Three Dog Night (18 page)

‘What made you say that?'

He kept his voice neutral, but inside he was seething. What did she know?

‘No reason. Thanks for the lift, cop.'

She got out. He opened the door on his side and followed her. As she was about to cross over to see her friend, he reached out and grabbed her arm.

‘You owe me an answer.'

‘Let go of me.'

She writhed, but he held on. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the hotel door open and two people come out. The woman was petite and dark, her contours blurred; the man's blond hair and square features, by contrast, were clear in the light from the neon sign. He knew who they were and that he should let go of the girl's arm, but he was enveloped by a red haze and his rage washed away his common sense.

‘Not before you give me an answer.'

‘OK. There were three girls.'

All of a sudden, she seemed to calm down. The two people from the hotel nodded to him by way of greeting and disappeared into a car. Gry carried on.

‘They hung out with us for a while, but then they, like, vanished. We talked about the killer who was at large, the one in England, the guy who killed all those girls. People like that exist.' She sent him a challenging stare, and she was right, he thought. People like that did exist. So why not here?

‘What were their names? The three girls?'

She shrugged.

‘I can't bloody remember. They were only here a couple of days.'

‘When?'

‘Around Christmas. And just before.'

‘Where do they live?'

She shook her head. ‘How should I know? Somewhere. They weren't local.'

‘Describe them.'

‘They looked tough, leather, studs and all that. They put us a bit on edge.'

She spat on the pavement. ‘They'd fucking got it sussed.'

‘Appearance?'

Her eyes took on a sly expression and she opened the palm of one hand.

‘Soon going to owe me something for all this info, aren't you?'

He looked at her fragile body. How would she defend herself if she was confronted by a thug?

‘Don't forget, this is in your own interests,' he said. ‘What if a killer really is at large, looking for girls like you?'

He nodded in the direction of her friend, who was bent over a car, leaning inside and apparently negotiating with the driver. He stoked up the threat.

‘What if it's the guy in the white Toyota? What if your friend doesn't show up tomorrow? How would you feel if you'd held something back?'

She fumbled in her jacket pocket for an almost empty pack of cigarettes. She lit one and blew a puff of smoke into his face. Then she turned away and looked after her friend, who was now getting into the Toyota.

‘That's what I mean,' she said pensively. ‘I saw a photo in the newspaper. Of that Nina.'

She looked at him. He had to look hard, but thought he could detect fear behind her defiant gaze.

‘One of the three girls. She looked like Nina. Spitting image.'

T
HEY WERE NEARLY
home when Felix said: ‘Do you think he had sex with her?'

‘Perhaps,' Peter said, steering the car through the snow over the home straight.

He didn't doubt for one moment that Mark Bille had something going with the prostitute.

Even so, he said, ‘Or maybe it was something quite different. It could be work.'

She looked unconvinced. He parked by the house and they emerged into a winter night so bitingly cold it made her shiver and a gust of wind nearly knocked her over.

‘Come on. Let's get you inside. I'll take the dog for a short walk.'

‘I'll come with you.'

He recognised her first day's stubbornness and took it to be a good sign, but she was clearly tired so they didn't stray too far from the house. She had eaten almost all her dinner at the hotel and the change of scenery had done her good. She had even sipped some beer while he told her about Stinger, Brian and Ramses, the treasure in the sea and the number they had found tattooed on Stinger's arm. He omitted his role in the story about the women and the rescue of Anja.

The dog enjoyed its brief freedom, scampering about and chasing after the snowballs he threw. The sea lay shrouded in darkness and Peter wondered where Brian could have scuttled his boat. The Kattegat was deep. If you planned to retrieve goods from a sunken ship, you probably wouldn't dump it at the deepest point. But Brian had known the sea like the back of his hand. He would have known where the best place was.

When they came back inside, Ramses' mobile was waiting for them. Peter had expected Felix to go straight to bed, but she seemed to get a second wind when she picked up the mobile.

‘I know we should give it to the police,' she said. ‘But there's no harm in looking, is there?'

She started scrolling through Ramses' contacts.

‘There's probably nothing here,' she said. ‘Not as far as those coordinates go. Or the mobile wouldn't have been left behind.'

She was right. There was no harm in looking and they might discover something the police wouldn't pick up on.

He looked with her. Contacts were listed by initials or first names.

‘Why don't we copy them down?' she suggested.

He looked at the names. There were several numbers and initials he could put together and make sense of. Old friends, prison contacts. Stinger's number was there, too.

‘This is illegal. You know that, don't you? This is evidence in a murder case.'

Her eyes narrowed. Her fingers worked away.

‘I'm not a criminal,' she said. ‘But I'm beyond rules.'

He shook his head at her logic, and yet he understood her. He used to be like that and perhaps he still was. They had both been there, where only a thin membrane separated life from death. It changed you.

‘That probably won't stand up in court,' he said.

‘I couldn't care less.'

She reached for a notebook on the table and meticulously wrote down the names and numbers. It was slow going.

‘Why don't you dictate?'

He did as she asked. Ramses' list of contacts was fairly short and contained no surprises.

‘And what do we do if we find the place?' she asked. ‘Hire a diver and send him down?'

The thought had already crossed his mind.

‘It depends how deep it is. Perhaps we can have a word with Kir?'

‘Who's Kir?'

‘Christian Røjel's daughter. The pig farmer whose roof I'm rebuilding.'

‘Kir.'

She tasted the sound. ‘Funny name.'

She asked, almost in the same breath: ‘Why do you always sleep on the balcony?'

The question took him by surprise. He attempted a vague answer, about how he loved nature and the open sky, but he could tell from looking at her that she knew there was more to it than that.

Later when he had dragged the mattress outside and was lying with Kaj beside him, he thought about the range of answers he could have given her. The terror of the Box at the care home still gripped him and he broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of being trapped indoors, for one. All the children from Titan Care Home had developed a touch of claustrophobia and his case was far from the worst. Or that the four years in prison had taught him what locked doors could do to the human mind and he had always sworn that, for the rest of his life, he would sleep outside so that he could breathe freely.

He turned over in the sleeping bag and found a comfortable position. Perhaps he should have suggested that she keep him company. She had told him about her insomnia. Bed was the worst, she said. It was a reminder that she was chasing sleep. Sleep and peace of mind were closely connected; he knew that only too well.

And what about his peace of mind? He'd thought he'd found it and had hoped to keep it. He'd thought he'd made peace with his past and found contentment on his cliff. But then Felix had appeared and triggered something inside him. Ramses was dead and Stinger had been beaten to pulp; a police officer had come sniffing around his home and Anja's ex-husband had forced him to be violent again, causing two ninja girls to appear out of thin air. All this had sent him straight back to a place he had promised himself he would never go again. Back. Back to what smelled and tasted of violence and crime and the sound of his cell door when the lock clicked shut.

He didn't want to go back to that life. He wanted to move on, but right now he didn't have a choice. He stared into the night, at the stars. It was another clear and frosty night.

In the midst of everything that had happened there had been something else. He couldn't put it into words, and he didn't know if it was good or bad, but it felt as if something inside him had been moved. As though something which had been frozen solid for years was now starting to thaw.

He heard a sound. Could it be a creak on the stairs? Was she coming to him? Would she suddenly be standing there in her thin T-shirt? Would she slip into his sleeping bag unbidden and give him something she thought he might want, out of gratitude perhaps? And did he? How could he accept a payment for something else?

He listened. He hoped he would have the strength to resist and send her away. But the noise had stopped and he fell asleep, disappointed deep into his bones.

K
IR MANOEUVRED THE
Toyota up the long, snow-covered gravel road leading to Konkylien, hearing Uncle Hannibal's voice in her ear: ‘No two ships sound alike under water.'

Konkylien had an uninterrupted view of Nederskov forest, and Kir had been a frequent visitor as a child. Now she could see the whitewashed house, the flaking plaster and the roof, which had so much moss growing on top it almost looked thatched. The moss was mixed with smudges of snow and in a few places you could see that underneath it was an ageing felt roof badly in need of replacement. The ridge of the old barn sagged like an overburdened sofa.

The
For Sale
sign had been taken down. There had never been any buyers, possibly because the family hadn't taken the trouble to do the place up. Besides, Red used the barn as a depot for the pub he had opened in Grenå. It was a bad time to open a pub, everyone knew that, but Red had managed to make it happen with his usual determination. Kir had a strong feeling that her father had lent him the money for the venture and possibly also for his flat down by the river. Red was the first-born and had a special status purely for that reason. She and Tomas accepted it. Tomas still lived at home and would probably take over the farm one day. She had her summer house but she had always thought of Konkylien as her house. Here she could breathe freely and feel welcome.

She got out of the car and slammed the door. Then she put her key in the lock and let herself in. She wanted to check the heating during this icy winter. Pipes might burst and water could leak in the wrong places. You had to keep an eye on old houses, but she knew perfectly well this wasn't the sole reason she had come here.

She walked from room to room. The doors stuck and creaked. The floorboards groaned under her weight. She slipped deeper and deeper into a world she loved, and it was as if the events of the past few days evaporated into thin air. The body in the harbour, the fear that had overpowered her, the shock at seeing the mutilated face in the body bag – it all vanished and was replaced by the sounds and smells of her childhood. There was the red velvet sofa with its threadbare upholstery and embroidered cushions from an age when women – her great-grandmother, apparently – would sit at home in the evening with a needle and embroidery yarn. There was a standard lamp in the corner, its base a mass of intertwined brass snakes; there was the old-fashioned diving suit, standing like a suit of armour with hinges on the visor and heavy shoes that made it look like a Martian; hanging on the wall was a lifebuoy from the old fishing vessel,
Malene
, of Grenå. There were photos, black and white and colour, from various diving expeditions in Denmark as well as abroad, strong young men waving from the surface of the water, their diving masks pushed right up their foreheads, or snorkelling in reeds by a lake or cheering from an ice hole somewhere in Northern Norway. There were divers standing next to mines covered in algae and seaweed, corroded gas flasks and other dangerous materials. As Uncle Hannibal used to say about the mines in Danish waters: ‘The Germans laid theirs neatly and systematically so that you could find practically every single one of them. The English just dumped theirs from the air with no system at all.'

The house was cold even though they had decided to leave the heating on low. She found an old rug which she wrapped around herself, sat down on the red velvet sofa and tucked her feet under her.

She reached down to the newspaper holder and picked up some of the old magazines.
Familie Journalen
.
Ugens Rapport
from some time in the Nineties. Diving magazines such as
DYK
and
Sportsdykkeren
. She flicked through them, remembering the feeling of Mark Bille Hansen near her when they had stood together in the harbour. If anyone had asked her, she would have been able to describe him exactly. His height. His gestures. His tone of voice. The snow on his hair and in his dark stubble. His eyes searching out hers as though he believed she held the answer to every riddle. Blue, green, brown – the colour didn't matter, and she couldn't remember it anyway. But she did remember the intensity. It had sent her reeling and she didn't like that.

She dropped the magazine she was holding when she heard the sound of a car in the drive. A second later she saw Red's black Honda stop outside the window, and shortly afterwards he appeared in the doorway.

‘What are you doing here?' he asked.

‘Hunting ghosts.'

It was a standing joke going back to their childhood. Hannibal's house had always echoed with strange noises that had fired their imagination when they were children. They had formed a club to catch every ghost in the house.