The Forgotten Girls

by Sara Blaedel

  “Don’t be silly; just come as you are. After all, the whole idea is to keep it informal. They’re setting up a special table for us in a corner of the back garden. Just come in from the Stendertorv Square side.”

  Louise was familiar with the restaurant in the basement of the old city hall. She just wasn’t in the mood for razzle and celebration. They still needed to get ahold of Lillian down at Eliselund, but of course she was gone for the day so they would have to wait until morning anyway.

  She closed her eyes for a second to get a grip and settle herself. Her demons were circling. It wasn’t the sorrow or the feeling of guilt. She had put those behind her—at least for a while, she thought. It was Big Thomsen that worried her. It was always like that. She had always been able to avoid him, but now he kept showing up everywhere and it had her rattled.

  She had seen the same insecurity in René’s eyes, but Bitten had been difficult to read. She had found only emptiness when she attempted to see behind her glazed-over eyes. Louise had no doubt that her anger had been real when René started giving too much away about the white van. But she didn’t have the chance to register if Bitten was angry that he’d exposed Big Thomsen or if her reaction was caused by fear.

  “What should we bring them?” Eik asked as they approached Roskilde.

  Louise shrugged. Flowers didn’t seem right now that she knew that the hotel room had been covered with a truckload of rose petals the previous night, and they didn’t need champagne, either.

  She shook her head, unable to think of anything, and felt a chill coming on from exhaustion.

  “I know!” she burst out, suddenly hitting on an idea as they drove toward the square. She turned to look at Jonas. “We need to go somewhere with an Internet connection—maybe they’ve got Wi-Fi at the café. And then we need to download a song to your computer.”

  She pointed ahead and instructed Eik to drive in and park on Stendertorv Square.

  “Camilla always said that she would only get married if Big Fat Snake played at her wedding. I want you to find ‘Bonsoir Madame.’ ”

  “All right,” Jonas mumbled. “Then we’ll have to go to the café because I don’t have that one.”

  She noticed a smile twitching at the corner of Eik’s mouth and thought that he was probably much more in tune with the boy’s taste in music than hers.

  SMALL TORCHES HAD been lit on the sidewalk, and the archway leading into the back garden was decorated with flowers.

  Louise stopped to breathe in the smell of the white lilies.

  “How many guests are invited?” Eik asked, pulling down on his T-shirt a little although it didn’t seem to otherwise bother him that he wasn’t dressed for a fancy wedding dinner. He had stopped by the corner store to buy an extra pack of cigarettes while they downloaded the music.

  “I think it’s just us,” Louise answered doubtfully, kicking herself for not having picked a more presentable outfit for work that day.

  She ran her fingers through her long hair, tousling it a bit.

  “Shall we?” Eik offered her his arm. She accepted somewhat hesitantly, resting her hand on his arm while Jonas led the way through the gate in the old red-brick wall.

  Louise stopped in surprise as they stepped onto the cobblestone. To the right at the back of the garden, a light canvas was suspended above two tables that had been pushed together. Torches were lit all the way around, screening off the private party from the other tables, and the tables were set with white tablecloths and tall candelabras. There were no other guests yet in the garden but several tables had small, white reservation cards.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone else was invited but us,” Jonas said before looking up at a pair of speakers mounted in each corner of the back garden. “I’m just going to run inside to see if I can set up the music.”

  “Holy moly,” Louise mumbled. The setup was impressive, but standing there with Eik felt a little awkward; neither really knew what to do with themselves until the host couple showed up.

  Just then they heard the sound of horseshoes on the pavement, and a carriage came around the corner. When Jonas came back outside, he gave a quick nod to signal that it was all under control. Louise felt Eik’s hand on her back as the carriage drawn by neighing horses stopped in front of them and they saw Camilla, smiling and waving with flowers in her hair and holding a large bouquet.

  Markus was quick. He chivalrously jumped down from his seat next to the driver and walked around to open the door for his mother and Frederik.

  “Congratulations!” they all shouted in unison.

  Louise had brought the two yellow roses that Jørgen had picked for her and she now passed them on to the newlyweds. Jonas had stolen a lily from the decoration, which he held out for Camilla, who repaid him with a kiss and asked them to come inside.

  “WELL, I’VE HEARD that you’re married now. And I’ve heard that you don’t fool around,” the voice of singer Anders Blichfeldt sounded from the speakers just as Frederik and Camilla walked into the back garden, and two waiters came up the stairs from the restaurant with champagne and glasses.

  “… Bonsoir Madame. I know who you are, Madame. You used to be a Mademoiselle, I know you too well…”

  Louise couldn’t help but laugh when she saw her friend kick off her high heels and dance around barefoot with her arms over her head while singing along. Then she surrendered and forgot all about Bitten and Big Thomsen when Eik grabbed her and started swinging her around.

  “Is this a private party?” a younger couple asked, looking somewhat timidly at the four of them dancing in the otherwise empty back garden.

  “No, come on in,” Camilla shouted while Frederik asked the waiters to get more glasses.

  After the song was finished, they made their way to the table beneath the canvas where candles had now been lit.

  “I’d like to propose a toast to my beautiful wife,” Frederik opened once they were all seated. He looked at Jonas and Markus and toasted in Louise and Eik’s direction. “Thank you for dropping everything you were doing in order to celebrate this evening with us. I’ve come to realize that I’d better get used to acting quickly now that Camilla has come into my life.” He gazed at her lovingly. “And so that’s what I did today.”

  “We’ve had the most amazing day,” Camilla said after they toasted. She also gestured toward the young couple, who had picked a table as far from the wedding party as possible. “We picked up Markus after school and then we went sailing on the bay.”

  “You’ve both been acting like a pair of loonies,” her son interjected. “It was so embarrassing when you came into my school wearing that and with flowers in your hair. What do you think my friends are gonna say?”

  Camilla shrugged and suggested that maybe they would tell him how nice it was that he had a happy mother.

  “What have you guys been up to?” she asked, leaning forward with curiosity.

  “We went to see Bodil Parkov and her husband,” Eik said, asking for a draft beer instead of champagne.

  Louise put her foot on top of his and pushed down, making him turn toward her in surprise. He didn’t know Camilla, and she hadn’t had a chance to instruct him on which things not to talk about around her friend. It had taken her years to establish watertight dividers between the things they could talk about and what she needed to hold back when they would get together privately.

  “Yes,” Louise hurried to say. “It’s been a busy day but then we were able to pick up Jonas on the way so that worked out well.”

  She was about to talk about Jonas’s song when Camilla interrupted her. “Her husband?” she exclaimed. “Bodil Parkov isn’t married!”

  Louise looked at her quizzically.

  “Uhh, yes, she is,” she replied, annoyed. “She’s been married to Jørgen for as long as I can recall.”

  Camilla put down her silverware and leaned forward. “The Bodil Parkov who worked as director of Eliselund until March 1980 was unwed. Otherwise she wouldn’t eve
n have been eligible for the position. The job required that you be single and live at the institution.”

  “I guess she had a secret then!” Eik interjected, leaning in toward Louise when the waiter arrived to switch out his empty glass. “But then that might be understandable considering the guy she’s got hanging around at home.”

  “Hey, now,” Louise snapped at him irritably.

  “Bodil Parkov was a spinster,” Camilla said, “and they said at Eliselund that she had dedicated her entire life to working with the mentally disabled because her family had been personally affected.”

  “Yes,” said Louise. “Her husband was in a work accident and suffered a brain injury.”

  “According to the Blue Book, she’s single,” Camilla maintained, but then she clapped her hands and gave Frederik a big kiss as the two waiters brought in large plates of lobster just then. “I sold the story about Eliselund to Roskilde Tidende, by the way,” she said once the lobster was on the table. “It sounded like they were interested in entering into a freelance agreement with me.”

  “So you’re going to start working as a journalist again?” Louise leaned toward Eik to make room as a small glass bowl with a slice of lemon was placed next to her plate.

  “They were looking for people for the crime section,” Camilla said, smiling as she broke a claw off her lobster. “They just laid off the entire editorial office and now they only want freelancers in order to keep the costs down.”

  Louise wasn’t really paying attention. She noticed that Eik had put his hand on her back. It tickled as he ran his thumb down her spine, and she realized that her foot was still on his boot. She wrapped it around his ankle and kept leaning toward him even though the waiter had already gone.

  “EIK…” SHE MUMBLED the following morning when she woke up with her lips against his naked chest. “That’s not a very common name. Were you named after someone?”

  He had his arm around her, his fingers tangled through her long hair. After the wedding dinner, the party had moved to Frederik and Camilla’s house. In her champagne buzz Louise had granted Jonas a skip day since he had been ill. So they had stayed the night out there.

  Jonas slept in Markus’s room, and Eik had followed Louise when she went to make up a bed in one of the guest rooms down the hall.

  “There was a musician once by the name of Eik Skaløe. Do you remember him?” he asked, pushing down the covers a little. It was warm in the room even though Louise had gotten up at some point in the night to open a window. “If I got anything from someone else, it’s probably a remnant of his soul.”

  “He disappeared, didn’t he?” Louise asked, propping herself up on her elbow to look down at his furrowed face. “He was the lead singer of that band, Steppeulvene, and quite young.”

  Eik opened his eyes and looked at her. “He was twenty-five when he committed suicide somewhere between India and Pakistan.”

  “Is it his musical part that’s inside you?” she asked, running her hand down his chest.

  “Hmm,” he mumbled. “I used to think maybe it was the desire to let go. I’ve often thought that it would be a relief, but I’ve never had the courage, which probably means I don’t want it enough after all.”

  He pulled her down toward him.

  “What do you want to get away from?”

  Louise kept looking at him even though he had turned his face away and was looking out at the early-morning sun and the hazy blue skies. He grumbled a little, and she tugged on him.

  “What do you want to get away from?” she repeated and put her hands around his face.

  Finally he turned his head and looked at her with pain in his eyes and a dry laugh.

  “Me,” he said. “It’s completely trivial. A lonely heart and pain and something that never heals.”

  He had closed his eyes again while speaking.

  “I had a girlfriend who disappeared from a boat in the Mediterranean. The boat was found drifting around outside a small harbor, and the two she had been sailing with washed ashore the very next day. But she never turned up.”

  “So she drowned?”

  At first he didn’t answer; then he inhaled deeply.

  “I don’t know. When they searched the boat, they found the other two people’s possessions, but all her things were missing.”

  “So you think she ran off?” Louise whispered.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know and I probably never will.”

  The silence grew heavy between them.

  “I had sailed with them to Rome but then we had a fight and I took off. I went out and got drunk and when I came back, they had sailed on. I stayed in Italy for a few days before I began to hitchhike home, and it wasn’t until I got back to Denmark that I heard the news of what had happened.”

  He reached for the cigarettes, which sat on the nightstand along with his keys and the spare change from his pocket.

  The smoke rose in a spiral, drifting toward the open window.

  Louise closed her eyes. She felt for him; she understood his anguish only too well. He, too, was torn up inside with sorrow. She hated that he suffered, but she now felt closer to him, and somehow less lonely. She reached out and touched his face, and was about to get up when he put out his cigarette in a glass of water and pulled her down on top of him.

  35

  GOODNESS!” HANNE EXCLAIMED when they arrived at the department. “You’re radiating red.”

  Rønholt’s secretary was watering the plants in the hallway windows.

  “Red is the aura of eroticism.”

  Hanne cocked her head and contemplated them as if they were enveloped in one big speech bubble that was telling her everything about the night they had spent together.

  “Passion and eroticism.”

  Jonas had stayed in Roskilde, and Eik had dropped off Louise in Frederiksberg before driving to Sydhavnen himself. He had returned an hour later, his hair wet and clothes clean, to chivalrously pick her up and drive her to the department.

  Louise didn’t know what it was that Hanne had spotted—maybe it was all the kissing that had made her chin flush. She looked down while Eik merely laughed as if he didn’t mind getting found out one bit.

  “You spend too much time on crystals and all of your spiritual bullshit, Hanne,” he said.

  “This has nothing to do with spirituality,” she objected. “It’s about aura and energy. And right now, you’re both emitting red and I know what that means.”

  As Louise turned on her computer, she couldn’t help but smile. She would have a hard time keeping certain details out of her head. Like the fact that her new partner did not wear underpants, a habit he had adopted during the years he spent traveling around Asia and India. And that he refused to send text messages.

  She wasn’t really mad at herself; she just felt overwhelmed at the thought of them working together so closely all day. Apparently she was never going to learn. It had been the same story with Mik—awkward.

  On the other hand, her prospects of sex were minimal if it wasn’t going to be with a colleague, because she never met anyone else.

  “DO YOU WANT anything from the cafeteria?” Eik asked from the doorway.

  Louise shook her head absentmindedly without taking her eyes off the screen as she re-read the first few lines once more.

  When he returned and flopped down across from her, she had logged on to CPR, the police access to the Civil Registration System, and finding Bodil Parkov on Bukkeskov Road in Hvalsø had not been difficult in the least. Louise wrote down the names of her late parents and looked through the rest of the personal data one more time.

  “Camilla was right,” she pronounced. “Bodil isn’t married.”

  Eik pulled his legs off the table and walked over to stand behind her chair. He ran a finger down her back, making her contract her shoulder blades.

  “Jørgen is her brother,” she said and looked up at him.

  “Then please explain to me why she’s going around telling people that
he’s her husband?” he asked, slurping from his cup. “Incest?”

  He looked at her.

  Louise shrugged, thinking back for a minute. Maybe she was the one who had misunderstood about them being husband and wife, she thought, but then she shook her head. Bodil had always referred to Jørgen as her husband.

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” she moaned, looking out the window while thinking it over. “What does she stand to gain from telling people that they’re married?”

  She couldn’t think of anything. She said, “I could kind of see it if it were the other way around; if you were trying to fool social services, so you made up a story that the person you’re living with is your brother.”

  She looked questioningly at Eik. When he didn’t react, she added: “Some people do that kind of thing to be able to collect higher benefits.” She rested her chin on her hands, her head feeling tired. Too much champagne and not enough sleep. “They’re renting their house but she probably doesn’t get any subsidies,” she went on.

  “Well, they’ve obviously wanted to trick someone,” Eik determined. “Why else would you lie about something like that?”

  She nodded. “Yes, why?” she repeated dully.

  “What do you know about them?” he asked, filling his cup from the white thermos that he had brought in.

  “Nothing,” Louise admitted, considering the question. “Aside from the fact that they’ve lived out there for many years. They keep to themselves, and they’re part of the area.”

  Louise moaned and tried to ignore a suffocating smell of fried onions. It was as if the cooking odors from the kitchen below seeped through every crack and opening. With small beads of sweat on her forehead, she got up to open a window but quickly shut it again when she realized that the outlet for the range hood was right underneath.

  “Hold on a second,” she excused herself. She needed some cold water on her face to keep the nausea from taking over. She was about to close the restroom door when Eik slid up behind her and pushed his way in there as well.