The Forgotten Girls (13 page)

Louise watched as she gently laid the little one down in the carry-cot next to her chair before going inside. She returned
shortly after with a couple of towels, which she tossed to the two older children. The father had begun rolling up the water hose. The scene of domestic idyll played on as Louise thought back to the day that hers ended.

S
HE HAD RIDDEN
her bike home from the train station on Sunday morning. She didn’t want to call and wake up Klaus to let him know that she was on her way, but she brought freshly baked bread from the bakery on Main Street—both breakfast rolls and pastries.

His motorcycle was parked in front of the house and the living room windows were open so she thought he might have gotten up early to start unpacking.

The door was unlocked but she didn’t take any time to puzzle over it. She was so excited to see him, she just walked right in.

He was hanging from a rope over the stairs.

L
OUISE CLOSED HER
eyes but stood up quickly before the images got too clear. With her arms in front of her, she pushed her way back through the pines and stumbled out into the road.

She froze for a second. For the first time in twenty-one years, she had allowed herself to think back all the way to the moment she stepped inside the house. She would usually force her memories to change course before she got that far. But today she had walked the plank, and as she slowly started to make her way back to the car, she tried to determine whether she felt more broken.

I
T WAS PAST
noon when Louise got to the department, but instead of going straight to her own office, she headed directly for Rønholt’s front office. And Hanne.

She had to have a talk with the secretary. If their relationship continued down this road, it would eventually come to a crash, and she knew herself well enough to know that she might end up saying a lot of things that were both rash and filled with anger—admittedly not the smartest thing to do now that she had put herself in a position where she could get the boot on relatively short notice.

She had come to realize that she’d made a mistake in falling for Rønholt’s offer and his words of praise. There was no doubt in her mind that Eik had been telling the truth when he said others had been offered the opportunity to head the new special unit but had turned it down because it was a sinking ship. Of course none of them were foolish enough to put their steady
and secure jobs on the line for a new unit that was at risk of being short-lived and apparently only served as an office where cases were pushed through in order to be closed and archived as quickly as possible. She was furious with herself now for not making sure that her contract stipulated her right to return to one of the established departments should it become necessary to close down this new unit after the trial period. She had been so eager to get away from the dreaded Michael Stig, who had replaced her old boss, that she acted without thinking.

“Come in!” Hanne’s voice sounded chirpy when Louise knocked but her smile faded when she saw who it was. “Well,” she said just before Louise stopped her, pulling a chair up to her desk.

“Hanne, what’s your problem?” she blurted out. “Why do you act like this with me?”

At first Hanne just stared at Louise as if she hadn’t the faintest idea what she might be referring to. Then she gave a small wave as if trying to fan away a smell. But perhaps she was merely trying to hush Louise. Still without saying a word, she reached over and picked up the top item from her letter organizer and handed it to Louise.

She accepted the file but let it drop onto the desk without taking her eyes off Hanne.

“Stop it,” she demanded, “and let’s just talk about this. We both know I’m not going to quit the department just because you don’t like my being here,” she continued, growing confused with the look in Hanne’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” the secretary asked uncomprehendingly, awkwardly flicking her big red hair a little as if Louise’s attack was coming as a complete surprise to her. “Why would you quit?”

“Because you’re being so rude, and frankly it seems as if
you’d prefer it if I just went away. But I won’t,” Louise emphasized. “We need to figure out a way to work together, so it’s no use for you to withhold information about important meetings. Or for you to keep me in the dark about the routines of the department in general.”

There was a moment of silence between them; then Hanne pointed to the plastic folder on the desk.

“I’ve got a phone number for you. They got a DNA result from the woman in the woods, and I promised that you would call them back.”

She said it as if the preceding conversation never happened.

Louise contemplated her for a second. Then she sighed and picked up the printout from the Forensics Department. She still hadn’t gotten around to putting her name on her cubbyhole.

“Thanks,” she said and stood up.

O
N HER WAY
back to the office, she wondered what in the world she was going to do about Hanne. In the end she would probably have to speak with Rønholt.

“Hey!” someone called from behind her.

She turned around. When she spotted Olle, she realized that she never thanked him for the drawing of the kitchen rat.

He was tall and his hair was thinning at the top. Louise guessed that he was at least fifty, but a look in his warm brown eyes, which kept smiling as he walked toward her, made his age difficult to pinpoint.

“Did you like it?” he asked expectantly, like a child who drew a picture for his parents.

Louise wasn’t sure if it was her expression or because she waited too long to answer, but in any event, he seemed to catch on to the fact that she probably wasn’t a major fan of cartoons.

“I can make something else,” he quickly offered. “I just thought I should make you something now that you’re going to be working with us.”

“No-no,” she burst out, embarrassed that he should have to suffer for her irritable mood. “It’s really cool and it was so nice of you. I didn’t even know you had that kind of talent.”

“I’ve got all kinds of talent,” he retorted in a velvety smooth voice, stepping closer and smiling.

Louise was so taken aback at his undisguised flirtation that she couldn’t think to do anything but just stand there with a sheepish smile.

“You be sure to let me know if you feel like exploring some of the other ones,” he went on as she slowly began to take a few steps backward.

“Olle!”

Eik came out of the cleaning room, tucking his pack of cigarettes in his pocket.

“She’s mine.”

Louise turned around, feeling relieved that her rescuer wasn’t having lunch at Posten with the others. She gave a quick nod to the tall, gangly cartoonist and fled down the hall toward the Rathole.

“D
ID YOU ATTEND
the managers’ meeting?” Louise asked as she walked through the door. Then her nose caught a strange smell in the office and she fell silent. Her initial thought was that maybe the rats were back.

Eik had pushed their desks up against the wall to make room on the floor.

“I was busy,” he declared without looking at her. His desk was a mess of papers, which lifted as the wind caught them.
“I printed out information on every registered Toyota HiAce that’s white with no windows, and I was working on screening out the newer models when they called from the Forensics Department to say that we could come pick up Lise Andersen’s clothes.”

As Louise walked over to her desk and put down her bag, she realized that the musty smell was coming from the clothes.

He was laying them out on the floor. He had already smoothed out the rust-red, smock-like dress and was now placing a pair of navy-blue ankle socks next to it.

“They’re completely worn out.” He held out one of them to show her the large holes. “That’s why it looked like she’d been walking barefoot.”

Louise nodded.

“I’m just trying to see if maybe there’s something about her clothes that might give us a clue to go on. But the dress doesn’t have a tag, and if you come over here you’ll see that the fabric is worn completely shiny. It’s old.”

But Louise didn’t look at the dress. Instead she looked at him as he proceeded to pick up an undershirt from the small cardboard box. Even though Eik was too much in every way, she had to admit that Rønholt was right about him being energetic and good at finding new angles.

“They got a DNA result,” Louise told him. She dialed up the DNA section of the Forensics Department.

Eik had finished laying out the clothes and walked over to get the camera from his desk. Then he began to photograph each piece of clothing.

“I guess it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to trace the dress,” he assessed while Louise waited for her call to be transferred.

He had made no comments on the fact that she had come in late, nor her calling in sick the previous day. Perhaps he hadn’t
even noticed, she thought, and told the man who picked up her call which case she was calling about. “You asked me to call.”

To Eik, Louise mouthed
They got a positive DNA match.
The man who had intercourse with Lisemette before she fell to her death was already in the police DNA database.

She was about to ask for the civil registration number when the man added that the person was identified by neither name nor civil registration number. His DNA alone was linked to another case. The perpetrator’s identity was unknown.

“But there must be a reference number?” she interjected and jotted it down as he read out the information.

She quickly wrapped up the call and punched in the reference number. Her fingers froze over the keys as she started to read.

“It’s him!” she said without taking her eyes off the screen to look at Eik, who was on the floor with the camera.

“Who?” he asked.

“It’s the same guy,” she said. “The man who killed the child care provider also had intercourse with Lise. And when I was talking to Mik it sounded like he was pretty sure that the perpetrator could also be linked to the missing runner.”

Eik left the camera on the floor as he got to his feet and walked over to stand behind her chair.

“But if it’s him then why didn’t he hurt Lise?” he asked. “There isn’t the slightest indication that she was the victim of an assault. Her clothes weren’t disheveled, and there were no tears or hematomas on her lower body.”

Louise shook her head, momentarily unable to think of an answer.

“Maybe she didn’t try to fight it?” she finally suggested, following him with her eyes as he returned to the clothes on the floor.

“You think he took his leisurely time to undo the whole long fastening in her dress? And what about her underwear? None of the things are torn or ripped. I’m not buying that this was rape,” he concluded.

“Then what do you think?” Louise asked, growing exasperated as he merely shrugged and reached for the camera.

“I think they knew each other,” he said, looking up at her. “And if that’s the case, then he might also have access to Mette.”

I
F WE’RE LOOKING
for the same guy, then I’ve got something you ought to see,” Mik said. He explained that he had just returned from the archive in Roskilde, where he had gone to pick up some old cases.

She had called him up to tell him about the latest development, and she could tell that he was walking while they talked. He seemed absentminded, even when she shared the news about the DNA match between the child care provider and Lise Andersen.

“Twenty years ago there were several aggravated assaults in those woods. Two of the women were raped and killed. After the press release that we sent out this morning warning women against walking alone in the woods, we were contacted by a retired schoolteacher from Hvalsø, who told us that one of her graduates was the perpetrator’s first victim.”

Louise stared straight ahead. She found it difficult to
imagine the same perpetrator being in the area all the way back then. She had no recollection of those cases, but then it was around that same time that she was engrossed in the aftershocks of her own catastrophe and had her hands full just trying to keep her life together.

“They never caught the perpetrator,” he added.

“But then what about all the years in between?” Louise objected. “If this guy was behind a series of attacks, do you think he just took a break only to pick back up where he left off?” she said.

It made no sense, she thought as she heard a door opening. She assumed that Mik had arrived back at his office.

“Obviously we need to investigate whether he might be behind other crimes in the intervening years,” he conceded. “But if that’s the case then it definitely wasn’t a series of attacks like the ones that took place back then.”

“No, of course not,” Louise mumbled. Then the police districts would clearly have been aware that the cases were linked.

“His DNA was collected in connection with the old assaults but they never found the person behind the DNA profile,” he told her. “That was also before DNA was recognized as evidence so they may not have even been able to convict him even if he had been identified—there is no other evidence.”

“And it was before the profiles started to get entered in the system automatically,” Louise said while still searching her memory. Surely she had heard about it, she thought, but she’d probably just repressed the story along with everything else.

“Right now, the forensic geneticists are working on finding out whether the old cases can be linked to the murder of the child care provider. We’ll get the results later today.”

“Would it be possible for me to read the case files?” Louise
asked. If they were able to link them to the child care provider, they would also be linked to Lisemette.

“You’re welcome to it,” Mik answered. “But you have to come up here. I can’t send them to you because we’re going to need them ourselves.”

“Of course,” she quickly cut in. “I’ll head out as soon as I get a bite to eat.”

Louise suddenly noticed that she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since they sat outside in the community garden the night before. Now hunger was gnawing at her along with adrenaline, which was well on its way to firing up every fiber of her body.

“C
AN’T WE JUST
pick up a sandwich on the way?” Eik suggested as they walked down the hall together shortly after. “And today I’m driving.”

She followed him without objection to a beat-up Jeep Cherokee—black, like the clothes that Eik always wore. The car reeked of smoke; empty soda bottles littered the floor. Louise got her cell phone from her bag, and while Eik rolled down the window and lit up a cigarette she called her parents to check on Jonas.

“Do you want to stay in Lerbjerg or should I ask if Melvin will be home later today?” she asked. She told him that she was on her way to Holbæk but could probably stop by on the way back.

Louise looked questioningly at Eik to confirm that he would be okay with taking a detour on their way home. He nodded briefly and emitted some deep grunts as he tapped the wheel to the beat of a Nick Cave song playing from the car stereo.

“I’d rather stay here,” Jonas sniffled and stifled a yawn.

“I’ll call you tonight then,” she promised. “Feel better.”

L
OUISE PUT A
bag on Mik’s desk with a chicken-and-bacon sandwich and a Schweppes Ginger Ale.

“You’ve got a good memory.” He smiled and took a gulp before showing them to an office down the hall where the case files were stacked up.

The first case occurred in the month of May. According to the old summary, Diana Sørensen had just gotten out of school to study for her finals when she was attacked in the woods. The girl explained that she was getting off her bike to walk up a hill when a man grabbed hold of her.

“He came out from behind a tree as if he had been waiting for me,” the girl had said.

There weren’t that many people coming through the woods, Louise thought, so it seemed illogical that he would have actually stood there waiting for the schoolgirl to pass by. More likely he’d followed her without her noticing. The girl had broken her right collarbone and her shoulder was dislocated from the fall, she read, inferring that the man must have yanked on her hard when he knocked her off her bike.

Diana Sørensen had been unable to describe her assailant. The police report noted that the victim was presumably unconscious during part of the incident, and it was added in parenthesis that she had been a virgin at the time of the attack.

Aside from the sounds, the man had been quiet during that part of the rape, the young girl recalled, and she never saw him as anything but just a large shadow.

“It looked as if the sun had disappeared; suddenly everything was just dark,” she had explained. Once the perpetrator had thrown her to the ground facedown, he had ripped off her tight jeans.

“He breathed in such a strange way,” she had described, and the officer had asked her to explain what it was about the rapist’s breathing that frightened her.

“He sounded like an animal,” the report said, and Diana Sørensen had elaborated on her statement by explaining that his breathing always seemed to have the same pulse: “Like a fan or a horse wheezing.”

“The young girl describes the perpetrator as a monster, a cross between man and beast,” Louise said, looking over at Eik, who was intently chewing on a match while reading. “But she couldn’t say what he looked like.”

He didn’t seem to be listening at all, she thought. He had a deep wrinkle across his forehead, and his index finger followed the lines as he worked his way through one of the other old reports. Louise shook her head with irritation and picked up the next case.

Two weeks later, a twenty-two-year-old woman had been raped and killed in the same part of the woods. There were clear indications that she had fought vehemently. The killer’s DNA had been scraped out from under her fingernails. According to the forensic report, the young woman had scratched and kicked in her attempt to defend herself until the perpetrator broke her neck, and only then did he consummate the rape.

“Listen to this,” Eik interrupted her, spitting out his match into the wastebasket. “If this is the same perpetrator that we’re looking for, this says something about his defect of character.”

Louise reluctantly took her eyes off the report on the rapist’s first casualty.

“Gitte Jensen was walking her dog in the woods and had taken it off the leash even though dogs must be kept on leash. At one point it started barking like crazy and ran off between the trees. She tried calling the dog and was about to go look for
him when she heard some strange sounds and twigs snapping on the forest floor. By then the dog had gone quiet, and she ran like hell all the way home, thinking about that rapist that everyone was talking about.”

He fell silent for a second as he read on.

“What about the dog?” Louise asked.

“They found it,” he replied. “Or rather, what was left of it.” He bent over the report and read out: “ ‘It is presumed that the dog was lifted by its hind legs and hurled around.’ ”

Eik grimaced and put a new match in his mouth, disgust written on his haggard face.

“You read it.” He pushed the report toward her.

Louise pulled it closer while stealing a glance at Eik, whose quiet distress was striking.

The dog’s skull was crushed and all of his vertebrae were broken, she read. The police had found bits of fur in the bark of the surrounding trees. Cerebral matter and blood were splattered across a sizable area, and based on that information Louise envisaged that the dog had been hurled around with terrific force.

“How the hell can anyone even swing around a chap like that?” Eik asked after collecting himself a little.

Louise shrugged. The dog was a male weighing upward of ninety pounds. “I guess you can if you’re strong enough,” she said.

“But it probably tried to bite.”

She thought of her dad, who once yanked a large fox out of the chicken coop. He had avoided getting bitten because he held it by its tail and swung it around so it couldn’t reach him.

They sat in silence until Louise slid the report back across the table.

“It attacked him,” she said.

Eik nodded. “And then he destroyed it.”

She felt a tight knot in her stomach. If the twins had been in some sort of contact with this perpetrator, then what had they been subjected to?

“They never caught him,” Louise mumbled as she began to lay out the cases on the desk. Diana Sørensen had managed to get herself home after the assault. The doctors subsequently thought that she had probably been lying in the woods for a while before regaining consciousness, and maybe the rapist thought she was dead when he left her. At the back of the file was a map on which the schoolgirl had circled the place where the attack happened.

Louise found Avnsø and turned the map to orient herself.

“The rape happened just on the other side of the large Troll’s Oak,” she said, looking at Eik. “That’s only a few hundred yards from the Deep, which is where Mik believes that the runner was attacked.”

She took the map from the next case file. In late summer another woman had been raped and killed not far from there.

“All of the old attacks happened in the same part of the woods,” he said, pointing to the place where the dog had been found.

“But nobody lives around there,” Louise said with frustration.

“The perpetrator must have thorough knowledge of the woods,” Eik said, looking at her. “He knows the forest paths well enough that he’s able to take a shortcut to get ahead of his victims once he spots them. Who knows the woods like that?”

He lit a cigarette and walked over to the open window. Louise was about to protest but instead she shrugged and tried to ignore it.

“Lots of people know the woods. Riders, orienteers, forest workers, scouts,” she answered. She personally knew every way through there; she had ridden down all the small roads and
knew exactly where to cut through the trees to get somewhere as quickly as possible.

Once Eik had finished smoking and closed the window, they laid out all the cases by date.

“The first one happened in May,” he summed up. “The last one was in August. And all of them in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings, as far as I can tell.”

Louise nodded. “Was there any specific pattern?” she asked. “Or some sort of regularity? Let’s have a look.” She started writing down the dates on a notepad.

“It was a month between the first one and the second.” Eik leaned forward to read the next cases. “But then there were two just one week apart.”

“What about the two women who went missing?” Louise suddenly remembered. “That was that same summer.”

The year after she’d left town. She had seen the missing person reports back when they were trying to identify Lise Andersen.

“Lotte Svendsen was one of them, and it was just after the Whitsun celebration.”

Louise walked over to the computer and ran a search on the year. “There it is. May eighteen. That was the weekend before Diana Sørensen was raped. So maybe she wasn’t his first victim after all?”

“What about the other one?” Eik asked. “When did she go missing?”

“I don’t remember the date but we’ve got them both in the system back at the department.”

There was a quick knock at the door, then Mik walked in.

“We’ve gotten a positive result back from Forensics,” he said and asked them to gather up the case files and follow him to his office. “The old DNA profiles match our case. It was the same perpetrator in the woods back then.”