by Chris Ould
“Astrid and Else?”
“I think so. Our suspect, whoever he is, must have been at the Colony commune when they were killed – either as a resident there or as a visitor like Justesen. Which means that we need to speak to the people who were living at Múli in October 1974. They’re the only ones who can tell us who Astrid knew, what she did there and how her disappearance was explained. Something must have been said to account for it; we just need to find out what and by whom.”
“Well that’ll be easier said than done after all this time,” Remi said drily.
“Maybe not,” Hentze said. “One of the founders of the Colony was a man called Rasmus Matzen who now lives in Denmark. Jan Reyná was going to see him so I asked him to put a few questions to Matzen about Astrid.”
“Hold on,” Remi said, raising a hand. “Why on earth is Jan Reyná involved in this?”
“His mother spent time at the commune so he wanted to ask Matzen about her.”
From Remi’s expression it was clear that he felt this explanation only went part way to an answer, but he chose not to follow the distraction. “So, did Reyná get any information about Astrid?” he asked.
“Yes, some,” Hentze said. “Apparently Matzen remembered her from the commune, but once he realised that she’d been murdered – or that her death was suspicious at least – he didn’t want to talk any more.”
“So Reyná messed it up,” Remi observed flatly.
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” Hentze said. “To be fair he had no jurisdiction to press Matzen for answers beyond a certain point… Anyway, the most important thing is that Matzen does have information that might be useful to us.”
Remi Syderbø wasn’t a man to dwell on might-have-beens once the damage was done. “In that case what do you want to do now then?” he asked. “Get someone from Danish CID to go and talk to Matzen on our behalf?”
“We could,” Hentze acknowledged. “But we’d have to brief them over the phone and we’d also be at the mercy of whoever was assigned to the job. It might work all right, but without knowing the case it’d be easy for them to miss a hint or a coincidence that we might pick up.”
“So you think it would be better to send someone who’s already familiar with the case – which would be you.”
“Or Annika,” Hentze said.
Remi gave him a look. “She’s been in CID since Tuesday,” he said, shaking his head. Then: “How long would it take?”
“Three or four days, I suppose. After speaking to Matzen it’ll depend how easy it is to trace the other people from the commune and interview them.”
Remi made a play of considering it, but not for long. “Just tell me you really don’t think there’s a choice about this.”
“I don’t think there is,” Hentze said.
“All right, go,” Remi said. “But you’d better do it sooner rather than later. If Andrias Berg doesn’t catch wind of it tomorrow – or even if he does – you’ll get the weekend at least, but come Monday…”
“Okay,” Hentze said. He looked at his watch. “I can probably make the five thirty flight if there’s a seat.”
* * *
In the CID office Hentze waited as Annika finished a phone call. She’d made a couple of notes on a pad.
“Mikkjal Tausen’s car is a rental,” she told Hentze. “It last used the Leirvík tunnel over two weeks ago. I also spoke to Sigrun Ludvig at her office. She confirms she spent the night with Tausen at his place.”
“How did you play it?”
“I told her there was a report that her car had passed a traffic accident in Vestmanna on the night of 25 September and asked if she could give me a statement. She said there must be a mistake because she’d been in Rituvík that night – overnight was what she said.”
“Okay, good,” Hentze said. “We can put Tausen aside, then. Has Sophie called?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay, come on; I need a lift and we can talk on the way.”
“Where to?”
“My house and then the airport.”
25
THE LAST OF SUNSET WAS BRIGHT ON THE DAMP TARMAC WHEN I cut across the parking area towards the building where Tove Hald lived. It was a modern building in Copenhagen’s Amagerbro area, window frames, railings and stair banisters picked out in red, as were the doors on the third-floor landing where I rang the bell.
Tove opened the door with a towel round her waist, using another to dry her hair vigorously. In between she wore nothing else.
“Hey. I thought you’d be here before now,” she said, standing back so I could enter the flat, which I did quickly.
“Sorry,” I said, to cover several possible things I might need to apologise for.
“No, it doesn’t matter,” she said, following me into the living area. “This is Kjeld. Kjeld, this is Jan.”
The man she’d referred to was just entering the room from the kitchen, a guy in his mid-twenties with Viking looks and stainless-steel spacers in his earlobes. He appeared not to notice that one of us was less than half-dressed.
“Hey, Jan,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Are you making coffee?” Tove said. “If you are will you make one for Jan?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, I’ll just finish drying.”
I couldn’t help look at her back as she went off to her bedroom, seeing the snaking daisy head tattoos which spilled down her spine as far as the towel round her waist. I turned, looking for Kjeld, but he’d gone back to the kitchen so I followed him there.
“So are you and Tove… living together?” I asked.
“Sure, we’ve shared this place for two years.” Then he reassessed for a second. “Oh, right, you don’t mean it like that. Nej, we only share the bills and the rent, nothing else.” He laughed. “She’s too weird for me. I can’t keep up.” He handed me a mug of coffee, regulation black.
“Weird in a good way?” I asked, because it begged the question.
“Oh, yeh, for sure.” He tapped his head. “She has too much working in here. She has a brain like— What do you say? Like a sponge, right?”
“Right,” I said, glad to know I wasn’t the only one who thought Tove was, at least, unconventional.
“And this thing – this research she’s doing for you – it’s got her very interested,” Kjeld went on.
“Has it?” I asked, slightly surprised.
“Sure. Like I said, she’s a sponge. When she gets into something she wants it all, right? Like one time we’re talking and I tell her about this actor I saw in a film called The Third Man but I can’t remember his name. It’s nothing, you know – just conversation – but the next day she sends me an email with a dozen attachments, about the film and the actor: where it’s made, who wrote it… Because it interested her she’d watched it twice in the night and then looked for everything she can find out about it. She tells me she can send me more things to read if I want, so I have to say, ‘Tove, it was only the guy’s name I wanted to know.’” He laughed. “Still, some of the things she found were interesting to read. Who knew, right?”
“And who was the actor?” I asked.
He shook his head then laughed again. “You know, I don’t remember. Weird, huh? Anyway, make yourself at home. I have some things to do but if Tove isn’t back in five minutes knock on her door. Sometimes she forgets you’re waiting for her.”
“Okay. Thanks, I will.”
Kjeld took his coffee and headed for his room and I wandered back into the living area, giving it a once-over. The over-large, worn sofa was angled towards a decent-sized TV; there were framed posters on the walls and some general clutter; but overall a sense that because this was shared space no one had put their own personal stamp on it too deeply.
I was looking at the view from the window, out across a main road and beyond that to a green swathe of park, when Tove padded back into the room, dressed now but still with bare feet. That much I could live with.
“You’ve
got coffee?” she asked.
“Yeah, thanks.” I held it up so that she could see that I had.
“Good, so we can start. I have some more information.” She was obviously in business mode again, crossing to the sofa, sitting down and opening the MacBook she’d been holding. “Was the translation of the police report okay?” she asked as I took the seat.
“Yeah, very useful,” I said.
“Good. Did you find Vesborggård House?”
“What’s left of it, yes. It’s being redeveloped. Only a few ancillary buildings are still there but I talked to a couple of people at the site.”
“Okay, I can show you,” she said. “I found a picture from 1923.”
She angled the Mac a little and I saw a black-and-white photograph of an imposing three-storey brick building with an arch at its centre and tall rectangular windows. It had the look of a minor country house, but designed in a way that indicated the architect was more at home with prisons or military buildings. I could see why Henning Skov, the new architect, had said it was no loss.
“Did you learn anything else?” Tove asked.
“No, not a lot. As far as I could find out the place was what would have been called an ‘approved school’ in England at that time. Young offenders were sent there as an alternative to prison.”
“Then that’s strange,” Tove said. “There isn’t much information about Vesborggård House because it was closed so long ago, but in the directories from 1973 to 1977 it is listed as a private clinic, which isn’t usual for Denmark. Here if someone needs treatment there are state hospitals and it is free.”
“Maybe they called it a clinic because they thought it sounded better,” I said. “It might have had less of a stigma attached.”
She frowned. “What is a stigma?”
“Shame – something shameful.”
“Okay. Yes, maybe.” She picked up her phone and made a rapid note. “As I told you this morning,” she went on, “in 2004 a group of fourteen people began a legal case regarding their treatment at Vesborggård House. They said that between 1971 and 1977 they had been sent there by the courts, or as a voluntary alternative to prosecution for minor crimes. They were all aged between sixteen to eighteen years old and in their lawsuit they claimed they had been given drugs to change their behaviour – to make them less ‘anti-social’.”
“What sort of drugs?”
“I don’t know yet. I found this information in several newspaper reports but they didn’t give many details; only that these people now claimed that the drugs they were given were not approved for medical use and that they had caused psychological damage in the following years: depression, anxiety and hallucinations.”
“So what was the outcome of the court case?” I asked.
“There wasn’t one. Before the case went to the court the company that operated Vesborggård House agreed to pay compensation without admitting a fault. There are no more details than that because the settlement was confidential.”
Abruptly she shifted on the sofa, setting the MacBook aside, then standing up. “I need to eat. Do you want something, too?”
“No, thanks, I’m fine.”
She went off to the kitchen and returned a short while later with a packet of Oreos. There was something automated about the way she pulled them from the pack and ate them mechanically one after the other, as if the taste held no interest for her; they were just fuel.
“So what’s the bottom line?” I asked. “Are you thinking that something illegal went on at Vesborggård House and the owners wanted to keep it quiet?”
Tove shook her head while she finished an Oreo. She hadn’t sat down again yet, which gave the impression that she had too much on her mind to be still. “No, we don’t know that,” she said, Oreo gone now. “But the company concerned is Juhl Pharmaceuticals. Do you know that name?”
“Should I?”
“No, maybe not,” she allowed. “But it’s well known in Denmark. It was founded in 1922 by Aksel Juhl and has been owned by the same family through four generations.”
She took a step forward and picked up the MacBook, made a few keystrokes and then handed it to me. On screen was what I took to be a promotional photo: a conference stage with a lean, light-haired man in his fifties with his arm round a woman about twenty years younger. “The current CEO is Mette Lauridsen,” Tove said. “That’s her with her uncle, Oscar Juhl, who was CEO before that. He stepped down in 2004, although he is still on the board.”
“The same year they were sued?”
She gave me an approving nod. “Yeh, although it may be a coincidence. But however it was, Juhl Pharma is a very prosperous company with a strong research division. In the past they have developed antibiotics, anaesthetics and others. So, you see the connection?”
She dropped down on the sofa, as if the lecture was over and now it was my turn – if I could – to catch up.
“You think the people at Vesborggård House were given experimental drugs made by Juhl.”
“Yeh, of course,” she said, making me feel – again – that I was three steps behind. “The people who sued for compensation said this, although of course that doesn’t mean that it’s true. Juhl Pharma may have thought it was better to settle with them than to have their business known in the court. We will find out, though. I have called their head office and sent an email saying I would like information about Vesborggård House. I have also spoken to a friend about Juhl. He wrote his PhD thesis on big pharmaceutical companies, so I’ll see him tomorrow when he comes back from Malmö.”
She crunched another Oreo then put the packet aside as if she’d reached her quota. “So, are you happy with that?”
I wasn’t sure whether she was asking for my approval of her plans or if I was satisfied with what she’d already found out. But either way I had the sense that this had got a little out of control now and that maybe I should try to rein it in.
“It sounds like you’ve got a long way,” I said. “But to be honest, I think you might have got as much as I need already.”
She gave me a frown, as if that didn’t make sense. “You don’t want to know any more?”
“No, it’s not that,” I told her. “But you must have other things to do and I don’t want it to take up all your time.”
“Oh, for the cost,” she said as if the penny had dropped. “No, that isn’t a problem. This is interesting now.”
I remembered Kjeld’s comment that when Tove became interested in something she wanted it all, like a sponge.
“Why?” I asked. “I mean, why is it interesting to you?”
She pursed her lips and frowned seriously for a moment, as if it was the first time the question had occurred to her. “Because I think it shows how people thought at that time,” she said then. “And especially what their attitude was like to young people who didn’t do as they were told. So, at a place like Vesborggård House, it seems that you have one part of our society trying to change another part to make them fit in; to make them normal whether they like it or not. They don’t try to understand what the problem might be; instead they look for a cure from drugs or a pill.”
It was when she said “normal” that I finally got it, and I wondered how many times in her life Tove had been compared to that and found wanting. I’d been as guilty of it as anyone else when we’d first met, just assuming that her brisk, abrupt manner meant that she wasn’t aware of her idiosyncrasies. I’d been wrong, though, that much was obvious now, so I shifted.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m probably only going to stay in Denmark for a couple more days. There’s someone I want to see and a couple of places I want to go, but if you find anything more on Vesborggård House I’d still like to know. So how about we meet up over the weekend if you’ve got time – would that be okay? I’ll buy you a drink or something.”
“Nej, I don’t drink,” she said flatly and then she stood up. “If I have more information I’ll call you, but now you should go. I have other things I need
to do.”
For a second I wondered if I’d hurt her feelings in some way, but there was no way to tell. I got off the sofa and by the time I was on my feet she was already working her phone.
“Okay, well, I’ll see you later, then,” I said.
“Yeh, I’ll see you,” she said, still fixed on the screen as she turned away. “Hi, hi.”
It was as much as I’d get.
26
BY AND LARGE, HENTZE WAS NOT A HAPPY TRAVELLER. HE didn’t mind being somewhere different when he finally got there, but he found nothing exciting or glamorous in the actual process of travelling. So he endured the flight out of Vágar, hemmed in next to the window, and at Kastrup he had the small consolation of towing his single carry-on bag through baggage reclaim without having to wait for anything else. Even so it was gone eight o’clock by the time he’d caught a train and made the short trip to Copenhagen central station, emerging into damp air and setting off briskly to walk the fairly short distance to his hotel.
Apart from the mayonnaise-dropping sandwich, he’d eaten nothing all day and now he was hungry so he intended to check in, leave his bag and then find somewhere to eat before doing anything else. However when he caught the aroma from a red-and-white hotdog stand on Reventlowsgade his stomach made it clear that it wouldn’t wait for that long and, lacking the will to defy it, Hentze gave in. He parked his bag and ordered the largest sausage on offer, then ate beside the stall, burning his mouth as the price of his weakness. It was a good hotdog, though.
Finally, with his hunger satisfied, at least for the moment, he felt rather more in control and remembered that he still hadn’t called Jan Reyná about his record search. It would probably wait, but seeing a bar just over the road and rather fancying a beer after the salty hotdog he took out his phone.
“Hey. I was just calling to see where you were,” he said when Reyná answered. “I’m in Copenhagen now, standing across the street from a bar on Reventlowsgade near the railway station. If you like I could meet you inside.”
