The Forgotten Girls (23 page)

L
OUISE STOOD FOR
a minute and watched them as they disappeared into the woods. Then she slowly started walking toward the main house. She had seen Bodil’s back as a female officer led her, and knew that the most difficult interrogation of her life was waiting for her inside.

She stopped on the stairs and closed her eyes for a second. How many times had she driven by the house? She had sat in their large yard, drinking lemonade. And all that time, Lise and Mette had been in the barn. Louise tried to shake it off but it was too surreal; too devastating to accept.

Then she went inside, closing the front door behind her. They were sitting in the living room, the officer in an armchair and Bodil on the couch.

Louise didn’t know what to say as she pulled up a chair at the head of the coffee table and noted that the police officer from Holbæk had gotten out her Dictaphone. She suddenly
had difficulty thinking of an opening and was grateful when the female officer started to read Bodil’s rights to her while Louise got herself situated.

“Do you want to proceed?” the officer asked and turned toward Louise.

“Yes.” She looked at Bodil, who focused on her, waiting for her to speak.

“You’ll probably have to take me back in time, Bodil, if I am to try to make sense of some of the things I’ve seen out here today,” she began. “I’ve spoken with your old neighbor, Edith Rosen, who told me about what happened to Jørgen when he was a child.”

“What I did to him.” Bodil corrected her without flinching. “Mother was right. I should have watched out for him better.”

Louise tried to hide her disgust. Their speculation about Bodil was right. Looking into her eyes, she continued. “Edith Rosen also told me what happened in 1958. Were your parents aware of what your brother did to you?”

Bodil nodded and her eyes darkened. It took her a minute before she was ready.

“The first time, I cried so hard that I accidentally ran to Mother’s room. My father wasn’t home,” she started. “I was frightened and I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. My mother just said that I was lucky to have a life. And she told me not to mention it to my father because it was my own fault that Jørgen turned out that way.”

“She couldn’t possibly have meant that you should continue to be victimized because he couldn’t control himself,” Louise objected.

“We didn’t really talk about that. I knew he couldn’t help it. He became like that when he hurt his head. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt me.”

“What about your father?” Louise asked. “Didn’t he ever find out?”

“Yes,” she said. “But that wasn’t until later.”

“Your mother didn’t say anything to him?”

Bodil shook her head. “Father never blamed me for the accident, and when he realized what was going on, he and one of my teachers arranged for me to go into service as a maid for a doctor at Ebberødgård. I saw my father now and then but even once Jørgen was gone, after our neighbor complained, I couldn’t come home because Mother couldn’t come to terms with him being sent away.”

She paused for a second, staring into the wall across the room.

“Then when my father died, she brought Jørgen back home. And I’ve often thought that things probably weren’t easy for her, either, in the subsequent years.”

Silence descended. The ticking from the wall clock boomed.

“When Mother fell ill and was on her deathbed, I received a letter from her, asking me to come,” Bodil continued quietly. “She wanted me to promise that I would take care of Jørgen after she was gone, and that I would never put him in a home. If I didn’t agree, she would disown me. But her threats were unnecessary because I always knew that one day it would be my turn to take care of him. So I was prepared. By that time I was working at Eliselund, and the consultant doctor and I had come to an agreement that my brother could secretly move into the basement when the time came.”

“We spoke with Lillian Johansen. She told us how you used to let him use the girls at Eliselund,” Louise said. “But she couldn’t explain how you managed to remove the twins from the institution.”

Bodil looked at her quizzically as if she didn’t quite understand.

“We drove them, of course,” she said with a sweeping gesture. “Ernst had a car. We always used it when we wanted to get away together for a bit.”

“Together?” said Louise. “Were you and the doctor having an affair?”

Bodil folded her hands back in her lap. “I guess you could call it that. We benefited from each other in various ways. He helped me with my brother and I was there for him. But I broke it off after we moved out here with Jørgen’s girls. He became very angry and accused me of abandoning him.”

“Did he take his own life because of the breakup?”

“I don’t believe so,” she said dismissively. “He was never good at standing on his own two feet. But he probably also realized that things were bound to get difficult when his paperwork was reviewed in connection with them closing down Eliselund.”

Louise was dumbfounded at how easily Bodil had sacrificed the consultant doctor.

“Weren’t you worried that he would reveal your secret?”

“No,” Bodil answered, “why would I be? He was the one who put his name on the death certificates. And besides, he knew just as well as I did that they would be better off here,” she went on. “After Eliselund closed down, the residents were to be transferred to other institutions. Who knows how things would have been for them, or if they would have been allowed to stay together?”

She was quiet for a moment before continuing in the same neutral voice.

“We’ve always been able to offer them security and stability. These people just function best like that, and as long as Jørgen gets his psychological and physical needs met, he is a picture of good nature. Just the way you know him.”

Louise opened her mouth to say something but didn’t have the chance before Bodil went on.

“Mette never progressed past being a little girl, and my brother always took good care of her. After he finished with the other one, he always went to sit with Mette and would brush her long hair. He was always so gentle, making sure that he didn’t hurt her. They got along well, the three of them.”

“He never touched Mette?” Louise asked.

Bodil shook her head.

“She wasn’t a woman. She didn’t arouse the urge in him.”

“Not even after Lise disappeared?”

“He didn’t see her that way. He would never go after a child.”

“But he could have gone to you?” Louise said, checking that the Dictaphone light was still on. The female officer was gazing out the window. It was impossible to tell if she was even paying attention.

Bodil bent her head without answering, so Louise continued.

“Was that why you didn’t intervene when he brought home the female runner?” she pushed. “So you could avoid it?”

It was a little while before Bodil finally nodded, and despite all of Louise’s disgust she suddenly felt sorry for the woman. It wasn’t just Jørgen’s life that was ruined that day when the car hit him. It was Bodil’s life as well. She’d had to shoulder a responsibility that she was much too young for, and their mother did her part to remind her of her guilt. There had never been any room for a normal life and normal emotions.

“What about the time when Jørgen lived with your mother?” she asked instead of digging deeper.

“Mother covered all of his needs,” she answered briefly. “She would never run the risk of him helping himself outside the home. She was very good at nurturing his gentle side.
Just look at the flowers—that was something the two of them shared. They would pick flowers from the garden and then sit and enjoy the sight of them. It was a diversion for him to help take the focus off the other things. It’s the same thing when we paint the plates.”

Louise thought of the two yellow roses that Jørgen had cut for her that ended up as a table decoration at Camilla’s wedding dinner. Now she wished she’d thrown them away.

“Didn’t Lise and Mette ever try to get away from here?”

Bodil looked at her in surprise.

“No, why would they?”

“Because nobody wants to live in a barn.”

“But they couldn’t stay in here,” she exclaimed. “I sometimes lock off Jørgen’s section after dinner. Evening time is when he becomes most restless and then it’s better to keep your distance.”

Louise was aware that injuries to the frontal lobes could also result in a violent level of aggression, but she didn’t realize how severely it had affected Bodil’s brother.

“We spent our days together,” Bodil continued. “It was never my impression, though, that the girls didn’t like living here. In the winter we would put heaters out there so it didn’t get too cold. Jørgen doesn’t like that, either, when he goes over there.”

“So he would just go to the horse pen whenever he felt the urge?” Louise asked, feeling provoked by how Bodil tried to portray their everyday life.

“That was most practical. Whenever the urge came over him, it was best if it was addressed quickly.”

Bodil fell silent for a second before adding: “And I didn’t want it going on in the house.”

“But the runner was in his room,” Louise interjected.

“That was only because he got so angry when I told him to
put her in the barn. That was their place and the one from the woods was a different story.”

Bodil seemed genuinely sad.

“The last week since the one went missing has been hard on him. I went looking for her in the woods but then when I heard that they found a dead woman, I figured it was probably her. I didn’t say anything to Jørgen even though he kept asking if she would be home soon. I don’t know if he’ll ever really calm back down again. And what happens now?”

Louise couldn’t think of what to say. She just sat there, speechless and deeply shaken by hearing Bodil speak of the twins as if they were objects. And as if she genuinely believed that she and her brother had given them a good life.

“Why did you make us all believe that Jørgen was your husband?” she asked instead.

Bodil gave a quick laugh as she straightened herself up. “When siblings live together at our age, people tend to gossip. I wanted to avoid too many questions being raised. That’s why I came up with the little story about the work accident. That’s the kind of thing that evokes sympathy because it could happen to anyone.”

Louise suddenly couldn’t stand to hear another word. They had another interrogation to get through anyway, so this had to be enough for now.

“Do you have anything further to add?” she asked.

Bodil began to shake her head then stopped. “There are the two of them out in the yard, of course. You’d better take those with you as well.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I didn’t know where else to put them. If I had said anything then Jørgen wouldn’t have been allowed to stay here.”

“Who are we talking about?” the officer asked in confusion.

“He was probably a little too rough with them,” Bodil admitted without answering the question. “But you have to understand that he was never a cruel person. He is just so strong that when the urge comes over him, it’s best not to fight back.”

For a moment her eyes turned glossy and she was quiet.

“It might be Lotte Svendsen from Hvalsø and another young woman from Espergærde,” Louise guessed. “They disappeared the same summer that the first series of rapes took place in the woods. And their bodies were never found.”

T
HEY BOTH FOLLOWED
Bodil to the patio door leading out to the yard.

“Now, I don’t remember the exact spot,” she said, looking around as they stood on the large lawn. “It’s down here in the back somewhere by the herb garden.”

She led them toward the woods’ edge where a large area had been cleared and turned into a vegetable garden.

“You buried them here?” the female officer asked.

“Yes. Jørgen did the digging. He’s good at that sort of thing.”

“We’ll have the dogs search the yard when they get back from the woods,” Louise decided and signaled that they could go back inside. “Did you get Bodil and Jørgen’s personal data for the file?” she asked the officer from Holbæk, who would soon be the one left with the case.

She shook her head. “We’ll go inside and take care of that now.”

Louise nodded. She didn’t feel like going back inside. Right now she needed to distance herself as much as possible from what she’d just heard, and so she walked around the house toward the courtyard to wait for the others. Her interest in
putting her name down for the gamekeeper’s house had vanished completely.

She thought of the young, pregnant runner who had been locked up and tied to a bed while she had been drinking coffee in the kitchen. She knew that it would be naive to hope that Jørgen hadn’t hurt her; even if her physical injuries healed, she would have to live with the nightmare for the rest of her life—just like Edith Rosen had.

And what about the baby? Louise thought, walking in to take one last look inside the barn.

Silence had descended on the cool livestock wing. The only sound came from the tall grandfather clock with its rhythmic moving hands. She looked at the bed, then walked over and pulled out a drawer from the small dresser. It contained the same type of smock-like dresses that Lise had been wearing. There were two of them, neatly folded, and next to them a few pairs of socks and underwear. That was it.

Louise had just closed the drawer when she heard footsteps in the gravel outside. She pushed the door to the horse pen shut and when she turned around, he was standing in the barn doorway.

H
E WAS SWEATING
, his thin hair sticking to his forehead, and his lumberjack shirt had come untucked. For a minute he stood transfixed, staring through the bars into the empty pen. Then he turned his gaze toward Louise, and his eyes lit up as he held out his hand.

“Jørgen,” she said, her back against the pen.

She only took one step sideways before she felt his hands on her face. He ran his fingers down her cheeks. She pressed her arm against her body and felt her shoulder holster but didn’t have a chance to react when he suddenly grabbed her and pulled her toward him.

“Jørgen. Let me go,” she demanded angrily and tried to wrench free of him but he brutally tightened his grip and she lost her breath. When she made another attempt, he squeezed her so hard that an intense pain shot behind her left lung as a couple of her ribs cracked.

Louise gasped for breath as he pushed her farther down the barn corridor, his one arm still locked around her. Yet she still tried to resist when he pulled off her sweater and yanked the gun holster over her head, the sharp leather straps cutting into her skin.

Don’t fight back
, she suddenly thought, remembering Bodil’s words.

She registered a new sound behind her—footsteps on the concrete floors. She wanted to turn her head but fell against the wall when Jørgen tore her blouse and pulled it off her, panting and snorting. With a single jerk, he tore her bra and started roughly fondling her breasts.

It hurt. His hands were rough against her skin. Louise closed her eyes, unable to look at his face. She felt his heavy breathing very close to her neck and then against her cheek as he stuffed a piece of her torn blouse into her mouth.

Using his entire body weight, he pressed her forward until she was doubled over across the saddle rack. The old grain sacks, heavy with dust, scratched her face as he pushed both hands down inside the waistband of her jeans to pull them down. The grit on the barn corridor crunched beneath her feet as he tugged on her pants one more time so the button fell off, enabling him to shove them all the way down.

The steps behind her came closer. Louise lifted her head to see the barn door and the twilight hitting the corridor from the doorway. At first she could only make out the outline of a person behind Jørgen’s broad body but as it came closer, she recognized René Gamst standing there holding his shotgun.

Relief rushed through her as they made eye contact, but then he moved his eyes to her exposed lower body and Louise noticed the bulge in his pants.

Jørgen was right behind her. She could feel the fabric of his
pants against her naked buttocks. The pain was burning in her chest, and her breathing was wheezy. His breath was like hard blows as she heard him undo his zipper. Louise closed her eyes and looked away from the barn door.

Then the first shot fell, and Jørgen’s body jerked violently. Another shot followed a second later.

L
OUISE FELT THE
warmth spreading across her naked torso as the blood from Jørgen’s torn veins pumped onto her skin, and he slumped over heavily on top of her.

As his grasp around her slackened, she grabbed onto the end of the saddle rack and started pulling herself out from beneath the weight of his large body. She gasped for breath as a bloody splodge from his head landed on her shoulder.

She tumbled into the corridor and pulled up her jeans while Jørgen’s body was left slumped, his arms dangling limply over the floor. Louise breathed in sharp blows after pulling the rag out of her mouth.

René was still holding the gun with both hands.

“You could have hit me,” she whispered, covering her breasts with what was left of her blouse.

“That was a risk I was willing to take.”

She watched a speck of dust floating in the light from the window and heard the sound of Jørgen’s blood dripping onto the floor.

“Why didn’t you shoot him right away?”

She couldn’t bear to look at him while asking.

“Because you liked it,” he answered scornfully. “If only Klaus could have seen how little you fought it.”

“I’ll kill you,” Louise snarled at him, her heart starting to pound. She could feel her pulse beating in her neck, and her
chest getting tight. He had recognized her after all. Determined not to lose control entirely, she breathed in and out, dug her nails into her palm, and stared directly into his eyes. “Leave Klaus out of this,” she said through her teeth. “No wonder he didn’t want to hang out with you guys anymore.”

“You!” he snorted. “You don’t understand a damn thing. You never did, not now and not then.”

“What do you mean?” Louise asked him, straightening up so the pain from her broken ribs stabbed inside her chest.

“Thomsen was right. You were so gullible.”

Despite her agonizing pain, she got up before he had a chance to react, kicked the weapon out of his hands, and twisted his arm around so hard that he doubled over.

René Gamst moaned.

“Tell me what happened!” she yelled, pulling on his arm.

“Your boyfriend was a pussy,” he gasped. “He didn’t have the fucking guts to put the noose around his own neck.”

His words made everything go black as she pushed him down the barn corridor in an armlock. She pressed him against the ground as she bent down, pulling out two plastic strips from her shoulder holster on the floor.

He screamed when she tightened one of them around his hands before using the other strip to fasten his wrist to a bar in front of the horse pen. Then she left the barn without looking back just as the door to the main house swung open and the female officer came running out.

“Did you hear the shots?” she shouted. “It was right nearby. I called Mik. They’re on their—”

She stopped abruptly as if she only just then really noticed Louise.

“What…?” she exclaimed, stunned, and walked toward her.

Louise brushed her aside and crumpled up in the small
pebbles. She pulled her shirt together around her naked chest and leaned back against the black-tarred plinth before closing her eyes.

She heard René calling from the barn and soon after the sound of running steps approaching. Someone stopped next to her but she didn’t open her eyes, and then she heard him continue into the barn. He returned a minute later and fell to his knees next to her. When he said her name, she recognized Mik’s voice.

“I think he broke a couple of my ribs,” she said quietly and opened her eyes.

Others came running as well. Louise registered that the female runner had been found not far from there. She was alive but in bad shape. Nobody mentioned the baby in her belly. More footsteps and more voices but she couldn’t take part in it. Ambulances had been called, and someone put a blanket around her.

Eik was wheezing as he stumbled into the courtyard, out of breath. With a cry of shock, he dropped down on the rocks next to her, reaching his hand out for her soiled face.

E
IK WAS STILL
sitting there when two ambulances pulled into the courtyard. She could smell his leather jacket and hear him breathing but she couldn’t see him.

Someone reached a hand down to her and she managed to get up while pain shot through her entire body. She slowly shook her head when he asked if she wanted him to ride along.

“When you head out together, you go home together,” he tried.

“Not today,” she mumbled, pulling the blanket closer around her body as she walked to the ambulance.

Over by the barn René was about to be put into the backseat of a police car. Louise turned her eyes away quickly but not quickly enough to avoid his scornful look and the twitching at the corner of his mouth.

She nodded when the ambulance driver asked if she would prefer to lie down. He asked about her condition and where it hurt but by then Louise had already turned her face away and closed her eyes.

She heard the police car drive off with René before they closed the back of the ambulance. She could feel his eyes on her naked body again before the shot was fired. She had thought he would help her. But in that gang, they only helped each other.

The potholes in the gravel road made the first-aid kit in the back of the ambulance rattle as they drove away.