A few years after the end of the conflict, he had entered the police, cut his hair and sold his bike, but he still had a picture in his wallet of him with long hair standing next to his Honda.
The thought of his rebellious youth made him smile almost imperceptibly, but Poulsen immediately noticed it from the rippling lips and classified in her head the look the inspector had for a moment as nostalgic.
It was not strange for Lene to perceive the changes in people's moods, since she was a child she could do it without any effort. It was a kind of gift, a form of empathy that did not create in her any special bond with the interlocutor, while instead the other person felt a strong instinctive confidence in her, feeling that she understood her fully.
This particular talent had helped her in her work to get to know the suspects quickly. She almost always managed to obtain more information from suspects than her male colleagues during interviews.
It was precisely those results that had made her achieve the advancement she was aiming for. At the time, she had applied to be transferred to the central police station, but a year spent in an office, dealing with other people's paperwork, convinced her that perhaps the choice had not been the best.
Some former colleagues she had met in the past few months by accident had advised her to go back to them and, if Petersen had not suddenly suggested that she join him in that case, he would probably find her transfer request on his desk the following week, and then there would be no point in talking to her.
"Why have you chosen me?" she asked him after a few minutes of silence. Outside, the rain had become a thunderstorm and the roads were getting increasingly scarce, turning into a sleepy suburb.
"I told you, everyone has the right to a chance."
"A bit like winning the lottery," she said smiling.
"If you think that hunting down a crazy killer is comparable, then yes, we can say that you've had the winning card," replied Lars, looking at her for a moment, then he moved his gaze away.
The inspector had to recognize, though reluctantly, that Poulsen was really beautiful and perhaps that's why her colleagues had tried to woo her several times. Her face was fine, with perfect features and two eyes of a light green color that seemed to shine with an intense light, yet every time he had observed her she seemed to be gloomy.
That was his very first impression when she was transferred to the police station, even though the few times he spoke to her in person, trying to understand her personality, she appeared to him just competent and determined.
In the first months she was there, Søren Janssen had been the most insistent with her, taking advantage of the fact that he had been on the team longer than the others, and everyone had started to consider him a bit like the inspector's deputy. Petersen didn't care what his younger colleagues thought and eventually had to take him aside to tell him to stop with that behavior.
If he hadn't been his chief, probably the other would send him to hell, and for a moment he thought he was really going to do it, but in the end he had lowered his head, saying that he understood.
"Do you think he's a serial killer?" Lene asked him, wiping out the smile she had before.
"I don't know, but he had no scruple in attacking the girl in that terrible way, it's fair to assume that it was not the first time."
"Maybe the pastor knew him," the girl suggested.
"Sergeant Lassen has sent his men around to check the surroundings, but it is rather difficult without knowing what to look for," replied Petersen.
"How many cops are there?"
"He's only got two men, it's a small town."
"It could be an advantage, if the suspect lives in the area. Thanks to the fact that he went to see the girl in the hospital, we have a sketch of him."
"All we know is that he is about sixty years old and has short hair with a thick beard, average height and build, which does not greatly restrict the research. Also, the fact that he moved so quickly to Copenhagen makes me suspect that he doesn't live in Torslunde, or at least that he's someone who goes back and forth."
"You're right. Apart from his approximate age, the rest of the description is too general, and then the beard can be easily cut," said Poulsen.
"That's the point. As far as we know, our suspicion may have already shaved his hair, taking on a completely different appearance. Never trust any identikit, unless there is an exceptional similarity that leaves no doubt. In most cases they are just a waste of time."
"I will take that into account. Do you think it'll snow?" Lene asked, changing subject.
She had begun to carefully observe the sky from the car window and didn't like what she was seeing. Outside it had just stopped raining heavily, but a kind of sleet mixed with water was coming down, but it fortunately melted as soon as it touched the car glass.
"The forecast showed snow already at the beginning of last week, even if it hasn’t fallen. I hope the weather holds, at least until we get there. There are still twenty kilometers to go," said Lars, suddenly worried about the road holding. The car was fitted with snow tires, but it was a small vehicle and would not stand up to a blizzard on country roads.
"I only went to Torslunde once about twenty years ago on a school trip, but it was springtime," she replied, keeping on looking outside.
"Me too, even if it happened a long time before you, I mean before the Nazi invasion, given my venerable age. However, I don't think any student in Copenhagen has been able to avoid a year-end trip to the medieval cathedral of Torslunde, at least in the last fifty years," the inspector said smiling. It was the first personal information he exchanged with Poulsen since he knew her, and he was strangely pleased about it.
"How old are you?" she asked curiously.
"Forty-nine and please don't tell me I'm still young," he replied almost ashamedly of his little weakness about the years that passed.
"But it's true, at least for a man. I'm 32."
"Don't you have anyone home, a husband or a partner?" he asked.
"No, since I'm on the force, I've only been thinking about work."
"It doesn't sound like much fun."
"In fact, it's not, but I couldn't do otherwise now. I lost my boyfriend ten years ago, just before I joined the police. Since then, I have completely forgotten personal relationships."
"I'm sorry. Am I too indiscreet, if I ask you how it happened?"
"It was during a robbery. We ran a pub downtown with some friends and one evening three fools came in from the back just after we had closed. They wanted the money from the cash desk."
"How did it end?"
"Very badly, as it happens too often in these cases. Those three started shooting immediately after taking the money, I don't know yet why, maybe they were just drug addicts, or they wanted to see what it means to kill someone. They left us on the floor in a pool of blood, thinking we were dead, but I survived."
"Have they ever been caught?" asked Petersen.
"A couple of months later. I was the one who had them sentenced with my witnessing and after the trial I decided to enlist in the police. It seemed like the only thing to do."
"You got guts."
"I think it was just a survival instinct. My past life was gone and I had to hold on to something."
"I can understand that."
"Now tell me something about you, I see that you're married," said Lene, pointing to the ring that Petersen had on his ring finger.
She had never wanted to hear the gossip about other people's private lives, even though in the early days she had moved to the central police station, perhaps to impress her, a couple of colleagues had told her in detail everything there was to know about almost the entire police force.
She had forgotten most of the meaningless nonsense that they had been feeding her, probably invented at the time, but she remembered to have been told that the inspector had been married for several years and also that he had a little girl.
"Yes, I married Hege ten years ago and we have a l
ittle daughter, that's our pride," confirmed the inspector, silently wondering whether his wife had canceled dinner that night or whether she had made their friends come anyway to talk about him and his work.
Lene noticed with surprise that her superior, speaking of his marriage, had suddenly become sorrowful.
"How old is your baby?" she asked after a moment of embarrassment.
"Three years old," he answered smiling, a sign that he really cared about his daughter and that the subject did not make him uncomfortable.
Outside, it had begun to snow, although for the moment still in a slight way.
"How long before we arrive to Torslunde?"
"We should be there in fifteen minutes, but I am very concerned about the amount of snow that is falling. In case it starts to descend really steeply, tomorrow we'll risk being stuck in the village," said Petersen, looking at the sky.
The worst blizzards he had ever witnessed had always started this way, with the first snow starting to fall very slowly, so much so that no one would have guessed what would happen shortly afterwards. Yet, after a fairly short period of time, that first shy appearance transformed itself into violent gusts that, like a curtain of white, suddenly descended to cover everything with at least half a meter of snow, causing road traffic to crash.
Lars hoped with all his heart that that evening the sky would not be following the same script, because he and Poulsen had to come back to Copenhagen as soon as possible to be able to coordinate the investigation from the capital.
"What do you think of the team? How do you rate your colleagues? Try not to be diplomatic," he asked after a few minutes, to make conversation and get to know her better.
He had thought of putting a cassette in the player of the car, usually he did so when he had to drive for a long time, because listening to classical music relaxed him enormously. At last, however, he had thought that the gesture could be misinterpreted by the girl and had decided not to indulge that need. He didn't want Poulsen to think he was hitting on her in any way.
"I'm the latest addition and a woman. It is clear that none of my colleagues like me too much, but they seem to me to be prepared guys, apart from a few errors in filling their reports."
"I asked you not to be diplomatic," he replied.
"What do you think I should say then? Maybe that they have hindered me in every way just because I am a woman and that, besides being boorish, they have the investigative flair of a dog with a cold?" she replied with a thread of irritation in her voice.
"Actually, besides being a more sincere comment, I'd also be willing to share it in part. They're not geniuses by instinct and they've behaved really badly with you, but they're not bad cops, and I hope you'll be able to work together better in the future than you have done so far," Petersen said.
"Doing worse would be almost impossible," said Poulsen with a light smile on her face.
Lars stopped the car a few meters ahead, just before the sign indicating the entrance to the town.
"We've arrived this far," he said with a sigh of relief. "Now it's just a matter of finding a hotel for the night."
"The first indication under the road sign says to go straight to get to the city center, I would advise you to follow it and do it quickly. It's almost seven o'clock and it's starting to snow a lot," replied Lene, massaging her hands for the cold.
Petersen gave a nod, then raised the internal heating significantly, restarting quickly.
The cars that ran along the road in both directions were increasingly sparse, you could see them because of the headlights that occasionally illuminated the path, but they were infrequent flashes. Just outside Copenhagen, Lars had noticed how the previously sustained traffic as they progressed to the countryside became scarce, but now that the weather was quickly getting worse, they seemed to be alone in the middle of nowhere.
After a few minutes they began to glimpse the first houses on either side of the road, then on the left the sign of the church where the murder of the pastor had occurred with the injury of his young housekeeper.
The church had been built in concrete at the beginning of the twentieth century, when a council of high prelates had declared the medieval cathedral a place of prevailing historical interest to be preserved from everyday life by providing the faithful with a more economical and in some ways comfortable church.
Since then, the normal pastoral functions had taken place in the new church, reserving only to very rare occasions, such as Christmas, the privilege of being celebrated within the ancient walls. The cathedral thus remained a place consecrated to God and it was a place of pilgrimage throughout the year, both for schoolchildren and believers from all parts of Denmark. It was located in the northernmost part of the country, diametrically opposed to the new building.
Lars continued to go along the main street and almost immediately he arrived at the center of the small village. The streets made up a kind of chessboard populated by mostly single-family houses that lead, like pieces of bread left by hungry giants, to the central square.
All around there were the historical buildings, those built more than a hundred years ago that with their facades with exposed beams and sloping roofs, mainly in wood of various colors, stuck to each other as if to receive support or to be able to fight together against the pitfalls of time, formed the main attraction to tourists who arrived during the summer.
The shops were located under the main porch. Lene saw the pharmacy's cross-shaped sign, then a pub, and another shop that looked like a butcher's shop, then other places she couldn't tell their use.
On the other side of the square, in one of the lower buildings, there had to be a post office, but the snow had begun to cover things in white, reducing the view to a few meters away.
"Should we try asking inside that pub where the hotel is?" she told Lars, who had just parked the car in front of the pharmacy.
"That's all we can do, I suppose. I don't see anything here for the snow," he replied by looking around.
Inside the pub the atmosphere was not friendly, they understood it from how they were welcomed, as soon as they entered. In the only room there were a dozen people, mostly sitting on old chairs around tiny tables. Until then, they had discussed animatedly, but they suddenly shut up, looking at them in a grim way.
The innkeeper, helped by a girl who at least judging by the red color of her hair and by her age had to be his daughter, approached them coldly.
"What do you want?" he said without preambles, while the others had begun to speak softly again, tending their ears to that conversation.
"We would like to know if there's an hotel and where it is. We couldn't find it with this bad weather," said Petersen, who was not intimidated at all.
"Your colleagues preceded you this afternoon. I don't think there's any more room by the Iversens," said the man.
"Which colleagues?"
"Like you didn't know" snorted the other one. "Press and television journalists. It is from today that you give us the torment for the poor pastor."
Petersen took out the card that identified him as a police member and placed it on the counter.
"I'm Inspector Lars Petersen and this is my colleague Poulsen. They sent us from Copenhagen to investigate the murder," he said.
The innkeeper turned pale and also the other men in the room immediately changed their expression.
"Excuse me, Inspector," said the mortified man, "but we didn't think you'd be here so soon. Don't you want to sit down? I'll bring you something warm right away. You've made a bad journey in this ravine."
Lars looked at Lene and then said, "All right, but we need information."
"I'll make you two nice herbal teas and I'll come and sit with you right away. My name is Erik Ström and this is my daughter Helle," said the innkeeper, taking them to a table away from the other busy people.
He came back after a few minutes with two steaming glasses that he carefully put down.
"How many reporters have arrived?" a
sked Lars.
"Two from television and four journalists from the press."
"Did everyone stop for the night?"
"Yes, when they arrived in the village, it was already dark here and the few people they met were not inclined to be interviewed. They came to me too, but I threw them out," said Erik with a satisfied grin.
A couple of men who had been in the pub since the afternoon, listening to the sentence, smiled in turn at the thought of the crew escaping fast from the innkeeper's broom.
"Tonight the news could be broadcast on the national TV, otherwise they will certainly pass it on tomorrow," said Petersen, recalling the words of the superintendent.
"Really?" exclaimed Erik, surprised, then he added, "Helle, switch on the TV and put on the first channel, but without sound. Let's see if the village has become famous," and the girl turned on an old television that was on a shelf behind the counter.
"You told me the hotel is full," said Lars.
"Yes, the Iversens, who live on a side street just after the square, are full. They only rent a few rooms in their cottage and the reporters have now occupied them all. Then there would be the new hotel, but that one keeps open only from March to September. But if you want, I can rent a couple of rooms for you and your colleague at a good price. They are here above, the bathroom is in common, at the end of the corridor, but each has its own stove and for one night they would be fine. I could also prepare you a good dinner."
"Then we are agreed, thank you," said Petersen, "but I also need to find a place to put my car in."
"We have a covered garage right back here, just a few steps from the pub. I can take you right away. We'll be back in about ten minutes."
"That would be perfect," said Petersen, standing up. He cared a lot about his car and didn't want it to be submerged in snow.
"Helle, go prepare the two rooms with clean linen and light the stoves right away," said the father to the daughter and she walked up a staircase just after the counter.
An Old Debt Page 4
