Three Dog Night (14 page)

He sat down behind his desk again. She went over to the window and looked down at the car park. He couldn't help himself: ‘And in future please remember that you're our guests. There needs to be room for everyone in the car park, and you would make a better impression if you didn't hog the spaces near the entrance.'

She turned around. She was smiling.

‘The alpha male reduced to playing second fiddle, eh? You can't handle that. You never could.'

He nodded.

‘You can interpret it any way you like. If that makes it easier for you.'

Since their last meeting, Mark had done some research: she was a young and inexperienced leader. It was exactly a fortnight since she had been transferred to Århus as chief investigator from a more junior post in Esbjerg because the legendary John Wagner had requested leave of absence. She wanted to assert herself in front of her staff and an ex who had humiliated her by losing interest and thus provoked her into dumping him. Why, she couldn't know, nor would she ever find out if he had anything to do with it.

‘But you could also choose to see it as a helping hand.'

He was looking for a crack in the facade, but none was forthcoming. She had her strengths and weaknesses as a detective. One of the latter was her obstinacy when the mood took her. She could sink her teeth into a case – but this could also lead to a wild goose chase. Her stubbornness often produced results, though. In Esbjerg, she had a high clear-up rate which you ignored at your peril. But she didn't have his sense of the psychology behind a murder, they both knew that. A killing triggered vibrations, and he had always been good at picking up on the ripples.

‘You'll get the credit, of course,' he said.

Finally a crack. He could see her making mental calculations and knew now was the time to strike.

‘Is Nina Bjerre's post-mortem finished?'

She checked her watch automatically.

‘Yes. Cause of death was strangulation.'

‘Any photos available?'

She nodded.

‘Her face is gone. The skin was peeled off, simple as that.'

‘I heard the rumour. When?'

He held his breath.

‘After she was dead, thank God.'

Mark slowly let out his breath

‘How are you going to identify her? You're not going to bring in her parents, surely?'

She shook her head.

‘We're not savages. We'll find a way, dental records or DNA. Unless the parents insist, of course.'

‘They won't. I've spoken to them.'

She looked shaken, wanted to say something, but he beat her to it.

‘May I see the photos?'

‘It's against the rules.'

‘Screw the rules.'

Her lips opened and her mouth took on the form he had loved: soft with a full lower lip; it was sexier than anything he had ever known.

‘Then come with me.'

On the first floor, the divers were assembled for the briefing. He caught a glimpse of red-headed Kir with the elfin face, and his mood took a turn for the better, without his quite knowing why. Anna strode, heels clicking, into their improvised command centre. Martin Nielsen and four other detectives greeted him somewhat hesitantly and Mark surmised they had heard about his interview with Boutrup.

Documents relating to the two cases were being put up on a big noticeboard. In one photo Ramses lay at the foot of the cliff staring at him with his one eye. In the other, the naked body of a woman lay on a stretcher. Her face was one big lump of raw meat.

Mark studied the dead woman. She was tall and slim, skinny even. Her legs were splayed. He moved a step closer and had another look before addressing Anna Bagger.

‘I'm not sure that's Nina Bjerre.'

‘Come on, Mark. Height and build point to Nina. It has to be her.'

Anna whispered in his ear, ‘Please don't complicate matters for no reason.'

Was that what he was doing? He scrutinised the photo again. She might be right. Perhaps Nina Bjerre had outgrown her knock knees. It was one possibility. Because if it wasn't her, who was the woman the divers had fished out of the harbour?

S
TINGER LAY CONNECTED
to a drip with several metres of tubes coming out of every orifice. Over his nose he had a CPAP mask feeding him oxygen.

He looked tiny in the hospital bed, his sparse strands of hair and bald patch reminiscent of Fethry Duck. His scabby, tattooed hands moved restlessly across the duvet as if trying to tell a story. Apart from that, he was barely recognisable. He had been beaten black and blue and left in the stairwell. Elisabeth had found him early that morning; driven by anxiety and a power cut she had taken a flashlight and gone down to wake the janitor.

‘He said your name. It was the first thing he did. So that's why I called you.'

She looked at Peter, her eyes shiny where her mascara had run. With her rotund figure and otherwise pale face, she looked like a very concerned panda. ‘He hasn't said anything since.'

Peter felt he ought to comfort her, but he didn't know how. She was so big and so well concealed behind her mountain of fat that it was difficult to find the part of her he wanted to contact.

‘He can't,' he said. ‘If he could talk he would.'

They had been told to wait, so they sat by the bed whispering. Over by the window Elisabeth's friend from the other day was sitting stiffly in a chair, still with a black eye and swollen lips, still with a defiant vulnerability in her eyes and a long ponytail down her back. Peter looked at Stinger and wondered if he would ever say anything again.

‘I'm glad you called,' he said.

Otherwise they said nothing, and in the silence he reconstructed his early morning start, being woken by the sound of his mobile and Elisabeth's panic-stricken voice. He had got dressed quickly and driven to the hospital after leaving a note for Felix and ringing Manfred, but by then Stinger had already been taken to intensive care and was about to have a scan to identify probable internal bleeding. Peter had waited in reception with Elisabeth and Anja, her injured friend, who really should have taken up residence in a crisis centre.

‘No places available, and her boyfriend was looking for her. He's in a gang,' Elisabeth whispered, and Peter recalled that Elisabeth herself had once had a biker boyfriend, careered around on a motorbike and allowed herself to be bullied. Even in his addle-brained state, Stinger had always been very annoyed by it.

‘Did he say anything else?' Peter asked.

She shook her head as they sat looking out at the snow, which gave the impression it was never going to stop. Once again tears welled up and ran down her fat cheeks like meltwater from a glacier.

‘He was almost completely covered by snow. He must have been lying there a long time, possibly all night. His pulse was very weak, they said.'

Peter rose and fetched coffee for all of them from the cafeteria. He also bought three cakes. Halfway through her cake, Elisabeth seemed to recover her memory.

‘Oh yes. He did say something about a tattoo.'

‘What?'

‘He said: “That tattoo.” Or something like that. It was hard to make out. The bastards knocked out most of his teeth.'

She shook her head. ‘I thought he was delirious and he was talking about it because it was his work,' she said, and added ‘Kind of' with a little smile.

At that point they had been waiting in reception for close on three hours. Finally they were approached by a nurse, who was able to inform them that they had operated on Stinger to treat the internal bleeding. They had put him into a medically induced coma so that his body could recover from the trauma it had suffered. They were welcome to sit by his bed, if they kept their voices down, but they shouldn't expect him to wake up. Later, a doctor arrived to update them. He had done his best and would see if he could bring the patient out of the artificial coma in a couple of days. But he couldn't make any promises, the doctor said, and didn't really sound particularly interested in the patient or the next-of-kin. The patient might not survive. In addition to the bleeding, his liver was dangerously enlarged. It looked like alcoholism. Was that a possibility?

Peter said nothing, but thought about the times he had seen Stinger knock back a bottle of vodka plus a few chasers. Elisabeth nodded quietly. Yes, it was. The doctor looked at her and Peter saw what he saw: an unkempt mountain of blubber, indicating excessive intake of fat and sugar and hence – the doctor might have erroneously concluded – stupidity. Perhaps he lumped her and Stinger together: patients whose illnesses were self-inflicted to the point where treating them was a matter of debate. If he had examined their circumstances more closely, he would also have discovered that they were both on benefits and consequently not making a contribution to Denmark's gross national product.

Sitting on one side of the bed with Elisabeth on the other, Peter could still hear the doctor's strained neutral tone:

‘He might not survive.'

He saw Stinger's eyes twitching nervously behind the eyelids as if he could still feel the blows raining down on him. In the hospital, Stinger wasn't known as Stinger. He was Lasse Stevns, aged forty-five, an ex-offender and one of society's losers. He smelt of filth, smoke and booze, and God knows what other infections he carried. In the doctor's eyes, there was nothing charming about him. The doctor had never personally spoken to Stinger or laughed at his pranks, or seen in his eyes the tenderness he had for animals and children, or his roguish interest in the fair sex, always tempered with his insight that beautiful, clever women were beyond his reach.

‘Just give me one with a bag over her head,' he used to say. ‘False teeth, glass eyes, I don't care. Just as long as there's something to get my hands on.'

He would then pick up a cushion and dance an intimate tango or something resembling it.

His tattooed hands were active again. Peter suddenly remembered what Elisabeth had said:
That tattoo
. Was it important, or were they just the delirious words of a man who had been subjected to a battering? Was it about Stinger's work and identity?

‘It meant a lot to him, didn't it?' he said. ‘Doing tattoos?'

He suddenly realised he had spoken in the past tense, but Elisabeth didn't appear to notice. She nodded.

‘It was his thing. And he made a bit of money doing it.'

Not much, Peter thought. He remembered several offers of free tattoos from a semi-plastered Stinger. He had always refused politely. On principle. He wasn't going to subject his body to any more pain than he already had done.

He smiled wryly. Stinger had always been proud of his craftsmanship and yet his work had been appalling.

‘Do you think he was trying to tell us something important? Something about a tattoo?'

Elisabeth shrugged.

‘What would that be?'

‘What about Stinger himself? Has he had any new tattoos recently?'

She considered the question for a moment.

‘A number, I think. On his bicep. I don't know what it means. Perhaps it's a telephone number. I saw it when he came out of the shower one day.'

‘Do you think we could have a peek?'

She nodded. They glanced around. They were alone in the side ward and there were no nurses around. There was only Anja. They told her to keep a lookout and cough if anyone came down the corridor. Elisabeth carefully held the sleeve of the white hospital gown and rolled it up. Stinger's arm was thin and the gown far too big, so it was an easy job.

The tattoo was clear. He must have got someone else to do it. There were six digits, like a telephone number without the area code: 561562.

‘Whose number is that, I wonder?' Elisabeth said. ‘Do you think we should call it and say Stinger's here?'

Peter shook his head.

‘I don't think that would be a very good idea.'

S
OMETHING DIDN'T ADD
up, but Kir couldn't put her finger on what.

It was early in the morning and the search had been resumed with dogs, mine clearance divers and teams of police; SOC officers and EODs – the Explosive Ordnance Disposal division – filled the part of the quay that had been sectioned off with their vehicles. She was waiting. While she waited she went for a stroll around the harbour, to the ice's favourite haunts. It had covered the entire marina area, where the modern flats now had a view of a frozen harbour, and the few big motorboats still there were held in the freeze's grip. The wooden gangways were encased in ice and snow, and only around the mooring posts could you see any pockets of black water. On the open balconies, pots of herbs and bushes were buried, and only a few brown branches or evergreens poked through the snow. In the corner of one balcony, a lonely Christmas tree stood stripped of its decorations.

Kir tilted her head back and looked up. She wondered which flat Nina Bjerre had been in for the New Year's Eve party. There was no sign of life now behind the big dark windows with the best view that Grenå could offer. The whole residential development was protected from the public by sheets of black metal fencing with a solid chain looping from fence to fence. The message was clear. This is a private area: no trespassing. But people lived here. She had also seen police officers coming and going through all the entrances. Nothing was private during a murder investigation.

Were the people behind the windows sitting on information? Had someone seen something or were they accessories? Was the killer to be found in one of the flats? Who knew?

She turned around and walked the other way, towards the fishing harbour and the ferry, and passed restaurants boarded up for the winter. In the summer, there was festivity, noise and high spirits; yachts were moored and used as holiday homes. Now everyone and everything shivered in the freezing temperatures. She wasn't the only person waiting.