Jeppe and Anette greeted each other at the entrance to Oscar Bar, both of them tired. She went looking for a table while he got the beer.
“Watch out, love.” The bartender pushed a wet cloth over the counter with a sarcastic smile. “If you could just raise your elbows for a sec, I’ll make sure your lovely windbreaker doesn’t get sticky. That’d be a shame!”
Jeppe lifted his elbows and wearily watched René wiping off the counter. René’s sarcasm was part of the appeal of Oscar Bar, part of what made him feel at home in a place otherwise far too noisy, featuring silly little tables and mirrors all over the walls. Johannes had introduced Jeppe to the place, back when they first met a thousand years ago at the theater school. Back when Jeppe still thought his mother’s acting aspirations were his own. Who knows, maybe they were.
René tossed aside the rag and sluggishly pulled two bottles of beer from a refrigerated drawer. Jeppe glanced around at the bar’s colorful clientele of singers and actors. He himself had grown up in a home where art was religion and stage artists, musicians, and authors were demigods. Jeppe’s mother rarely showed her emotions, but when she put on Schubert’s Winterreise or read certain passages aloud from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, she could never help crying.
It had been a disappointment when he dropped out of theater school. She had never said as much, but Jeppe could tell that’s how she felt from her wan smile as he explained how he couldn’t just keep dreaming his way through life. For a few years he had ridden the fitness wave as a spinning instructor, while he steadily grew into adulthood. One of his colleagues made it into the police academy, and to Jeppe it sounded like a good blend of something physical and something steady. He didn’t think about it much; just sent in his application.
The only remnants from the theater school days were his friendship with Johannes, a comprehensive catalog of show tunes in his brain, and Oscar Bar. And since the joint was just a loogie away from police HQ and had cold beer, he saw no reason to change habits. He and Anette sometimes hung out there even though their colleagues took endless pleasure in teasing the detective duo of Werner and Kørner for frequenting a gay bar. Together!
René set the two bottles of beer on the counter. Jeppe paid with a bill from his pocket and made his way to a table in the corner where Anette was waiting.
Jeppe sat down and they raised their bottles in silence and drank.
“All right,” he said, wiping his fingers off on his pants, and pulled out his notepad. “What have we got?”
“Julie Stender.” Anette opened her tablet. “Age twenty-one. Killed last night in her residence at Klosterstræde Twelve. No immediate signs of sexual assault, which is noteworthy in itself, but an unsettling carving on the face of the body.”
Jeppe nodded. “Last seen?”
Anette scanned her screen, swore, pulled out a pair of reading glasses—which she perched on the tip of her nose—and swore again.
“Here it is. Saidani went through her texts and Facebook posts: The victim went to a concert last night at the Student Café on Købmagergade, a bar that is attended by many of the young people in her social circle. The band was called something like ‘Vutbajns,’ she said, I don’t know them. Julie Stender actually checked in on Facebook while she was there, but the bartender can’t remember her offhand. She talked to several people—Falck is still working on calling around—but as far as we know she left at around ten p.m., saying she was tired and wanted to go home.”
“She made it home. We know that. Do you want another beer?”
“Already?”
Jeppe caught René’s eye behind the bar and held up two fingers, but the bartender just kept talking to a guy in silver shorts.
“Saidani has read through a number of text messages on Julie’s phone,” Anette continued. “To Caroline, to her father, to an old school friend. Nothing out of the ordinary. But on the way home from the Student Café, Julie texted two people—and here’s where it gets interesting. She texted Caroline at ten thirteen p.m. ‘Hi, Caro. Hope you’re enjoying the wilderness? The concert was kind of blah. You didn’t miss anything. Nothing new from the Mysterious Mr. Mox. Miss you. Kisses!’ ”
“Mysterious Mr. Mox. Sounds like a magician.”
“Must be a nickname for someone,” Anette suggested. “Sounds like there might be a man in her life. We just need to find out who he is.”
She took a quick sip of her beer and then continued. “Okay, but listen, because this might be important. The next message she sent was to someone we know.”
“Kristoffer?”
“Fuck you. You knew!” Anette looked genuinely disappointed.
“What, did you think I was off getting my hair cut while you were working?” Jeppe was unable to hide a slight smile.
“A lady can hope, right? Are you never going to get those girly locks cut off, by the way? With that look it’s hard to take you seriously.”
Jeppe broke her off. “Come on. What did the text say?”
“Ten fifteen p.m.: ‘Hi K. Was tired and slipped out without saying goodbye, couldn’t find you. Sorry! J.’ Kristoffer never answered. But it means that he was at the concert and that he and Julie knew each other.”
Jeppe nodded. “Esther de Laurenti told me. The two of them have apparently seen a fair amount of each other at her house. Kristoffer works at the Royal Danish Theatre, where he’s a dresser. The shift for his show ends at ten forty. Let’s catch him at work before he leaves.”
“That gives us plenty of time for another round, then.” Anette emptied her bottle and waved to René, who immediately hopped off the bar and opened two beers.
“How the hell do you do that?” Jeppe asked.
“What do you mean? All I did was wave.” Anette stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Never mind.” Jeppe scowled at René as he set the bottles on their table with a conspiratorial smile at Anette. “What else?”
“No sign of forced entry at the apartment,” Anette continued. “All the windows were closed when Gregers was found. The front door was locked, and the back door in the kitchen intact. So unless she went to bed with one of the doors ajar, she let the perp in herself.”
“And since it’s unlikely she ordered pizza or let the paperboy in past ten, we can pretty much assume she knew him. It was a him, right?” Jeppe asked.
Anette drank some more beer and thought for a moment.
“I think so. She was a tall girl and not scrawny. It would have taken some strength to overpower her. But let’s hear what Nyboe says at the autopsy tomorrow.”
Jeppe looked out the window at the summer night. The outside tables were filled with beer drinkers and coatless smokers talking at full volume. At this time yesterday Julie Stender had walked home through the city, let herself into her place, and closed the door behind her. And then? She hadn’t used her phone again after texting Kristoffer, either for incoming or outgoing calls, and there hadn’t been any activity on social media, either. Had someone followed her in the streets?
Anette started moving her hands around nervously, like someone looking for a cigarette. Jeppe felt a sudden urge to smoke, although he rarely had cravings anymore. He had quit when he and Therese started fertility treatments, and he didn’t really miss it. It did taste good, though, especially with beer. And now, there was nothing to keep him from starting up again.
“Did you check Mr. and Mrs. Stender’s alibi with the hotel?”
“Room service to the room at eight thirty p.m.,” Anette read aloud from her notes. “Two orders of the rib eye and a bottle of amarone. No one saw them leave the hotel room after that, but it’s easy enough to sneak past the front desk without being noticed. We requested the surveillance tapes from the lobby. But there’s also a rear exit if you take the elevator to the basement level, and there are no cameras there. So, not really a watertight alibi, no.”
“We should talk to someone who knows the family as soon as possible. And to Christian Stender. Alone.”
Anette nodded and tapped away on her noiseless keyboard.
“Do you want to stop by Shawarma Grill-House on the way to the theater?” Jeppe said, glancing at his watch. “I haven’t had dinner.”
Anette turned off her tablet and finished her beer.
“That is the first intelligent suggestion you’ve made the whole damn day.”
* * *
A SHAWARMA WITH four spoonfuls of chili, followed by a quick stroll down Strøget, Copenhagen’s pedestrian street—Jeppe’s mouth was burning, not unpleasantly, from the spice. He and Anette waited for Kristoffer at the stage entrance to the Royal Danish Theatre on Tordenskjoldsgade. The guard, a smiling black man with steel-framed glasses and a blue shirt, had reassured them in a melodic Caribbean accent that no employees would leave the theater without walking past him or ringing the bell for him to open the car gate. And if they did, he would be able to see them on the surveillance cameras.
The wall was filled with sepia faces of distinguished actors who had performed over the ages on the sloped floor of this, the country’s finest theater. They looked ethereal—not like they had ever taken their costumes off to argue with spouses or eat a ham sandwich. That, on the other hand, was exactly how the first people bursting through the door looked, scurrying toward the street calling, “Thanks, have a good night!” over their shoulders to the guard. They appeared downright normal: tall, short, old, and young with colorful scarves, sandals, and denim jackets. Others soon followed, some with freshly scrubbed faces, others with large or small instrument cases, one carrying a bouquet of flowers wrapped in cellophane, surrounded by a group of friends.
Jeppe stood beside the guard to get a better view of the crowds. He had seen Kristoffer only in a picture at Esther de Laurenti’s place and was afraid of missing him.
After ten minutes, Kristoffer emerged, alone. He had a backpack on and walked with his thumbs in the shoulder straps, like a little kid carrying too many schoolbooks. When he reached Jeppe, he stopped abruptly.
“Come,” he said before Jeppe could even open his mouth. “I live five minutes away. Let’s go to my place.”
Kristoffer took the lead, stooped and thin, over the crosswalk by Magasin department store, and Jeppe and Anette followed without protest. It was against protocol to follow a witness home like this, but then he had been the one to suggest it. And chances were better he would relax on his own turf.
Downtown Copenhagen. Jeppe found people who lived inside the ramparts like this deeply exotic. Where did they shop—that is, when they wanted something other than scented candles and sushi?
Across from the old St. Nicholas Church, Kristoffer turned into a courtyard and proceeded to an unassuming wood door in a rear building.
“Top floor,” he said.
He held the door open for Jeppe and then climbed the steep, narrow stairs with peeling wooden railings and mottled yellow paint on the walls two steps at a time.
Jeppe followed and could hear Anette snorting behind him, as soon as she reached the second floor. Up on the fourth floor, in what must have been a converted loft, Kristoffer unlocked and opened the door. A cardboard sign with the name Kristoffer Sigh Gravgaard painted elaborately on it hung over the mail slot.
Sigh? Probably some kind of stage name. It fit almost too well to be original.
A buzzing from the inside pocket of his windbreaker stopped Jeppe in the doorway. Falck. He answered the call, listened for a second, and concluded with, “Good, thanks!”
Anette gave him a questioning look from the landing below, where she stood, trying to catch her breath.
“Swedish police located Caroline and her girlfriend,” he reported. “They’re on their way back to Copenhagen, shocked, but safe and sound. We’ll question Caroline tomorrow morning.”
Anette nodded and seemed mostly preoccupied with how long she could drag out her break before she had to climb the last half flight.
Jeppe pushed the door and entered a front hallway that was so narrow he had to close the door behind him to proceed. Behind him Anette swore under her breath. The apartment contained a tiny kitchenette, a round dining table with folding chairs, and a no-frills single bed. No plants, no pictures on the sloped white walls, no clutter. It looked like a dorm, only clean. From the main room he could see into a smaller room holding a large desk under two computers and a keyboard. The walls were covered with thick sound-insulating panels, and musical instruments lay all over the floor. Jeppe recognized a sitar, a ukulele, congas, and tambourines, but there was also a collection of incongruent pots and plates, which he sensed were part of the instrument collection.
Kristoffer was gone. A door from the kitchenette led to a back stairwell; there was another door by the bed. Both doors were closed.
“Where the hell did he go?” Anette whispered. She brought her hand up under her jacket and loosened her service handgun.
“Maybe the bathroom?” Jeppe said, squeezing between the wall and the mattress to knock. No reaction.
Anette cautiously opened the door to the back stairwell and peeked down the stairs, then shook her head. Released the safety catch on her weapon, raised it, and aimed straight at the door to the bathroom, nodding to Jeppe. He knocked again. Still no answer.
“Kristoffer?”
Silence.
“Answer us, damn it!” Jeppe put his hand on the handle and nodded back to Anette, his pulse racing in his ears. Then he flung the bathroom door open and hurled himself backward onto the bed so he wouldn’t be in the line of fire. The door crashed into a bookcase; some books toppled to the floor. Then there was silence.
On the white-tiled floor of the bathroom, half under the sink, Kristoffer lay gazing blankly at the ceiling.
Jeppe got up, vexed by the unnecessary drama.
“What the hell are you doing, man?” he shouted. “Why didn’t you answer us?”
Kristoffer continued to lie in silence. Jeppe yelled at him again but got no response. He was about to resort to force when the young man sat up like a shot, rubbing his face with the backs of his hands. Without warning, he began talking from the awkward position, half under the sink. No explanation, no excuses.
“Julie said I was too pushy, that I nagged her. She didn’t understand—”
“You need to know,” Jeppe interrupted, “before you say any more, that you are not obliged to talk to us. We can’t rule out that you may become a suspect in the case later on. Do you understand?” They had to inform him of his legal status if his statements were going to be admissible later on.
“I only say what I want. That’s what I always do.” He sounded astonished, as if he had only just now realized they were there.
“Are you saying that you and Julie Stender were in a relationship with each other?” Anette asked sharply.
“Relationship?” Kristoffer asked. “We had sex three times. The last time was a month ago. Here. I was in love with her. When she left, she said we should just be friends.”
Jeppe’s pulse started accelerating again. “Kristoffer,” he asked, “where were you last night?”
“I went to a concert at the Student Café with Julie.” He spoke without reservation, not seeming to consider how much to share. “I mean, we are still friends. It was cool, we listened to the band, drank some beer. She went home early.”
“And then what did you do?”
Kristoffer lifted his gaze from the spot on the tile floor where it had rested thus far and spoke to Jeppe’s left shoulder.
“I followed her.”
Jeppe sank, his pulse pounding in his ears.
“Kristoffer, you’re going to have to come down to the station with us.”
CHAPTER 9
“May I have a cigarette?”
Of all the questions Anette had heard in her many years as a detective, this one was the most common. She almost consented to Kristoffer so she could enjoy a bit of secondhand smoke.
“No, damn it!” she said, catching herself. “And you also won’t eat, sleep,
or piss until we’re done here.” She fumbled with the cable between the camera and the computer, tired and cranky.
Kristoffer smiled. It was the first time emotions showed on his stone face, and the effect was unsettling. He leaned toward the computer, grabbed one of the dangling cords, and plugged it in. The camera blinked, ready to record, and an image of the room appeared on the screen. Anette yanked the computer away from him and sat next to Jeppe, across from the still-smiling Kristoffer.
“Okay,” Anette said, rolling up her sleeves and leaning on the desk. “The time is eleven forty-six p.m., Wednesday, August eighth. We are resuming the questioning of Kristoffer Sigh Gravgaard in connection with reference number two eight one five. Present are Investigative Lead Jeppe Kørner and Detective Anette Werner. Tell us, Kristoffer, why did you follow Julie Stender when she left the Student Café last night?”
“We went there together to hear Woodbines,” the young man said, eyes downcast as if he didn’t care for visual communication. “But Julie left during the intermission when I was getting us beer. She just left. She’s been distant the past weeks. As if she were afraid that I hadn’t gotten the message… So I walked over to her place. She lives right by the café.”
Anette shifted on her chair, suddenly less tired. Where was this going? Was he about to confess?
“What time did you leave the concert venue?”
“I don’t wear a watch,” Kristoffer said, slowly bending forward to rest his forehead weirdly on the table. He continued speaking with his mouth an inch or two above the tabletop. “But around ten thirty, quarter to eleven. I was outside her door two minutes later.”
“And then…?”
“The lights were on in her apartment. Caroline’s in Sweden, so I knew it had to be Julie. I stood on the street for a bit keeping watch; sang her a song.”
The Tenant Page 6