The Scream of the Butterfly (23 page)

51

SANNE OPENED THE
door to her office a crack. Sarah Winther-Sørensen was sitting by the desk, picking at the seam of her pale green cigarette pants. She had swapped out the dark top for a white shirt.

“Poor girl.” Lisa looked over Sanne's shoulder. “First she loses her father, and now this.”

Sanne leaned against the door frame: the shit had really hit the fan.

OLD PEDO CHARGE MOTIVE FOR MAYOR MURDER?

SOURCE AT POLICE HQ CONFIRMS EXISTENCE OF OLD CASE

The article — written by Sandra Kørner again — had sent shock waves through the whole establishment from the justice minister down. Everyone in the department was under huge pressure, and Sanne felt they had no choice but to bring Sarah in for an interview.

“If I ever get hold of the idiot who leaked this,” Lisa hissed.

“Calm down.” Sanne pushed open the door and entered. “We'll deal with it later. Hi Sarah.” She closed the door behind Lisa. “Would you like some coffee? Tea?”

Sarah shook her head and continued to pick at her pants.

“I want Peter here.”

“We've called him and he's on his way, but he'll be a while, okay?” Sanne opened a bottle of mineral water and pushed it toward Sarah.

“You know why we want to talk to you, don't you?” Lisa put her pen and notepad on the desk and sat down.

“Someone in my year showed me the article on her phone,” Sarah whispered.

Sanne chewed her lip. She had to get something out of the girl before the lawyer arrived. Once he was in the room, she would get nothing.

“You're almost an adult, so you understand why we have to ask.” She hesitated. “Did your father ever, well . . . you know?”

Sarah closed her eyes; her face was white. Her hand shook as she reached out for the bottle of mineral water. There was a knock on the door and Allan's head popped around.

“Lars is on the phone in my office. I thought you would want to hear what he has to say.”

“We'll be back shortly.” Sanne got up and left. Lisa followed.

“I'm going to the washroom. You two go ahead.” Allan pointed to his office and disappeared.

Allan's desk was overflowing with papers and reports. Lisa moved a small pile, which had Allan's cell phone on top of it, and sat down. Sanne picked up the landline.

“Lars? I'm going to put you on speaker. Lisa is here as well.” She pressed the speaker button.

“Hey Lars.” Lisa flexed her foot up and down. “What's happening?”

He sounded agitated; his voice was well above his normal pitch.

“I've figured out how Mogens Winther-Sørensen and Serafine knew each other.” Pause. The sound of traffic in the background was perfectly audible. He was probably driving. “I've just left Arne Winther-Sørensen's office.”

“We've brought in his granddaughter. Remember that anonymous call we got about the pedophile story yesterday? It's breaking news on
Ekstra Bladet
now.”

“They don't waste any time, do they? Hang on . . .” Lars swore. “Okay, I'm back. Arne Winther-Sørensen wouldn't tell me anything, but I found an old photo in his office of Mogens with a boy who looked roughly eight years old. That boy can only be Serafine. You can see a Red Cross flag in the background.”

“So Mogens did work for the Danish Red Cross? But then why did they insist they had never heard of him when I contacted them yesterday?” asked Lisa.

“I'm on my way to their main office on Blegdamsvej now. I'll give you a call when I'm done.”

Sanne hung up. Allan's phone pinged to signal the arrival of a text message. Sanne tilted her head to read it.

The text consisted of one word:
Thanks!
The sender was Sandra Kørner.

She turned the phone so Lisa could read it as well.

“That . . .” Lisa stared at the phone and jumped up, her small body like a coiled spring.

“How long do you think he's been feeding her information?” Sanne picked up the phone and tried to unlock it, but it had a passcode. “We have to wait until we . . . Hi Allan.” Allan was standing just outside the office.

“Yes?” He looked from one of them to the other.

“Can you explain this?” Sanne held up his cell phone.

He narrowed his eyes and stepped closer.

“That's . . .” Then he spotted the text, and opened and closed his mouth. “Listen, I haven't . . .” But the time for denial had passed. He sat down on the windowsill and buried his face in his hands. He rocked back and forth for a long time before he started to speak.

“I didn't tell her anything she didn't already know — she just wanted confirmation on the pedophile story.” He looked up. “She kept pushing me . . . Do you know how much they're willing to pay? I've got the mortgage on the apartment, and . . .”

Lisa closed the door of the office and looked at Sanne for a long time. What should they do?

“I think . . .” Sanne tried to buy time. “First, I want you to unlock your phone right now. We want to be quite sure that you didn't give her any other information. Here . . .” She tossed Allan the cell phone.

He caught it and entered his passcode.

“There's nothing else — see for yourself.”

Lisa snatched it from his hand.

“Hmm. There's just the one text message.” She scrolled to outgoing calls. “Although you spoke to her a couple of times this morning. Apart from that there are no other calls to or from her number, but that doesn't prove —”

Someone started to scream. They could hear the sound of fighting, and chairs and tables being knocked over.

“What's going on?” Sanne rushed outside. The reception area was a battlefield: chairs and tables were lying helter-skelter. Someone had knocked over the table with the coffee maker, and brown liquid was splashed high up the wallpaper. Three of her colleagues were on the floor, pinning down Sarah Winther-Sørensen. She was no longer screaming, but sobbing. Her hair and makeup were a mess and the collar of her white shirt was half torn.

At that very moment, Peter Egethorn stepped through the green door to the Violent Crime Unit. It took him less than one second to take in the scene. Three long strides later, he had reached the tangled knot of police officers, freed Sarah, and helped her to her feet. Then he looked furiously at Sanne.

“What the hell is going on here?”

52

THE LOW, MUSTARD-COLOURED
main office of the Danish Red Cross was located at Blegdamsvej 27, squeezed in between the imposing temple of the Freemasons and a 1970s, seven-storey college built of concrete and glass. Lars signalled and turned into the parking lot. A Jay-Z song was playing on the radio; he hadn't caught the title and hoped never to hear it again. The music faded the moment Lars found an empty parking spot, and the announcer took over.

“The Danish Meteorological Institute has issued a weather alert for torrential rain in eastern parts of the country. And tonight, DR will show the first live televised debate leading up to the general election. Every party leader will be in the studio to debate the three major themes for this election: the financial crisis . . .”

Lars sighed, paid for parking, and entered the building. It had already started to drizzle.

“Mogens Winther-Sørensen, you say? The mayor?” Agnete Thomsen took off her tortoiseshell glasses and looked at him. The head of the asylum section was a slim woman in her late fifties. “No, he never worked for us.”

Lars shifted in the Børge Mogensen chair. The pale wicker seat cut into one of his buttocks.

“My colleague who phoned you yesterday was told the same thing.” He took out the photograph of Mogens Winther-Sørensen and eight-year-old Serafine from his inside pocket. “But then I found this.”

Agnete Thomsen studied the picture.

“Yes, that's the mayor — and that looks like a centre for asylum seekers. Hang on . . . It must be the Margretheholm Centre.” She gave him back the photograph.

“Where is that?”

“The Margretheholm Centre? It's here in Copenhagen, on one of the Holmen Islands. The navy used the buildings for educational purposes. From 1999 and for some years after that, we took over the facilities to house asylum seekers, primarily Kosovo Albanians, but later refugees from Iran and Nigeria.”

Lars drummed his pen on his notepad. Kosovo Albanians would certainly fit with the Bukoshi family.

“So what would Mogens Winther-Sørensen have been doing out there if he wasn't an employee?”

“He could have been visiting? It's the most likely explanation. In those days, visitors were free to come and go practically as they pleased.”

“But to be so friendly with a refugee child . . . Is that possible from a single visit? I would think those children would be fairly shy. Just look at it — the two of them obviously hit it off.”

“It's difficult to tell, it's just a snapshot.” Agnete Thomsen put her glasses back on. “The old director of Margretheholm would surely know, don't you think?”

Agnete Thomsen found a contact list in a desk drawer, flicked through a couple of pages, and entered a number on her phone.

Thirty seconds later she hung up.

“Right, we'll try his cell.” She entered a new number and raised her phone to her ear. “His name is Søren Gjerding. He was my predecessor here, incidentally. He retired five years ago.”

But she had no luck with his cell number either.

“How odd. He almost always picks up. Just a moment.” She got up and walked briskly across the office. She opened a door and stuck out her head to speak to a secretary.

“Would you please check if anyone knows how to track down my predecessor? Thank you.”

She turned around in the doorway.

“This could take some time. Would you like some coffee? We've got one of these latte makers.” Lars got up and followed her.

A machine was flashing and hissing in a niche in the wall beside the elevator. Lars stared at it.

Agnete Thomsen laughed. “They claim it makes regular coffee as well.”

“Am I being that obvious?” Lars took an IKEA mug from the stack, put it into the machine, and pressed the button marked
Black Coffee
.

“Why are you so keen to know if Mogens Winther-Sørensen ever worked for the Red Cross?”

“I'm afraid I'm not allowed to discuss the investigation.”

“Of course. I understand.” Agnete Thomsen furrowed her brow, which was almost concealed by clouds of steam rising from the chrome coffee machine. “Only it's just — your case . . . It won't be good for the Red Cross to be dragged into a murder investigation, especially one involving the mayor, of all people. The last thing this organization needs is something that could damage our fundraising. Our financial assistance means the difference between life and death for a lot of people across the world —”

“Nobody wants to put the Red Cross in a bad light.” Lars took the mug, which was now full of coffee. “Why don't we ask your secretary if she's found him?”

He followed her back down the corridor to her office. The coffee tasted acidic and chemical. They passed a shelf with information about the work of the Red Cross. Lars left his mug behind a stand of leaflets about fundraising for Congolese refugees.

Agnete Thomsen stopped. “Signe.” They had reached her secretary, who was sitting with the telephone pressed to her ear.

A few seconds passed before Signe finished the call.

“Søren Gjerding was supposed to give a presentation at a conference in this building half an hour ago — only he never arrived.”

53

“HOW AM I
supposed to remember one argument I might have had with my husband, what . . . fourteen years ago?” Kirsten Winther-Sørensen had arrived less than ten minutes after Peter Egethorn. And if he had been furious, she was incandescent. But once Kirsten had been given the opportunity to speak with Sarah and Peter in private, Sanne had managed to talk her down somewhat. Now she and Sanne were sitting alone in Sanne's office. But although Kirsten seemed calmer now, she was by no means in a forgiving mood.

“Malene Meisner.” Sanne kept her voice controlled. “Ring any bells? Or Malene Rørdam? That would have been the name you knew her by. For a very brief period she was Mogens's head of communications, just after he was elected mayor.”

“I kept as far away from politics as possible.” Kirsten Winther-Sørensen turned her gaze inward. “Now, please may I —”

But Sanne pressed her. “Malene Meisner was fired after a Christmas party in 1999. Allegedly after a smear campaign orchestrated by Merethe Winther-Sørensen. Still not recalling that fight?”

“What's wrong with you people? My daughter just lost her father. She's falling apart, and you . . .” Kirsten Winther-Sørensen looked away. “You don't give a crap. You're just like Merethe. All she cares about is getting Sarah into the party's line of succession. Surely you can see . . .” she said, trailing off.

Kirsten Winther-Sørensen left police headquarters with her daughter, without answering any more questions. In light of the situation, Sanne didn't feel she could detain them any longer. Now she and Lisa were sitting in Sanne's office. Peter Egethorn sat on a chair on the other side of the desk with his face in his hands.

“I've tried to convince Kirsten to be frank with you.” He exhaled slowly. “But she refuses.”

Lisa was ready with pen and paper. Sanne stared at Peter's fingers.

“Then perhaps it's time you start telling us what you know.”

The lawyer took a deep breath and took his hands off his face.

“You can never be sure about the Winther-Sørensen family. But I knew Mogens. There was never anything inappropriate between him and Sarah.”

Sanne nodded.

“What's your relationship with Kirsten Winther-Sørensen?”

Peter Egethorn took a sip from the glass of water Lisa had put in front of him. Today's edition of
Ekstra Bladet
had been tossed in the wastebasket. He glanced at it.

“It was all over the front page . . .”

“Perhaps that makes it even more important to tell the truth?”

Peter Egethorn nodded. Slowly.

“Kirsten was thinking of leaving Mogens. That's why she went for a drive last Monday when he was . . . We had spoken on the phone a couple of times during that afternoon and evening. My advice to her was to wait until after the election. They had been together for years, and it would be damaging to the party if . . .” He paused. “If she left Mogens in the middle of the election . . . Merethe would destroy us.”

“How long have the two of you been seeing each other?”

“Kirsten and I . . . We've been together since high school. When she started her company, I took care of the legal side, patents, that sort of thing. Her father was a Conservative member of Gentofte Council, so politics is in her blood. Only she picked the wrong party.” Peter Egethorn's mouth took on a bitter expression. “Merethe Winther-Sørensen spotted her in the Copenhagen branch of the Radical Party in the mid-1990s and decided that she would be perfect for her son. And what Merethe Winther-Sørensen wants, she gets. I never heard it from Kirsten herself — the minister's private secretary took me aside and explained the situation to me.”

“And you just accepted it?” Lisa made a note.

“You don't understand — it wasn't like I had a choice. And at the time, I believed it was what Kirsten wanted. But a few months later, she started calling me again.”

“And you've been together ever since?”

“More or less.”

“So Mogens and Kirsten . . . ?” Sanne tried to catch his eye, but Peter Egethorn avoided her.

“Well, they have Sarah. But apart from that . . .” He shrugged his shoulders.

“There is a period of time we've been unable to shed any light on. It's the autumn of 1999. Can you help us?”

“Yes — 1999 . . . At some point during that autumn, probably late September or early October, Kirsten told me she wanted to end our relationship. She was going to give Mogens another chance. He had changed.” Peter Egethorn fell silent and stared into space. “There's still a lot I don't know. Please understand, we had a tacit agreement: we never discussed her life with Mogens. Ever. So I didn't see her for about a month, and I guess I thought it really was over. But then suddenly — it must have been early November — she called me out of the blue. She was in a state and said things between her and Mogens were worse than ever. It was just after he had been elected mayor.”