“Do you know how Gregers’s operation went? Would you be so kind as to check?” She sounded troubled, her words slurred from the sedative.
“I’ll ask right away. Just a sec.” Anette briskly left the room.
Jeppe pulled a chair over to the bedside and sat down. Took a deep breath and forced himself to look at the battered woman, at her injuries, her pain and suffering. Forced himself to put into words his share of the culpability.
“I… I’m sorry that I—”
To his horror, he felt his throat tightening and his voice choking up. Esther gently put her hand over his and squeezed. Jeppe bit his lip. Here he was, being comforted by the very victim he had failed to look after. He was more out of it than he had thought. Maybe he should take a sick leave again once this case was over. Get himself sorted.
Anette’s heavy footsteps came rumbling around the corner. Esther raised her head a little.
“Gregers is being prepped for anesthesia right now. Everything is looking good. Given the circumstances he’s feeling well and confident.” Anette lowered herself into an armchair with a groan.
“Thank you. And my dogs?” Esther asked.
“With a boarding service,” Jeppe replied, squeezing Esther’s hand in return. “They’re treated like kings with an outdoor exercise area and liverwurst sandwiches for dessert.”
“That’s a relief. Thank you!” She carefully lay back in the bed.
Jeppe freed his hand from hers and took out his notepad.
“Would it be okay if I asked you a few questions? If you’re up to it?”
Esther nodded and grimaced at the pain.
“Who was he? Did you recognize him?”
“Yes!” Her jaw was locked and her voice faltering. Still, she managed to seem calm and composed. “He’s your own fingerprint guy, the clean-shaven one with the glasses.”
Jeppe sent Anette a nod of confirmation: David Bovin.
“Where and how did he get ahold of you? We had two officers standing outside your door.” He could hear a touch of defensiveness in his own voice.
“By the Lakes, not far from here. He must have followed me from the hospital, when I visited Gregers, and just waited for his chance.”
She swallowed with difficulty.
“He came strolling toward me, quite casually. I tried to scream but couldn’t. Then he pushed something over my mouth that had a strong smell. The next thing I remember is waking up in that yard by the water. The sun was shining and that confused me, because I thought it was evening. I was feeling sick and confused, totally alone. There was scaffolding around the house, but no workers. Of course, it was the weekend. Could I have some water, please?”
He poured water into a glass with a straw and handed it to Esther. She drank, cleared her throat, and drank again. The water level in the glass barely seemed to move.
“He was furious, crazy. Tied my arms behind my back and forced me to squat at the edge of the water, then chewed me out and threatened me with his knife. Started hitting and kicking.”
“Chewed you out? But why?”
“He was of the conviction that I was his mother, that I had given him up for adoption at birth and was therefore to blame for the terrible childhood he had had. He called me the worst things…”
Esther paused, collected herself and refound her strength. Jeppe gave her space. He saw her cheeks grow wet without a sound.
“He talked about Julie and Kristoffer. Told me how he had tortured and killed them. He boasted about it, called them works of art, scorned them for their fear.” She closed her eyes. “It’s hard to talk about.”
Jeppe waited until she opened her eyes again.
“Did he say anything about why?” He too had to clear his throat. “Why he killed them, I mean?”
“No. I had to die because I was his mother and had let him down. But he didn’t say why Julie and Kristoffer…” A pleading sound escaped her, like a puppy begging. She tried to cough it away. “But he did mention Erik.”
“Erik Kingo?”
“Yes, he talked about their common mission or something like that. I’m a little unclear on what he meant. He was Erik’s assistant, he said, but this project, it had something to do with… with the dead. With me. He was going to slit me open, said I would be his last work of art, his masterpiece.”
The door swung open and a new nurse came in. Her cheeks were round and her blond hair hung in a braid down her back. She looked almost grotesquely healthy compared to the trinity around the bed.
“Esther, we have to prepare you for your scanning in a couple of minutes, so start saying goodbye to your guests.”
She sent Jeppe a cheerful wink and left the room. In hospitals the contrast between life and death is as sharp as a knife, but the transition is fluid. He looked at Esther. Despite the obvious marks from her encounter with death, she looked full of life. She would surely make it.
He let the door close after the nurse left before he asked, “Why didn’t he kill you? How did you get away?”
“I told him that I wasn’t his mother.”
“But how…?”
She took a deep breath and held it. Jeppe got the feeling that she was psyching herself up to tell a story she had known for a long time had to come out, but which still hurt to share.
“In 1966, I had a baby, who I gave up for adoption. I was seventeen and my parents thought being a mother would ruin my life… But this guy’s in his thirties, born in the eighties. There’s no way I can be his mother.” She fell quiet and for a minute just smoothed the blankets with her trembling hands.
“At first he didn’t believe me. He hit me, called me a lying whore. I told him I was only seventeen when I had the baby, asked him to do the math. That made him even angrier. He kicked me again and again and threatened to stab my eye out.” She cautiously touched a spot under her left eye.
“How did you get him to believe you?”
“I kept saying the date to him, over and over again, the date of the birth. March eighteenth, 1966. I have it engraved on a pendant that I always wear around my neck.” She brought her hand up to her collarbone to show them but was prevented by the bandages. “When he saw it I guess it sank in, that I couldn’t be his mother, that someone must have lied to him.”
She swallowed a couple of times and then continued with a contorted face, as if the memory she was recalling hurt even more than her physical injuries.
“I told him that the baby I gave birth to was a girl. One of the nurses in the maternity ward whispered it to me in secret, even though she wasn’t allowed: A little girl…”
“Then he stopped?”
“No. He hit me again, and I must have lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was here.”
Jeppe looked up and saw a cortège of orderlies and nurses enter the room. He and Anette got up and headed for the door, saying a hurriedly Get well soon to Esther on their way. Jeppe managed to give her a sad smile before they were pushed into the hallway and onward to the elevator.
On the ride down, his ears started buzzing. He covered them with his hands, but the buzzing wouldn’t stop.
* * *
“YOU’RE FREE TO go home once we’re done talking.” The paralegal put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. Her white shirt was partially unbuttoned in the midday heat in the office and the top of a lace hem peeked out.
Anette regarded Christian Stender from where she stood, leaning against the wall. He sat slumped, his face stony. Ulla Stender was mechanically caressing his arm, but he seamed unaware that she was even there. The skin on his face was shiny and beginning to have the same texture as mayonnaise that has been left out and formed a skin. There had to be something wrong with his blood supply.
Stender’s lawyer clicked a blue plastic pen a couple of times.
“What do you mean? Go home?” he asked hesitantly.
“The police are dropping the charges,” the paralegal explained, folding her hands on the table in front of her.
“But you have a confession from Mr. Stender…” The lawyer nervously touched the knot in his tie, then set his pen down.
“…and don’t plan on bringing any charges for perjury. Our detective from the investigative section has a few questions, but after that Mr. and Mrs. Stender are free to go home. Assuming, that is, that we can count on Mr. Stender’s cooperation.”
The lawyer flipped through his papers. “My client naturally demands to know the reason for…”
“Go home, Ditlev!” Stender was sagging like a limp vegetable. Even so, he still managed to project authority.
“What did you say?”
“If there aren’t any charges, I don’t need you, do I? You cost me eighteen hundred kroner an hour, so just go, you donkey!”
The lawyer sat for a moment, shocked, then gathered his things, briefly touched Ulla Stender’s shoulder, and left the room. She watched him go, then looked at Anette as if pleading for help.
“If you’re dropping the charges against me, that must mean you have another perpetrator,” Stender continued calmly. “Do you?”
Anette let go of the wall and walked to the table. Supporting herself on her hands, she looked him straight in his red-rimmed eyes.
“Yes. We have our killer. He’s still on the loose, but we know who he is and have a witness statement to back it up. The question now is, what made you confess to a crime that you didn’t commit?”
He slowly straightened up and lifted his hands over his head like a doomsday preacher.
“He who fights monsters must make sure that he himself does not become a monster…”
“We can’t go on with this”—Anette slapped the table hard—“this shit! How long are you planning to talk in circles at us? What is it worth to you not finding your daughter’s murderer? For fuck’s sake!”
“When you’ve been looking into an abyss for a long time, the abyss starts looking back into you.” Stender lowered his arms and nodded to himself. “Ulla, my darling, would you please go back to the hotel and pack our things so that we can go home?”
Ulla Stender looked like a woman who had been through seven kinds of hell in the last few days, and had only her checkered Chanel jacket to protect her against collapse. The prospect of escaping back home to Sørvad without the accompanying shame of being married to an insane serial killer seemed to give her a glimpse of hope. She got up, murmured, “Now, oh dear, well,” and hurried toward the door and the relief that lay beyond it.
Stender pointed his fleshy index finger at Anette and said, “Let me just make it clear that you can’t threaten me with anything. I have lost the thing that was dearest to me. Jail wouldn’t change that. Do you understand?”
He still spoke slowly and a little slurred, but she had no doubt that he meant what he was saying.
“My daughter was killed by a madman, who works for you, the police, a man who participated in the investigation and planted evidence right under your noses without your realizing it. David Bovin. I’m afraid my daughter was… infatuated with him. Julie was never a good judge of character. Too good-natured. She opened the door and he killed her, cut her, boasted about it on the internet. And you…” There were little white flecks of spit at the corners of his mouth. “You helped him on his way!”
“How did you come in possession of this knowledge?”
“Before you, you mean? How did you fail to be in possession of this knowledge is a more relevant question!”
Anette could see that rage was winning over his apathy.
“So you’re not going to tell us?”
“You ought to focus on more important things, like catching that lunatic.”
“You’re not going to tell us how you know who he is?” Anette persisted. Stender glared at her and said nothing. “Or let us know why you confessed, thus obstructing the investigation? Aren’t you interested in seeing the killer punished?”
Stender slapped the table with both palms, causing cups and ballpoint pens to rattle. “That was exactly what it was about,” he yelled. “The killer getting his punishment. Not just atoning a few years with home-cooked food and table tennis facilities. He was to be punished!” A furious rage gleamed in his eyes.
“And that would happen if you went to jail for him?” Anette folded her arms across her chest and tried to look calmer than she felt.
“I’m not saying another word. Wait, yes! I will say one more thing: It was about that devil being punished. But it was also about protecting someone more important than myself.”
“Who do you mean? Kingo? Was he the one who needed protection?”
“Ha! Erik is a big boy who is fully capable of looking after himself.” Stender wiped the sweat off his forehead with his hand. “No, I had to protect someone who is more important than all the rest of us put together. And now, now I’m not saying any more. You can decide for yourself if you want to keep me or let me go. It’s all the same to me.”
He put his hand over his stomach and sat, waiting calmly. Anette signaled for the paralegal to step out into the hall with her and closed the door behind them.
“Can we hold him?” she asked.
“That is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my time as a legal officer,” the paralegal said, looking shaken. “I mean, he’s completely… well, that was just totally—”
“Can we hold him?” Anette repeated.
The paralegal pulled herself together. “Only if we charge him with perjury and potentially also obstructing a police investigation. I didn’t think we wanted to do that.”
“We need to go through his phone records and emails and see what kind of deals he made and with whom,” Anette said.
“We’ll need to bring charges in order to keep him.”
“Fine,” Anette said with a nod. “Then that’s what we’ll do. We can always withdraw them when we’re done, so that he can go home and bury his daughter. That is, if he hasn’t done anything criminal.”
“Poor Ulla Stender,” the paralegal said, shaking her head.
“Poor all of us.”
* * *
ANETTE BURST INTO their office, pulled out a bag of pork rinds from her purse, and began crunching methodically in an inferno of chewing sounds. She seemed upset. Jeppe contemplated the roll of fat escaping the tight waistband of her pants, and wondered briefly if his partner ate for comfort when she was stressed, unlike himself, who lost his appetite altogether.
He pulled out his phone and texted again, this time writing Miss you! He did know. You don’t write that when you hardly know each other, especially not when you’ve already texted twice with no answer. It’s too desperate. He put the phone away and looked at his partner.
“So, who lured Christian Stender into taking the blame for his own daughter’s murder in exchange for doing something nasty to David Bovin?”
Anette responded, her mouth full, “The only one close enough to him or who we at least know has been close enough to Bovin is Kingo. Erik Kingo is the link between Bovin and Stender.”
Jeppe reached over and helped himself to a couple of pork rinds from the bag. “But why would Kingo hurt Bovin? Why not let us catch him and then deny any involvement in the case if he’s involved, that is?”
“Because Bovin knows too much. He’s dangerous.”
Jeppe regarded the pork rinds in his hand and had second thoughts. They looked just like what they were, dead skin.
“Can we bring Kingo in?” he asked. “What do we have on him?”
“As long as Stender isn’t talking, and Bovin hasn’t been caught, all we have is a bunch of conjecture,” Anette said, crunching and contemplating. “We know he’s involved, but how? Let’s bank on Bovin snitching when we have him. Soon.”
There was a knock on the door, and Sara Saidani leaned into the office with an eager look on her face. Jeppe couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her smile. It suited her.
“I have someone you need to meet. Do you remember Kingo’s old assistant? Jake Shami? He’s in room four.”
“Now?”
“Right now!”
Anette poured the last of the pork rind crumbs straight out of the bag and into her mouth as she walked out the door. Jeppe followed, shaking his head.
Saidani went down to the preliminary hearing to retrieve Christian Stender’s confiscated phone. Meanwhile, Jeppe and Anette took over interrogation room four, where a skinny young man sat nervously fingering his necklace. He had the darkest skin Jeppe had ever seen and was wearing a bright blue shirt with multicolored triangles all over it. It looked like a beautiful exotic bird had landed in their drab world. Anette closed the door so it wouldn’t fly away.
Jeppe introduced himself with a handshake and sat down at the table. Anette leaned against the wall and thrust her hands into her pants pockets. Business as usual.
“You were offered coffee? Good. I understand that Detective Saidani has told you what this is about?” Jeppe gave the young man a friendly smile.
“I knew this day would come. I’ve always said it, but no one wanted to listen. That man is fucking insane!” His fast Copenhagen street lingo received added emphasis from his erratic gesticulations.
“Who?”
“Erik motherfucking Kingo! Who else? The biggest asshole who ever walked on God’s green earth.”
“Why do you say that?” Jeppe asked. “What makes him an asshole?”
“Kingo manipulates people into doing whatever his sick mind comes up with. He tells you you’re a star, that you’re beautiful, misunderstood, that he’ll give you your big break. He looks inside you, pushes you to be the best you can be, and makes you love like you’ve never loved before. And then”—the young man formed his hands into the shape of a bowl, then jerked them apart—“he lets you fall. That’s what he did to me, that’s what he does to everyone who’s stupid enough to trust him.”
“Have you heard of David Bovin, the assistant he had after you?”
Jake Shami rested his hands behind his neck and rolled his eyes.
“Not only have I heard of him, I’ve met him! When I was released, the first thing I did was contact him. I wanted to warn the guy. It was a bit of a surprise to meet him because he was… well, quite different from me. But Kingo isn’t picky as long as he gets his way. Anyhow, he was already completely brainwashed by the time I met him, couldn’t be saved. Kingo had filled him with lies about me, so he just looked at me pityingly.” He shaped his hands into a cone in front of his mouth. “Hello, look at me, for fuck’s sake! Do I look like someone who would rape an old lady? It wasn’t my fucking idea. I was just so far into Kingo’s sick world.”
The Tenant Page 28