Three Dog Night (26 page)

Peter Boutrup. On the surface he was an ordinary man with a house, a job and a dog. But then there was everything you didn't see at first glance. It was under his skin like an extra layer which no one else had penetrated, with the possible exception of herself. There was still a lot she didn't know, but she sensed this much: they might be different, but they were also alike in many ways. They were both struggling to survive, climbing back to the life they had once had, at the edge of the abyss where nothing can grow except for hatred, impotence and fear. But it was hard. You didn't jump out of the pit you had landed in just like that. It required a superhuman effort and sometimes the cost was extraordinarily high. She knew it and feared it: the price she would have to pay for certainty about what had happened. Peter had already gone much further than she had. What price had he paid? she wondered. What had he given up to get his new life?

She rummaged through the boxes. Her grief had started to slop around in her brain again, making her almost seasick, as she flicked through Maria's drawings of Mummy and Daddy, of the house and the cat, of happy people with no worries.

Then she remembered the moleskin notebook in her bag. Something had made her take it with her, like the teddy bear. She found it and leafed through it, scrutinising the scraps of paper for the first time. A neatly folded piece of green paper attracted her attention and she unfolded it. She read it twice but she still didn't understand it. There was beginning to be so much she didn't understand about Erik.

She wondered about the letter and looked at the date: 20th July. Two days before the fatal helicopter trip. ‘Århus Chief of Police' the letterhead said. It was a receipt from a lost property office, issued to Erik, who would never in his life – or at least not in his new luxury life – have considered catching a train. But, black on green, it said he had handed in a briefcase he had found on the intercity train between Århus and Copenhagen.

Felix carefully put the receipt in her purse. Erik was far too busy and selfish ever to waste time handing in someone else's briefcase to a lost property office.

She started repacking the boxes. Little by little, her mind all a-whirl, she managed to close them and stack them on top of one another, and then she made herself another cup of tea. There was only one possible explanation for why Erik would have handed in that bag: it didn't belong to someone else. It belonged to him.

A
FTER VISITING
S
TINGER,
Peter said goodbye to Elisabeth and went down to the hospital cafeteria, where he had arranged to meet someone.

Ingrid Andersen waved from a table where she was sitting with a cup of coffee. She was in her nurse's uniform, but with a blue cardigan hung loosely over her shoulders and sensible shoes that could tolerate long walks up and down hospital corridors. She was in her late fifties, a little on the motherly side, and the nurse who had got closest to him during his admission. A kind of mutual understanding had developed between them. Some of the staff kept him at arm's length because he arrived flanked by two prison officers and with a conviction for manslaughter, but Ingrid had always treated him as the person she thought he was: a young male patient who could benefit from a little TLC plus some strictness and a healthy dose of humour, which, as far as she was concerned, was perhaps the most important weapon in the fight against all disease. To repay her humanity he had turned on the charm and listened to her talk about her marriage to a violent man, whom in the end she had kicked out, and her love for a dog that had hovered between life and death after cutting its paw. The dog, Bella, meant everything to her. It was a sentiment they shared.

‘How's your friend?'

‘Not very well. I've just been to see him.'

The doctors had brought Stinger out of the medically induced coma, but it was Peter's impression that it hadn't made much difference. Stinger simply lay in bed staring vacantly at the ceiling without saying a word.

‘And it's because of him you want to know something about that other patient? Brian? You know we take an oath of confidentiality, don't you?'

She had lowered her voice and he pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her.

They had to go through it, of course. He was prepared for that. He would have to beg and she would be reticent and insist on sticking to the rules. But eventually she would give in, he knew that. Just as he knew she'd already enquired about a close colleague who worked in the cancer ward. He knew her too well.

‘So what's it like to be a free man?' she asked. ‘And healthy?'

She sent him a critical but affectionate look.

‘You seem to be thriving,' she added.

He smiled and told her about his first year. About working for Manfred, restoring the house after four years of neglect due to his imprisonment, about the dog, the cliff, the countryside around him and working out with weights, jogging and trying to keep in shape, which he'd never done before.

‘And you don't smoke?'

‘I don't smoke, no.'

‘So have you found yourself a girlfriend yet to keep you on the straight and narrow?'

‘You know very well you're the only one for me.'

She smacked him with the back of her hand.

‘You're just as silly as you always were. I keep telling you: you need a woman in your life.'

He told her a little about Felix, and not just to satisfy her curiosity. Afterwards he told her about Stinger, Ramses and Brian while she sat erect in the chair, drinking coffee and listening attentively.

‘Alliances are formed in prison and, indirectly, Brian is the reason why my friend Stinger is now close to death and Ramses was found dead. So I need to know more about Brian's last days.'

‘I hope you're not getting yourself into trouble again?'

She sent him a stern look. He could have wasted hours telling her he'd never seriously been a part of the criminal fraternity, but it would probably have disappointed her, so he did what she hoped he would do: vehemently shake his head.

‘I've just been released. I've no intention of sabotaging my future.'

‘Good,' she said, seemingly satisfied, and readied herself to tell him what she knew. He could tell from the way she collected herself, pulling the cardigan more tightly around her shoulders, pushing the coffee cup slightly to one side and placing both palms on the table.

‘It's not often we have the honour of caring for patients from prison,' she said. ‘So, of course, my colleague could remember Brian. And I've asked her the questions you wanted me to.'

‘That's really very kind of you. I owe you a favour.'

She waved her hand dismissively.

‘Nonsense. Neither of us will be on the slippery slope for lack of a favour.'

He was about to express his gratitude again, but she interrupted him.

‘Wait and listen to what I've got to say.'

She looked around as though afraid the walls had ears. But the visitors in the cafeteria were busy eating and chatting, and all the sound was swallowed by the ceiling and the large room. Ingrid Andersen said: ‘You wanted to know who visited Brian and how he felt during his last days. Let's start with the latter: Annemette, my colleague, says he believed right until the last moment that he would survive and his cancer was something he could fight.'

Peter nodded. Ingrid continued.

‘As regards his visitors, she said, and I quote: “You would have to be an idiot to suppose they came from the Salvation Army.”'

Peter could vividly imagine the kind of clientele that had been at Brian's bedside. Ramses and Stinger were a couple of them and were probably among the most subdued.

‘According to Annemette, they needed their ears boxing,' Ingrid said. ‘But they got nowhere with her. Rules were rules. When one of them started smoking in the ward, she grabbed him and threw him out and confiscated a bottle of vodka while she was at it.'

‘The two of you could be twins,' said Peter, who had been caught smuggling in cigarettes himself. Ingrid had been furious and subjected him to a long lecture on the damaging effects of tobacco.

Her eyes sparkled with humour.

‘You can't pull the wool over Annemette's eyes. Anyway, she also told me that someone had been after Brian. One day when she entered the ward his face was all blue and there were bruises on his neck after an attempted strangulation.'

‘That sounds serious,' he said. ‘Attempted murder of a dying man.'

She nodded.

‘Annemette called security and they tried to find out who had been in the ward, but to no avail. Too many people coming and going. From then on, they were very careful as to whom they let in to see him, and staff were always present.'

She removed an imaginary speck of dust from her white uniform.

‘So that's how Annemette was able to tell me about what you call Brian's plan. That's what you wanted to know, wasn't it? What his plan was?'

Peter nodded. He was increasingly convinced that Brian had planned everything and that Stinger and Ramses were merely a means to an end. The treasure in the boat, if there ever was any, was never meant for the likes of them.

Ingrid looked at him. ‘You were right. He had a plan. He wanted revenge.'

‘On whom?'

‘Annemette had the impression it was whoever had grassed on him and sent him to prison. Whatever it was he was inside for.'

‘He robbed a security depot,' Peter said. ‘But it probably wasn't the only thing he'd done.'

She grabbed his arm.

‘Sometimes dying patients do something with the final strength they can muster. They shout or spit, or even get up to leave the hospital.'

She squeezed.

‘Annemette says Brian grabbed her by the arm like this. And then he stared at her, broke into a grin and said: “I'll have the last laugh!” And then he drew his final breath.'

‘W
E'VE GOT TWO
young women, killed in almost identical fashion, and a man fatally shot through the chest.'

Anna Bagger tapped her pointer on the whiteboard where photos of the three victims were displayed.

‘The women were strangled before their faces were removed. The pathologist describes the latter as primitive and brutal in its execution. The weapon could have been a sharp knife, but the killer isn't a professional.'

Mark wondered what line of business qualified you to be professional in this context. Surgeon? Butcher? Fur trapper?

‘The forensic psychiatrist describes the killer as callous.'

Anna Bagger switched the pointer to her left hand while taking a marker from the ledge under the board with her right. She drew a straight line from the name of one girl to the other with such force that Mark could hear the tip of the marker squeal against the surface.

‘Gry Johansen gave us Tora's name. She and two other girls hung out with the local prostitutes in the weeks leading up to Christmas.'

She circled the name of the faceless girl the divers had fished out of the harbour.

‘Tora Juel Andersen. Aged eighteen. Left school with average exam results and had been working in Føtex supermarket in Nykøbing, Mors, ever since. She lived at home with her parents, Anemarie and Ulrik Juel Andersen, until the summer of 2009 when she went to Århus, supposedly to share a flat with a girlfriend and start further education in Viby. Her parents have described her as a bright, unruly girl who felt trapped in Mors and wanted to be where the action was.'

‘Can you blame her?' one of the detectives said loudly.

Mark looked across the room in Grenå Police Station which the Århus team had commandeered and increasingly reminded him of a command centre in a war zone. He counted nine detectives in total, all sitting like attentive students. Plus Mark himself, who had been summoned at the crack of dawn. He didn't know what to make of it. Anna Bagger had, it seemed, completely changed her tune after learning about his illness, and he didn't like that. He preferred to be free of any sort of clinginess and just wanted to work on his own, but it wasn't going to happen today. She appeared to have decided that he would be coupled to the team, like an extra carriage for awkward passengers.

‘We're still awaiting Gry's autopsy report, but we've compiled witness statements which we need to review. In the meantime, there's enough to do with Tora.'

Bang, bang. The pointer hit the board again. Anna Bagger was wearing jeans and a cream silk blouse, and her eyes were a gleaming blue, without a trace of sentimentality. She explained: ‘Here we have some happy photos showing Tora with her friend Ida. But it's all a big fat lie. Listen to what Ida said when we interviewed her yesterday.'

Anna Bagger pressed a button. The hesitant voice of a young girl could be heard on the tape recorder: ‘I don't know where she lived. She never said. She was so secretive and in the end I just didn't care.'

The detective's question followed: ‘Are you aware her parents thought she was living in your flat?'

There was a silence. Mark Bille imagined the girl was nodding. The detective said: ‘You need to reply with a yes or a no.'

‘Yes.'

The girl muttered something inaudible. The detective asked her to speak louder.

‘She paid me five hundred kroner a month not to tell anyone. She said she wanted to be in control of her own life and that her family wouldn't understand.'

‘Do you know where she really lived?'

‘No. But she lived with her boyfriend.'

‘Do you know his name?'

‘She called him Swatch. I think she'd met him at a concert.'

‘What else do you know about him? Have you seen any photos of him?'

‘No.'

‘Didn't Tora ever talk about him?'

‘Not much.'

‘What nationality is he, do you know? Danish? Foreign?'