Three Dog Night (4 page)

‘You go back up and I'll stay here,' she suggested.

He nodded and lumbered up the cliff to meet them. The policeman – so far there was only one – introduced himself as Mark Bille Hansen from Grenå Police. He had shoulder-length black hair, like an Indian's, and a lined face that looked anything but Danish. He didn't come across as especially friendly and Peter concluded that he was either stressed or hung-over. The latter was only to be expected on New Year's Day.

They talked for a little while before clambering down to the beach, where the woman in the Puffa jacket was standing guard. The policeman squatted down and studied Ramses carefully.

‘When did you find him?'

Peter had checked his watch. It was now a quarter past three and starting to get dark.

‘At half past two. I went for a walk with the dog.'

‘And you've never seen him before?'

Before Peter had made up his mind, he was shaking his head. The man with the black hair put his ear close to Ramses's mouth to detect any possible signs of life. Then his fingers found the gold chain with the Star of David and held it up.

‘A religious symbol?'

The question was aimed at Peter, but it was his neighbour who answered. He didn't even know her name yet.

‘It looks Jewish.'

Mark Bille Hansen had another quick look at the body.

‘Hm. That might fit.'

Peter let them talk. He could have told them that Ramses was not very familiar with religious symbols. He only wore the star because he liked the look of it and because a girlfriend from the distant past had given it to him and told him it would bring him luck. Peter looked at the star and wondered what luck it had brought Ramses. If this was good luck, he would like to see what bad luck was.

‘And you were just passing?'

The question was addressed to the hitherto nameless woman.

‘I was out enjoying a New Year's Day walk. I live up there … as well.'

She pointed up the cliff.

‘As well?'

‘We both live there,' she said, with obvious irritation in her voice.

‘Together?' Mark asked.

She shook her head vehemently. It looked as if it might come off. She glanced at Peter.

‘We don't actually know each other.'

She took off her mitten and held out her hand.

‘My name is Felix. Perhaps we should introduce ourselves.'

‘Peter.'

Her hand was tiny. It was also ice-cold and her handshake was devoid of any strength. Her eyes directed the strength she had at him while everything else seemed as if it might crumble and turn into dust.

Mark Bille looked at his notepad.

‘Peter Andreas Boutrup. What else?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Who are you?'

‘I live up there. In number fifteen,' Peter said. ‘I'm a carpenter.'

Mark Bille nodded. Peter could see he was about to ask another question when they heard the emergency sirens.

More than anything, Mark felt like covering his ears with his hands. His headache hadn't gone away, despite the pills, and the sound of the sirens cut through his brain with scalpel-like precision and found the centre of the pain. Matters did not improve when he saw the two detectives quickly approaching from the car: a man and a woman. The man was tall and sturdy with a young face and short, steel-grey hair, and Mark had never seen him before. The woman he would have recognised anywhere in the world and he could have kicked himself for not knowing where she was now. Anna Bagger had risen through the ranks and she had obviously ended up in the East Jutland Crime Division. Of course he would have known if he'd bothered to keep up in the last twelve months, and now he was standing there like a moron as she moved towards him with her characteristic glide. He went to meet her. When they were close he realised she was just as surprised to see him. But she hid it well; she stuck out her hand and looked him in the eye.

‘Mark. I hear you got married.'

Half her smile was professional, probably for the benefit of her colleague. The other half hit him somewhere he didn't like.

‘And I hear you got divorced.'

He said it in a low voice. She exhaled and her breath misted in the icy air.

‘A lot can happen in two years. I see you've returned to the scene of the crime?'

There were layers of meaning in every single word and in every little movement, from the way she blinked to the way she gasped as she breathed.

‘You could say that. I grew up around here,' he said.

She looked around. No one could take in the bigger picture and the small details in a split second like she could: the grey sea, the snow and ice on the cliff, the body on the sea-smoothed dark stones, and a little further away the dog and the two neighbours who had discovered the body. For a moment, her gaze zoomed in on the bullet hole in the man's back before returning to Mark and homing in somewhere between his eyes. Perhaps she was a little rattled after all.

‘I didn't know that you were such a country bumpkin,' she said. ‘I want you to meet my colleague from the Crime Division, Martin Nielsen.'

Mark shook hands with the man as relief washed over him. She didn't know. She had been busy with her own life and oblivious to his, something which at this precise moment suited him just fine. She would find out, of course, but he would have that conversation when the time came.

‘It's all happening on Djursland, I must say,' Anna Bagger said, blowing a strand of blonde hair from her face.

Again icy breath emerged from her lips and he remembered how she would exhale cigarette smoke by sticking out her lower lip. Once it had touched something inside him, he didn't really know why; perhaps it was the combination of feminine – her finely plucked eyebrows which knitted in concentration, while her eyes were half-closed in pleasure – and masculine, with the sailor-like movement of her lips. It no longer touched him, but then again few things did.

‘A missing girl and a dead man, you mean? Yes, never a dull moment here,' he agreed.

She nodded and started walking quickly over to the body and introducing herself to the two people who had found it. She asked her questions in a calm, friendly tone, but Mark knew she was committing to memory the images of the man and woman with photographic accuracy and that her brain had already started combining motive, opportunity and alibi. She was clever. This was her life's ambition. Meanwhile more vehicles had arrived at the top of the cliff and technicians in white overalls were swarming around with more police officers and a pathologist. Anna Bagger finished her round of questions.

‘So neither of you has ever seen him before?'

Both the man with the dog and the woman who looked thin to the point of transparency denied having seen him before. At length Anna Bagger seemed to realise they had been standing for an hour and a half in extremely cold conditions.

‘Go home and make yourselves comfortable. Someone will be along to take your detailed statements.'

Mark watched them as they and the dog struggled back up the cliff. Every time the man offered to help, the woman pretended not to notice.

P
ETER HELD OUT
his hand. She didn't take it, but he could clearly see her exertion and her obstinate determination as she mobilised all her strength and forced herself up the last stretch. She was in need of some sort of help, he could see, possibly medical, but there was also something deeper. It seemed as if her very soul had fragmented, a state he knew only too well.

Before they parted she stood scrutinising him while patting Kaj, who soaked up the attention, a typical dog.

‘Why did you lie?' she asked. ‘Why did you say you didn't know him?'

‘Why do you think I lied?'

She angled her head upwards to see him. She was so tiny.

‘I recognise a lie when I hear one.'

‘Recognise?'

He couldn't help smiling. He was reminded of Manfred's King, a small dog which thought it was a Great Dane.

‘From personal experience?'

‘I recognise the sound of a lie,' she insisted. ‘And you lied.'

‘So what if I did?'

‘Who is he?'

There was more than usual curiosity in the voice and eyes that branded him a liar.

‘Nobody.'

‘And what is Mr Nobody's name? Where's he from?'

She was getting too close. He searched for a way to divert the conversation.

‘Felix,' he said. ‘That's a funny name for a girl. It must be foreign.'

‘Felicia.'

She pressed her tongue against her front teeth on the c. ‘My mother's Spanish. It's a nickname. Peter …'

She tasted his name. ‘You have a namesake in the Bible. He, too, denied a friend. Three times.'

She stared at him as if she could nail him to the cross with her eyes, and he knew exactly what kind of person she was. She was the type that would not be shaken off. She was probably ill or just terribly run-down, but she didn't let go, and again he was reminded of King in a comparison which was not entirely fair.

‘Listen,' he said. ‘I think we've got off on the wrong foot.'

He scratched his neck.

‘Would you like to come in?' he offered. ‘I could make some coffee.'

She shook her head in an exaggerated protest before setting off back to her house.

‘He wasn't my friend,' he called as she left, but she simply waved a gloved hand in the air without turning around.

Stinger was a friend, he thought. Ramses was merely an acquaintance. It was important to make a distinction or your life would quickly fill up with dubious associates for whom you felt some responsibility.

At first it was a relief when he was able to close the door behind him, but his thoughts soon started to trouble him. She was right. Why had he lied?

For a while he walked around in circles in the house which was no longer the safe haven of which he had dreamed. Everything within him had resisted the moment she had asked whether he recognised the body at the foot of the cliff. The denial had been automatic, but from that moment on he was trapped. In her presence, in the spotlight of her gaze, the denial had been uttered again in front of the police. Bang. Just like that! In no time at all he had wrecked his future, so as to be able to buy himself a little more peace and the illusion of being an ordinary citizen doing his civic duty.

It was already a murder case. Of course they would find the link between him and Ramses. Of course they would dig up everything.

There was only one thing for it: he would have to go back immediately and admit that he had lied.

He had already put on his coat and his boots when the realisation dawned on him.

Ramses had known half the coordinates of the spot in the Kattegat where Brian's boat had supposedly been scuttled with its valuable cargo. Someone might have forced the information out of him and then killed him. Stinger knew the other half of the secret. Whoever had killed Ramses must be looking for Stinger now. Stinger was no angel, but there wasn't an evil bone in him. He didn't deserve to die.

He rang the mobile number Stinger had given him, but there was no reply. He left a message: ‘This is Peter. Call me. Quickly. The shit's hit the fan.' But he knew Stinger and his relationship with technology only too well. There was no guarantee he would know how to listen to a message.

He looked at his watch. It was four o'clock and it had grown dark outside. The police had told him to stay at home.

Stinger had mentioned he was staying with his sister in Århus. Peter knew her vaguely. Elisabeth, her name was. What else could he remember about Elisabeth? From time to time she had visited Stinger in Horsens Prison. She had been a biker chick back then, a couple of years ago. Leather, studs and biceps as big as thighs, but kindness itself behind the facade.

He would have to make a couple of calls before he could get her full name and address. He weighed up the pros and cons and ended up concluding it was more important to save a life than clean the slate. The latter could wait. He whistled for the dog and drove off in the old VW van he had recently bought at an auction for 18,000 kroner he didn't have.

‘A
ND YOU DIDN'T
see him drive off?'

The police officer, Anna Bagger, seemed annoyed, and she had cause to be. There was also something friendly and trustworthy about her, but that was possibly down to pure professionalism. Felix shook her head.

‘I was cold when I got back so I took a hot bath. I expect he left while I was in the bathroom.'

‘You don't know where he was going?'

It sounded idiotic, but she probably had to phrase the question like that. Perhaps they were taught to do it this way at the police academy. Mark Bille Hansen, who was accompanying her, tried to look neutral.

‘No. As I told you earlier, I don't know him.'

‘How long have you lived here?'

‘One month.'

‘Is it really possible for two people living this close to each other for one month not to speak?'

It wasn't an accusation; on the contrary, it was spoken with mild wonder and a suppressed smile as Anna Bagger allowed her gaze to glide over the décor, which was maritime kitsch: a model of the frigate
Jylland
in the window, a porthole in the wall, rope edging round the ceiling and conches on the window sill. Nothing Felix would have chosen for herself.

‘We keep ourselves to ourselves.'

‘Why?'

‘Why what?'

Anna Bagger made a gesture to encompass both the house and the cliff.

‘Why do you live here? So far away. What are you doing here?'

Felix had never liked several questions being fired at once. In fact, she didn't like being interrogated like this, and she certainly didn't like having strangers in her house.

‘I'm on sick leave. I need peace and quiet.'

‘What's your job?'