The Tenant

by Katrine Engberg

  “No, not as such,” Saidani said, eyeing him somberly. “Plus, Shami himself was the one to interrupt the rape, because he wasn’t able to go through with it. What might seem even more perverse is that the victim, Karen Jensen, was eighty-three years old at the time. Jake Shami was twenty-four.”

  Jeppe shook his head. Yet another oddly shaped piece that didn’t fit into the puzzle. Another potential red herring.

  “Where it gets really interesting is that Jake Shami gave an interview to Ekstra Bladet after he had served his sentence,” Saidani continued. “He claimed Erik Kingo made him attempt the rape. Kingo denied any knowledge of it and maintained that Jake was unstable and sick. But that idea is interesting, isn’t it?”

  Jeppe’s throat tightened in discomfort. Kingo as a mentor who exploits his position of power. Kingo as provocateur. Could he have pushed a protégé so far as to commit rape? Or murder? Was that really conceivable?

  “Will you find Jake Shami? I’m on my way to Nyhavn to question the tattoo artist, but let’s invite Shami in as soon as possible.”

  Saidani gave him the thumbs-up and turned back to her screen. Jeppe got up and turned his back on those brown eyes and their seductive beam. Oh, he was tired of being thrown off course in every area of his life, rootless and directionless, without the gut instinct that usually guided him. He went out to the kitchenette and got a Snickers from the candy machine. He pushed two thick ibuprofen tablets into one of the caramel pieces, and crunched them in his teeth along with the peanuts. He still had a lot to do before he was set to meet Anna tonight and he wasn’t going to show up battered and sore.

  Anna. Jeppe’s blood gushed like a spring creek when he thought of her. What the hell was he doing?! A witness, and a married witness, to boot. But she made him feel alive again, and right now that was the only thing that mattered. That and the case, of course.

  Life really can change in a day, an hour, a second. Jeppe caught himself fantasizing about Sunday brunch with Anna, laughter and kisses, putting on a pot of chili and having sex in the shower while it simmered.

  He was being silly; he knew that. But better silly than heartbroken.

  * * *

  WRITING A MURDER mystery is like trying to braid a spiderweb, thousands of threads stick to your fingers and break if you don’t keep your focus. Esther de Laurenti had developed an ingenious system of different-colored slips of paper, which hung in chronological order from left to right above her desk. She had sat many times letting the colors flicker before her eyes in an attempt to remember some important point that had just slipped her mind before she had managed to capture it in writing. Now she sat there again, this time without her fingers on the keyboard, and flipped mentally through her story in a backward attempt to understand not what lay behind the ideas but how a given person might have read them. It was alarming, to say the least.

  The pattern cut into the victim’s face, for example. In her head that had served as a macabre effect, meant to lead to the killer’s fascination with astronomy and constellations. But the real killer had elaborated on her original text. On her computer screen Esther pulled up the picture of Julie Stender’s lifeless face—she had had the presence of mind to take a screenshot of the picture from the online papers before it disappeared—and tried to disregard the fact that the grainy image of blood and death was real.

  The carving in no way resembled the Orion constellation she originally had in mind. The lines were round, unbroken parallels, closing in on one half of Julie’s face. A tornado with the eye at the center, a maelstrom. It was still a message, Esther sensed, not just abstract vandalism. What was the killer trying to convey?

  She closed her eyes. Stars. Orion. The hunter. Something dawned through the fog. She tried to relax, as Jeppe Kørner had asked her to do, not try to force the memories to come. Just sat quietly and looked out the window at the street life she knew so well.

  She thought of Julie sitting at the kitchen table a few weeks ago, showing off the new tattoo on her wrist. Two little stars, still red and swollen, and two words underneath. Two names, which she had recognized, but not thought about any further. What were they again? Her fingers trembling, she did a search for Orion and found them right away, Orion and Pleiades, the stellar myth of Orion’s amorous pursuit of seven sisters. He woos them but is in fact after their mother, wasn’t it something like that?

  Why had Julie gotten that tattoo? Had he made her do it?

  Esther wiped her nose, fetched a glass of water, and sat down again. Jeppe Kørner had asked for a report of the evening’s conversation topics at that infamous dinner party back in March. She took a sip of the water, wishing it were wine, and tried to remember.

  The weather had been nice, warm for early spring and sunny. Over dinner they had talked about that scandalously curated Nolde exhibit at the Louisiana Museum, about the new minister of culture, and about Zadie Smith’s latest book. Brilliant! Disappointing! The conversation had eventually broken up into smaller groups around the table and by the window, where Bertil, Anna Harlov, and Kristoffer met for smoking breaks every half hour. And then what? They had gotten drunk, of course. Bertil had taken off his shirt, and then Erik Kingo had done the same in protest of what he called gay people’s monopoly on the body. Esther and Kristoffer had sung for everyone after dessert, while Julie watched from the kitchen door, and then Anna and John had thanked her for a lovely evening and been the first to leave. The rest of the night was fuzzy; Esther remembered only fragments of conversations. She recalled peeing with the door open, Kristoffer mixing drinks with angostura bitters and sugar cubes, Erik Kingo leaning over Julie by the kitchen sink, that dirty dog, and Bertil hanging out the window singing opera.

  A memory, unpleasant, like realizing you’ve been robbed or have forgotten your best friend’s birthday.

  They had talked about children, young mothers, and adoption. Esther had no recollection of how they had gotten onto the topic. There was consensus that not enough children were forcibly removed from violent families in Denmark and that far too many had to live with daily abuse and incompetent parents. Kingo had argued in favor of forced castrations, the idiot. Always the self-appointed provocateur. Esther remembered with embarrassment how she had practically yelled at her guests, way too drunk, and how all of the sudden it had gotten quiet.

  She closed her eyes in suppressed embarrassment and heard her own voice like a hazy echo reverberating through the room. Heard herself explaining how she had been only seventeen, he a good deal older. He had said that she couldn’t get pregnant if he just pulled out in time. But as it turned out she could. It was fall, and she managed to hide her belly under sweaters and coats until she was sixth months gone. Her father…

  Esther could still remember that day today, remember the look in his eyes when the truth came out. The disappointment! She cringed but forced herself through the discomfort, back to the dinner party, trying to remember. Was this the point in the conversation when Bertil had knocked over his glass so they had been forced to remove the tablecloth? Was this when Julie had asked if it was okay if she left?

  Esther had wanted to keep the baby, but that was out of the question. It would be put up for adoption, otherwise she could find herself on the street without a cent, all alone with the child. In the end she just signed the adoption form. When her water broke and she arrived at the hospital, she was already in labor. It went fast. And it hurt. She had called her mother but was told that she had to handle it on her own. The midwife walked away with the baby as soon as it was born. Esther begged to see it, but they said it was too late. The baby was already gone. Then she was given a sedative. When she came home from the hospital, her father had bought her a gold watch. They never spoke of it again.

  Esther gasped for air in an unanticipated contraction of pain. The memory was still painful more than fifty years later. Why had she even talked about it that night? Her guests had gazed at her, eyes fogged with drink and sympathy. Frank had come over and picked her up in a
bear hug, as if after thirty years of friendship he only truly understood her just now. But she had instantly regretted her openness. Some burdens don’t become easier to bear just because you share them.

  Esther sat with her eyes fixed on the brick facade across from her. This room had been her bedroom when she was a child. The view had been the same her whole life. Her parents were long dead, men had come and gone, but Esther had stayed. She had traveled, sometimes for months at a time, but she had never moved. Something within her had calcified at the age of seventeen and never begun to flow freely again. In all those years, she had never seen her child. Either the child didn’t know she existed or had just never wanted to meet her, she didn’t know.

  She had wanted it.

  The first few years after giving birth she had suffered from inexplicable chest pains, violent and incapacitating, but they had abated over time. She had never had other children. She already had a child.

  Esther went into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and made some fresh coffee in the French press. Jeppe Kørner seemed convinced that that dinner party meant something critical to the murder case, but how? How could that night have influenced the sequence of events that led to Julie’s death? And Kristoffer’s?

  Had someone met someone else that night and formed an unholy alliance—the thought was ridiculous! Just as ridiculous as Esther’s confession having aroused anything other than compassion among her guests. She sat down with her coffee and glanced at the colored slips of paper on the wall. Constellations and unwanted children, wasted lives. She wiped her cheeks and took a deep breath.

  Then she opened Google Docs and began to write.

  You expect something from me that I can’t give. Recognition, understanding, maybe even forgiveness.

  No, I don’t know who you are. The question is, why is it so urgent for you that I should know? If you want to be seen and recognized, you also want to be found out. Have a light shone on your crimes. Do you think you’ll gain my approval once I know your identity? That we will all put our arms around you and finally understand? That justice will prevail and you will be carried through the city on a palanquin?

  What have I done to you?

  What have I done, that you have had to kill two innocent young people, just because they were close to me? Because I was fond of them?

  I have been racking my brains for unforgiveable deeds in my past and have found them, by God. Of course I have behaved badly, hurt people in my lifetime. But to such an extreme degree? You have to help me. Maybe then I can understand. And we can settle the score once and for all.

  CHAPTER 27

  The afternoon was still young, but Nyhavn’s bumpy cobblestones were already littered with plastic beer cups. Groups of youngsters hung out on the dock among the old wooden schooners, dangling their bare feet over the water. Tourists perpetuated the idyll with smartphones and big smiles on their way to take a harbor cruise. How beautiful the whole thing was, but so expensive.

  Around the corner, on Toldbodgade, was a sign advertising a tattoo parlor. The shop’s glass door was open and Jeppe took two steps down onto a black-and-white-checkered floor. The place was hot, and it echoed with 1950s rock and roll. The walls were covered with heavy, red velour curtains and close-ups of tattoos on pale skin. A tired English bulldog lay in one corner and didn’t even bother to look up when Jeppe entered. After he stood there for a minute, a skinny woman with raven-black hair stepped out from behind one of the curtains. Her bangs were bobbed and she wore the kind of earrings that stretch out the earlobe from within.

  “Hi, are you the one with the cover-up of some old Celtic tat on your shoulder? I’ll be done in about five, maybe seventeen minutes. Go take a walk in the sun and come back if that’s—”

  “Detective Jeppe Kørner. I’m here to talk to… Tipper?”

  “He’s with a customer,” the woman said. “Can it wait?” She saw the no in his eyes before he even shook his head.

  “Tipper!” she called through the velour curtain. “You’ve got a visitor. It’s the police.”

  She disappeared again without so much as a nod. A moment later, a deep voice sounded from the velour depths.

  “Hey, I can’t really walk away from this. You’re going to have to come in here.”

  Jeppe cautiously pulled the curtain aside and peered into a tiny back room. Draped on an upholstered bench lay a woman with naked buttocks and legs, lit up in the dark under a dazzling work light. Her calves and what was visible of her back were covered with a jumble of red, blue, and green tattoos. Leaning over her left thigh sat a powerfully built young man with a full beard and a nose ring, working with a buzzing needle.

  “We’re right in the middle of a long session, and I don’t want to prolong Melissa’s suffering here, so if it’s okay with you, we’ll talk while I work. You can sit in that chair there.”

  Jeppe looked at the stool behind the upholstered workbench and hesitated.

  “Melissa’s cool, she’ll just turn up the Foo Fighters. Have a seat!” The customer, seemingly dozing with earphones on, gave Jeppe the thumbs-up.

  He sat down. Naked buttocks rocked back and forth between him and the tattoo artist.

  “I may still need to talk to you in private,” he pointed out.

  “In that case, it will have to wait until I’m done with this.”

  Jeppe could compel Tipper, if it came to that, but he knew that things would probably run smoother if he didn’t. He could hear the sound of rock drums seeping out of the woman’s earphones. This would have to be private enough for now.

  “I’m here to ask you about one of your customers, Julie Stender, who was murdered a couple of days ago.”

  Tipper was hunched over, working in a nonergonomic position, his face only a few inches from his client’s pale thigh. The buzzing needle rested steadily between his plastic-gloved fingers.

  “Yeah, I read about that in the papers. Too bad, she was really sweet, Caro’s friend.”

  “Caroline Boutrup?”

  “Caro’s one of my close friends. She apparently was the one who recommended Julie to come here for her first tat.” He spoke casually as the needle slid over the customer’s skin.

  “Was it a few weeks ago? Mid-late July…”

  Tipper thought for a moment. “That sounds right. I can check the system in a bit and find the exact date. Couldn’t have been more than two weeks ago.”

  “Was there a story behind the design? Did you discuss it? Tell me everything you can remember.” Jeppe caught himself staring, hypnotized, at the buzzing needle.

  Tipper took a while to think and then cleared his throat.

  “She was kind of a bread-and-butter customer, you know? Stars and sloped writing. Classic fashion tat, a conservative choice for an ink virgin. But she was nice enough.”

  A smell of chemicals and hot metal filled the stuffy room. The rhythmic buzz of the needle reminded Jeppe of some irritating song. He started to sweat.

  “I think I took a picture of it,” Tipper said. “It must be hanging on the wall out by the cash register somewhere.”

  Jeppe stepped through the velour curtain out into the light and greedily breathed in the slightly cooler air. He stepped closer to the many pictures of naked, reddened skin below raised blouses and turned-away faces. There were lots of feathers as well as stars, anchors, wings, skulls, trees, angels, and demons. Some of the tattoos were in full color, others just outlined in black or blue, the faceless bodies fat or thin with short necks and bald heads, long braids and stringy arms.

  He found the picture of Julie’s tattoo under a birdcage that filled someone’s back from neck to tailbone. Orion & Pleiades in neat, swoopy handwriting, and two little stars on a slender woman’s wrist. Jeppe photographed the image and stuck his head back into the velour cave.

  “Did she come alone?” he asked Tipper.

  “Yeah. She was quite talkative, bubbly, almost. But then she also told me she was in love. Said the stars were to symbolize her and her
beloved.”

  The Mysterious Mr. Mox! A man she had known for just a few weeks. A man none of her friends or family had met. A man they now couldn’t find.

  “Did she talk about him? Try to remember if she said anything about him.”

  “Yeah, well, she didn’t say that much about him specifically. I guess she mentioned an exhibition he had. Photography, I think it was. That was about it. But he did come pick her up.”

  Jeppe’s heart stopped.

  “He picked her up? Did you see him?”

  “Sure. He was one of those squeaky-clean guys. Short hair, clean-shaven with glasses, no tats. Old. Too old for her, anyway. He just popped in to pick her up, so I didn’t get such a close look. But she kissed him and showed him the tattoo, as if he had to approve it. He was the one who paid, too. Cash.”

  Jeppe leaned against the wall. A witness, an eyewitness! Even if the shop didn’t have video surveillance, Nyhavn was so full of cameras that they would surely find footage of him. He slammed his fist against the wall, startling Tipper.

  They had him now.

  * * *

  “KEEP THE CHANGE!”

  Anette slammed the taxi door behind her and started up the steep stairs of headquarters. She had slept for most of the two-hour flight home from the Faeroe Islands and was in reasonably good shape, apart from a stiff airplane-neck and a faint tinge of nausea after one too many stale cookies. A dream lingered in her memory, about babysitting kids who kept running off in a shopping mall, disappearing between the legs of grown-ups, but she was good at shaking that kind of thing off. After a cup of coffee and a bit of work, the dream would have evaporated altogether.

  The personnel room was humming with activity when she walked in. Jeppe sat at a table, handing out orders to their colleagues. He spoke animatedly and gesticulated like a conductor.

  “Falck, you obtain the recordings from all the surveillance cameras in Nyhavn and Toldbodgade from July twenty-second between one o’clock and five o’clock p.m., and put together a team to watch them, looking for Julie Stender together with a man!”