The Forgotten Girls

by Sara Blaedel

  She turned off her phone, regretting having made the call. Just then she saw the blue lights flashing in her side-view mirror. She hadn’t noticed the police car following her while she talked on her cell phone. Now it pulled forward a little and signaled for her to pull over.

  “Fuck!” she exclaimed and signaled off, throwing her cell phone down on the passenger seat.

  “That’s going to be an expensive call,” the officer opened after she rolled down her window.

  “Yes.” Camilla went to get her driver’s license out.

  “Because you know it’s illegal to talk on the phone like that while driving.”

  “Yes,” Camilla snapped, handing him her license.

  “I see you have a hands-free phone device installed,” he said, leaning forward to look inside the car. “If you had used it, you could have avoided the ticket I’m about to write.”

  Camilla turned in her seat and looked at him. “My day can’t get much worse so you just go ahead and write up that ticket. Or two of them—I really don’t care,” she hissed.

  “But it might be nice if you learned a little from the ticket,” he mumbled. “It’s because it’s dangerous to talk on the phone while driving, you know.”

  Camilla just managed to bite her tongue before her temper got the best of her. Mustering all her strength she attempted to smile at him, hoping it didn’t look quite as forced as it felt.

  “Of course,” she said. “Of course one should take it seriously and learn something.”

  For one, she was definitely going to have to learn to control her temper, she thought, and angelically accepted the ticket that the officer handed her.

  “Have a nice day,” she said as he was about to return to his car.

  “You too.” He shot her an awkward smile. “Sounds like it can only get better.”

  She stayed parked until after they left.

  Unfortunately, the officer was wrong. Her day could get much worse. She still had to go to the hotel and see Frederik.

  29

  LOUISE BOUGHT A sandwich from the hospital cafeteria and finished her Sprite before getting up from the bench. She considered going back to the ward to make another attempt to speak with Bitten, but obviously the woman wasn’t going to cough up the name of her lover as long as her husband was there. She would wait to try again when Bitten was back home.

  She’d just left the large parking lot when Eik called to tell her that he had been working on the list of previous employees at Eliselund and had made an appointment with the consultant doctor’s widow.

  “It was her husband that signed the death certificates,” he said and told her that he was meeting her in Solrød at 7 p.m. “I thought you might like to come?”

  That was in an hour. Louise glanced at her watch and told him that she’d just finished up in Roskilde.

  “I could meet you down there,” he suggested. “Or I can talk to Birte Holsted alone.”

  “I’ll be there,” Louise said quickly, surprised that Eik was even still at work. She had called when she left Hvalsø to assist the Holbæk police with the interview, and it had sounded like he was running out of steam looking for the previous employees at Eliselund. But it suited her just fine because it would give her an excuse to put off her talk with Melvin. She wasn’t looking forward to disappointing him by backing out of the community garden project.

  EIK WAS STANDING by the curb in front of a yellow single-family house when she turned the corner onto the residential street behind the Solrød train station. He stepped on his cigarette to put it out and walked in front of her up the driveway, where an elderly lady was waiting to receive them, a crutch under her one arm and an unwelcoming look on her face.

  “We’ll sit in here,” said the widow, who explained she needed the crutch because of recent hip surgery.

  She showed them into the living room, where a wide patio door was open, the evening sun casting a blanket of light on the floor. For once, Louise had hoped that there would be coffee waiting on the table, but there was nothing to suggest that the former consultant doctor’s widow had any intention of serving them anything.

  And she didn’t point toward the comfortable couch when she asked them to have a seat.

  “Here you go,” she said, pulling out a high-backed chair by the dining table instead before hobbling to the head of the table herself. “You know, I have no idea why you suddenly want to talk about Ernst. It’s been so long since we buried him that even our grandchildren have had babies in the meantime.”

  “I understand your surprise,” Eik said, taking off his leather jacket before edging down onto the hard chair. “But as I said on the phone, this is really more about Eliselund than it is about your late husband.”

  Louise watched him while he talked. His voice was deep and pleasant, confidential, she thought. He folded his hands on the table and smiled disarmingly at the widow.

  “We’re working on an old missing person case and in that connection, we’re trying to locate some of the people who worked at the institution in the time before it closed down,” he continued. “And during that time, your husband was still working down there.”

  “My husband killed himself while working down there,” the widow corrected him.

  “What do you mean?” Louise cut in.

  Birte Holsted slowly looked at her.

  “He committed suicide,” she merely said. “He ruined our lives.” Her lips were tight and her gaze lingered somewhere above their heads.

  “When did it happen?” Louise moved forward in her seat a little.

  The widow grabbed on to her crutch, which was about to slide down from the back of the chair. “They cut him down on March sixteen, 1980,” she said, her face impassive, and put the crutch on the floor. “I knew for a long time that some things were going on down there. I could feel him pulling away from us. He became increasingly pressured and shut himself off. It was only after his death that I heard about the case.”

  “The case?” Louise asked.

  “A disciplinary case had been launched against him. He was under suspicion of gross medical misconduct but they never got to the bottom of it,” she told them. Then she straightened up and looked at them.

  “My husband was weak and unable to set boundaries,” she said.

  “Can you be a little more specific?” Eik asked patiently.

  “There was a director at the place who caught him making a mistake,” she told them, “and then he was caught in her snares. Finally, the pressure became too much. And even though it was hard at the time, I’ll readily admit that what happened was probably for the best.”

  “His death?” asked Louise, and the widow nodded. “What happened?”

  “They claimed that a patient died of pneumonia because my husband didn’t start treatment in time.”

  “Was it a young woman who died?” Louise asked, leaning in over the table.

  The widow looked at her and shook her head.

  “It was a young, mentally retarded boy,” she replied as if that made it insignificant. “It wasn’t until after his death that I learned there was another case against him, one that was far more serious and would have led to his dismissal as well as a prison sentence if he hadn’t prevented that himself.”

  “What was it concerning?” Eik quickly asked.

  The widow sighed heavily. “You’d be better off asking Bodil Parkov what went on at Eliselund back then. She was the director down there, and if anyone knows it would be her.”

  The look she shot in Louise’s direction held many years’ worth of bitterness.

  “Did your husband issue death certificates for a pair of seventeen-year-old twin sisters before his death? Did you ever hear about them?”

  Louise couldn’t be sure but she thought she saw a twitch across the widow’s wrinkled forehead before she shook her head and pressed her lips together.

  “One of the twins was just buried,” Louise said. “She didn’t actually die back then, and we need to know i
f the other one is still alive, too, and how the two sisters disappeared from Eliselund.”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Birte Holsted said, slumping. “I never heard about any twins.”

  She suddenly looked tired. Even if she had reacted to the question about the forged death certificates, she now seemed to be telling the truth in saying that she didn’t know anything about Lisemette.

  “Perhaps you can help us with the names of some of the others who worked at Eliselund at the same time as your husband?” Eik tried, ignoring the fact that Louise had gotten up from her chair.

  “I didn’t know any of them,” the widow answered quietly. “My husband didn’t talk about the patients or the employees once he was finally home. And we were quite thankful for that, really.”

  She bent down and picked her crutch up from the floor, preparing to walk them out.

  “We’ll show ourselves out,” Louise quickly said as Eik got up and thanked her for the conversation.

  “That’s enough to make you want a drink,” Eik moaned as they were standing on the sidewalk once again. “What a life. Do you suppose she’s been sitting in there feeling resentful for the past thirty years?”

  Louise shrugged and began walking toward the car. “It certainly doesn’t seem like the two of them had the ideal relationship,” she conceded and asked where he had parked.

  “The train was faster,” he said, jumping at Louise’s offer to drive around Sydhavnen to drop him off.

  When they pulled up in front of Ulla’s, Eik gave it another shot.

  “Come on, just one,” he coaxed. “I’m buying.”

  “PATIENTS DIED BECAUSE he neglected his work,” Louise said after Ulla had stopped by their table, placing two beers in front of them.

  The room was smoky; behind their table, four men were playing pool. Louise leaned forward in an attempt to make herself heard above the jukebox.

  “But you can’t exactly call it neglect when a person manages to survive their own death certificate,” she said, shaking her head. “What the heck did he have to gain from writing Lisemette out of the system? And what did the widow mean when she said that he was caught in the director’s snares?”

  Eik threw back a shot and raised his glass to let Ulla know that he was ready for another.

  “It also sends a strong message that he chose to take his own life down here,” he said and put his cigarettes on the table. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  Louise laughed and shook her head. She looked around. “Thanks for asking, but everyone is smoking in here.”

  “So, he killed himself at Eliselund because he wanted to make sure that everyone saw him take the consequences of his mistakes,” Eik said, getting back on point.

  “And why was that important to him?” Louise asked, looking down at the table when a dark-haired man with a beer belly and leather vest leaned on her chair and asked if she wanted to dance.

  “Jønne, get lost,” Eik said, waving him off.

  There were only eight or nine patrons at Ulla’s. Aside from the ones playing pool, the rest were hanging out by the bar where Ulla herself was holding court with her meaty arms on the counter and eyes that regularly wandered to Eik and Louise’s table.

  “Because something was over,” he continued. “He took the consequences of something that had happened.”

  “Something to do with Lisemette?” Louise suggested. When he asked if she wanted to share one last beer, she agreed.

  30

  EVERY PART OF Louise’s body ached when she was woken by her phone. She had passed out on the couch the night before after a taxi had dropped her off in Frederiksberg around 11 p.m. The one last beer had turned into many. She had found out that Eik Nordstrøm had only black clothes in his wardrobe because he couldn’t care less about clothes and it was just easier when everything looked the same and he could buy a stack at a time. That piece of information had cost her a beer but in return, he had bought a round when he revealed that he took a dip off the pier in Sydhavnen every morning come rain or shine. Louise had tried asking a few questions about his personal life but he clammed up. She did the same when he wanted to know about her old boyfriend and Big Thomsen.

  The phone was still ringing, and Louise swore out loud when her dog poked its wet nose in her face, thrilled to finally see signs of life.

  “I’m getting married,” Camilla sang when Louise finally answered the phone.

  “Hmmm,” she answered, pushing Dina away a little. “Were you able to appease the minister?”

  “God, no!” Camilla laughed. “I’m getting married today—at eleven thirty at city hall. Frederik made all the arrangements.”

  Louise sat up.

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it,” she exclaimed, worried that her friend might expect her to turn up with flowers and champagne.

  “Well, you’re not invited. We’re going to celebrate our wedding day in bed with plenty of champagne.” Camilla laughed again.

  “Are you drunk?” Louise asked with confusion as she got up. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at Hotel Prindsen. Frederik rented the suite, and he had scattered red rose petals all across the room before I got there.”

  “This morning?” Louise asked, checking the time on her phone. She was suddenly worried that she was the one who had overslept. But it was only seven oh four…

  “No, we’ve been here since yesterday.”

  “Well, I’m glad you guys made up,” she said, yawning. “What about Markus; where is he?”

  “He doesn’t know anything. The last time I talked to him was yesterday afternoon when I was on my way home from Eliselund.” Camilla snorted. “The kid called me because he didn’t feel up to walking home from a friend’s house, so he got to stay there and spend the night but we’ll pick him up after we’ve been to city hall.”

  Louise sat up straight. “You were at Eliselund yesterday?” she asked as she heard Frederik’s voice and a door closing. “What were you doing there?”

  “Back when the death certificates were signed, the director of the place was someone named Parkov.”

  “I know that,” Louise cut in irritably.

  “After Eliselund, she worked at Avnstrup until that closed down, too, but as far as I can tell she still lives out in the woods,” she went on. “I had actually planned to go talk to her myself, but… you know… something more important has kind of come up.” She laughed, adding that she and Frederik had agreed that she would start working again after the wedding. “Apparently I get completely impossible if I don’t have a story to keep me busy.”

  “Could you stop talking for a second?” Louise cut through while she could hear the clatter of plates and silverware in the hotel room. “How do you know that she lives by Avnstrup?”

  “Because I looked her up in the Blue Book and then ran a search for her. She lives on Bukkeskov Road.”

  “Is it Bodil from the gamekeeper’s house?”

  “How would I know what the place is called?”

  Louise tried to focus her thoughts.

  “She was at Eliselund when the twins died,” Camilla added. “But then she left shortly after. Lillian was there at the time as well.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Louise said and stood up.

  It was one thing that Bodil had not recognized the photograph of Lisemette. But she should at least be able to tell them how the twins had left Eliselund.

  “WE’RE GOING TO see Bodil,” Louise said breathlessly when she got into the office. Dina had run off in Frederiksberg Park because Louise had gambled on finishing up their morning walk faster by letting her off the leash. But the dog didn’t return when Louise called her; it wasn’t until fifteen minutes later, when she spotted the yellow Lab on the grass with a chocolate counterpart, that she had succeeded in calling her dog over.

  She removed her sunglasses from her hair, which had air-dried during her bike ride. She could tell from the look on Eik’s face that he expected her to elaborate.
r />   “And then we need to have a talk with Lillian Johansen, who still works at Eliselund,” she said, telling him about Camilla’s visit to the day center.

  “Last night was fun,” Eik said, his voice raspy, and it was only then that Louise got a good look at him.

  “Jesus!” she blurted out. “What happened to you?” The bags under his eyes made them look small and screwed-up and he had a large scrape across his left temple.

  “I didn’t do as good a job as you going home,” he said, rubbing his wound. “And then this morning I misjudged the distance to the wharf when I jumped in the water.”

  “You look like hell. What about the car? Did you drive here?”

  “Yes. We can take my car; it’s parked down there,” he said and added that first he would like to go by the cafeteria to get something to eat. “Do you want anything?”

  Louise hadn’t had time for breakfast or tea before dashing out the door, so she nodded as he got up. At least he didn’t smell like booze, she thought as he walked by her.

  While Eik was getting them food, Louise went to inform Rønholt that they were driving out to Hvalsø.

  “You look nice!” Hanne said appreciatively and pointed to Louise’s hair, which was still hanging down. Confused, Louise stopped for a second in the doorway before Hanne nodded to signal that it was okay for her to go in. “He’s not busy.”

  “Take a look at this,” Rønholt said when he saw her. He waved her over to his window and pointed to a large yellow-and-brown flower.

  “We’re going to Hvalsø,” she said and began to retreat toward the door.

  “It’s a lady’s slipper,” he said lovingly, “the largest and rarest type of orchid in all of Europe. It only blooms for two weeks. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Orchids had never been Louise’s strong suit but she nodded. It did look pretty with its heavy flowers.

  “By the way, they called from Holbæk to say that they were very happy with your interview.”

  “Thanks,” said Louise, her hand on the door handle. “I’m glad to hear it. They’ve got plenty on their plates right now with the murder in the woods and the runner who’s still missing.”