by Sara Blaedel
She jumped at the sound of a voice from the doorway. “Excuse me,” said the nurse who had been keeping an eye on Frederik. “You have a call. The phone is in the office.”
Camilla got to her feet. She was chilly now. She had on the T-shirt she’d slept in, along with a dark-blue cardigan they’d dug up for her in the lost-and-found bin that patients regularly added to.
A redheaded nurse in the office pointed to the phone on the desk. Camilla picked it up. At first she didn’t recognize Louise’s voice; it sounded so bleak. “Who is this?” she asked, anxious at first, until she realized that whoever had taken Jonas and set fire to the house couldn’t know where she was. “Louise?”
“It’s about Jonas,” her friend said. “Go down to intensive care. Sune is in room six. Get hold of the butcher. You saved his son, now it’s time for him to return the favor.”
“Who took him?” she whispered. She looked at the nurse still standing in the doorway. “Where are you?”
“At Thomsen’s father’s house. The body of the dead horse is here. They’re not even trying to hide the fact they’re threatening you.”
“Unbelievable!” Camilla said, amazed and angered at the ruthlessness they were up against. “Tell me what to do.”
“We need to know places where they might have hidden him. He’s been here, now he’s gone of course.”
Camilla nodded and thought for a moment. “Could they have taken him out to the sacrificial oak? Has anyone been out there?”
“That’s the first place Nymand checked. No one there. Not at the girls’ graves, either. Find out if there are other places connected to their religion. Areas with a special meaning for their rituals.”
“Got it. You want to know everything.”
“Yes.”
* * *
The door to intensive care swooshed as it closed behind Camilla. She hurried down the hall, passing rooms 2, 4, 6. She knocked gently before pushing the door open and stepping in. The room was empty. There were no beds or people inside, only two night tables pushed up against the wall.
“Yes?” Camilla turned to find a nurse wearing an open white coat looking at her.
“Lars Frandsen and Sune,” she stammered. “I’m a friend of the family. We’ve just recently been in touch.”
The nurse sized her up. Camilla remembered that she still stank from the smoke. She must look like something the cat dragged in. Which might have been the reason why the nurse took her elbow and led her down the hall. She probably looked like she’d dropped everything to rush to the hospital.
“My condolences,” the nurse said. She led her to a door in the same hall. “They’re in here.”
Uneasy now, Camilla knocked. Four pale, red-eyed faces turned to her. “Excuse me,” she said, before anyone could speak. “Lars, I need to talk to you.”
He stared at her as if he were about to refuse, but then he stood up. An elderly woman clutching a white handkerchief in her hands was sobbing. Sune sat beside her, pale and unfocused, but when he looked up he recognized her. His expression changed, and he seemed about to say something when Camilla hurried out into the hall with his father.
“Where have they taken Jonas?” she asked after she’d introduced herself.
The butcher’s face went blank. “My wife just died!”
“I know, and I’m very sorry, but this is a matter of life and death.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He turned around to walk back into the room, but she grabbed him.
“I’m the one who found your son!” She was in his face now. “Tell me where they could’ve taken Jonas.”
She shook him. She was so angry that she didn’t even think about how strong he was. “Our house is burning down. Goddamn it, we could all have died. And now Louise’s son has disappeared.”
She kept shaking him. “Where could they have taken him? Come on, talk to me!”
Suddenly he seemed very interested. “Who burned your house down?”
“Good question, because I have no fucking idea!” Camilla let go of him and backed off a bit, her arms falling to her sides. “Someone started it while we were asleep. The only person who might have seen something is Elinor, the old lady who found Sune and dragged me out in the forest. But she died of smoke inhalation.”
Now, having said the words, she made the connection: Elinor was dead because she had tried to warn them. That the wagons were again rolling on the Death Trail, that someone in the summer night had snuck up to the manor house. And it saddened her.
They must’ve come in from the forest, she thought. They had surveillance cameras along the driveway. If they had been activated during the night, Tønnesen would have been aware of it.
“What do they want? What have we done? This has to stop; these are children they’re hurting.”
Her voice faded at the end, along with her anger. But she had to make him cooperate.
The butcher lowered his eyes for a moment before again meeting hers. “They’ve turned on you because you helped my son. You should never have done that. You interfered in something that should have been taken care of within the brotherhood.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You know how frightened that boy was when we were out in the forest with him. Of course we had to help!”
She grabbed his arm. “You of all people know what they’re capable of. Tell me what they might do with Louise’s son; you owe me.”
He looked at her as if she’d just slapped him. “Blood vengeance. When one of us has been wronged, there has to be revenge.”
“Why him? Why Jonas?”
“Your friend was the one who had him arrested yesterday. Bitten told me when she called to ask about Jane. In a way, she was asking for it.”
“What the hell is it with you? Ingersminde has burned down, Jonas been kidnapped—are you all crazy or what?” One moment he was Sune’s father, a man who’d just lost his wife, and the next he was part of Thomsen’s brotherhood, for whom revenge was normal, as it had been back in the times of the Asatro. “This has to stop, and you have to help me. There’s no one else I can turn to.”
Silence. A cart farther down the hall clattered against something, a door closed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what to say.”
Camilla breathed in deeply several times, until she had composed herself completely. “Tell me where you think they might have taken Jonas,” she implored. “They found his T-shirt at Ole Thomsen’s father’s place, but he wasn’t there. Where can he be? Think about it. Think about Sune being sacrificed, almost bleeding to death. You owe them nothing! For God’s sake, they wanted to kill your son!”
The butcher made a fist, pressed it against his mouth, then closed his eyes, as if he were forcing his mind to play along. “They could have taken him to Avn Lake or to Blood Springs. Maybe to the hillside at Gyldenløvshøj?”
Camilla pressed him. “Which is most likely? Are there rituals connected with these places?”
“Hell’s Cauldron,” he mumbled, looking away from her now. “That’s another place we make sacrifices to the gods. But it’s best known for human sacrifices. Back in the days of the Asatro the farmers met every ninth year, and according to myth they sacrificed ninety-nine men, ninety-nine horses, ninety-nine dogs, and ninety-nine hawks. The sacrifices were made to the goddess of death, Hel, Loke’s daughter. She reigns over the kingdom of death.”
His voice sounded mechanical; he was going to pieces right before her eyes. He leaned against the wall and sank to the floor.
Camilla froze up inside. “Human sacrifices,” she repeated. She shook her head. “Can I borrow your phone?”
48
Not here, either!” Louise shouted. She hopped off the attic ladder. They had searched the wings of the house, barns, and the enormous attic over the country manor. Police were combing the main residence, and two dog patrols had arrived, but Louise was certain that Jonas was nowhere around.
H
e had been there. His pajamas had been found piled up on the kitchen floor. Again, there had been no attempt to hide anything. Pajamas, T-shirt, not even the white plastic bottle of animal tranquilizer. Cotton, nylon rope, and rags lay on the kitchen counter, and the blood on the kitchen floor had coagulated, though when she touched it her finger showed a slight stain. Had an hour gone by, an hour and a half?
She heard the police dogs returning from the fields behind them, being led to the other side of the main residence.
She stared into space. It was as if the world had stopped, in the same way she had begun shutting down inside. Her temples throbbed, her scalp tingled. She put her hands on her knees and let her head hang loose with her eyes closed, waiting for the blood to reach her brain. She knew she wouldn’t get one step closer to Jonas without getting herself under control.
Someone put a hand on her arm just as she was about to straighten up. She stared into Eik’s solemn face, and suddenly all the strength she’d tried to muster disappeared, replaced by tears.
“Hell’s Cauldron, where is it?” He led her away as he explained that he’d just heard from Camilla. He carried Jonas’s striped pajama bottoms.
Louise went blank. What was he talking about? Then her brain slowly began working. “It’s close to Ravnsholte.” Why does he want to know? she wondered.
He pushed her gently. “Let’s go. I’ve already told Nymand.”
Louise trotted to the car. Ravnsholte was in the forest on the other side of Hvalsø, where her parents lived.
Charlie whined in the back of the car, his snout against the window, ears pointing forward. He was following the other dogs so intently that he didn’t turn when Louise and Eik got into the car.
“That’s enough,” Eik said, as he made his way among the growing number of police cars.
“Hell’s Cauldron,” he repeated, when they’d reached the highway. “Can you find it?”
“Drive through Hvalsø and out to Lerbjerg,” she said as she tried to remember how to get there. “I can find it if we enter the forest where I used to ride.”
Her mind was in turmoil as they drove the six kilometers from Nørre Hvalsø to where she grew up. She couldn’t shake the image of Jonas. She imagined him being woken up in the dark, drugged, and pulled from his bed.
She tried to sort everything out. The old police chief had taken Jonas to punish her; that much she knew. Now, however, she was beginning to understand how he had misused his position to protect his son and his son’s friends.
She thought about the janitor from Såby. About Gudrun, Klaus, and the young prostitute. Each time he covered up for them, he was actually saving his own ass. They had something on him.
Roed Thomsen was a weak man who had been unable to deal with his own sick daughter. Instead he’d let everything get out of hand when she died. And since then he had done all he could to maintain the facade.
“The old police chief has always known what’s gone on,” she said, giving voice to her thoughts. “But he never stepped in because he was afraid of being found out. Everyone’s got something on everyone else, and that makes them deadly.”
“Roed Thomsen was their gothi,” Eik said a moment later. “Asatro was his way of ensuring he wouldn’t be alone if someone turned against him.”
“And the worst thing is, they’re convinced their beliefs give them the right to do what they’re doing,” Louise said.
They reached the forest and drove past the parking lot and down the hill, where she told him to turn right. “I’m not sure we can drive all the way in.”
She straightened up when they passed the Snipe House and saw Verner Post standing by his woodpile. “Stop!”
She waved. The old man had always lived there. Several of his upper teeth were missing, and the ones left were stained from the ever-present wad of tobacco he kept inside his upper lip. He’d been born in the Snipe House and had taken possession of both it and his job in Bistrup Forest from his father, who had been killed when a tree kicked out wrong. Louise knew this only because Verner Post had helped his father several times when a tree needed felling.
“We’re going to Hell’s Cauldron. How close can we get there by car?” She felt strangely calm. She didn’t really believe Jonas was there; she was sure she’d have sensed his fear or the men’s anger if they were so close.
She stiffened, however, when she saw the expression on the old man’s face. “I just sent another car in there. Why’s everybody all of a sudden interested in the old sacrificial grounds?”
“Sacrificial grounds? Who did you send in?” Her nerves exploded. She felt like grabbing on to him, but she held herself back. Roed Thomsen wouldn’t need directions; he had to know the forest at least as well as she did.
“The butcher, the young one. He looked like he just seen a ghost. He ought to know the way, often as they come out here. We always have to clean up their mess. But he was all in a tizzy.”
He moved the chaw of tobacco around with his lower lip.
“Was there anyone else in the car with him?” Eik said.
Verner Post shook his head. “He’s the only one I saw.” He turned his head and spat.
* * *
“Stop!” Louise pointed at the trees, and Eik parked the car. There were no other vehicles around, and the forest was quiet. Sweat broke out on Louise’s forehead as she headed for the hillside farther along in the forest.
Eik held the striped pajamas and let Charlie out of the back. He followed after Louise. She stopped regularly to listen. “We’re wasting our time,” she said when Eik caught up to her.
Charlie raced around with his nose to the ground. He didn’t seem especially interested in the pajamas Eik kept showing him.
“They’re not here,” Louise kept saying. “We’d be hearing something.”
Eik turned to her and grabbed her shoulders, forced her to look at him. “Stop it!” he said as if he were trying to talk sense into a child. “If we’re going to find Jonas, you have to start acting like a policewoman instead of a mother.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her to the top of the hillside, not letting go until they were looking down into Hell’s Cauldron, which was covered with the final crop of autumn’s fallen leaves. She remembered the hollow as being deeper. Probably because she had been smaller back then, she thought.
Relief or anxiety, she wasn’t sure which, rushed through her body when she saw that Jonas wasn’t there.
49
When they pulled up to his gate again, Verner Post was raking the narrow strip of gravel that led to his lopsided old forest house. He stopped and leaned on his rake.
Louise got out of the car. “Are there any other places than Hell’s Cauldron that the Asatro might associate with the old myths of sacrifices?”
“We’re not talking about myths here; it happened,” he said. “They found human bones in there.”
“Are there any other stories about similar places out here?”
He pushed out his lower lip and frowned under his cap. “You’re thinking of King Valdemar Atterdag, riding on Valdemar’s Road in the moonlight with his escort?” He spat again.
“No,” Eik said, “we’re thinking more along the lines of the sacrificial oak in Boserup Forest. Places connected to human sacrifices, brotherhoods, rituals of vengeance.”
“Far as I know, the only human sacrifices around here were in Hell’s Cauldron. That’s what they say anyway.”
Louise’s relief was short-lived. “But there were funeral pyres in the lake in the Black Bog. That goes back to the Vikings; they sacrificed a slave when an important man was buried. Other than that, human sacrifices were a part of war and bad blood, when they had their rituals of revenge.”
Louise stopped listening, but she did catch that Eik asked directions to the Black Bog.
She knew precisely where it was. Back when she’d first started riding in the forest, her father had warned her about the bottomless bog. He also told her about a giant pike that had never be
en caught. He had her believing he’d seen it. No one knew how long it had been swimming around in the black water, but according to legend the ashes from funeral pyres had made it immortal. In the old days, many farmers in the area had their ashes spread in the Black Bog so the pike wouldn’t come out of the water and pull its victims back in.
* * *
They spotted them when they reached the top of the hill. Louise leaned up against a motley birch trunk, trying to make sense of the scene on the banks of the coal-black forest lake.
Six men stood in a circle, and behind them the butcher sat slumped over, watching the older men. She recognized his father, the old butcher; the owner of the sawmill; Roed Thomsen; John Knudsen’s father, who had owned the farm in Særløse; and the mason’s father, who also had been a mason until he turned the business over to his son. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she recognized a gray-haired, broad-shouldered man whose daughter had been two or three years behind her in school. In the middle of their circle lay Jonas.
He was blindfolded and naked, save for his undershorts, his hands and feet bound, his mouth taped shut. Blood had been smeared all over his upper body. They had tied him to something that from a distance looked like a narrow raft of logs, or a bier of long branches lashed together. Louise couldn’t tear her eyes away from his body twitching, like an exhausted animal trying to escape a trap.
The men ignored him, not even bothering to look when he gathered his strength and strained again to free himself.
Louise was freezing, yet sweating, too. She heard Eik step back toward the road and quietly call in for backup. He gave them the coordinates.
Roed Thomsen wore a long cape. He stood with outstretched arms, his somber voice droning as if he were reciting a mass. She watched as something passed from hand to hand—the oath ring, she was sure of it. Each man’s lips moved when he received the ring, but she couldn’t hear their words. They looked serious and tense, yet at the same time expectant. Like athletes before a game.
