Three Dog Night (17 page)

‘Tell me about you,' she said. ‘You know so much about me now. But what do I really know about you?'

She saw him retreat. Not physically, but mentally.

‘What if I said that learning something about you might help me?' she said.

‘It's not a very happy story. It won't make you feel any better.'

‘Try me.'

He gave her an abridged version, and she soon realised she had only been given a tiny snippet.

It was a bitter snippet, growing up in a care home, a sadistic manager handing out punishments to the youngest children for the slightest offences. He described instruments of torture as though they were old acquaintances: the Box, the Horse and the Rings. He explained their individual function and told her how the children had been terrified of isolation and pain, but most of all the darkness in the Box. And yet there wasn't a trace of bitterness or hatred in his voice and she wondered how anyone could have survived something like that.

‘It's a choice,' he said in response. ‘You can choose not to hate, not to want revenge. I made that choice, but it took me time.'

He added with a smile: ‘Four years behind bars puts life in perspective.'

She couldn't do the same. She needed the hatred and the desire for revenge and she told him so. It kept her alive: her rage at what had happened was all-consuming. He said he understood and that for the time being she had to hang on to it; perhaps later she could let it go.

‘Perhaps we should try to work through what happened,' he said, as though suggesting they should paint the house together or shovel the snow from the drive. ‘It'll probably help you to recover. We could start with Ramses. See if you can remember any more.'

She mulled over his suggestion, then decided the time had come.

‘I've got something you need to see,' she said. ‘It's in the kitchen, second drawer down. A mobile phone.'

‘And you'd like me to get it?'

She nodded.

He did as she asked and quickly returned with a mobile in a plastic bag.

‘Is this it?'

He took out the mobile.

‘Yes. I think it's still charged.'

‘Is it yours?'

She shook her head. ‘It's his. Ramses'. I took it while your back was turned.'

He gaped at her. He had not expected this.

‘You stole a dead man's mobile? A man who had just been murdered?'

She looked at him but said nothing. He shook his head as though he still didn't believe her.

‘And yet you accused me of betraying him because I said I didn't know him?'

He had raised his voice. The dog, which had been lying on the rug, pulled back its ears and pretended to be invisible.

She looked away.

‘You were the one who suggested we could start with him. You knew him. I've seen him before and I just want him identified and out of my life.'

Peter got up. He took the empty carrier bags from his shopping and stuffed them into a drawer. Pushing them down, with his back to her, he said: ‘It's too dangerous. You should have given the mobile to the police on the first day.'

‘I had to take it. He haunts me,' she said. ‘Ramses is the key to everything that ruined my life and I have to find out how it all fits together.'

As she said it, she knew it was true. She owed it to Maria and she owed it to herself.

‘I'm sure the mobile could be of use to you, too,' she said.

He turned around and leaned against the kitchen drawers.

‘To me?'

‘Perhaps it's all connected,' she said. ‘You knew Ramses. I've seen him before. Now he's dead. Perhaps it's got something to do with both of us.'

She nodded towards the mobile. ‘Perhaps the answer's there? If we can get it to work.'

He sighed and picked up Ramses' mobile.

‘I'm not trying to be a saint, but the police already have their eye on me,' he said. ‘We'll have to hand it in.'

‘And we will.'

‘It's working,' he said, pressing a key. ‘The battery's still charged. Full.'

For a moment, a silence fell between them. They looked at each other.

‘I need to think about this,' he said.

‘OK.'

It was better than an outright rejection. It was a partial victory.

He checked his watch.

‘It's half-past six. Are you hungry?'

She felt hollow inside, and not solely from hunger. Even so, she nodded.

He reached down, took her hand and pulled her to her feet. Her head still hurt, but the room had stopped spinning.

‘Do you think you can manage a drive?'

The thought of getting out was tempting.

‘We can try.'

‘Come on then. Let's get a bite to eat in town.'

T
HE RESTLESSNESS SET
in late at night. It was like pent-up energy, like a boxer before a big fight that had been cancelled at the last minute. His blood was in ferment, his muscles tense. He was sweating like a pig. He needed a release.

Just after ten o'clock Mark Bille Hansen left his flat near the railway station and the meandering river which gave rise to the town's name of Grenå. The water looked black as it ran between the snow-covered banks parallel to the railway. In the station car park, he started the engine, gunned it to the roundabout and drove the three kilometres from the town centre down to the harbour. Thoughts were pounding in his head. Anna Bagger was still insisting the body in the harbour was Nina Bjerre – age, build, long blonde hair – it all fitted. But her face was missing. And even though Anna was certain she was right, his doubts had clearly shaken her. They would know for certain tomorrow when the dentist submitted his final judgement, but Mark was sure that Anna was lying in her bed now or sitting in her living room pondering the obvious question that followed: if it wasn't Nina Bjerre they had found in the harbour, then who was it? And where was Nina Bjerre if she wasn't in cold storage at the Morgue?

The latter question was no less pressing because earlier that day the divers had found a mobile in the harbour. The insides had obviously been destroyed by the water, but it was a Nokia and it matched the model that Nina Bjerre had had.

The night was freezing cold and dark. With the shops behind him, he glided past homes where people sat behind their windows with the blue glow of the television for company. There were very few people around on a Monday evening when the outside temperature was well below minus ten. But as he approached the harbour, strangers started appearing in the streets – black people, who looked as if they belonged beneath the African sun rather than wrapped up in thick coats for a Danish winter. There was a refugee centre just outside the town. They had to be from there. It was hard to see what had attracted them to the harbour. But wasn't it the same story with harbours everywhere? A motley assortment of people from the fringes of society, just like the waters of a river, found their way to the harbour, making their way to the bars and hotels traditionally located by the well-worn paths of seamen and fishermen. And didn't the same apply to restless men, their blood in ferment, didn't they follow the same stream, in a downward spiral, a whirlpool of desire, which could crush human destinies as easily as the current could carry a body to Norway?

Mark scanned the pavement as he drove. She worked in this area. He didn't remember her face clearly or even her name. And yet he would be able to recognise her, he knew that.

He had driven all the way down to Havnevejen and turned right when he saw her standing with a fellow prostitute. They were close to the entrance of the Strand Hotel. The tip of her cigarette glowed in the dark when she took a drag, and even though he didn't remember her face or her name, he remembered her body: petite with jeans fitting like an extra layer of skin, a short white Puffa jacket and an imitation fur hood. High-heeled boots to above her knees.

He stopped the car and didn't have to wait long before she appeared outside. He rolled down the window.

‘Are you busy?'

She looked as though she was considering his question. He was half-expecting her to produce a diary.

‘Same as last time?'

He nodded. What had she been expecting? Dinner for two followed by a marriage proposal?

‘Price has gone up. It'll be another three hundred kroner.'

The haggling gene asserted itself in him.

‘You can't just hike your price for no reason.'

‘It's not for no reason,' she said solemnly, and now he could see her face, possibly for the first time. Pale and narrow. There was caution mixed with greed in her eyes. ‘Most girls refuse to go out. Ever since they found the body of that girl Nina.'

Of course. He hadn't even considered the consequences for the girls on the street. He felt like an idiot.

‘OK. Jump in.'

She turned around and said something he couldn't hear to her friend. Then she took a final drag, flicked the cigarette and got in on the passenger side. She had make-up plastered over her young face and her cheap perfume filled the car.

He headed towards the summer house area before doing a U-turn. He made a decision.

‘Why don't we go back to my place? It's too cold in the car, don't you think?'

She thought about it, then nodded.

‘How old are you really?'

The question hadn't troubled him before, but the words were out before he knew it. He had slept with her once and he hadn't given her name or her age a thought. Where had this interest crept in from? He didn't like it.

‘Twenty-two.'

Other questions stacked up, but he kept them back. He could have focused on whether she had a family, if she had a place to live, if there was a pimp in the background who took most of her money. But he didn't. Instead his blood was in ferment again, and he cast a sidelong glance at her thighs in the tight jeans and remembered what it felt like to run his hands up them. His erection stirred, and reaching the car park and walking up to the flat together, he felt as though he would explode.

She looked around quickly when he switched on the light in the passage. There was a guarded look in her eyes behind the thick kohl and clumps of mascara.

‘I don't bite. Don't worry,' he said, hearing his own impatience.

She walked through the flat with a feigned lofty air. Every now and then she would touch objects. He knew he was walking a fine line here. A dangerous line. He was a police officer. He should be living a comfortable family life, not cruising the streets to pick up hookers. If he really had to, he should be doing it in a different town. Århus. He should have gone to Århus, but this was easier. It was quicker. And quick was what he needed.

‘Come on. Sleeping quarters are in here.'

‘Who said anything about sleeping?'

She had already started to undress. Small breasts jutted out at him beneath a thin jumper. ‘I'd rather have a drink,' she added. ‘And seeing that we're back at your place, how about some music?'

He poured a little whisky into two glasses and put on a Coldplay CD. Clit music, as one of his friends had called it. It was a crude but apt expression. Most women loved Coldplay and its lead singer. Personally, he couldn't imagine why they would have wet dreams over such a morose guy.

She stripped for him in time to the music. Smiles wreathed his face. They would probably be added to her bill.

‘What's your name again?'

He asked while cupping her breasts from behind. She wriggled against his erection.

‘Gry.'

‘You're sexy, Gry.'

She rotated her hips to the rhythm of the music. She was wearing only a G-string. He pulled her down on to the sofa, on top of him. She took care of the rest. Along the way, they haggled a little, until she opened her hand and showed him a condom. She rode him with professional lust in her eyes, and he cascaded inside her, with a variety of female faces appearing in his head in a multi-coloured fan. Afterwards it annoyed him that his guilt would rear its ugly head, as it always did.

She quickly got dressed again.

‘Can you give me a lift back?'

It wasn't a part of their deal, but he could hardly say no. He looked at her and felt disgust, mostly with himself. He couldn't get rid of her quickly enough.

‘Come on then.'

In the street, she lit a cigarette. The smoke followed her, along with her frozen breath, as they crossed the car park.

‘You're a cop, aren't you?'

The question hit him in the solar plexus. Now what? How much did she know? That he was a randy bastard who, like all the other randy bastards, had made a fool of himself by paying for sex? She most definitely knew that. Also, that his work was linked to the body in the harbour and the body at the foot of the cliff? She probably knew that, too, and he wasn't pleased about it. So he made no reply, merely unlocked the car from a distance of twenty metres and heard a promise of liberation in the click of the lock.

‘Right, get in.'

She took the cigarette with her inside the car. He pressed the button and rolled down the window on the passenger side.

‘Chuck it out.'

She sent him a provocative look.

‘Or what? Am I going to be arrested?'

‘Or you can walk.'

She flicked away the cigarette with a grin. She had brown stains on her teeth. Why hadn't he noticed that before?

‘I hope you catch the guy who did it.'

‘Did what?'

‘Threw that Nina in the water, of course. What else?'

He deemed it wisest not to say anything. He drove as fast as the speed limit would allow, and then some. She continued: ‘Are you sure she's the one you found?'

He nearly drove into the kerb. He straightened up and had to concentrate on steering through the residential area down to Kattegatvej, where he turned right and stopped outside the Strand Hotel. Her colleague was still standing under the street light and the neon sign. He turned to her.