The Absent One (31 page)

‘Carl Mørck, Department Q. Your son didn’t call?’

‘My son is ill. He’s in bed.’ She looked instantly concerned. ‘Isn’t he?’

So he hadn’t called, the little scamp.

He introduced himself once again and was reluctantly let in.

‘Frederik!’ she called upstairs. ‘I’ve got a sausage for you.’ She seemed sweet and natural. Not what you’d expect of a genuine countess.

His shuffling down the stairs came to an abrupt halt when he saw Carl standing in the hall. In an instant it seemed as though childish visions of the kind of punishment he would get for not doing exactly as the police said clouded his snot-streaming face with dread. He was certainly not ready to be confronted with the consequences of his offence.

Carl winked at him to signal that everything was OK. ‘Oh, so you really are bedridden, huh, Frederik?’

The boy nodded rather slowly, then took his French hot dog and disappeared. Out of sight, out of mind, he probably thought. Wise kid.

Carl got straight to the point.

‘I don’t know if I can help you with anything,’ she said, giving him a friendly look. ‘Kristian and I didn’t actually know each other terribly well. So I’ve no idea what was going on in his head in those days.’

‘And you remarried?’

‘No need to be so formal. Just call me Maria,’ she smiled. ‘Yes, I met my husband, Andrew, the same year Kristian died. We have three children now. Frederik, Susanne and Kirsten.’

Very ordinary names. Maybe Carl needed to reconsider his prejudices about the ruling class’s signature values.

‘And Frederik is the oldest?’

‘No, he’s the youngest. The twins are eleven.’ She beat him to his question. ‘And, yes, Kristian is their biological father, but my present husband has always been there for them. The girls board at a wonderful all-girls school near my in-laws’ estate in Eastbourne.’

She said it so sweetly and unaffectedly and shamelessly. How the hell did she have the heart to do that to her children? Eleven years old, and they were already exported to the backwaters of England and subjected to relentless discipline.

He looked at her with a freshly cemented foundation under his class prejudices. ‘While you were married to Kristian, did he ever talk about a Kirsten-Marie Lassen? I’m sure it must be a curious coincidence that she shares your daughter’s name, but Kristian knew the woman very well. She went by the name of Kimmie. They were at boarding school together. Does the name mean anything to you?’

A veil descended over her face.

He waited a moment, expecting her to say something. But she didn’t.

‘Excuse me, but what just happened?’ he said.

She raised her palms, fingers splayed. ‘I don’t care to talk about it, that’s all I wish to say.’ She hadn’t needed to say that. It was evident.

‘Do you think he might have had an affair with her, is that it? Even though you were pregnant at that point?’

‘I don’t know what he had going on with her, and I
don’t want to know.’ She stood with her arms crossed under her breasts. In a second she would be asking him to leave.

‘She’s a bag lady now. She lives on the street.’

That piece of information apparently didn’t console her.

‘Whenever Kristian had been talking to her, he beat me. Are you satisfied? I don’t know why you’re here, but you may leave now.’

There it was, finally.

‘I’m here because I’m investigating a murder,’ he tried.

The response was instantaneous. ‘If you think I killed Kristian then you’d better think again. Not that it never crossed my mind.’ She shook her head and looked out over the lake.

‘Why did he hit you? Was he sadistic? Did he drink?’

‘Was he sadistic?’ She glanced down the hallway to make sure a little head didn’t suddenly appear. ‘You can bet your life he was.’

He stood reconnoitring the area before climbing back in his car. The atmosphere in that vast mansion house had been oppressive, as, layer by layer, she had uncovered what a strong, sadistic man could do to a slender woman of twenty-two. How the honeymoon was quickly transformed into a daily nightmare. It started with mean words and threats, then things escalated. He was careful not to leave marks, because in the evening she had to be dressed to the nines, showing off her pedigree. That’s why he had chosen her. For that reason only.

Kristian Wolf. A guy she’d fallen in love with in an
instant and would spend the rest of her life trying to forget. Him, his deeds, the way he behaved and the people he surrounded himself with. All of it had to be swept away.

Inside the car Carl sniffed for petrol. Then he called Department Q.

‘Yeah,’ Assad simply said. He didn’t say ‘Department Q’, or ‘Vice Police Superintendent Assistant Hafez el-Assad speaking’ or anything else. Just a ‘yeah’!

‘You need to identify yourself and the department when you pick up the telephone, Assad,’ he said, without identifying himself.

‘Hi, Carl! Rose has just given me her dictaphone. It looks
so
nice. And then she wants to talk to you.’

There was some shouting and loud, echoing footsteps, and then she was on the line. ‘I’ve found a nurse from Bispebjerg for you,’ she said drily.

‘OK. Super.’

That didn’t warrant a response.

‘She works at a private hospital up near Arresø,’ Rose continued, giving him the address. ‘She was easy to track down once I found her name. It’s a
really
peculiar one, too.’

‘Found it where?’

‘At Bispebjerg Hospital, of course. I scoured their old archive filing cabinets. She was working in the gynaecological ward when Kimmie was hospitalized. I called her and she remembered the case. Everyone who worked there back then would remember Kimmie, she said.’

‘Denmark’s most beautiful hospital’ – as Rose had quoted from the website.

Carl looked down at the snow-white buildings and concurred. Everything was exquisitely well maintained. Even this late into autumn, the manicured lawns were worthy of Wimbledon. Absolutely magnificent surroundings. The royal couple had enjoyed the sight only a few months earlier.

Their palace at Fredensborg had nothing on this place.

Head nurse Irmgard Dufner was rather a contrast. Smiling and as big as a vessel putting in to port, she cruised out to greet him. People around her stepped quietly to the side as she passed them. A pudding-basin haircut with a fringe, legs like two-by-fours, and shoes that pounded heavily on the floor.

‘Mr Mørck, I presume!’ She grinned and shook his hand as if she were trying to empty his pockets of their contents.

Luckily for him, her enormous outward appearance was matched by the size of her memory. A police officer’s dream.

She had been senior clinical nurse on Kimmie’s ward at Bispebjerg, and even though she’d been off duty when the patient disappeared, the events had been so strange and tragic that she’d never forgotten them, she explained.

‘When the woman arrived she was quite beaten up, so we expected her to lose the child, but she actually did all right. She just wanted that child
so
badly. When she’d been at the hospital for a week, we were almost ready to discharge her.’

She chewed her lip. ‘But then one morning when I’d been on night shift, she miscarried suddenly and severely. The doctor said it seemed as though she had provoked it
herself. I found that hard to believe, given how much she’d been looking forward to having the baby. At any rate, there were large blue bruises on her abdomen. But it’s impossible to know about these things. There are a lot of mixed feelings involved when a woman faces raising an unplanned child on her own.’

‘What could she have used to cause the bruising? Do you recall?’

‘Some said it could have been the chair in her room. That she had pulled it on to her bed and pounded it against her abdomen. In any case, it was lying on the floor when the doctors came in and found her unconscious, with the foetus lying in a pool of blood between her legs.’

Carl tried to imagine it. A sad sight.

‘And the foetus was big enough for you to see it?’

‘Oh yes. At eighteen weeks a foetus resembles a little human being, around five or six inches long.’

‘Arms and legs?’

‘Everything. The lungs haven’t fully developed, nor have the eyes. But just about everything else has.’

‘And it lay between her legs?’

‘She had given birth to the child and the placenta in the normal way, yes.’

‘You mention the placenta. Wasn’t there something abnormal about it?’

‘It’s one of the things everyone remembers. That, and the fact that she stole the foetus. My colleagues had placed it under a sheet while they staunched her bleeding. When they returned after a short break, the patient and the foetus were gone. The placenta, on the other hand, was still
there. That was when one of our doctors noticed it had ruptured. Been torn in two, so to speak.’

‘Couldn’t that have happened during the miscarriage itself?’

‘Sometimes that happens, but
very
seldom. Maybe the violence inflicted on her abdomen had something to do with it. Either way, it’s quite a serious situation if the woman is not curetted.’

‘You’re referring to potential infections?’

‘Yes, in the past, especially, this was a big concern.’

‘And if this isn’t done, what then?’

‘Well, the patient risks dying.’

‘I see. But I can assure you that she didn’t. She’s still alive. Not in the best condition, since she now lives on the street, but she
is
alive.’

She folded her sizeable hands in her lap. ‘I’m relieved to hear that, but it’s a shame she’s living on the street. Many women never get over that kind of experience.’

‘You mean the trauma of losing a child might be enough to make her withdraw from society?’

‘Ah, you know what? Anything’s possible in a situation like that. It happens time and again. They can enter a state of mental derangement and are quite often overwhelmed by self-recrimination.’

‘I think I’ll try to give a brief summary of the case. What do you say to that, friends?’ He looked at Assad and Rose, knowing that they both had things they wanted to get off their minds. It would have to wait.

‘We have a group of youths comprised of very strong-minded individuals, which is to say that they always carry
out whatever they plan to do. Five guys, each with his own personal attributes, and a girl who appears to be the pivotal figure.

‘She’s brash and beautiful and initiates a short relationship with one of the top students at the school, Kåre Bruno – who I have a strong hunch dies with a fair amount of assistance from the gang. One of the objects in Kimmie Lassen’s hidden metal box points in that direction, in any case. Maybe it was jealousy, maybe a scuffle, but of course it
could
also have been a simple accident, in which case the rubber band she stashed away might just be a kind of trophy. At any rate, the rubber band in itself doesn’t tell us anything definite about the question of guilt, even if it arouses suspicion.

‘The gang sticks together, despite the fact that Kimmie leaves the school, and their association results directly or indirectly in the murder of two, probably randomly chosen, youths in Rørvig. Bjarne Thøgersen confesses, albeit nine years later, but presumably to cover for one or more of the others. Everything suggests that in this connection he was promised a large sum of money. He came from a relatively poor family and his sexual relationship with Kimmie was over, so it could have been a reasonable solution in his particular situation. In any event, we now know that
someone
in the gang was involved, since we’ve found effects with the victims’ fingerprints in Kimmie’s box.

‘We in Department Q are drawn into this case following a private citizen’s suspicion that Thøgersen’s conviction was erroneous. Perhaps the most important element to note in this connection is that Johan Jacobsen supplied us
with a list of assaults and disappearances the gang may have been involved in. Furthermore, with this list we can confirm that during the years Kimmie lived in Switzerland there were reports only of physical assaults – not homicides or disappearances. The list is admittedly somewhat speculative, but Johan’s general approach seems sound.

‘It has come to the attention of the gang that I’m investigating the case. I don’t know how, but probably through Aalbæk, and an attempt is currently being made to obstruct the investigation.’

At this point Assad raised a finger. ‘Obstruct? Is that what you said?’

‘Yes. Trying to block the investigation, Assad. “Obstruct” means “block”. And that tells me the case has more to it than just a few rich men’s normal concern for their reputations.’

They both nodded.

‘As a result, I’ve been threatened in my home, in my car and, most recently, at my work, and in all probability people from this gang are behind these threats. They have used old boarding-school chums as go-betweens to get us removed from the case, but now this chain has been broken.’

‘So we’ve got to tread cautiously,’ Rose grunted.

‘Correct. We’re being left in peace to work for now, and they mustn’t know this. Especially because we believe that interrogating Kimmie, given her situation, would be greatly to our advantage. Through her we might get some clarity about what the gang got up to back then.’

‘She won’t say anything, Carl,’ Assad interjected. ‘Not the way she looked at me at the central station.’

Carl thrust out his lower lip. ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll see. Kimmie Lassen is probably a few sandwiches short of a picnic. How could she not be, living on the street when she has a palace in Ordrup? A miscarriage in mysterious circumstances, where she was apparently repeatedly subjected to violence – this has probably contributed to the situation.’ He considered fishing out a cigarette, but Rose’s coal-black-mascara glare was resting heavily on his hands. ‘We also know that one of the gang members, Kristian Wolf, died a few weeks after Kimmie Lassen disappeared, but we don’t know whether the two facts are connected. Today, however, I learned from his widow that Wolf had sadistic tendencies, and it was also suggested that he had a relationship with Kimmie Lassen.’ His fingers were now wrapped around the pack of cigarettes. So far so good.