The Tenant

by Katrine Engberg

  Jeppe’s stomach turned. “Thank God he couldn’t do that in reality.”

  “No, but sadly that is probably what he tried to do.” Falck looked down at his round belly, and Jeppe remembered Falck had an adult daughter about the same age as Julie.

  “How does the manuscript end?”

  “The last passage is the one where the perpetrator cuts the pattern. You want me to read it aloud?”

  Jeppe shook his head and said, “No, thanks, that I’ve already read. No description of how he gets away? Or who he is?”

  “No. But if we take Esther’s statement as the truth, then she doesn’t know. Julie Stender only revealed that he’s older than her and wears glasses. It’s not even certain that the man she met on the street is identical with the killer. I mean, if someone read the manuscript and decided to copy it, he could be anyone at all.”

  “I’m just trying to understand,” Jeppe said, massaging his temples. “Esther made the story up in two rounds: first the part about the young woman who moves to the capital and meets a man… And three weeks later the description of the murder itself?”

  “Precisely.”

  “The killer could certainly have inspired Esther, through Julie, to write the first part and then found his own inspiration to commit the murder from the second part. Reality, book—book, reality.” Jeppe sighed. “It’s starting to get quite convoluted, this is. No one in the real world thinks like that. Devious like that.”

  But even while uttering the words Jeppe knew that wasn’t true. Perpetrators will go through fire and water to cover their tracks. It just aggravated him that there weren’t any solid clues. This investigation was beginning to feel like climbing a thawing glacier. His hands kept slipping, his back hurt, and he felt a little sorry for himself.

  “Jepsen!” Anette slapped Jeppe’s shoulder, making him jump in his chair and nearly choke on his candy. “Good Lord!” she exclaimed. “He’s a piece of work, that Stender. Totally flipped out and threatened to call his lawyer when I asked about Julie’s abortion. Wanted to know who had gossiped. Yes, gossiped, that’s what he fucking called it. Besides that, he had a totally different account of the story. He’d only done what any other concerned father would do to protect the apple of his eye. And he denies ever having contact with Hjalti Patursson after he moved back to the Faeroe Islands.”

  Jeppe got on his feet and nodded to Falck to indicate that they were done for now. Falck helped himself to one last candy and wandered away.

  “That’ll be hard to verify.”

  “I’m still trying to get ahold of Hjalti Patursson’s mother, who, according to the local police, is still going strong somewhere in the Faeroes. Maybe she has something to add.” Anette grabbed the bag of candy and took over where Falck had stopped. “By the way, the Stender family is going back to Sørvad on Monday. Nyboe has released the body, the burial will be at Sørvad Church on Thursday.”

  Jeppe’s cell phone buzzed on his desk. He recognized the main number of NCTC. Clausen sounded short of breath.

  “Hi, Kørner. Bovin found a match for the handprint on the doorframe, the one with the traces of corn starch from a latex glove.”

  “Already? That was fast.” Jeppe pulled over a notepad and opened a drawer to find a pen.

  “That’s right. Bovin doesn’t have authority to make a decision of this magnitude, but two of us forensic techs checked the material, and the match holds. We found fourteen details in the print, and, as you know, it only takes ten to be absolutely sure, so there’s no doubt. We have a match.”

  “And who is it?” Jeppe looked up and met Anette’s attentive eyes. No one breathed.

  “There’s no doubt. The print on Julie Stender’s doorframe was made by Kristoffer Gravgaard.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “This is where Agnete’s merman and his seven sons wait for Agnete to come back. But she never comes,” Esther de Laurenti said as she pointed at the murky water of the canal that mirrored the copper-green tower of the parliament building. “How lovely it is to have an underwater statue,” she continued. “Somehow it’s so very Danish to hide art underwater. I often walk by with the dogs in the evening and say good night to the merman. Can you see that one of the sons has fallen to the bottom? A canal tour boat ran into him.”

  Jeppe glanced noncommittally into the dark water. The sun was low over Christiansborg Palace, transforming the facades along Gammel Strand into a golden-age painting. It was one of those summer nights when people grin sheepishly at passers-by because they are bubbling with happiness. If Jeppe was bubbling, it was from frustration. A moment ago Thomas Larsen and the rest of the team had gone to arrest Kristoffer at work. The handprint placed him in the apartment and indicated that he had worn gloves, which, given the nature of the case, was highly suspect. Although not conclusive. In principle, he could have very innocently helped Julie paint a wall on a different day. They still needed a confession to have a case.

  Thomas Larsen’s triumphant look when Jeppe informed the team of the handprint was stuck in his mind like a scab he couldn’t help picking. He had tasked Larsen with bringing Kristoffer in, giving the excuse that he himself had promised to return to Esther de Laurenti her computer and also needed to ask her a few more urgent questions. Everyone knew that as team leader he should be there to arrest a suspect; it was highly irregular for him not to go. It might even have consequences for him later on. But Jeppe was indifferent. Or rather, he was ashamed at being wrong; he felt like a failure. So much for gut feeling. Besides, he still thought it was the worst idea in the world to bring Kristoffer in like this. He was convinced the young man would shut up like a moody teenager if he were forced and treated roughly.

  He pushed aside his gloomy thoughts and tried to concentrate on his questions for Esther.

  “Why specifically Julie?” he asked. “You could hardly have gotten to know her that well. What made her interesting enough to write a book about?”

  Esther tugged on the leashes to call her dogs back from a couple of French-speaking girls who had been petting them for several minutes. She looked like someone who had not slept particularly well for the last couple of nights. Her short hair looked unwashed, and her face was pale. She nodded at a free bench, and they went over to sit down.

  “Well, I wasn’t writing a book about Julie,” Esther explained. “I was writing a crime novel, where the victim was inspired—strongly inspired—by Julie. It wasn’t a biography. But to answer your question, there were several reasons. The most important was that Julie had a je ne sais quoi quality that created images in my head and got stories going. Secrets, I suppose. People who carry around grief or who have faced great challenges are more interesting than the ones with easy, happy lives.”

  Jeppe adjusted his watch, suddenly impatient to get away from this investigation and his own racing thoughts. He really wanted to go home and down a sleeping pill and have some peace for once.

  “What challenges?” he asked. “Are you referring to the unwanted pregnancy with the drama teacher?”

  Esther de Laurenti eyed him sorrowfully. “Certain things one ought to be allowed to take to the grave.”

  “I’m afraid I need to emphasize”—Jeppe looked at her earnestly—“how important it is that you tell us all you know about Julie. Anything, big or small, could be a significant help to the investigation.”

  To his alarm, he saw her eyes fill with tears. He looked out over the water and waited for her to discreetly wipe her cheeks and nose on the sleeve of her jacket. She cleared her throat a couple of times, nodded, and smoothed the folds of her apricot-colored skirt.

  “You obviously already know Julie got pregnant when she was fifteen,” Esther said. “It was an accident, of course, and the circumstances were not, I should say, optimal. But Julie actually was fond of him—his name was Hjalti, and he was very much in love with her. She wanted to keep the baby but knew that her father would oppose it, so she waited to tell anyone about the pregnancy until she couldn’t hide i
t anymore. She was more than three months along before her father found out…”

  Esther searched for the right words, wiped her cheeks, and cleared her throat again.

  “Well, he totally lost it,” she continued. “Threatened to kill Hjalti if she had the child. Julie told me how he destroyed the whole living room around her, knocking over shelves and throwing things out the window. She was terrified. Locked herself in her room and stayed there for two days without opening the door. She described how she had to sneak to the bathroom at night when the others were sleeping. On the third day she finally came out and they drove to a private hospital in Aarhus where her father obviously had connections. Normally the doctors would never allow an abortion after week twelve. But Julie had one under general anesthesia. When she woke up the baby was gone and she had an IV line in her arm. She missed several months of school, was tutored at home, and recuperated with some family in Switzerland. The official explanation was a severe depression, and even that was a huge blow to the family’s status. When she finally came back to school, Hjalti was gone. She never heard from him again.”

  Jeppe couldn’t think of anything to say. He tried to picture what had gone on between the pregnant fifteen-year-old and her father. He must have been beside himself with rage, but more than anything, that would have given him motive to kill the teacher. Not his daughter. Never his daughter.

  “The abortion nearly broke Julie,” Esther continued. “She was deeply unhappy for a very long time. But she came around. When you’re young, you can overcome most things. She distanced herself emotionally from her father but continued living at home so he would feel her contempt. That was her punishment. And it worked. He would jog after her like a wounded puppy, taking out his anger on his wife and employees instead. And for her part Julie subjected all boys who were interested in her to scorn and ridicule. She was an unbelievably sweet and charming girl, but I have no doubt that she could manipulate men until they were on the ropes.”

  “Was it the duality that interested you?” Jeppe asked, trying to get at the heart of what she was saying. There was something important to this, but what?

  “Yes,” Esther replied. “At any rate that was a significant part of it.” She fell silent and looked down as if to gather her courage. “I once went through a—what shall we call it—a similar chain of events.”

  His ears perked up.

  “An unwanted pregnancy, a forced decision, grief. It was a different time back then, but in many ways the experience—to use a really misleading word—was parallel. So, yes, I did find Julie fascinating, because she was carrying a heavy cross, but also quite simply because I saw myself in her.” She paused for a moment. “Should we walk a bit?”

  They got up from the bench and strolled along Gammel Strand, past Krog’s seafood restaurant and the construction site for the subway extension.

  The dogs darted happily back and forth across the sidewalk in front of them.

  “What did Julie tell you about the man she had met recently?”

  “The one I made the murderer in my book?” Esther asked. “Not much. She could certainly be outspoken when it happened to suit her, but not about him. Maybe he meant more than her boyfriends usually did. That’s how it seemed anyway.” Esther pulled the dogs toward her so that a group of tourists with cameras could pass. “Let me see, I need to be careful not to blend reality and fiction… I did make him into my own character, so it can be hard to remember what came from Julie and what I invented myself. Hmm… as I’ve said, he was older than her, had a nice face, I think she called it, and wore glasses. She met him on the street just like in the book, that wasn’t something I made up. Oh yes, he gave her a note that read Star Child on it, and that made a profound impression on her. You see, her mother used to call her just that, it was a thing they shared. She hung the note up on the fridge, I saw it with my own eyes.”

  Jeppe waited for a rented bike to wobble across the sidewalk with two laughing boys on it. The note wasn’t up on the refrigerator anymore, so maybe the killer had taken it with him, too? Star Child?

  “What else…,” she continued. “Well, she called him nerdy. And, yes, she said that he had an artistic soul and that she felt connected to him. That was pretty much it.”

  “An artistic soul. I wonder what she meant by that.”

  “Emotional, creative, sensitive? Isn’t that what people mean when they say things like that?”

  “Do you think he was… an artist?” Jeppe could hear the skeptic tone in his own voice.

  “Well, Julie grew up in an environment with art and artists, so we can certainly presume she was attracted to that milieu.”

  One of the dogs started pooping in the middle of the sidewalk, and Jeppe walked on a couple of paces to distance himself from the event. Esther de Laurenti pulled out a crumpled little plastic bag. While she bent over and scraped up the poop, she asked under her breath, “Do you think Kristoffer killed her?”

  Jeppe quickly walked back to her and responded in a hushed voice by putting the question back to her. She weighed her words, but he could tell that she had thought this through a thousand times over the past day.

  “No, I don’t think Kristoffer has anything to do with the murder,” she said. “Not because I know him and am fond of him, but because he generally isn’t interested enough in other people to want to kill them. Does that make sense? I’m pretty much the only person he’s attached to. He may have been fascinated by Julie, but the Kristoffer I know is much more preoccupied with his own feelings than with the objects of those feelings. He’s a bit unusual but absolutely peaceful.”

  Jeppe saw no reason to inform Esther that the police were picking Kristoffer up at that very moment. He walked with her and the dogs back to the corner of Klosterstræde, said good night, and continued to his parking spot by Tivoli.

  The car was uncomfortably hot, and he opened all the windows as he pulled out and turned right toward Central Station and then down Ingerslevsgade by the railway tracks. At a red light his phone rang, and Anette’s voice boomed from the car’s speakers.

  “Where are you?” she said, agitated.

  “On my way home. Everything okay?”

  “We found Kristoffer. You need to come to the theater right away.”

  “What’s happened?” The light switched to green. Jeppe slammed on his hazard lights, ignoring the car honking behind him.

  “He came to work at six this evening, but by the time the performance started two hours later, he was gone. None of his coworkers had any idea where he could be, so we started searching the theater. It’s a big place. We just found him a few minutes ago. In the chandelier.”

  Jeppe threw the beacon onto the roof with his left hand, and spun the car around.

  CHAPTER 17

  Jeppe drove down Tordenskjoldsgade and parked under the mosaic roof, right in front of the queen’s private entrance to the Danish Royal Theatre. Well-dressed patrons were trickling out of the theater’s doors, as if a chocolate fondant was spilling its insides out onto sidewalks and bicycle paths. A larger contingent of news vehicles was already blocking the narrow lane behind the theater, and frantic journalists were running among the theatergoers with camera crews on their heels to solicit eyewitness reports of the evening’s drama. A real murder in a theater will always be a better story than anything performed onstage. So good, it might one day become a play of its own.

  He ran past the journalists, fighting his way against the flow up the stairs and beneath the red lights of the main entrance into the theater. Shouts echoed through the lobby from people who were frantically searching for their coats at the unmanned coat check. Jeppe found a door into the auditorium itself. There, leaning against one of the red velour seats, stood Falck, peering up at the ceiling.

  “Why haven’t you locked down the theater? You’re letting the killer get away!” Jeppe yelled.

  Falck lifted his broad foreman’s hand to stop him.

  “Kørner, there wasn’t anything we co
uld do. Thirteen hundred people sat here watching the ballet tonight. We encouraged everyone in the audience to get in touch if they’d seen or heard anything significant, but it’s not likely. This theater is practically two theaters in one—the front, which the audience sees, and then an enormous backstage. We are withholding the staff but aren’t optimistic. They were all busy putting on the show, and this place has more rear exits than Christiansborg Palace.”

  Jeppe calmed himself. Of course, Anette and the rest of the team had evaluated the circumstances and made the right decision.

  “Where is he?”

  Falck pointed straight up in the air. Jeppe followed the line of his finger up to the beautifully decorated ceiling of the Old Stage, full of cloaked angels and gilt ornamentation. A faint clinking broke the silence. Jeppe trained his eyes on the enormous crystal chandelier that lit the room from its position in the middle of a circular golden molding. He saw the chandelier sway and looked questioningly at his colleague.

  Falck nodded and said, “It appears that Nyboe’s team has also arrived. Let me take you to the scene.”

  He led Jeppe through a small door next to the stage. Back in Jeppe’s theater-school days, when he and Johannes had gone to see a play almost every week, Jeppe had often sat in the audience and fantasized about a life on the other side of that door. A life on the stage.

  Behind the door a group of stagehands was gathered around the stage manager’s control panel. They were all dressed in black, some of them with big bellies and white hair, others young and slim. The mood was subdued but calm, and a bag of licorice was being passed around as if they were all just on a break. It obviously took more than a dead body to shake the stagehands. Thomas Larsen was standing a bit farther away, out of hearing range, busy questioning one of the white-haired crew members.

  Jeppe nodded to the men and cast a sidelong glance onto the actual stage, where a dark cave set towered. A group of ballet kids who wore their hair in tight buns and carried big shoulder bags was ushered across the stage by an adult. One of them whined a little, and Jeppe looked at his watch. They were up late.