Dark September

by Inger Wolf

  She opened the door wide. "You're not interrupting a thing."

  He glanced around. The second-floor apartment was in an older building on the south side of town; it had been newly renovated and painted an antique blue. The old furniture, crowded floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and Persian rugs were a bit too much for Trokic's taste. The place smelled of perfume and something else he couldn't put his finger on, a bit sweet; he didn't like that, either. Europa lifted her head up in a corner of the room and wagged her tail.

  "I don't have a lecture until after lunch, so we have lots of time." Isa Nielsen gestured toward the sofa. "Have a seat."

  She placed coffee and cups on the coffee table. While she poured, she talked about her work at the Department of Political Science. Primarily, she taught sociology and worked on various interdisciplinary research projects.

  "Including anthropology?"

  "Yes, sometimes the two institutes have common interests. But mostly I work with theoretical sociological models in connection with political science projects."

  Trokic imagined the male students stuck around when she lectured. Even though you couldn't call her beautiful, her eyes and smile were lively, her movements graceful and feminine. "So, maybe you knew Anna Kiehl outside of the running group, from the university?"

  "It's a big university, thousands of students and researchers and lecturers in every discipline. I didn't know her there."

  "What about personally?"

  Isa Nielsen turned her hands over in her lap. "Only superficially. There were eight of us in the group, and we only ran once a week." She sounded apologetic.

  She looked him in the eye, straight into him. He felt it all the way down to his toes. "Does the name Christoffer Holm ring any bells for you?"

  The sociologist thought for a few moments. "I think I've heard that name. Should I know him?"

  "Maybe. He wrote a book called The Chemical Zone."

  She smiled. "Oh, yes. Tall, blond, handsome? Works at the university?"

  "Holm was a researcher at the psychiatric hospital, but he seems to have disappeared."

  "He was the one with the other anthropology student in our running group. Irene. I remember because he drove her out a few times to where we met in the forest. He didn't run with us, though. Her last name escapes me right now. A redheaded girl…"

  Trokic frowned and straightened up. "Are you sure about that?"

  "I think so. Wasn't she Anna's friend? It seemed so, anyway. But that was a long time ago."

  "It was. Tell me about her, what you know about her."

  "Nothing other than what I've already said. She seemed a little…no, she's actually nice, very nice. But really, I never spoke with them much at all."

  Trokic wrote down what she said. Irene had lied about what she knew about Christoffer Holm. That was obvious. Why? The missing researcher was involved in some way, he was sure of it. And now there was a new angle. "Would you please excuse me? I have to make a call."

  He walked into the next room, a small library. Europa padded after him good-naturedly and laid down at his feet. He called Jasper and immediately said, "Bring Irene in, she lied to my face an hour ago. Something's not right here. I'll be in as soon as I can."

  So. Christoffer Holm had a connection to Irene. The tall bookshelf in front of him was filled with textbooks and folders. He wondered if Isa Nielsen could help with a few observations; she was a sociologist, she must know a few things about human beings. And her familiarity with the forest. He wouldn't mind coming back here.

  He hung up and stuck his phone back in his jacket pocket, wrote down a few words in his notepad, and distractedly scratched the dog before turning. The sociologist watched him from the doorway, her arms crossed.

  "Nice dog you have here," he said.

  She nodded, then her eyes suddenly changed expression. "She's also the only one I have."

  Trokic didn't know what to say. "I guess I better get going."

  "Have you done a psychological profile of the killer?"

  "We don't use that type of thing so often."

  She smiled and shrugged. What he'd said wasn't completely true. Agersund had met that very morning with the psychologist they normally used. But it was more a dialogue—contentious, in his opinion—than an actual profile. Jacob had mentioned a few short takes from the meeting on his way out the door. He was convinced they were wasting their own and the psychologist's time.

  "I have to go. Thanks for talking to me."

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Jasper again. "We have the DNA analysis. It's certain that Christoffer Holm was the father of Anna Kiehl's unborn child."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Trokic paced in his office with a pencil between his teeth. Two sandwiches lay on the desk. He was moving the pieces of the puzzle around in his head while absorbing all the new information. So. Holm had gotten Anna Kiehl pregnant. His DNA was in a hair found at the pond and also in the unborn child of the victim, but the semen on her stomach belonged to someone else. Who? Jasper leaned back against the door and stretched his legs.

  "I sent someone out for Anna's friend."

  "Where the hell are they?" Trokic asked.

  "Things can only go so fast, Daniel."

  Trokic grabbed the phone and dialed Lisa's number. "You have Christoffer Holm's sister's number. Call her and see if she'll talk to us again. We need to know more about Anna Kiehl's boyfriend, maybe we've overlooked something."

  He did another lap of his office as he thought about what to do. "No, wait. Go down and talk to her, Lisa. To speed things up. We'll take care of the friend—"

  "I just promised Poulsen I'd take a quick look at a computer from a fraud case. It won't take long, but apparently, the speed of light isn't fast enough for him."

  "What! They must be crazy, he'll have to find someone else to help. Find someone to bring Elise Holm in then, it's important. Have you heard anything about the pond?"

  "They say it's going slow. The bottom is muddy and it's almost impossible to see anything. They have to feel their way around in it."

  "I'll run out there this afternoon." Trokic hung up.

  It felt as if his brain was working even when thinking of other things. While he slept, fragments of the case drifted around in circles, creating new structures, curves, energies. This time it was the details in Anna Kiehl's apartment that kept dancing around. Her friend Irene was sitting near his office, waiting, ready to be questioned. He needed to get started, asap.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  "Would you like to go out for a bite to eat?"

  Lisa looked up from the computer into Jacob's calm expression. She hesitated a moment. They were busy, and she'd decided to skip lunch. On the other hand, she couldn't be expected to run on Mars bars all afternoon just because everyone thought they could just boss her around. Then she remembered what Trokic had told her yesterday evening: Jacob was her new partner.

  "Okay. A quick lunch."

  She lifted the lavender jacket off the chair behind her, wishing she'd worn something more neutral. She would draw attention beside the tall, pale officer, but there was nothing to do about it.

  He smiled. "We're partners, after all. Let's grab something light down on Åen."

  They ordered pasta at Sidewalk. "We got the search warrant," he said after the food came. It smelled delicious. "Reasonable grounds for suspicion and significant importance to the investigation. We'll go out there this afternoon."

  "What?"

  "A search warrant for Tony Hansen's apartment." His eyes were focused on her. He was a few years her senior, with boyish features, a straightforwardness, a lack of cynicism. His arms were splayed out on the table between them, his off-white hooded sweatshirt slightly open at the neck. Her skin prickled.

  "Yeah, okay, but how'd you manage it? I mean, it's not easy to prove he had time to do it."

  "We have to be able to cross him off the list. So, we emphasized his record, that he'd been in the vicinity, that he lied
. We drove out there, but he's still not home. The techs are going through the apartment, they haven't found anything of interest yet. The guy is just a dedicated alcoholic. It's a waste of time if you ask me."

  "I'd like to know what he's hiding. There's something."

  They ate for a moment in silence. The crowd on Åboulevarden streamed by, the baby buggies, high heels, piercings. The longer she lived in the city, the better she liked it. Much of her family also had moved here. She liked the Latin quarter, in particular, all the small, winding streets, brunch on Sundays. A young woman at the table beside them was obviously trying to make eye contact with Jacob. She kept playing with her hair on the back of her neck.

  "How do you know Trokic?" she said.

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin. "I met him in Croatia several years ago. I was a UN soldier stationed in Sisak for a while, and he worked for a humanitarian organization in Zagreb."

  "Humanitarian work?"

  "Yeah, it was an Irish-Catholic aid organization, St. Patrick's. Its headquarters was a former school on the outskirts of the old city of Zagreb. He helped relocate families who'd lost their homes some way or other. Often, they'd burned down. Most of them came from Krajina. That was where they refused to recognize Croatia as an independent country."

  So, Lisa thought, she'd have to give up the idea that her somber colleague was a Croatian fascist. It annoyed her a bit. "Okay. But how exactly did you meet?"

  "He was going around the hardest hit areas, making contact with the homeless. It was bad when he started, really bad. The Serbs burned entire villages and drove out the Croatians. But to make a long story short, I actually met him in the middle of the war zone. I thought it might be interesting to meet someone with a Danish and Croatian background, so when I had some time one day, I looked him up in Zagreb. I met one of his younger cousins…and well…Trokic lived with her big sister and husband during the time I was seeing her. Sinka. That was her name."

  The corners of his mouth sank; something bad had happened, she sensed it, but she didn't press him.

  "He's had a rough life, all in all. A tough childhood here, and his father and younger brother were killed by the Serbs down there. He took it hard."

  She drooped inside. She hadn't known, but of course, it was something he wouldn't tell just anyone. She wanted to know more, but she didn't want to pry, either.

  "We've seen a lot of the same things," Jacob said. "Not that we sit around and dwell on it when we're together, but anyway…"

  He ran his hand through the tufts of his blond hair, and she lowered her eyes.

  "But what about his disciplinary case several years ago?" she said, bringing up one of her other reservations about him. "Unnecessary use of violence, wasn't that it? Against a woman. That's the kind of thing I can't handle very well."

  "You probably also know he was acquitted in city court. He was on a beat back then. She was a heroin addict, sort of crazy."

  Lisa looked at him skeptically and lowered her voice; she'd noticed that the couple to the right seemed to be eavesdropping. "Violence is violence."

  "He's okay. And a damn good cop. He punched her a few times, she attacked him while he was confiscating four grams of heroin. I know, because he talked a lot about it. She tried to scratch out his eyes. Sometimes, you just react."

  "Okay, I didn't know that. I just thought—"

  "Yeah, I know. But I trust him three hundred percent, and you can too."

  After he finished his pasta, he leaned back and looked at her carefully. "I was thinking, maybe you'd like to see a movie with me some evening? It gets lonely sitting by yourself in the hotel room, watching TV."

  "Sure," she said, surprised that he'd asked. And relieved at the thought of not being alone for an evening.

  "Jasper said you were a sort of female film freak, underneath all your computer expertise. He said I should ask you who said…what was it, let's see if I can remember…'This is a .44 Magnum, probably the most powerful handgun in the world.'"

  She laughed. "That crazy bastard won't leave me alone. He challenges me all the time."

  "So, do you know?"

  "Of course I know. Tell him hi from Dirty Harry. Surely, he can find something harder than that."

  Jacob laughed. "He said that's what you'd say."

  His phone rang. He looked at her across the table as he spoke. The wind swirled his short hair and made him shiver a bit. He hung up, focused again.

  "We have to pay a visit to the sect. One of them claims he knows who our killer is."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  "What is it now?" Hanishka frowned sternly at the two officers. "Don't you have anything better to do? I told that Daniel detective guy this morning, we had nothing to do with what happened."

  "One of your…supporters called us, said he had some information," Jacob said.

  "I doubt that very much."

  "Don't waste our time. It's the truth, the call came from your phone."

  The leader of the sect looked at them for a moment before sighing. "All right. Wait here and I'll ask around."

  Two minutes later, he returned. "No one here knows anything about the case."

  "Is everyone here?"

  "Yes."

  "Then we're going to have to ask you to let us in. This is important, it concerns a serious crime."

  "All right," the leader repeated in annoyance. He opened the door.

  They stepped into the living room, their usual meeting place, it looked like. An old yellow rug lay on the floor, potted plants stood on a large windowsill. No furniture. Lisa held her arms at her sides and peered around. Groups of people sat on the floor, about twenty of them in all, their heads shaved. Even though their clothes weren't identical, she wasn't sure she could tell them apart.

  Hanishka clapped his hands, and abruptly their murmuring ceased. "Someone here has information for the police. I don't know who, but I want that person to come along so we can get this settled!"

  You could hear a pin drop. Some of them looked at the floor, others stared frankly at the two detectives. One person coughed, a few others looked terrified. Lisa studied them carefully and noted every move. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  "What do you think?" she said when they reached the car.

  "We could bring them all in, one by one, maybe?"

  "That would take time. But we may have to. Let Trokic decide if it's worth it."

  Lisa sat in the passenger seat, leaning slightly toward him so she could watch as he drove. "Strange place. You think they're happy?"

  "Probably. According to Sartre, we're all doomed to be free, so if you put yourself in a situation where there are rules for everything, maybe you feel all your choices have been made."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that freedom gives you responsibility, but responsibility can create a lot of anxiety. And like somebody said, we feel trapped, even though our lives are made up of free choices. The members of that sect in there aren't doomed the same way because it's written out what they're supposed to do. And that eliminates a lot of dilemmas and makes life less of a problem."

  "Opium of the people, is what you're saying?"

  "I think they're at peace with themselves. Maybe that's a type of happiness. They're not the ones adding to the depression statistics, that's all the rest of us."

  Back in the office, Lisa was happy she'd gone to lunch with him. She felt better, now that her blood sugar had stabilized. The short stint with Jacob had been good for her, and she looked forward to spending an entire evening with him. She smiled at the thought.

  The officer sent to pick up Elise Holm was grouchy when he returned. "She's all yours. Maybe next time you can do your own pickup; your cases aren't necessarily more important than ours."

  "Sorry about that. The orders came from higher up."

  Lisa had heard about a pile-up on the freeway in the northbound lanes at a turnoff, and the police were short-handed.

  She'd just sat down when her niece called.
"Can I come over this evening, Aunt Lisa?" She was blubbering.

  "What is it?"

  "I can't stand her, she's a complete nul, a basic bitch. She promised to give me money to go to the movies with Line and Oliver tonight. So, I'm getting ready and she says I can't go after all."

  Nanna was sobbing dramatically. She'd begun using Lisa as an escape hatch a little too often, and even though she enjoyed Nanna's company, she wasn't sure it was helping the mother/daughter relationship. Besides, this could be a stunt to improve Nanna's chances of getting her way.

  Lately, Lisa was worried about her niece becoming a bit unstable. She was dropping all her interests, and her appearance and behavior were more provocative nowadays. Or was Nanna just being a teenager? Hadn't she herself run around with a rainbow of colors in her hair, wanting to rebel against her parents? She couldn't remember exactly where the lines had been drawn.

  "I don't know, Nanna. I'm working late this evening."

  Another agitated voice came on the line. "You can have her; I'd love to get rid of her. She insults me over and over and then expects me to finance her little escapades, and the crowd she hangs with? You don't want to know. Honestly, I can't knock any sense into her head. But I'm cutting her off, she just has to learn."

  "I'm working late this evening," she repeated to her sister. "But I can bring it home with me, and if she's there first, she knows where the key is."

  "I'm moving in with Aunt Lisa!" her niece screamed in the background.

  Someone knocked on the door of her office. "Just a sec," she told her sister.

  Elise Holm opened the door, walked over, and sat down across from Lisa. Her face was pale, bloodless. "Something's horribly wrong," she said, shaking her head.

  "It's okay with me," Lisa said into the phone. She turned to the woman.