The Shadow Woman (37 page)

“It was an inside job, of course, but we were never able to prove it. Maybe that’s what bothers me the most.” He drew in and blew out some smoke, and Winter thought about a locomotive. “But there was seven million in there that afternoon, and the ones who came for it knew about it.”

“Wasn’t the bank locked?” Winter asked. “It was after closing, wasn’t it?”

“It was officially closed, but the door was still open,” Bendrup said. “Everyone blamed everyone else. But that’s not what makes me think it was an inside job. You see, back then it wasn’t that usual to lock the doors. Not here in good old Denmark anyway.”

“That’s why they could just walk in,” Poulsen said. “The money was there, and four men entered. Black stockings over their faces, of course. Three marched straight in and one remained by the door.”

“You know that? Precisely?”

“There was a camera,” Bendrup said. “This may seem, for the most part, like something out of the 1800s, but there was a camera in the bank. So we could see.”

Winter nodded.

“And then all hell broke loose,” Bendrup said, and sucked on his cigar, which glowed in front of his face.

“As it turned out, we were already on our way over there before the crooks even stepped back out across the threshold.”

“So I understand,” Winter said. “How did that happen?”

“It’s the sort of thing that only happens to fools and geniuses,” Bendrup said.

“A group of morons from the electric company was putting new wiring in the vault and tripped the alarm to the police station, which also stood right here but wasn’t quite as beautiful.”

Winter nodded. Poulsen was leaning against the desk. A truck had pulled up outside the window and was revving its engine. Someone called out. Winter heard a train. The truck suddenly rattled and went silent.

“Meanwhile, the staff was sitting there with seven million in used bills. We called, course—well, not me because I wasn’t on duty—but they called and didn’t get any answer because those idiots managed to cut the phone lines at the same time that they set off the alarm. So there was no answer, and the first car careered down Østerågade and arrived right in the middle of the party. Or just as it was ending. The robbers were on their way out, and the police car came screeching to a stop on Nytorv and Søren Christiansen was first out and the first to get killed. The robbers brought guns with them, see. AK-4s that rip a body apart even if you’re a bad shot.” Bendrup fixed his eyes on the window and then on Winter. He sucked at his cigar, but it had gone out while he was talking. “Jesus Christ. With a bit of imagination you can still see the stain left by Søren’s blood.”

“But there was return fire, right?” Winter asked.

“Yes. The officers who’d arrived with Søren took cover behind the car and opened fire. Just then another car came up from Ved Stranden—I can show you later, when we go down there—and those officers saw what was going on and more or less took the bastards from behind. There was more shooting. A few of the guys called it the ‘Bonnie and Clyde case’ afterward,” Bendrup looked at Poulsen. “But not me. It was too serious to joke about.”

“Two robbers died,” Winter said.

“One died on the spot. A bullet in the eye that must have been a lucky shot. The other was still alive when it was over, but he was in a bad way. We thought he’d make it, but he died without ever regaining consciousness. The doctors said he’d had something called a fat embolism. Know what that is?”

“Vaguely,” Winter said.

“Same here, but I learned a bit about it. He’d been hit in several places, and the resulting fractures caused bone marrow to enter the bloodstream, which in turn caused a clot that resulted in his death. It was—well, disappointing. We had no one to question.”

“No,” Winter said. “The others got away.”

“They got away. Two men and the driver and maybe the kid. The driver was a woman. Two detectives and a uniformed officer swore they’d seen a child’s face lying on the floor of the getaway car when the doors were opened before they took off.”

“They were sure of it,” Poulsen said. “Just as sure as they were that the driver was a woman.”

“Brigitta Dellmar,” Winter said.

“Apparently she was later identified as such,” Poulsen said.

“She was unknown here,” Bendrup said.

“So they got away.” Winter kept his voice neutral.

Bendrup looked at him suspiciously. “That’s the story, in broad strokes. The epilogue is that they hid out in a holiday home in Blokhus. And that the third robber floated up in the fjord a few weeks later. At least it’s believed that it was him. He was buddies with the two who died. Or one of them anyway.”

“What was their connection to the biker gangs?” Winter asked.

“Well...” Bendrup tried to light up his cigar again.

Winter waited. Michaela Poulsen, irritated by the noise, walked over to the window. It quieted down just as she looked out.

“Well, the organization was being built up here back then. They’d come over from California, like the Beach Boys and all kinds of other crap. Somehow they got a stronger foothold here in Denmark than in other European countries. I think. In any case, there were a few trail-blazers, and two of these hapless bank robbers were among them. At least two. But that’s about all we know, which, of course, isn’t the same thing as what we think.”

“So, what do you think?” Winter asked.

“We think—or I think anyway—that it was a straightforward attempt to raise funds. Seven million was a lot of money back in ’72. Anyone wanting to build up a strong organization needs capital. Bear in mind that the Danske Bank heist wasn’t the only one that took place at the time, nor the first. It was probably just one in a series of planned robberies, even if it was the biggest. And the bloodiest.”

“Supporting that theory,” Poulsen added, “is the fact that one of the robbers was probably killed by his own—”

“How do you mean?” Winter asked.

“He was executed since he was no longer needed. That may sound shocking, but things got pretty nasty around here. Or else he was weak—according to their definition, that is—a weak person whom they couldn’t trust.”

“Or else they simply had a falling-out over something,” Bendrup said. “They may just have been hired hands. Connected to the organization, yes. Sent out by the gang leadership, no. Could be.”

“You said they may have had a falling-out,” Winter said. “Over what?” He felt a cold surge through his head and hair. Suddenly his pulse was racing.

“I can almost see what you’re thinking,” Bendrup said. “I can see it now. And it’s not a very nice thought.”

“Is it possible that the woman and the child had to disappear?” Winter asked.

“Well,” Bendrup said. “I’ve thought a lot about it, and that’s one potential explanation. Either there was an order handed down from above that the weak had to be gotten rid of, or else something happened between the robbers afterward. Maybe the men fought over the lives of the woman and child. Perhaps all their lives were in danger. Maybe it was just a coincidence that things turned out the way they did, but I don’t think so. All you can say for sure is that it was a nightmare.”

“Turned out the way they did?” Winter asked. “You mean that the one guy was murdered?”

“Yeah. He was shot, but why him?”

“Okay,” Winter said, and lit up a Corps. “They escape and get away. They hold out somewhere. Maybe others in some organization know where they are, maybe not. Then something happens. It’s possible they’ve already gone their separate ways, but let’s assume that one of the men is killed in the presence of the others. That leaves a man and a woman and possibly the child. The woman is from Sweden. They manage to make it back to Sweden—”

“Yeah, fucking hell,” Bendrup said. “We did what we could, but that wasn’t good enough. They must have had contacts and been taken across by some smuggler.”

“Or else they got themselves a contact,” Poulsen said. “They had money, after all, right?”

“If there was any money left,” Bendrup said. “With them, I mean. The money might already have been in the coffers.”

“But if the girl was actually along during the robbery, and we also know that she came to Sweden and was eventually found at a hospital in Gothenburg,” Winter said, “then the question is, who else made the trip over?”

“Maybe no one,” Bendrup said. “It’s not unthinkable that the woman and the last remaining man, if we call him that—that they’re dead too. That they died soon after the robbery. Executed.”

“Or else they came across too,” Poulsen said.

“So the last man was never identified?” Winter asked.

“No. He may have been a Swede. The woman was Swedish. The man might have been Swedish too.”

“Then why did they come over here in the first place?” Winter said. “Why did they specifically take part in this robbery?”

“Maybe there was a sister organization in Gothenburg, but we never managed to determine that,” Bendrup said. “That is, after we heard about the child and the hospital and the connection to Brigitta Dellmar. And that she’d been seen during the heist.”

“You found no link between her and any of the Danish men who were killed?”

“Nothing. Nor with anyone else in the fledgling organization. But there may have been. Maybe cross-border love. Just like cross-border collaboration. Spread the risk.”

“We really searched for them,” Poulsen said. “The woman and the man.”

“She’s never been heard from again,” Bendrup said. “And she had a little child, after all. That really points to only one possibility.”

“So, what was the deal with that house? Where was it? I can’t remember the name from the file.”

“Blokhus. On the North Sea. It’s a seaside resort.”

“You were able to establish that they’d been in a house there?”

“According to some witnesses, they had. We checked out the house, but it was empty. Empty as a tomb.”

“Of course this was long after the robbery,” Poulsen said.

“What?”

“They’d picked the lock or something and gotten inside. Or else they’d had a key. No one saw anything suspicious back then. The house was a bit isolated, given that there were no year-round residents. Now it’s different, but back then there were nothing but holiday homes along the whole street. They left no trace behind. Then the owners came along a few weeks later and continued renovating the house, which they’d already been in the process of doing for some time. New wallpaper. Fresh coat of paint. And finally someone living up the road reacted to all the commotion following the robbery. In other words, it all went very slowly.”

“How did they connect the robbers to that specific house?”

“They found something,” Bendrup said. “The owners of the house, that is.” He stood and picked up the binders. He found the one he was looking for and started flipping through it. “They were busy working on the house.” Bendrup put down the binder and picked up another one. “It should be here.”

“It was really just a small slip of paper wrapped up in a little child’s sweater,” Poulsen said. “It was when they were getting started on the flooring and were about to access the crawl space underneath. There was a loose floorboard in the corner, over by the window. Lying inside was a sweater, and that slip of paper fell out when they picked it up. It was a slip of paper with symbols on it. Like a map.”

“Here it is,” Bendrup said, and held out the binder. Winter felt sick to his stomach and excited at once. “Don’t you feel well?”

Winter shook his head. He took the binder. Lying in a plastic folder was a copy of the same map, or message, as the one he had studied several times in Gothenburg, with the same letters and numbers and a similar drawing that could be a set of instructions or anything at all: 5/20,—1630, 4—23?, L. v—H, C.

“I recognize this,” he said, and explained the connection to them.

“Good God,” Poulsen said. She’d removed her jacket.

“Well, we never managed to decipher it,” Bendrup said. “But this is a step forward nevertheless.”

“Did you find any fingerprints?” Winter asked.

“Mostly from those who touched the stuff afterward,” Bendrup said. “But we did come up with one set that belonged to Andersen.”

“Andersen? I haven’t seen anything about an Andersen in the files,” Winter said.

“What? Oh shit, sorry, I was unclear,” Bendrup said. “The robber we later found, the one who was floating in Limfjorden, his name was Møller and that’s how he appears on all official documents, but when we checked with his buddies here in town, it turns out he had some kind of a code name, and that was Andersen. They all had double names, every one of them.”

Winter’s mouth was dry. He had trouble swallowing, but he felt that he had to swallow before he could speak. “The dead woman in Gothenburg, her name is Andersén,” he said. “Helene Andersén. She adopted that name a few years ago. So she may well have been that little girl.”

“Good God,” Poulsen repeated.

“When did you find that out?” Bendrup asked. “Her identity, I mean. That name. Andersén.”

“Just a few days ago,” Winter said. “Everything’s gone so quickly after that. Didn’t you get the name from us? My registry clerk was supposed to send over most of the material ahead of my arrival.”

Poulsen looked at Bendrup.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bendrup said. “I’ve been off work for the past three days and only came back this afternoon. The stuff was lying on my desk. It must have been there since it arrived, without anyone taking a look.”

“That’s my fault,” Poulsen said. “I should have checked the mail earlier. But maybe we’ve made some progress here after all.” She eyed Winter. “If you’d like, we can all head downtown now so you can have a firsthand look at where it happened.”

“But first we’re going to have a beer,” Bendrup said.

WINTER AND BENDRUP EACH SAT WITH A CARLSBERG HOF AT LA
Strada opposite Danske Bank, on the corner of Østerågade and Bispensgade. Michaela Poulsen was drinking a club soda with lemon. They were alone in the bar, but there was a lot of hustle and bustle on the pedestrian street outside.