The Dinosaur Feather (37 page)

“What are you scared of?”

“I’m scared of . . . Vibe is like a sister to me, for fuck’s sake!” Søren threw up his hands in despair. “She has been, ever since I met her at that disco. My sister was my girlfriend for seventeen years! I was scared to have children with her. All the things it takes guts to do. . . . When I see Vibe with her big pregnant stomach, I thank God she left me. I would never have been able to forgive myself if she hadn’t had children because of me. She deserves so much better.” An embarrassed silence followed.

“I don’t have real friends, either,” Søren continued. “I’ve got you and Allan. And Vibe and her husband, obviously.”

“What’s wrong with me? I’m a decent enough guy,” Henrik said, looking like he was simultaneously offended and amused.

“Nothing. I can’t complain. But you said it yourself this morning. I don’t trust anyone. I don’t give anything back. You don’t really know me, do you?” Again he threw up his hands. “Plenty of children are orphaned, and some of them go into foster care or are adopted and they turn out fine. I was playing in my grandparents’ garden when the crash happened, and it was the best garden in the world.
That
I do remember. But I don’t remember them dying, I don’t recall shedding a single tear. Nor have I ever been angry that they died, and I haven’t missed them. Not really. Knud and Elvira were my parents. They were. I can’t see any reason why I’m such a fucking coward.” He paused. Henrik cleared his throat.

“You’ve just done it,” he said eventually.

“Done what?”

“Opened up. Taken a chance.”

“I see my daughter’s face before me all the time,” Søren said. “Suddenly, she’s everywhere. I thought I could get away with it. Can you imagine what it was like lying next to Vibe and not be able to tell her what was really going on? She thought I was upset because we were splitting up. She comforted me and assured me that we would always be friends. She came over with dinner for me, and I kept lying to her.” Søren pressed his fist into his mouth.

“You need to talk to someone,” Henrik said for the third time. Søren looked out of the window. How could he ever have doubted Henrik?

“Yes, I do,” he said.

At 7:50 p.m. Søren rang the bell of an apartment in a residential block on the outskirts of Nørrebro. The name on the door read
Beck Vestergaard
. Søren hadn’t looked Bo in the eye since the day before Katrine, Maja, and he had gone to Thailand.

“Make sure you take good care of them,” Søren had ordered him, fixing Bo with his eyes. Bo had bristled with irritation. Since then, he had seen Bo once. In the church and only from the back.

Søren had called earlier to say he was coming, but he barely recognized the man who opened the door. Bo was unshaven, and he was wearing jeans and a vest. His stomach bulged like a ship’s fender. He stared at Søren, turned around, and disappeared into the apartment. Søren followed him into a small living room that opened into a laminate kitchen. To the right of the kitchen, an open door led to a room where Søren could see an unmade bed. The curtains were drawn and the television was on in the background.

“What do you want?” Bo scowled. He had sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette. Before Søren had time to reply, he went on: “I don’t know why you’re here after all this time. But if you’re hoping to be forgiven, you can leave right now. You lost any chance of that when you stopped answering your phone; when I couldn’t get hold of you. Not even at the station. Bastards threatened to get a restraining order against me. A fucking restraining order! If I didn’t stop calling. Like I was the criminal. Ha, if only they knew!”

“I couldn’t bear to hear what had happened. They were dead. I couldn’t bear the details.”

Bo sent him a brief, lost look.

“I wasn’t trying to hassle you, but that was how I was treated. Like a stalker. I just wanted to talk to you. I had just lost my wife and my child. Our child. For fuck’s sake, I just wanted to talk to you!” Bo buried his face in his hands.

“I was a coward,” Søren admitted. “I was wrong.”

A pause followed, then Søren said, “I want to hear it now, please. The details. I want to know why you’re here and they’re not.”

Bo went deathly pale, and started panting.

“Are you saying it’s my fault? You total shit . . .” He made to get up, but his excess weight dragged him back down on the sofa. He accepted his fate and started talking.

“Our hotel room was some distance from the beach, and I woke up that morning when water started coming in under the door. It was total chaos outside. A roof had been ripped off, people were screaming and running away from the beach. I called out for Katrine and headed for the beach. I still didn’t know what had happened, but suddenly I realized I wouldn’t have a chance unless I started running. So that’s what I did. In the opposite direction, away from the coast and up a slope, where I ended up on a hill along with fifty other people. I didn’t want to look down at the bay. I didn’t want to. I lay curled up under a bush, praying they were alive. But my prayers weren’t answered.” He laughed a hollow laugh. “I drank too much wine the night before; we had held an improvised Christmas lunch and I had had too much to drink. My guess is Katrine went down to have breakfast with Maja on the beach when she woke up, so as not to disturb me. They were helpless when the tsunami came. So they died. They were found farther along the beach. That’s what happened, Søren. Happy now? I failed to save them because I was asleep. Because I had a hangover.” Bo retreated into himself.

“I went to the funeral,” Søren said. “I sat in the back.”

“I know, I saw you.”

“Thank you for arranging such a beautiful service. The flowers on their coffins, the silk ribbons and all that.”

Bo said nothing. He looked like he had given up. He eased himself out of the sofa and got another beer. He didn’t offer Søren one. That was all right. Søren’s daughter had died, and he had hidden, like a coward, at the back of the church, convinced that Bo hadn’t seen him. He didn’t deserve a beer. He didn’t deserve anything. A long silence ensued. Bo was staring dully at the television, drinking from the bottle. Søren was numb. When he got up to leave, Bo said: “Guys like you, in their late thirties, going for the big confession, hoping for the grand, all-embracing forgiveness for all their sins, you’re all pathetic.” He hurled the empty bottle into a corner.

“I’ll call you,” Søren said. “I’ll visit.”

“No, you fucking won’t.”

Bo didn’t look up when Søren left. Søren opened the front door. Just as he crossed the threshold, he heard Bo say: “But Maja smiled at me. At me! She never knew who that asshole was.”

With a heavy heart, Søren walked past the trash cans and old bicycles that lined the concrete walkway.

Vibe’s stomach greeted him first when she opened the door. Her head was bullet shaped and her swollen feet were stuffed into Birkenstock sandals. She was grinning from ear to ear.

“I’m the happiest hippo on the planet,” she said, hugging Søren. “How lovely to see you! I thought you were working around the clock and would visit once the police were no longer ‘clueless,’ as the papers say.” She scrutinized him. “Hey, what’s wrong? You look completely shattered.”

Søren hung up his jacket.

“Vibe, I need to talk to you. My timing’s crap,” he nodded toward her stomach, “but it’s urgent. I can’t wring a single constructive thought out of my head until I have spoken to you.”

“That sounds serious,” Vibe said, lightly.

Her husband, John, was sitting on the sofa and the television was on. A bottle of massage oil stood on the coffee table, and John had a towel in his hands. There were also two glasses of red wine. Hers still full, while his contained just a drop. They were watching a cop show. John got up and shook Søren’s hand.

“Hiya. Sorry about today’s papers, eh?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Søren mumbled.

“Can I get you anything? A glass of wine? Are you hungry?” Vibe asked. Søren hesitated. He was starving. Vibe read his mind.

“Darling,” she said to her husband. “Please would you heat the leftovers for Søren and pour him a glass of wine? He wants to talk to me. It’s important.”

John’s eyebrows shot up.

“Is it okay if we go into the dining room? Then we won’t disturb you.”

John checked his watch. “I’ll heat some food for you,” he said, glancing at Søren. “And then I’ll take Cash for his walk, so you can talk.”

“I’m really sorry,” Søren apologized. “I didn’t mean to ruin your night.”

“That’s all right,” John replied, putting his hand on Søren’s shoulder for a moment.

Twenty minutes later Søren was eating goulash with mashed potatoes. He tried to remember when he had last eaten. Vibe poured him a glass of wine, and they made small talk while the food disappeared. When he had cleared his plate, he carried it into the kitchen so Vibe wouldn’t have to get up. In the kitchen, he drank some ice-cold water from the faucet and splashed some on his face. Then he went to the living room. Vibe was sitting in the corner of the sofa, looking expectantly and anxiously at him.

“I’ve been dreading this moment for twenty years,” she said.

Søren stopped in his tracks. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“Ah,” she said quickly. “I’m getting ahead of myself.” She looked away. “Sit down, get it off your chest, you look so tormented.”

It was Friday October 12, and it was pitch-black, cold, and nasty outside. Søren leaned back and stared at his hands. Then he told Vibe the reason for his visit.

Could she remember going on that course in Barcelona in December 2003? Yes, of course she could. Did she remember Søren going out with Henrik? Søren had told her about their night out when she came back, about the restaurant, about the girls at the neighboring table they got talking to, who had come with them to a club where they had danced. Vibe remembered it well. The night he had gone home with a woman named Katrine. Vibe’s eyes hardened to begin with, but then she started to smile, wanting to know if Søren was here to confess to an old infidelity. “Bad boy,” she said, wagging her finger at him, “but honestly,” she went on, “we were together for seventeen years and I was perfectly aware that it might happen, that it might already
have
happened, there’s no need to look so guilty,” she said. Søren shook his head. No, there was more.

“I couldn’t say it,” Søren said eventually. “I couldn’t make myself tell you. I didn’t want a child with you, but I had gotten another woman pregnant. I just couldn’t. It was also because of our relationship, Vibe,” he said, as though she had protested. “We were like brother and sister, for God’s sake! We weren’t lovers. There was no spark. Not really. I mean, take John. Even John treats me as if I were his brother-in-law, not a hint of jealousy even though I’ve slept with his wife more times than he has.” Vibe couldn’t help smiling. “Apart from the fact that I truly didn’t want to be a dad, then our relationship was enough of a reason for us not have a child together. And then Elvira and later Knud died . . . I just couldn’t tell you Katrine was pregnant. At least, not then.” Søren swallowed. “So I decided to wait a little. Until the storm had passed. Just like we decided not to tell Knud and Elvira we had broken up.”

“Did they know about the baby?” Vibe whispered.

“No, Vibe, they knew nothing. I would never have done that to you. No one knew anything. Not Henrik, not anyone. I kept everything to myself. But I couldn’t keep the secret for ever, that was obvious . . . but . . .”

“You have a daughter . . .” Vibe whispered. She shook her head in wonder as if her entire world had just been smashed.

“I
had
a daughter,” Søren said brutally. Vibe blinked.

“On the eighteenth of December Bo, Katrine, and Maja went to Thailand for Christmas. To Phuket. They died in the tsunami. Not Bo, but Maja and Katrine.”

Vibe put her hands in front of her face, her eyes darting from side to side as if she was rereading old documents and everything finally made sense.

“But you didn’t have your breakdown until January,” she said, baffled. “After we had split up. Quite a while after Elvira’s death, and while Knud was still alive—though no one knew how long he would last. And that was after the tsunami, wasn’t it? In early January.”

“We were in Sweden, remember? We had no idea what had happened until we came back and saw the papers. I wanted to tell you about Maja in Sweden, but I couldn’t. You were so relaxed. When we came home and heard what had happened in Asia, I looked for their names and I couldn’t find them. I thought they had survived, that they hadn’t called me because everything was chaos. After all, I was just a sperm donor. All I could do was wait for Katrine to get in touch. On January fifth, in the evening, Bo called. He was crying and screaming. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. I calmed him down. In a situation like that you think all sorts of crazy things. I imagined that Katrine had been hurt and was in hospital. Bo was so upset and emotional. Deep down, I couldn’t believe that they were really dead. After all, they weren’t on the dead or missing persons’ registers. But they had died. Bo had identified them.”

“Oh, no.” Vibe was sobbing, the tears ran in two straight lines down her cheeks.

“That was it. I had a breakdown. I took time off. Forgive me, Vibe. I know you blamed yourself for my suffering. I couldn’t talk about it. I suppressed everything about Maja. When Knud died soon afterward, I added my grief for Knud to my grief for Maja. So no one would know.”

Vibe stared silently into space.

“I can understand if you hate me,” he said.

“I don’t hate you, Søren,” she said. She leaned forward as best she could and took his hand.

“It must have been terrible for you,” she said. Søren could feel his toes curl and he looked away.

“So why now?” Vibe wanted to know, as she stroked his hand. “Why tell me now? Is it because I’m pregnant? Has something happened?”

Søren closed his eyes so he wouldn’t cry. Having succeeded, he turned to look at her.

“It’s this case I’m investigating,” he said, softly. “It’s not especially tragic—all things being equal—and it shouldn’t be so harrowing, either. Not for a detective. No children have been hurt, and both the victims . . . well, of course they have friends and families, but even so. No suddenly orphaned children staring at me with lost eyes. Do you know what I mean?”