in her eyes sent chills down his spine. As a matter of routine he scanned the room. Was it possible there was still evidence hidden in the blue carpet? A trace of blood, fibers, maybe even a hair or two from the people who had been here. Fortunately there was a carpet instead of wood floors. Assuming the carpet wasn’t laid afterward, of course. Which was possible. Eight years had gone by.
”You should have told us,” Trokic said, still not totally convinced. Suddenly he remembered, Lisa over at the farm, seeing what more she could dig up. He didn’t at all like the thought of her running around there alone.
He pulled out a set of handcuffs from his back pocket and tossed them over to the real estate agent. ”Here, put those on.”
”Are you arresting me?”
”I’m not taking any chances. You were holding a knife.”
Isaksen sighed and put on the handcuffs. ”Okay, I understand.”
”Good. Let’s go down to the car.”
He called the station and told them to send a few officers, Forensics, and Jasper Taurup. Then he called Lisa. No answer. His throat was dry as a bone.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The skeleton lay scrunched up in the tiny space five meters down. The stench rising from the well was unbearable, and even though Lisa knew it must be from rotten leaves, she imagined how the girl literally had been forced down into the sediment and had settled into the mud, only to rise again when spring warmed the earth.
So this was where she ended up, eleven-year-old Louise. Stuck here where no one would look for her, the victim of some monstrous crime. But what happened? Had Isaksen had his eye on her, been tempted late one evening, assaulted her? Something was rustling in the bushes behind her, and she froze. The place gave her the creeps, and it was hard to make things out in the fading shadows. But again the noise stopped, and she turned back to what she’d found in the well. How had it happened? Three hundred meters to the west, the Horse Farm and the horses grazing in the pastures were no more than silhouettes. Beyond the yellow rippling field of rapeseed, the first city streetlights were appearing.
Her phone rang. Good timing, because she needed to tell Trokic and her other colleagues what she’d found. It was late, but the area had to be secured and cleared.
Suddenly something hit her arm, and her phone flew through the air and landed in the brambles. She whirled and barely managed to recognize the man before everything went dark.
Lisa came to a few moments later. Simon Møller breathed heavily, his eyes glaring with hatred in the faint light from the flashlight on the ground.
”Why did you have to poke around here too?”
He ripped the gun out of her shoulder holster and jammed it into the back of his pants. ”If you scream I’ll blow your brains out, right here and now.”
Lisa swallowed the lump in her throat and made no noise.
”I have to admit, though, you’ve done a pretty good job, you’re pretty close to the truth. I can fill in the blanks for you.”
Now he seemed almost friendly, as if he looked forward to finally sharing his secret with another human being. ”Maja and I were always tight. Like brother and sister, you could say. Or almost like lovers. Whatever made her mad, I took care of. Nobody bothered her, I made sure of that. And I don’t mind saying she liked my attention and everything I did for her. Like that stupid horse. It had to die, she wanted revenge.”
Simon stared out across the trees and smiled. He looked almost nostalgic. ”Louise was a dumb little girl, she made Maja do all the shit work. Maja hated her more than anyone. So we got her to come to my house one night when we were alone, we told her we’d give her some tack. It was easy, she’d just had an argument with her parents.”
He laughed. ”No way I could have come up with all the ways we humiliated her. Maja was a lot better at it than I was. But then things sort of got out of hand.”
Now Simon stared into the distance. ”I got carried away. She felt light as a feather in my hands, fragile, I liked that. That and the fear on her face when I pressed the knife against her throat. And that distant look when she realized it was all over.”
”And Maja?” Lisa said.
”Maja stood beside me and watched, she got all excited too. She didn’t say anything when it was over, but anyway we had an understanding, you could say. Then we carried her across the field and dumped her here in the well. Maja got covered with Louise’s blood and flipped out. She didn’t want to go home, but finally she left.”
And hid in a greenhouse t
o try to get hold of herself, Lisa thought. Though she was terrified, Lisa sensed how Simon loved sharing these details with her. Which terrified her even more; him telling her all this meant he wasn’t about to let her go.
He seemed to be totally absorbed in his story as he leaned over the well and stared down at what he had tossed inside.
Lisa spoke softly, almost a whisper. ”Why did Maja have to die?”
”It never was the same between us, but we kept what happened a secret. At least until some months ago. New Year’s Eve. She was drunk, and out of the blue she leaned over the table and looked at me and asked if there’d been a lot of others like Louise, asked me how I could live with it. I got really nervous about what she might say. Who she’d tell about what happened, later on at some point. And I know she would’ve given me all the blame, so this new little perfect life of hers would never end. I couldn’t let her do that.”
”But the key,” Lisa said. ”She laid it on the table for you, just like you’d agreed, if she was afraid something would happen to her. Did she still trust you?”
”Don’t you see, I ordered her to do that. She’d never have done it voluntarily, but in her condition she really had no choice.”
”That drug. How did you get her to take it?”
”That was the easy part. I mixed it in her toothpaste one day when I was over there, then it was just a matter of time. Federico promised she’d be in the palm of my hand. But it didn’t turn out quite that way. I had a terrible time getting her up in that apartment, then when we got there she fought like crazy. It was pretty bad. It was a hell of a relief when she finally fell.”
Lisa clutched her pants. ”So it was supposed to look like a suicide.”