The Absent One (16 page)

She thrust her arms towards Kimmie, as if to make sure she was real, but Kimmie dodged her, leaving Tine with arms raised in the air.

Behind her Kimmie heard the man’s running footfalls.

The telephone had rung three times during the night, but each time Carl lifted the receiver the line was dead.

At the breakfast table he asked Jesper and Morten whether they’d noticed anything unusual in the house, but only got sleepy glances in response.

‘Maybe you forgot to close windows or doors yesterday?’ he tried. There had to be some way into their sleep-leaden think tanks.

Jesper shrugged. To get anything from him at this time of the day, you first had to pull the winning number in Utopia’s grand lottery. Morten, at least, grunted a sort of answer.

Afterwards Carl walked round the house without spotting anything abnormal. The front-door lock had no scratches. The windows were as they should be. The break-in had been committed by a person or people who knew what they were doing.

After a ten-minute investigation, he got in his police car that was parked between the grey concrete buildings and noticed how it stank of petrol.

‘Bloody hell!’ he shouted. In a split second he ripped open the Peugeot’s door and lunged sideways on to the ground, rolling several times before taking shelter behind a van, expecting Magnolievangen to be illuminated by a blast powerful enough to blow in windows.

‘What’s wrong, Carl?’ he heard a calm voice say. He turned towards his barbecuing mate, Kenn, who in spite of the morning chill wore a thin T-shirt and seemed nice and warm.

‘Stand still, Kenn,’ he commanded, staring down towards Rønneholtparken. Apart from Kenn’s animated eyebrows, nothing was moving anywhere. Maybe a remote control would activate the explosion the next time he approached the vehicle. Perhaps the spark from the ignition would be enough to set it off.

‘Someone has tampered with my car,’ he said, finally turning his attention from the rooftops and the hundreds of windows in the buildings.

For a moment he considered calling the crime-scene techs, but decided against it. Whoever was trying to frighten him didn’t leave fingerprints or other similar clues. He might as well accept that fact and take the train.

Hunter or hunted? Right now it was all relative.

He hadn’t even removed his coat before Rose was standing at his office door with arched brows and charcoal-grey lashes.

‘The police mechanics are out in Allerød and report that nothing special is wrong with your car. A loose petrol line, how interesting can that be?’

She closed her eyes resignedly and in slow motion, which Carl ignored. Better to assert his authority right away.

‘You’ve given me a lot of assignments, Carl. Are we going to talk about them, or should we wait until the petrol fumes have evaporated from your belfry?’

He lit a cigarette and settled in his chair. ‘Fire away,’ he said, hoping the mechanics had enough wits about them to bring his car to headquarters.

‘Let’s start with the accident at Bellahøj Swimming Centre. There’s not much to say about it. The guy was nineteen and his name was Kåre Bruno.’ She stared him down, dimples at full strength. ‘
Bruno!
Seriously!’ She repressed something, maybe a giggle. ‘He was a good swimmer, very athletic across the board, actually. His parents lived in Istanbul, but his grandparents lived in Emdrup, close to the Bellahøj open-air swimming pool. That’s where he usually stayed during his free weekends.’ She riffled through her papers. ‘The report states it was an accident, and that Kåre Bruno himself was responsible. Not paying attention on a ten-metre diving board isn’t particularly smart, you know.’ She stuck her pen in her hair where it could hardly stay very long.

‘It had rained that morning, so the guy probably slipped on the wet surface while showing off for someone, I’d guess. But he was there by himself, and no one saw exactly what happened. Not until he was lying on the tiles underneath with his head rotated 180 degrees.’

Carl looked at Rose with a question on his lips, but she cut him off. ‘And yes, Kåre went to the same boarding school as Kirsten-Marie Lassen and the others from the gang. He was in the sixth form when the others were in the fifth. I’ve not spoken with anyone from the school yet, but I can do that later.’ She stopped as suddenly as a bullet hitting a block of concrete. He would need to get used to her style.

‘OK. We’ll review it all in a bit. What about Kimmie?’

‘You really believe she’s very important in this gang,’ she said. ‘Why is that?’

Should I count to ten?
he thought.

‘How many girls were in the gang, in total?’ he asked instead. ‘And how many of them have since disappeared? Only one, am I right? And she’s probably also a girl whom one could assume wants to change her current status. So that’s why I’m especially interested in her. If Kimmie is still alive, she might be the key to a whole lot of information. Don’t you think we ought to consider the possibility?’

‘Who says she wants to change her current status? Many homeless people can’t be forced to live in a house again, if that’s what you think.’

If her mouth always ran on like this, it would drive him up the wall.

‘I’ll ask you again, Rose. What have you found out about Kimmie?’

‘Do you know what, Carl? Before we come to that, I’d like to say that you need to buy a chair so Assad and I can sit down in here when we’re giving you our reports. Your back starts aching when you have to loll around in the doorway, even when we’re discussing the tiniest details.’

So loll around somewhere else
, he thought, taking a deep drag of his cigarette.

‘I’m sure you’ve seen the perfect chair in some catalogue or other,’ was what he said.

She didn’t bother to respond. He figured that meant there would probably be a chair standing there in the morning.

‘There isn’t much in the public registry on Kirsten-Marie Lassen. At any rate, she has never been on the dole.
She was expelled from school in the fifth form and later continued her education in Switzerland, but I don’t have anything more about that. The last registered address I have is at Bjarne Thøgersen’s on Arnevangen in Brønshøj. I don’t know when she moved out, but it couldn’t have been too long before Thøgersen turned himself in, I think. Which would make it any time before September 1996. And before that, from 1992 to 1995, she’s listed at her stepmother’s on Kirkevej in Ordrup.’

‘You’ll get me the woman’s full name and address, right?’

Before he’d completed his sentence she’d handed him a yellow slip of paper.

Kassandra was the woman’s name. Kassandra Lassen. He knew the film,
The Cassandra Crossing
, but he’d never heard it as a damn name.

‘What about Kimmie’s father? Is he still alive?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Willy K. Lassen, software pioneer. He lives in Monte Carlo with a new wife and a couple of rather new children. I’ve got the note somewhere on my desk. He was born around 1930, so either his pistol comes fully loaded or his new wife is a bit of a tart.’ She fabricated a smile that covered four-fifths of her face, accompanied by that growling laughter, which at some point was going to make Carl lose his composure.

She finished laughing. ‘It doesn’t appear that Kirsten-Marie Lassen slept at any of the shelters we normally check, but it’s possible that she rented a room or something else that’s not reported to the taxman. What the heck, that’s how my sister scrapes by. She has four lodgers
at a time. You need something to support three kids and four cats when your husband is a prick who abandons you, don’t you?’

‘I don’t think you should be telling me too many details, Rose. I am a guardian of the law, in case you’ve forgotten.’

She held out her palms.
Good grief
, her expression said,
if he’s going to be such a stickler, that’s his problem
.

‘But I have information about Kirsten-Marie Lassen’s admission to Bispebjerg Hospital in the summer of 1996. I don’t have the case record because they have to rummage around in their archives even if you need information on something that happened the day before yesterday. I only have the time she was admitted and the time at which she disappeared.’

‘She disappeared from the hospital? While undergoing treatment?’

‘I don’t know anything about that part, but in any case there’s a notation saying she left against the doctor’s wishes.’

‘How long was she in the hospital?’

‘Nine or ten days.’ Rose riffled through her small yellow slips of paper. ‘Here. From 24 July to 2 August 1996.’

‘The 2nd of August?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘That was the date of the Rørvig murders. Exactly nine years afterwards, to the day.’

She pouted upon hearing this, clearly irritated that she hadn’t noticed the coincidence herself.

‘Which department was she in? Psychiatric?’

‘No. The gynaecological ward.’

He drummed on the edge of the desk. ‘OK. Get the file. Go over there yourself and offer your assistance, if necessary.’

She gave an ultra-quick nod.

‘What about the newspaper archives, Rose, have you looked into them?’

‘Yes, and there’s not much. Court proceedings were closed in 1987, and when Bjarne Thøgersen was arrested, Kimmie was not named.’

He breathed deeply. Only now did it occur to him. Not one of the boarding-school gang had ever been publicly named in connection with the case. Unsullied, they had quietly climbed to the top rung of society without anyone having reason to raise an eyebrow. No bloody wonder they tried to keep it that way.

But why the hell had they tried to frighten him in such an amateurish and unacceptable way? Why had they not just come to him and explained themselves if they knew he was the one investigating the case? All else simply created suspicion and resistance.

‘She disappeared in 1996,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t a missing-persons bulletin issued to the media?’

‘She wasn’t listed as missing. Not even by the police. She simply disappeared. The family did nothing.’

Carl nodded. Nice family.

‘In other words, there’s nothing in the papers about Kimmie,’ he said. ‘What about galas? Didn’t she go to those? People with her background do that.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Then get to work checking it out, please. Ask the people at the tabloids. Ask them at
Gossip
. They have
nearly bloody everyone in their archives. You must be able to find a damned caption or something.’

She gazed at him with an expression probably meant to suggest that she was ready to give up on him. ‘It’ll probably take a long time to find her hospital case record. What should I start with?’

‘Bispebjerg Hospital. But don’t forget the tabloids. People in her circles are prize meat for those vultures. Do you have her registry information?’

She handed the paper to him. There was nothing new in it. Born in Uganda. No siblings. Every other year throughout her childhood a new home address, alternating between England, the United States and Denmark. When she was seven, her parents divorced, and oddly enough her father was given custody. And she was born Christmas Eve.

‘There are two items you’ve forgotten to ask about, Carl. I think that’s embarrassing.’

He lifted his eyes towards Rose. From that angle she resembled a slightly chubby version of Cruella de Vil right before she snatched the 101 little Dalmatians. Maybe it was a good idea to get that chair on the other side of his desk after all, so the perspective could be altered a bit.

‘What’s embarrassing?’ he asked, not caring to hear the answer.

‘You haven’t asked about the tables. The tables out in the corridor. They’ve already arrived. But they’re in boxes and need to be assembled. I’d like Assad to help me.’

‘That’s fine with me, if he can figure out how to do it. But, as you can see, he’s not here. He’s out in the field searching for the mouse.’

‘Hmm. What about you, then?’

He shook his head slowly. Assemble tables with her? She must be out of her mind.

‘And what is the other item I haven’t asked about, if I may be so bold?’

She looked as though she couldn’t be bothered to respond. ‘You know, if we don’t put the tables together, I won’t copy all that shit you asked me to. One good turn deserves another.’

Carl swallowed hard. In a week she would be out of here. She could babysit those damned dried-cod eaters who were visiting on Friday, then it would be a good swift kick of his shoe.

‘Well, anyway. The other thing was that I spoke to the Inland Revenue. They told me that Kirsten-Marie Lassen had employment from 1993 to 1996.’

Carl paused in the middle of a hit on his cigarette. ‘She did? Where?’

‘Two of the places don’t exist any more, but the third one does. She also worked there the longest. A pet shop.’

‘A pet shop? Did she wait on customers in a pet shop?’

‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them. It’s still at the same address. Ørbækgade 62 in Amager. Nautilus Trading A/S, it’s called.’

Carl noted it down. It would have to wait a bit.

She bowed her head towards him, brow arched. ‘And yes, Carl, that was all.’ She nodded at him. ‘And you’re welcome, by the way, kind sir.’

‘I’d like to know who halted my investigation, Marcus.’

The homicide chief peered over his bifocals. Of course he did not care to respond to the question.

‘And, apropos, I think you should know that I’ve had uninvited guests in my home. Have a look at this.’

He produced the old photograph of himself in a parade uniform and pointed at the splatters of blood. ‘Usually it’s hanging in my bedroom. Last night the blood was still pretty fresh.’

Carl’s boss leaned back slightly to inspect it. He didn’t care for what he saw.

‘What do you make of it, Carl?’ he asked after a moment’s pause.

‘Someone wants to scare me. What else can I make of it?’

‘Every policeman makes enemies along the way. Why do you assume this has anything to do with the case you’re on now? What about your friends and family? Are there any practical jokers among them, do you think?’

Carl smirked. It was a nice try. ‘I got three telephone calls last night. Do you think someone was on the other end when I picked up?’