The Killing Forest (6 page)

L
ouise felt dizzy when she walked out of the house. Eik stood smoking a cigarette, enjoying the view of the forest. She asked him to unlock the car, and just as she was about to get in, Charlie jumped up right behind the front seat. He looked at her and cocked his ears forward, as if in anticipation.

“You'll just have to wait to get out and run,” she snapped. She was still enraged. She'd let the man provoke her. She shouldn't have reacted when he mentioned René.

“Damn it,” she said under her breath. She vowed that from now on she would be better prepared.

Eik walked over to her. “What are you mumbling about?”

“Nothing,” she said. “You were good in there. I'm sorry; it threw me off to see it was Jane lying in bed. We knew each other.”

Eik put his arm around her. “I figured it was something like that.” He kissed her hair.

Images from the past kept popping up now, after seeing Jane. Happy images. Despite her anger, Louise could suddenly recall what it was like being an eighth-grader in love.

She had been crazy about Klaus. She'd stood by the outdoor handball court in every kind of weather to watch him play. She'd hung out in the gym's clubhouse, just to see him walk out of the locker room.

It all seemed so ridiculous now, but back then it had been a matter of life or death. Teenage love had been a force she couldn't control, no matter how hard she tried. She could still remember her heart jumping when he looked at her and smiled.

They started going together after a party in the gym. Maybe she'd been drunker than she thought when she walked over to him. And it had felt like the most natural thing in the world when Klaus put his arm around her and whispered in her ear, “Finally.”

Eik backed out of the courtyard and drove down the bumpy gravel road, out to the highway. “You want to go out to eat tonight? Jonas is welcome to come along, of course. We could go to Tea; they make the best Peking duck in town.”

She smiled and said that Jonas was going to a movie with a friend and would be staying all night with him afterward.

Eik grinned. “It's not like I have anything against it being just the two of us.” He leaned toward her. “We can have coffee at your place afterward.”

She touched his cheek, felt the stubble grazing against the palm of her hand.

“There's something I have to do first,” she said. She told him to turn right before they reached the roundabout.

“There's no hurry, it's only five.”

“This is something I have to do alone.”

She pointed at a side street ahead. “Would you please drop me off there?”

Eik's expression became serious. When they reached the street, he stopped and turned to her. “Are you sure this is wise?”

She saw the doubt in his face. He couldn't possibly know where she was going, but he wasn't dumb; she'd told him about losing a man she'd loved. She touched his cheek again and nodded.

“I haven't spoken with Klaus's parents since he died, and now I have to. They deserve to know what René Gamst told me. If their son didn't commit suicide, they should know. But going out to eat Peking duck tomorrow or this weekend sounds fantastic.”

She loved the thin pancakes and the pungent hoisin sauce. It was one of Jonas's favorite foods, something he and his father had made together. Jonas had diced the cucumbers and spring onions; his father had been an expert at the crisp skin. Suddenly Louise missed her foster son terribly. His relaxed face, the thick, dark hair that fell into his eyes.

“Of course,” Eik said, jolting her out of her thoughts, the chaos of emotions from the past and present bouncing around inside her. All the things she had pushed away, repressed.

She didn't even know if Lissy and Ernst still lived in the white house on Skovvej. Back in the eighth grade, Louise always bicycled past as slowly as possible on the way to Lerbjerg, to see if Klaus's scooter was parked in the drive, or if he was helping his father behind the house.

She studied Eik's face in profile for a moment before getting out of the car. She shook her head when he asked if he should wait for her.

“I'll take the train home,” she said, and smiled at him.

“Shouldn't we check to see if they still live here?”

“I have to do this alone,” she repeated. She was beginning to wonder herself if this was such a good idea.

Eik watched her a moment, then nodded and blew her a kiss.

She stood on the corner as he made a U-turn and drove off toward Copenhagen.

L
ouise walked the last stretch with her hands in her jacket pockets, her eyes on the sidewalk.
Step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back
. It was as if the lock on her trunk of repressed memories had been blown off. The old children's rhyme kept running through her head, in time with her steps.

It was a game she'd played with her girlfriends at school. They had upgraded it to a teenage version—whoever stepped on a crack had to tell the others a secret. Louise had revealed that she was secretly in love with Klaus, and instantly she'd seen that she wasn't the only one; he was one of the boys many girls in school had their eyes on.

Suddenly she spotted the freshly painted picket fence and house, which looked exactly like it had all those years ago. Well kept, though not renovated. A café curtain still hung in the kitchen window.

She breathed deeply. Did they still live here? Anyone younger probably wouldn't have hung that curtain. She crossed the street and stopped at the gate, her legs refusing to take her another step.

Pull yourself together
, she thought. Their name was on the mailbox. But she still couldn't move.

In her mind's eye she saw Klaus's scooter and the birdhouses his father had built, a hobby that had given him something to talk about with Louise's father. The two men were always showing each other something or telling stories that had to do with birds. She had completely forgotten about those birdhouses. She looked around; they hung from every tree in the yard, more numerous now than back then. Many were ornate, too. One on the big tree in the middle of the yard was a precise copy of a Swiss hut. A newer model, she thought. Surely he wouldn't have had time for that level of detail back when he'd worked at the sawmill.

She heard a voice from the woodshed. “Louise? Is that you?” Ernst, Klaus's father, walked over to her and opened the gate. “Come in, come in!”

She tried to smile at him; she wanted to say something, but her mind went blank. Over twenty years had gone by without them hearing a single peep from her. Not that she'd heard from them, either. Finally her feet moved, and before she knew it the words flew out of her mouth.

“I don't think Klaus committed suicide.”

Instantly she realized her mistake. She should have said that it was so nice to see him again; that he was looking well.

Ernst stiffened for a second, then laid a hand on her shoulder. “Come inside. It wouldn't surprise me if Lissy had a cup of coffee waiting for us.”

Louise followed him around the corner of the house to the back porch, where a half-finished birdhouse stood on his workbench. They entered the house through the laundry room to the smell of newly washed clothes and freshly brewed coffee. She took off her shoes, and he led her into the kitchen. She couldn't remember exactly how it had looked back then, yet a sense of security and familiarity overcame her. Which made it even more difficult to say what she was there to say.

Klaus's mother appeared in the doorway and welcomed Louise with open arms, as if she were a long-lost child come home.

“Now, this is a surprise!” Lissy said.

Her hair had turned gray, and her figure was rounder now, but her eyes were still lively. And she had the same habit of drying her hands on her apron. Without another word, she opened a cupboard and brought out coffee cups.

“Do you use milk or sugar?” she asked as she walked over to the refrigerator.

“Milk, thank you.”

Ernst led her into the living room. At once, she noticed the photos covering the bureau, of Klaus and his younger sister. They appeared together in several shots, then a few were of an older Heidi. Alone. What looked to be the most recent showed her with a little boy on her lap.

“Our grandchild,” Ernst said. “Jonathan. He just turned three.”

Farthest to the left in a silver frame was a photo of her and Klaus. Her hair was tightly curled, a permanent gone wild in Salon Connie. She'd forgotten that.

Louise managed to say that their grandson was a real cutie before her throat tightened up from the grief that revisited her. They sat in awkward silence, waiting for Lissy. The moment she stepped into the room, Ernst told her what Louise had said out on the sidewalk.

“You don't think it was suicide,” he repeated. “But isn't it hard to know what happened after all these years?”

Before Louise could explain, Lissy said, “I've never believed it was his own idea.” She looked at Ernst. “We've talked about that.”

Ernst nodded almost imperceptibly, then stared down at his hands.

Louise set her coffee cup down. “So what you're saying is, you've known all along?”

“Don't think that we've
known
,” he mumbled.

“We have our theories,” Lissy said, her voice more assured.

“But you didn't do anything about it?” Louise said. “You should've said something.”

“No one knows for sure what happened that night,” Ernst said. “That's why it was hard to make serious accusations. And no parent wants to think that their child took his own life.”

“You know this town,” Lissy said. She studied the fingernails on her right hand, then looked up. “You know how it is when everyone turns against you. And it's right what Ernst says: We didn't know what happened. We just couldn't make sense of it. He was so happy, all he could talk about was you two and your house. He was starting a new life, and he'd settled his debt, too.”

“What debt?” Louise asked.

“He owed Ole Thomsen for a motorcycle. And it turned out he even had to pay interest. It ended up being expensive, more than he could pay from what he earned as an apprentice.”

Of course, Louise thought. Thomsen wasn't above squeezing his friends.

“We helped him out. We paid off Thomsen so Klaus wouldn't have to have anything to do with him and his gang.”

Louise hadn't known about that, either.

“But it's hard to turn your back on old friends,” his father said. As if an explanation was needed for his son's problems with leaving the gang. Louise had never understood what he had in common with them.

Louise also didn't understand why his parents hadn't acted if they suspected wrongdoing.
She'd
never doubted that Klaus had taken his own life. The only question for her was why.

“I'm not sure if you've heard what happened out at the gamekeeper's last month,” she said.

They both nodded. She told them what René Gamst had said just before his arrest. That someone had put the noose around Klaus's neck.

Several moments went by before Ernst said, “There was a bunch of them out at your house that night.”

Louise's skin tingled. She'd never heard how much people knew about that night, and she'd never asked. She wasn't sure she wanted to know, to have the images of Klaus's last hours swirling around in her head.

She'd been told about the beer drinking. Her brother had seen empty bottles on an upside-down beer case—a makeshift table Louise and Klaus ate breakfast on that first morning in their house. Klaus had spread a newspaper and set out paper plates and plastic tableware they'd bought at a gas station.

Ernst continued. “Every one of them said that they left around one thirty that night.”

“You can't believe anything they say,” Lissy said, “you know that. All their explanations. It was the same way back then in SÃ¥by.”

“SÃ¥by?” Louise said.

“That's something else entirely,” Ernst said.

Lissy brushed him off. “It's not something else, not at all. And then there was Gudrun at her store. No one believed she stumbled and fell on her way to the bathroom that night, not with those injuries. And why would she use the store's bathroom? She had her own, right beside her bedroom.”

Ernst clenched his hands so tightly that his rough knuckles turned white. “We don't know anything about what happened to Gudrun. The police chief said she fell.”

“What about everything missing from the store?” Lissy said. “The alcohol and cigarettes.”

Louise broke in. “Wait, you're talking about the Gudrun who ran the convenience store at the gas station; the woman who died?”

Everyone in Hvalsø had known you could knock on Gudrun's back door and buy beer and cigarettes at night. Louise had done it herself, several times, when they'd run out of beer at a party. Gudrun had been a sweet old lady, well-liked by everyone, and the whole town had gone into mourning after her adult daughter showed up for lunch that Sunday and found her mother on the floor in the store's back room. At first it was rumored that she'd been beaten and robbed, but the police said there was no sign of assault. The items missing from the store had been attributed to Gudrun's back-door business, which she'd kept off the books. Of course, that was easy to claim; she wasn't around to dispute it. Nobody knew for sure what really happened that night.

Lissy wouldn't let it go. “I heard from down at the clinic that her skull had been fractured. A few ribs, too. And the injuries to her face.”

“The police said it was bad luck how she fell; how she hit her head on the counter,” Ernst said.

“She was beaten,” Lissy said, annoyed at her husband. “And she could hardly knock herself in the head from behind and fall on her face and crack her ribs, all at the same time. They said she must have lost consciousness right off the bat.”

“That may be, but we still don't know for sure.”

“Who was in charge of the investigation?” Louise said.

“The chief of police did the talking,” Lissy said. “I don't know who was actually out there doing the investigating.”

The police chief back then was Big Thomsen's father, old Roed Thomsen. He'd retired just before Louise had finished at the police academy. He had always been well respected, was one of the town's leaders—he probably still was, Louise thought. Hadn't he been president of the Hvalsø Sports Association? She was never around him. Her parents didn't belong to the town's elite. Her family would always be regarded as outsiders, no matter how long they lived there.

“What happened out in SÃ¥by?” Louise asked.

“The school janitor was killed by a hit-and-run driver. They never found him.”

“For God's sake, Lissy!” Ernst said. “There's no reason to start in on things we don't know about.”

She ignored her husband. “Did you know him?”

Louise shook her head.

“But then you never played handball, did you?”

“I did, yes. But I don't remember the janitor out there.”

“He lived in Vestre SÃ¥by with his wife and two small children. There was a handball tournament that weekend, and as I recall he left for the gym early Saturday morning to let the cleaners from Roskilde in. There'd been a dance the night before.”

“None of this matters now,” Ernst said. He looked at Louise. “A paper boy found him in the ditch. They never did catch whoever ran him over, even though the police questioned everyone around there. The chief of police finally gave up.”

“Of course he gave up,” Lissy said. “He knew who was out there in the middle of the night, running the intersection with their headlights off.”

Ernst sighed. “I don't know why you're digging all this up.”

“I'll tell you why, because it's so easy to see what goes on around here.” Suddenly Lissy sounded tired. “You've always been afraid of the bigwigs in this town; you'd rather just shut your eyes. But I'm not going to keep quiet anymore, not about anyone who might have been involved in Klaus's death. And that's that! Not after hearing this from Louise.”

Chills ran down Louise's spine. Her joints suddenly felt stiff and sore, as if she'd been sitting motionless too long. But she couldn't move. “Who drove around at night with their headlights off?” She looked back and forth between Klaus's parents, though she felt she already knew the answer.

Lissy avoided her eyes, and Ernst folded his hands in his lap again, perhaps considering her question. Finally he looked at her. “Thomsen and his crowd. Klaus was with them the night the janitor died.” He didn't look away this time, as if he wanted to show her that he realized he'd let the cat out of the bag.

Louise opened her mouth, but no words came out.

“They shut their lights off and crossed the intersection,” Lissy said quietly.

“It was a sort of test of their manhood,” Ernst said.

Louise was familiar with the Såby intersection. When you crossed the highway to Holbæk, the road continued on to Torkilstrup. A large building blocked the view on the left side of the road, and if you didn't stop at the intersection, you couldn't see traffic coming from Roskilde. A gas station on the other side of the highway made it difficult to see cars coming from Holbæk.

“They didn't stop, they just hoped there weren't any cars,” Louise said to no one in particular.

“When it happened, Klaus didn't say anything about being out there that night,” Ernst said. “Later, he talked about it, but he claimed he hadn't seen anything. I told the chief of police what these kids were up to, but he said they had nothing to do with the accident. Monkey business, as he put it, is a lot different from killing a man. He also said the janitor was thought to have been drunk, and the question was whether he'd even been hit by a car.”

“And two days later you got sacked at the sawmill,” Lissy said. Ernst nodded.

She looked at Louise. “That's how things are done here. You must know that. The chief of police plays poker with the owner of the sawmill.”

“Yeah, but I got my job back,” Ernst said.

Lissy nodded. “You did. After he was sure you weren't going to raise a fuss.”

“We don't know that,” he said, shaking his head at her. “That's why you're better off keeping your suspicions to yourself. We don't know anything. We're guessing.”