by Sara Blaedel
Something in his eye jogged her memory. She knew Klaus had been with him the evening before his death. That Lars had agreed to come by and help him carry their double bed upstairs while she was in Roskilde, at the Gnags concert with Camilla.
Louise had completely forgotten that. Just as she had repressed all the too-painful details. She didn’t even know if the bed had been moved upstairs, because she didn’t go inside the house after she found Klaus hanging in the hallway. And she’d never returned.
Her little brother Mikkel, her parents, and Camilla had packed her things and taken them to Lerbjerg. Klaus’s parents had dealt with all his belongings. They told Louise that she was welcome to anything they had bought together, but she had politely declined. All of it had been recycled.
A shadow passed over the butcher’s face when he finally recognized her. He lowered his eyes to the level of her throat to avoid eye contact. He still hadn’t said anything and she couldn’t find a way to get started, until Eik saved her by announcing that they wanted to talk about his son.
“Police,” the butcher said, nodding as he stepped aside. “I don’t know if my wife is awake. She’s not doing so well. I thought you were the nurse; it’s been over an hour since I called.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Eik said.
“Have you found him?”
The butcher looked up at Eik, who was already halfway into the hall. He seemed uneasy, fearful.
“No, we haven’t found your son yet,” Louise said. Quickly, she stepped inside. “We’d like to talk to you about him, and why he might possibly be hiding in the forest close to Roskilde.”
The butcher got in her face. “Let’s get something straight right now. If you’ve been listening to that schoolteacher, you need to know he’s full of shit. I don’t want to hear it. My son isn’t hiding. Why the hell should he be?”
Louise was so surprised by this outburst that for a moment she stood speechless, staring at the Thor’s hammer hanging from a silver chain around the man’s neck.
Eik walked into the kitchen and asked where they could sit and talk. The butcher turned his back on Louise and motioned them into the living room, where a big flat-screen TV took up most of one wall.
“I’m not listening to more gossip,” he said. “The whole town’s talking. They even talk about it while they’re fucking standing in line in my shop. And they stare. Like it’s my goddamn fault, all of it. That my wife’s sick, that my boy couldn’t handle it. I’m not going to fucking take it anymore. And now you show up…”
He sank down into his soft leather easy chair, his back to the windows with a view of the fields behind the house.
“Your son is handling it better than a lot of people would,” Eik said, sitting on the sofa across from him. “We have reason to believe that he’s doing fine. But we need to ask you and your wife a few questions.”
“Have you talked to him?” the butcher asked. He sat up; suddenly he looked very pale.
“Would you please see if your wife is awake and able to speak with us?” Eik said. Louise kept her mouth shut and walked over to the window behind the dining room table. The lawn looked more like a meadow, separated from the field behind by an uneven stone fence.
The butcher walked over to a door across the room, knocked lightly, and went inside. Louise glanced into the room, but it was dark. He closed the door, and she turned back to the view outside, disquieted by the atmosphere in this house.
She knew Hvalsø all too well. Knew how it felt when the town talked about you, whispered behind your back. Even though she had an instinctive aversion to the butcher, she couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him, too. And anyway, Klaus must have had a reason to be friends with him.
“You can come in,” he said from the doorway.
The first thing Louise noticed was the metal pole with the IV bag and the clear plastic tubing that disappeared underneath the thick comforter. A tiny, frail woman lay buried in pillows.
Eik stood beside the bed and introduced himself. Louise joined him and was about to offer her hand when she froze.
“Jane,” she said, her voice hoarse. She crouched down, her eyes now level with her old schoolmate. “Is it you?”
The woman was a shadow of the schoolmate Louise had played handball with, but after Louise hooked up with Klaus they’d gone their separate ways.
She stopped before her voice broke. Why in hell had she not read up on the case properly? She should have checked to see if the boy’s mother was someone she knew.
“Yes, it’s me.” The voice seemed to come from deep down in the pillow. “I’d recognize your voice even if I couldn’t see you.”
Jane’s eyes were sunken, her face so thin that her cheekbones stood out like two sharp corners. Not much remained of the grocery manager’s beautiful daughter, but she lifted her hand up a few centimeters from the comforter and smiled at Louise.
“Lars says you have news about Sune.” Her eyes blurred, and a moment later a tear ran down her cheek.
Louise took her hand and stroked it with her thumb. “We think we’ve found him.” She pulled her phone out with her other hand and showed Jane the photo of the pocketknife from inside the hollow tree. “Or at least we found where he’s been staying some of the time,” she said. She asked if the knife belonged to their son.
It was overwhelming to see the relief flooding into the mother’s face when she saw the knife. The father’s reaction wasn’t as clear. Relief. Fear. Confusion, maybe.
“It’s his old knife,” Jane said to her husband. The tears came freely now; she turned her head to the side and let them fall on the pillow. Then she closed her eyes, and it seemed as though she withdrew into herself.
Louise let her rest. A somber silence fell over the room.
“I just don’t understand what he’s doing out there,” Jane said a few moments later, her eyes still closed. “Is he hiding from someone?”
Her husband broke in. “None of us understands this. We’ve been preparing ourselves for anything after he disappeared. Someone could’ve stolen his knife,” he added.
Louise and Eik glanced at each other. What the hell was it with him? Louise thought. Could it be some mental wall he’d built, to shield himself from the family’s problems?
Eik asked if they could borrow a few chairs and sit down.
“Sure,” the butcher said, bringing in two dining room chairs. They sat beside the bed. Jane looked up at the ceiling with her hands folded on the comforter.
“Our son has been very deeply affected by my illness,” she said, turning to them now. “But all the time he’s been missing, I’ve never believed he would go so far as to take his own life.”
Her husband quickly jumped in. “No one’s said he did.” His tone made it obvious that they indeed had talked about it, possibly even prepared themselves for it. “But you do read nowadays that a lot of teenagers play around with the idea,” he continued. “It’s the ultimate punishment for parents. The school principal even said that on the phone.”
He sniggered. “It’s almost like they blame us already. That it’s our fault he might have done it.”
“Lars, please!” his wife whispered. “Don’t be so angry.”
The butcher suddenly hid his face in his hands and bowed his head.
“It’s not always easy living in a small town, with people gossiping,” she said, to excuse her husband.
Louise looked away when her old school friend made eye contact with her.
“At any rate, not when you have a shop, and everyone thinks they know you,” Jane continued. “And Lars is right. You get the impression that people think my illness is why Sune isn’t doing well, that maybe he even…” She closed her eyes.
“But luckily there’s no reason anymore to believe that your son chose that path,” Eik said. He asked if Sune had been a Boy Scout.
“Yes,” his mother said, with a hint of pride. “He has all the merit badges you can earn. He never cared about hanging out at
the gym with the other boys.”
Louise noticed that his father was about to say something, but he stopped himself.
“Does this mean he’s coming home?” Jane said hesitantly, as if she was afraid it was too early for optimism. “Not a moment has gone by that I haven’t thought about him. What hurts the most is that we might never say good-bye to each other. I’ve planned it all; I know exactly what I want to say to my son, the words that will help him when I’m gone. But now that he’s not here, I haven’t been able to say any of it to him.”
She turned to Louise, who had to muster every bit of willpower not to lower her eyes. She’d known this woman well, and it was heart wrenching to see her this way. Be professional, she scolded herself. She tried to focus on what was in front of her: a dying woman now hoping to be reunited with her son.
“We found a campsite in Boserup Forest, where your son probably has been staying since he disappeared,” Eik said. Louise straightened up in her chair, thankful once again for Eik.
“Fine,” the butcher said, preparing to stand up. “I’ll go out and get him.”
Louise and Eik said nothing, and eventually the parents sensed that something was wrong.
“He’s not there anymore,” Louise said. “The camp’s been abandoned.”
“Did he have any money when he disappeared?” Eik asked. “Cash, credit card?”
Both parents shook their heads. “He had a debit card, but it’s in his wallet,” his father said. He leaned back in his chair.
“We’re going to ask Roskilde Police to initiate a search for—” Louise said.
“I’ll find my son myself,” the butcher said. “Sune has been through enough. I don’t want him hunted by the police, too.”
Louise nodded and handed him her card. “I don’t know if you have anyone to help you search, but call me if you don’t find him. And I’ll notify my colleagues in Roskilde.”
Jane reached out for her hand. “Thank you for helping,” she said, smiling broadly now. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I’ve been so unhappy. I might leave this world at peace with myself after all; that means more than I can ever say. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. It’s so important to be able to say your good-byes.”
Louise squeezed Jane’s hand and nodded. She wasn’t sure she could help her old friend. All she knew was that Jane’s son had been staying in the forest, and right now she had no idea where he was.
She felt the butcher’s eyes on her back all the way out to the hall, and when she turned to say good-bye he was right behind her. She lowered her hand when she saw the expression on his face.
“I can’t believe you’d stoop so low, putting René behind bars,” he said, his voice low. “He helped you, and that asshole got what was coming to him.”
“René killed him,” she snapped. “Shot him. It was completely unnecessary.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“So what did you hear?”
The butcher retreated a step and looked on her with scorn. “I heard he saved you from that asshole fucking your brains out.”
“He told you that?”
“You hear so much,” he said offhandedly, but then continued. “It’s hard for him to tell what happened, sitting in jail. But I have a visitor’s permit. I’m going in to see him tomorrow.”
Louise was enraged. She could imagine them sitting together and talking about her. Only moments ago she had almost changed her mind about Lars Frandsen, but now she remembered very clearly why she had hated him and his gang.
10
Louise felt dizzy when she walked out of the house. Eik stood smoking a cigarette, enjoying the view of the forest. She asked him to unlock the car, and just as she was about to get in, Charlie jumped up right behind the front seat. He looked at her and cocked his ears forward, as if in anticipation.
“You’ll just have to wait to get out and run,” she snapped. She was still enraged. She’d let the man provoke her. She shouldn’t have reacted when he mentioned René.
“Damn it,” she said under her breath. She vowed that from now on she would be better prepared.
Eik walked over to her. “What are you mumbling about?”
“Nothing,” she said. “You were good in there. I’m sorry; it threw me off to see it was Jane lying in bed. We knew each other.”
Eik put his arm around her. “I figured it was something like that.” He kissed her hair.
* * *
Images from the past kept popping up now, after seeing Jane. Happy images. Despite her anger, Louise could suddenly recall what it was like being an eighth-grader in love.
She had been crazy about Klaus. She’d stood by the outdoor handball court in every kind of weather to watch him play. She’d hung out in the gym’s clubhouse, just to see him walk out of the locker room.
It all seemed so ridiculous now, but back then it had been a matter of life or death. Teenage love had been a force she couldn’t control, no matter how hard she tried. She could still remember her heart jumping when he looked at her and smiled.
They started going together after a party in the gym. Maybe she’d been drunker than she thought when she walked over to him. And it had felt like the most natural thing in the world when Klaus put his arm around her and whispered in her ear, “Finally.”
* * *
Eik backed out of the courtyard and drove down the bumpy gravel road, out to the highway. “You want to go out to eat tonight? Jonas is welcome to come along, of course. We could go to Tea; they make the best Peking duck in town.”
She smiled and said that Jonas was going to a movie with a friend and would be staying all night with him afterward.
Eik grinned. “It’s not like I have anything against it being just the two of us.” He leaned toward her. “We can have coffee at your place afterward.”
She touched his cheek, felt the stubble grazing against the palm of her hand.
“There’s something I have to do first,” she said. She told him to turn right before they reached the roundabout.
“There’s no hurry, it’s only five.”
“This is something I have to do alone.”
She pointed at a side street ahead. “Would you please drop me off there?”
Eik’s expression became serious. When they reached the street, he stopped and turned to her. “Are you sure this is wise?”
She saw the doubt in his face. He couldn’t possibly know where she was going, but he wasn’t dumb; she’d told him about losing a man she’d loved. She touched his cheek again and nodded.
“I haven’t spoken with Klaus’s parents since he died, and now I have to. They deserve to know what René Gamst told me. If their son didn’t commit suicide, they should know. But going out to eat Peking duck tomorrow or this weekend sounds fantastic.”
She loved the thin pancakes and the pungent hoisin sauce. It was one of Jonas’s favorite foods, something he and his father had made together. Jonas had diced the cucumbers and spring onions; his father had been an expert at the crisp skin. Suddenly Louise missed her foster son terribly. His relaxed face, the thick, dark hair that fell into his eyes.
“Of course,” Eik said, jolting her out of her thoughts, the chaos of emotions from the past and present bouncing around inside her. All the things she had pushed away, repressed.
She didn’t even know if Lissy and Ernst still lived in the white house on Skovvej. Back in the eighth grade, Louise always bicycled past as slowly as possible on the way to Lerbjerg, to see if Klaus’s scooter was parked in the drive, or if he was helping his father behind the house.
She studied Eik’s face in profile for a moment before getting out of the car. She shook her head when he asked if he should wait for her.
“I’ll take the train home,” she said, and smiled at him.
“Shouldn’t we check to see if they still live here?”
“I have to do this alone,” she repeated. She was beginning to wonder herself if this was such a good idea.<
br />
Eik watched her a moment, then nodded and blew her a kiss.
She stood on the corner as he made a U-turn and drove off toward Copenhagen.
11
Louise walked the last stretch with her hands in her jacket pockets, her eyes on the sidewalk. Step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back. It was as if the lock on her trunk of repressed memories had been blown off. The old children’s rhyme kept running through her head, in time with her steps.
It was a game she’d played with her girlfriends at school. They had upgraded it to a teenage version—whoever stepped on a crack had to tell the others a secret. Louise had revealed that she was secretly in love with Klaus, and instantly she’d seen that she wasn’t the only one; he was one of the boys many girls in school had their eyes on.
Suddenly she spotted the freshly painted picket fence and house, which looked exactly like it had all those years ago. Well kept, though not renovated. A café curtain still hung in the kitchen window.
She breathed deeply. Did they still live here? Anyone younger probably wouldn’t have hung that curtain. She crossed the street and stopped at the gate, her legs refusing to take her another step.
Pull yourself together, she thought. Their name was on the mailbox. But she still couldn’t move.
In her mind’s eye she saw Klaus’s scooter and the birdhouses his father had built, a hobby that had given him something to talk about with Louise’s father. The two men were always showing each other something or telling stories that had to do with birds. She had completely forgotten about those birdhouses. She looked around; they hung from every tree in the yard, more numerous now than back then. Many were ornate, too. One on the big tree in the middle of the yard was a precise copy of a Swiss hut. A newer model, she thought. Surely he wouldn’t have had time for that level of detail back when he’d worked at the sawmill.
She heard a voice from the woodshed. “Louise? Is that you?” Ernst, Klaus’s father, walked over to her and opened the gate. “Come in, come in!”
