The Butterfly House

by Katrine Engberg

  But as she was walking along the dark residential streets pushing her award-winning, all-terrain, infant-bassinet-mounted stroller system, she admitted to herself that all her preparations had been in vain.

  The baby had come, seen, and conquered. She had screamed and screamed, until they gave up all ambitions of sleeping, eating, or even sitting down, had terrorized them with endless urgent needs, and robbed them of all free time. Anette was so tired, the kind of tired she never could have believed possible, too tired to care about the rain beating down on her face. She just put one leg in front of the other, determined to keep wheeling along until her daughter stopped crying. Which did not seem likely to be any time soon, if ever.

  Svend had offered to take the afternoon shift, and Anette knew he wasn’t keeping score about who did the most. But she was, and she was way behind. Thus she had prepared the baby carriage with dogged persistence and had set off, her body filled with contradictory emotions: unconditional love for the baby hand in hand with a growing rage at being caught in a seemingly endless cycle of identity loss and drudgery.

  For Anette was excruciatingly bored. She harbored an instinctive urge to protect her baby, so strong that it frightened her, but being on maternity leave was driving her crazy. Anyone who thinks that doing their taxes or recaulking the tub is boring has obviously never been on maternity leave.

  Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I tra-la-la-la-laa! Up above the blah-blah-blah, tra-la diamond in the blah…

  She struggled to remember the words, put a comforting hand on the baby’s belly, and pushed the stroller along angrily. Her daughter reciprocated with a furious wail, which would have fitted a devil banshee perfectly.

  Anette shook her head resignedly. Lights were glowing warmly and pleasantly from the houses on her street, and here she was walking like a zombie, singing to her overtired baby in the dark.

  Who are you, if you don’t perform and fill out your designated role?

  Is having a baby and being a mother enough?

  A task that blindsides you, because you face it totally unprepared, having spent your entire life honing your skills for something else, and yet you’re expected to just be able to do it instinctively. All the while, the baby senses your general ineptitude and your fear of messing up and feels justifiably fretful. It’s not easy.

  Anette hummed on and tried to breathe calmly. Little by little her daughter stopped crying and lay there watching with her big, dark blue eyes. Oh, tiny human!

  While Anette trudged past the houses on the streets of Greve Strand, her thoughts circled back to what she hadn’t had time to think about all day: the case. Between changing diapers, breastfeeding, cuddling, changing diapers again, and doing laundry, Anette had desperately tried to remember where she had heard the victim’s name before.

  Bettina Holte.

  When Jeppe mentioned the name, Anette had recognized it right away, but the memory had stayed hidden somewhere in the sleepy, porridgey mush that was now her brain. Over dinner she had briefly told Svend about the body in the fountain in the silent hope that the name would mean something to him, but in vain.

  Anette slowed the pace and then halted. Of course! The maternity ward at the hospital in Herlev. Bettina had been the health-care aide there.

  No way! She knew the fountain victim! She had spoken to her, asked her for advice. The name was so special, it had to be her! Gray-haired and stocky, sturdy and straightforward, she spoke with an authority that did wonders for the nervous women giving birth. An oracle of common sense. But also a little strict, Anette remembered with a flash of irritation. She was the one who had chewed Anette out because she wasn’t willing to have an epidural. Why would a health-care aide even care how much anesthesia one of the patients wanted?

  Why in the world had she ended up in a fountain with the blood drained out of her?

  Anette realized that the baby finally slept. She smiled in relief at her daughter, who now looked like a neatly wrapped angel, turned the stroller around, and trudged back to the house. With a little luck, she could have an hour at the computer and learn more about Bettina Holte before it was time to breastfeed again.

  * * *

  WINDED, JEPPE ROLLED over onto his back and closed his eyes. Let his breathing find its normal balance, as dopamine was released and a sense of well-being raced through his body. His pulse was beating somewhere near his temple, his brain devoid of all thought. Airy head, heavy body. There had to be a way to use good sex in drug rehabilitation. No high could be better than this.

  In the borderland between euphoria and sleep, he snuck a peek at his watch. He was going to have to leave soon. Jeppe turned his head and looked at the woman beside him. Beautiful as only the female body could be, she lay there with her back to him, naked and taut, like a string instrument.

  He gently traced his finger along her spine from the nape of her neck to her tailbone, and felt his heart contract. She was asleep, always so tired, even more so than him. That’s what having kids will do to you, she said, whenever he complained.

  They had found their way to each other cautiously, the way only two previously burned people could. Or to be precise, two divorced adults. Had approached each other slowly and politely, ever anxious of being too pushy, both petrified of being hurt again. That made their surprise at the passion that had sprung up between them all the greater. When they finally succumbed, their desire gushed like a swollen spring stream, quickly pulling their emotions along with it. As Jeppe regained his faith in love, his back pain had lifted on its own, and the epic identity crisis he had been suffering thanks to his divorce the previous year had faded, like a sun-bleached photo stuck on the wall.

  He had better sneak out, before he fell asleep himself.

  They had agreed to wait introducing him as Mom’s boyfriend to the kids until they felt sure that that was what he actually was. Especially since the kids already knew him as her boss. That of course being the other problem: they worked together, and he was her superior. Although their closest colleagues had gradually found out about them, they had kept things discreet at work. That meant stolen glances across the meeting room table and dates after bedtime, followed by nightly schleps across town to get home.

  Jeppe had decided to enjoy the romantic aspects of their semisecret affair instead of letting it bother him. It worked most of the time.

  When he had washed up and gotten dressed, he returned to the bedroom and kissed the still sleeping Sara before cautiously letting himself out of her apartment on Burmeistersgade. The old harbor district of Christianshavn was quiet in the wet evening darkness—as quiet as the neighborhood ever got—and Jeppe unlocked his bike feeling alive and peaceful at the same time.

  The chain on his bike rattled rhythmically the whole way through town, over Queen Louise’s Bridge to Sankt Hans Square. Jeppe’s fingers were freezing, but inside his jacket he was sweating. By Sankt Johannes Church, he parked the bike in a rack and checked his phone. There was an email from Nyboe: The victim did not have any alcohol or other drugs in her system. It had been hard to determine due to the lack of blood in her body, but now he was certain. Bettina Holte had been conscious while she was slowly and painfully drained of blood.

  Jeppe crossed Nørre Allé and looked up at the third floor. There was a light on.

  She hadn’t gone to bed yet.

  The stairs seemed endless, and yet he seemed to climb them too quickly. His key rattled loudly in the lock; Jeppe closed the front door behind him and held his breath. For a brief moment he thought maybe she had left the light in the hall on for him, but then he heard slow footsteps approaching. Damn.

  “You’re home late!” Her tone was accusatory. She adjusted the robe around her with a look of despair. “Where have you been at this hour?!”

  Jeppe unzipped his rain jacket and hung it on a hook. He crouched down to untie his shoes and take them off. This wasn’t tenable any longer.

  “You shouldn’t have waited up. I didn’t ask you to.” He
tried to sound amiable, but the irritation in his voice was ingrained and familiar. “You know that I often work late. There’s no reason for you to wait up. I’m not a child.”

  Her head drooped, like a puppy that had just been scolded. Jeppe walked over and hugged her.

  “Mom, you’ve got to stop!” He held on tight to her skinny shoulders. She looked so frail, suddenly an old woman. “Everything’s fine. I just don’t like having to report to you because I happen to be staying at your place for a few months. I’m not mad, just tired. Okay?”

  “I was just worried about you,” she said with a brave smile. “You know how my mind races. Did anything happen to you? Are you okay? You don’t answer when I call—”

  “Mom, I’m a policeman. I can’t always answer your calls. You know that.… You look tired.”

  “I guess I am.” She stifled a yawn. “I’m going to bed. Sleep well, Snuggles.” She kissed him on the cheek, went into her bedroom, and shut the door behind her.

  Jeppe sat down on one of the hard wooden chairs at the round dining table and rested his head in his hands. On November 1, he would get the keys to his new apartment and be able to put this humiliating chapter behind him. Moving in with your mother after a divorce was no party, no matter how practical it might serve as a temporary solution. The conflicts and grievances of his teen years still lay strikingly close to the surface, even so many years after he had moved away from home. Little things like the way his mom would ask him to wring the dishcloth out just so, sent him straight back to the timid boy he had been twenty-five years ago.

  But, he reminded himself, it was a tremendous help that she let him stay here between the house sale in the spring and moving into his new apartment in a couple of weeks. It would be over soon. And it had saved him plenty of hassle and money. His only fixed expense right now was the monthly rent on the storage unit for his furniture.

  Jeppe opened the fridge and took out a beer. The sound of the can opening blew away the last of his irritation. He was just a spoiled asshole.

  He found a pack of cigarettes at the bottom of his bag. He had recently resumed his former bad habit with great pleasure. As long as he only smoked occasionally, it was no less healthy than breathing the city air on his daily bike rides through Copenhagen. He opened the kitchen window and let in the chilly air and the bass rhythms from the nearby dance club, Rust, then perched on the kitchen table with his beer and lit himself a cigarette.

  The church bell struck midnight, one solitary serenely clear chime that cut through the damp night air. Jeppe pictured Bettina Holte, restrained with strong straps around her wrists and ankles, a ball in her mouth, her body in convulsions, her eyes open in panic. Bleeding to death was messy. Was she on a bed? Was there plastic underneath? And where did all the blood go, down a drain?

  A bed, a floor drain, a private location, where someone could carry a body out to a cargo bike without being seen, somewhere within biking distance of Old Market Square.

  Jeppe brushed the thoughts aside, drank his beer, and reread an email from his old friend Johannes. He was writing from South America, where he was trying to save his marriage to his Chilean partner after a—to put it mildly—turbulent time. Everything is still fragile, he wrote. You never know what tomorrow will bring.

  No, Jeppe thought, flicking his cigarette butt out into the yard. You never know what tomorrow will bring.

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10

  CHAPTER 6

  The sculpture at Bispebjerg Hospital of the Norse goddess Gefion, swinging her bronze whip over her bulls, was just a replica of the original at Langelinie, and only a sixth of the size. The pool around it was accordingly modest, more cute than impressive. But today the cuteness went unnoticed.

  In the fountain, beneath the bronze bulls, the body of a naked man floated quietly. Tall, by the looks of it, and doughy, with dark hair, a beard, and colorful tattoos on both arms. He was lying faceup, which meant the cuts on both wrists and in his left groin were freely visible. Twelve small symmetrical cuts. His open mouth revealed a pierced tongue, and his dead brown eyes reflected the sky, like little pools of mercury.

  “At least it’s not raining today,” Clausen muttered.

  He didn’t sound as if he seriously thought it made a difference. Two bestial murders in two days. Not the kind of situation that could be improved by a pause in the autumn rains.

  “Someone is sending us a message,” Jeppe said. “And I am afraid it isn’t over yet.”

  His eyes felt grainy. He shouldn’t have stayed up smoking and speculating till three thirty.

  “What a fucking mess!”

  The two men leaned in over the dead body to study the incisions up close. The flesh had lost its color in the water, and the wounds gaped like unnatural little gateways into a soul, which had long since departed. The dead man looked like a Hieronymus Bosch figure, a warning from hell.

  “Did you get ahold of Monica Kirkskov?” Clausen asked with a faint smile.

  “Yeah, thanks. She had some interesting information about a possible murder weapon, a scarificator. Nyboe is on it.”

  Jeppe took pictures of the body’s face and tattoos with his cell phone and emailed them to Sara. New victim, same MO. See if you can identify. They were professional in their emails; the private stuff was exchanged by text. Well, and in bed. Jeppe put away his phone and scanned the scene around the fountain.

  Behind the white pavilions crime scene investigators were currently setting up, were redbrick hospital buildings, colored brown by the overnight rain. Muntin windows, blue wooden doors, and trees whose brown leaves were struggling to hold on for just a little longer. It looked quite serene.

  “Who discovered him?”

  Clausen pointed to an elderly man, slumped on a stoop, his head in his hands and an anxious dachshund on a leash. The hood of his dark blue rain poncho was sticking to the top of his head. An officer was squatting beside him, talking soothingly to man and dog alike.

  “He was out walking his dog and took a shortcut through the hospital grounds. He doesn’t usually go that way, he says, and didn’t have a phone with him, so he had to go into the ER to sound the alarm. He’s pretty shaken up.”

  “What time?” Jeppe asked, pulling a stick of chewing gum out of his pocket. The cigarette taste wasn’t so easy to get rid of.

  “The call came in to the main switchboard at six oh-eight a.m. Private security guards patrol the hospital grounds at night, one of them walked past the fountain at about five twenty. Everything was normal then.”

  “So again, a relatively narrow time slot for when the body could have been dumped in the fountain,” Jeppe established, looking up at the eaves of the surrounding buildings.

  Clausen lifted his chin to see what he was looking at.

  “Yes, it’ll be exciting to see what we have in the way of surveillance,” he said.

  “I’ll get Falck started on finding footage from whatever cameras there might be. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something we could use.”

  A drop fell into the water in front of them. Both men watched the ripple spread on the smooth surface and reach the dead body, pulled up their hoods simultaneously, and let the rain start drumming on the fabric.

  “Why does he throw the bodies in fountains?” Jeppe asked.

  Clausen hesitated. “Maybe this sounds silly, but in a number of religions, you wash the deceased to remove their sins before their journey to the realm of the dead. Maybe the water is part of a ritual…?”

  “A ritual. Or a message.” Jeppe pulled the gum out of his mouth, rolled it contemplatively between his thumb and index finger. “Yesterday the body was dumped in a fountain downtown. Why did he come out here to Bispebjerg today?”

  “Maybe the risk of being seen with the body in the city was too high now that the media has started writing about a killer with a cargo bike?”

  A crime scene investigator called to Clausen from the bushes by one of the hospital buildings.

  “Well,
Kørner, I have to get back to the evidence. We found bicycle tire prints, and we are trying to cast before the rain ruins them.” Clausen hurried off in a bouncy gait, which made his small body in the rain poncho look like a hopping tent.

  Jeppe stayed by the fountain, watching the dead man with his vacant skyward stare. The dead have a secret that the living will never know. What was the connection between Bettina Holte, a fifty-four-year-old health-care aide from Husum, and this younger man with a pierced tongue?

  The forensics had gotten set up and were about to start the first on-site examinations of the victim. Jeppe took a few steps back to make room. Just as Professor Nyboe pulled a mask up over his mouth and leaned down over the body, Jeppe’s cell phone rang.

  It was Sara.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi.” Sara’s voice was thick with excitement. “I think I have something on the victim. I ran the images of his tattoos through that new American identification program and got a match. The pinup on his left bicep matched a profile. I found him in POLSAS.”

  “In POLSAS? Does he have a criminal record?”

  “No. Apparently he filled out one of those background-check forms to work with children. That includes uploading a picture to the system, you know. It’s a few years old now, if it is him at all. Right now all we have to go by is the tattoo, but if it is him, his name is Nicola Ambrosio, born in Naples, Italy, in 1983. Lives at number forty-two Amagerbrogade, fifth floor on the right.”

  “Nicola?” Denmark probably wasn’t the funnest country to live in if you were a man named Nicola. “Do you have time to go out to Amagerbrogade and check?”

  “I’m on my way,” Sara said.

  “Good. Call me when you know more.” Jeppe wanted to say something to her, just a small private word that could bridge over the smooth work-related sentences they had just exchanged. “Sara…?”

  She didn’t answer. It took a couple of seconds for him to realize that she had already hung up.