Three Dog Night (5 page)

‘I manage a spa in Århus. We offer skincare treatment and sell beauty products,' she explained and added: ‘We also do massages.'

She felt herself being scrutinised, but wasn't surprised. Right now she didn't look like a beautician. She hadn't done so for months.

‘And you're able to live on your sick pay? I can't imagine it's much,' Anna Bagger said.

‘I don't need much.'

She didn't think her private finances or lack of them was anyone's business but her own. Anna Bagger looked at her as if she couldn't make up her mind whether to believe her or not. Felix wished Peter Boutrup had stayed put.

‘He found the body. Well, him and the dog. I was just trying to help and I happened to have my mobile with me. That's all.'

Anna Bagger's face took on an inscrutable expression.

‘Thank you. That'll be all. For now.'

The police officer sounded a little distant, as if her thoughts had already jumped to the next link in the investigation. They shook hands and she left the house, followed by the rural police officer who looked anything but rural. A car started outside. An ambulance pulled away. Anna Bagger and her entourage also found their cars and soon they were tiny dots rumbling through the snow down the lane back home to Århus.

Felix unlocked the door to the secret room. Nausea rose in her throat and she started to shake as though she had a fever. She should have stayed at home. What on earth had made her walk to the cliff?

Suddenly her legs felt unsteady beneath her, so she sat down on the swivel chair. When the room had stopped spinning, she looked at the walls, which were plastered with cuttings, photos, business cards and scribbled-on Post-its.

There were survivors. And then there were the dead. She was a survivor. Why this was so, she had no idea, nor did she want to know. Her neighbour was another survivor. She had seen it in his eyes. There were only the dead and survivors. Everything in between – the living – was another country to her. As indeed was life at this moment.

She pulled a mobile from her pocket. She had removed it from the dead man's pocket while Peter had gone up the cliff to get the police.

She turned it over and over in her hand but couldn't bring herself to open the menu, even though it was still switched on. For a moment she wondered at humanity and its ability to adapt. She had never stolen anything in her entire life, and here she was with a dead man's phone in her hand. Perhaps this was what survival felt like: you existed in a frozen zombie land. Other rules applied here. She wondered if that was true for Peter Boutrup as well.

She left the room, locking it behind her, and put the mobile in the kitchen drawer. On her way back to the sofa, she had to clutch the back of a chair for support. She was tired. But she wasn't too tired to wonder what it was he had survived.

S
TINGER'S SISTER,
E
LISABETH
Stevns, had, to put it mildly, gained a lot of weight since Peter had last seen her. Fat bulged through the grey track suit; the top seemed too short and the trousers too tight. Blonde hair and dark roots were arranged in a messy pile on top of her head. When she bent down, he could see the tattoo on the small of her back, a psychedelic design a few centimetres above her bum crack, which was also revealed. But her face was pretty and her smile forgiving in face of life's unpredictability, which included a useless brother with a criminal past and future.

‘Here. Go on, take it all! I'm done with him! He can stay with you, can't he?'

She rummaged around for Stinger's few belongings scattered around the flat in Teglværksgade in Århus: T-shirts, dirty underpants, jogging bottoms, a belt, a couple of porn mags and a pouch of tobacco. As she located the items, she stuffed them into a yellow Netto bag. Finally, the whole bag was shoved into Peter's arms.

She was panting from the effort, and brushed the hair from her face. There was a packet of crisps and a half-empty tub of Haribo's Matador Mix on the coffee table. She took a couple of crisps from the bag and ate them noisily.

‘I've done everything I could do for him. Two months! And not a bloody
ØRE
from him. The moment he lays his hands on some cash, he's out of here. He only came back for a quick shower.'

Peter took the cash to be the five hundred kroner he'd given Stinger with his coat, beanie and gloves.

‘So where is he now?'

‘Where do you think?'

She sent him a knowing look.

‘Anholtsgade? Lulu and Miriam?'

A smile flickered in her eyes. She shook her head at her incorrigible big brother and took the Netto bag back from Peter.

‘That's a pretty good guess.'

The financial crisis was having an impact, and Lulu's half-days at the massage parlour had been reduced to once a week because people were short of money. She and Miriam spent most of their time running the brothel in Anholtsgade. The two of them serviced the customers, and they – the customers – didn't grow on trees, or queue around the block, these days.

‘They're not exactly lining up,' as Miriam said, letting him in. ‘We may have to do some retraining.'

Peter kissed her on the corner of her mouth, which was red and heavily pencilled but capable of affection when the mood took her.

‘Happy New Year! You'd make great nurses or French maids.'

Miriam pulled a face at him.

‘I'm looking for Stinger. You know, the tattooist.'

Miriam adjusted the lipstick at the corner of her mouth with her finger.

‘He's down at the massage parlour with Lulu. They'll be here later.'

She examined his face.

‘You look tired. Why don't you stay and have some chicken with us?'

She pulled him in from the stairwell. He relaxed the moment he crossed the threshold, as if someone had helped him remove a heavy rucksack from his back. This was how it always was with Miriam. She had been his occasional bedfellow for years, even though the frequency had diminished recently. Miriam belonged to his past, the life he had once lived surrounded by prostitutes and pickpockets. She was still a part of his life, but it had become complicated. He was no longer sure what they expected of each other.

Everything about Miriam was well groomed and desirable, from the radiance of her skin to her breath, which was fresh and inviting. She had a sense of beauty, especially her own. He thought about Felix. He found her beautiful, too, but he was unable to explain to himself why. She had no curves and didn't dress as sexily as Miriam. But she had a fire inside her.

He let himself be led into the living room with its soft furniture as Ramses' dead body drifted further and further into the distance. Stinger was in good hands. There was nothing left for Peter to do but sit back and wait.

‘So? What's new with you?'

She placed him in one of the deep chairs. As always, Kaj was on the rug under the coffee table.

Miriam kicked off her heels, stretched her feet and warmed them on the dog's coat.

‘Ooh, it's cold today. And there's a draught from the window.'

She massaged Kaj's flank. Peter rose and held up a hand to the six-pane windows, which were old and crumbling. There wasn't much to stop the wind. Some of the panes were cracked and blots of condensation had spread outwards.

‘They need replacing.'

‘Try telling Lulu that. She says we can't afford it until the recession's over.'

‘I'll get them for you at cost price and fit them myself. Got a tape measure?'

She fetched one; he took the measurements and jotted them down in his notebook.

‘You should have told me earlier. Is there anything else?'

She flopped back on the sofa again and patted the seat next to her, and he sat down.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened or am I going to have to guess?' she said.

More than anything else he wanted to forget, but there was no stopping Miriam.

‘Perhaps I can help you.'

Perhaps she could. He tilted his head back and started talking: about his new neighbour; about Stinger turning up; about Ramses' body.

‘That's so like you.'

She shook her head.

‘You're so scared of having anything to do with the police you make things much worse for yourself. What a mess! You'll have to tell them you know him.' But there was a smile on her face as she spoke and she got up at once. ‘Today's my day off. We could have some fun.'

He hesitated and she noticed.

‘Consider it payment for the windows.'

He shook his head.

‘What about a New Year's present then?'

‘Nope.'

She made it sound so simple. But in his mind another face kept appearing, one with dark eyes and a voice that called him a liar.

‘Thanks anyway,' he added. ‘Some other time.'

She shrugged and feigned indifference. She went into the kitchen and started cooking, with her back to him, banging and slamming things down, but she soon recovered. She produced a bottle of champagne and filled two glasses.

‘Seeing that it's New Year. And we haven't seen each other for ages.
Skål
!'

It was three weeks since he had last been to Århus.

‘Ramses,' he said after the first mouthful. ‘What do you know about him?'

She swirled the champagne around in her glass, making the bubbles rise.

‘Not an awful lot more than you do,' she said. ‘One for the ladies. Thought more with his dick than most men.'

She leaned against the worktop and looked at him. ‘That's what makes a man careless.'

‘Do you have anything specific you can tell me?'

She shrugged again. Lulu and Miriam knew a great deal, women in their line of work often did, but they were discreet and guarded their customers' secrets the way fairy-tale dragons guard treasure.

‘I think he was having a dangerous liaison. There was a rumour.'

‘A woman?'

‘A woman whose husband was unhappy about this liaison,' Miriam said, locating a roasting tin in the cupboard under the worktop.

‘Who should I be looking for?'

He knew he was pushing it. He also knew he would only get a hint by way of an answer. She rinsed the chicken and dabbed it dry with kitchen towel. From a packet in the fridge she took a big blob of butter and slapped it in the roasting tin, then she turned on the cooker and warmed the tin.

‘You've got to go back in time, Peter,' she said, standing next to him.

She waited until the butter had browned before placing the rinsed chicken in the tin, making the fat sizzle. She looked at him while sipping her champagne.

‘If you want an answer, your own past is where you'll find it. And deep down you know that, don't you? Stinger, Ramses and Brian.'

She put down her glass.

‘The whole thing reeks of Horsens.'

Horsens Prison. Peter stared into the distance. He didn't want to look back; he had made a promise to himself. He wasn't interested in revenge or hatred. He wanted to live his new life, go hunting with Manfred and talk about great literature, play with Kaj, put a roof on the pig farmer's barn, do his paintings and dream about the future.

He was done with demons. But it didn't necessarily follow that they were done with him.

Later, when the food was ready, Lulu came in from the cold, wearing more clothes than he had ever seen her wear, and alone.

‘Stinger? He ran into someone he knew and he was gone.'

She offered him a cheek to kiss, pushing out her enlarged breasts and sniffing the aroma of roast chicken. ‘Yummy, I've been looking forward to this all day.'

M
ARK
B
ILLE
H
ANSEN
turned up at Århus police station early on Saturday morning. No one had told him to do so. No one expected him. But he had decided it was the right thing to do. Århus was leading the investigation into the disappearance of Nina Bjerre, and it was also Århus and Anna Bagger who were investigating the death of the man under the cliff. Anna sat there now with a straight back and alert morning gaze, leading from the front and allocating work for the frogmen from the mine-clearing division of the FKP, the Frømandskorpset, with whom the police had a regular contract. She briefly met Mark's eyes, and warmth suffused his body, along with the irritation of having to watch from the wings.

He concentrated on the divers. He had seen their equipment when he parked outside the station at twenty minutes past seven. They had arrived from Nykøbing, Sjælland, late on New Year's Day in three vehicles: a blue pick-up, a green diving truck the size of a house and a towing vehicle with a black, one-tonne fibreglass boat and a small inflatable with an outboard motor on the back. Attending the meeting this morning were the commanding officer, Allan Vraa, as well as three young divers in green sweaters and army trousers, two dog handlers and a couple of police pathologists.

‘Nina Bjerre went to a New Year's Eve party with some friends at the new development by the marina. She left the party at around two a.m. A witness saw her in the area near the fishing boats, so we were thinking of searching the harbour, with dogs and with you.'

Anna Bagger spoke to the commanding officer. ‘What do you think? How long would it take your team to search the harbour?'

Allan Vraa unfolded a map on the table.

‘Grenå Harbour is a dump. There's zero visibility and fish waste scattered around. It covers the seabed up to a depth of a couple of metres.'

‘So what do you do if you can't see anything?'

He looked up.

‘We use a progressive seabed search technique. We put out one hundred and twenty-metre lines and divide the harbour into a grid. The divers feel their way around.'

‘Through fish waste?' Mark asked.

Allan Vraa nodded.

‘It's not a pleasant job, but it can be done and it'll take about twenty-four hours, I would guess, but that means we'd cover one hundred per cent of the harbour. We work with two divers at a time.'