Three Dog Night (6 page)

‘Will you be diving yourself?' Anna Bagger asked him.

He hunched his shoulders.

‘I do sometimes. But we happen to have a diver on standby. She lives just outside Grenå.'

‘She?'

Even Anna Bagger seemed surprised.

Vraa nodded.

‘The only frogwoman in the FKP. She's good. She did her training at Kongsøre and got top marks at graduation five years ago. She was the one who found that body in Vejle Fjord a couple of months ago, if you remember.'

One of the young divers nodded emphatically.

‘Kir's good.'

Everyone remembered the Vejle case, of course. A woman had gone missing after a night out. Witnesses had seen a man sailing in the fjord and dumping something mysterious.

‘Vejle was straightforward once we had the witness statement,' the commander said. ‘But for that, it would have been impossible. An entire fjord. It would've taken us over a month, and besides, bodies have a tendency to drift.'

‘The current in Grenå can be strong,' Mark said. ‘I heard about a man who fell into the harbour and was found in Norway.'

The commander nodded.

‘When you're dealing with dead bodies anything is possible.'

‘But surely they surface at some point?'

This was the dog handler asking.

‘Depending on the temperature of the water, the body will sink during the first seven to ten days – in our case possibly longer due to the cold. Then it'll surface for one day before sinking again. It's the gases that cause the body to float.'

‘If Nina Bjerre fell into the marina, she won't be surfacing any time soon,' Anna Bagger concluded. ‘Which gives us even more reason to start looking for her today.'

‘What about all the fish sludge you mentioned?' asked Martin Nielsen, Anna Bagger's colleague. ‘Won't the body just sink into it, so you won't be able to find it even by feeling your way?'

The commander shook his head.

‘Even if the seabed is very soft and the body has sunk, a submerged body doesn't weigh enough for it to sink right to the bottom. The divers will have their arms in the sludge all the way. If she's there, we'll find her.'

He cleared his throat.

‘I understand you found a body in the area yesterday. I was just wondering if the two cases might be related.'

Anna Bagger shook her head.

‘No obvious link, but of course we're looking into the possibility.'

‘Do you know who he is?' Vraa asked her.

‘He's been identified as a petty criminal who was in East Jutland Prison until last spring for handling stolen goods and assault. His name's Ramses Bilal and he was born in Egypt. The post-mortem is being carried out as we speak.'

Mark had seen his share of post-mortems during his time in Copenhagen. He didn't envy the police officers watching the process. Anna Bagger followed up on Vraa's previous question.

‘It's hard to see how Ramses Bilal could be involved in the disappearance of a nineteen-year-old woman from a New Year's party. The two of them move in completely different circles, and anyway Gjerrild Cliff is at least ten kilometres from Grenå Harbour.'

They set off in a procession, but without flashing blue lights. Mark thought that if this had been Copenhagen, the media would have been ready and waiting the moment they left the police station. In any case, TV and newspaper journalists would turn up at some point. They needed to agree a press strategy, but perhaps Anna hadn't even thought about it.

His mobile rang as he followed the green diving truck. He could tell from the display it was his mother and felt no desire to reply. When he did so, despite his better judgement, he regretted it immediately.

‘You've moved back to Grenå, and yet we hardly ever see you.'

He could have told her it was precisely because of reproaches like that he rarely visited them. But he had no time to reply before she moved on: ‘I hope you haven't missed any of your check-ups?'

He would rather be investigating the death of a woman and losing himself in a good case than confronting reminders of his own mortality. He gritted his teeth and replied as amicably as he could that he was at work right now and besides he didn't have his headset on. A man had been found dead at the foot of the cliff and they were searching the marina for a young woman.

‘Poor Nina.'

‘Don't tell me you know her?'

His mother tut-tutted down the telephone.

‘You forget this is a small town. She was in the same year as your cousin.'

‘She went to school with Sanne?'

He didn't know his cousin very well.

‘Sanne's been here lots of times with Nina.'

‘We're on our way to Grenå. If you're at home, I'll stop by in a while, OK?'

Of course she was at home. Where else would she be? The roles were clearly defined in his parents' marriage. His father was first officer on the Grenå–Varberg ferry. His mother had always been at home with their two children and, when money was tight, had worked part-time as a dentist's secretary. They were his parents and he loved them. He also loved living at some distance from them and not having to conform to their expectations of an older son. Not even the events of recent years had caused them to lessen their demands.

He drove through the town to the residential area in the hills feeling that his life had come full circle and he was now back where it had started, and furthermore that he hadn't made any progress. He drove past the school where he and his brother Martin used to go; he passed houses where his friends used to live; streets he used to cycle up and down and where he played; fields where he and his friends had played football. Familiar and yet so alien. The prodigal son had returned. In a film this would be the end and the credits would start rolling. In real life things were very different.

‘She's a pretty girl,' his mother said, putting the cups on the table. ‘She and Sanne were very close when they were twelve or thirteen. Nice parents. In those days, they lived over in Myntevej.'

‘Do you remember if she had any brothers or sisters?'

‘A younger sister, I think.'

‘Happy New Year, Mum.'

He raised his coffee cup. She angled her head.

‘Did you have a nice evening? We tried calling you at midnight.'

‘A very nice evening. I was out.'

He drank his coffee, recalled the taste of bought sex and took another sip to get rid of it.

‘I hope you're not drinking too much?'

‘No.'

He had cruised the town with the world's biggest erection. He hadn't been drinking but knew that he had to take things to the limit and then collapse, knowing he was still a human being. A man.

The girl had been standing on a street corner near the harbour with a couple of colleagues, clearly on the game, even in the cold. Though these days you needed a trained eye to tell the difference between the pros and the tarted-up young women going to New Year's Eve parties in sub-zero temperatures wearing high heels, short Puffa jackets and buttock-short dresses. He had stopped his car and opened the door, and she had jumped in after they had haggled briefly over the price. Young. Not pretty, but not ugly, either. To be honest, he didn't want to remember her face. Or her body, either. Only the function it had in relation to his.

Afterwards he had driven home. He fell asleep just as the bells on the Copenhagen Town Hall clock chimed twelve times and Danmarks Radio Choir sang ‘
Vær Velkommen
'.

‘What do you remember about Nina Bjerre, Mum?'

Sitting at the kitchen table, his mother lit a cigarette.

‘She had a brace on her teeth for a while.'

‘That must be a long time ago.'

His mother sucked air in with the cigarette. Then she got up. He heard her rummaging around in the living room and followed her.

‘Here. I don't know if this helps. This is Sanne's twelfth birthday.'

There were five photos. The girls – seven of them – were in the garden sitting on the patio eating birthday cake. Most of them were slim, still without women's curves. It was summer. Shorts and skimpy dresses.

His mother pointed.

‘That's her. That's Nina.'

It was a full-length shot. She was standing next to Sanne and a couple of the others on the slope in his aunt's garden. They were all posing, pretending to be models.

‘She was a little gangly, don't you think?' his mother said, pointing at the photo again. ‘Nice, slim body, but a bit knock-kneed. Not something you really notice, and not at all if she wears trousers.'

She looked at him.

‘They can fix crooked teeth nowadays, but I've yet to hear of anyone fixing knock knees.'

I
N THE MORNING
Peter called in on Stinger's sister, Elisabeth, on his way home to Djursland, but she hadn't seen a sign of him and had no idea where he was.

‘The earth must have swallowed him up,' she said. ‘You said he met a woman?'

Lulu had described how a masculine-looking woman dressed in black, with a square face, had gone up to Stinger and persuaded him to skip the roast chicken in favour of something that was evidently more interesting. Elisabeth shook her head. The description didn't match anyone she knew in Stinger's circle, but it sounded just like him to be tempted by the offer of a night out.

‘I bet he went pub-crawling with her until closing time and found someone to go home with,' said Elisabeth, who had a visitor and didn't have time to talk.

They stood talking in the doorway and Peter caught a glimpse of her guest sitting in the living room pressing an ice pack against one cheek. She was a tall, skinny girl with a ponytail. She had clearly been beaten up because she had black eyes and bruised cheeks.

‘She's run away from her boyfriend. I have to help her,' Elisabeth whispered. ‘If he finds out where she is, he'll kill her.'

Peter wanted to ask what the boyfriend would do if he found his girlfriend at Elisabeth's. Would he kill her, too? But he said nothing. He had the feeling he and Stinger's sister had more in common than might be thought at first glance. He knew only too well what it was like to invite in every waif and stray and not know when to say stop. He felt like saying to her: think about when and how to say no. But it was none of his business, so he opened the back of the car for Kaj and drove to Djursland, thinking he would go to the police station and tell them he knew Ramses. But he had promised Manfred to be at work first thing and it was already nine-thirty, so instead he decided he would use his lunch break to do the honourable thing.

The carpenter's workshop was in an old barn opposite the main house, which Manfred was doing up as and when he could find the time; a Sisyphean task, as he called it. When Peter arrived he was standing by the trestles and sanding turquoise paint off a door for his and Jutta's bathroom.

‘Great day yesterday.'

Peter shouted his greeting through the noise from the sander. Manfred looked up and switched it off. He ran his hand across the surface of the door and seemed satisfied with it, for the moment.

‘Thank you. We did well.'

‘How many in total?'

‘Three stags and two does. Plus some bits and bobs: two pheasants and a fox.'

Peter whistled.

‘Not bad.'

‘We displayed them in the yard. What a shame you couldn't stay. I'll e-mail you a couple of photos.'

Manfred looked at him closely.

‘I hear you've been busy under the cliff.'

Peter told him about finding Ramses. He should have known the story was already doing the rounds.

‘I said I didn't know him.'

No further elaboration was necessary. Manfred patted him on the shoulder and met his gaze with his small intelligent eyes.

‘I'm re-reading
Of Mice and Men
,' he said after a pause.

Peter was well acquainted with Steinbeck's story about two friends, George and Lennie, and their hopeless dream of freedom and something better than the hard life of a migrant worker.

Manfred looked at him with his ever amiable expression. But behind his amiability Peter could read the question: was he, like George and Lennie, going to end up sabotaging his chance of a new life through his own stupid actions?

‘I made a mistake,' Peter said. ‘My plan is to go to the police today and rectify it.'

Manfred merely nodded, and Peter was grateful that things could be discussed between them without doing them to death. As he started on his work he thought about the
Of Mice and Men
analogy. You had to be careful not to destroy your dreams, and his reticence could easily lead to that consequence. But he wasn't like George and Lennie. He had fought too hard for his freedom to let it slip away.

‘The police are rushed off their feet today,' Manfred said the next time he switched off the sander. ‘You'll probably have to queue.'

‘Don't tell me another body has been found.'

Manfred leaned forward and deftly flipped the door resting on the trestles.

‘Do you remember me telling you about Jutta's friend whose daughter hadn't come back from a New Year's Eve party?'

‘Is she still not back?'

‘They're searching the harbour for her today. A team of divers has come over from Kongsøre. That's where they train divers, you know.'

Peter thought about his walk back from the New Year's party and the sub-zero temperatures as he was lying on the balcony in his sleeping bag with the dog huddled against him.

‘Poor girl,' he said, knowing these weren't the right words because the right words didn't exist.

Manfred nodded.

‘Poor girl. And poor parents.'

K
IR GOT THE
call just as she had surfaced from her dive and was sitting in the boat, dripping wet. It was Allan Vraa calling. Could she get ready to search the harbour in Grenå asap?