The Butterfly House

by Katrine Engberg

  Jeppe walked back to the locked door and squatted down. The door handle was made of light-gray Bakelite, smooth and shiny as if it had been used regularly.

  Jeppe leaned in closer. On the side of the handle, where your thumb would touch if you grabbed it, there was a dark red smudge.

  “We’re breaking down the door! Come on, Falck!”

  Jeppe took two steps back and gave the door a well-aimed kick, just below the lock. The door shifted. So did his back. He kicked again. On the third kick, the frame around the handle splintered and the door flew open.

  Fluorescent overhead lights turned on, reflecting sharply off the room’s white tiled walls.

  There was a gurney by the wall.

  Anette Werner was strapped to it with a ball in her mouth and vacant eyes. The floor beneath her was awash in blood.

  “For God’s sake! Come on, you get the straps on that side. Hurry!”

  Jeppe and Falck tried to undo the wide leather straps, but it was excruciatingly slow going. Jeppe knew he should feel her neck for a pulse, but couldn’t make himself do it. They just had to get her free and up to the ER as quickly as possible.

  Jeppe choked back bile as he lifted Anette’s arm and saw the incisions. Twelve small, symmetrical cuts letting the life flow out of her.

  He tore off his jacket and then his T-shirt, ripped it down the middle and tied strips around her wrists, tight, to stop the bleeding.

  “Tie the jacket around her thigh, Falck! Tourniquet!”

  He put his ear to her chest and listened. Come on, come on, come on!

  A pause, nothing, silence.

  Then the faintest thump imaginable. But it was there! And it was the best sound he had ever heard.

  “She’s alive!” Jeppe yanked the ball out of Anette’s mouth. “We’ll lift her up onto my shoulder and you steer us out, okay?”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  The voice came from the doorway.

  Jeppe’s heart froze.

  Anette was dying in his arms two hundred yards from an emergency room. The world flickered like a dying lightbulb. Falck’s fearful eyes. The blood. The killer, who had been right in front of his face the whole time. The meat cleaver in his hand.

  Only two things were crystal clear:

  His faithful Heckler & Koch service revolver was in the car.

  And they were screwed.

  * * *

  “HAVE YOU HEARD of the butterfly effect, the chaos theory?”

  The two policemen blinked, seemingly not understanding the question. For some reason the way they stared irritated him, as if he were some kind of a monster. But then, given their limited knowledge, he supposed he couldn’t expect them to have a more nuanced view.

  “According to Edward Lorenz’s chaos theory from the 1960s, a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can start a hurricane on the other side. In other words, there is a nonlinear dynamic between cause and effect. Sometimes an innocent little misstep can have catastrophic consequences. That’s just life.”

  He struck the flat side of his cleaver against his palm, feeling its robust weight. Saw the policemen weighing their odds against him and it. They were unarmed, and the one in the suspenders, the one named Falck, was both old and overweight. Even though the meat cleaver was a close combat weapon and thus by definition more uncertain, he knew that they wouldn’t be able to overpower him.

  “That insignificant decision not to bring your guns with you seems to have proven lethal. Put your phones on the gurney. Falck, you go over there”—he nodded toward the sink on the wall—“and, Kørner, by the opposite wall. Sit down on the floor and put your hands on your head.”

  The moment the older detective took a hesitant step away from the gurney, he knew that he had won. Once there was distance between the two cops, they were defenseless. The old one would hardly be able to get off the floor without assistance. Kørner saw it, too. His regret was almost palpable as he walked to the wall opposite the sink and slid down into a sitting position without ever taking his eyes off the cleaver. Perhaps Kørner should have brought along a younger partner.

  When the detectives were sitting on the floor against their respective walls, he walked over to the policewoman on the gurney.

  “She’s still alive, I see. Tough lady. Although I don’t suppose she would survive losing an arm. If you move, we’ll test that theory.” He tossed their phones onto the floor and watched them shatter.

  “We already called for backup,” Kørner said, sounding haughty, self-confident. “The police will be all over this place in a second.”

  “Ah, but your colleagues have no idea where you are, and I can assure you that you won’t be found, at least not alive.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “A magician never reveals his tricks.”

  “Why? All of this, all those people dead, why?”

  “There was no other way, that’s why,” he said, shaking his head. “Unfortunately I don’t have all the time in the world before I have to go, and I doubt that I could make you understand in brief terms.”

  “Try!” Kørner sounded commanding, as if he were the one making the decisions.

  “If you’re buying time, don’t bother. But I’ll give you a few of the headlines. Let’s call it fulfilling your last wish.”

  Simon stood holding the cleaver over the dying policewoman. His arm muscles were burning, but the pain didn’t matter. It was almost pleasant. The final spurt had begun.

  “You can make good money off the sick. For Rita and Robert it was only ever about the money. They hired Peter Demant to give the whole thing a professional veneer, but no one else’s qualifications mattered. As long as they were cheap.”

  Kørner moved, ever so slightly, but he caught it.

  “Stay put, Kørner, until I say when…” Simon shook his head resignedly and rested the cleaver on the policewoman’s chest. “Things went wrong at Butterfly House. Not from ill will, but from laziness, greed, arrogance… cowardice. And as we know, small acts of cowardice can trigger huge disasters. The victims were four young, innocent people, kids who couldn’t protest, because no one believed them.”

  “Is that why the employees had to die?” Kørner asked. “Because they were lazy?”

  There was an unpleasant taste in Simon’s mouth and he swallowed to get rid of it.

  “They failed their responsibility to vulnerable young people. Ruined their lives! After that they kept working in other health-care jobs as if nothing had happened. Do you get it? More children they could neglect, more children they could medicate.”

  “And you’re their protector, is that it, protector of the sick and the savior of the weak?” Kørner asked from his spot by the wall, staring straight ahead. “I just want to understand why you made it your job to kill people.”

  “You’re talking, Kørner, and time’s running out.” Simon pointed to a trapdoor in the floor, a few feet from where the detective was sitting. “That leads down to a crawl space. Not big, but big enough that two policemen can lie side by side until the oxygen runs out. Open it!”

  Kørner crawled to the trapdoor and opened it with some difficulty. The lid was made of cast iron, and he struggled to lift it.

  “Get in, feet first. It’s not that deep. Come on! You have to lie down to make room for your head; then your colleague will come keep you company in a minute.”

  He watched Kørner swing his legs into the opening in the floor and lower himself in.

  “If things go according to plan, you’ll soon be accompanied by one high-profile psychiatrist as well. I just found documentation that shows he should have been the first one I got rid of. But better late than never.”

  Simon stepped closer to the hole.

  “I’m sorry things have to end like this for you. In a hole in the ground. Think of it as a restraint, almost like a Utica crib. You know what that is, right? An escape-proof cage used for the most dangerously insane patients, even up unti
l the late 1800s. So small you couldn’t stretch out fully inside it. It wasn’t used for punishment or to cure patients, just for storage.”

  Kørner ducked and disappeared into the hole, and Simon felt a ray of light shining on his face. Soon he would be able to look ahead again.

  He nodded apologetically.

  “Not a punishment, Kørner, just storage.”

  * * *

  JEPPE SAW THE world disappear. The gleam of the tiles was replaced by the dark dankness from the raw walls around him. He lay down into the earthy smell and felt cool dirt underneath him. The crawl space was only about three feet deep, and his head and feet hit either end. Not much bigger than a grave.

  Through the opening above him came light and air, but soon the lid would close and everything would turn dark. He and Falck would lie here like anchovies, stewing in their own juices, gasping for breath while Anette bled to death.

  How fast would it be over? Jeppe couldn’t remember how long it took to deplete the oxygen in a small, airtight space. There was probably an equation. Faster than their colleagues would find them, that much was certain. And that was the only equation that mattered.

  All of that death caused by laziness and greed. A murderer driven by his sense of justice. A double-edged sword, which makes its bearer both victim and executioner, Peter Demant had said. He himself was next on the list. The only reason he was still free was presumably that he had managed to hide in time.

  Did Jeppe have any regrets?

  That he hadn’t been nicer to his mother. That he hadn’t solved this case fast enough. That Anette would never make it home to her baby.

  He ran his hands over the walls, letting crumbling cement drizzle down over him. He could hear Simon Hartvig ordering Falck to stand up. Once he was lying in the hole, too, that was it. Then they would die here, side by side.

  Jeppe hadn’t exactly planned how he would exit this world, but buried alive next to Detective Falck was definitely not on the list of tolerable ways to die. He held his breath and scratched at the cement again. Heard Falck approaching.

  A shadow fell over the hole, and Jeppe saw Falck’s massive body kneel as he prepared to climb in. Saw Simon standing right behind Falck with the meat cleaver.

  Jeppe caught Falck’s eye. The old detective was fighting the effects of gravity and its years of wear and tear on his knees and back. His body was tired, his hunger for results not what it had once been. Those multicolored suspender straps simultaneously held him up and reduced him to one of those jokes he enjoyed telling. But he was still in there, Falck was, the young cop he had once been, that bulldozer of an investigator, the man with enough fighting spirit, stubbornness, and courage for a whole city. He was in there.

  In one alert, crystal clear instant Jeppe saw him. That was all he needed. He clenched his hand around a fistful of cement powder and tensed his abdominal muscles.

  “Now!”

  Falck lunged to the side, nimble as a volleyball player. Jeppe raised his arm and in one smooth motion flung the cement dust at Simon’s eyes. Simon covered his face with his hands and screamed in surprised outrage. The cleaver hit the floor.

  Jeppe used the moment to try to lift himself up out of the hole, but he didn’t get far. Simon moved his hands from his face and straight to Jeppe’s neck. His grip was iron-hard and instantly blocked Jeppe’s air supply. He couldn’t get enough foothold to fight back.

  Strangulation is a terrible way to die.

  That sentence ran through Jeppe’s head as he tried to grasp onto something with his hands and feet, his vision starting to fade.

  Red behind the eyes, like when you turn your face to the midday sun, a smell of the wet dirt awaiting him. Static filled his ears, pressing painfully inward toward his brain. He hadn’t been fast enough.

  The sound of swishing metal cut through the static. Simon’s grip loosened and oxygen flowed like heroin into Jeppe’s brain, coursing through his bloodstream. He collapsed onto the floor, his lower body still down in the coal hole, and breathed greedily, black spots dancing in front of his eyes.

  Then Jeppe raised his head.

  Simon Hartvig lay unconscious on the floor, and behind him Detective Falck stood, broad like a giant and just as powerful, with the meat cleaver in his hand. He must have hit Simon with the blunt side, because there was no blood on the knife blade.

  Falck raised his eyebrows questioningly. Jeppe pointed to Anette and tried to speak, but ended up coughing so much, his words were almost unintelligible.

  “Run, Falck!”

  CHAPTER 25

  It wasn’t until midnight that Jeppe reached Christianshavn in a taxi reeking so badly of stale cigarettes that he swore he would never smoke again. He decided to call his mother to let her know he was all right but then remembered that his phone had been smashed.

  Sara opened the door, spread her arms, and pulled him into a hug so tight that he almost couldn’t breathe.

  “You’re happy to see me.”

  “I’m happy to see you alive! Is Anette okay?”

  Jeppe nodded, exhausted.

  “In the trauma center at National Hospital with IVs in both arms. She had lost almost four liters of blood and was on the brink of death, but she’s going to make it. Her condition isn’t critical anymore.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Sara kissed him again and again, holding him tight and pushing her face into the curve of his neck as if they both had to hurt a little before she dared believe he was okay.

  He picked her up and carried her into the apartment, kissed her neck and shoulders, everywhere he could reach. In the bedroom they toppled onto the bed, Jeppe still in his raincoat and wet shoes.

  She peeled the clothes off him, insistent, desire going hand in hand with the fear of death. Jeppe appreciated that this flash of lust, the kind of passion that burns without limit when you’re a teenager, was a rare gift. He reached out and touched her soft breasts, kissed them. She pulled him down on top of her, and he ignored the gravel in his eyes and his sleep deficit. Surrendered to her.

  Afterward, as they lay together, she didn’t turn her back to him.

  “Were you scared?”

  The question was asked so innocently that Jeppe laughed.

  “No, weirdly I wasn’t. I’m more scared now than I was in that basement.…”

  She looked at him questioningly.

  Even in the dark he could see the little wrinkle she got on the bridge of her nose when she was skeptical, and suddenly felt such a tremendous rush of love for her that he had to turn and look up at the ceiling.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” Jeppe decided to postpone his smoking ban.

  Sara flung the covers off with a laugh.

  “You old nicotine junkie. Come, we’ll go out on the back stairwell and open the window.”

  She hopped out of bed and pulled him up. Two minutes later he was installed in the stairwell with a blanket, a cold beer, and a postcoital cigarette that tasted better than anything else he could remember in his life.

  Sara sat on the step below him and leaned against his knee.

  “Where’s Simon Hartvig?”

  “In custody. If he’s been released from the trauma center, that is. Falck gave him quite a whack on the old noggin, so I bet he’s got a bit of a headache.”

  “Falck? Detective Falck?”

  “The one and only. I wouldn’t have picked him as the hero of the day, but if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be sitting here now. He’s probably the one who’s most surprised.”

  Jeppe blew his smoke upward and away from Sara. She didn’t seem to mind.

  “Simon Hartvig, protector of the weak.” Jeppe wrapped the blanket around Sara, so she wouldn’t be cold. “Wilkins, Holte, and Ambrosio were guilty in their patients’ decline and suicide. In his head the murders were what it took to settle the score.”

  “Why do you think the victims agreed to meet him?”

  “He must have threatened to reveal how their sins of omission were to blam
e for Pernille Ramsgaard’s suicide if they didn’t come.”

  “And then he waited for them with the meat cleaver?” Sara took the beer out of his hand and drank a swig.

  “With the meat cleaver, the scarificator, and the gurney. And an account to settle. That basement room at Bispebjerg Hospital was ideal. It was a quiet, out of the way place to work and it had all the necessary appurtenances.” The cigarette was starting to warm Jeppe’s fingers. He inhaled and held the smoke in his lungs until it burned. “Simon could use his night shift for cover and sneak down to the basement claiming he was going on his break.”

  “Everything in one place,” Sara said, wrinkling her forehead. “But why throw the bodies into fountains?”

  “There was symbolism in that. A healing metaphor, a reference to Pernille Ramsgaard perhaps. Plus he had to create a geographic distance between the crime scene and where they were found.”

  Jeppe finished his beer and put the bottle on the stairs.

  “Tuesday morning Isak wasn’t feeling well and slept poorly. That was probably why Nicola Ambrosio was thrown in the hospital’s fountain. There wasn’t time to take him into town.”

  Sara pulled the blanket tighter around her bare legs and shivered.

  “It doesn’t make any sense. Who kills people they hardly know to protect the sick? He must be deranged.”

  “Let’s see what the psychological profile says,” Jeppe said with a shrug. “Maybe there’s something we don’t know, a missing piece to the puzzle.”

  “Yeah, maybe…” Sara rubbed her upper arms for warmth. “How is your friend’s roommate, the old guy who had the heart attack?”

  “Gregers? He’s going to have an operation on Monday and should be on top of his game soon again.” Jeppe stood up. “Come on, let’s get you to bed. You’re shivering. And I’m falling asleep.”

  “It’s too late for you to drive home.” Sara smiled up at him. “Spend the night.”

  Jeppe was too exhausted to argue. He would just have to sneak out before the kids woke. Right now the idea of sleeping next to the woman he loved outweighed the prospect of getting up early.