by Sara Blaedel
“It was originally an old tuberculosis hospital,” she finished, diverting the conversation from her childhood.
“What did you look like back then?” Eik asked curiously. “A skirt and long, dark braids?”
“I wore torn jeans and had a crew cut,” she said, even though it wasn’t true. She had in fact had long braids. Braids, dirty jeans, and cuts or scratches all over, and she spent most of her time on the back of her horse, but that was none of his business.
THE LARGE WHITE gate to the courtyard in front of the gamekeeper’s house was open. Even though the gravel was newly raked, Louise pulled all the way up and parked next to the front door.
She had only just turned off the engine when Bodil appeared in the doorway. She clearly didn’t recognize Louise at first but as soon as she had introduced herself, they were invited in.
“I’m just having lunch,” she said. “Jørgen went to take a nap.” She showed them into the entrance hall.
“This will just take a moment,” Louise said quickly. “We don’t want to interrupt while you’re eating.”
“Pish-posh—there’s coffee in the pot,” Bodil said and shook her head at Louise.
Louise remembered that her parents had attended the brunch party when Bodil turned seventy but she couldn’t recall if that was one or two years ago. They took off their shoes and followed her into the cozy, low-ceilinged living room.
“I’m out here. Do you guys want a cup?”
They followed her through a small hallway and into a large kitchen.
“He’s been so tired all day. I hope he’s not getting sick,” Bodil chattered while pouring their coffee. “Men are always such babies whenever they catch the slightest thing.”
She winked at Eik and put the pot back on the burner.
Louise had taken out the photograph of Lise. She handed it to Bodil across the table and asked if she had noticed the woman walking around the woods.
The elderly woman took the picture and studied it carefully before putting it back down.
“Is she dead?” she asked, looking up.
Louise nodded. “She was found by Avnsø Lake last week.”
Bodil slowly put the picture down and shook her head. “It was terrible what happened to our neighbors over on Stokkebo Road.”
Louise knew that around these parts, people considered anyone who lived within a mile or two a neighbor.
“How did she die?”
“She fell down the slope behind the camping cabin,” she answered.
It was obvious from Bodil’s expression that the killing of the child care provider had, understandably, sent waves of fear through the small community.
Bodil picked the photograph back up and looked at it before handing it back to Louise.
“This one wasn’t a crime,” Eik interjected. “The woman died as the result of an accident and we’re just trying to find out whether she lived in the area since she was found in the woods.”
“You didn’t see anyone driving into the woods last week?” Louise suggested.
Bodil shook her head. “But then of course Jørgen is more the one to pay attention to things like that. Lately he’s been very preoccupied with a white van that’s started coming to the parking lot. But it’s mostly because they don’t greet him even though they come here often.”
She shook her head a little.
“That kind of thing really hurts him,” she elaborated in Eik’s direction.
“What kind of van is it?” he asked with interest.
Bodil shook her head again. “I don’t know, but then I’m not so good at cars,” she admitted. “I’ll just go see if he’s awake so I can ask him.”
She got up and disappeared into the living room. They heard a door open and close. Louise emptied her cup and placed it in the sink. She had put the photograph back in her bag when Bodil returned.
“It’s an old Toyota HiAce with no windows, and the last time he saw it was last Wednesday. He’s marked it off in his calendar—he does that when there’s something he needs to remember.”
The day before Lise was found, Louise thought.
“But apparently it was here the Wednesday before last as well, and the Wednesday before that,” Bodil continued. “He doesn’t know who they are, though, because as I said they don’t say hi.”
They thanked Bodil for the coffee, and she walked them out.
“Do you know anything about Pasture House being vacant for an extended period?” Louise asked as they stood in the courtyard.
The curtains were closed in the back rooms, and Louise hoped that Bodil’s husband had fallen back asleep.
“Sure, it’s probably been a year or two,” she said. “Maybe even more. There’s been some big dispute out there about something or other. I think it was the ceiling that was about to come crashing down and they couldn’t come to an agreement about who should pay for the renovation. It’s rented out by the forest administration, you know. But now a new family has moved in so they must have solved the problem.”
“But you didn’t notice anyone out there before they moved in?”
Bodil shook her head. “No, and I pass by the place a couple of times a week.”
They thanked her once more when she told them it was time for her to go make sandwiches to have them ready when Jørgen woke up.
Louise stood for a moment, enjoying the courtyard. There was an old chestnut tree by the gate and a tall poplar that blocked the view of the abandoned lumber mill. Someday when Bodil and her husband weren’t around anymore, perhaps it might be an idea to put her own name down for the house. She was reasonably certain that it was managed by the forest administration as well.
THEY DROVE IN silence, a tense feeling of being on their way to something that might answer the question of where Lise had been staying.
“Pasture House is right by the roadside. Someone would probably have noticed if anyone had been staying there. At least in the rooms facing that way,” Louise said in an attempt to lower her own expectations.
As she recalled, that only included the living room and one bedroom. The front door and entrance hall also faced the road, but back when she used to go there, they always used the door at the back. There were at least two and maybe three bedrooms. The yard was secluded behind the house and not visible from the road.
The forest road narrowed and turned into two tracks.
“I wonder if you can even drive here,” she said, trying to recall if she had ever traveled this way by car. They had usually gone by bike or moped.
“I’ll get out and push if we get stuck,” Eik promised as Louise slowed down and turned out onto the shoulder so she could drive with all four tires on the grass.
“Deal,” she smiled, maneuvering the police car along the narrow track.
As they emerged from the trees, the narrow, thatched house came into view right across from them. It was a single building, and it was indeed so close to the road that passersby could look in the windows. A car was parked in the driveway to the right of the house, and a man was shooing a couple of children into the backseat.
Louise pulled up and parked on the shoulder outside the garden fence.
“May we have a moment of your time?” she asked after the man handed a couple of bags to the children.
“What’s this about?” he asked in a reserved tone without moving toward them.
Eik introduced himself and held out his badge. The added authority still seemed to have an effect on some people. “We just have a couple of questions about a woman who suffered an accident in the woods last week,” he reassured him and was about to continue when the man cut him off.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“We think the woman may have been living somewhere in the area and were just wondering if maybe you’d seen her?” Eik continued, unaffected.
Louise brought out the picture from her bag. The man barely glanced at it before shaking his head. Instead, his eyes stayed on Louise.
“Say—didn’t you live with the guy who hung himself?” he asked.
She avoided his gaze.
“They say you guys just moved in and hadn’t even unpacked yet,” he continued, still staring at her.
Louise spun around without answering and walked back to the car. Once she had slammed the car door, she closed her eyes and briefly leaned her head back on the headrest. In the years since leaving here, she had fought to bury her traumatic loss; to leave it and the whole period behind her. As if she could only move on by denying she’d ever experienced the profound pain.
An instant later Eik tore open the door and got in.
“What the hell was that?” he asked. “Do you want me to handle him?”
“No, no! Please, just forget it.” Louise quickly started the car without checking her rearview mirror.
“Do you know him?”
Louise shook her head. She didn’t. But he obviously knew who she was. And wanted to provoke her for some reason.
16
LOUISE WAS SHAKEN all day. Her focus compromised, she wouldn’t have been able to recount what anyone had said if asked to describe the conversations they’d had the rest of the afternoon. After Pasture House, her thoughts had switched off; she was present in body only.
They had stopped by the rest of the houses in the woods as well as the houses on Stokkebo Road. They had skipped the child care provider’s widower, however, because a police car had been parked out front. But all they had found out was that nobody knew anything about Lise Andersen or had seen her in the woods. That much was clear to Louise although Eik had done all the talking. She was grateful that he had acted as if nothing had happened and refrained from asking questions about the episode at Pasture House.
She tried to pull herself together. Several people had noticed the white van and believed, like Jørgen did, that it had made regular visits to the forest lately. But nobody had seen anyone around the car or knew whom it belonged to, and when they themselves had turned into the parking lot at the edge of the woods where the van had been parked, the place was deserted. There were a couple of picnic tables and two large trash cans, so people must come out here, Louise thought.
“It’s hard to get anything out of this,” Eik said after getting out of the car. He lit a cigarette and crumpled up the empty pack, throwing it in a high arch into the trash can.
Louise stayed in the car. She couldn’t really psych herself up to join him in searching the parking lot.
“This is fucking useless,” he concluded. “How far is it to Avnsø Lake?”
Louise pointed through the windshield but then she got out. She walked to the road, which continued into the woods, and showed him that he needed to continue straight ahead. The road split a bit farther on.
“You’ll want to hang a left the first time and then right,” she explained but fell silent as she heard a siren.
She walked past the fir trees, which screened one entrance to the parking lot, and looked toward Stokkebo Road, where the sound was originating.
There was more than one emergency vehicle, she noted with a growing sense of unease.
“Now what?” Eik asked and walked over to stand beside her as the sound drew nearer.
Just then three police cars came around the corner. They slowed a little as they entered the woods; even so, their wheels sent a scattering of pebbles onto the side of the road. A moment later five more cars from the canine unit sped by.
Louise jogged toward their own car, and Eik dropped his cigarette and jumped in as even more canine unit vehicles went by.
“What the hell’s going on?” Louise yelled. She backed up the car so fast that the wheels spun out before she put it in gear and stepped on the gas to keep up. She made it onto the forest road just as the last vehicle disappeared at the fork in the road.
“Turn on the police radio,” she commanded. They usually only had it on when they were on patrol.
“Just drive,” he said, drowning out the voice on the radio reading off GPS coordinates to the emergency response.
The police car in front of them stayed left but when they reached Avnsø Lake, it continued at high speed a little farther before turning down a small hill and slowing down.
“That’s the road to Hvalsø,” she said. She let off the gas when she noticed that the cars had pulled over and were parked behind each other in a long row.
She and Eik stayed in the car; the dog handlers in front had already gotten out of their vehicles. Several cars still had their emergency lights on, but the sirens had been turned off.
It occurred to Louise that the officers probably thought she and Eik were a couple of police reporters who had intercepted the emergency dispatch and latched on, and she was briefly embarrassed by the thought. Then she spotted Mik making his way toward the dog handlers, who had gathered in a group behind the last car.
He was pale, and it looked like he had slept in the clothes he was wearing. They were wrinkled, his shirt untucked. That’s not like him, she thought, then got out when she realized he was heading their way.
“What’s going on?” she asked, but her voice was drowned out when a pair of dogs were let out.
Mik seemed exhausted. He ran his hands through his hair as he walked up to her and sadly shook his head. She could tell his eyes were bloodshot from fatigue, and she felt an urge to pull him close and give him a hug.
“Mik, what is this all about? What’s with this huge police presence? Do you have something new on the child care provider?” she pleaded.
Mik nodded heavily and dropped his hands. “It turns out there were four small children on the walk.”
He looked at her gravely.
“We found Janus in the lake early this morning. He was the child care provider’s own son. Just turned two. He’d probably already drowned by the time you found the other children.”
Eyes cast down, he quietly shook his head.
“Oh no. I’m so sorry,” Louise whispered.
“We decided to withhold the information about the missing child out of concern for the father, who’s gone into shock. But since it became apparent that he was missing, we’ve been conducting an exhaustive search.”
Louise put a hand on Mik’s arm.
“How did you find him?” she asked.
“I sent for divers and a boat from the Emergency Management Agency. The bottom of the lake drops very quickly, and they didn’t find him on the first try. But then this morning they went back out there. The boy’s sweatshirt had caught around the end of a plank on a sunken raft, which held him down.”
“And now you’re on the scent of the perpetrator?” Louise asked, gesturing at the line of police cars.
Mik shook his head and inhaled deeply as if trying to recharge his energy supplies. “I wish,” he said. “We’ve got nothing on him, but I’m hoping we’ll get the DNA results back later today. Otherwise they should be ready by tomorrow.”
The forest floor was green but already trampled by the officers flocking the area. He followed her gaze in their direction.
“We’ve received new information,” he said. “A twenty-nine-year-old woman was reported missing after her morning run.”
Louise let go of his arm and was about to ask a question when he went on: “Her husband raised the alarm just over an hour ago. The woman left their home in Hvalsø around seven a.m., about the same time that he left for work, and when he came home he began to suspect that she hadn’t returned.”
Louise saw that the handlers were getting the dogs ready behind them.
“He’d set the table for her breakfast and the things were untouched. Her purse and cell phone were still in the bedroom. Last night she set out the clothes she was going to wear today, and they were still there. The only things missing were her running shoes and workout clothes.”
“And she didn’t show up for work,” Louise guessed.
Mik shook his head.
“The husband called her boss, who confirmed that she hadn’t come in a
nd hadn’t called in sick. The boss was surprised, but he wanted to hold off a little before calling to check on her.”
Mik had tasked two people with investigating whether the couple had been fighting or if there could be any other reason for her staying away.
“The husband flat out denies any problems. He insists that everything was normal.”
Mik shrugged and bit his lip, making his crooked front tooth visible.
“He’s spoken with her girlfriends, too, to find out if they know anything.”
“And she usually runs in the woods?” Louise cut in.
“Three times a week she runs out here to the Troll’s Oak,” Mik confirmed, swatting an insect off his arm. “After what happened by the lake the other day, I didn’t dare hold off on sending out our people. We can’t wait until we’ve uncovered her personal background.”
Louise agreed completely. As long as the perpetrator was still on the loose, they needed to make every effort to find the woman.
She saw Eik talking to some colleagues from Holbæk she didn’t know. For a moment she stood and watched as he walked over to the canine unit’s on-site commander, who was busy organizing the search.
Two more units had arrived, and she assumed more were on their way. It always took a little time to rally the troops for a major search effort. She counted fifteen dogs now. Once the team was ready, they would start making their way through the woods, forming a chain with about twenty yards between each dog.
Louise sensed her fatigue. She felt heavy and sad and was having trouble keeping her thoughts straight. She hated that she’d allowed that man from Pasture House to get under her skin. What did he know about her and her past? Were people still talking after all these years?
Eik walked over to her.
“I’ll stay and help with the search,” he said, gesturing toward the men he had been talking to. “As soon as everyone’s here, we’ll get started.”
She nodded weakly. She did not have the strength to offer her assistance. She needed to be alone.
“The couple was expecting their first child,” he added. “She wasn’t that far along but the husband said they’d already painted the nursery.”
