The Butterfly House

by Katrine Engberg

  Jeppe waited until the young detective had left his office and gone down the other end of the hall before closing the door. Tomorrow their roles might be reversed, him having to report to Larsen.

  Jeppe massaged his temples. He was running out of space in his head for any more ill-fitting pieces of random facts. He had a feeling there was something he had not properly followed up on, but in this confusing flow of information it was hard to put his finger on what.

  Maybe there was something to what Sara had said. Marie Birch, former resident of Butterfly House and friends with Isak Brügger. Homeless, a misfit, only nineteen. Victim, involved, missing, possibly guilty? According to Anette she didn’t seem violent, but she could easily be. Or she could get help from someone who was. They had to make a new push to find her. And Isak Brügger.

  Isak.

  The missing piece fell into place with a gentle sigh.

  Isak had supposedly stolen his case manager’s keys out of his pocket, but how? What if the case manager with the guilty conscience had helped Isak escape?

  Jeppe found the phone number for Ward U8 and called them. A woman picked up right away.

  “Ward U-Eight, this is Ursula.”

  “Hi, this is Jeppe Kørner with the Copenhagen Police. I’m calling to talk to Simon Hartvig.”

  “One moment, please.” The woman put her hand over the receiver and said something to someone in the background. “Do you know, I can see that he’s working the night shift tonight and won’t be in until later.”

  “Could you give me his home number, please?” Jeppe said after a moment’s hesitation. “I have a couple of routine questions for him.”

  “Okay.” She made some fumbling sounds. “Do you have something to write with?”

  Jeppe wrote down the number, thanked Ursula, and called Simon Hartvig.

  He didn’t answer.

  As he hung up, the superintendent opened the door to Jeppe’s office.

  “Anything new?” She stood there holding a coffee mug with the word Grandma printed on it, looking like a sweet, elderly lady who might have you over for tea. Jeppe knew better.

  “Bo Ramsgaard has a rock-solid alibi. It wasn’t him. We had to drop the charge and release him.”

  If there had been a glint of hope in her eyes, it faded fast.

  “And?”

  “And we’re still searching high and low for Isak Brügger and Peter Demant. And trying to locate the cook from Butterfly House. We’re questioning one of the two nurses from the place, Trine Bremen. There’s an APB out for Marie Birch.” Jeppe tried to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “But unfortunately we don’t have anything concrete yet.”

  She stared at him blankly.

  “Luckily,” Jeppe continued, “none of them have shown up in a fountain, and I guess we have to consider that a plus.” He gave her a faint, tentative smile, which did not have the desired effect.

  “You have until this afternoon, Kørner.”

  The superintendent shut the door with a small, hard bang.

  * * *

  SIMON HARTVIG LOOKED out over the water in Erdkehlgraven at the bizarre assortment of boats and shacks that comprised the so-called Fredens Havn, and sighed, resigned. He was no Sherlock Holmes, and right now he was feeling both tired and discouraged, but he had to do what he could to find Isak.

  Fredens Havn, Holmen.

  It had to be somewhere around here. He walked down Refshalevej with the water to one side and the colorful DIY houses on the other. Crooked and unconventional, but mostly well maintained and cozy. And with an unobstructed view of Fredens Havn and Holmen. About a hundred feet down the road a smaller house stood out, not as nice as the others. The facade’s only window was boarded up with plywood, and weeds were growing unimpeded around the front door. He walked cautiously around the little house, peeking in the cracks where he could. It must be abandoned. No furniture, just dust and dried leaves on the floors. He tried the door, which to his surprise opened right up, creaking and complaining.

  It smelled damp inside, like rotten wood. He walked carefully across the tender floorboards past heaps of trash. Two roll-up mattresses, sleeping bags, and a backpack full of clothes showed that someone had camped here for a while. In a corner an empty gas cartridge that looked shiny and new, and clearly hadn’t been lying on the floor for long. Simon picked items up off the floor with his thumb and forefinger: food packaging, tin cans, and trash.

  Under a cellophane bag that had contained dried seaweed snacks, he found a folder with a rubber band around it. It read MARIE BIRCH in all caps on the front.

  Simon took off the rubber band and opened the folder, moved over into a strip of light between the sill and the plywood in one of the windows, and read.

  Word by word his heart stopped, slowly but surely. Shock blurred his vision, and yet the message beamed crystal clear.

  CHAPTER 22

  She was of two minds. Marie Birch literally changed her mind from one minute to the next, unable to decide what was the right thing to do. She had felt stable and functioning for a long time, but now Isak’s presence threatened to change her own mental state. Insecurity spread like a heat flash. She had believed she could be the grown-up and handle the situation, be the safe figure that Isak needed when he had to go without his medication.

  But Isak was in bad shape. Really, really bad shape.

  Neither of them had slept much last night. Isak had woken up and seen bugs swarming until the walls were black with insects. He yelled for help and tried to kill them—even the ones that were crawling into Marie’s ears, and explaining to him that he was hallucinating didn’t help. At dawn she had managed to pull him out of the house to sit in the wet grass by the water and let the open sky soften his fear.

  Her own experience of going off the meds had been so unproblematic. When Butterfly House closed, and Marie decided she would never again be dependent on anyone or anything, she had gone through a quick withdrawal period, cold turkey. Instinctively she had known that it was the way forward. And she had been right.

  Now she was able to regulate her mood swings by sticking to a healthy, nutritious diet and avoiding alcohol and other triggers. She slept at least eight hours a night and spoke up when other people tried to overstep her boundaries. Marie had cured herself and become, if not healthy, then at least strong enough to manage on her own. She had hoped to be able to help Isak in the same way. But they didn’t have the same condition. And Marie had no idea how to deal with a paranoid schizophrenic.

  Now he was her responsibility, and she didn’t even dare leave him long enough to go buy them anything to eat or drink. Isak was sitting on a tree stump a few yards from her looking out over the ramparts. Every now and then his head turned in an involuntary muscular tick. He was trembling.

  When they were still living at Butterfly House, Isak’s antipsychotics had been injected once a week in a slow-release formula. She had hoped that was still the case, because that would have given them a few days to prepare together before the symptoms began. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to be the case.

  How was she going to take care of him?

  Could she seek help from the Count, would that get them through the week and win a little time?

  “Marie?” Isak didn’t turn his head from the water. “I know I can do this. I’m strong enough and I want to!” He spoke in bursts in between his rapid breaths. “But can it wait? It’s not because I won’t do it. I just really want to wait.”

  Marie walked over to the stump and squatted beside him.

  “It’ll pass, Isak. I promise. It’s bad now, but it’ll get better soon. I’ll get us to safety, to a nice place.”

  “Marie?” His head jerked up to the side in a prolonged spasm. “I’m scared.…”

  She spontaneously wrapped her arms around his body, feeling him recoil from her touch.

  “Marie, you don’t understand. I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”

  She rested her forehead against the side of his body
and cried. Though she knew she was supposed to be the strong one, right now she felt small and scared and just wanted someone’s mother to come and help them.

  It started raining. She raised her head and felt the drops falling heavily on her forehead and eyes. She didn’t even have any rain gear for him. She couldn’t help him on her own.

  The drops ran down her cheeks in a little rivulet and dripped from her chin. She stood up and reached out her hand to him.

  “Come on! We’re leaving.”

  “You’re not taking me back to the home are you?” He looked at her in bewilderment.

  She smiled and pulled him to his feet, so he towered over her.

  “Never! We’re never going back there again. But we do need to leave. Come on, this way.”

  She dragged him along, in under the trees along the ramparts, relatively sheltered from the rain until they reached Langebro bridge. It seemed to calm Isak to be moving, side by side without talking to each other. On the bridge she took his hand. He let her hold it the whole way across to the other side.

  As they stood on Otto Mønsteds Gade looking at police headquarters, she let go.

  “Isak, go over there, ring the bell, and ask for Anette Werner. She’ll help you.”

  “Aren’t you coming with me?” he twitched restlessly.

  “I can’t, Isak. I can’t go over there. But don’t be afraid. You’re not going back; I’ll keep an eye on you.”

  He stood at the curb, looking at a loss.

  “Isak, it’s going to be okay. I promise. Ask for Anette Werner, and tell her the whole thing! Anette Werner, remember that name! Let me see you walk over there and ring the bell!”

  Isak took a step out onto the street and turned to look back. She smiled reassuringly at him. Then he took another step and another, until he was across the street by the door. He raised his hand and rang the doorbell, looked back at her and waved.

  When the door opened and he disappeared into the building, she stuck her hands into her pockets. Her hunting knife was gone.

  * * *

  “KIM WAS THE most wonderful human being I’ve ever known. I miss him every day.”

  The woman across from Anette sat quietly looking at her hands while she spoke. She wove and unwove her fingers, rubbed her palms together, and then lay them on the table in a fluid, unconscious choreography.

  She was a mature woman, must have been a good ten years older than Kim Sejersen, whom she had dated until his death in the summer of 2014. Her name was Inge Felius, her features aristocratic with a high forehead, narrow face, and a slim nose. She wore her gray-streaked hair in a loose bun fastened by a decorative silver clip. She reminded Anette of a greyhound.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Anette held her elbows awkwardly close to her body. She had already tipped over the sugar bowl and was doing her best not to bump into anything else. The low-ceilinged little town house on Fiskervejen in the village of Veddelev was crammed full of stuff, as if its owner had decided early in life to collect everything she came across and hang on to it.

  There were books, vases, and lamps, but also bulletin boards with dusty photos and newspaper clippings from the 1980s, shelves full of porcelain figurines and music boxes, cracked leather jackets hanging on hooks, and baskets of magazines and cat toys. It was actually quite comfy in an artistic grandmotherly sort of way, but surrounded by all these trinkets, Anette felt twice as big and clumsy as normal, and that was saying something.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice.”

  “I’m just glad to finally get to talk to someone about Kim. The police closed the case right after his death, declaring it an accident. To be completely honest, I’ve been waiting for three years for someone to get in touch with me. Tea?” She poured the steaming liquid into two rustic cups and pushed one over to Anette. “It’s been hard to process that night.”

  “How do you mean hard to process?”

  “Well, witnessing it.”

  Anette swallowed her tea wrong and knocked over a stack of books on the floor while coughing.

  “You were there?” she exclaimed.

  “The party was for staff members with partners. I went. And even though Gundsømagle is only a fifteen-minute drive from here, Kim and I decided to spend the night at Butterfly House so we could both drink.”

  “You were there! You attended that party, the one where Kim drowned?!”

  For a moment Inge Felius seemed to consider whether Anette was firing on all engines.

  “Well, I’m sorry.… But did you witness the actual accident?” Anette wiped up the tea she had spilled with her elbow.

  “The accident.” Inge weighed the word in her mouth. “I had gone to bed, long before it happened. I was tired, Kim was drunk. The next morning he was dead. Rita knocked on my door at seven in the morning, yelling that she had called the police. I woke up and Kim was gone.”

  Her voice broke a little on that last sentence and she drank from her cup with distant eyes.

  “Why don’t you believe it was an accident?”

  There was a scratching sound from the window facing the yard. A striped cat on the sill wanted in; Inge got up and opened the window. As thanks the cat allowed her to pet it a couple of times before it jumped down to the floor and disappeared around the corner.

  “Intoxicated or not, why would he go out in a muddy pond in the middle of the night? Kim was a mature, sensible man even on those rare occasions when he got drunk. This idea of it being an accident is ridiculous, simply ridiculous! But the police were confident.”

  “So, what do you think happened?”

  The elegant woman looked up at Anette with a defiant glint in her eyes.

  “Is there any other explanation possible than the one: that he was murdered?”

  “By whom? One of the patients?”

  “The residents adored Kim.” Inge brushed aside the question with an irritated gesture. “He didn’t see them as patients, but as equals, as young people with a future. He worked with them, listened to them. They loved him.”

  “Well, then who?”

  “That I don’t know.” Inge shook her head defeatedly.

  “Which other staff members were present that night?”

  “Yes… um, let’s see. Tanja brought her girlfriend, Ursula, and Bettina Holte came with Michael. Rita’s husband, Robert, was there of course, the co-owner. Nicola came alone, I think. Several of the temps were there, too.… A bunch of them were still sitting in the yard when I went to bed.”

  She brought the teacup to her lips, but set it down again with a hard clink.

  “They were a pack of wusses, all of them, let Kim defend his criticisms of the place alone, even when they knew he was right. The next day, when the police came, they all claimed that Kim had been the last one to go to bed. But why would he stay up on his own and then wade out into the pond and drown?”

  Anette accidentally brushed against a bouquet of dried flowers with her elbow and heard a couple of them crumble and fall to the floor. She pretended that nothing had happened.

  “Something went wrong that night,” Inge said. “I talked to Tanja and Ursula about it afterward and they agree.”

  Anette watched Kim Sejersen’s girlfriend with a sudden empathy that took her by surprise. Maybe it wasn’t so much empathy as a universal appreciation of loss that struck her. You can lose the one you love. Love does not make you invincible. She shook off the feeling.

  “Do you remember Ursula’s last name? I’ve already spoken with Tanja, but maybe I should hear what Ursula has to say as well.”

  “Yeah, we’re still in touch. Her name is Ursula Wichmann. She’s a nurse, too.”

  “A nurse, you say?” Anette scrunched up her eyes. “Do you know where she works?”

  “Yeah, I even visited her there,” Inge said with a smile. “One day when I was in town for a painting class, watercolors. She works at Bispebjerg Hospital in their pediatric psychiatry center. Actually that�
��s where she and Tanja met, maybe five or six years ago…”

  But Anette wasn’t listening anymore. Her ears were filled with a rushing sound and the horizon line was tipping dangerously. She thanked Inge abruptly, and let herself be walked out of the crowded home without knocking anything else onto the floor.

  In the car, Anette’s heart threatened to leap out of her chest. Isak Brügger’s ward, Tanja Kruse’s girlfriend, Butterfly House, the accident—her thoughts swirled like confetti that’s been shot out of a paper tube. Now what?

  She checked the time. Svend had taken the baby to see his mother and had brought formula along so that Anette could sleep while they were gone. She still had a couple of hours to play with. Maybe she could just fit in a visit to Bispebjerg Hospital.

  She wrote Svend a text but deleted it without sending. Lies tend to settle over the heart like plastic wrap, making it hard for the love to breathe.

  * * *

  BACK IN HER apartment, Esther tried to clear her head with a pot of strong coffee. She ought to eat something, but once again her appetite was completely gone. Uninterrupted images of Alain kept flashing through her head: Alain sitting in a restaurant with a pretty, thirty-year-old blonde treating her to oysters with Esther’s money, impressing her with his knowledge of opera and his French accent. Telling the blonde that she was too good for him and kissing her palms.

  The thought was nauseating and sent the rage coursing through her like seething lava. That bastard! But along with her anger, an increasing sense of fear was growing. Why would a person con people like that? He had to be sick in the head.

  Her newly replaced lock gave her a certain sense of security along with the hotel chain that she had had installed on her front door. Even so, she still had to go through every room to make sure she and the dogs were alone before she dared to sit down at her computer.

  The owners’ association regularly sent out news emails that Esther consistently didn’t read. As long as the stairwell was kept nice and clean, she generally didn’t care what was going on in the building. Now she opened up the most recent emails and read them. She quickly found what she was looking for: The unit on the second floor on the left had been sold as of October 15 and the owners’ association wished Hugo and Ida Rasmussen a warm welcome to Peblinge Dossering.