Three Dog Night (19 page)

Red grinned, drawing the big birthmark on his cheek up to his eyes. It was dark red and had given rise to his nickname. His real name was Mogens.

‘And have you found any?'

‘Nah.'

He entered the room. Red was both broad and tall, and his size made the low-ceilinged room look like something out of a cartoon. He sat down in the old stripy wing chair and looked around.

‘It's almost as if the old boy was still here.'

He grinned. ‘In a moment he'll come in and tell us about the time he recovered a body from a cabin at a depth of forty-five metres and pulled off its leg.' Red made a pulling motion. He could imitate Hannibal's facial expressions and voice to a T: ‘Blooooody hell! Shiver me timbers!'

Hannibal had been the very cliché of an old salt, and he knew it only too well. Red held up the imaginary leg and squinted short-sightedly at it.

Kir laughed. She remembered it vividly. Hannibal had thought he had accidentally twisted off a leg, but it had turned out to be a false leg.

She looked at Red and missed her childhood, when they had done things together, her, Tomas and Red. It had stopped suddenly. From the day she saved Tomas from drowning, Red had turned his back on their little group. It had never been quite the same again, which made this shared moment even more rare and precious.

‘What do you think happened to him?'

Red leaned back in the tall chair, and the sinews in his neck stood out like thick ropes.

‘I imagine he was legless, and he was having a piss over the side. And then: splash!'

‘I've been looking for him,' she admitted. ‘I've been diving in the places where he used to fish.'

‘Forget it,' Red said. ‘It's like I said. He went over the railing. The old boy got the death he'd have wanted.'

Kir was far from sure about this, but lots of people believed Hannibal's death must have been an accident. And perhaps they were right. Hannibal's motor boat had been found on Fjellerup Beach two days after he went missing. No one had seemed terribly surprised. Most felt it was only a question of time before something like that happened. Their father, in particular, had been certain – a certainty that had turned to anger when he discovered that Hannibal had left everything to his nephews and niece and not a krone to the pig farmer.

‘Right. I've come here to collect some casks.'

Red launched himself out of the chair. He turned around in the doorway, about to say something, when Kir's mobile rang. The display showed Allan Vraa's number.

‘Work,' she mouthed to Red, and then said into the mobile: ‘Hi, what's up?'

‘I just wanted you to know the latest,' her boss said. ‘The forensic odontologist has just confirmed the body you found isn't Nina Bjerre.'

‘If it isn't her, then who is it?'

She heard a hiss as Allan Vraa heaved a deep sigh.

‘God only knows. But the mobile we found was definitely hers, so I think we'll have to get back down in the sludge and keep looking. It appears we may be talking about two bodies.'

P
OLITI.

The sign looked as signs did at police stations all over Denmark. But this new police station also had an idyllic location in the middle of a public park which was usually green but was now white with snow. Piles of snow had been cleared away for access, but even so, he had to overcome his reluctance to enter. In the end, however, he managed to push open the door, with his brow perspiring and his knees wobbling, to his immense irritation.

All the car park spaces had been taken and he'd had to leave his car some distance away. He recognised the detectives' cars from the day by the cliff. The team from Århus had probably set up camp here, where all the action seemed to be. It was as if all roads led to Grenå.

Peter asked for Mark Bille Hansen at the counter.

‘Do you have an appointment?'

‘No. But he knows who I am. Tell him I've got something for him.'

He waved a plastic bag in front of the receptionist's nose. Ramses' mobile was inside.

A few minutes later he was shown up to Mark Bille's office by a uniformed officer, who knocked cautiously at the door.

‘Now what?'

The voice issuing from the office did not exactly have that fresh-as-a-morning-daisy feel. The policeman opened the door slightly, but didn't poke his head too far in.

‘Peter Boutrup for you.'

‘Oh, all right,' came the not terribly enthusiastic response.

The officer quickly stepped aside to let Peter in. The office looked tidy – and austere. Impersonal was possibly a better word, he thought, wondering about the best way to greet Mark Bille Hansen. Formal or informal? He hated the sense of being on unknown territory. The day the policeman had turned up in his home had been easier.

‘Morning.'

Mark Bille Hansen muttered something by way of reply, but it wasn't enormously welcoming. He was clearly not a morning person. His hair looked a mess and thick stubble darkened his winter-pale face. He wore a light blue shirt but looked as if he would have preferred to relax in a T-shirt. There was a Thermos and a mug on the table in front of him.

‘They can look after themselves, those girls can,' Peter said and knew at once he should have kept his mouth shut.

Mark Bille gawped at him.

‘Girls?'

‘Last night, I mean. Down at the harbour. They'll have you by the nuts, if you're not careful.'

‘I was working.'

It was a defensive answer, and it came far too quickly. They both knew it. Mark Bille examined some papers lying on the blotter on his desk.

‘Is that what you came to tell me?'

Peter placed the bag on the desk.

‘We thought this might interest you. We decided to give it to you rather than Århus.'

‘We?'

‘Felix Gomez and me.'

A glint of interest appeared in Mark Bille's eyes.

‘Whose is it?'

‘Felix found it at the foot of the cliff, a short distance from where Ramses was lying.'

‘That area was fingertip searched by CSIs. When did she find it? Why didn't she bring it in herself?'

Peter shrugged.

‘Perhaps the snow had covered it. She found it when she was out for a walk.'

Mark Bille looked at him with undisguised scepticism.

‘And I thought you didn't know each other.'

Peter looked at the man in front of him. He looked under pressure.

‘You get to know each other quite well when you find a body together.'

‘I've been going through some papers and asking around,' the policeman said, shuffling some documents. ‘You're a man with an interesting past.'

Of course the officer had done some research on him. Peter should have known.

‘Not just your time in Horsens Prison,' Mark Bille said. ‘Your childhood at Titan Care Home. Punishments, sadism. And a girl called My.'

Mark Bille looked up at him. ‘Tell me about her.'

Peter looked out of the window and down at the snow-covered vehicles in the car park. Suddenly he needed some fresh air.

‘She's got nothing to do with this case.'

‘That's for me to decide.'

Mark Bille glanced at some notes.

‘Autistic. Twenty-six years old. Murdered. Found hanging from a tree. You were close friends? You took her dog in when she died.'

‘What if I did?'

Mark Bille lowered the paper and looked at him.

‘I'm just asking myself how involved you might be in recent events – Ramses, the woman in the harbour – I'm wondering what your agenda is?'

He nodded at the mobile in the plastic bag. ‘And now this. I keep learning new things about you, Peter Boutrup. For instance, what happened in your house the day Hans Martin Krøll was shot? You went to prison for manslaughter, but what happened prior to that?'

Peter tried to look indifferent, but inside he was seething.

‘I don't think the police reports tell the whole truth,' Mark Bille said. ‘You're clearly holding something back. You keep holding something back. What is it?'

Peter desperately wanted to leave, but he couldn't. He tried to be casual. There had been a new development, he was certain of it. Something that had made Mark Bille smell blood.

He pulled out a chair and sat down. As if Mark Bille had read his thoughts he said: ‘The body in the harbour wasn't Nina Bjerre.'

‘Then who was it?'

The policeman shrugged. ‘She has yet to be identified. But it's possible now there might be a connection between her and Ramses after all. Nina Bjerre was clean. She lived with her parents. She was still at school. She had no known links to criminal or suspicious activities. She was an A-grade student: pretty, hard-working and intelligent.'

He turned his palms upwards. ‘The case has changed. Now we're dealing with a mysterious dead girl and Ramses. Now it seems more likely the two deaths might be related. And if they are, she might also be someone you know. Seeing as you knew Ramses.'

Peter swallowed some saliva. He hoped not. Christ, he hoped not.

‘Then let me see her.'

Mark Bille got up.

‘One moment.'

He darted through the door. Peter waited. Shortly afterwards Mark Bille returned and asked him to follow. They went up one floor and down a corridor. At the end he could hear voices. In a large, airy room the detectives had set up their headquarters. There were seven of them and they sat at separate desks, with computers and telephones. Mobile whiteboards had been pushed together by the end wall and the scene reminded him of a classroom. On one whiteboard the teacher had scribbled words in a blue marker pen. Hastily drawn arrows connected one keyword to another, joining all the words in a chain. Little round magnets attached various photos to the whiteboard and together with the words, they made up an ingenious pattern, which might or might not have made sense.

The female officer from the day by the cliff came up to them and shook hands. She was wearing jeans and a grey silk blouse. Her somewhat square face and the glide of her hips made her seem both masculine and feminine.

‘Anna Bagger. We've met.'

Peter nodded. His gaze was attracted by the photographs on the whiteboard. The detectives must be desperate, he thought. Otherwise they'd never let an outsider see how they worked.

Anna Bagger nodded towards the whiteboard and the area where the photos of the dead woman were displayed. She was lying on a steel table. There were close-ups of details, but also of her in full figure. Her face was gone.

‘She's impossible to recognise,' he said.

Anna Bagger pointed to a close-up.

‘Look at this. It's a detail we've held back, but now we'll have to release it.'

He peered at it. At first glance, it looked like a complicated scar.

‘What is it?'

‘She's been branded,' Anna Bagger said, as much to Mark Bille as to him. ‘A very specific brand.'

A brand. Like the ones they used to burn into the hide of longhorn cattle in Texas to show they belonged to a specific ranch. He looked at it more closely. Now he could see the symbol.

‘A fleur-de-lis,' Anna Bagger said. ‘In case you didn't know.'

He did.

‘It's on the inside of her right thigh, quite high up,' Anna Bagger said. ‘It's roughly three by three centimetres, and the interesting thing about it is that this brand has been superimposed on a matching tattoo.

She pointed to the edge of the pattern. He saw it now. Under the brand which had drawn the skin together into a red scar he could make out blue lines almost following the same shape, but not quite.

‘I'd say you'd have to know a girl quite well to know about those marks,' Anna Bagger said. ‘I don't suppose you've seen them before or heard about them?'

Peter straightened up after studying the mark. He looked at Mark Bille.

‘The Three Musketeers,' he said.

‘What about them?'

Peter was tempted to say they were like the Magnificent Seven, minus four – three, if you included D'Artagnan – but he restrained himself.

‘In the novel by Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
, the villainous Milady de Winter has a fleur-de-lis branded on to one shoulder.'

Anna Bagger's eyes zoomed in on him.

‘In the book, it means she's a harlot and a murderess.'

M
ARK STOOD IN
his office watching Peter Boutrup cross the road and walk back towards his car. He walked taller now than when he'd entered the office, as though he had just cast off a burden. As Mark himself had to do: unburden himself. Stop thinking he could or indeed should make a difference to this shithole of a town.

There was a knock at the door and Anna Bagger entered.

‘You could have told me about the brand,' he said.

She straightened her fringe with two fingers.

‘Forensics wasn't sure. We only found out today it was a tattoo and a brand.'

‘And what are you going to do about it?'

‘So far we've spoken to every tattoo parlour in the district. No one recognises it.'

She perched on the corner of his desk.

‘Or they're not prepared to admit it.'

She fidgeted with the pen on his blotter. He took that as a kind of professional come-on. He pulled out his chair, sat down and leaned back as he pushed himself a little further away from the table.

‘Branding is the new tattooing,' he said. ‘It's the next step up the ladder if you want to show how tough you are. You have to endure metal heated to one thousand, one hundred degrees being pressed against your skin for five seconds. You have to be one tough woman to handle that.'

She shifted her gaze to the wall, to some modern art he hadn't asked for and didn't understand.

‘Was it voluntary, I wonder?' she speculated.

He took a deep breath.