Three Dog Night (20 page)

‘Do you really want to hear my opinion?'

‘I wouldn't be asking if I didn't.'

He sat for a while looking at her. He was irritated, but he was also a police officer and the case was more important than personalities.

‘OK,' he said. ‘I don't think it was voluntary. I think you need to distinguish between the tattoo and the brand. The tattoo might have been her choice and it might be significant. The brand looks like someone was mocking her, perhaps someone using their power to mock the tattoo.'

She looked as if his words had made an impression and nodded to indicate that he should go on.

‘But this brand is a pro job,' he said. ‘You should see some of the things we came across in Copenhagen. Home-made. Infected, misshapen, leaving hideous scars.'

She shook her head.

‘If she'd been branded against her will, who would do something like that?'

‘Her owners,' he said. ‘Or rather, her self-appointed owners.'

‘Brothel owners?'

‘Or gang bosses.'

‘What does it mean?'

Again one of her fingers sought out the fringe.

‘That you're one of the herd,' he said. ‘You brand horses. And cattle.'

‘So it's about belonging to a group,' she said. ‘Someone's group?'

He nodded. ‘Seems logical to me.'

She crossed her arms, looking as if she felt cold.

‘Do you think there are any more branded women out there?'

‘Who knows? You need to get her identified.'

He started reeling off the checklist: ‘Who else was reported missing? Does the odontologist's report give you anything to go on? Other identifying marks? And tell the press about the brand and see what info comes back.'

She took his coffee mug and wound her fingers around its handle.

‘Do you think that Boutrup knows any more?' she asked.

‘Maybe.'

‘Do you think he did it?'

‘It's a possibility. But no, I don't think so.'

‘Why not?'

He thought about how the girl had died. Bound, humiliated and disfigured. Whoever had done this had wanted to display his power.

‘He's not angry enough. Or stupid enough.'

‘Anything else?'

He had been annoyed with Peter Boutrup for turning up, even though he'd given him the mobile. Boutrup had seen him in the harbour with Gry. He had felt pathetic. He felt as though someone had taken a 1,100-degree hot iron and branded
him
. But Peter Boutrup had shown solidarity. ‘They'll have you by the nuts if you're not careful,' he had said and turned it into a man versus woman thing.

‘He's all right,' he said.

She got up, nodded and walked towards the door.

‘Thank you, Mark.'

‘You're welcome.'

That was all. She pressed the door handle. He wanted to tell her they should quickly check the mobile to be sure it really had belonged to Ramses. Then they had to track down all of Ramses' contacts and their contacts again, if at all possible. A released repeat offender shot in the chest and a young girl branded, bound and submerged in the sea with a face like a piece of raw meat: he was becoming increasingly convinced that the two killings were connected. But she hadn't asked him about that, so he hadn't told her. He paced up and down his office, his mind turning over the information Gry had given him by the hotel. The sudden arrival of the three unknown women. One of them had looked like Nina Bjerre.

He took a piece of chewing gum from the packet on the table and sat for a while shuffling sheets of paper back and forth. He had to concentrate. Others could deal with the routine workload: a spate of robberies in town. His thoughts returned to the previous night. He had to find Gry again. And this time it wasn't to have sex with her. Or not only.

S
TINGER'S CONDITION WAS
unchanged, and there wasn't a doctor in sight. There was just the skinny man in the bed with arms like matchsticks and tubes all over the place. It made a strange contrast to Elisabeth's enormous body perched on the edge of the bed, which was perilously close to capsizing. She was heavy-hearted, despondent, lost to the world; her eyes drooped and her fleshy cheeks were swollen with grief. All she and Stinger really had was each other.

‘What's going on, Peter? What's he mixed up in?'

Peter shook his head.

‘I don't know. He's in way over his head.'

He had called Manfred again and asked for time off. He felt bad about it, but Manfred was a friend and he understood. He had called in another carpenter to work on Røjel's roof, and Peter was free to return to work whenever he was ready.

‘Sounds like you've got enough on your plate,' Manfred remarked.

‘And Jutta?' Peter had asked. ‘How's her friend?'

He had called Manfred when he got to the hospital and he savoured the whine of the workshop chainsaw in the background. Hospital sounds were the last things he wanted to hear, but he felt obliged to visit Stinger. Stinger wasn't just his friend; he also held the key to the riddle of everything that had happened, and Peter had to get his hands on it.

On the telephone he heard Manfred switch off the chainsaw.

‘They're still hoping, I suppose, now that they know it wasn't Nina's body in the harbour,' Manfred said. But Peter could tell from his voice it was a very faint hope.

‘By the way,' Manfred said. ‘I hope you're looking after yourself.'

Was he? Perhaps he should drop everything.

‘Have you finished the Steinbeck?'

‘Yes,' Manfred said. ‘Not a happy ending. But you already knew that.'

‘Remember, it's only fiction.'

‘Of course,' Manfred said. ‘Real life is different.'

‘I'll be back at work tomorrow,' Peter said. ‘You can count on it.'

He still had Manfred's voice in his ear when he returned to Elisabeth. Again he saw what he had seen on the day he had been looking for Stinger: her obesity and her shapeless clothing, but also her form of vanity – her tattoos. On her arms and the small of her back and in other places too, no doubt. Not Stinger's workmanship.

‘You were a biker chick once, weren't you? Didn't you use to hang out with some sort of club?'

She nodded, but he could see she was on her guard.

‘Do you still see them?'

‘Nope. They were a bunch of wankers. But getting out was tough.'

‘Like it is for Anja?'

She didn't reply, but he could see he had hit home.

‘Those are some impressive tattoos you've got. Are they from back then?'

She smiled as though he had said she was beautiful.

‘We all had them. It was part of the whole thing.' She giggled like a teenager. ‘Stinger went ape.'

‘Where do girls like you go to get your tattoos?'

He told her about the dead girl in the harbour and her fleur-de-lis.

‘Rollo's Kennel in Vestergade. He's the best. I'm going there soon to get another one.'

Peter eyed Stinger in bed.

‘Watch out, he might hear you.'

She smiled through her tears.

‘What has he got himself mixed up in this time?'

He wished he could help. But what would it involve? Deep down, what he really wanted was to stay out of it.

‘What a pile of shit,' she said.

What could he say? He looked at her without speaking and she reached across the bed and touched his shirt collar, as if she wanted to hug him but didn't know how.

‘Stinger's not a bad person,' she said. ‘He's all right.'

‘I know that.'

He owed Stinger that. Perhaps she was expecting it, too. Everyone expected it, including Felix, who had hooked him with her boyish little figure and eyes like My's, which saw straight through him.

‘I'll try to find out,' he promised and cursed his sense of responsibility.

Elisabeth held out her hand, and when he returned her handshake, he knew he was sealing his own accursed fate.

After leaving the hospital he went to see Miriam in Anholtsgade and told her about the fleur-de-lis.

‘Some African prostitutes are branded,' she said. She had pulled him down to her on the sofa, but he stayed put on the edge.

‘In Denmark?'

She nodded. ‘As far as we're concerned they're the competition, but many of them aren't here of their own free will. Someone has trafficked them, like they traded slaves in the old days. Sometimes the owners brand them. Barbaric, isn't it? Like putting a barcode on consumer goods.'

‘Barbaric, certainly. Great line of business you're in.'

She looked upset and he regretted his remark.

‘Sorry.'

‘What's up with you?'

She reached up to his face and a finger traced the line around his mouth. He sat very still. She removed her hand.

‘Is it Felix?'

He couldn't say yes or no.

‘What's going on?'

He realised he couldn't say it out loud. He didn't want to hurt her, but even so it was as if every sentence he uttered diminished her.

‘You're suffering from Stockholm syndrome,' she said at last. ‘You've heard about that, haven't you?'

He knew what it was. The term was coined after a bank robbery in Stockholm. The robber's hostages became so attached to him that, later, they defended him.

‘Perhaps it works both ways?' she suggested. ‘Both for the kidnapper and the kidnapped?'

‘No one has been kidnapped.'

She arched her eyebrows.

‘You're practically living together. Feelings grow.'

He made an attempt to change the subject.

‘Her husband was the managing director of Kjær Entreprise,' he said. ‘A big construction company in Højbjerg. Erik Gomez Andersen. Does that name mean anything to you?'

Miriam was puzzled by the name but only briefly.

‘No, not off the …'

She clicked one fingernail against another.

‘Perhaps you could ask around?' he asked her.

She nodded and picked at a seemingly perfect nail.

‘I don't suppose that could do any harm.'

She looked at him.

‘You're saying she doesn't remember anything?'

‘So she says. But I think her memory's coming back.'

Again she caressed his cheek, this time scratching him with her nails.

‘You take care,' she whispered. ‘Don't forget you've got enemies out there.'

He drove home to Felix and Kaj. That evening they sat talking, Felix curled up in her chair with her hooded eyes resting on him. In one way they were alike, he thought. She had lost her old life. He had never really had one.

Yes, he had enemies, he thought, as he took the dog out for the last walk of the night. The snow glinted in the darkness while the waves crashed down over the ice on the beach and against the cliff. But how could his enemies be connected with recent events, with Stinger's hospitalisation, Ramses' death and the young girl in the harbour? Was the whole thing just chance, here, where he lived, on his doorstep? Or was there a pattern, a plan? Surely that was what Miriam had been hinting at – that somehow everything was about him. But if that was the case, what could it be?

‘Come on. In you go.'

He got the dog inside and followed. It was going to be another cold night. The stars were out. The forecast said the temperature would be down to minus fourteen.

Lying in his sleeping bag on the balcony with Kaj by his side, he discovered what was troubling him. It had been bubbling just beneath the surface. He thought about Ramses' mobile and the names and numbers it contained. He knew from Elisabeth that Ramses had been close to Lily Klein. He wriggled out of his sleeping bag and went downstairs to find the note he had written with the names of the contacts. No Lily. No name or number.

F
ELIX STEPPED OUT
of the shower and reached for the towel. Then she got dressed and went into the kitchen. She made tea, ate some toast and a banana and ignored the temptation to lie down and let tiredness take over. She thought about the endless days she had spent without food or any inclination to do anything but float off into nothingness. Those days were gone. She knew when the turning point had been: waking up with the organ music in her ears and the sobs that had overpowered her, the tears that had flown freely.

It was as if they had washed away her self-pity and her guilty conscience at having survived. What remained was the burning desire to find out what Erik had been up to and what had caused the accident that cost Maria and him their lives. That was the difference: she was no longer thinking about herself. She was thinking about Maria.

Well, a little bit about him too: about Peter. As she ate, she slipped the dog titbits, knowing full well it would annoy him. He was strict with the dog. He was also strict with her, and with himself, she guessed. He was quite different from any other man she had ever known. Unyielding, persistent. He had seen her in the most pitiful of all situations and he had treated her with respect.

‘Here, boy.'

She threw a piece of cheese to Kaj, and he caught it in mid-air, his eyes glinting with mischief.

‘We won't tell anyone, will we?'

She scratched him between his ears and felt envious. Kaj was alone in being allowed to share his bed. She had considered it one night when lust had started flowing through her veins and sent thoughts of him racing to her brain. She had wondered how he might react if she went upstairs and slid into his sleeping bag, just like that. But her courage had failed her and she had ended up relishing the fact of her lust and the feeling that her body wanted something the rest of her might not be quite ready for yet.

But the lust had been there and that in itself was a triumph. With that and the previous day's events at the back of her mind she felt ready, even though her body was still weak. She let the dog out and watched it running around on the cliff before letting it back in. Then she walked to her car and drove off with a squeal of tyres.