Three Dog Night (29 page)

The snow also seemed to calm her nerves, and her pulse started to drop. Life went on. Right here, close to her, people were living their usual lives, shopping, going to work, taking their children to and from nursery, helping them out of their snow suits. Everyday events. The town was normal and it seemed ridiculous to her that a moment ago she had felt frightened that someone was following her. She dismissed it as the result of months of sleep deprivation and parts of her brain that had jammed. She got into her car, entered the address in Hjortshøj on the satnav and joined the slow-moving traffic.

I
N THE SUMMER,
Marselisborg Marina was a jewel as it lay by Tangkrogen and Strandvejen, near the large, palatial villas in Skåde and Højbjerg. Peter had only ever visited it on a summer's day to eat pancakes with Matti and Ing-Kirstine. The weather had been good and the place teeming with people. Restaurants and ice cream stands here had had their balmy days.

Today was probably not one many would choose to come here.

He slammed the car door shut and pulled up his collar to shield himself against the swirling snow. He had driven here after Horsens and in this way exchanged one icy location for another.

He kicked his way through the snow and walked up to the closed restaurants and past a few boats shivering in the water. There was ice on the masts and railings, and the wooden jetties and pontoons were very slippery. The fronts of the buildings looked cold and hostile. He walked around to the car park behind the hotel where numerous boats were stored in cradles on dry land for the winter, like stranded seabirds.

Erik Gomez Andersen. The name of Felix's ex-husband kept buzzing round his head. There were all sorts of loose ends, but he had no doubt that Erik was connected to Ramses and thus with his own wretched past, from which he was struggling to free himself. Who was Erik planning to visit in prison, and what was the nature of his involvement with Brian, Stinger and Ramses?

Peter stopped, flapped his arms to get warm and pulled his woollen cap further down over his ears. Hadn't he nursed Felix and listened to her story and seen in her eyes that she had loved Erik despite his affairs? The man was a poser who had splashed money around and had what some called style, a chancer who had deceived his wife and left her with nothing but debt.

He circled the boats, barely able to see in the gusting snow. He kicked his way through the snowdrifts and crunched through frozen puddles. Some people appeared to be pillars of the community. No one had suspected Erik Gomez of doing anything other than holding down his job and providing for his family. Others were automatically suspect. Especially if they'd served four years for manslaughter and one of their friends had been found dead at the foot of a cliff. This was how it was and he accepted it. But there was something rotten about Erik Gomez, of that he was sure.

He reached up and tried to scrape snow from the bow of one of the boats, but he couldn't find its name anywhere. Felix and Erik had kept their boat moored here. It might already have been sold or confiscated, but there was always a chance he might find it. The boat was the only place left, now that they had gone through the boxes from the office and searched the house in Skåde.

The problem was that he had no idea what he was looking for. He couldn't remember whether it was a motorboat or a yacht, but he guessed the latter. Nor did he know its make or size. He only knew the name:
Felix
. Of course that might have been changed – a new owner could have changed the name as soon as he bought her. But he might be in luck.

He looked up at the boats and tried to make out the names behind the ice and snow. Finally he went back to the car and fetched a shovel from the boot and used it to scrape away the snow from each bow in turn.

He had cleared the snow from perhaps twenty boats and his arms had started to grow leaden when he finally found it. It was a beautiful, stylish wooden boat. He didn't know very much about yachts, but he knew good craftsmanship when he saw it. It was painted navy blue and the paintwork was flawless, like the name, when uncovered, which was painted in beautiful white looped letters: FELIX.

He put down the shovel and looked around. There were only a few people nearby, an elderly couple out walking their dog by the restaurants. Two or three cars were parked in the area, but he saw nothing suspicious. He found a suitable toe-hole and quickly swung himself up on to the cradle and the deck of the boat, where a tarpaulin effectively denied access to the cabin. He worked quickly to loosen the ropes and flick aside the tarpaulin so that he could pick the lock and open the hatch. It was dark. He switched on his torch.

The inside of the boat was well maintained, just like the rest of it. All the cupboards, drawers and tables were made from beautifully varnished, exotic dark mahogany and the bench surrounding the fixed dining table was upholstered in leather. As in most boats, space was at a premium, but effective use had been made of what was available and there was a small, but fully equipped galley with a stove and an oven – he could have been in a tiny bungalow. The sleeping accommodation was the same – compact luxury in mahogany and leather. Everything seemed new and unused.

He moved around quickly, searching the empty cupboards and drawers, and concluded that the boat had either had very tidy owners who hadn't left behind so much as a hairpin or a can of shaving cream, or it had no owners at all. Felix hadn't mentioned whether the boat had been sold. She probably didn't even know.

After a superficial search he started looking more thoroughly. He loosened carpets and looked under them; he lifted the mattresses off the bunks and moved anything that could be moved to explore every nook and cranny.

He heard the sound just as he found the small plastic card wedged in between the leather cushions on the bench. Was that footsteps? Someone walking round the boat and then stopping? A rattling of the hatch he had closed behind him? Or was it merely the wind catching the boat and causing something, possibly his shovel, to fall over?

For a moment he froze, then he quickly retreated to the fo'c'sle. He squeezed behind the door, trying to keep his pulse under control. The footsteps on the deck were louder now. Someone came down into the cabin and moved around. Soon afterwards the door to the fo'c'sle was kicked open and a black-clad Lily Klein appeared, pointing a pistol at him like some latterday Lara Croft. She was small and black in the darkness, multiple piercings in her face which flashed like glow worms. Her eyes matched the muzzle of the pistol.

‘Hands up.'

Peter raised his hands. Adrenaline was making his heart pound. Lily tossed her head and now he could see her pit bull from the hospital: the big woman with the broad face and the mullet came down the ladder and shone her torch. The eyes came closer. He could smell garlic on her breath. She knelt down in front of him and heavy hands patted their way down his body and up again, along his sides and in between his legs until she shook her head.

‘Nothing.'

Peter's fear gave way to rage.

‘What did you expect?'

‘What are you doing here?' Lily's question rang out like a gunshot.

‘What are
you
doing here? What are you up to?'

‘I don't have to tell you anything,' she said.

‘What are you looking for?' Peter asked. ‘Who are you, Lily Klein?'

‘Who do you think I am?'

‘I've seen you before.'

‘What do you know?'

‘About what?'

She flung out an arm.

‘About Gomez? His role? The whole operation?'

‘What operation?'

She pushed her face into his.

‘What do you know?' she asked again. ‘What did Stinger tell you?'

‘You bitch! Was it you who beat Stinger to a pulp?'

The big girl lashed out with her torch, but Lily raised her hand.

‘It's all right, Lena. Let him talk.'

Her voice was calm, but the pistol was still pointing at him.

‘Just because you're waving that penis extension about, you think you can do whatever you like,' he said. ‘Where are your baseball bats this time?'

‘You're starting to bore me,' she said. ‘For the last time, what are you doing here?'

‘Are you looking for the boat?' he asked. ‘The one at the bottom of the Kattegat?'

He saw her interest in her eyes, like a surge of greed.

It could be them. They were certainly involved, he was sure of that. But were they acting alone or did they have someone behind them?

‘Fuck you, you bitch.'

Lily stood weighing up the situation.

‘You really don't know anything?' she said at length.

‘And Ramses,' Peter said. ‘I thought the two of you were friends.'

‘Ramses was an idiot.'

‘And that was why he had to die?'

She nodded to her friend. Lena commenced a search similar to his own. Lily gave the pistol another wave upwards.

‘What were you doing in Horsens?'

He was at a huge disadvantage. She knew more about him than he knew about her. He would need to change that if he got the chance.

‘I'm sure you already know.'

‘Cato,' she said. ‘Why him?'

‘We're old friends.'

She nodded.

‘Let me give you some advice,' she said. ‘You never saw us. You never met us. Stay at home and get on with your life. Forget Horsens, forget your past and everything else.'

She didn't look as if she expected a reply. Instead she cast a glance at her friend, who shook her head and held her palms up after searching the boat. Lily nodded towards the hatch and Lena climbed up the ladder.

‘Horsens,' Peter said as something returned in a flash. ‘I saw you in Horsens Prison once.'

She started walking backwards, still pointing the pistol at him.

‘Drop it.'

F
ELIX KEPT HER
eye on the road to Hjortshøj, but she couldn't see anything unusual in the rear-view mirror. She looked at the clock in the car. It was a quarter past two. Which meant she would be doing the return journey in darkness.

She drove along the small roads as the snow closed off the landscape and reduced the number of cars both in front of and behind her. She could see their headlights through the curtain of snow tumbling down from the sky and wondered whether it might not be wiser to turn around and go home. But she was so close now and the car continued to plough its way through the snow like a faithful dog. She knew it was either Hjortshøj or another sleepless night.

She found the address and rang the bell, glad that the woman at the lost property office had done the spadework for her. The nameplate on the door said Østerby. They knew she was coming. And they knew why.

A man opened the door. Late thirties, at a guess. Blond hair, glasses, the spitting image of her financial adviser. Behind him, a medium-sized black dog was barking and he tried to control it. She took its wagging tail to be a good sign.

‘I'm so sorry to intrude. I'm here about the briefcase …'

She could feel the man sizing her up, but she must have looked safe enough for him to let her in because he nodded to indicate that she should follow.

‘Don't mind the dog. It's harmless. Let's go into the living room.'

A girl the same age as Maria was watching television. The man asked her to turn down the volume. She was still at the age when she obeyed without sulks.

‘I'm so sorry about this,' Felix said again. ‘I was abroad and haven't been able to get along to the lost property office until now. The lady who works there was really kind and helpful.'

The man nodded sympathetically.

‘It's quite all right.'

‘Of course I'll pay you whatever you paid for it. Plus a little extra.'

She had stopped on the way and taken out 2,000 kroner from a cashpoint. They agreed on 1,000 kroner. The briefcase had been sold for 500 kroner at auction, but the Østerby family had also spent money on petrol driving to Århus, and then there was the time they had spent at the auction. Felix made the offer.

‘Ah, well, in that case.'

Østerby got up. ‘I'll get it straightaway.'

They completed the transaction discreetly and with friendly smiles. Felix thanked him and repeated the story about her sister in Barcelona. The dog, which had calmed down, came over to sniff the leather.

‘Dreadful weather,' she said as the man and the dog accompanied her to the door. The girl in the living room had turned up the volume again. ‘I'm heading for Djursland. I hope I'll be all right.'

The man opened the door for her. Dusk was approaching.

‘I'm sure you'll be fine in that,' he said, looking at the BMW, which she had driven all the way up the drive to avoid having to walk through the snow. The sky and the ground were now one, and the falling snowflakes were the size of cotton wool balls.

She put the briefcase and her bag on the passenger seat and started the engine. She turned on the satnav, reversed out and let it take her out of the maze of residential roads. As she drove, she noticed a black saloon behind her. She decided it was probably a coincidence. She hadn't noticed when exactly it had first appeared. It stuck close to her rear bumper. She could see that the driver was wearing a hoodie or a headscarf, but not whether it was a man or a woman. The car looked smart and new.

She joined the main road and the black car was still in her wake. They drove like this for a long time while she debated with herself how best to tackle the situation. The other car might not have been following her. It might just be going the same way. Finally she decided to deviate from her route. She indicated left and was soon in a narrow lane. The black car duly followed. Now she was absolutely sure it wasn't there by chance and her heart started beating wildly as she drove further and further from the main road, approaching what looked like a forest. The road twisted and turned and the tyres ploughed their way through virgin snow and whatever was hidden beneath. The other car was still following, but it had started to lag behind. Occasionally it would swerve then straighten up again. She realised the four-wheel drive gave her an advantage and accelerated even though it was risky. As she manoeuvred the car round the bends, she tried to read the number plate of the black car in the mirrors. It was difficult. She had to give up on the numbers, but she thought she could see an X and possibly a D. She couldn't see what make of car it was.